Thor: Ragnarok (2017) * *

Directed by:  Taika Waititi

Starring:  Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Cate Blanchett, Karl Urban, Jeff Goldblum, Idris Elba, Anthony Hopkins, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tessa Thompson

Thor: Ragnarok is slightly superior to its predecessor Thor: The Dark World (2013) and injected with more humor and levity, not that it helps much, since the cookie-cutter superhero plot involves yet another being with superpowers trying to take over the universe.    If my science is correct, the universe is supposedly ever-expanding, so who in their right mind would want to rule it all?    Who wants that headache?    And who in the business of wanting to take over things would want to leave herself with no more worlds to conquer?    

Yet, here we are, with a third Thor standalone movie which at least infused Chris Hemsworth with some one-liners and expanded the character a bit.    He actually laughs and cracks jokes in Thor: Ragnarok, which is somewhat better than reciting platitudes about duty, honor and courage.    The God of Thunder is at least a little more than a one-dimensional god who wields a mighty hammer.    He will need it against Hela (Blanchett), the oldest daughter of Odin (Hopkins) who returns to destroy her homeland in a way previously prophesized.     Thor enlists his on-again, off-again enemy Loki (Hiddleston), scavenger Brunnhilde (Thompson), and eventually, the Hulk/Bruce Banner (Ruffalo), whom Thor must battle first in an arena.    I won't recap how that happened, but the movie spends so much time with this subplot we forget Hela is plotting to destroy Asgard.   

The actors have more of a ball with the material than previous Thor films.    Blanchett is an alluring, seductive, and sufficiently hateful villain, while Loki approaches these events with equal parts mischief and bemusement.    His allegiances shift on a dime, which grows tiresome after a while.    Make Loki a villain or a hero and have him be that person.    Hemsworth is surely a great physical presence and at least is allowed to have some fun.     Doctor Strange (Cumberbatch) shows up for a cameo, but like his movie from one year ago, his presence left me confused.   

Hulk is also allowed to utter some dialogue, which provides him with more character than before, while his character (and the movie for that matter) is one big CGI explosion.    Masses of people share the screen with explosions, noise, and semi-coherent action.    Even if Hela were successful in defeating Thor, her task of eradicating her homeland was practically completed for her anyway.    There aren't many citizens of Asgard apparently, since they are all able to fit onto a smallish spaceship, like an intergalactic Noah's Ark.

Thor and company will return in the looming Avengers: Infinity War, which is supposed to combine the Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, and every other Marvel character written since Stan Lee decided to draw up his first comic book.    And here I am thinking Thor: Ragnarok has extraneous subplots and characters already.    The next Avengers movies might cause a full brain meltdown. 

Daddy's Home 2 (2017) * *

Directed by:  Sean Anders

Starring:  Mark Wahlberg, Will Ferrell, Mel Gibson, John Lithgow, Linda Cardellini, John Cena

It is faint praise, but Daddy's Home 2 is slightly better than the original, which saw a stepfather and biological father battling it out over who is the more appropriate daddy in their children's lives.    The sequel adds each guy's respective fathers to the mix, which bumps the laugh quotient up a little bit, but falls back on slapstick gags which are perhaps more elaborate, but not funny nonetheless.    The movie doesn't have enough faith in its premise to wring out laughs out of truth or human nature, so let's have an out-of-control snow blower wreak havoc on the Christmas decorations.    Or one guy pelted by not one, but three snowballs.    Slapstick doesn't equal laughs as much as desperation.

As Daddy's Home 2 opens, Dusty (Wahlberg) and Brad (Ferrell) seem to have the co-parenting thing down pretty pat.    Christmas is approaching, however, and the kids dread having to spend Christmas at both houses, so they all plan to spend Christmas together.    Yay.   But throwing a monkey wrench into the happy plans is the arrival of Kurt (Gibson), Dusty's largely absent, macho dad who mocks Dusty's and Brad's partnership at every turn.    Further complicating matters is the arrival of Don (Lithgow), the overly sweet and sensitive father of Brad, who greets his son with a mouth to mouth kiss.   Kurt assesses the situation and determines to drive a wedge between Brad and Dusty through a series of machinations too laborious to be recapped here.

The whole crew, including the kids stuck in the middle and Brad's and Dusty's spouses all trek to a winter cabin rented by Dusty and the hijinks ensue.    The plot doesn't contain any surprises except what object will be used to pelt someone in the face.    Dusty and Brad are soon at each other's throats and the arrival of the biological father of Dusty's stepchild (Cena) seems like overkill in a movie already teeming with too many characters and subplots.

The movie's laughs belong to Gibson and Lithgow, two self-contained actors and characters who find a way to rub off on each other anyway.    We wish everyone else would get out of the way so we can watch them do their thing, but the movie cuts back to the unconvincing rekindling of the feud between Dusty and Brad, while everyone else scrambles for their fleeting moments in the sun.   All is resolved on Christmas Day at a movie theater crippled by a power outage in which the characters engage in a puzzling version of Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas?", which plays a part in one of Dusty's childhood regrets.    If you really, really want to know how, go see Daddy's Home 2.    I could tell you and save the price of admission, which also may save you from a slog of forced slapstick.    If you like that sort of thing, however, you will get mad at me and we wouldn't want that.  
Maybe Daddy's Home 3 will follow Don and Kurt around and leave everyone else home.   Now that would be an interesting comedy to see.

Beverly Hills Cop (1984) * * *

Directed by:  Martin Brest

Starring:  Eddie Murphy, Judge Reinhold, Ronny Cox, Steven Berkoff, Lisa Eilbacher, John Ashton, Gil Hill

Axel Foley (Murphy) is a hotshot Detroit cop with a penchant for doing things his way, which gets him tongue lashings from his superiors.    After a friend is murdered in front of his apartment, Axel traces the case to Beverly Hills, where he butts heads with a police force which does things way too by-the-book for Axel's liking.    Beverly Hills Cop is a swift, funny actioner which relies heavily on Murphy's comic timing and charm.    He is genuinely amused by the stuck-up, affluent rich folks who strut down Rodeo Drive, but is also a fairly convincing action hero.  

There isn't much new in the fish-out-of-water story which was originally slated to star Sylvester Stallone, who dropped out probably to make Rhinestone or perhaps some other lesser movie.    Murphy is the more proper fit for the material so it works.    The sequels, released in 1987 and 1993, focused more heavily on slick action and weren't bad, just not entirely necessary.    But, you know how it is with Hollywood and unnecessary sequels to hit comedies (see The Hangover).

The movie opens with Murphy involved in a long chase through Detroit's streets in which dozens of cars were destroyed and property damage costs would rival those from natural disasters.    Foley is chewed out by his boss, Inspector Todd (Hill), who in real life was a former cop and Detroit politician.    His only three movie credits were the Beverly Hills Cop series and he was a highlight; creatively and comically chewing out Foley in equal parts exasperation and yet, a twinge of love and respect for the young man.   

There are plenty of shootouts, fights, and chases to satisfy those looking for action, (as well as an unconvincing stunt double for Murphy whose moustache is entirely too thick), but I preferred the smaller scale comedy in which Murphy pokes fun at the rich, worms his way out of one tight spot after another, and chuckles at the stiffness of the Beverly Hills cops assigned to tame him.    The cops, played by Ashton and Reinhold, have some nice comic scenes of their own, such as when Reinhold informs Ashton of the dangers of red meat.   

Beverly Hills Cop is too standard to be listed among the truly great Murphy comedies, but it is among his most famous roles.     Murphy is certainly funny here, but never allowed to transcend into a performance which shows us his many comic gifts.     The movie was happy to be an action comedy and on that level, it does the job. 

48 HRS. (1982) * * * *

Directed by: Walter Hill

Starring:  Eddie Murphy, Nick Nolte, James Remar, Annette O'Toole, David Patrick Kelly, Frank McRae, Brion James, Sonny Landham

The plot of 48 Hrs. is nothing new.   It wasn't even original back in 1982, but the movie successfully worked the formula and spawned an entire generation of cop buddy movies.  In this case, one of the buddies is a convict, but the idea remains the same.    What separates 48 Hrs. from its imitators is the Murphy/Nolte chemistry and the wattage pumped up really high.    The movie hums along, with very few slow spots, and then of course Murphy shakes down a redneck bar while posing as a cop, and a movie star was born. 

Nolte is San Francisco cop Jack Cates, a dog-tired, cynical, borderline alcoholic on the trail of slimy, sadistic thief Ganz (Remar), who broke out of prison and killed Cates' partner in a shootout.     Desperate to catch Ganz, Jack enlists the help of convict Reggie Hammond (Murphy), Ganz' former partner who is six months away from completing a three-year prison sentence.    Jack arranges for Reggie to leave prison on a 48-hour pass to team up and catch Ganz and Billy Bear (Landham), who wields a knife similar to the one Crocodile Dundee used.

Despite a mutual goal, Jack and Reggie do not get along, hurling a variety of racial slurs and insults at each other, but of course, they develop a truce followed by respect and maybe even friendship.    We know Jack is a curmudgeon, but a good guy at heart.    Reggie is a slick criminal, but with a strong sense of humor and streetwise toughness.    They make a strong team, while Remar and Landham play sufficiently brutal bad guys.  

The movie's most famous scene is Reggie tearing up an all-white redneck bar with Confederate flags adorning the walls.    Using sheer verbal force, assertiveness and personality, Reggie obtains the information he needs while completely intimidating the clientele.    Think of Popeye Doyle rousting a Harlem bar in The French Connection, only funnier and meaner.    Even Jack is amazed.  

It is a pity we haven't seen much of Eddie Murphy lately.   By the early 2000's, he shifted gears towards a string of mostly mediocre family-friendly films which highlighted Murphy's likability while muting his humor.    Save for a little-seen 2016 movie called Mr. Church, Eddie Murphy has been mostly absent from the big screen for half a decade.   I miss him.   Watching 48 Hrs. again recently made it abundantly clear why. 

LBJ (2017) * * *

 

Directed by:  Rob Reiner

 

Starring:  Woody Harrelson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jeffrey Donovan, Bill Pullman, Richard Jenkins, Michael Stahl-David, C. Thomas Howell

 

With HBO movie "All The Way" starring Bryan Cranston in his Emmy-nominated role still fresh in people's minds, LBJ may seem redundant, but it is a more spry, livelier look at the former President.   All The Way featured a spot-on performance by Cranston, but it tried to cover too much ground and bogged itself down.    LBJ sets its sights on Johnson's pre-Kennedy political career and how Kennedy's assassination thrust a politically dead Johnson suddenly into the Presidency.    The film is buoyed by an energetic Woody Harrelson performance.    He wouldn't be the first actor you think of to play Lyndon B. Johnson, but he was a correct one.  

 

Harrelson infuses Johnson with a never-say-die attitude.    He knows the angles and how to play them.    He may have been Texas born and bred, but he was able to talk plainly to the Kennedys while working compromises in order to help Kennedy pass his Civil Rights Act, which LBJ ran to the finish line when it was signed into law in 1964.    LBJ and the Kennedys were opposites, which the movie repeatedly underlines, but we see Johnson still fighting for political relevance and a slim possibility of running for President in 1968.    His belief was Kennedy was set to be an eight-year President, but that belief was shattered on November 22, 1963.  

 

Johnson was faced with an unprecedented outpouring of grief over Kennedy's death, while trying to move the business of government forward.    Johnson was, as LBJ documents, a master of walking the tightrope over political disaster.    He opposed Kennedy in the 1960 primaries, but Kennedy's media darling status made him a virtually impossible candidate to beat.    To everyone including Johnson's surprise, Kennedy asked him to be his running mate as a way to solidify the Southern vote.

When in the White House, Johnson is made chairman of committee on racial inequality which no member of the cabinet takes seriously and by the fall of 1963 is in no man's land politically.    Johnson feels, not unreasonably, he was pushed aside by machinations set in motion by Robert Kennedy (Stahl-David).     Through it all at Johnson's side is Lady Bird (Leigh), who is there to comfort him in his rare moments of vulnerability.    It seems almost a waste to have a fine actress like Leigh relegated mostly to the sidelines save for a couple of key scenes.    Her intimate moments with Lyndon are among the best in the film, but there aren't enough of them.

LBJ sinks or swims on Harrelson and he is up to the task.    The movie shows us how Johnson rose from the Washington political scrap heap to carry on Kennedy's legacy through toughness, resourcefulness, and not being afraid to get his hands dirty.    We see him wheel and deal with his lifelong friend Senator Richard Russell (Jenkins), a hardline Southern Democrat, which means he was also a staunch segregationist.     It is interesting to bear witness to how Johnson, in his plainly spoken way, understood why the Civil Rights Act was necessary and, after nearly 100 slaves since the slaves were freed, its time had come.    We also learn in the epilogue how Johnson got Medicaid and Medicare off the ground.    Not bad for a guy who had resigned himself to being an eight-year vice president. 

                       

 

 

Bobby (2006) * *

Directed by:  Emilio Estevez

Starring:  Emilio Estevez, Demi Moore, Sharon Stone, William H. Macy, Shia LaBeouf, Brian Geraghty, Laurence Fishburne, Nick Cannon, Christian Slater, Martin Sheen, Helen Hunt, Ashton Kutcher, Lindsay Lohan, Elijah Wood, Joshua Jackson, Anthony Hopkins, Harry Belafonte, Heather Graham, Joy Bryant, Freddy Rodriguez

There is a stirring movie to be made about Robert F. Kennedy's ill-fated 1968 Presidential run which stirred hope and idealism in Vietnam War-torn America, only to end with Kennedy's assassination in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles .    This is not that movie.    Kennedy himself is only featured in Bobby in archive news footage and leaves a more lasting impression than any of the fictional characters writer-director Emilio Estevez chose to focus on instead of Kennedy.

Bobby bogs itself down in an endless loop of interlocking stories all taking place in the hotel on June 5, 1968, hours before Kennedy was fatally shot by Sirhan B. Sirhan.    There are entirely too many stories, too many characters to keep straight, and nowhere near the emotional tug a backdrop like Bobby deserves.     We lose track of what is going on as the movie hurries to touch all of its bases, which some characters receiving short shrift and other stories which go nowhere.  

Bobby becomes a "Wait, there's..." movie as we recognize each of the famed actors logging their first onscreen appearance.    I start to figure out their connections to each other in my mind as opposed to becoming immersed in their stories.    Martin Sheen is Estevez' father, of course, but Fishburne co-starred with Sheen in Apocalypse Now, while Demi Moore co-starred with Estevez in two films and was once his fiancée, while Moore's real-life husband at the time, Ashton Kutcher, shows up as a completely irrelevant drug dealer.    It's as if Moore put in a good word for her husband and Estevez shoehorned in a small role for him.    There are numerous connections to be sure, all of which are likely more interesting than the stories they star in.

The film captures its sense of time and place well with the aura of Kennedy's spirit pervading the hotel as the staff makes preparations for his arrival.   All of the characters will play some role in the events to come, but we don't care so any emotional impact is lost.    When Kennedy himself appears, albeit in the form of a double seen from behind while Kennedy's front is seen in the archive footage, the movie perks up slightly, if only because we know what will come.     I found this technique curious.    Why not have an actor play Kennedy?    Why the distracting editing?    Did Estevez blow his budget on hiring all of these well-known actors for cameos, so he wasn't able to afford anyone else?

The performances are fine, to be sure, but to what end?    The assassination scene and its aftermath of shock, grief, and suddenly lost aspirations of a better America are effective, but they beg the question why Estevez didn't focus his efforts more on Kennedy himself and cut out some of the extraneous subplots, which would likely be all of them.

Superman (1978) * * * *

Directed by:  Richard Donner

Starring:  Christopher Reeve, Gene Hackman, Marlon Brando, Margot Kidder, Jackie Cooper, Terence Stamp, Jeff East, Marc McClure, Valerie Perrine, Ned Beatty, Susannah York, Glenn Ford, Phyllis Thaxter

Superman is a joyous film.    Casting is everything and Christopher Reeve was, and remains, the perfect Clark Kent/Superman.     The recent Man of Steel and Batman v. Superman chose to show Superman as a nearly expressionless bore.    He takes no joy in what he does and seems oppressed by the weight of his own story.    If you can do something which no one else can do, such as run faster than a locomotive or leap tall buildings in a single bound, then isn't it kind of cool?     The 1978 version of Superman, and to an extent its next two sequels, understood this.    

We see the origins of Kal-el, who was born on Krypton to Jor-El (Brando) and Lara (York), and is sent away just before the planet explodes into oblivion.    His spaceship lands on Earth in the cornfields of Smallville, Kansas, where his adoptive parents, Jonathan and Martha Kent (Ford and Thaxter) stumble upon him and immediately recognize his great powers.    They teach Clark to keep his powers under wraps, mostly because they fear the world would not understand them.    However, soon Clark grows curious about his origins and treks to the North Pole, where a glorious ice palace called The Fortress of Solitude awaits him.    It is here he learns of his past and understands his purpose.    He leave the fortress as Superman, while keeping his superhero alter ego carefully hidden under nerdy, klutzy Clark Kent persona.

Superman fights crime, saves his co-worker Lois Lane (Kidder) from falling off the Empire State Building (she doesn't know he and Clark are one and the same), and soon encounters the dastardly zillionaire Lex Luthor (Hackman), who plans to use an atomic bomb to explode and sink half of California into the Pacific while cleaning up on the remaining real estate which he owns.    Yes, Lex Luthor doesn't want to rule the world just yet.    He has modest goals, which is to become a multi-zillionaire real estate mogul.

You may ask how come Lois Lane, who is supposed to be an ace reporter for The Daily Planet in Metropolis, can't tell Clark and Superman are the same man.    Clark sports glasses and wears his hair differently, but there is more.    Clark is such an affable putz there is no way Lois could ever mistake him for the buff, confident Superman.    Lois falls for Superman (and vice versa), while Clark has to pretend to be jealous.     The movie has fun with this "love triangle" as we see sly looks and smiles from Clark which serve as a wink to the audience.     Clark knows exactly what he's doing behind the hapless façade.

Gene Hackman is among the first movie villains who has all the fun.    He engages in hilarious byplay with his dim-witted assistant Otis (Beatty) and his sultry girlfriend Miss Teschmacher (Perrine), who is all in with Lex and his evil scheme...up to a point.   They live in a plush, modified underground train terminal.     She distresses at having a Park Avenue address 200 feet below street level.    "Do you know how much they are shelling out up there for a few measly rooms off a common elevator?", Lex reasons.    He is so busy making us laugh we occasionally forget he is the villain, until we see the sinister evil twinkle in his eye and his plot to destroy half of the West Coast.

Much was made of Brando's $5 million dollar salary (which was considered astronomical at the time) and he is in the movie roughly fifteen minutes while receiving top billing.     He shot scenes for the sequel which were edited out after the producers' dispute with director Richard Donner caused him to leave the project.     Good news though:  Brando's scenes can be seen in the special Richard Donner cuts of Superman and Superman II, which were filmed at the same time.    Donner doesn't rely heavily on visuals to create the world of Superman.    He prefers to keep it mostly grounded with humor and insight.

It became cool in the early 2000s for superhero films to give us scene after scene of painful soul searching from the hero; performing their daily wars against evil as more of a chore than a pleasure.   Where did Spider Man find the time to battle the Green Goblin when he is so busy looking perplexed and deep in thought?    Superman chooses its spots well in showing us the human side of Superman, especially when his loved ones perish and he, as an immortal, can only stand by and watch it happen.    "All of these things I can do.   All of those powers.   And I couldn't even save him," Clark says at a funeral in his teens, which thoughtfully provides him the impetus to do what he does in the climactic scene to save the life of another loved one.     Even though we have been inundated with countless superhero films and cinematic superhero universes, Superman remains among the very best of the genre.