Logan Lucky (2017) * * *

Directed by:  Steven Soderbergh

Starring:  Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Daniel Craig, Riley Keough, Katie Holmes, Hilary Swank, Seth MacFarlane, Brian Gleeson, Jack Quaid

Steven Soderbergh is at home in caper comedies.    Logan Lucky has the feel, if not the sophistication, of the Ocean's Eleven series.    There isn't much in the way of computers used to knock off Charlotte Motor Speedway, just a plan which we weren't entirely confident the seemingly bumbling crooks could pull off.    Logan Lucky is breezy, light, and mostly gets the job done while filled with slyly comic performances from actors we normally don't associate with light comedy.

Jimmy Logan (Tatum) works underneath Charlotte Motor Speedway as part of a construction crew fixing sinkholes in the infield.    Due to his limp, he is let go because he is a potential insurance liability.     Jimmy has money issues and his ex-wife is now about to move his daughter far away, so he conspires with his bartender brother Clyde (Driver) to knock over the speedway by breaking into its vault (sound familiar?)   Jimmy has a limp, while Clyde wears a bargain-basement prosthetic left arm.    The brothers apparently attempted crime before when they were teenagers and it didn't end well.    Jimmy, a former star college quarterback, has fallen on hard times since the leg injury ended his career, so he sees the robbery as a way to get rich while battling what Clyde calls the family curse.

Assisting the Logans are their hairdresser sister Mellie (Keough), jailed explosives expert Joe Bang (Craig) who has five months to go on his sentence, and Joe's two dopey brothers Sam and Fish (Gleeson and Quaid).    Joe points out the obvious roadblock to his involvement, but the Logans plan to break him out of jail, commit the robbery, and return him before anyone notices he is missing.    Unlike the Ocean's series, the plan isn't explained to us ahead of time (except for the basics), and instead we delightfully witness it unfold.     There are complications, of course, one of which is a prick race car owner who shows up precisely when he shouldn't, and of course the ever-present stupidity of some or all of the robbers which threatens to rear its ugly head. 

I naturally won't spoil the rest of the film for you because part of the delight of a movie like Logan Lucky is watching its plot developments and try to figure how on Earth everything will work out ok.   These are criminals, mind you, but they are played by likable actors who are having fun taking their turn in the Soderbergh universe, so we won't begrudge them if they succeed in pulling off the heist.   I must admit there are plot swerves which occur for plot swerves' sake.    They don't make much sense, including the introduction of an FBI agent (Swank) who investigates the robbery and MacFarlane's entire role in the film, which mostly showcases his ability to speak with an English accent.    These developments prevent Logan Lucky from reaching the heights Soderbergh achieved with the Ocean's series, but for the most part I still enjoyed it. 

The Glass Castle (2017) * 1/2

Directed by:  Destin Cretton

Starring:  Brie Larson, Woody Harrelson, Max Greenfield, Naomi Watts, Ella Anderson

The Glass Castle, a film adaptation of a 2005 memoir by Jeanette Walls, feels like a movie holding back.     It is only willing to go so far with its presentation of its alcoholic, selfish, abusive lout of a father, only to backtrack and try and present us with a "he wasn't so bad, after all," ending.    Baloney.  Horsefeathers.  Hogwash.  Bullshit.    The ending feels tacked on; trying desperately to end things on a pleasant note.    Why?    The guy was on the same likability wavelength as the father in Captain Fantastic, which is another movie about a borderline abusive father who, wouldn't you know, was just trying to teach his kids valuable lessons.     We are the idiots for not being able to recognize them.  

The film begins in 1989 Manhattan, where Jeanette (Larson) is a New York Times gossip columnist engaged to a nice yuppie named David (Greenfield) and living in a nice apartment.    Things are good, until Jeanette passes her parents in a taxi digging through a dumpster for food.    Turns out Rex(Harrelson) and Rosemary (Watts) enjoy the "freedom" of living like uncivilized human beings and prefer to wander the country like gypsies.    The wandering is out of necessity because Rex keeps losing jobs thanks to his drinking and he stays one step ahead of bill collectors and the authorities.    The couple squats in an abandoned building and chastises Jeanette for "not being true to herself" for wanting to marry David, whom Rex bullies.     I can't fathom how bad they smell from a life of living on the street.

We see numerous flashbacks to Jeanette's mostly miserable childhood, in which Rex spends all of the family's very limited income on drinking, while Rosemary stands by her husband and enables his terrible behavior.    The kids go days without eating.    In one gross scene, Jeanette's little sister eats butter with sugar mixed in since it is the only thing resembling food left in the house.    The family moves from shithole to shithole before settling for a while in Rex's hometown of Welch, West Virginia.    We meet Rex's parents, and learn quickly his mother was both verbally and sexually abusive to him.    That gives us a reason for Rex's behavior, although Jeanette points out to him, "It doesn't give him the right to act this way,"    Her delivery of the line seems perfunctory, because the movie itself seems to believe the abuse does indeed give him a right to act that way.

The wheels churn toward the predictable, inexorable conclusion.    We know Rex can't live like a prick and die like one.    The scales need to fall from Jeanette's eyes because somehow she is wrong for wanting her folks out of her life.    Rex and Rosemary aren't so bad.    We just need to be fair and walk a mile in their shoes before passing judgment.     The ending is unconvincing, dishonest, and lame; borne out of death scene clichés we've seen before and not anything borne out of someone's unique story.

It is hard to fault the actors, whom do top-notch jobs playing either the abused or the abuser.    I'm not really a book reader, but I may have to obtain a copy of the book and witness just how much Hollywood came in and turned it from an unflinching look at an alcoholic's destruction of his family to a movie which shoehorned in a sappy conclusion.     

Wind River (2017) * * * 1/2

Directed by:  Taylor Sheridan

Starring:  Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen, Graham Greene, Jon Bernthal, Martin Sensmeier, Julia Jones, Gil Birmingham

Writer-director Taylor Sheridan, whose two previous screenplays were Sicario (2015) and Hell or High Water (2016), sets his stories in scenic, desolate areas of America.    The people in his stories suffer from the effects of that desolation and never in a more powerful way than in Wind River, which transcends its origins as a murder investigation to focus on the soul-crushing effects of living so far from others.    In Wind River, the story mostly takes place on a Wyoming Indian reservation which has a tribal police force of six patrolling an area as large as Rhode Island.     It is hard to imagine snow not covering the ground.    Homes are miles from each other and are in shambles.    Their occupants have either given up on their hopes and dreams or are well on their way to doing so.

A teenage girl's body is discovered miles from the nearest home, which stirs up old hurts and then piles new ones on top of them.    He name is Natalie.   She was raped, had cuts on her forehead, and was barefoot in the snow and subzero temperatures.    The cold killed her to be sure, but why was she running barefoot into the woods with no person around to help in sight?    Fish and Wildlife tracker Cory Lambert (Renner) and inexperienced, but determined FBI agent Jane Banner (Olsen) want to find out.    Cory knows the area so well "like it's his job", as he puts it, but when he discusses the landscape he can't help but be in awe of its savage beauty.    He loves the area and its people, while fearing its relentless, unpitying effect on those in it and around it.

Cory is divorced from his Native American wife (Jones) and has one son.    He had a daughter who died tragically three years earlier, so when he advises Martin (Birmingham), the father of the dead girl, on how to handle his grief, we know he is coming from a place of knowledge.    As a father of a recently deceased child myself, these scenes rung so true and heartfelt.    Cory goes about his daily business and his job, but the grief will always be just below the surface.    His own grief is part of the reason he needs to find out what happened to the girl, who at one time was friends with his own daughter.

Cory and Jane don't receive much help.    The tribal police chief Ben (the invaluable Graham Greene) is short-handed, but he doggedly carries on his duty without excuses.    His ragged, world-weary demeanor is a source of humor.    Jane sees the world as it should be, but Ben's experience knows the world as it is, especially in the Wind River reservation.    Jane learns quickly what she is up against; a world Cory and Ben know too well.

Sheridan's imagery of the unforgiving, yet gorgeous landscape belies the secrets it keeps.    Clues such as blood trails can be buried in snow squalls in minutes and the residents have to get around by snowmobile.    The wildlife is mysterious, beautiful, and terrifying, especially vultures and mountain lions which populate the woods and go about their business as nature intended.    Such rough terrain causes the people to act against their better natures out of desperation, loneliness, and anger.    Drugs run rampant in the area because it provides a respite against the sad lives these people lead. 

Wind River sounds very much like a downer, but it is well-paced and uses the mood of the Wind River residents as subtext.     As Cory and Jane move closer to the outcome, we are drawn in by the conventions of murder mystery without forgetting the ugliness which caused the death in the first place.     Renner is as strong here as he ever was, driven by his own demons to solve the crime, while occasionally letting down his guard for others to see inside.     He never needs to reach for effect.    Olsen is also strong as an outsider to this world who learns to appreciate her own life a little bit more after witnessing the suffering she encounters in Wind River.   

If I had any complaint about the structure of the movie, it is an ill-timed Mexican standoff which occurs before we learn the full story of Natalie's senseless death.    It makes the reveal anti-climactic.    And there is one scene in which Renner maybe goes a bit too action hero on us when dealing with a suspect. 

An image which may or may not have been intentional is perhaps the most haunting in the movie.    We see Cory and Martin sitting in Martin's backyard.    They are talking, but in some cases the unspoken words are more powerful than the spoken ones.     We see the highway in the distance with cars rushing past in both directions.    The people in those cars can simply blow by Wind River without a thought.    The people who reside in Wind River could use the highway to take them away and towards a better life.     An escape is so close, yet so very far away.    It may as well be on the moon.      



 

Terms of Endearment (1983) * * * *

 

Directed by:  James L. Brooks

 

Starring:  Shirley MacLaine, Jack Nicholson, Debra Winger, Jeff Daniels, Danny DeVito, John Lithgow

 

Terms of Endearment gets the feeling right of a love between parent and child surviving squabbles, tears, joys, sorrow, and soon physical distance.  In this Best Picture Oscar winner, Houston suburbanite Aurora Greenway (MacLaine) lives next door to a womanizing, heavy-drinking astronaut (Nicholson) and hasn't had any relationships since her husband passed away.  Her daughter Emma moves away from Houston with her college professor husband Flap (Daniels) to a small Midwestern university.  Flap and Emma raise two children, but Flap has a problem resisting the charms of his female students, which causes obvious tension in the marriage.

 

Emma and Aurora speak on the phone daily as they attempt to manage their respective lives.  Turns out Aurora has a problem resisting the charms of the astronaut Garrett Breedlove.   What an apt name for him.    Garrett prefers younger women, but soon finds Aurora irresistible, possibly because she is at first put off by him and thus presents a challenge for the lascivious astronaut.   Nicholson and MacLaine play off each other so well, mostly because each hides behind facades which lower only gradually.    They soon see the best and worst in each other.  We see sparks of compassion and maybe even shyness in Garrett, which allows us to see a character we can't make easy assumptions about.  Nicholson, sly grin and all, won an Oscar for his work as did MacLaine.  It is little wonder.  They each capture all the right notes.

 

Debra Winger had the unfortunate luck to be nominated for Best Actress alongside eventual winner MacLaine, but she is not outshined in any respect.  We see how she can put up with Flap, but only so much, but we also see a gentler side in her own extramarital affair with sweet banker Sam Burns (Lithgow), who idealizes Emma as well as gives her the sweetness lacking in each person's marriage.

Why Terms of Endearment works so well is its ability to present its characters as three-dimensional and human.  They don't act according to a script, but their behavior evolves out of human nature, which is passionate, sometimes right, and sometimes wrong.  

 

I won't reveal the plot twist which is sad and seemingly out of left field, but isn't that how things go in life?    I enjoyed how the situation brings out the best and worst in others.    We see how all of this may be too much for someone like Garrett to handle, but doggone it, he loves Aurora enough to be there for her even if he isn't comfortable doing so.   "I was inches from a clean getaway," he confesses to Aurora, and there is no point in the movie in which we like him more than that one.

 

Terms of Endearment is a movie which dares to be about people and not plotlines, and we are fascinated all the same.    Sometimes all it takes to make a memorable movie is to create people with vivid human dimensions and let them do their thing. 

 

 

Love The Coopers (2015) * *

Directed by:  Jessie Nelson

Starring:  John Goodman, Diane Keaton, Alan Arkin, Amanda Seyfried, Ed Helms, Marisa Tomei, Olivia Wilde, Anthony Mackie, Jake Lacy, (voice of) Steve Martin, June Squibb

Love The Coopers (should be Love, The Coopers) gathers a group of accomplished actors together, sets up their characters' back stories, and meshes them together into a Christmas dinner with little payoff to reward us for sitting through all of the back stories.    It ends with the family members all dancing in a hospital waiting room on Christmas Eve, with all sins forgiven and all problems resolved.    The movie only wants to be loved, the people in it want to be lovable, and they are all fighting for your attention.  

I will encapsulate the stories as succinctly as I can.    The patriarch of the Cooper family is Bucky (Arkin), an octogenarian seemingly with a crush on young, confused waitress Ruby (Seyfried), who has no direction in life.    Then, there is Sam and Charlotte (Goodman and Keaton), who are considering separating after 40 years of marriage.    Charlotte's sister Emma (Tomei) is a single woman who is busted for shoplifting and is forever jealous of Charlotte.     She spends a very, very long ride in a police car conversing with the arresting officer (Mackie), who is gay.    Charlotte's and Sam's son Hank (Helms) is a soon-to-be divorced, recently unemployed father, while his sister Eleanor (Wilde) doesn't want to come to dinner without a mate and persuades a soon-to-be shipped out soldier (Lacy) she meets in an airport bar to pose as her fiancé.    Then, there is the ancient Aunt Fishy (Squibb) and the family dog.   

Love The Coopers spends ample time on the setup, but things mostly fizzle when they all sit down to Christmas dinner.    It is naturally snowy outside and all of the houses in the neighborhood are decorated to the gills.     Long-nursed grudges are brought to the surface until Bucky has a medical emergency and the entire Cooper clan goes to the hospital, including the waitress Ruby who comes along as Bucky's date.    The whole Bucky-Ruby thing is weird, unconvincing, and ends without any satisfactory resolution dealing with the idea of an eighty-something man in love with a twenty-something woman.    The movie sidesteps it and pairs off Ruby with a man only roughly twenty years her age.  

Charlotte and Tomei are supposed to be sisters, but come on.   Diane Keaton is 70 and Tomei is young enough to be her daughter.    For a while, I believed Tomei was playing Keaton's other daughter.    The crux of Goodman's and Keaton's dispute is something involving a trip to Africa which was never taken.     It is as if they are straining to find a reason to want to separate.    Of all of the subplots, I enjoyed the one involving Eleanor and her make-believe fiancé.    The two have chemistry and Wilde has a smile and eyes to die for.    I was at least interested to see how the story unfolded, even though it is resolved as predictably as you figure it would.

Love The Coopers is narrated by a disembodied speaker voiced by Steve Martin, who whimsically discusses the family and how neatly everything is wrapped up at the end.    The only thing he didn't say was, "Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!", although he sure sounded like he wanted to.    The movie isn't one with any surprises, except for the identity of the speaker, which is kind of cute.   

Jaws 2 (1978) * * 1/2

Directed by:  Jeannot Swarzc

Starring:  Roy Scheider, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton, Jeffrey Kramer, Mark Gruner, Keith Gordon, Marc Gilpin

Jaws 2 is a passably entertaining sequel to Steven Spielberg's 1975 classic.    It is probably as good a sequel as could have been made considering the absences of Spielberg, Robert Shaw, and Richard Dreyfuss.    It is unfair to expect anything close to the mastery of Jaws, but Jaws 2 gives an effort, and the tagline of "Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water," is brilliant.   

Jaws 2 picks up some time after the events of Jaws and centers again on Amity Island police chief Martin Brody (Scheider), who once again has to deal with a series of shark attacks and the unwillingness of the town's politicians to address the problem.  There is no Quint or Hooper around to assist Brody, so he takes matters into his own hands. He becomes a vigilante shark killer, if you will.     Brody's two sons become targets of the shark, which almost takes on the human qualities of a serial killer.  Is the shark a relative of the one Brody blew to smithereens in the first film?  

It would be semi-understandable for the town powers-that-be to try and dissuade the notion of a shark, if the same thing didn't happen all that long ago.  I am amazed the town isn't bankrupted by lawsuits.  But, there is Amity's mayor (Hamilton) asking everyone to be reasonable in the face of overwhelming evidence of another shark feasting on swimmers.   

Jaws 2 is more interested in becoming what Jaws wasn't, which is a slasher film with a shark instead of a human doing all the killing.  It isn't interested in creating suspense, but instead documenting the various shark attacks and then waiting until Brody kills the thing in a one-on-one showdown.     You would think the visitors to Amity Island would stay out of the water on their own once word of the shark got out, but nope.  Jaws 2 gives us more views of the shark than its predecessor.   Spielberg was forced to do so out of necessity since the mechanical shark kept breaking down.   However, Spielberg used his genius to suggest the shark's presence, such as the bobbing yellow barrels and the ominous John Williams score.   

The movie is skillfully made with Scheider ably taking center stage as the shark-weary Brody, who got more than he bargained for when he moved to Amity Island from the streets of New York City.   He is a formidable foe for the shark, but I must say I missed Quint and Hooper tagging along.      

Blood Father (2016) * *

Directed by:  Jean-Francois Richet

Starring:  Mel Gibson, Erin Moriarty, William H. Macy, Diego Luna, Michael Parks

Now that Mel Gibson directed last year's Hacksaw Ridge, which earned Gibson a return trip to the Oscars with a Best Director nomination, his list of projects may upgrade from movies like Blood Father.    However, he will appear in Daddy's Home 2 which will hit theaters in November, so maybe they won't upgrade too substantially.    Blood Father isn't an awful film, just one which Mel Gibson wouldn't have likely touched during his heyday as one of Hollywood's top leading men.    

Gibson lends world-weary experience and perhaps a bit of real-life truth to his role of John Link, a recovering alcoholic ex-con whose missing daughter shows up with drug dealers on her tail.    As a drug addict herself, Lydia (Moriarty) earned the wrath of a deadly cartel by killing the nephew of one of its leaders during a botched robbery.    She is on the run and calls her estranged father, who runs a tattoo parlor out of his desolate trailer somewhere in the California desert.   I can't imagine anyone being so desperate for a tattoo that someone would patronize Link's place, but he does seem to eke out a meager living while attending meetings and staying sober. 

Gibson's battles with alcohol are well-documented and the character of Link is not a thousand miles removed from Gibson himself.    When he says, "You can't be a prick all your life and just say 'never mind'," we sense he is speaking from real truth.     Gibson's performance adds gravitas to Blood Father and reminds us what a strong presence he is, even as his face becomes much more ragged and weather-beaten.    The performances are well above the material, which is mostly standard action, shoot-em-up stuff mixed in with a story of an estranged father and daughter learning to know each other again.   

Link relies on his past criminal experience to evade the drug dealers, who aren't far behind.    He calls in favors from shady folks like a former cohort turned Nazi memorabilia collector (Parks), who is a mixed bag of evil and lunacy buried under a façade of familiarity.     He also attempts to use his sobriety to nurse his daughter out of addiction, but I think the hail of bullets she is forced to withstand is far more sobering than anything her father tells her.

Blood Father isn't poorly made, but it is indistinguishable from other straight-to-on demand movies also.    It is by-the-numbers action with a knowing Mel Gibson performance mixed in which elevates it slightly.    I didn't hate it, but I couldn't muster up a lot of enthusiasm for it either.    It is kind of just there, with Gibson trying mightily to drag it along to its inevitable conclusion.