That Thing You Do! (1996) * * *

 

Directed by:  Tom Hanks

Starring:  Tom Everett Scott, Liv Tyler, Johnathon Schaech, Steve Zahn, Tom Hanks, Ethan Embry, Kevin Pollak, Peter Scolari, Charlize Theron, Rita Wilson

That Thing You Do! captures a time just as Beatlemania exploded across America and right before Vietnam became a household word.   It was 1964 and four young men from Erie, Pa. record a song called "That Thing You Do!" and it takes off.   When the song is first played on the radio, the sheer joy erupting from the band members is as catchy as the song itself.   Thank goodness the titular song is a likable one because we hear it a lot. 

The band is The One-ders, which is The Wonders spelled differently a la The Beatles.   Announcers mistakenly call them  the "o-need-ers", but that is soon changed by the no-nonsense record executive Mr. White (Hanks), who lifts them from a band playing country fairs to national television spots.   As the group's fame grows exponentially, so do the internal pressures and conflicts which threaten to break them up just as they're getting started.   Guy (Scott) is the drummer and the band's spiritual leader whose family owns the local appliance store.   He gets the gig after the original drummer breaks his arm.   Jimmy (Schaech) is the band's lead singer and songwriter, who wants to write more "meaningful songs" and soon neglects his faithful longtime girlfriend Faye (Tyler) as his ego inflates and the options for newer female admirers increase.  

Rounding out the band is the unnamed bassist (Embry) who has signed up to join the Marines and isn't long for the band, and guitarist Lenny (Zahn) who is more bewildered and thrilled at the group's overnight success than his fellow band members are.    By the time The Wonders reach California and a spot in a beach party movie and a national TV showcase, the group is about to come apart at the seams, so much so that a second recording session may not ever happen.   Will they indeed be one-hit wonders as their name suggests?   

The Wonders is the type of band you would hear "Where Are They Now?" segments about on Kasey Kasem's American Top 40 broadcasts a decade later.    They have the look of teen idols, but so do hundreds of others.   The song is the kind that you play over and over again, then put away, and don't listen to again for a long while.   The actors who play The Wonders are youthful and effervescent, even though Jimmy is the only jerk among them.   He doesn't deserve Faye's loyalty, which she finally realizes and says, "I've wasted thousands of kisses on you,"   There is also a nice payoff to Guy's secret crush on her. 

That Thing You Do! is colorful, bright, and engaging.   It isn't deep, it isn't meant to reflect on history, but instead it's a movie which shows us a brief moment when the sun shined on four lads from Erie, Pa. who didn't stick around long enough, nor were as substantial as four lads from Liverpool.   

The Empty Man (2020) *

 

Directed by:  David Prior

Starring:  James Badge Dale, Stephen Root, Joel Courtney, Marin Ireland, Aaron Poole, Samantha Logan, Sasha Frolova

Spoilers present, if you're interested.  

The Empty Man is another example of a movie which would go straight to VOD if it weren't for the dearth of movies being shown in theaters.   It is drudgery to sit through.   It is another tale of an ordinary man battling the supernatural.   Ever since Rosemary's Baby, the ordinary person loses 99 times out of 100 when taking on a supernatural being.   Maybe these folks should educate themselves by watching Rosemary's Baby, or even The Sixth Sense.   Surely, they've heard of those movies.

The Empty Man begins in 1995 Bhutan.   A group of hikers, two male and two female, climb the mountains and cross a rickety bridge.   One of the hikers falls into a hole in the ground, and his friend finds him sitting in a trance in front of a skeleton.    The friend is rescued and taken to a nearby vacant house, but he is catatonic.  Following a severe snowstorm, the hikers attempt to make their way back to civilization when one of the women suddenly stabs her friends to death and then jumps to her own death in a deep chasm.   Only the catatonic man survives, and he shows up years later hooked up to a machine in a Missouri hospital.   How he was rescued and brought there is not explained.

The story picks up again in 2018 Missouri.   We meet former St. Louis detective James Lasombra (Dale-from The Departed), who now owns a security shop selling mace and other like items.   He is haunted by the death of his wife and son in a car accident, and now his neighbor's daughter Amanda (Frolova) goes missing hours after talking to him about creepy stuff.   James decides to play detective again and find out Amanda's whereabouts.   This leads him to tales of the Empty Man, who can be summoned by blowing into a bottle and chanting his name, and a secret society which wants the Empty Man to appear again for reasons only they understand.  

The society itself isn't very secret, since James is able to Google it and retrieve all of the information he wants about it.   The farther down the supernatural rabbit hole James travels, the more demonic visions appear to him, and the more he lights up a cigarette to deal with the stress.   I suppose James doesn't need to run the store, since he abandons it the moment he starts his research into Amanda's disappearance.   However, he needs money to afford all of those smokes, so he has a conundrum perhaps worse than the one with Amanda. 

Movies dealing with the occult and demons who can be summoned at will are silly by nature, but it isn't against the law for them to be at least somewhat fun and suspenseful.    The Empty Man is dreary and hopeless.   Poor James Badge Dale provides more of a hero than the story deserves, and he is eventually swallowed up by the inane plot.   When it is told to James what his true nature is, all I could do is ask questions, which isn't what is desired from the viewer, but I asked if this was suddenly Weird Science disguised as a horror film.   The Empty Man is empty-headed.   

Interiors (1978) * * * 1/2

Directed by:  Woody Allen

Starring:  Diane Keaton, Geraldine Page, Mary Beth Hurt, E.G. Marshall, Richard Jordan, Sam Waterston, Kristin Griffith

Interiors represented a departure for Woody Allen as his first drama, although some of his comedies until that point freely showed the wounds in Allen's soul.   Annie Hall is a comedy, yes, but it's about a painful breakup.   Interiors is also about a breakup, but this time it's a marriage of many years.  The patriarch, a successful lawyer named Arthur (Marshall), announces over breakfast his desire for a "trial separation".  His daughters Renata (Keaton), a published poet, and Joey (Hurt) who is forever in search of work which will fulfill her, are stunned to varying degrees.   Arthur's wife Eve, a cold perfectionist of an interior designer, is soon hospitalized from the trauma of her broken marriage.  A third daughter, Flyn, (Griffith) is off filming bad movies which her sisters snicker about behind her back.   This family was hanging on by a thread to begin with.   The divorce brings their conflicts and issues center stage.

Renata and Joey are the daughters with the most gaping wounds caused by their mother's coldness.   Their marriages suffer.   Renata's husband Frederick (Jordan) is an unsuccessful novelist who finds solace in the bottle and lashing out at Renata.   Frederick also has a crush on Flyn, and one night while drunk attempts to rape her in an unsettling scene which showcases just how pathetic Frederick is.  

Joey's husband Michael (Waterston) is a political activist and filmmaker who is forever put upon by Eve's insistence on polishing his wooden floors multiple times and redecorating his apartment.  Why does Eve want to redesign his place so much?  To get back at Joey for undisclosed reasons.   Clearly Joey is the most upset at her mother.   "I feel such rage against you," Joey painfully admits to Eve. 

Renata and Joey find a common enemy to direct their hostility when Arthur introduces his new fiancee Pearl (Stapleton), a down-to-earth woman whose warm and open personality is so foreign to the daughters that they refer to her as a "vulgarian".   They're used to Eve's distance.  Pearl is culture shock to them, and to her.  Stapleton's performance is the best in the movie, and she received a well-deserved Oscar nomination.  Watch the scene in which she instinctively answers when Joey says "Mom".  

Allen goes heavy on the symbolism, especially when we see the volatile waves crashing violently against the surf at the family's beach home.   After the inevitable conclusion, the seas are calm as the daughters reflect on what they've lost, or perhaps the calm they gained.   This would not be Allen's last foray into drama, and future films only reflect his renowned versatility as a writer and director.  There are no laughs to be had in Interiors, but the material isn't treated in heavy-handed fashion.  It is tempting to suggest we wish we had these people's problems.   They are affluent, yes, but all of the money in the world won't shake them free of their guilt, anger, and resentments.   We feel sorry for someone like Eve, who realizes only too late what caused Arthur to want to leave her.   This drives her to multiple suicide attempts, not necessarily because Arthur is gone, but because he isn't coming back. 

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (2020) * * (streaming on Amazon Prime)

 

Directed by:  Jason Woliner

Starring:  Sacha Baron Cohen, Maria Bakalova, Rudy Giuliani

One of Sacha Baron Cohen's signature characters returns after a fourteen-year hiatus in a sequel filmed in part during the COVID-19 pandemic.   With two weeks left before the 2020 presidential election finally arrives, Borat Subsequent Movie Film drops on Amazon Prime in hopes of showing America at its ugliest.   This is a case of too little, too late.   We have seen America at its worst for the past five years every day as part of the 24-hour news cycle which moves so swiftly we forget yesterday's news yesterday.  Borat uncovers the ignorance of Americans who believe the Clintons run a secret pedophile ring from the back of a pizza shop (and slaughter children and drink their blood) and the foolhardy belief that the coronavirus was created in a lab and spread across the world.   Borat has some fun with this notion in a plot twist, but these revelations are old hat.   These ignoramuses are covered by legitimate news organizations time and again.    Borat adds nothing new to the mix.   We've seen this enough.  

Borat, the Kazakhstan journalist whose beliefs in a woman's place in the world and antisemitism are as backward as the country depicted here.    I am sure the real Kazakhstan is nowhere near as third world as the movies suggest, but when he returns to America years after disgracing his home country with the documentary he made in the first film, he finds he's right at home with likeminded individuals.    His mission, as ordered by the nation's new premier, is to give his fifteen-year-old daughter Tutar (Bakalova) as a gift to Donald Trump in hopes it will elevate Kazakhstan on the world stage.  Trump is hard to get to, so Borat floats the idea of giving his daughter to Mike Pence.  When that fails, he settles for Rudy Guiliani, and the controversial payoff is sufficiently creepy.   Cohen insists Guiliani's behavior is not at all staged.   You'll have to see for yourself.   If it isn't staged, then Guiliani is a fool.   If it is staged, then Guiliani has found another way to further sully his now-damaged reputation.    I recall him in Fear City, the recent documentary about the successful federal prosecution of the mob.   He was intelligent and thoughtful there.   How did he become such a dumpster fire of a person now?

Borat is in the movie, but because of his fame (and infamy), he wears disguises for a lot of the movie, so those who like the traditional Borat will be disappointed.   He delivers the signature "high five" and "great success" lines, but they, like the rest of the movie, feels like old hat right about now.    When Borat is not "exposing" the buffoonery of people, or outright shocking them with his (and Tutar's) wildly inappropriate dance at a debutante ball while Tutar is having her period, he is slogging his way through a plot in which his daughter discovers she has rights and chooses not to behave the way her country (and father) has conditioned her to.    It is here where Borat Subsequent Movie Film goes all gooey and sentimental (much like Cohen's unsuccessful Bruno) and it all doesn't fit.   

An immense talent like Cohen is long past having to play his characters from Da Ali G Show again.   I suppose he felt the time was right for a Borat return and the quasi-documentary filmmaking style thrusting people's ignorance and unfounded prejudices onto a public which probably has already had its fill of such harebrained ideas.   It's difficult to swallow that some of these scenes were filmed without the subjects knowing it was a film, but still I can't blame Cohen for giving Borat another go.  After watching this incarnation of the character, however, it's mostly been there, done that. 

Urban Cowboy (1980) * * *

 

Directed by:  James Bridges

Starring:  John Travolta, Debra Winger, Scott Glenn, Mickey Gilley, Charlie Daniels Band, James Gammon, Barry Corbin, Madolyn Smith

Urban Cowboy was a staple on cable in the early 1980's.   I was a mere ten years old when I initially saw it, and it was a simple, yet engrossing story.   For a ten year old, that's good enough.  Watching it again forty years after its release, it can be seen as Saturday Night Fever with country and western bars replacing discos.   Both films star John Travolta, and both male leads are macho meatheads who don't see anything fundamentally wrong with mistreating women at first, but one gradually sees the error of his ways.   

Is Urban Cowboy entertaining in a slick, superficial way?   Yes.   Are Travolta and Winger appealing?  Yes.   Can I enjoy those aspects of the movie and denounce its sexist, sometimes misogynistic attitudes towards the female characters?   Yes.   We have to take into account that this movie was released in 1980.  To paraphrase Bill Maher, it's difficult to blame someone for not being "woke" years before "woke" was even a thing.    In these ways, movies are time capsules.  They reflect the past or what was contemporary back then.   Their values may not at all coincide with the present.

On to the movie, where Buford "Bud" Davis (Travolta) moves from the country to Houston, lands a job with his uncle (Corbin) at an oil refinery, and spends his nights drinking, dancing, and riding the mechanical bull at Gilley's, a famous Houston hot spot run by country singer Mickey Gilley (playing himself).  He grows proficient at bull riding, and to date this is the only movie I can recall in which the big event at the end is a mechanical bull riding contest.    He meets and falls for the fiery Sissy (Winger), and they marry at Gilley's and move into a brand new trailer home.   Life is decent for the Davis', until it isn't.   Sissy wants to ride the bull, Bud doesn't want her to because a woman's place is in the home, he smacks her, she leaves and hooks up with ex-con Wes (Glenn, with the face of granite) who isn't above smacking Sissy around either.  

Bud gets with Pam (Smith), a Gilley's patron who lives in a fancy Houston high rise apartment.   She's slumming it at Gilley's to be sure, but we know where all of this will end up.  However, we see subtle changes in Bud and his attitudes towards women and their place.   Because Bud is played by John Travolta, we allow him some rope, and we care enough to hope he can get his act together.   We also care for Sissy enough to hope she finds someone better for her than Bud or Wes.  Does it matter that Bud is the hero and Wes is the villain when both put their hands on poor Sissy?  How does Bud hold any moral high ground over Wes?    He apologizes to her to be sure, but who knows how much he has changed?  

James Bridges wrote and directed movies with strong female characters, including The Paper Chase (1973), The China Syndrome (1979), and this film.   Through it all, Sissy remains plucky and loving towards her men, even if neither deserves such loyalty.   Like Saturday Night Fever, Urban Cowboy's soundtrack has a lot of memorable crossover songs, including Looking for Love by Johnny Lee, Charlie Daniels Band's Devil Went Down to Georgia, and Boz Scaggs' Look What You've Done to Me.   The soundtrack may have outsold the movie.   It is impossible not to note the similarities to Saturday Night Fever, but while Fever remains a timeless depiction of an era, Urban Cowboy is a romantic comedy which checks similar boxes, is enjoyable enough, but with a questionable moral compass.   

Kickboxer (1989) * *

 

Directed by:  Mark DiSalle

Starring:  Jean-Claude Van Damme, Michel Qissi, Haskell V. Anderson III, Dennis Alexio, Ka Ting Lee, Rochelle Ashana

My review of Bloodsport led me to Kickboxer, another Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle which isn't a million miles removed from Bloodsport in terms of quality and plot.   It's B-movie action, but you feel some grudging affection for it.   Van Damme puts forth a lot of energy in a plot we've seen a hundred times before, and the villain (like all others in this genre) is one-dimensional, sneering, and sadistic.  

Van Damme is Kurt Sloane, brother of world champion kickboxer Eric Sloane (real-life kickboxing champion Dennis Alexio).   If you wanted to know why Dennis has an American accent, while Kurt doesn't, it is explained that their mother moved with Kurt to Europe following the parents' divorce.  Eric, cocky from a recent win, accepts a challenge to fight in Thailand against Tong Po (Qissi), who is able to crack cinder block columns with his kicks.   Kurt tries to warn Eric to call off the fight, Eric doesn't listen.  Eric gets his ass kicked and is left paralyzed.   It is not made clear whether Tong Po won the world championship, or if it was a non-title match.   Either way, Tong Po tears the championship belt in two and scornfully throws it on Eric's prone body in the ring.

Kurt vows revenge, and finds his way to a martial arts master who can teach him how to kickbox.   Kurt is already jacked, so he learns some moves with the Mr. Miyagi-light instructor, and it's Kurt vs.Tong Po, although not in a traditional ring or match.   Tong Po and his weasel manager Freddie Li (Lee) arrange for a battle in a dark cavern using gloves dipped in broken glass.   There is, of course, a bloodthirsty crowd of degenerate gamblers watching the fight, which make sense because the fight was supposed to take place in a double-secret location.   Kurt also develops a relationship with a local woman named Mylee (Ashana), whose function is to be supportive and to be the woman in danger from Tong Po and his goons.    Would it be a spoiler to suggest Eric may show up to the fight in his wheelchair and lead the Kurt Sloane cheering section?    It is funny to see the crowd cheer Kurt while most of them bet on Tong Po, so they're losing money, but at least they are happy about it.

Kickboxer doesn't try to transcend its genre or be more than it is.   It is thin on plot, but big on heavily edited action sequences with some of the heartier punches and kicks shown in slow motion with Van Damme doing his best Bruce Lee impression.   No one would ever mistake Van Damme for Bruce Lee, but give him credit for trying. 

Bloodsport (1988) * *

 

Directed by:  Newt Arnold

Starring:  Jean-Claude Van Damme, Donald Gibb, Forest Whitaker, Bolo Yeung, Leah Ayres, Norman Burton

When Bloodsport was first released, it was allegedly based on a true story of Frank Dux, the first Westerner to win an ultra-secret Hong Kong martial arts tournament.   There was a Frank Dux, but there was no such tournament, and how secret could it be when dozens of fighters participate and maybe a hundred bloodthirsty gamblers pack the stands?    

Nonetheless, Bloodsport introduced the world to the "Muscles from Brusssels" Jean-Claude Van Damme, who for a time was a top-line action film star.   Bloodsport is the first of many Van Damme films in which he fights his way through a martial arts tournament.    They each contain the same types of scenes, including Van Damme squaring off against the evil opponent who crippled, maimed, or killed his friend in the tournament.    The villain, such as Chong Li (Yeung) in Bloodsport, sneers hateful dialogue at JCVD and promises (even with some poor dubbing) the same fate will befall him.   No points for guessing the bad guy won't get his wish.  

Bloodsport isn't a malicious movie, just a silly actioner showcasing Van Damme's acrobatic martial arts skills.   He looks good and has the moves, although his characters are limited pretty much to that.  While watching the fighters go at each other, I wonder why there was even a referee?   The combatants can do what they wish to each other, and the referee's job is to point out who won, which when you see one of the contestants lying in a pool of his own blood, is fairly obvious to the ravenous crowd.   This crowd, however, pauses its bloodlust when Li steps over the line and kills an opponent, leading to silence and the tournament powers that be to symbolically turn their backs on him.   No matter to Li, who wants to kill Frank because he eclipsed Li's quickest victory record.    

Bloodsport isn't altogether awful, just a product of its era.   It is preposterous violence centered around a threadbare plot and even thinner characters, but there are some nifty fight sequences before it all starts to become repetitive.   Van Damme and Steven Seagal would soon show up all over movie theater screens with films of varying degrees of quality and success.   I think they even starred in a movie together recently, but I don't think I'll be tracking that one down.    And I would like to see a movie about the real Frank Dux, who reportedly made all of this up.   It worked, because it got him into the movie business. 

The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020) * * * * (Streaming on Netflix)

 

Directed by:  Aaron Sorkin

Starring:  Sacha Baron Cohen, Eddie Redmayne, Mark Rylance, Frank Langella, John Carroll Lynch, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Michael Keaton, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Jeremy Strong, Alex Sharp

What makes The Trial of the Chicago 7 special is how it resonates in today's political climate.   The Chicago 7 were tried and convicted in 1969 for inciting riots outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.   Originally, it was the Chicago 8, but Black Panter Bobby Seale's (Abdul-Mateen II) case was declared a mistrial after Judge Hoffman (Langella) ordered him bound and gagged, causing lead prosecutor Richard Schultz (Levitt) to request a sidebar to point out this flagrant mistreatment of Seale.   Judge Hoffman, no relation to defendant Abbie Hoffman (Cohen), displays an almost unprecedented scorn for the defendants; and whose rulings made the convictions easy to overturn on appeal.   

Writer-director Sorkin does not make the defendants easy to like.   Hoffman and cohort Jerry Rubin (Strong) continually antagonize the judge with outbursts and demonstrations, including one day wearing judge's robes.   When ordered to take them off, Hoffman and Rubin have police uniforms on underneath.  Defendants' attorney William Kunstler (Rylance-brilliant) is eventually rung up on 24 counts of contempt of court as he displays his overt frustration with the judge.   Seale's tab is ten counts before his mistrial verdict, and the rest mostly follow in lockstep.   These are protesters after all.   

The most rational of the Chicago 7, it appears, is Tom Hayden (Redmayne), the future California senator and husband of Jane Fonda who intuits he won't be able to force much change from a prison cell.   He and Hoffman approach protest in dissimilar ways, but they respect each other, as revealed in a critical scene in which Hayden is recorded alleging inciting violence.    It is easy to draw comparisons to the Black Lives Matter movement and how some segments of society view it with disdain while others support it.    Protest is a fundamental right in the United States.   In the late 1960's, with images of the Vietnam War beamed into everyone's living room, the protest against the war was unprecedented.    Were the protests popular?  Sometimes, and other times they were received with scorn.   It comes with the territory.   However, there is a thin line between peaceful protest and violence. 

Perhaps the opposition to the protesters on trial is seen as a microcosm in Judge Julius Hoffman, who can barely conceal his dislike for the defendants.   His rulings, including having Seale bound and gagged in front of the world, causes even the prosecution to scratch its head.   When former Attorney General Ramsey Clark (Keaton) is called to testify, his testimony is barred from being heard by the jury.   As Clark tells Kunstler, "get ready for the appeal," knowing full well the defendants' fate is sealed.   In a dialogue exchange which alludes to current events, Clark informs the prosecution that he can disclose a conversation he had with then-President Lyndon Johnson because "the President is not my client,"   Someone ought to tell the current president that.   Or the current attorney general while we're at it.

The Trial of the Chicago 7 reflects the gray area of jurisprudence and ultimately human nature, which makes it such juicy watching.   The actors shine as people who are allowed to show various dimensions and have personalities.    Abbie Hoffman isn't shown as perpetually unhinged, nor is Hayden seen as simply an upright citizen.   Sorkin's dialogue is peppy and alive, and not simple verbal volleyball matches which pepper some of Sorkin's work.   The final scene prior to the epilogue is a powerful payoff and a reminder of why the protesters were in Chicago in the first place.       

Honest Thief (2020) * *

 

Directed by:  Mark Williams

Starring:  Liam Neeson, Kate Walsh, Jeffrey Donovan, Jai Courtney, Anthony Ramos, Robert Patrick

Liam Neeson action movies are becoming a genre of their own.   The plots may interchange, but Neeson usually plays a sixty-something former cop/military man who can outwit, outmuscle, outshoot, and outsmart men half his age.    He may be flawed and does bad things, like rob banks as he does in Honest Thief, but he is generally a good guy at heart and wants to do the right thing.   In Honest Thief, he plays Tom Dolan, a safecracker who has robbed banks in seven states over the last nine years.  Dubbed the In and Out Bandit, Tom does his robbing at night and vanishes without a trace.   One day, while looking for a storage facility to store his boxes of ill-gotten cash, he meets and falls in love with Annie, who works at the place.   He stops robbing banks, but feels guilty that he has to lie to her about his past, so he calls the FBI and works out a deal:   He'll turn over the $9 million he stole in return for a light sentence and a chance to start his life anew.

The agent in charge (Patrick) is skeptical of Tom's story, since it seems numerous people crank the FBI with such confessions, so he sends two younger agents (Courtney and Ramos) over to investigate Tom's story.   Tom indeed has money stashed away, and the agents decide to bump off Tom and keep the loot for themselves.   Patrick is shot by the crooked FBI guys, and they try to frame Tom for the murder.  They don't know they are dealing with a man with a particular set of skills, so the plan goes awry and Tom is on the lam.   Insert generic car chases, fights, and shootouts, and you have Honest Thief.

Annie is drawn into the fray, and decides to stick by her man even though he was once a thief and is now on the run.    This of course will put her in danger.   An honest FBI agent (Donovan), who brings the dog he received in his recent divorce (don't ask) with him to work, suspects Tom may be innocent and the agents are the villains.   Donovan normally plays the smug villain, and this is a nice change of pace for him.   Walsh is suitably likable, and thus we wonder why she didn't just go somewhere else instead of being sucked into this.   Just to show Tom is really a good soul, he tells his story about how he got into robbing banks and how he never spent a dime of the money he stole.   Still, it must be a drag schlepping nine million dollars around in cardboard boxes from place to place, a problem I suppose most people wish they had.   If Tom were a tad more enterprising, he could've figured a way to launder the money in banks.   In for a penny, in for a pound, so he may as well have taken the extra step.

Some of these movies are good, like Taken (first one only), Run All Night, and Cold Pursuit.   Honest Thief doesn't rank among the better films of the Liam Neeson genre.   It is a tepid chase picture which checks the boxes if you're eagerly awaiting another Liam Neeson movie where he kicks people's asses, but probably won't do much for anyone else.    

Can't Buy Me Love (1987) * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Steve Rash

Starring:  Patrick Dempsey, Amanda Peterson, Courtney Gains, Tina Caspary, Seth Green, Darcy De Moss, Dennis Dugan

Can't Buy Me Love goes about its drab business being an average 80's teen comedy until it boxes itself in with a plot in which there can't be any possible redemption for the leads.   We meet the gawky, nondescript Ronald Miller (Dempsey), who mows the five natural grass lawns left in Tucson and apparently makes pretty good scratch doing it.   He longs for the pretty, popular Cindy (Peterson), who goes to school with Ronald but only sees him as the guy who mows her lawn.   Ronald has his own group of less popular friends, but he really wants to be accepted by the "in" crowd.   So far, this sounds like the setup for any number of teen romantic comedies from any era.   

Then comes the plot:   Desperate Ronald offers Cindy $1,000 to pretend to be his girlfriend for a month.  No kissing, touching, or foreplay, just an item in name only.   You see, Cindy spilled red wine all over her mother's outfit and needs the money to replace it before her mom finds out, so she accepts the offer.    This makes Cindy a borderline prostitute and Ronald a borderline john, which won't be good for either's reputation, assuming no one finds out.  Of course, we know people will find out, and that's where the movie winds up in a quandary from which it doesn't recover.   The way Can't Buy Me Love handles these developments is: it doesn't handle them.    

Ronald believes, correctly, that just having Cindy on his arm even briefly will allow his stock to rise in her friends' eyes.   Cindy's friends start fighting over him, he slicks back his hair, and becomes an insufferable jerk to even his real friends, and of course the deception will deservedly blow up in his face.    Cindy's friends are so mean and callous towards everyone that it makes you wonder why Cindy would even be friends with them.   They deserve to be the outcasts and don't have a collective brain, but in a movie like Can't Buy Me Love, they become the objects of infatuation and longing.   

Cindy is far too nice to be hanging out with such loathsome souls, and she deserves better than to be dating Ronald or even her real boyfriend, with whom she was conveniently broken up so Ronald could make his move.   Ronald goes from "totally geek to totally chic" as one of Cindy's friends eloquently puts it, and after the gig is up, from "totally chic to totally geek".   He changes personalities so fast that he could give himself whiplash.   Patrick Dempsey tries to keep up, but the screenplay asks too much of him.   Peterson has a sweet way about her that makes us wish she was in a better movie.  

When I first saw Can't Buy Me Love in 1987, I was far too young to understand the implications of the plot.   The issues are tidied up far too neatly and quickly in the movie, and back then I suppose I was happy for everyone.   However, viewing it again after many years, Can't Buy Me Love sidesteps too many important issues and questions to be enjoyed even on the level of dopey teen comedy.   

The War with Grandpa (2020) * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Tim Hill

Starring:  Robert DeNiro, Oakes Fegley, Rob Riggle, Uma Thurman, Christopher Walken, Cheech Marin, Jane Seymour

Originally slated for 2018 release, The War with Grandpa now hits theaters in a blockbuster-starved period of movie releases.   Since potential blockbusters have postponed their release dates, movie studios are emptying the vaults to present at least something to the movie-going public.   It's a double-edged sword.   I enjoy the movie theater experience, so it is a positive the theater has a movie to show, but these days it's slim pickings,   

The War with Grandpa would be a movie you watch on Nickelodeon or the Disney Channel if it didn't star big names like Robert DeNiro, Uma Thurman, Christopher Walken, etc.   This leads me to wonder what about the project attracted these stars.   The War with Grandpa is presented as an innocuous family picture, but like Home Alone, it gives us an escalating series of dangerous pranks which could really hurt somebody.  We can only hope the family has the money to pay for the damage, or decent health insurance.   But did it really need to star Robert DeNiro?   He has been in some bombs, to be sure, but he is the same iconic actor who starred in Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Godfather Part II, and Silver Linings Playbook.   Now, he's starring in a movie where he is battling his grandson in a war of wills and slapstick gags.  

What is the war about, you ask?  Well, Ed (DeNiro) is having a tough time adjusting to living alone following the death of his wife.   He drives despite not having a license, his house is in disarray, he can't operate the self-checkout at the supermarket, leading to a case of mistaken shoplifting, etc.   Ed's daughter Sally (Thurman) suggests he move in with her family and take his grandson Peter's bedroom.  Peter now has to take up residence in the attic, which is full of junk, birds, and mice, and the kid is none too happy.   He writes a declaration of war (after reading the Declaration of Independence) and slips it under his grandfather's door.   Ed doesn't take it seriously at first, but once the brat disguises a can of fast-drying putty as shaving cream, it's on.   A helicopter drone is brought into the mix, and while Ed can't figure out the self-checkout, he assembles and operates the drone with no difficulty.  

This is supposed to be lightweight stuff, but some of these games of one-upmanship get nasty, and it's cringe-inducing to see an elderly man slip on marbles and later fall off the side of a house.   The matter is expected to be settled in a game of dodge ball at the local Bounce U., but this scene just wants to make you watch the movie Dodge Ball instead.    Because The War with Grandpa is lazy slapstick, the characters simply shake off their slips, trips, falls, and crashes and keep on moving.    This may not appeal to me, but it will more likely appeal to younger kids.   

Other big names like Uma Thurman, Christopher Walken, Rob Riggle, Jane Seymour, and Cheech Marin have supporting roles, and most aren't given anything substantial to do.  Thurman has run-ins with the same police officer, Riggle is unhappy about not being able to use a chainsaw, and Walken has a man cave stocked with video games.   I started to connect the dots as I recalled DeNiro co-starred with Thurman in Mad Dog and Glory (1993), and Christopher Walken in The Deer Hunter.   Walken co-starred with Seymour in Wedding Crashers.  You know the movie isn't filling the entertainment bill if you start to concentrate on the actors' filmographies rather than what's on the screen.  

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile (2019) * * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Joe Berlinger

Starring:  Zac Efron, Lily Collins, Jeffrey Donovan, Kaya Scoledario, James Hetfield, Haley Joel Osment, John Malkovich, Jim Parsons

The words in the title are spoken by the trial judge who presided over Ted Bundy's Florida double murder conviction which sent him to death row.   Bundy was executed in 1989, but not before confessing to thirty murders over ten years in Washington, Utah, and Colorado.   There may have been more women slaughtered by Bundy, but the true number will never be known.    What makes Extremely Wicked unique is that it portrays an infamous serial killer without showing his crimes, except for one at the conclusion. We are no less shocked when the gruesome details emerge of the horrendous murders, but when we first meet Ted, he seems affable, caring, and incapable of such horror.   How do such actions reside in the same person?   His longtime girlfriend Liz Kendall (Collins) continually chooses to believe Ted even after he is convicted of attempted kidnapping in Utah and then charged with murder in Colorado, while being a suspect in numerous killings in Washington.   

The movie stars Zac Efron as Ted Bundy, one of the most notorious serial killers ever.   His Florida trial was broadcast nationwide, and mostly women attended in person to gawk at the handsome suspect.   To them, it was like seeing a teen idol in the flesh...crimes be damned, he's eye candy.    Bundy's looks, charm, and intelligence (he was a law student) made it easy for him to lure victims.   He's just so darn nice and unassuming.   Why wouldn't someone feel safe in his presence?   He's a clean-cut, All-American young man.   But how ugly he is.  

There is never a scene in which Efron portrays an obvious psychopath.   His eyes don't bulge, he doesn't scream, he stays in control of himself.   Efron doesn't overact, which makes him all the scarier.   There is something lacking in the eyes, though, and that is where the performance lies.   They are opaque, and not windows to Bundy's soul, which he doesn't have anyway.   Bundy seems close to perfect on the surface, which makes Liz err on the side of Ted even when confronted with mounting evidence against him.   It is our natural instinct as a viewer to want to talk some sense into her, but we know the history, and she doesn't.   Once Bundy escapes from a Colorado jail while awaiting trial on murder charges, Liz tries to find a way to leave Ted behind, even taking up with a shy co-worker (Osment), who is sweet on her.  Ted keeps calling her, but we wonder why he bothers.   We also speculate as to why Liz wasn't made the 31st victim.   As Liz battles with the bottle, is she dealing with survivor's guilt, or something worse?  

Liz is not the only woman Bundy effectively bamboozles.   A sycophantic former co-worker named Carole Ann Boone (Scoledario) runs into him first in Colorado and then in Florida, and she is enthralled with him.   She completely believes in his innocence, or just simply doesn't want to believe in his guilt.  Carole Ann pathetically sits behind him in court, and at one point agrees to marry him on the witness stand.   While on death row, she announces to Bundy she is pregnant with his child.   Carole Ann is quite frightening herself, not because she is a murderer, but she so blindly follows Bundy to the edge.  Would Liz have done the same thing if he didn't go on the lam?   

Besides Efron, Extremely Wicked is buoyed by strong supporting performances, including Jim Parsons as the Florida DA who is none too happy to have the trial televised, and John Malkovich as Judge Edward Cowart, who manages to avoid being manipulated by the ever-manipulative Bundy.  He takes on the attitude of a witness watching a traffic accident unfold before his eyes and accepts that he is powerless to stop it.   When sentencing Bundy, he is not without sympathy, mostly at Bundy's potential being wasted in the service of serial killing, and he delivers his speech as if it wasn't the first or last time he would have to make it.   It's a measured, quietly nuanced performance.   

Extremely Wicked haunts the viewer because while we are witnessing Ted Bundy's legal escapades, there are victims dead and buried, and in some cases hacked to pieces, in four states (maybe more).  The hideous nature of the crimes remains omnipresent, and their unheard screams of horror will not let us rest.   The movie makes a sensitive and powerful statement by not showing us the grisly murders.  We are not here to watch murder porn.   We see one, and it is muted just enough so we get the point of its horror without wretched excess.   The world knows Ted Bundy and what he did.   It is a chilling, unsettling story of a man who finally gets what he deserves for killing those who didn't deserve to meet such a terrible fate.  

Schitt's Creek (Season six) * * 1/2

 

Starring:  Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Annie Murphy, Daniel Levy, Chris Elliott, Jenn Robertson, Noah Reid, Dustin Milligan, Karen Robinson, Emily Hampshire

The sixth and final season of Schitt's Creek made Emmy history recently by sweeping the comedy awards, including wins for its four acting leads, directing, writing...you name it.   The wins feel more like a makeup for all of the better seasons which were overlooked by Emmy voters.    This final season wraps things up in a tidy manner, but there is nothing here which convinces me that it was even necessary.   

Schitt's Creek was about two seasons past its sell-by date.   The characters are who they are in all of their self-contained glory.   David (Daniel Levy) sheds a few more tears and Alexis (Murphy) gives us some dimension after a tough breakup from a long-distance relationship, but Johnny (Eugene Levy) remains the pillar of strength and decency, while Moira (O'Hara) hams things up not only in the crummy movies she stars in, but at town meetings also.   O'Hara throws all subtlety out the window in this season, and she is trying to be hard to be FUNNY.   O'Hara was awarded a Best Comedy Actress Emmy, but this is by far her least appealing season.

Schitt's Creek remains subtly amusing in its last season.   It ends with the wedding of David and his eternally patient fiance Patrick (Reid).   I say check back in a year or so to see if they're still together.   Another subplot involves Johnny, Roland (Elliott), and Stevie (Hampshire) trying to gain funding for an ambitious capital venture involving the purchase of thousands of hotels similar to the Rosebud, which builds to a solid payoff.   The final sequence which puts a bow on everything feels muted, and doesn't even contain a goodbye between Johnny and Roland, which has comic and sentimental possibilities which were sidestepped.    Johnny's relationship with Roland, in my opinion, is the heart of the show, because it is a dovetailing of two worlds into one.   Levy and Elliott have exquisite comic timing together.

The final season is worth a look for those who watched the first five seasons.   It isn't bad, but just further evidence that the final episode of season three still feels like the more natural conclusion to the show.    The next three seasons were more of the same old, same old. 

The Broken Hearts Gallery (2020) * * 1/2

Directed by: Natalie Krinsky

Starring:  Geraldine Viswanathan, Dacre Montgomery, Bernadette Peters, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Molly Gordon, Phillipa Soo, Sheila McCarthy

You could be forgiven if you think The Broken Hearts Gallery has a Hallmark movie feel to it.   It checks the boxes for a romantic comedy, but while it has spirit and pluck, there is an undercurrent of melancholy because we are dealing with broken hearts.   The Broken Hearts Gallery is carried along by attractive, likable leads.   Does it stand above your run-of-the-mill romantic comedy?   At times, yes, and at other times, not much.   There were times in which the two-and-a-half star rating could've been nudged to three stars, and other times it could've been dropped to two stars.  It's that kind of movie.

Geraldine Viswanathan stars as Lucy, a 26-year old woman unlucky in love who, perhaps masochistically, saves souvenirs as reminders of her failed relationships.   Her bedroom is full of items which many wouldn't consider saving, including the thimble game piece from Monopoly, which we learn later comes from her first broken heart (and an unexpected source).   She is perpetually optimistic that her current boyfriend, the older Max (Ambudkar), who works with Lucy at the art gallery owned by Eva Woolf (Peters-who looks great at 72), will be The One.   Hours later, Max is back with his ex, and Lucy is crushed again.

In a Meet Cute for our times, a tipsy Lucy accidentally gets into the car driven by Nick (Montgomery), mistaking him for her Uber driver.   Nick tries to dissuade her from her belief that he's the Uber driver, but not that much.   This lack of communication comes into play later with a plot reveal you can see coming from fifty miles away.   Nick drives Lucy home, and after a few more coincidental meetings, Lucy and Nick become friends, with a romance right around the corner.    Nick is looking for funding to complete his dream project, the renovation of an abandoned hotel in midtown Manhattan (good luck), and Lucy one day nails Max's tie to one of the walls.   She calls it the Broken Heart Gallery, and after a few Instagram postings, other brokenhearted folks contribute their own personal items which remind them of lost loves.   Some people record their stories.   The gallery takes off, and Lucy may have her dream of one day running her own gallery.

I don't think I need to recap what happens next.    Romantic comedies by definition have a certain comforting predictability to them.   Will there be contrived issues which keep Lucy and Nick temporarily apart?   Will they be resolved with a grand gesture in a public setting?   I'm not revealing any spoilers by suggesting that the answers will likely be yes.   Viswanathan is a bubbly presence, while Nick is a bit more reserved and cautious.   Their chemistry isn't off the charts, but it will do.   The entire movie is like that.  Not great, but passable.   If you take into account the quality of movies currently showing in theaters thanks to the pandemic, with The Broken Hearts Gallery, I can safely say in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. 

 

Wish Man (2019) * * * (Streaming on Netflix)

 

Directed by:  Theo Davies

Starring:  Andrew Steel, Fay Masterson, Kirby Bliss Blanton, Tom Sizemore, Frank Whaley, Bruce Davison, Danny Trejo, Robert Pine, Steven Michael Quezada, Jason Gerhardt, Julian Curtis, Dale Dickey

Wish Man is heavy-handed at times, awkward at others, and shamelessly manipulative.   But it is heartfelt with moments of absorbing power, and the fact it is unpolished and imperfect makes it feel more like life.  Like many biopics, some of the facts are obscured in favor of dramatic license, but Wish Man isn't about the facts as much as the emotional moments. 

Wish Man tells the story of Frank Shankwitz (Steel), an Illinois-born Arizona highway patrol officer with abandonment issues and a drinking problem.    Following his parents' divorce, Frank's indifferent mother Lorraine (Masterson) moves him to Arizona, mostly to spite Frank's caring father who only wants to see his son.    Young Frank finds work in a remote diner run by the caring Juan (Quezada), who becomes a father figure and soon his caretaker after Lorraine abandons him.   Oh, and Lorraine lies about Frank's father, claiming he died in a car accident while on the way to visit him in Arizona.    

Fast forward to 1980, Frank encounters a drunk driver on the highway and subdues them following a scuffle.   Fellow patrolman Tom Wells (Whaley) comes to the scene and proceeds to beat the stuffing out of the couple with his flashlight.   He later pins this on Frank, mostly because the victims were so drunk they could barely stand, let alone figure out who beat them up.    Frank later is involved in a serious crash in which he claims to have died for a few minutes before being revived.    While home on the mend, and being looked after by the new department secretary Kitty (Blanton), Frank is served a lawsuit by the drunk couple and develops a pill addiction which is only dealt with briefly.

One day, a friend of Frank's captain (Pine) makes a request:  A young boy dying from leukemia would like to be a patrol officer for a day.   The friend says he is a big fan of the show CHIPS, and wouldn't you know who plays the friend?   Larry Wilcox, who played Jon on the hit 70's show.   Talk about meta casting.   Frank volunteers to help the boy realize his dying wish, and these scenes are touching without being schmaltzy.   The idea for the Make-A-Wish Foundation was born then, and Frank soon puts the dream into action by starting the foundation after all of the police brutality business clears itself up.

Frank is played by Australian actor Andrew Steel, who is big, burly, and gives Frank vulnerability and dimension.    We see from the plaques on his walls that he is a dedicated patrol officer, but happiness has eluded him, and he hides his sadness in drink and sarcasm.   Wish Man is heavy on flashbacks to Frank's unhappy childhood, and these visits to the past set up some sweet payoffs later on, especially when Frank reconnects with his now elderly father (Davison), who lost track of his son years ago.

Wish Man is far from perfect.   Some of the dialogue is corny, and the movie spends more time on Frank's attempts to clear his name in the police brutality case than it does on the foundation.    In fact, the foundation itself is formed following a scene of dialogue and handled in the movie's epilogue, but the genesis is there in Wish Man, and it is not deep, but surprisingly compelling.