The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2021) * *

Directed by:  Michael Showalter

Starring:  Jessica Chastain, Andrew Garfield, Vincent D'Onofrio, Cherry Jones, Sam Jaeger

After watching The Eyes of Tammy Faye, I felt I knew only slightly more (on a superficial level) about Tammy Faye Bakker (later Messner) than I did previously.   Who is behind the caked-on (and in some cases permanent) makeup of Tammy Faye?  You won't know by watching this film, and it's a shame because that spoils Jessica Chastain's fearless performance.   Chastain brings the spunk and the energy, but to what end?  The Eyes of Tammy Faye frustrates the viewer because it hints when it should explain and tries so hard to vindicate its subject that it feels as if plenty of stones went unturned in its attempts to explore her.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye begins in 1950's Minnesota, where Tammy Faye longs to sing in her church where her mother (Jones) plays the piano.   Tammy Faye is forced to stay home during church because she is illegitimate, or a product of her mother's first marriage which ended in divorce.   I wasn't quite sure.  Soon Tammy Faye is in bible college where she meets Jim Bakker (Garfield), who defends wealth in his class sermons.   The poor Tammy Faye is smitten by the smooth, cheerful Jim Bakker who early on demonstrates shady tendencies.   They marry, move into Tammy Faye's mother's home, and plan their next move to make it big while spreading the good word. 

Jim and Tammy Faye travel from town to town putting on Christian puppet shows.   They fall into the Christian Broadcast Network run by Pat Robertson where Jim becomes the first host of The 700 Club while Tammy Faye stays home pregnant and with the puppets put away permanently.   Tammy Faye is bored, and longs for she and Jim to break away from Robertson (and soon Jerry Falwell, Sr.) and form their own network.   Within a few years, they launch the PTL (Praise The Lord) Club which grows exponentially in viewership and donations.   The Bakkers are soon ostentatiously wealthy with grandiose plans to open a theme park and other offshoots of PTL.   Things are not as they seem.  Bakker is hounded by creditors, is accused of embezzlement and fraud in the media, and engages in sales of "partnerships" to investors who outwardly ask how many partnerships are for sale.  

How much did Tammy Faye know of her husband's dealings?   Did she even want to know?   The household isn't exactly a happy one.   Jim goes for months on end without having sex with his wife.  There are hints of Jim's infidelity with his male assistant while he acts vengeful and spiteful when Tammy Faye begins a brief something or other with her record producer.   I suppose it is an affair, but the zenith of their joy occurs when the eight-months-pregnant Tammy Faye has sex with him with their clothes on before her water breaks.  

The famed scandal which turned Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye into household names and late-night talk show punchlines soon comes into focus, but the movie only glosses over the headlines.   We find we could learn more by reading the Wikipedia article.   Tammy Faye Bakker was indeed showy, flashy, and lived lavishly, but she also had compassion for gays and those suffering from AIDS, which ran against the agendas of the Jerry Falwells of the world.    Tammy Faye's empathetic interview with an HIV-positive man was unheard of in the Christian world, who like Ronald Reagan didn't mention the word AIDS on television until the epidemic was well underway.   The interview is the movie's emotional highlight, showcasing what made Tammy Faye unique in this world and a path the movie could've taken if it were interested in doing so.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye is content to be a glossy biopic showing the rise, fall, and comeback of its subject.   Did you know Tammy Faye soon remarried one of the PTL investors who himself went to prison on fraud convictions?   Or she soon co-hosted a talk show for many years with Jm J. Bullock before her death from cancer in 2007?   You wouldn't by watching this film, which is only satisfied by presenting us with a Tammy Faye singing comeback at Oral Roberts University circa 1995 which rings totally false.   We have a movie which is neither fish nor fowl.   It teases a look inside the life of a controversial figure while sidestepping the controversy and is so intent on painting Tammy Faye as a hero that it gives itself no wiggle from the corner into which it shoehorned itself.   

Cry Macho (2021) * *

Directed by: Clint Eastwood

Starring: Clint Eastwood, Dwight Yoakam, Eduardo Minett, Natalia Traven

At 91, Clint Eastwood still possesses enough charisma and magnetism to nearly pull a simple, intermittently involving story like Cry Macho's to the finish line.   Even the iconic actor/director Eastwood can only do so much and Cry Macho takes its place as a notch below some of Eastwood's best films.   Cry Macho is a too-quiet movie about an aged loner looking for redemption by leading a wayward Mexican teenager named Rafa (Minett) back to his father in the States.  It isn't stirring, it's just there.   

Eastwood's Mike Miko was once a top rodeo star who worked for millionaire rancher Howard Polk (Yoakam) until he injured his back and retired from the rodeo.   In a brief speech before firing Mike, Howard encapsulates Mike's life until that point, which involved drinking, a tragic loss of his wife and son, and a failure to reach his potential.   One year after the firing, Howard asks Mike for a favor:  Travel to Mexico and find his estranged son whom he hadn't seen since the boy was six.   Mike, out of loyalty to his longtime employer, agrees to rescue the boy from his wealthy mother who abuses him and makes a living as a prostitute.   Mike finds the mother, who wouldn't mind bedding Mike even though at his age it might kill him.  

I'm assuming Mike is in his seventies, but the 91-year-old Eastwood is playing him, and we know he is 91.  There are times other characters seem to know this also.   One of Rafa's mother's thugs attempts to kidnap Rafa and is punched in the face by Mike.   The thug doesn't fight back, possibly because he knows if he punches Mike back he may crush his face.   How are we to expect to take this creep seriously if he wimps out like that?

Mike finds a romantic interest in a cafe owner who makes the second woman in the film who makes it known she's hot to trot.   I'm reminded of the period in Woody Allen's filmography in which the sixty-plus Allen paired off with hot blondes more than half his age (Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Hollywood Ending).  

Even though Cry Macho puts itself through familiar paces in which Rafa and Mike start out in a cold war which leads to an inevitable thaw and friendship, Eastwood is at his grizzled, tender best.   The fact that Eastwood is still acting and directing at his age is enough to make you treasure each film, even one like Cry Macho.   How many left will there be?   

The Card Counter (2021) * *

 

Directed by:  Paul Schrader

Starring:  Oscar Isaac, Tye Sheridan, Tiffany Haddish, Willem Dafoe

The Card Counter could be pitched as Rounders meets The Mauritanian.   We think we are going to watch one movie about a master poker and blackjack player and the world he inhabits.   Not so much.   Instead, The Card Counter is all over the place.   We realize we are better off with the less we know about William Tell (Isaac) who discusses his expertise in voiceover narration about the odds, what to play, how to play, and why roulette has the best odds of any casino game.   ("You win, you walk away.  You lose, you walk away,").  Tell is not a gambling addict.   He knows when to walk away away and when to run, as Kenny Rogers' The Gambler would tell you.   But, he is Haunted By His Past, which involves a stint as a torturer in Abu Gharib being tutored by the sadistic Col. John Gordo.   The colonel loves his work and instills the same passion in Tell, but then Tell is thrown in federal prison when the government starts cracking down on prisoner torture.  Gordo evades prosecution and flourishes as a military contractor.  

The Card Counter makes the mistake of shifting away from the gambling and focuses more on Tell's past.  Truth be told, I couldn't care less about Tell's past or his Guilt.   Oscar Isaac is the most effective of actors when he is required to do less and use body language to express his deep emotions.   Then, the movie saddles him with unnecessary characters such as La Linda (Haddish), who agrees to stake him in poker tournaments and serves as a potential romantic interest, and Cirk (pronounced Kirk...don't ask why his name has to start with a C and thus has to laboriously explain to everyone meeting him that he is Cirk with a C).   Cirk's late father also served with Gordo and Tell, and has revenge on his mind for Gordo.   Do these characters serve as anything other than someone for Tell to talk to on the occasions when he isn't playing cards?   Their extended dialogue scenes lean towards boring.

Schrader has excelled in the past writing and directing movies about people who lead lives of quiet desperation, such as First Reformed, Hardcore, and Scorsese's Taxi Driver (Scorsese executive produces here).   Tell isn't lonely as much as he is alone and let's face it, I think he likes it that way.  But The Card Counter also dovetails in a violent ending which could serve as the first cousin to the endings of the movies listed earlier in the paragraph.   The Card Counter's ending is the same type of release of pent-up anger and frustration, but is it required in this movie?   What we have are two different movies competing for the same screen, and the results are a mish-mosh at best.  

 

Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021) * * *

Directed by:  Destin Daniel Cretton

Starring:  Simu Liu, Tony Leung, Fala Chen, Awkwafina, Meng'er Zhang, Benedict Wong, Michelle Yeoh

Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is a comic book unknown to me, so I went into the movie with a fresh perspective and no expectations.   This was to its advantage.   It is almost a given Shang Chi will at some point rely on expansive CGI and an all-out battle of the armies of good and evil, but before that we are treated to a compelling story, a complicated villain, and fight scenes reminiscent of some of the joy of Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee films.

The Shang Chi is actually a San Francisco-based valet named Shawn (Liu), who is leading an unassuming life below the radar with his gal pal Katy (Awkwafina) by his side.  There are reasons for this.  Shang Chi's father Wenwu (Leung) is (or was) the leader of the Ten Rings, a shadowy organization which inserted itself into world affairs.   The Ten Rings is likely responsible for every high-profile assassination in the last thousand years.   Wenwu himself is 1,000 years old, thanks to the ten rings he wears on his forearms which give him eternal life.  But when the power-hungry Wenwu meets up with his future wife Jiang Li (Chen) in a magical forest village (and finds she is more than his match in the fighting department), Wenwu gives up his life of power to settle and raise his family.   Jiang Li is later killed by some of Wenwu's old enemies and Shang Chi and his sister Xialing (Zhang) are sent away for their safety.  

The enemies soon encounter Shang Chi on a San Francisco bus which erupts into a melee, with Shang Chi breaking out his long dormant martial arts skills while Katy takes over the bus driving duties when the driver is shot (shades of Speed).  This is quite a virtuoso fight scene and there are more to come when Shang Chi visits Hong Kong to warn his sister of the danger, only to find she's no slouch at taking care of herself either.   The battles atop a scaffolding overlooking the city give us thrilling stunts clearly inspired by Jackie Chan's improvisational use of anything lying around as a weapon.

The middle sags slightly when Shang Chi and his family locate their long-lost family in the forest hideout where his father met his wife.   Wenwu believes he hears his dead wife calling to him from the village to destroy it and he is of course conflicted by his desire to avenge those he thinks killed her and his family who is trying to stop him.   The final battle has plenty of CGI for those who love it.   It isn't CGI run amok.   We are still able to follow who is doing what to whom, which you can't always say about Marvel battles.

We care about the characters and the villain is allowed to have feelings and more than one dimension.  We see where Shang Chi and Katy fit into the Marvel Universe and after this stirring introduction, I say welcome to the Marvel Universe!

Airplane! (1980) * * * 1/2

 

Directed by: Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker

Starring:  Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty, Leslie Nielsen, Lloyd Bridges, Robert Stack, Stephen Stucker, Peter Graves, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Airplane! opened up the 1980's by spoofing the legion of disaster movies from the 1970's.    Those movies, whether good or hokey, were prime targets.   Airplane! centers its gags around a Chicago-bound flight in which the crew and most of the passengers encounter food poisoning.   A former fighter pilot haunted by an air battle which cost many of his squadron members their lives is one of the healthy passengers, and now must land the plane despite his lack of confidence and his "drinking problem" (not quite what you'd expect).

Ted Striker (Hays) is also in the middle of a breakup with his longtime girlfriend Elaine (Hagerty).  Wouldn't you know it?  She's a flight attendant on the flight and sits beside him in the cockpit.  Can the two hash out their differences while trying to navigate the plane through rough weather and receiving instructions from the ground crew?   Oh, but why am I discussing the plot anyway?   Airplane! is about its litany of verbal and sight gags thrown so fast and often at the viewer that the viewer may feel the need to duck.   Many of them work, some not as much, but the sheer volume is ambitious and infectious.

The actors play the material straight, even when satirizing some of their previous work.   Leslie Nielsen, who later re-teamed with writer/directors Abrahams and the Zuckers on Police Squad! and the Naked Gun movies, soon made a second career out of these roles.   If the actors even attempted to play these roles as anything but serious, the effect would be lost.   When you're appearing in a movie in which one of the jokes involves shit literally hitting the fan instead of figuratively, then what could you possibly add to your performance which would top that?   Nothing.   Actually, I must correct myself.  One actor (Stucker), who plays a member of the Chicago ground crew, nearly leaps around the scenery with boundless energy and rips off one funny line after another.   Many of his lines weren't scripted, but in a movie like Airplane! that's par for the course.  

The Protege (2021) * * 1/2

Directed by:  Martin Campbell

Starring:  Maggie Q, Michael Keaton, Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Patrick, Patrick Malahide

The Protege is a competent action film which never fully crosses over into something special.   It makes the effort, with Maggie Q as a solid center and Michael Keaton as what could best be described as her frenemy.   Maggie Q plays Anna, an assassin raised by another assassin named Moody (Jackson), who rescued her from a hellish existence in Vietnam after her family was brutally slain.   Moody and Anna are a makeshift father and daughter who work together carrying out hits on elusive, powerful targets.  

Anna, however, owns a rare bookstore and wishes to leave the assassin business behind for good.   One night, Moody is found dead in his bathtub from gunshot wounds, and Anna has to put the bookstore on hold while she seeks revenge.   The whole Moody business ends with a twist which isn't believable despite a character's attempts to explain it.    Keaton, as a fixer named Rembrandt who works for a shadowy corporate type, kind of likes Anna and would like to get to know her better...if you know what I mean.  This maybe prevents him from putting a bullet in her head.   That, and Anna's superior fighting skills.   

It is interesting to see Keaton playing a fixer with somewhat of a heart under the circumstances.   When he and Anna fight, there is a sly smile from both which suggests they might get to the rumpy-pumpy soon.  He says, "Either kill me or bang me," or words to that effect.   Maggie Q and Keaton have chemistry and make things more compelling than you would expect.   It's almost a pity that their relationship seemingly ends with a meh payoff.   

The Protege, directed by the reliable action director Martin Campbell (Casino Royale, Goldeneye), is polished and slick, but the end result is just an exercise in being an okay film which isn't the worst way to spend two hours of your time.