This week Steve chats with Drx about Avengers: Infinity War and it’s possible implications to the Marvel Cinematic Universe as well as the celebrated indie film from writer-director Chloe Zhao. In limited release, Steve gives his thoughts on the new Grace Jones documentary Bloodlight and Bami and the new brain-melter The Endless. On Blu-Ray, Steve gives the rundown on Paddington 2, Hostiles, Film Stars Don’t Die In Liverpool, Sweet Virginia, the 40th anniversary edition of Cheech and Chong’s Up In Smoke and the first season of 13 Reasons Why.
Steve talks with Lynda about the breaking news in the Bill Cosby retrial before reservedly geeking out about Avengers. Closing the segment out is the 4 hour documentary on Bobby Kennedy now available on Netflix.
Director James Mangold is now very much a household name after making the Johnny Cash bio-pic Walk The Line, a killer western adaptation with 3:10To Yuma and two Wolverine films which include the absolutely incredible Logan. Back in 2003, he was a director with a couple of great films under his belt like Cop Land and Girl Interrupted but he was about to give us a “keep you guessing” mystery thriller that still holds up to this day, the ensemble cast film Identity from the writer and director of Jack Frost. No, not that feel good family film with Michael Keaton, I’m talking about a murderous snowman who killed people with icicles. Yes, I’ve seen it.
Identity features a wide mosaic of characters trapped at a motel in the middle of nowhere. We have John Cusack as Ed, a limo driver not unlike his character with the same job in the disastrous disaster flick 2012. As the head of our cast, he finds himself in the company of a correctional officer (Ray Liotta) and his prisoner (Jake Busey), a prostitute (Amanda Peet), a couple of newlyweds(one of them being Clea Duvall), an older couple (including John C. McGinley) and their young son and Ed’s client, an ’80s Hollywood TV actress (Rebecca DeMornay), as well as the motel desk clerk (John Hawkes) who all spend a paranoid night together as one of them start knocking the rest off. Pretty stacked, right? This is also before Hawkes hit his mainstream stride in Deadwood.
The film has a creepy ethereal atmosphere that starts to ramp up more and more towards our third act twist and we have a running B plot with a cop played by Alfred Molina interrogating an incarcerated Pruitt Taylor Vince (from Mangold’s debut Heavy) that keeps us a bit off the true path. I love this film when I finally got to see it on DVD and I still love the plotting and reveals as they happen. The movie is like the love child of Alfred Hitchcock and Agatha Christie through a David Lynch filter, making the fact that long time Lynch collaborator Angelo Badalamenti almost scored this one that much more intriguing.
If you look this one up on any review sites like Metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes and you’ll see that critics have pretty much put it in the middle of the road which, to me, makes it incredibly underrated. What I see is a genre film headed by a burgeoning master leading a group of eclectic character actors under the eye of cinematographer Phedon Papamichael, who would collaborate with Mangold on two of his most beautiful films. This is what I consider must see filmmaking and I am happy to celebrate it on its fifteenth birthday. Go give it a spin!
I Feel Pretty – Amy Schumer is definitely a polarizing comedian. I like her, my wife likes her but there are a lot of people who don’t. Admittedly, I was a few seasons late to the Inside Amy Schumer bandwagon and generally find myself laughing quite a bit during her sketches and mostly the one on one interview scenes that close out the show. Her self-deprecating humor works in this context, something I like about her. Then she made Trainwreck with Judd Apatow, a film I will watch if I notice it on the movie channel because I think it is absolutely hilarious even if the runtime is a little drawn out. She then moved on to her second feature, Snatched, a film that was only saved by the returning Goldie Hawn, an actress who hadn’t been on the big screen in fifteen years. Then there’s this new horrendous experience, one that I couldn’t escape fast enough. Schumer plays a woman with massive insecurities who, after a nasty bump on her head in spin class, gains confident in herself, her body and her beauty. The comedy comes from the fact that no one else can see this change in her making every interaction painfully awkward and I couldn’t stand it. This film feels like one of the misfired sketches that struggles to find and ending but still tries to haphazardly jam a message in at the same time. Honestly, Amy Schumer is going to need something incredible to erase this one from my memory.
James Cameron is talking shit…. again – Let’s put things into a timely context. Do you remember when James Cameron proclaimed himself the “King Of The World” after cleaning up at the Oscars in 1998? Well, it’s been twenty years since and he has only made one feature film since, albeit it was Avatar which made close to three billion dollars but my point is that he is hardly the King any longer. This doesn’t stop him from making terrible comments about other people’s work, meanwhile his constantly pushed back Avatar sequels become less and less relevant. A while back Cameron shot his mouth off saying that Wonder Woman wasn’t as progressive for women as it was being celebrated to be and, no matter how I or any man feels about the film, this is definitely an untrue statement. Patty Jenkins SHOULD be celebrated as the film did break down many barriers. Now Cameron is taking aim at Marvel and the Avengers by saying that we’ve had enough of these films, which seems to be convenient coming from a guy that wants to saturate us in his world of Pandora, so much so that he even had a theme park built. Is this a real gripe with superhero movies in general or is he just worried that we won’t give a crap about his “Pocahontas meets Smurfs” films when or if they finally get made? Seems like a guy fighting for his last piece of relevancy as the new generation scratches their heads wonder who the hell this guy is.
Super Troopers 2 – Seventeen years after making a huge comedy splash with a film about the hijinks of a squad of highway patrolman, Broken Lizard are back with a kickstarted sequel, picking up where they left off. Think of all the quotable lines from that first film and how fondly it’s reminisced about. How can you live up to that hype? The pressure for Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter and Erik Stolhanske must have been immense but, you know what? They pulled it off. No, it’s not quite as “lightening in the bottle” as the first one but if you have a love for these characters like I do, you will just purely enjoy the film of the level of having a reunion with good pals. Is it cheesy? Yes. Is it also hilarious? You’re damn right it is and it opens with a scene I couldn’t believe was happening. Do yourself a favor, comedy fans, and go check it out.
Pain & Gain – What the hell are you doing, Steve? A Michael Bay film of your High Spots list? Bear with me here because I will explain myself. No, I don’t consider Michael Bay to be a good filmmaker at all. He is baffled by how humans interact, he is trigger happy, explosion heavy and can’t keep the camera stationary for a goddamn second. All of that aside, five years ago this week he directed this film about a trio of muscle bound meathead gym rats who decided to make a quick buck by kidnapping a wealth client and the movie is wildly entertaining. Led by Mark Wahlberg, Anthony Mackie and The Rock, this film is all about the characters and the height situations they get into as their stupidity escalates everything but, really, the former WWE superstar takes the cake as the must watch in this one. This and Southland Tales are when I started to really believe in him as an actor.
Better Luck Tomorrow – Long before Justin Lin was known as the Fast And Furious go to guy, he made a little indie film financed with credit cards and with money raised independently by him and his other producers. The film almost collapsed completely until M.C. Hammer of all people kicked in the money to finish it off, then going on to be the first independent film to be picked up by MTV Films for distribution. The story follows a group of book smart Asian-American friends who, out of pure boredom, try out a life of excess and, more importantly, hardcore drug dealing! The movie was my introduction to Lin and his style, followed up by the immensely great Finishing The Game, but also actors Parry Shen, Roger Fan and Sung Kang, who’s character Han actually crossed over into the Fast And Furious series. A discovery from my video store employee days, if you haven’t seen this one then you need to right now. It’ll give you a new appreciation for this filmmaker fifteen years after he made his first mark.
On this week’s spot with Drex, Steve gets his thoughts out on big releases Super Troopers 2 and I Feel Pretty, as well as shines some spotlight on You Were Never Really Here, Eye On Juliet and Mobile Homes. On the home video side, Steve talks about the sole release this week, Steven Spielberg’s The Post.
Whenever I’m racking my brain for a film to talk about on these pieces I usually hit up a website to see what movies were released on this day five, ten, fifteen or more years ago and sometimes I get really giddy when I see certain titles. Today’s film is one of those, and one I feel is entirely underrated, Joseph Kosinski’s Oblivion which is five years old this week. Made for about $160 million the full total on its gross was a bit over $262 million, something that isn’t any sort of indicator on its cinematic worth. This movie is gorgeous, intriguingly written and features a great performance from Mr. Scientology himself, Tom Cruise.
You may know Kosinski’s name from the brilliant sequel slash reboot Tron: Legacy, a film that made us nerdy fans take note of his name and patiently await what was next. Oblivion is directly adapted from his own unpublished graphic novel about a man that is basically a caretaker for the earth sixty years after a war with aliens force mankind to abandon the planet for a new home near Saturn. If you haven’t seen the film yet, I will stop my synopsis there and get back to my geek out over this movie because it’s immense. Kosinski’s reverence for sci-fi bleeds into every frame of this film with Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey being a big inspiration but other classics like Aliens and Blade Runner play their own influencer roles in this vision as well.
With the visual style being so dazzling and enthralling, under the eye of Kosinski’s regular cinematographer Claudio Miranda, you need a soundtrack to go along with it and Joseph Kosinski kept true to having French electro pop stars scoring his films. For Tron: Legacy he recruited Daft Punk who’s contribution is one of the pieces that makes that movie so incredible so the fact that M83’s Anthony Gonzalez adds a special atmosphere to Oblivion should be no shock and the song that closes the film featuring Suzanne Sundfor is one that is still currently in my constant rotation.
All in all, after many time watching it, Oblivion continues to be one of my favorite modern sci-fi films, along with Moon and Sunshine, and makes it into my “if you haven’t seen it, watch it immediately” pile of movies. I saw this Blu-Ray at Walmart the other day for $6.99 and I had so many conflicted emotions. On one hand, it feels like a travesty for this movie to hit bargain blow out pricing, which makes me sad, but on the other hand, this is a price that EVERYONE can surely afford and it gets the movie into people’s players that much quicker then I am supremely happy with that outcome.
This week Steve joins Lynda for a little discussion about the Bill Cosby retrial before heading into his review on Amy Schumer’s latest film, I Feel Pretty. To close out the segment, Steve gives his love to Monty Python, who’s entire catalog is now available on Netflix!
1. Uninspired horror – Does it feel like good horror is a dime a dozen? With John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place currently killing it at the box office and with critics it feels like a good time to address all the cheap pandering films in this genre that don’t make the cut of even being a passably scary movie. Just look at Blumhouse’s latest one Truth Or Dare, a story that takes its inspiration from a handful of more successful movies to forge in glued together identity. Oh, a guy lured everyone to a place to get an unseen evil’s focus off of him and on to someone else? Seems like you lifted the beginning of It Follows a little. I feel like I’m being a little focused on this one movie, so let me bring up another one from last year, Happy Death Day. The movie basically rolls Mean Girls into a Groundhog Day style plot but fails to make any sort of original stride with this premise. My overarching complaint is that mainstream horror has been resting on its laurels for too long and we need better original horror. Especially Blumhouse. This is what you were made for!
2. The diminishing role of critics – This may be slightly self-indulgent of me to rant about this but it is becoming increasingly difficult to get the coverage on films like we used to in this industry. Now, for me to bring this up publicly is a bit premature as I have only been involved in an official capacity for around three years but those who have been doing this longer have voiced this concern as well and it really does seem that for a lot of us, the writing is on the wall. The position is frequently unpaid, we receive endless hate for our opinions and now the studios are actively restricting movies from us for review. Disney is the biggest culprit as Rogue One was the only new Star Wars film to get an advance screening and neither or the Episodes were shown. This has now stretched as far as the Marvel movies with Avengers: Infinity War being screening-less on the West Coast. Film appreciation in the media is nearing extinction and as a person who is passionate about it I feel the weight of my decision to get into this at the worst possible time.
3. The Gunman – Ever take a look at those Liam Neeson films like Taken, Unknown or Non-Stop and think “I wonder what Sean Penn would be like in that role?” Well, you are the only one and you’re weird but, that aside, it’s already been done in 2015 by, ironically enough, Pierre Morel, the man behind Taken. Well, the movie is new to Netflix this week and I know you’re asking what’s the problem? Is it Penn himself? No, not really. The big issue is the movie is boring as hell, predictable and not enough action bite to even warrant it to be considered part of the action genre. Fantastic character actors like Javier Bardem, Idris Elba and a pre-Oscar winning Mark Rylance star in the film but are so ineffectual and forgettable that they must have just come in, collected a paycheck and left. Again, just like most films in the last few years, I saw this one in theaters and still look for the day that I can get a full life refund from Morel and company, including Penn himself, who served as producer additionally. Make that cheque out to cash please!
1. Borg vs. McEnroe – How good could a movie about tennis be? A better question, is it better than Wimbledon? That last one is misleading because no film can unseat that Paul Bettany/Kirsten Dunst classic. I kid, I kid, this one is infinitely better and is completely devoid of an awkward romantic center. Instead we got the face-off between two of the greatest tennis players of all time, John McEnroe and Bjorn Borg, played by Shia LeBeouf and Sverrir Gudnason respectively. For the majority of the film, we get the back stories on both revered athletes peppered into their very different preparations for the biggest match of their career at Wimbledon. LeBeouf brilliantly captures McEnroe’s volatile nature in his strive for greatness without ever having met the real man in the process, much to the subject’s angry displeasure. Gudnason, on the other hand, plays to Borg’s quiet thoughtful side, a phenomenal talent that never wanted the crush of attention that his skills always garnered. We get a bit of insight into both of these unforgettable stars and it all comes together in a totally pace shifting third act, depicting the war these two battled on the court. Seriously, the movie is worth a watch just for that.
2. You Were Never Really Here – A couple years back, director Lynne Ramsey was all set to direct Natalie Portman in a western called Jane Got A Gun. Through unknown circumstances behind the scenes, a reported disagreement between Ramsay and the film’s producer and financier, and she no showed the first day before quitting entirely. Well, that film turned out to be a bit lackluster but luckily for the We Need To Talk About Kevin filmmaker, and more importantly us the viewers, she moved on to this thriller starring Joaquin Phoenix. He plays a disturbed Gulf war veteran who now lives with his mother, making his living tracking down missing teen girls. When one of his clients ends up involving him in a darker conspiracy, his reality starts to fracture and this movie starts to head down a rabbit hole of disturbing proportions. A lot of this film I felt a slight comparison to Taxi Driver with a side of Jacob’s Ladder PTSD but the one thing that was a constant was Joaquin’s performance which is damn riveting in its silence.
3. Monty Python – If I were ever to say that John Cleese, Eric Idle, Graham Chapman, Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam didn’t have a formative effect on my idea of comedy then I would be an absolute liar because Monty Python was everything to me. It seems that the comedy gods were listening, or at least Chapman was, because Netflix orchestrated a deal to acquire the entire catalog of their work and it is now already here and we’re talking EVERYTHING. The series, the live specials, the movies and the documentaries. Now you can stop pantomiming your favorite bits to your friends or the uninitiated and actually show them the really product, streaming into your home at the click of a button. Trust me, your wife already appreciates you not John Cleese goose stepping everywhere and kicking over that lamp. Again.
Steve Stebbing 