Critical Condition (1987) * *

 

Directed by:  Michael Apted

Starring:  Richard Pryor, Rachel Ticotin, Ruben Blades, Joe Mantegna, Bob Dishy, Bob Saget

Critical Condition is all over the map.  It wants to be a thoughtful satire, madcap comedy of errors, and an action picture all in one movie.  The tone continually shifts until we get whiplashed with Richard Pryor trying his mightiest to keep it all together.  There is an able supporting cast to back up Pryor, but even they seem overwhelmed.

Pryor is conman Kevin Lenahan, who is framed in a jewel robbery, but due to his track record he doesn't expect to be exonerated at trial.  Instead, he fakes insanity and finds himself soon pretending to be a doctor at a local hospital on a dark and stormy night where the power goes out.  Kevin (or Dr. Eddie Slattery as he calls himself when making the rounds), desperately attempts to conceal his identity while planning his escape.  He finds himself giving medical advice and leading around an intern (Saget) and a veteran doctor (Dishy) who is terrified of lawsuits, all the while assisting the beleaguered chief administrator (Ticotin) who is doing her best under the circumstances.

I recall first seeing the movie when it was first released in 1987.  I was a high school student then and I declared it one of the worst movies I had ever seen.  Upon second viewing, I certainly don't feel that way now.  It's not a good movie, just one that is at war with its motives and its methods.  It wants to be all things to the audience, but it doesn't work out that way.  It is also sad to know that Pryor began his battle with MS at the time of this movie's release and putting forth the energy must have been tough on him.  I give him and the movie credit for attempting what it wants to do, but there is too much ground to cover.  

Now You See Me: Now You Don't (2025) * *

 

Directed by:  Ruben Fleischer

Starring:  Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, Isla Fisher, Dominic Sessa, Rosamund Pike, Morgan Freeman, Ariana Greenblatt, Justice Smith, Lizzy Caplan

Now You See Me: Now You Don't is the third installment of the successful series following the exploits of The Four Horsemen, four magicians who ply their trade on amoral billionaires and relieve them of their riches.  They're Robin Hoods of the 21st century, but when you take into account the amount of money and planning it takes to finance these schemes, where is the break-even point?  Is it even worth it financially, or are they in it for the pleasure of watching the rich become poor or go to prison?

Now You See Me: Now You Don't begins, however, with a trio of the next generation of Horsemen publicly hacking a corrupt crypto jerk and distributing his ill-gotten gains amongst the poor and getting him arrested for his shady business practices.  This catches the attention of Daniel Atlas (Eisenberg), who recruits them for another mission:  To expose billionaire diamond mogul Veronkia Vandenberg (Pike-and I love her accent she employs for the movie) and steal the world's most valuable diamond from her.  That part is done rather easily.  It's when she sends her goons to kill everyone that things get dicey, and rather boring. 

It seems the Horsemen broke up due to personal squabbles since Now You See Me 2, but they reunite with just some minor bickering going on.  Their sleight-of-hand tricks in which they and the newbies show each other in games of one-upmanship are not really possible in the physical world we occupy, to paraphrase a line from Ocean's Twelve.  They look impressive, but we know they aren't really happening unless the Horsemen have become The Avengers.  

The Now You See Me doesn't live in the world of realism and doesn't need to.  The series is mostly forgettable and is a swerve fest. The actors are having a good time, but the plot twists and turns are so ludicrous they defy any suspension of disbelief.  There's suspension, and then whatever the Now You See Me series asks of its audience. 

Being Eddie (2025) * * *

 

Directed by: Angus Wall

Featuring:  Eddie Murphy, Charlie Murphy, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, Pete Davidson, John Landis, Jamie Foxx, Kevin Hart, Val Young

You can forgive Being Eddie for being borderline hagiography because it's pieced together nicely, showing us the mostly positive parts of Eddie Murphy's life and career.  Vampire in Brooklyn is noted as a career low point, but mostly the interviewees give us positive takes on Murphy with Murphy himself providing a more in-depth review of his life than we've ever seen before.  

Murphy seems at peace with himself, living in a posh California mansion and maintaining a loving relationship with his wife and ten children.  The children range in age from early 40's to toddlers, and Murphy lovingly describes them as his rock.  When Murphy discusses something funny, his laugh is different than the one we saw in his earlier movies.  What is still the same is his confidence and his comic ability.  He isn't boring, and the final scenes showing him playing with Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby puppets (harkening back to an early childhood memory), are very funny.  The Richard Pryor puppet itself is a howl.  

Murphy grew up on Roosevelt, Long Island and predicted he would be a star by the time he reached eighteen.   He was off by one year.  He joined SNL when he was 19 during the much-maligned 1980 season which was the first during Lorne Michaels' hiatus from the show.  Due to underwhelming ratings and unfavorable comparisons to the original Not Ready for Primetime Players who departed the show the previous year, all of the cast members except Murphy and Joe Piscopo were fired.  SNL was where some of Murphy's greatest characters like Mr. Robinson, Gumby, and Velvet Jones were formed, plus his spot-on celebrity impressions made him a household name before he ventured into the movies.  

48 Hrs. (1982) was his feature-film debut and what a start.  The scene in the redneck bar where Murphy's Reggie Hammond takes control of a roomful of people who hate him made him a star.  Then, we have Trading Places and Beverly Hills Cop, which shot Murphy into orbit as one of the biggest box-office draws of the 80's.  Movies like Best Defense and The Golden Child aren't mentioned, although I found The Golden Child to be an amusing action adventure with Murphy playing against type.  The late 80's and early 90's brought about some flops, some of which aren't brought up, but then Murphy found himself on an upward career trajectory again after The Nutty Professor and a series of family-friendly hits like Daddy Day Care.  Dreamgirls pushed Murphy into awards consideration for the first time in his career.  He won a Golden Globe and SAG Award for Best Supporting Actor but lost out on the Oscar to Alan Arkin in what was a definite upset.  

The documentary then focuses on Murphy's return to host SNL in the late 2010's.  He had not been on the show in any capacity since the David Spade "a falling star" joke about Murphy which hurt Murphy to his core.  He wasn't angry with Spade for telling the joke as much as he believed he was betrayed by SNL for allowing the joke to air.  Was Murphy a mite too sensitive?  Possibly, but he's honest about himself and why he stayed away from SNL for years until hosting.  It represented a full-circle moment for him and Being Eddie makes the same conclusion.  

Being Eddie isn't perfect, but it moves along briskly and allows for Murphy to present an openness we haven't really seen.  He lived a mostly non-controversial life, but the movie is about the gift that keeps on giving: Murphy's comedy and his stand-up.  Being Eddie broaches the subject as to when Murphy will ever return to stand-up after stepping away from it in the late 1980's, and Murphy is coy with his response, but that would be quite a return.  

 

Nuremberg (2025) * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  James Vanderbilt

Starring:  Russell Crowe, Rami Malek, John Slattery, Michael Shannon, Richard E. Grant, Andreas Pietchsmann, Colin Hanks, Leo Woodall

One of the strengths of Nuremberg is how Hermann Goring (Crowe) is depicted not as a raging lunatic, but as someone with charm and manipulative skill.  Crowe is at-home and confident as Goring, showing him as the type of evil hidden behind a smile and a whole lot of girth rather than shouting and frothing at the mouth with villainous hatred. 

Nuremberg is a movie I wanted to like more than I did.  The subject of the perils of postwar Germany and trying war criminals without precedent is tricky and fascinating material, but Nuremberg meanders its way to the showdown between U.S. Justice Robert H. Jackson (Shannon) and Goring as he takes the stand in his defense.  Other than Goring's testimony, Nuremberg doesn't spend much time in the courtroom.  It assembles the first 22 members of the Nazi high command indicted for war crimes and other crimes against humanity and places them in a nearby makeshift prison with Col. Burton Andrus (Slattery) as the warden.  Andrus tells Jackson that if the trials don't go well against the first 22 defendants, then the trials will be scrapped, and the Allies will look ridiculous on the world stage.

However, Nuremberg focuses on psychiatrist Douglas Kelley (Malek), who is brought in to examine the defendants and determine if they are mentally fit to stand trial.  Kelley is sharp and competent, determining early on the traits of the members of the high command, including Goring.  Kelley, however, wishes to turn his meetings into a best-selling book, so his motives aren't strictly professional.  Kelley falls under the spell of Goring, even going so far as to act as courier delivering letters to Goring's wife and child who are in hiding.  Kelley's ethical boundaries are fluid, until he witnesses the horrors of the concentration camps on film which Goring claims to know nothing about.  I also liked Malek here, especially as he transitions from early cockiness to later insecurity and ethical confusion.  

But Nuremberg meanders on its way to the main event.  The undercard consists of unnecessary attention to Goring's family and uneven pacing.  I found myself checking my watch more than being engrossed, which is the last thing I expected from such riveting subject matter.  Instead, the effect is curiously diluted.  

The Running Man (2025) * *

 

Directed by:  Edgar Wright

Starring:  Glen Powell, Jayme Lawson, Josh Brolin, Lee Pace, Colman Domingo, Michael Cera, Daniel Ezra, William H. Macy, Amelia Jones

The Running Man suffers in comparison to the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle.  Is it more faithful to Stephen King's novel?  It may be, but it is a slog to get through, even from the early moments.  Glen Powell assumes the Schwarzenegger role but not the charisma to carry it.  At a bloated 2:13 running time, The Running Man asks a lot of any actor to carry.  

Powell is Ben Richards, an angry, out-of-work factory worker in a dystopian future blackballed from work by the state for whistleblowing about unsafe conditions.  His baby daughter is suffering from medical issues, his wife works at a gentleman's club presumably dancing, and Ben decides to travel down to the state TV network to try out for one of their game shows.  After a physical and psychological test, Ben is chosen to participate in The Running Man, the most watched show on the network in which contestants have to avoid being killed by "Hunters" as a rabid public is encouraged to report the contestants' whereabouts for lucrative rewards.   The contestant must survive for thirty days.  I liked the 1987 version in which Ben and his friends would have to only live through one night and four different bad guys harnessing various weapons such as a flamethrower or a chainsaw would stalk them.  This version also requires the contestants to send out a video each day to ensure the public and network he or she is still alive.  Does this create opportunities for doctored footage which turns people against Ben?  What do you think?

The show is run by oily network honcho Dan Killian (Brolin), who believes Ben could possibly be the first winner of The Running Man.   The show is hosted by the Jerry Springer-inspired Bobby T. (Domingo), who enthusiastically eggs on the proceedings like a modern-day P.T. Barnum.  Sure, these guys are bad, but at least they're fun to watch.  Powell looks the part of action hero, but he has only one dimension (angry), and the entire movie grows tiresome quickly as Ben travels from place to place encountering those willing to help him and those who can't wait to turn him in.  

Dragging out the action over thirty days is tedious and soon we find ourselves checking our watches more than getting involved in the action.  The Running Man feels as long as the thirty days in which the action is supposed to take place.  

Who Killed the Montreal Expos? (2025) * * *

 

Directed by:  Jean-Francois Poisson

Featuring interviews with:  Felipe Alou, David Samson, Larry Walker, Pedro Martinez, Vladimir Guerrero, Claude Brochu

The Montreal Expos last played in Montreal in September 2004 before moving to Washington DC and becoming the Washington Nationals.  Like the Brooklyn Dodgers moving west to Los Angeles in the late 1950's, the Expos' move created a civic pain which lingers to this day.  Walter O'Malley, the Dodgers owner who packed up and moved west, was so hated in Brooklyn that the following joke became prevalent:  If you have Hitler, Stalin, and Walter O'Malley in a room and you have a gun with two bullets, who do you shoot?  Answer: Walter O'Malley twice.  Only, I'm not sure how much jocularity is involved in that hypothetical. 

The closest thing to a Walter O'Malley in Expos lore is Jeffrey Loria, who bought the team in 1999, sold the team in 2002 to Major League Baseball, and went on to own the Florida Marlins.  His stepson David Samson was brought in to be the general manager, and the gregarious, vociferous Samson is by far the most entertaining interview subject.  Expos fans blame Loria and Samson for purposely running the team into the ground and selling, while previous Expos executives like Claude Brochu say that one person did not kill the Expos, but the economy, the inability to raise money for a new ballpark, and the 1994 season ending in a players' strike.  

The 1994 Expos were well on their way to the playoffs and the belief they could win a World Series.  The dream ended when the players struck in September, cancelling the remainder of the season including the playoffs.  Could they have gone all the way to a championship?  We'll never know, but that doesn't stop the living players from reuniting at events and declaring themselves the 1994 World Champions.  Maybe that's in jest, but it also may be a lament.  However, once the players returned from strike in 1995, baseball suffered and the Expos in particular sustained a loss of fan interest.  The fact that they played in Olympic Stadium which was crumbling and leaking like a sieve didn't help matters.  It was the only roofed ballpark where rainouts occurred because the roof had so many holes in it.  

Brochu is correct that there is no one person or event which caused the Expos to relocate to Washington DC in 2005.  As badly as Montreal's baseball fans would like to blame someone, and Loria and Samson are the biggest targets on the fans' dartboards, the truth is the Toronto Blue Jays have thrived and were involved in a seven-game classic World Series last month.  The Expos did not, and what frustrates fans most of all is how most of the reasons why the Expos are gone didn't involve anything that occurred on the field.  

The Great Debaters (2007) * * *

 

Directed by:  Denzel Washington

Starring:  Denzel Washington, Forest Whitaker, Denzel Whitaker, Nate Parker, John Heard, Jurnee Smollett, Kimberly Elise, Jermaine Williams

The Great Debaters is an underdog sports tale in which the underdogs are not athletes, but the debate team at small Wiley College in Texas during the 1930's.  Their coach Mel Tolson (Washington) is firm, committed, and believes they can win enough debates to soon face off against the best debate teams in the country, including Harvard.  Mel, however, also attempts to unionize the local sharecroppers which doesn't sit well with the local sheriff (Heard) and other farmers.  There is discrimination, racism, and the threat of violence against black people all around, which makes Mel push his team harder not just to be great debaters, but to secure their futures in a hostile world. 

Washington's directorial debut was Antwone Fisher (2004), which I saw a long time ago and would like to revisit.  In that movie and this one, Washington directs and takes on a supporting role, allowing his younger cast to shine.  The actors are very good, with veteran Forest Whitaker as the college president and father of one of the debaters offering steady support as well.  The debating scenes are not as stirring as Washington would like them to be, mostly because debating is not as cinematic as running with a football or hitting a game-winning home run.  

In the end, Wiley College takes on Harvard (who are seen as the best in the world at debating), although in real life Wiley took on USC, but I suppose Harvard has more prestige than USC.  Mel's team gets their moment in the sun, and when we realize the hard decades which lie ahead, it's moving to see it happen.  Washington can move a scene along and his presence as an actor is always helpful.  The Great Debaters is tricky ground, but Washington can handle it. 

John Candy: I Like Me (2025) * * *

 

Directed by:  Colin Hanks

Featuring interviews with:  Tom Hanks, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas, Martin Short, Catherine O'Hara, Dan Aykroyd, Rose Candy, Bill Murray, Steve Martin, Macaulay Culkin, Andrea Martin, John Candy (archive footage), Chris Columbus, John Hughes (archive footage), Mel Brooks

John Candy was a naturally funny man.  His first appearance onscreen usually results in a chuckle or laugh.  He was full of warmth, good humor, charm, ability, and unfortunately weight and health problems which caused his death from a heart attack at 43 in 1994.  One thing Candy wasn't was controversial.  He was a beloved actor, other actors and crew members loved working with him, and no one had a bad thing to say about him.  Bill Murray, in the opening moments of John Candy: I Like Me, amusingly points out that he can't think of anything negative to say about Candy.  The documentary, while borderline hagiography, is still compelling because we still miss the guy 30-plus years after his death.  

It isn't the movie's problem that Candy was a sweetheart of a guy who carried the psychic weight of this father dying on his fifth birthday and while battling his weight demons was still outwardly cheerful.  However, if the interviewer brings up his girth, he is visibly uncomfortable but always played the good sport.  It would be wrong to try and create controversy where none existed, so we can still enjoy John Candy: I Like Me on its own terms.  The most sadness you will find is how insecure Candy was despite his great achievements. 

Tracing his early showbiz days with Second City and soon SCTV, his co-stars spoke glowingly about his talent and the person he was.  He married and had two children, and from all accounts, was a present and loving husband and dad.  He liked to party and hang out at the bar socializing with friends, and was reluctant to give up his vices.  When doctors advised him to lose weight and cut out drinking and smoking, he would simply find another doctor who would tell him what he wanted to hear.  His friends suggested he learned to eat and drink his feelings from an early age.  By the time he died from a heart attack while filming Wagons East! in Mexico, he had to have been close to 400 pounds.  

The best parts of John Candy: I Like Me involve behind-the-scenes stories of some of his most memorable films, including Stripes, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, Uncle Buck, Spaceballs, JFK, Home Alone etc.  The movies like Nothing but Trouble were filed under the "doing a friend a favor" movies which were box office bombs, but still benefited from Candy's talent.  I never saw Wagons East! and many others can claim the same thing, but watching it would invoke sadness because we knew he died during its filming.  The driving force behind John Candy: I Like Me is knowing that we will reach the sad time where Candy was taken from the world and his family at far too young an age.  He left behind quite a filmography, but there could've been so much more. 

Bugonia (2025) * * *

 

Directed by:  Yorgos Lanthimos

Starring:  Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Aidan Delbis, Stavros Halkias

I wasn't a fan of The Favourite or Poor Things, which were both beautiful to look at and unpleasant to endure.  Bugonia, even with its pessimistic or sometimes downright nihilistic approach, is a better, more involving movie than the previous Yorgos Lanthimos efforts mentioned.  And this is a film about a conspiracy theorist wounded by life who kidnaps a CEO because he believes she's part of an alien race sent to destroy all of humanity.  

Bugonia isn't the most fun movie to watch, but it's still engrossing because Michelle Fuller (Stone), the sleek CEO of a biomedical company spends the movie with a shaved head (the kidnappers believe she transmits messages to the mother ship through her hair) and trying to reason with the two men named Teddy and Donny (Plemons and Delbis) who are convinced of her alien origins.  Michelle of course believes they're insane, and there are issues below the surface which suggest that Teddy and Donny were damaged long before they ever set eyes on Michelle.  

Michelle's life as a CEO is far from glamourous.  She lives alone in a modest mansion in the middle of nowhere.  She awakes at 4:30am, undergoes a vigorous exercise routine, and then drives into the office where she tells her subordinates they are free to leave at 5:30pm unless they have work that needs to get done.  We have quotas after all.   A funny scene involves Michelle recording a company announcement discussing diversity and the speech uses the word "diverse" every other sentence.  "You need to diversify your language," she tells her speechwriter.  

Michelle is a cold CEO who just seems out of touch with humanity, which is something CEO's of often accused of.  She doesn't scream or cry or beg her captors to appeal to their emotions.  She approaches it coldly and logically, like Spock would.  She's very calm, and you wonder why.  Teddy is easy to dismiss as a nutcase, and when he and Donny chemically castrate themselves in order to lessen the distractions to their cause, then it's hard to argue that point.  But when the local sheriff (Halkias) tells Teddy he's sorry for what happened when he was Teddy's babysitter and that "I never did that with anyone else" as if that's supposed to comfort Teddy, we see the deep wounds which drive him.  We also learn of Teddy's drug-addicted mother who was made comatose by Michelle's company's experimental treatments, so we question whether his crimes against Michelle aren't personal too.  

Bugonia, like other Lanthimos' efforts, holds us outside with people who seem cut off from ordinary cheer.  The actors capably keep this tone up through the violence and plot twists which aren't all that surprising but are still chilling.  This movie wasn't made to please audiences, but it's still satisfying on its own terms.  

Limitless (2011) * * *

 

Directed by:  Neil Burger

Starring:  Bradley Cooper, Robert DeNiro, Abbie Cornish, Andrew Howard

The hero of Limitless is Eddie Morra (Cooper), a New York writer with writer's block and unfulfilled potential.  From his narration, he is intelligent, but is still stuck in a rut after his girlfriend leaves him and his publisher is looking for pages from here or they'll ask for a refund on the advance.  Eddie is going nowhere, until a chance meeting with his former brother-in-law on the street.  The brother-in-law provides Eddie with a special pill called NZT.  The user takes it and suddenly his brain power spikes to near 100%.  Eddie finishes his novel in four days and then becomes a financial wizard whose acuity catches the eye of Carl Van Loon (DeNiro), a billionaire financier who thinks Eddie is the next big thing on Wall Street.

The trouble is, and there is plenty, Eddie's intelligence dwindles when the NZT wears off, and he's also into a Russian mobster for lots of money who instead settles for a supply of the pills.  When he runs out, Eddie has to score more for himself and the mobster and is entangled in a deadly web where Eddie fears being discovered and his secret weapon exposed.  On a thriller level, Limitless is pretty good.  Cooper is a sturdy hero with understandable motivations and of course a touch of selfishness.  Who wouldn't want to be one of the smartest people on the planet and make zillions in the process?  Eddie finds he can live with the withdrawal and the complications which ensue, morality be damned.

Limitless wisely chooses to make the villains far more despicable than the hero.  Eddie wants to better himself and win his girlfriend back.  The rest don't mind blackmailing or resorting to violence and perhaps killing Eddie if need be, so Eddie wins by default and Cooper's effortless charm doesn't hurt. Eddie is a man who only wants to better himself and finds a miraculous way to do so.  Who can blame him?  That's the hook of Limitless.