Foul Play (1978) * * *

 

Directed by:  Colin Higgins

Starring:  Chevy Chase, Goldie Hawn, Brian Dennehy, Billy Barty, Burgess Meredith, Dudley Moore, Rachel Roberts

Foul Play owes plenty to Hitchcock and to screwball romantic comedies of yesteryear.   It is a successful mix because of the comic chemistry between Chase and Hawn.  Even a murder plot involving the Pope as a target is told in a breezy, light manner.   Foul Play is a tale of intrigue, mystery, and misunderstandings in which an innocent woman named Gloria (Hawn) is drawn into simply because she went on a date with the wrong kind of guy.

Gloria is a librarian who is starting over after a failed relationship (the song played over the opening credits is Barry Manilow's Ready to Take a Chance Again to drill the point home).   She goes on a date with a guy who winds up knocking at her door after the date is over with multiple stab wounds.   Before he dies in her apartment, he utters, "Beware of the dwarf."   What does that mean?   Gloria has no idea, but soon she is a murder suspect and is being chased by the albino assassin who killed her date.   A dwarf (Barty) does show up at Gloria's door, asks if she ever thought about the afterlife, and Gloria pounds him into oblivion (or at least the local hospital).   Turns out he's a harmless bible salesman.  

San Francisco cop Tony Carlson (Chase) is assigned to the case and takes a liking to Gloria that is far more than expected or maybe even allowed under the circumstances.   He believes she is innocent and also intuits that a sinister plot is afoot which stretches far beyond Gloria's understanding.   Why would an assassin be stalking her if there wasn't something up?   Burgess Meredith is also on hand as Gloria's grandfatherly landlord and Dudley Moore as a horny guy who Gloria runs into and quickly befriends in order to hide in his apartment from the assassin.   Moore thinks he is about to get lucky.  The apartment itself is a mashup between a typical bachelor pad and your local adult toy store.  

Foul Play is equal parts effective comedy and thriller with Hawn as its central character who manages to keep moving forward in a plot which would cower lesser people.   She isn't simply the damsel in distress, but can help herself when the need arises.   Chase more or less plays the detached, cool guy from Saturday Night Live, but does it well.   What makes Foul Play tick is everyone's buy-in on a crazy plot which zigs and zags, but everything turns out okay in the end.      

Reminiscence (2021) * *

 

Directed by:  Lisa Joy

Starring:  Hugh Jackman, Rebecca Ferguson, Cliff Curtis, Thandiwe Newton

Why are private eyes in movies also tasked with narrating them?   Reminiscence's Nick Bannister (Jackman) is saddled with enough baggage and plot to match without having to also tell us about what we're watching and how he feels about it.   One of Hugh Jackman's strengths as an actor is his belief in the material, whether it's good or bad.   In Reminiscence, Jackman is thrust into a world of noir and heartache set in a future Miami that is partially underwater following a war and the results of climate change.  Miami now resembles Venice and water taxi business is booming.

Nick Bannister is a private eye who assists the local DA with the use of Reminiscence, a machine in which the unconscious user is submerged in water and with the aid of electrodes attached to his/her head is able to relive memories.  Nick makes suggestions to the person's subconscious to draw out desired memories.  The memories are then seen and recorded as holograms.  When he is not helping the DA depose people with the machine, he charges others who want to revisit better times from their past.   One Dark and Stormy Night, Mae (Ferguson), a lounge singer with a form-fitting gown wanders in from the rain.   She wants to use the machine to find out where she left her keys last.  (I shit you not).   Nick is instantly smitten while his loyal assistant Watts (Newton) smells a rat.   Of all the time displacement centers in all the world, she had to walk into Nick's.   Now, if the name Watts stirs your subconscious wondering where you heard the name before, you can think back to 1987's high school comedy Some Kind of Wonderful, in which the Watts character was in love with the hero, who was in turn pining for the most popular girl in school.   The Watts character in Reminiscence follows a similar character trajectory.

Nick begins a passionate romance with Mae which lasts a few months before she vanishes without a trace.   Nick then uses the machine himself to pick out clues from his memories to figure out her whereabouts.   He is led on a journey to New Orleans, where he finds his beloved and idealized Mae is Not Who She Seemed.  Nick refuses to believe Mae is anything than the sweet sex kitten she purported herself to be while Watts does everything but roll her eyes.    This great cast does what it can with characters who are forced to endure the varying twists and turns which are only marginally compelling.  

We are pulled through a morass of subplots involving a land baron, illegitimate children born from illicit affairs, killings, drugs, AND a potential citizen uprising against the mayor and the land baron who lives on a mansion on dry land while the rest of the Miami denizens must swim from place to place.  Why the story must take place in a waterlogged Miami is anyone's guess.   I suppose it adds to the noir premise, but it is still possible to make an exciting noir film that isn't grim and weighed down by all of the sidebars and tangents.   It wasn't done here, but it is possible.   

The Words (2012) * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal

Starring:  Bradley Cooper, Zoe Saldana, Dennis Quaid, Olivia Wilde, Jeremy Irons, JK Simmons

Rory Jansen (Cooper) is a struggling New York writer whose manuscripts are returned with form letters from agents and publishers on a far-too-regular basis.   He wants to marry his longtime loyal girlfriend Dora (Saldana) and settle into a nice place where he can churn out bestsellers.   For the longest time, it appears such a dream isn't in the cards, until Rory and Dora marry and spend their honeymoon in Paris.  Dora buys Rory a weathered old briefcase in which Rory discovers a manuscript written decades ago hidden in one of the pockets.   He reads it and right away knows it is heartfelt and brilliant.   In desperation, Rory decides to pass the book off as his own and, voila, he is now the toast of the literary world and a world-famous writer.    But, as surely as night follow day, the real writer of the book (Irons) discovers the deception and confronts Rory on a Central Park bench. 

If The Words had stuck with this premise and followed it to its conclusion, then we would've had a potential gem here.   Alas, we find this plot is really the plot of a book written by another world-famous writer named Clayton Hammond (Quaid), who reads it aloud to a standing-room-only audience in Manhattan.   He has the apartment and life Rory has dreamed of, but it has come at a price which he gradually reveals to an avid fan and potential lover (Wilde) back at his penthouse.   Or has he?   The Words leaves the possibility open that the Rory stuff may be autobiographical, or just genius fiction.  Do we need to wait for The Words II to find out?

The Words is structured as a series of layered stories told one on top of the other.   When Irons' Old Man (he is never given a name) tells his story to Rory of how he came to write the book in post-World War II Paris, we realize half of the movie is someone telling a story about someone else.   As appealing as Quaid and Wilde are, their characters are unnecessary.   They rob the film of its power, which lies in the Cooper story.  

The Words is still involving enough and the performances work despite all the angles being thrown at them.   It's also a nice touch to see Irons not as a vengeful old man seeking retribution or blackmailing Rory, but as a man saddened by a turn of events which prevented him from publishing his own work.  In a way, he is somewhat happy to at least see his story out there for the world to see, even if someone else takes the credit for writing it.   Cooper's Rory is naturally faced with a moral quandary, but this is muted by the fact that his story his only part of the undercard and not the main event.  

Life (1999) * * *

 

Directed by:  Ted Demme

Starring:  Eddie Murphy, Martin Lawrence, Bernie Mac, Miguel Nunez Jr., Anthony Anderson, Ned Beatty, R. Lee Ermey, Rick James, Clarence Williams III, Bokeem Woodbine

Life is an odd duck of a movie.   It's a comedy to be sure, but it is also a sad story of two innocent men who spend the bulk of their adult lives imprisoned in Mississippi for a murder they didn't commit.  There is a happy ending, but it occurs about twenty-five to thirty years too late.   Maybe even forty years.   It's as if the extra years were tacked on so we could see Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence in heavy makeup as they approach ninety years old.

Even so, it is perhaps better that Life doesn't focus on how horrible it must be for two innocent men to serve an unjust life sentence.   With two renowned comic actors like Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence as your leads, better to just let them wisecrack and bicker to take the edge off.   Ray (Murphy) and Claude (Lawrence) argue and squabble from the first moment they meet in 1932 Harlem.   Both wind up on the shit list of a ruthless club owner and are about to be killed when Ray proposes picking up moonshine in Mississippi as a way of making things right.   

One thing leads to another in Mississippi, with Ray and Claude framed for the murder of a conman (Williams) by the local sheriff who actually committed the crime.  Claude bemoans even being in this predicament, while Ray tries to think his way out of this mess.   He finds he can't, and the years press on with prison life becoming a daily helping of backbreaking work under the baking Mississippi sun with the threat looming of being shot if you try to escape.   Ray and Claude meet some characters, including Can't Get Right (Woodbine), a slow-functioning adult who can hit a baseball a mile.   Ray and Claude try to arrange for Can't Get Right to be discovered by a Negro League scout and hope they would also be freed as Can't Get Right's "managers".   It doesn't work out that way, which is a recurring theme as Ray and Claude attempt to free themselves of their situation.

As the years pass, various prisoners come and go while Ray and Claude are the constant.   After their Can't Get Right plan fails, Ray and Claude don't speak for years.   We wish they would start talking to each other again because they need the company, and that's when we know Life is working for us.  Murphy and Lawrence smoothly switch gears when required.   Life doesn't try to be too funny or too tragic.   It's an adeptly balanced film.   To reiterate my point in the opening paragraph, while it is nice that Ray and Claude are finally able to escape at long last, it is a shame they are in their nineties by now.  How much freedom can they enjoy and how much time do they have to enjoy it?   At least Andy Dufresne from The Shawshank Redemption had a pretty decent amount of years left to bask in the Mexican sun.  

  

Respect (2021) * *

 

Directed by:  Liesl Tommy

Starring:  Jennifer Hudson, Marlon Wayans, Forest Whitaker, Marc Maron, Skye Dakota Turner, Audra McDonald, Mary J. Blige, Hailey Kilgore, Tituss Burgess, Tate Donovan

It may be impossible to make a biopic about Aretha Franklin which can wholly encompass her impact on music and culture.   Respect tries, but sputters when it should be lifting off.    Even at two hours, twenty minutes of running time, Respect only takes us to Ms. Franklin's 1972 recording of Amazing Grace, which is her biggest selling album to date.    Jennifer Hudson sings spirited versions of Franklin's songs and most of the movie's best parts are courtesy of the Hudson performance.

Franklin even from a young age had quite a voice.   So much so that her father Rev. C.L. Franklin (Whitaker) wakes her up in the middle of the night to sing for his friends at his parties.   The reverend is a believer in "Do as I say, not as I do," and his hypocrisy is evident throughout the movie, causing a strain on Aretha's relationship with him.   Aretha is also sexually abused by a family friend resulting in teen pregnancy which the movie mentions but doesn't revisit or provide any closure.   The children produced from the unholy act are also seen once but not dealt with in any serious way.

Franklin also endures an abusive marriage to Ted White (Wayans), who dresses the part of an important person without actually being one.   Aretha's father dislikes Ted from the jump, and in this instance, the reverend was correct in his assessment.    Aretha then develops a drinking and drug problem because what is a biopic of a famous entertainer without the obligatory scenes of drug abuse, followed by an intervention, and then the rebound?   I'm sure all of this happened to Aretha Franklin, but Respect feels like a generic biopic in its story arc and structure.   It sees much, but not deeply or effectively enough to make Respect special.  

Free Guy (2021) * *

 

Directed by:  Shawn Levy

Starring:  Ryan Reynolds, Jodie Comer, Taika Waititi, Lil Rel Howery, Joe Keery

If you are into the techno aspect of video games, then Free Guy is your movie.   I don't seem to be a member of the intended audience.  The dialogue and plot are aimed at someone who either works at a video gaming company or plays Grand Theft Auto in marathon all-night sessions.   Many of the human characters in Free Guy work are part of the former group, while others like Guy (Reynolds) are, unbeknownst to them, trapped in the world of a video game.   

Free Guy centers around NPC's (non-player characters), which are explained as innocent bystanders in video games who are victimized, robbed, and killed by the player characters.   Free Guy takes place within the world of a game called "Free City" and the pleasant Guy, who works at the local bank that is robbed every day like clockwork, develops a slow case of wanderlust.   Surely there is something more for him in the bigger world.   One day on the street, he spots a mysterious brunette (Comer), falls instantly in love, and he breaks from his daily routine to follow her.   He is hit by a train for his troubles, but in a plot development owing something to Groundhog Day, Guy wakes up the next morning without a scratch and is up and at 'em again.   But this time, he hopes to see the brunette one more time.   To the puzzlement of his best friend Buddy (Howery), Guy thinks there is more to life than lying face down on the floor every day while the bank is robbed yet again. 

The brunette (named Molotov Girl in the game) is the avatar of programmer Millie (also Comer), who doesn't want to play the game but find the hidden evidence which proves Free City was stolen by the arrogant game publisher Antwan (Waititi).   She soon enlists Guy to help her when it becomes clear he will not stop trying to get to know her better.   Guy, in turn, breaks from his NPC mold and begins helping those who are targets of the "sunglasses people", or the player characters who make life a daily hell.

Free Guy doesn't really give me much reason to care.   The stakes aren't high or potent enough for me to invest my emotions.   Even the game itself is a bore.   What is the goal?   If I played Grand Theft Auto, perhaps that would give me a hint.   Ryan Reynolds is likable in his John Ritter-type of way.   I stated in the review of The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard that if there were a John Ritter biopic made, Reynolds would be the ideal choice to play the actor.    Comer is sweet enough, while Waititi goes over-the-top with the snark as the treacherous Antwan.   We're supposed to be happy when everyone finds what they want or gets what's coming to them, but meh.  

Road House (1989) * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Rowdy Herrington

Starring:  Patrick Swayze, Ben Gazzara, Sam Elliott, Kelly Lynch, Terry Funk, Red West

Legendary bouncer Dalton (Swayze) has his hands full when he agrees to clean up a roughneck bar in a small Missouri town.   He is actually a "cooler", which is a specialized type of bouncer.   He's the guy who steps in when your attempts to remove unwanted patrons from the bar fail.   Dalton's advice to the Double Deuce staff:  "Be nice.  Until it's time not to be nice,"  One of his staff asks when they will know when it's time.   Dalton replies, "You won't.  I'll let you know,"   Dalton is Zen for someone in such a violent profession:  "In a fight, nobody wins." 

Road House is a slick action movie where one punch ignites a bar-wide brawl.   You know, the ones that I'm sure happen every day in the real world.   The Double Deuce has more problems than simply being rundown and having its bartenders deal drugs and skim off the top.   No, the owner (and the owner of every business in town), pays local crime lord Brad Wesley (Gazzara) ten percent.   Is this based on gross revenue or net revenue?   Whatever the arrangement, Brad's thugs show up intermittently and demand the money.   Failure to pay leads to drastic actions like the owner being roughed up, or the store being burnt to the ground, which would certainly cut into Brad's take.   There aren't many local businesses to shake down, so Brad must have business elsewhere in order to afford his gigantic mansion on the lake.

Dalton, who has a Mysterious Past, befriends the locals and is soon leading the fight against Brad's reign of terror.   He also finds time to romance a local doctor (Lynch), who once rebuffed Brad's advances.  Brad's jealousy is inflamed when he sees Dalton and Doc (yes, that's how she is referred) together.  Dalton also brings in his mentor Wade Garrett (Elliott) into the fray as backup.   Road House is the type of movie where one character tears another's throat out in a fight and it doesn't even seem excessive.  

Make no mistake.  Road House is a B-movie with an A-list cast.   Many of its elements are ridiculous, so it would not do you much good to think too much while watching it.   However, what it lacks in believability it makes up for in spirit and a grounded Swayze at its center.   We can tell Dalton is a fitness buff based on his physique and practicing Tai-Chi on the lakeshore for all to see, but then again in many scenes he is either lighting up a cigarette or actively smoking one.   Wade makes no bones about being a rough-housing bouncer who partakes in the occasional beer.   Elliott is at his laconic best as a sidekick who looks like he just rolled out of bed and went to work throwing guys out of bars.  Gazzara's Brad Wesley enjoys being a villain so much his face can barely conceal a gleeful smile when is ordering a monster truck to crash into the local Ford dealership and crunch a few showroom cars.  You would think it wouldn't be in Brad's best financial interests to destroy the businesses whose incomes allow him to take a cut every month, but Road House isn't a movie in which you are expected to watch and process such thoughts.  

Kissing Booth 3 (2021) * 1/2

Directed by:  Vince Marcello

Starring:  Joey King, Jacob Elordi, Joel Courtney, Molly Ringwald, Taylor Zakhar Perez, Maisie Richardson-Sellers

If there was ever a group of friends who needed a break from each other, it's these folks.   Kissing Booth 3 picks up where Kissing Booth 2 left off, with Elle (King) agonizing over whether to attend University of California with her lifelong best friend Lee (Courtney) or Harvard to be near her boyfriend Noah (Elordi).   Decisions, decisions.   At least she'll be able to spend the Southern California summer at Lee's summer home on the beach to figure things out.   But, they had better take advantage while they can because Lee's and Noah's mother (Ringwald) is Selling the House.   If you take into account how often Elle argues with Lee, then Noah, then Lee again, then Noah again, other friends, and then inexorably makes up with all of them only to fight with them all over again, you will see why Elle should find an alternative school to attend.  

If it weren't for arguing, bickering, complaining, and fighting, these people wouldn't communicate at all, but at least that's an improvement from Kissing Booth 2, in which everyone kept their emotions bottled up until they exploded.   Or maybe it isn't.   Either way, Elle, Lee, and Noah all need a serious timeout.   Elle's decision will surely disappoint either Lee or Noah.   I may be divulging a spoiler, but she decides to go to Harvard to be with Noah, with whom she has had zero chemistry since the first film.  He's the brooding type who has learned to stop punching everyone who looks at him funny.  Now, he just averts his eyes when he's hurt and that seems to be just about every day while dealing with Elle,

Elle and company manage to stay at the summer home and ready the place for buyers.   If you're expecting a Brady Bunch situation in which Elle and the others sabotage the sale, then you'll be disappointed.   Since Elle upsets the tantrum-throwing Lee with her college decision, she decides the two should check off items on a bucket list they created when they were younger.   For a while, they are able to start a flash mob (ugh), race around a kiddie race track while dressed as characters from Super Mario Brothers, etc.   It must be more fun to actually do these things than it is to watch them.

But Elle is soon stretched thin by trying to please everyone, while holding down a server job at a restaurant in which the tables look to be arranged on someone's back patio.  Yes, she also babysits her younger brother so her father can date a woman Elle disapproves of because how dare dad date again years after his wife's passing.   Elle's relationship with her father in the two previous movies consisted of one or two scenes just to establish that she still has one living parent.   She has no other reason to despise her father's girlfriend except to add yet one more conflict to a young woman's life that already has too many for someone her age.   The screenwriters have piled more on Elle than she should be forced to handle.

Elle also is saddled with narrating Kissing Booth 3 as if we needed its intricacies explained to us.   Yay for us.   We can now rejoice in listening to the lessons Elle has learned (i.e. do what makes you happy).  Joy, joy, joy.   For the sake of realism, would it kill the filmmakers to cast actors or even extras in these Kissing Booth movies that don't look like they walked in from a nearby modeling shoot?   I'm sure I mentioned in this in my review of one or both of the previous films, and it's a complaint yet again.  Anyone in this cast could grace the cover of a magazine on their his or her worst day.   The pool parties are chock full of people with maybe one percent body fat between them.  

It appears the Kissing Booth series has reached a merciful end.   But in show business, never say never.  We may see an article stating how a Kissing Booth reboot or fourth installment "is happening".  Joy, joy, joy. 

The Breakfast Club (1985) * * *

 

Directed by:  John Hughes

Starring:  Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, Anthony Michael Hall, Paul Gleason, John Kapelos

The Breakfast Club represents a touchstone in teen comedies.   The 80's were chock full of them, with varying degrees of realism and sympathy for the plights of their teen characters.   Some were meant to be naughty sex romps while others like The Breakfast Club actually delved into the psyches of American teenagers.   The movie argues that maybe we can all get along if we took the time to relate to one another.   Or at least teenagers would.

The Breakfast Club takes five teens, each a certain "type", and throws them all together for Saturday detention at their high school.   We have the jock Andrew (Estevez), the troublemaker John Bender (Nelson), the strange Allison (Sheedy), Miss Popularity Claire (Ringwald), and the brainy Brian (Hall) all serving detention for various reasons, but they are all there wasting a precious Saturday.   Keeping an eye on the teens is Richard Vernon (Gleason), who seems just as pissed to be spending a Saturday at school as the students he is monitoring.   Richard laments what today's teenagers have become.   Carl, the school janitor (Kapelos) disagrees: "The kids haven't changed, you have."   Richard sounds like the mean old fart teenagers swear they will never become, until one day they magically transform into a Richard.

The students with nothing in common don't say much to each other at first.   They hope to pass the time by sitting silently and staring straight ahead, but to alleviate the boredom, they begin communicating first by antagonizing each other, settle into a guarded truce, and then open up to each other.  As was custom in order to bond in many 80's comedies, weed is introduced to break down the walls.   It is here where the group is at its most honest while the movie itself is at its least realistic.   Richard doesn't hear the radio blasting, glass shattering, or smell the weed?   

The actors in The Breakfast Club all possess innate intelligence and likability.   They take archetypes and turn them into individuals.   I was always perplexed at how they all spoke with such perfect grammar and elocution, but with that quibble aside, the students are able to engage us.   Writer-director Hughes was able to write characters who have built-in empathy and understanding of others.   Many people may not have such traits, but Hughes wishes they had.   It would make communication a whole lot easier.

I can't help but think of The Breakfast Club without also referencing a recent Bill Maher editorial discussing Molly Ringwald writing an article about revisiting her old movies and discovering how they could be viewed through a less-flattering lens in the age of #MeToo.  Maher decries this as a "woke" thing, but I'm not so sure.   I think it may be a truth that as a younger person, you behaved in ways or believed in things which would make you cringe today.   In other ways, you were once a John Bender and now you've turned into a Richard.  

The Green Knight (2021) * * *

 

Directed by:  David Lowery

Starring:  Dev Patel, Alicia Vikander, Joel Edgerton, Sean Harris, Ralph Ineson, Barry Keoghan, Erin Kellyman, Sarita Choudury

A lot of what I'm about to write in this review is actually based on thoughts about The Green Knight I had after I walked out of the theater.   Before that, I was willing to dismiss The Green Knight as a slog through a gloomy, dreamlike journey for which our hero Sir Gawain (Patel) is ill-equipped.   He truly does not understand what is being asked of him, and when he does come to terms with it, is he willing to sacrifice his life for his honor?    

There is rarely any sunshine in The Green Knight, which is either a cinematography choice or a story one.  The opening moments have a hung-over Gawain awoken from his slumber by a splash of water in his face.  He quickly says goodbye to his lower-station girlfriend (Vikander) and his mother before trotting off to a Christmas banquet thrown by his uncle King Arthur (Harris).   Arthur invites Gawain to sit beside him at the feast, which maybe raises his hubris a bit too high when The Green Knight (Ineson), who looks to be half-statue and half-tree barges in to lay down a challenge to the Round Table.  

The challenge is this:  Strike The Green Knight with your best blow and in one year's time, whomever strikes the blow must travel to the Knight's palace to receive the same blow in turn.   The pumped-up Gawain foolishly agrees to the duel and quickly lops off The Green Knight's head.   However, The Green Knight rises, picks up his head, and races away on his horse holding his laughing head a la The Headless Horseman.   Gawain's year until next Christmas has just become much more worrisome.  When the day finally arrives for Gawain to set out on his journey nearly one year later, he has a lot to think about.

The trek to The Green Knight's lair is not a fun one.   Gawain encounters a group of thieves who tie him up, steal his horse, and leave him for dead in a forbidding forest.   After escaping, Gawain then stumbles upon a mysterious woman who has lost her own head and asks Gawain to find it in a nearby swamp, and then Gawain finds himself in the house of a lord (Edgerton), who is more than hospitable to his guest for reasons made clear later.   Many of these scenes are filmed in near darkness, so it is difficult to see who is doing what to whom.   

When Gawain finally arrives to fulfill his destiny by meeting The Green Knight again, we see what would happen if Gawain were to run away or if he stayed and accepted his fate.   Up until then, The Green Knight is too dreary to be enjoyed on any conventional level, but the final moments allow us to ponder and understand its true nature.   Perhaps the lack of joy and dread are intentional, because that is likely what Gawain is feeling as he proceeds forward to the eventual showdown.   Patel has excelled in the past with characters caught in moral quandaries in such films as Lion and Slumdog Millionaire.   He does so here as well.   His expressions remind us of a man who is kicking himself for allowing a moment's pride to send him on such an arduous trek.   He deludes himself into thinking he has a chance to escape, but with every step, his fate is sealed.

So I find myself at a crossroads when reviewing The Green Knight.   It is a movie which invites reflection after the fact more than entertainment while you're watching it.   If I had written this review within thirty minutes after seeing it, my gut reaction would've been 1 1/2 stars and that would've been that.  Something, however, nagged at me at The Green Knight, and caused me to reflect further.   This isn't a simple retelling of a King Arthur legend or fable.   King Arthur is hardly in it.   I suppose this is the strangest three-star review I've ever written, mostly because all of the story's power and thoughtfulness struck me long after I left the theater.   The idea that I felt the need to think more about it is what makes The Green Knight a unique moviegoing experience.  

Jungle Cruise (2021) * *

 

Directed by:  Jaume Collet-Serra

Starring:  Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Jack Whitehall, Edgar Ramirez, Jesse Plemons, Paul Giamatti

Jungle Cruise is Indiana Jones lite.  It has plenty of stunts, CGI, near misses, and direct hits all done playfully, but what is lacking is the Indiana Jones spirit and purpose.   In the Indiana Jones series, Indy is in a race against time to prevent an archaeological find from falling into evil hands.   Jones wasn't simply tracking the Holy Grail, he was trying to keep it out of Nazi hands.   In Jungle Cruise circa 1916, heroes Dr. Lily Houghton (Blunt) and Amazon steamboat captain Frank Wolff (Johnson) are in a race against a German prince (Plemons) and a group of cursed 400-hundred-year old conquistadors trapped in the Amazonian jungle to discover "Tears of the Moon", petals from a tree which can cure just about any ailment.   

The villains are too cartoonish to be a serious threat to Lily and Frank's quest.   The movie makes a note that the action takes place "two years into the Great War", which unintentionally casts a pall over the events of Jungle Cruise.   Johnson and Blunt are more than capable comic leads, with Jack Whitehall in tow as Lily's foppish, yet loyal brother MacGregor.   There isn't much romantic chemistry between Johnson and Blunt.   They come off as a man and woman who may one day be great friends, especially when Frank's true nature reveals itself about midway through the trek down the Amazon.   The bulk of Jungle Cruise is full of action, but slight and lightweight.   I found I didn't care all that much about whose hands Tears of the Moon falls into, just as long as it fell into someone's.  

At a running time of 2 hours, 20 minutes (yikes), you begin to wonder if the adventure will ever end.   I had seen enough rapids, insects, snakes, piranhas, exploding engines, and chases to last me a while.  I'm sure there will be more of these awaiting us in the inevitable Jungle Cruise 2, which will ultimately wind up as a case of SSDD.   If it doesn't, I'll be the first to eat crow.  

The Last Letter from Your Lover (2021) * * *

 

Directed by:  Augustine Frizzell

Starring:  Felicity Jones, Shailene Woodley, Callum Turner, Joe Alwyn, Ben Cross, Nabhaan Rizwan

The Last Letter from Your Lover doesn't cover much new ground.   It doesn't need to.   It is a relief to watch an unabashedly romantic movie with love letters, misunderstandings, proud romantic gestures and declarations, and finally a happy ending.   No one is hit by a car and killed while on his way to the rendezvous point where lovers separated by years will finally reunite.   Thank goodness for tiny miracles.

The Last Letter from Your Lover takes its cliches and turns them into time-honored traditions.   There isn't much here we haven't seen before.   But, we don't care because what's done here is done well.   The Last Letter begins in the present day with Ellie (Jones), a journalist for a small London newspaper who stumbles across handwritten love letters in the paper's archives.   Correspondence circa 1965 between "J" and "Boot" is filled with sincere expressions of emotion straight out of romance novels.    Ellie discovers J is Jennifer (Woodley), an American socialite married to stuffy Lawrence (Alwyn), who regards her as more of a prop than a wife.   She's great to show off at parties and dinners, but tender moments are in scarce supply.   While on holiday in France, Jennifer starts a fiery affair with journalist Anthony O' Hare (Turner), who adores the ground she walks on.   Jennifer falls for Anthony as well, but is hesitant to leave her husband.  

However, when Jennifer first appears onscreen, she is returning home from the hospital with amnesia, a scar on her face, and with hubby in tow.   It is told she was in a horrific car wreck and we piece together she was on her way to the train station to run away with Anthony (aka Boot) to New York.   Jennifer wants to piece her life together again, but Lawrence is less than helpful and lies about a crucial piece of information concerning Anthony.   Meanwhile in the present day, Ellie, who has no use for romance, begins an awkward relationship with Rory (Rizwan), the paper's stern archives overseer who insists Ellie fill out the correct forms to retrieve even something seemingly trivial.   But Ellie (played with pluck by Jones), wants to find out what happened between Jennifer and Anthony, and even goes through the trouble of trying to reunite the reluctant former lovers.  

I found myself wrapped up in the seemingly doomed (or at least very delayed) romance between Jennifer and Anthony.   The way Woodley and Turner passionately express themselves with body language and glances makes all the difference between the silly and the sublime.   The Last Letter is not going to win points for originality or unpredictability and that's perfectly okay.   What matters is how much we find we are involved in the stories and would love nothing more than to see it wind up happily for all.   That's when you know it works.  

Stillwater (2021) * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Tom McCarthy

Starring: Matt Damon, Abigail Breslin, Camille Cottin, Liou Siauvaud, Deanna Dunagan

Bill Baker (Damon) is a quiet, stoic Oklahoman first seen in Stillwater helping to clean up after a tornado levels a group of houses.   He grabs Sonic after work and returns to his dingy home alone to eat.   He says grace and digs in.   After the brief interlude into Bill's underwhelming existence in Oklahoma, he is on a plane to Marseilles, France.   Judging by the local hotel's familiarity with him, we know he has taken this trip numerous times.   In the next scene, he is visiting his daughter Allison (Breslin) in prison, serving a nine-year sentence for the murder of her lover.   She insists she's innocent and asks her father to deliver a note to her attorney outlining a possible lead who may be the actual killer, if anyone can find him.

After Bill's request to have the lead followed up on is rebuffed, he takes it upon himself to knock on doors and search for the elusive mystery man who may hold the key to Allison's case.  This doesn't go as intended, and further estranges Bill from Allison.   Assisting Bill to an extent is Virginie (Cottin), an actress with a young daughter named Maya (Siauvaud) who Bill first meets at the hotel and later moves in with to form a makeshift family.   This is the first hour of Stillwater and most of this is covered in the movie's trailers, which aren't exactly false advertising, but suggest a thriller in which the hard-headed American cuts through the French legal bs to free his innocent daughter from prison.   Stillwater is only partly that.   A large chunk of its 140-minute running time involves Bill's burgeoning relationship with Virginie and he and Allison coming to terms with their own pasts.   It is here where the movie bogs down while trying to veer off into a promising direction, as if we were watching two different movies. 

The title Stillwater not only refers to Bill's hometown (where his beloved Oklahoma State Cowboys play), but also a reference to the old adage of still water running deep.   Bill has a troubled Past which has affected his relationship to Allison, who may be more of a chip off the old block than she realizes.  Bill is troubled and flawed, but attempting to redeem himself by aiding Allison and creating a family with Virginie and Maya.   Underneath Bill's baseball cap, flannel shirts, blue jeans, and economic use of words, we think we have Bill wired, but the strength of Damon's performance lies in the tenderness underneath.   It is Damon who anchors the movie and nearly pulls it through all by himself.   But then Stillwater returns to its main event involving Allison and the murder of her lover, and all credibility flies off the rails.

Without revealing whether Allison committed the murder or was complicit in it, Stillwater nearly ventures into Prisoners (2013) territory.   You remember that movie?  The one where Hugh Jackman captures his daughter's alleged kidnapper, ties him to a chair somewhere, and beats the holy hell out of him?   I can forgive you if you don't recall the movie, but the same dynamic applies here.   The question is whether this is a thriller plot element thrown in for good measure or whether this is something Bill would organically do.   Another development which mutes any potential revelations or an intense emotional payoff is the fact that Allison is soon allowed out of prison one day a week on a release program, so Allison at least is allowed to spend some time in the sun and swimming in a lake.

Then, a couple of insane plot swerves which don't connect logically rear their heads.   If you think about where they lead, you will deduce that Allison's plan should've backfired, but instead it leads to a quasi-happy ending and a host of intended moral ambiguities.  The way the issue of Allison's guilt or innocence is resolved is almost ludicrous.   Like most of Stillwater, it's all over the map.