Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty (Season Two-2023) * * *

 

Starring:  John C. Reilly, Adrien Brody, Quincy Isaiah, Solomon Hughes, Jason Segel, Jason Clarke, Hadley Robinson, Sean Patrick Small

Winning can be tense and unhappy business.  The end of season one of Show Time...er, Winning Time saw the Los Angeles Sixers win the NBA title in new owner Dr. Jerry Buss' (Reilly) first season.  What to do for an encore?  Is there anywhere to go but down?  Season two of Winning Time begins at the start of pre-season following the Lakers' 1980 championship.  Cockiness has set in throughout the organization.  Buss assumes that if winning a title in his first season happened, then a repeat is almost assured.  This is not the case.  By mid-season, last year's win is a distant memory, especially with Magic Johnson's leg injury keeping him on the sidelines for months.  The Lakers are then knocked out in the first round of the playoffs by the underdog Houston Rockets.

Coach Paul Westhead (Segel), who led the team to the previous year's championship, finds himself on the outs with the team and management by implementing "The System", which is more Westhead's attempt to make his mark on the team which never quite warmed to him and a league that thinks he lucked into the Lakers' title.  As insecure as Westhead was the previous season, he overcorrects into a stubborn, unyielding jerk by constantly butting heads with GM Jerry West (Clarke-much calmer this year) over proposed roster changes and his players over his insufferable belief in his system.  A handful of games into the following season, Westhead is replaced by Pat Riley (Brody) and the dynasty is on its way.

This season focuses plenty on Magic Johnson (Isaiah) and his numerous issues, including his leg injury and his conflict with Dr. Buss over wanting a lifetime contract, an unheard of proposition.  Dr. Buss relents, but when a disillusioned Magic demands a trade unless Westhead is fired, Buss wonders if the lifetime contract was worth it.  Buss undergoes quite a few headaches, including family squabbles, a renewed interest in a former flame, and of course trying to restore the Lakers to their former glory.  If you recall last season, Jerry West complained about his characterization as a drunken man with volcanic anger issues.  This season, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar should be the one complaining.  This version of the Lakers legend is an unsmiling, unhappy man to whom basketball is a chore.  Was it that way?  I can imagine sometimes and let's not forget the possibility of dramatic license.  

Winning Time flows in much the same manner as season one, with the team's ups and downs engagingly chronicled and convincing capture of the period.  Reilly has a ball with this role as Buss, with the novelty of owning a professional basketball team wearing off and the daily pressures beginning to seep into his psyche and somewhat altering his fun-loving demeanor.  We see new sides of Magic, when he realizes his million-dollar smile isn't going to get him out of every personal and professional jam.  His rivalry with Larry Bird (who matches Abdul-Jabbar in the unsmiling department) is a focus as well.  Brody gives us a Pat Riley who is now promoted from assistant to head coach in a manner we may never see in professional sports again, thank goodness.

Unfortunately, season two will be the last for this series, and the season abruptly ends with the Lakers losing to the rival Boston Celtics in seven games in the 1983-84 NBA Finals.  I think Bird's face may have betrayed a slight smile, but the rest of the decade's accomplishments are displayed in an epilogue, so we are not shown how the Lakers finally became the dominant team of the 1980's.  HBO had a different idea.  

Dumb Money (2023) * * 1/2

 

Directed by: Craig Gillespie

Starring:  Paul Dano, Shailene Woodley, Pete Davidson, Clancy Brown, Nick Offerman, Seth Rogen, Vincent D'Onofrio, Talia Ryder, Sebastian Stan, America Ferrara, Dane DeHaan, Myha'la Herrold, Anthony Ramos, Kate Burton    

Dumb Money comes from the director of the brilliant, funny, and inspired I, Tonya (2016) which reached a fever pitch with its lunacy.  Dumb Money never reaches I,Tonya's level.  It has moments of inspiration, but is mostly flat, and in the end while we're supposed to be cheering the fact that hedge fund billionaires take a hit in the public eye and the wallet, it doesn't last long.  We find ourselves acknowledging this footnote in recent market history and move on without really being much moved.  

Dumb Money begins in the middle of the 2020 COVID pandemic with financial analyst Keith Gill (Dano), a regular guy with a regular job and a family who sees the hidden value in GameStop stock, which hedge fund managers like Gabe Plotkin (Rogen) short in order to make beaucoup dollars when the stock tanks.   Keith's social media posts pumping up GameStop's stocks cause other working-class people to sink their savings (however miniscule) into the stock and then watch the price skyrocket beyond Wall Street's meager expectations.  GameStop was expected to start closing its stores, but Keith gave them new life.  

The term "dumb money" isn't related to stupid money, which is what everyone in Dumb Money hopes to make, but is instead a derogatory term for common people who play the stock market without the so-called knowledge the "experts" have.  Dumb Money argues that the entire market is a crapshoot, and the amateurs outplayed the hedge fund managers at their own game, which led to Wall Street fighting back and attempting to shut down Keith's site, which grown exponentially in popularity as his viewers get rich off of GameStop. 

I couldn't help but think of The Big Short (2015) while watching Dumb Money, and how its socially awkward hedge fund manager Dr. Michael Burry (Bale) shorted the housing market and anyone who followed made stupid money as the economy crashed in 2008.  The Big Short was better, mostly because of its standout performances and its pointed satire, plus it used celebrity cameos to explain the stock market lexicon to the lay viewer.  Dumb Money has its satirical moments and its performances work, but it never truly crosses over into greatness.  

Heart and Souls (1993) * * *

 

Directed by:  Ron Underwood

Starring:  Robert Downey, Jr., Kyra Sedgwick, Alfre Woodard, Charles Grodin, Tom Sizemore, Elisabeth Shue, David Paymer, Wren T. Brown, B.B. King

Heart and Souls is corny, sentimental, and by its nature silly.  But it works, because why wouldn't it?  Yes, it sucks to die, but in Heart and Souls you can at least live on as a spirit attached to an unsuspecting person who adopts you as a non-imaginary friend.  In the case of young (and later adult) Thomas Reilly (Downey, Jr.), four spirits cling to him for decades (although they make themselves invisible to him from between ages 10-30).  How did this happen?  Thomas' mother was on a bus involved in a fatal crash one night in 1962 which killed the hapless driver Hal (Paymer), young mother Penny (Woodard), would-be singer Harrison (Grodin), petty thief Milo (Sizemore), and pretty Julia (Sedgwick), who just rejected her boyfriend's marriage proposal.

Thomas's mother survives the crash and gives birth to him shortly after, with the four ghosts inexplicably linked to the boy.  The ghosts are Thomas' best friends until they realize they are causing him to nearly be institutionalized by age ten and disappear.  Thomas then grows up to be a cold, ruthless attorney who keeps his sweet girlfriend Anne (Shue) at arm's length and drives around San Francisco in a new Mercedes which we know will be damaged heavily by the time the movie is over.  As Thomas is trying to gleefully foreclose on some properties, the ghosts reappear after learning from Hal that their purpose for hanging around in limbo is to take care of unfinished business before Hal takes them up to heaven in the same bus involved in the crash thirty years prior.

Milo would love to return a stamp collection he stole from a kid.  Julia wants to find the man she rejected and apologize to him.  Penny wants to find out her children's whereabouts and whether they're okay, and Harrison wants just once to sing in front of an audience without retreating from stage fright.  Thomas becomes their vessel, in some cases literally, since the ghosts can enter Thomas' body and use him as their conduit.  Downey's versatility is on full display, as he becomes the person who is inhabiting him.  Think Ghost times four.   When the ghosts each fulfill their missions, the effect is surprisingly stirring and warm.  Heart and Souls is harmless fun with, yes, a heart and a soul.  

The Retirement Plan (2023) * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Tim J. Brown

Starring:  Nicolas Cage, Ashley Greene, Rick Fox, Ron Perlman, Jackie Earle Haley, Thalia Campbell, Ernie Hudson, Lynn Whitfield, Joel David Moore

One thing I have to say about Nicolas Cage is:  No matter how shoddy the movie he's in, he gives it his all.  His resume, even in his "renaissance", is full of forgettable movies which don't do justice to his talent. Cage is not the problem with The Retirement Plan, which is chock full of plot holes, loose ends, characters who tease interesting arcs and then nothing is done with them, and action sequences where guns and bombs are going off in a harbor and no one seems to notice.  There are so many twists and turns that, by the end, we are twisted and turned out.  And we don't even learn the fate of a key character who is held hostage earlier in the film.  

I'll try and recap as best as I can.  Ashley (Greene), a fuckup whose boyfriend steals a thumb drive from a mobster Donnie (Haley), who swears a lot and acts apoplectic often, to turn over to the FBI (I think).  A mole inside the agency (Moore), tips off Donnie and his boss Hector (a woman by the way) about the theft.  This leaves the boyfriend and Ashley captured by Donnie, but not before Ashley sends their six-year-old daughter (Campbell) to Grand Cayman Islands to find her estranged grandfather Matt (Cage), a drunk who is passed out on the beach when his granddaughter discovers him.  Matt hasn't seen his daughter in ten years and never knew he had a granddaughter, but soon Donnie's goons are pulling up to Matt's house and Matt thrashes them.   You see, Matt was a hired assassin who worked for the agency, and  was allegedly forced to retire but still seems to be able to work with his former boss (Whitfield) in getting information and assistance at a moment's notice.   

Donnie's goons are led by Bobo (Perlman), who is successful in kidnapping the granddaughter and holding her hostage, but he turns out to be a pretty good fella, as kidnappers go.  The movie teases a change of heart from Bobo, but then this is dispensed with later.  There is another puzzling scene in which three goons are pounding at Matt's hotel door.  Matt's plan is to quickly open the door, grab one of the goons, and then quickly shut the door again.  The two remaining guys stand there in silence staring at the door wondering what to do next.  Wouldn't the others start kicking at the door again trying to break in?  Then, there is the CIA head honcho played by former basketball star Rick Fox, who is introduced as a shady character but then at the end is left to explain the entire plot to Matt, who then escapes in a boat while leaving his daughter and granddaughter in the custody of an agency full of double agents.   If there was a tearful reunion scene between Ashley and Matt, I missed it.  So did the movie.  

A Haunting in Venice (2023) * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Kenneth Branagh

Starring:  Kenneth Branagh, Tina Fey, Kyle Allen, Kelly Reilly, Jamie Dornan, Michelle Yeoh, Camille Cottin

Kenneth Branagh doesn't remake a previous film based on Agatha Christie novels this time, but instead adapts a later work with A Haunting in Venice, which is dark and I don't mean the subject matter.  The bulk of the movie takes place in a rumored Venice haunted house on Halloween night, 1947.  As the movie opens, legendary detective Hercule Poirot (Branagh) is long retired from active duty, but is still solicited almost daily to work cases.   He has hired a bodyguard to keep people from bothering him, but one morning his old friend, crime novelist Ariadne Oliver (Fey) comes calling with a request too hard to pass up.  

Ariadne does not have a murder to solve, but wants Poirot to try and debunk psychic Jenny Reynolds (Yeoh) who will be contacting a dead woman at a seance scheduled for Halloween night at a supposedly haunted house, where the poor girl was allegedly driven by demons to jump from the top floor into the canal below to her death.  Ariadne so far has not been able to spot any fakery on Ms. Reynolds' part, which is why Poirot is brought in.  However, a simple debunking makes way for a murder when Ms. Reynolds is found murdered following a fairly convincing communication with the deceased.  

As usual with Christie novels and films, the suspects are rounded up, interrogated, accused of the murder, and then Poirot gathers them all in a room (typically following a second murder) and deduces the identity of the culprit.   The suspects here are Ariadne, Poirot's bodyguard (a former police officer who responded to the call the night the haunted woman died), the girl's mother (Reilly), the girl's heartbroken lover (Allen), and a doctor (Dornan) who is in love with the girl's mother.  Oh and there's a an accented nanny (Cottin) who may have had something to gain from all of this death.  What prevents the suspects from leaving?  A torrential storm outside, of course, which plays like a Deus ex Machina. 

A Haunting in Venice was shot in so much darkness it's hard to tell what is happening, making A Haunting in Venice the gloomiest of the Christie movies.   The movie follows the Poirot playbook and there is comfort in such uniformity.  Hercule Poirot is famous enough and has solved so many cases that those in his presence should know that they'll be questioned and eventually pinpointed as the murderer, but then so will everyone else.  Why anyone would want to commit a murder in Poirot's presence is beyond my comprehension.  Not much slips by this man.  Why would this time be any different?  

Sound of Freedom (2023) * * *

 

Directed by:  Alejandro Monteverde

Starring:  Jim Caviezel, Bill Camp, Eduardo Verastegui, Mira Sorvino, Cristal Aparicio, Kurt Fuller, Manny Perez

Sound of Freedom is about a government agent's quest to find children who were abducted into sex and human trafficking.  Tim Ballard (Caviezel) spent many years at the Department of Homeland Security tracking adult predators, but after one leads him to a young boy kidnapped while supposedly auditioning as child actors, Tim devotes his life to rescuing endangered children in Colombia.  Sound of Freedom is more famous for being an unexpected hit, its "pay it forward" marketing campaign, and the political polarization which accompanied it.  While it is reported that star Jim Caviezel is ultra-conservative and allegedly is a proponent of Q-Anon theories, Sound of Freedom itself is apolitical and doesn't take the Taken approach to dealing with trafficking.  

Another issue brought about is how much of this true story is true.  I've written here numerous times about how movies based on true stories take dramatic license.  Rudy was about a real-life Notre Dame football player, but the movie itself was nearly a work of fiction based on a real person, but that didn't lessen its impact.  Sound of Freedom is a somber movie about a terrible reality.  It isn't fun to watch, but it works on its intended level in almost documentary-like fashion.  Caviezel gives a restrained performance more based on human behavior than acting flourishes.  The movie doesn't allow Ballard to take center stage, but instead focuses the unflinching story on the victims. 

The most effective and layered performance is from Bill Camp, who plays Vampiro, a former dealer for Pablo Escobar who now rescues trafficked children.  He becomes Ballard's partner in his quest and his story of how he finally left his life of crime behind is hauntingly told.   What's also interesting is the approach of Sound of Freedom.  Ballard doesn't break out a certain set of skills to the kidnappers, but instead infiltrates and uses his mind, although violence does occasionally happen.  Like Oskar Schindler, Ballard is happy to accomplish his mission, but then saddened that the trade continues even though a child was rescued.   Ballard is a man swimming against the tide which threatens to drown him, but you can't imagine what it feels like for the children.  How Sound of Freedom ever became a political football is a question I can't answer.  

Blue Beetle (2023) * * *

Directed by:  Angel Manuel Soto

Starring:  Xolo Mariduena, George Lopez, Susan Sarandon, Adriana Barraza, Damian Alcazar, Bruna Marquezine, Harvey Guillen, Elpidia Carrillo, Raoul Max Trujillo, Belissa Escobedo

With the glut of superhero movies underwhelming at the box office and in the minds of audiences lately, Blue Beetle is a refreshing antidote to those films.  It's a pity Blue Beetle may keep audiences away because they think it will be another Flash, but it has a heart and isn't CGI on steroids, not that it doesn't have moments of things blowing up.  

Our hero is Jaime Reyes (Mariduena-from Cobra Kai) who comes home from college to learn his family home will soon by lost.  Jaime and his sister Milagro (Escobedo) find jobs working for ultra-rich and ultra-villainous Victoria Kord (Sarandon), who can't wait to gobble up the Reyes home (among others) and build a shopping area.  Kord is also into weapons of warfare, including the Blue Beetle suit which Jaime comes into possession of courtesy of Kord's niece Jenny (Marquezine), who is certainly not a villain like Victoria.  

Jaime is told not to open the box the suit comes in, but he does out of curiosity, and the suit (which attaches itself to its host) takes over Jaime and gives us the usual superhero movie scene in which Jaime has to figure out how to use his newfound powers.  What isn't typical of Blue Beetle is how we know Jaime comes from a loving family and works with them to overcome evil.  The best performances come from Adriana Barraza, who plays the family matriarch who has a secret past as a revolutionary fighter, and Uncle Rudy (Lopez), a conspiracy theorist who once knew the original Blue Beetle from long ago.

Jaime, as played by Mariduena, is a likable guy who transforms into a vulnerable hero.  Blue Beetle still touches on some superhero standards, but hits more poignant notes especially in the climactic scenes which separate the movie from the typical.  

Equalizer 3 (2023) * * 1/2

Directed by:  Antoine Fuqua

Starring:  Denzel Washington, Dakota Fanning, Gaia Scodellaro, Eugenio Mastrandrea, Remo Girone, Andrea Dodero, David Denman

The Equalizer 3 is a suitable sequel and a fitting conclusion (which was promised in the trailers) to the Equalizer saga, which realistically could've been satisfied with the initial film.  Two more unnecessary, but entertaining sequels followed because of the series' success at the box office.  Did either Equalizer 2 or 3 add to Robert McCall's story?  No, it mostly repeated it, but did so with skill and a focused Washington performance.  

Equalizer 3 follows the McCall saga to Italy, where the former CIA agent litters a quaint vineyard with thrashed thugs but is soon captured and held at gunpoint while the vineyard owner/untraceable terrorist surveys the damage and asks McCall why he tracked him down with intent to kill him.  The calm McCall informs his captors that they have nine seconds to let him go or face death.   They didn't see the first two Equalizer movies apparently, because when McCall sets his watch, that mean it's their ass.  McCall, of course, kills the leader and his remaining henchmen with gruesome efficiency, but is seriously wounded with a gunshot.  He is discovers on the roadside by a police officer and taken to a doctor for treatment and the required rest needed for the effects of such treatment to subside, which is seemingly two days.

Robert finds himself in a small seaside town recuperating when a gang of creeps begin terrorizing the poor folks who live there.  Being Robert McCall, he can't abide this and makes it his business to squash the villains like bugs.  He does that, of course, in a fashion which almost made me feel sorry for the bad guys.  Almost.  Something tells me we've seen this before, but because of Washington, The Equalizer 3 handles its business, but if there's a fourth installment, what more can be said about the McCall character? 

Thelma and Louise (1991) * * *

 

Directed by:  Ridley Scott

Starring:  Geena Davis, Susan Sarandon, Brad Pitt, Harvey Keitel, Christopher McDonald, Michael Madsen, Stephen Tobolowsky, Timothy Carhart

Best friends Thelma (Davis) and Louise (Sarandon) get away for a much-needed weekend away from their difficult home and work lives but wind up as criminals on a cross-country run from the law.   Thelma and Louise isn't simply about this physical journey, but how both women are transformed by their crimes and embrace a life they didn't expect to experience.   Parts of Thelma and Louise are formula while others stand out as original slices of life and character development.   

Thelma and Louise endure life as waitresses and more challenging personal lives.  Thelma's husband Darryl (McDonald) is an impossible prick to live with, while Louise's boyfriend Jimmy (Madsen) is a nicer guy, but doesn't want to marry her.  Louise also is a previous victim of rape from when she lived in Texas, and this memory haunts her to the point that when she wants to escape to Mexico, she wants to avoid traveling through the state.  The pair sits down for a night out on the town at a local bar, Thelma gets tipsy and dances all night with a handsome guy who soon attempts to rape her.  Louise, likely triggered by her past rape, shoots the creep dead and flees with Thelma.  

The two don't report the killing to the police because they believe their story of self-defense would be dismissed and Thelma would be blamed for being drunk and amorous with the would-be rapist.   Further events snowball with an Arkansas police detective (Keitel), who empathizes with the pair and doesn't want to see the matter escalate further than it already has.  Along the way, Thelma and Louise meet handsome drifter JD (Pitt-in his breakthrough film role) whose charm and looks seduce Thelma with devastating consequences.   Plus, he brings Thelma sexual joy in ways the insufferable Darryl couldn't even imagine.  

Some sections of Thelma and Louise drag, almost acting as a five-minute break before the action begins rolling again, but Thelma and Louise isn't an action picture, but an elevation of the road/buddy genre.  Davis's Thelma undergoes the most changes as the movie moves on to its famous climax.  When we first meet her, she is so terrified of Darryl that she leaves him a note telling him she's leaving for the weekend.  As Thelma and Louise drive through the Arizona desert, we see a more hardened Thelma looking for trouble, or a reason to unleash her rage on a society that keeps women like her down.   She catches up to where Louise was at the start of the trip: angry, suspicious, and tough.  When she shoots Thelma's rapist, we sense she was looking for an opportunity to use the gun on someone who did to Thelma what was done to her in Texas years ago.  

Callie Khouri's Oscar-winning screenplay, however, doesn't simply turn Thelma and Louise into an anti-male movie because Keitel's Hal genuinely cares about saving the two women before less-sympathetic lawmen catch them.   Even while Thelma and Louise drive off the cliff and into the Grand Canyon as a final middle finger to the men trying to capture them, Hal still tries to save them which, at that point, was from themselves.