Batman (1989) * *

Directed by:  Tim Burton

Starring:   Michael Keaton, Jack Nicholson, Kim Basinger, Robert Wuhl, Jack Palance, Billy Dee Williams, Jerry Hall, Pat Hingle

I know, I know.    Batman is by its nature a story of an outsider fighting crime under a disguise.    The idea of Batman owes more to film noir than the cartoonish antics of the 1960's Adam West series.    I never read the comic books, but they were written as atmospheric and with a conflicted hero fending off numerous evil villains.     The visual look of Tim Burton's Batman is dark and somber, but effective.     The trouble is the pall that engulfs the movie.     This Batman isn't much fun or interesting.     Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy explores the myth and origins of Batman, but still manages to engross us.     Revenge for his parents' murder got the ball rolling, but what keeps him spending his nights fighting Gotham criminals?     This version of Batman doesn't answer that question.     Heck, I don't even think it asks.

Batman/Bruce Wayne is played by Michael Keaton.    It is a role which doesn't play to his strengths as an actor.    Keaton is at his best playing verbal, high-energy characters who can think fast and act faster.    Bruce Wayne is a man with secrets and barely utters more than one sentence at a time.     The wattage on Bruce Wayne/Batman is very low.    The role has since been essayed by Val Kilmer, George Clooney, Christian Bale, and Ben Affleck with varying degrees of success.     Keaton would not have been the first actor I thought of to play the Caped Crusader.     Keaton is more at home playing the Joker.     Jack Nicholson, of course, plays the Joker after his face is disfigured from falling into a vat of chemicals.    He has a permanent smile, but that doesn't make him a happy guy.    As Jack Napier, he was the criminal who killed Wayne's parents.     As the Joker, he plans to take over Gotham after killing his traitor boss and declaring war on Batman.

Nicholson clearly has a ball playing the Joker.    We at least respond to him.    Does it belong in the upper echelon of great Nicholson performances?    No.    But he entertains and camps it up while his opponent barely registers.     Gotham reporter Vicky Vale (Basinger) follows the story of the mysterious nightcrawler Batman.    Is he myth or man?      She soon becomes Wayne's girlfriend and learns the inevitable truth.    My guess is she likes Wayne more when he dons the suit and mask and drives around in the Batmobile.    When she talks with Bruce at dinner, they seem stuck for conversation.    

Joker's plan to take over Gotham limps along like the rest of the plot.    Batman dispatches goon after goon and uses grappling hooks to swing or climb his way out of trouble.     All the while his chin remains firm and stiff.     Words escape his lips as if by accident.     We sense he does all of this because the story requires him to.     We never truly understand or accept that he is compelled to battle the bad guys and save Gotham.     It is a trend in superhero movies that the villain gets to say all of the fun lines while the hero acts morose, but in Nolan's trilogy, Wayne/Batman had something to say when he spoke.   

Tim Burton is a highly visual director.    He rarely tells down-to-earth human stories (although Big Eyes was one and it was pretty good).    He specializes in extravagant fantasies and is attracted to dark stories.     His version of Batman is well within his wheelhouse, but the movie is bogged down by its own despair.     The sets and gadgets are inventive (even the interior ones), and the late Anton Furst won a well-deserved Oscar for his production design.     I only wish the story was as intriguing as the sets.  

Dumb and Dumber To (2014) * 1/2

Directed by:  Peter Farrelly and Bobby Farrelly

Starring:  Jim Carrey, Jeff Daniels, Rob Riggle, Kathleen Turner, Rachel Melvin, Laurie Holden

Twenty years after the release of the original, along comes Dumb and Dumber To.     This is yet another sequel we weren't exactly pining for, but the Farrelly brothers gave it to us anyway.     I enjoyed the first film.     It had plenty of inspired laughs, including a scene where blind Billy in 4C is sold a bird with its head duct taped on.     Dumb and Dumber mixed highbrow and lowbrow humor quite nicely.     The sequel starts low and stays there.   

Harry (Daniels) and Lloyd (Carrey) are back and still as dumb as a box of rocks.    Lloyd has spent the last twenty years in a catatonic state after failing to land the girl of his dreams in the first film.    Harry visits him only to learn to his relief that Lloyd's catatonia was part an elaborate hoax.     Don't ever say these guys won't go to absurd lengths to amuse themselves, if not us.    Lloyd soon finds he needs a new kidney and learns he has a long-lost daughter.    Lloyd insanely thinks she would be a willing kidney donor, but upon meeting her, you wonder if she wasn't already a brain donor.

The guys wind up in the middle of a plot involving the daughter's stepfather who is slowly being poisoned by his gold-digging wife and her lover.     It adds story to the film, but not interest.    A lot of Harry and Lloyd's interaction involves hitting each other and playing mean pranks.     There is no real friendship there, unlike the first film, where it is apparent they are brothers from another mother.     The guys' much discussed former girlfriend Fraida Felcher (Turner) shows up as well.    Jennifer Lawrence filmed flashback scenes as the young Fraida, but they were deleted at her request.    She seems to understand the idea of self-preservation in Hollywood.     The other actors willingly kept their scenes in.

Carrey and Daniels are accomplished actors who did not need to make this sequel.    I'm sure they were paid nicely and wanted to work together again.     They made the film, perhaps got all of that out of their system, and hopefully they will see no need to make a third installment.     It is baffling how the sequel manages to leave out all of the qualities that made the first film a comic gem.     Dumb and Dumber To has very few laughs.    Lord knows how much the guys are trying their hardest to pull them out of us.     A lot of the slapstick, including one character ripping another's catheter out, is painful and not funny.     If you spend more time grimacing than laughing, the movie isn't working as intended.

Jeff Daniels is among the most dependable of actors.    Jim Carrey has proven he can be effective and even brilliant (see The Incredible Burt Wonderstone) when he is not playing a "Jim Carrey" role.     The actors stay within their characters in this film, much like the first film, but Dumb and Dumber To leaves them with little to do.     They almost seem to be trying to force laughs out of the dim script.    Carrey used to have to do that back in his Ace Ventura days, but I figured those days were long gone.     The Farrellys made a film that owed more to The Three Stooges (2012) than the original film or their better works.     This is not a good thing.    

Working Girl (1988) * * * *

Directed by:  Mike Nichols

Starring:  Melanie Griffith, Harrison Ford, Sigourney Weaver, Joan Cusack, Philip Bosco, Alec Baldwin, Kevin Spacey, Oliver Platt

Here is a romantic comedy taking place in the world of mergers and acquisitions where some of the people dare to be sweet or even ethical.     It's a cutthroat world and maybe the movie is more fantasy than reality, but in the end it's moving and we cheer as the heroine finally gains her reward.     What else more can you ask for?   

"You can break the rules plenty when you get there, but for someone like me, you can't get there without breaking the rules."     Such is the quandary of Tess McGill (Griffith), a secretary (using the lingo from 1988) nearing 30 from Staten Island trying to break into the world of high finance.    She graduated from night school with a degree in business, but she is forever pigeonholed into the role of secretary.    Maybe it's her hair, which she eventually cuts because, "In order to be taken seriously, you have to have serious hair."     Tess is aching for a chance to prove herself, which comes in the unlikeliest of ways.

After being bumped from job to job, partly because she butts heads with her superiors, Tess becomes the secretary of Katherine Parker (Weaver) at a mergers and acquisitions firm  who promises their working relationship will be a "two way street".    Tess approaches Katherine with an idea for their client to purchase a radio network and make the firm millions.    Katherine shoots down the idea, but conspires to underhandedly present it as her own to an outside firm.     Katherine is soon laid up for a while after a skiing accident and after Tess discovers the scam, she poses as a mergers and acquisitions executive to push the proposal forward with the willing help of mergers specialist Jack Trainer (Ford).  

Before you say "The Secret of My Success", you will realize Working Girl operates on a much more intelligent level.     Tess is working to prove herself in a world to which she doesn't yet belong.    She has the credentials, but not the experience.    She doesn't have the experience because she no one will give her a chance to gain any.    The Secret of My Success never rose above dopey sitcom level thinking.    Working Girl is more about business politics than just the pursuit of the almighty dollar.     I'm still not sure what Michael J. Fox hoped to gain from his deception in The Secret of My Success, but in Working Girl Tess' motivations are much more clear.    She wants to get in on the ground floor of big business and stick it to her lying, treacherous boss.

Naturally, Tess and Jack fall in love while working on the merger.    Jack is unaware that Tess is a secretary.   Tess is unaware that Jack and Katherine are an item, although Jack wants to put an end to that as quickly as possible.     I really enjoyed the performances from the leads.    Griffith (Oscar nominee for Best Actress) is a plucky, smart hero we can root for, all the while maintaining, "I have a head for business and a bod for sin."    We believe her.    Ford is not simply a romantic foil or a dupe.    He acts ethically and loves Tess.     Once Tess' deception is discovered, he doesn't abandon Tess, but stands by her because she is the right person for the job.    And he loves her.   

Weaver (Oscar nominee for Best Supporting Actress) takes a potentially one-dimensional villain role and turns it into something special.     She is calm, soft spoken, and sometimes completely taken with herself to great comic effect.    She says of Jack, "He will marry me because I'm smart, successful, and after all...I'm me."    Joan Cusack (also Oscar nominated for Best Supporting Actress) has some scene stealing moments as Tess' best friend Cynthia, a fellow secretary with a Noo Yawk accent who goes along with the deception....to a point.

Working Girl moves along with swift confidence thanks to legendary director Mike Nichols, who had forgotten more about comedy direction than most will ever know.     Kevin Wade's screenplay takes a plot that has formula written all over it and gives us a surprising feel-good story in a world where feel-good moments are fleeting.     Working Girl was made during a time when Gordon Gekko's ethics were more in play on Wall Street, but it finds a way to be touching in a cruel world. 









  

Flash Gordon (1980) * * *

Directed by:  Mike Hodges

Starring:  Sam J. Jones, Max von Sydow, Melody Anderson, Topol, Brian Blessed, Timothy Dalton, Ornella Muti, Mariangela Melato

Flash Gordon plays like a campy homage to the 1930's serials and thus stands out.     Released shortly after The Empire Strikes Back, no one could have blamed the filmmakers for attempting to duplicate Star Wars, but I think the visual approach and tone are correct here.     It doesn't take itself seriously.    Problems plagued the production to the point director Mike Hodges called the movie, "a $28 million improvisation".     Some of the visuals were cheesy, even by 1980 standards, but it adds to the unique experience rather than detract from it.   

Flash Gordon (Jones) is a blond beefcake New York Jets quarterback mixed up in intergalactic intrigue along with future girlfriend Dale Arden (Anderson) and Dr. Hans Zarkov (Topol), who thinks he knows why the Earth is suddenly experiencing bizarre weather, a shift in the moon's orbit, and a total solar eclipse.     The Earth is under attack by Emperor Ming (von Sydow), merciless ruler of a distant world.     Flash, Dale, and Zarkov travel there to stop the attack, but not before NASA declares "these recent events are no cause for alarm."   

The world of Mongo, which Ming rules over with an iron first, is forever besieged by in-fighting between Prince Barin (Dalton), who covets Ming's sexy daughter (Muti) and Prince Vultan (Blessed), who commands an army of flying hawk men.     Flash, after plot complications too numerous to recap, organizes the warring parties to ally together and fight Ming as he prepares to marry Dale (whom he imprisons as a concubine).     The wedding official asks Ming, "Do you promise not to expel her into space before such time as you've grown weary of her?"    Swell guy, this Ming, and von Sydow being the pro he is carries off the role with his usual gravitas. 

The sets and visual effects are not of Star Wars caliber, to be sure, but are not a distraction.    There are plenty of verbal and visual gags, such as a rocket flying by Ming's palace with a banner reading, "Be merry under penalty of death."    Or something to that effect.     Flash Gordon maintains its goofy tone, which isn't a hindrance but rather refreshing.     Think of it as a cheaper Star Wars with roots dating back to the 1930's serials starring Buster Crabbe.

The movie underperformed at the box office, possibly because moviegoers were weary of sci-fi action films and Star Wars ripoffs by then.    It is easy to write off Flash Gordon as either type of film, but you would be denying yourself an enjoyable time.    Plus, the Queen score and songs are good too. 

Rebel Without a Cause (1955) * * 1/2

Directed by:  Nicholas Ray

Starring:  James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, Jim Backus, Ann Doran, Corey Allen, Dennis Hopper


James Dean's long movie career seemed assured until his death on September 30, 1955 at age 24.     He completed Rebel Without a Cause, East of Eden, and Giant by then, but only East of Eden was released while he was alive.     His performance in Rebel Without a Cause is more of a guy in his early 20s acting like a teenager than an embodiment of it.     Dean in this film is mannerisms and acting.    In 1955, this was seen as revolutionary, but now it is clearly dated.     The movie has its effective moments, but also long stretches of heavy dialogue and angst.     Too many long stretches.

The movie's goal is to reflect the pain and agony of youth.    Hormones flare and mixed emotions rage.    Teens don't even know the words to describe their feelings.    Yet, one day we wake up and all makes sense again.     Jim Stark (Dean) clearly has not reached that point.     His family moves from place to place, forever looking for a fresh start.     Jim finds trouble or trouble finds him regardless.    As the movie opens, he is brought into the police station for public drunkenness.     It is movie drunk, which means at one moment Jim is so inebriated he can barely stand, then moments later he is seemingly sober and coherent just as the plot needs him to be.   

Jim's household is ruled by his domineering mother (Doran), who pushes his father (Backus) around much to Jim's disgust.     It is suggested that this is the source of his anguish and confusion.     He tells the police officer, "If he had the guts to knock Mom cold once, then maybe she'd be happy and she'd stop picking on him."    The movie reflects the attitudes of the time that a woman should learn her place and a man's job is to put her there.     Anything less is clearly unacceptable.     Don't they know what that does to kids?    

I think Jim's issues stem from something deeper and more disturbing.    The movie only lays out his family as a possible reason.     His father is a sensitive man who only wants to understand his son and help him.     Smacking Jim around wouldn't help the case.     He knows that even if Jim doesn't.    He is the most sympathetic character in the movie.     Jim's scream to his parents, "You're tearing me apart," is a famous point in the movie, but instead of being a meaningful cry for help, it comes off as awkward and self-indulgent. 

Jim's first day at his new high school in Los Angeles is anything but calm.    He makes a new enemy in Buzz (Allen), who flattens his tire with a knife and challenges Jim to a "chicken fight".    The rules?    One guy each drives a car toward a cliff.    The first to jump out is "chicken".    Again, being chicken must have been a really bad thing to be in 1955.     Jim is torn about whether to show up.     But he shows because he must defend his honor.     The fight leads to Buzz' death, which causes only brief consternation to everyone involved, including Buzz' girlfriend Judy (Wood), who in a matter of hours is hooking up with Jim.      

By the end of the movie, the entire Buzz subplot is practically forgotten.    The focus then shifts to Buzz' friends going after Jim, not because they are upset about Buzz, but because they think he will rat them out to the police.     Another major character is the confused, lonely Plato (Mineo), who attaches himself to Jim and is clearly in love with him.     He is the product of absentee parents.    Feeling abandoned and hopeless, he invites a showdown with Buzz' friends and the police with sad results.    

Mineo's and Wood's performances were both Oscar nominated and both were more natural and less prone to histrionics than Dean's.    Rebel Without a Cause is not without its moments of candor and power, but once it threatens to lead somewhere, it derails itself.    The final scenes involving Plato, Judy, and Jim drag and the gunfight showdown is dragged out past any tolerable length.     Dean was an actor with charisma and presence.     But in Rebel, his performance is uneven.    It is part star-turn and part Brando Method.     Maybe it is unfortunate that I saw this movie sixty years after it was released.      It is a product of its time and maybe carried more power back then.    A great film manages to remain identifiable and meaningful to audiences no matter what.     Certain movies maintain their universal appeal even as the years move on.     Rebel Without a Cause is not a great film, just maybe great for its time. 

Miracles from Heaven (2016) * * 1/2

Directed by:  Patricia Riggen

Starring:  Jennifer Garner, Kylie Rogers, Martin Henderson, John Carroll Lynch, Queen Latifah, Eugenio Derbez, Brighton Sharbino, Courtney Fansier. Bruce Altman

When Miracles from Heaven works, it works well.     When it strives to be a tad too manipulative and pound its point home, it doesn't.     Based on true events, Miracles from Heaven is adapted from the 2015 book by Christy Beam, the mother of a twelve year-old daughter who suffers from an incurable and terminal digestive disorder.     After climbing a hollow tree one day and falling headfirst into the middle of it, her disorder is cured.     How did this happen?     Should we believe the doctor who treated her, who isn't sure, but thinks the fall may have bumped her head in just the right way to "reset" her digestive system?     Or was the cure a miracle from God?    

The girl herself thinks the latter.    She tells her parents of her vision of heaven, which looks like it was borrowed from the heaven of The Lucky Bones (2009).     This means there are colors, endless sunshine, and flora everywhere as far as the eye can see.    It's nice, but would get kind of boring fast.     Why do movies depict heaven as either an arboretum gone amok or just endless layers of impenetrable clouds?    There was the heaven of What Dreams May Come (1998), in which the people were part of a giant colorful painting, but am I to be thrilled at the prospect of walking around this scenery for eternity?   

The girl believes what she saw.    The parents believe her.    Her cure could be an unexplained medical breakthrough, pure luck, or perhaps a spiritual intervention far beyond our comprehension.    It depends on your belief structure.     And it is a belief.     The movie leans more towards the latter explanation, which is its point of view.     The movie is faith-based to be sure, but allows its people to have doubts, fears, and even lose faith in God because it seems their prayers have been unanswered.    These are natural feelings.     Christy, who with her family attends church weekly, asks her pastor (Lynch), "Why would a loving God allow my daughter to suffer like this?"    It is a question for which there is no answer.    Christy has a crisis of faith while others including her husband Kevin (Henderson) tell her to stay the course and believe.    

At first, the daughter Anna (Rogers), throws up often and goes to the hospital.    Doctors coldly dismiss the symptoms as lactose intolerance or a simple virus.    Soon, her stomach distends, and Anna's condition is diagnosed as a rare digestive disorder in which she can't digest the food her stomach takes in.     Christy is referred to a top doctor in Boston, but he has a three-year waiting list.    The ER doctor (Altman) says the only way to get on the list is for someone to die and drop off of it.    With the exception of Dr. Nurko (Derbez), the doctors here are seen as aloof and unsympathetic.    Dr. Nurko is seen as Patch Adams' goofier younger brother.    

Christy and Anna befriend a very, very friendly waitress named Angela (Latifah), who offers to take the two on a guided tour of Boston.     I understand Angela was supposedly real, but she seems like a plot device.    Her name is Angela, deriving from Angel, which can't be a coincidence.    Still, Queen Latifah is touching and altogether decent.     There seems to be no progress in Anna's condition, so she goes home, climbs the tree one day, and the rest is history.    

Before you roll your eyes because I supposedly gave away a spoiler, the trailers for the movie gave this plot point away.     This development would have had greater impact if this twist wasn't revealed.    But it was revealed, probably to bring the faith-based audience into the theater.     Why would the film's marketers only want to appeal to the built-in faith based audience?     What about non-believers or agnostics?     Their money is just as green and wouldn't it be a home run to perhaps convert an agnostic to their view?  

Jennifer Garner and Kylie Rogers both give natural, commanding performances.     They never reach for effect.     Henderson and Lynch create grounded, believable people.    I didn't like Eugenio Derbez' clown act so much.     He is better when he is shown as a caring, carefully optimistic doctor.    There are some touching moments of genuine power in Miracles from Heaven.     I just wish there were more of them.     Maybe the trailers shortchanged the experience with its shortsighted marketing strategy.    



 

Mother's Day (2016) * 1/2

Directed by:  Garry Marshall

Starring:  Jennifer Aniston, Julia Roberts, Kate Hudson, Sarah Chalke, Margo Martindale, Jason Sudeikis, Timothy Olymphant, Shay Mitchell, Britt Robertson, Jack Whitehall, Aasif Mandvi, Carmen Esposito, Hector Elizondo

It may take me as long to list the names of the actors in Mother's Day as it will to write the actual review.    This is the last film of the late Garry Marshall, who in his uneven directorial career made gems like The Flamingo Kid, Nothing in Common, and Pretty Woman.     In the non-gems category is Exit to Eden, Raising Helen, New Year's Eve, Princess Diaries, and now this movie.     Marshall's final three films were odes to quasi-national holidays (Valentine's Day, New Year's Eve, and now Mother's Day).     Valentine's Day was pretty good.    New Year's Eve was rather blah.    Mother's Day is the worst of them.    I cannot confirm whether Marshall was eyeing up a movie about Arbor Day or Columbus Day.

Mother's Day (like the previous two holiday films) consists of a large cast and whip-around coverage of numerous subplots, all of which turn out okay in the end.     It doesn't much matter how many subplots there are.     They all seem extraneous.     There are good actors in Mother's Day saddled with a really dumb script.     One subplot involves a mother and father who travel from Texas to Atlanta via RV and discover their two estranged daughters' long hidden secrets.     One sister is married to another woman.  Another is married to an Indian.    Gasp!    The fallout from this leads to dopey racist, sitcom humor.    Maybe the movie is using the excuse that the parents are supposed to be like Archie Bunker and the joke is on them.   It doesn't feel that way.     

There is so much more.    I will describe briefly.    Jennifer Aniston's Sandy is stunned to learn her ex-husband (for whom she still carries a torch) has married a younger, bodacious woman (Mitchell) who truly fills out a bikini well.   Her children actually like their stepmother, which will not do.   You already know about the sisters.    Another guy named Bradley (Sudeikis) lost his wife in combat last year and still has not found a way to move on.     He will eventually hook up with another of the characters in very contrived, inevitable fashion.     Then, there is a young woman (Robertson) with a young child and a stand-up comic boyfriend (Whitehall) who wants to marry her.     She refuses, mostly because she was given up for adoption and has attachment issues.     Then, we have a millionaire QVC personality/businesswoman named Miranda (Roberts) wearing a Moe/Pete Rose wig and flashes a million dollar smile while hawking her products.     She has a connection to one of the above subplots which doesn't take long to figure out.    

The characters all find a way to intersect their lives, including Sandy who apparently runs an interior decorating business but is never seen doing any actual work.      She interviews with Miranda to do some decorating, shows up late, has a meltdown, and gets the job anyway.     Only in this world does that happen.     Without even working a single day for Miranda, she upgrades her car from a crappy minivan to a new white Cadillac Escalade.   How?   Did Miranda give Sandy an advance?   She was hired on Friday and had the new car in her driveway in time for a Saturday party, with personalized license plates to boot.   Just in time for her ex-husband to be impressed/shocked.   

The actors are likable and deserve better.    Especially Margo Martindale and Robert Pine as the parents who are racist Southern caricatures.      In the course of a few hours, they will be able to reverse a lifetime of prejudice and fear and accept their new son and daughter in-law (and their child Tanner, which produces lame racist jokes as well).     Mother's Day is meant a light comedy requiring little thought or analysis, but it is nearly impossible to do that.      The problems with this movie are so glaring they can't be ignored.     There are a lot of moving parts that add up to nothing special.      The payoffs evolve predictably, which is fine if the execution is there.     The movie just limps along until it's over.     But it sure takes forever to get there.