Midway (2019) * *

Directed by:  Roland Emmerich

Starring:  Ed Skrein, Patrick Wilson, Woody Harrelson, Dennis Quaid, Nick Jonas, Luke Evans, Aaron Eckhart, Mandy Moore, Darren Criss

Midway is Pearl Harbor minus the insipid love triangle.   The CGI-aided visuals of the opening Pearl Harbor attack scenes are surprisingly cheesy.   The actors stand or run in front of unconvincing CGI sets behind them.   The air battle scenes, which fly by in a blur, look better but it's hard to keep track of what's happening.   All we know is the United States won an important military battle with three more years of war still to go.   I sincerely hope this isn't a spoiler for you.

I guess a World War II movie wouldn't be complete without a soldier or pilot with a Noo Yawk accent taking center strange.    Here, it is Dick Best (Skrein), a 1970's porn star name if there ever was one.   Dick is a cocky pilot stationed in the Pacific who can't wait to shoot down "some Japs" and raises the ire of his superiors for being, well, cocky.    Like most of the characters in Midway, he's pretty easy to forget. 

After Pearl Harbor is attacked, military strategist Edwin Layton (Wilson), whose previous warnings about a pending attack by the Japanese fell on deaf ears, is commissioned by incoming Admiral Chester Nimitz (Harrelson) to figure out where the Japanese will attack next.   Through the use of eccentric code breakers stationed in a basement somewhere, Layton correctly predicts Midway Island in the Pacific would be the next target.   

Midway resembles Pearl Harbor in another way:   It depicts the Japanese as stoic, almost dispassionate players in their own war.    Yes, the movie even gives us the Japanese general ruefully reciting the famed line, "We've awoken a sleeping giant,"   That they did.    The Japanese would make far more despicable villains if they weren't presented as quiet, uninteresting, and sticklers for maintaining their honor in defeat.    Filmmakers take much more liberties with Nazis, thus at least making them villains whose demise we can actively root for.    The Japanese seem almost reticent in their imperialist designs.

Midway doesn't differentiate itself much from other movies about famed World War II battles.   Most of the battles take place in the air, so we see planes buzzing around, machine guns being fired as if there is infinite ammunition, and close-ups of the pilots shouting orders as if they will help us make sense of the action.   If you like airplanes lifting off from and landing on vast aircraft carriers, then this is your movie.   In the end, after the USA successfully prevents the island from falling into Japanese hands, we see celebrations and American brass hugging each other, while the Japanese commit ritualistic harikari.    We're happy for the Americans, I suppose, although we're not sufficiently moved.    It was a turning point in the war, but millions more will die before it's all over. 

Ozark (2017) * * * 1/2 (first season on Netflix)

Starring:  Jason Bateman, Laura Linney, Julia Garner, Jason Butler Harner, Esai Morales, Peter Mullan, Sofia Hublitz, Skylar Gaertner, Lisa Emery, Jordana Spiro, Harris Yulin, Marc Menchaca

With his ability to analyze, forecast, extrapolate, and problem solve, I can't imagine Marty Byrde (Bateman), a Chicago financial analyst who launders millions for a Mexican drug cartel, didn't foresee at least the possibility of the trouble he faces in Ozark.    His life isn't exactly rosy before he learns at gunpoint that his partner has been skimming from the cartel.    His wife Wendy (Linney) is cheating on him, and he views the video footage from a private eye's hidden camera repeatedly.   Is he angry or being voyeuristic?  

His cartel contact Camino del Rio (Morales) kills Marty's partner and stuffs him in a barrel of acid.   Marty survives, but only after convincing "Del" that there are beaucoup money laundering opportunities in the Missouri Ozarks.   Del gives Marty and his family 48 hours to leave Chicago, relocate to the Ozarks, and then set up shop.   Marty assumes incorrectly he can quietly launder the eight million dollars his late partner stole from Del because it's the Ozarks, after all.    He's wrong, and in many ways, puts himself and his family in even further danger by stepping on the toes of the criminal element there.

The crime families of Ozark are the Snells and the Langmores.   They each encounter Marty and both profit and suffer from his involvement in their lives.    The Langmores are what the Snells would consider rednecks.   The Snells live on a vast poppy farm which feeds their heroin distribution ring.    The Langmores think smaller, and nineteen-year-old Ruth (Garner) is the driving force behind their schemes to get rich quick.    The Snells quote the Bible, but they surely don't follow its spirit.   The Langmores don't pretend to be religious at all. 

On the periphery is FBI agent Roy Petty (Garner), who smells a rat when Marty's partner goes missing and Marty withdraws eight million from his various bank accounts before skipping town.  Roy camps out at a local Ozark hotel, ingratiates himself with Ruth's closeted uncle Russ (Menchaca), before seducing him into becoming his lover and later informant.    During the eighth episode of the first season, we witness Roy's mother succumb to a heroin addiction back in 2007, and this fills in the background as to why his obsession with taking down Marty and the cartel isn't strictly part of the job. 

Ozark is wonderful noir drama with a lead character who is a criminal, and a family who is complicit in his crimes, although one can forgive his two children since they are teens and have nowhere else to go.   Marty's life is a pressure cooker of robbing Peter to pay Paul and trying to prevent his house of cards from blowing away in the wind.   Bateman expertly conveys this, and even though Marty is a criminal too, we sympathize with him to an extent.   His reasons for getting in bed with the drug cartel aren't excuses, but the opening speech of the first episode gives us a window into what makes Marty tick.   I suppose we care more for Marty because there are lines he won't cross, lines which the Snells and Langmores obliterated long ago.   Laura Linney delivers her usual excellent work.   She doesn't just sit on the sidelines; she thinks and schemes just like her husband.

At least through season one, Ozark does not attempt to paint Marty as a hero or a victim of circumstance.    He made his bed, now he must lie in it, and what compels us to keep watching is wondering why he felt he needed to make this bed to begin with. 

Last Christmas (2019) * * *

Directed by:  Paul Feig

Starring:  Emilia Clarke, Henry Golding, Emma Thompson, Michelle Yeoh, Lydia Leonard

Kate (Clarke) is an aspiring singer who has lost her zest for life.   She had a heart transplant last Christmas, and this Christmas she is ducking her mother's calls, sleeping on a different couch every night, screws up at work, and has meaningless sex with random strangers.   She may as well wear a t-shirt when she walks into auditions saying, "Please don't hire me,"   One day, she meets a handsome stranger named Tom (Golding).   He is a nice guy, but something is off about him, and we can't put our finger on it until we can.   Kate lowers her guard, lets the stranger into her heart, and maybe she can make this Christmas something special.

Last Christmas is charming, yes, but it isn't exactly what you'd expect.   The trailers make you think Kate and Tom are mismatched souls who wind up embracing in the end on the way to happily ever after.   Tom has a positive impact on Kate's life, so much so that she begins volunteering at a local homeless shelter where Tom works, which she would never dream of doing a few weeks ago.    But, there is more, and Last Christmas isn't a run-of-the-mill romantic comedy.

George Michael's music, with the ubiquitous Last Christmas leading the way, is featured heavily in the movie.    Thankfully, the cast doesn't break out into singing Faith or I Want Your Sex.   It is part of the movie, but doesn't distract from the task at hand.    Emilia Clarke and Henry Golding are both likable and vulnerable, and we care about them, which is the first step in making a worthwhile rom com.   A subtext is the treatment of foreign-born people in post-Brexit England.    Kate's parents are immigrants from the former Yugoslavia, and even after living many years in the UK, they are still affected by xenophobes.

Without giving away any spoilers, I can say with confidence that Last Christmas charmed me with its sweetness and its two leads, who we hope can find happiness in whichever way they can.  

Harriet (2019) * *

Directed by:  Kasi Lemmons

Starring:  Cynthia Erivo, Joe Alwyn, Leslie Odom, Jr., Janelle Monae, Jennifer Nettles, Zackary Momoh

Harriet is the first movie made about Harriet Tubman, an escaped slave who risked her own freedom to return to the South and aid other slaves in escaping to the north.    It was dangerous enough for her to travel 100 miles from Maryland to Pennsylvania on foot with her owner on her trail, but Tubman would reportedly rescue nearly 150 slaves from bondage in the years leading up to the Civil War.    She was a hero, and her heroism is such there was talk of her replacing Andrew Jackson on the $20 dollar bill.   So why is Harriet such a disappointment?    Why is such an inherently powerful story made inert?    The early scenes of Harriet (born Minty Ross) enduring starvation, the weather, and the ever-present threat of discovery to make it to Philadelphia are riveting, and the rest of the movie doesn't match that power. 

Harriet begins in 1849 in a Maryland plantation.   Minty, later Harriet (Erivo) marries a free man (Momoh) in the hopes of earning her own freedom and ensuring her future children are legally born free.    Her master puts the kibosh on that plan, and after learning she will be sold and separated from her family, Minty goes on the run at night and miraculously eludes capture.    Once Minty reaches Philadelphia, she changes her name to Harriet Tubman and works with an organization which assists escaped slaves in assimilating to their new surroundings.    Despite being free, Harriet can't rest easy knowing her family is still enslaved, and proceeds against the objections of organization leader William Still (Odom) to travel back down to Maryland to help her family escape.  

Even after leading her family to freedom, Harriet has visions from God telling her to go back and help more slaves escape, and she does just that.    She is dubbed "Moses" and the evil Gideon (Alwyn), son of her former master makes it his life's mission to capture and kill "Moses", not knowing that Moses is indeed his former slave Minty.   We know eventually there will be a showdown between Harriet and Gideon.   What we don't expect is how unsatisfying it is.   Harriet holds Gideon at gunpoint and belts out a speech about how evil slavery is and how the Southern way of life will soon go by the wayside.   With slave hunters bearing down on her, she is busy lecturing Gideon about things the audience has already surmised. 

Erivo gives us a determined, resourceful Harriet.   Odom is saddled with the frustrating character whose job is to tell Harriet she can't or shouldn't do something just so Harriet can basically say "hold my beer" and go and do the very thing she was told she can't do.   Alwyn is sufficiently hateful as Gideon, with his eyes almost permanently stuck in the narrowed position.  Harriet feels much like a superficial, made-for-television version of the Harriet Tubman story.   We see the events unfold without ever being absorbed in them.   There is a great movie to be made about Harriet Tubman, and Harriet isn't it.

Jojo Rabbit (2019) * * * 1/2

Directed by:  Taika Waititi

Starring: Roman Griffin Davis, Scarlett Johansson, Thomasin McKenzie, Sam Rockwell, Rebel Wilson

You laugh at the satirical early scenes of Jojo Rabbit so that you may not cry.   What's sad is that the Nazi regime actually recruited children to help carry out their despicable, deadly agenda.    The main character of Jojo Rabbit, a ten-year-old named Johannes (Davis) is ecstatic to be starting his first day of Hitler Youth training camp, and it takes a certain broken type of individual not to be appalled.  
What does one learn in Hitler Youth training camp?   Well, falsehoods about Jews and how to behave like a violent sociopath, just to name two items.   

Taika Waititi walks a delicate, delicate tightrope with Jojo Rabbit, which he wrote, directed, and co-starred as Jojo's imaginary friend, Adolf Hitler.   Yes, that one.   Waititi is fresh off directing Thor: Ragnarok, which made a boatload, so getting Jojo Rabbit greenlit was probably smoother than usual.    Imagine a first-time writer/director pitching a satirical view of Nazi Germany in which Adolf Hitler is the imaginary chum of the ten-year-old protagonist?    And Hitler is portrayed as an egomaniacal goof?   Good luck.

But, the movie was made and the results are a triumph of balance between the humorous, the sad, and the horrifying.    Jojo is all in on the lies spread about Jews.    He never met one, but surely he could recognize one because of the horns growing from their heads.     Jojo's mother, Rosie (Johansson) sees what is going on and finds it makes no sense.    People are dying and the war is soon to ravage their small, quiet, previously undisturbed town.   Her husband is off fighting in Italy and hasn't been heard from in months.   Soon, Jojo meets his first Jew, a teenage girl named Elsa (McKenzie) who he is terrified to discover hiding out in the bedroom of his dead sister.    Jojo is at first horrified and ready to contact the Gestapo, but realizes this will result in his mother being hauled away and shot.    Jojo and Elsa are frosty towards each other at first, then they develop a friendship which blows all of Jojo's previous beliefs completely out of the water.

Hitler pops in often, trying to compel Jojo to resist Elsa and continue obeying the laws of the Fatherland.    Hitler's impatience with Jojo grows with each visit, and finds even he can't stop Jojo from discovering his own humanity.    I won't reveal the payoff to Jojo's relationship with the imagined Hitler, but it is enormously satisfying and mostly inevitable.    The other adults in Jojo's life are hardly role models, although Capt. Klenzendorf (Rockwell), the inept leader of the local Hitler Youth chapter, does provide the depth we've come to expect from characters played by Sam Rockwell lately. 

Jojo Rabbit is as varied in tone as the emotions it dredges up within the viewer.   There is humor and satire, but we don't venture into Springtime for Hitler territory.    The themes dealt with are not taken lightly, and treated with the gravitas they deserve.    We are left with a powerful, unsettling movie experience.    The happy ending is a tad too happy, considering what has happened and how the two main characters are going to face their uncertain futures without any family to speak of.

Dolemite Is My Name (2019) * * * 1/2

Directed by:  Craig Brewer

Starring:  Eddie Murphy, Keegan Michael-Key, Wesley Snipes, Chris Rock, Snoop Dogg, Craig Robinson, Mike Epps, Tituss Burgess, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Ron Cephas Jones

Rudy Ray Moore is singularly focused on obtaining show biz success by any means possible.   He made some raunchy comedy albums back in the day, but by the early 1970's, Rudy is working in a record store; his early recordings forgotten.    At age 47, he is looking for one last big break, and stumbles across it in the form of a wino who frequents the record store bugging the customers for change.

Rudy learns the winos who hang around the corner from the store have funny stories to tell, and he supplies them booze and listens to them, incorporating them into a self-made comedy album which becomes an unexpected hit.    He then adds musical rhyming poems to his live shows and years later was dubbed "The Godfather of Rap".   Despite a strong following and a tour, Rudy craves more recognition.    He decides to make a movie starring himself as hip pimp Dolemite, the character he created on his comedy albums.    He hires an assortment of has-beens and never-wases to star, write, and direct, while begging, borrowing, and stealing to ensure the movie is completed.  

The finished product reminds me of a movie Bob Bowfinger would've been proud of, but it isn't the point whether the movie (also titled Dolemite Is My Name) is good or not.   What matters is the nerve and determination Rudy showed in getting it made and distributed at all.    But, get it made and shown in theaters he did, and it became a hit.    Rudy and his friends would make seven more films, and I'll bet they had a ball doing it.  

Dolemite Is My Name is a return to form for Eddie Murphy, who spent the better part of the last twenty years starring in family-oriented comedies and disappearing for long stretches from the movie scene altogether.    In the middle of all of this, he scored an Oscar nomination for his role in Dreamgirls (2006) and then followed up with Norbit and Meet Dave.   It hasn't been an ideal twenty years for an actor and comedian as funny and talented as Murphy.  

We can't help but root for these people who only want a taste of showbiz success.    Because Rudy and his cohorts aren't supremely talented, they need to claw and fight for their piece of the pie.   Murphy and his co-stars form a family who fight, argue, bond, and sweat together, but ultimately love each other.    This is what helps Dolemite Is My Name transcend its biopic origins and transform into something special.   

I thought of 2017's The Disaster Artist, which documented the making of the cult film The Room, which is unseen by me but said to be one of the worst films ever made.    Opinions are subjective, and the point isn't that a bad movie was made, but that one was made outside of the studio system and biopic movies are being made about them.    When was the last time you saw a movie made about someone who derided Dolemite Is My Name or The Room?   Let me know when you find it.

Motherless Brooklyn (2019) * * *

Directed by:  Edward Norton

Starring:  Edward Norton, Willem Dafoe, Alec Baldwin, Bruce Willis, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Bobby Cannavale, Ethan Suplee, Cherry Jones, Leslie Mann, Michael K. Williams

Lionel Essrog (Norton) is a private eye in 1950's Brooklyn with Tourette's Syndrome, which at the time didn't even have a name.    He knows his mouth and his brain do not always work in sync, and he blurts out things when he shouldn't.    Edward Norton resists the urge to overdo Lionel's tics and sudden outbursts, and we accept these aberrations as part of who he is.   They feel ingrained in the character, and less of a distraction to the story.  

If there is a story that doesn't need any distractions, it's Motherless Brooklyn.   It has the look and spirit of 1950's private eye dramas down pat.   Granted, there is a bit more plot and running time than is needed, but we remain involved in Motherless Brooklyn's tale of big city corruption and secrets among the haves and have-nots.   Lionel, who lives in a small apartment building underneath the Brooklyn Bridge, is clearly a have-not.    He works for a small-time detective agency specializing in garden variety surveillance on cheating spouses.    But Frank (Willis), who runs the agency, is asked to dig up dirt on a powerful bigwig and unearths evidence which gets him killed.    Lionel wants to find out why his beloved mentor Frank was killed, and finds the web he finds himself entangled in becomes harder and harder to escape.

Along the way, we meet the city's most powerful man, Moses Randolph (Baldwin), whose primary function is to uproot entire non-white neighborhoods and raze them to make way for parks and expressways.    The ruthless Moses doesn't let anything stand in the way of his work and, by extension, his legacy.   Lionel finds Moses is not easy to take down, and the conclusion is more of a truce between Lionel and Moses than a resolution of their beef.    It would've been less believable and more conventional if Lionel were holding Moses at gunpoint. 

Besides Moses, we meet Paul (Dafoe), Moses's ne'er do well brother who feeds Lionel information, Laurie Rose (Mbatha-Raw), who works for the center publicly opposing Moses' eviction of people from their homes, and has more than a passing connection to these events.    Thankfully, Norton wisely chooses not to make Laurie an obligatory romantic interest.    If you consider all that Lionel has going on, a relationship is the last thing on his mind.

There is more, and I won't reveal how everything dovetails, but Motherless Brooklyn is held together by a strong central performance by Norton and a lovingly captured a sense of time and place.