Review: mother!

MOTHER! 
(DRAMA/HORROR-THRILLER)
Directed by Darren Aronofsky
Screenplay by Darren Aronofsky
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer, Brian Gleeson, Domhnall Gleeson, Kristen Wiig, Stephen McHattie, Jovan Adepo, Amanda Chiu, Patricia Summersett, Eric Davis, Raphael Grosz-Harvey, Emily Hampshire
Rated R for strong disturbing violent content, some sexuality, nudity and language.
121 minutes
Verdict: It's easy enough to engage with Darren Aronofsky's idiosyncratic fever dream buzzing with thought-provoking ideas and bolstered Jennifer Lawrence's presence, but its surreal, allegorical style is unlikely to satisfy audiences at your local mall's multiplex.
YOU MAY BE INTERESTED IN MOTHER! IF YOU LIKED:
BLACK SWAN  (2010)
THE FOUNTAIN  (2006)
NOCTURNAL ANIMALS  (2016)
ROSEMARY'S BABY  (1968)
DONNIE DARKO  (2001)



Minor spoilers for MOTHER! follow:
Apparently, audiences who saw MOTHER! on opening night really, seriously hated it.  According to CinemaScore, the Las Vegas-based marketing research firm which surveys the general audiences attending the opening nights of movies and interprets the average audience response by a traditional letter grade (A+ being the most positive and F being the most negative), MOTHER! received an F.  That doesn't necessarily mean the movie is bad, or that most people who see the movie will dislike it, but the opening night audience is typically filled with the people most invested in the movie based on its marketing, and the worse the CinemaScore, the less likely there is to be sustained interest, because word-of-mouth is likely to be bad.  Usually, a really bad CinemaScore has to do with a movie being marketed as something completely different from what it really is, such as 2012 dark allegorical crime drama KILLING THEM SOFTLY, which The Weinstein Company misleadingly advertised as an off-kilter crime comedy.  When the audiences in the mood for a comedy starring Brad Pitt showed up on opening night and were treated to a bleak and very violent, stylish thriller about the Great Recession, they gave it an F.  Now, on the one hand, it entirely makes sense that mainstream audiences didn't like MOTHER!, but anyone who saw the previews, which were vague, grainy and hallucinogenic, or the teaser poster showing a painting of Jennifer Lawrence's character holding her literal heart in her hand with a bloody hole in her chest, which I think gets across the idea of the movie about as well as Paramount's marketing team could do.

Written and directed by Darren Aronofsky, who is no stranger to controversy or misunderstandings as the creative mind behind NOAH, BLACK SWAN, REQUIEM FOR A DREAM and THE WRESTLER, MOTHER! is similar in some ways to Tom Ford's 2016 psychological drama NOCTURNAL ANIMALS, which I really hated.  Both are cruel, aggressive movies, but at least MOTHER! has a heart to it (admittedly, a heart that it then rips from its chest and proceeds to stomp on it and set on fire) and engaged me on an emotional level.  Still, it's the kind of movie that would probably bring more and become clearer on another viewing, but it's not a movie you really want to see again right after you see it the first time.  It doesn't distance itself from the audience in the way that NOCTURNAL ANIMALS or, I'd argue, some of David Lynch's thrillers do, but it's tough to understand the business sense behind this movie.  It feels like entirely a filmmaker's film, and we get to look in on the pure artistic vision of it all, like peeking into a poet's private journal, not actually intended for readers' eyes, except that this private journal cost $30 million to make and would hopefully make that money back.  What it offers the audience though, is, well, rough stuff.
It isn't easy to explain what exactly the movie is about, and supposing you were to see it, it's intended to be seen with minimal prior information about the plot.  It does star Jennifer Lawrence, who, as one of the top Hollywood stars around is the excuse to spend $30 million on something that's practically unsellable otherwise.  Lawrence plays an unnamed woman who lives a tranquil existence in solitude with her husband (Javier Bardem), a poet, but his creative struggles put a strain on their relationship which subsequently becomes worse as their old and isolated house is intruded upon by a confusing series of obnoxious and inexplicable 'guests' who the poet welcomes in, but who quickly begin to tear away at the woman's sanity.

Very little in MOTHER! is meant to be taken literally, and it's a highly visceral experience heavily layered with allegorical elements that Aronofsky once again draws from no less than the Bible.  Like many religious texts and religions themselves, MOTHER! reflects the greatest moments of human warmth, like a new mother feeding her child, and the darkest human depravity, like that child being torn apart and devoured by an aggressive mob.  It's many stories in one, but the experience is sometimes so intense and distressing, it's not always easy to come up with.  It's been several days since I saw it, and it's been buzzing around in my head, and as everything becomes clearer, it's all the more frustrating that it wasn't obvious before.  In addition to the Bible and mankind's relationship to their perceived creator, it's also about mankind's relationship to creation (a denser and much more surreal version of themes explored in NOAH), motherhood and Mother Earth, creative people and their relationships, and probably more.  On the one hand, you could stand back and brush it all off as reading into a film that's just a lot of nonsense, but Aronofsky draws you in with superficial layers that are readily understandable, but that layer melts away to reveal more.
The performances are top-notch, particularly Lawrence, whose character acts as multiple allegories as well as the audience surrogate as the camera frequently follows her perspective, her relationship to her surroundings, her relationship to her body, and the increasing hopelessness of her situation.  She engenders tremendous sympathy, even empathy, and if she weren't already an Academy Award-winning actress one of the highest-paid stars in Hollywood, this would absolutely be a star-making turn.
MOTHER! is a horror movie, and certainly horrific things happen in it, but it's not the kind of horror movie that today's audiences expect.  Even while it's a widely-agreed classic of the genre, if you showed ROSEMARY'S BABY to today's generation of horror fans, they'd probably be bored by it and not even realize it's a horror movie.  MOTHER! is a horror movie in a similar vein though, more aggressive and amped up, but paranoia-driven, domestic and bizarre.  It's not surprising that many people dislike it, but it's not boring and there's a whole lot to talk about.  The more distance I get from it, the more willing I am to see it again in hopes of drawing more from it, but as exciting and engaging as it is, it's weirdly unpleasant.

                                                                                                                                                                  Images via Paramount

The Rest of 2017

Summer has come and gone, leaving a few surprises, a few disappointments, and honestly, it wasn't all that remarkable a summer for movies.  Let's just say nothing quite knocked me off my rocker.  PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES was a huge disappointment, especially because some critics said it was good when they saw it early at Cinema-Con and then suddenly had nothing but bad things to say about it when it hit theaters (thanks a lot jerks, it was terrible), and most of the superhero movies were good but not quite great, mostly because they were bloated (WONDER WOMAN, SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING and GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY).  While SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING and WONDER WOMAN definitely had their great moments without actually being great movies (now watch, in a few years, I'm probably going to be talking about how great they are), the big winners from the summer in my book are DUNKIRK (Nolan keeping it lean but with all the spectacle), BABY DRIVER (another clever Edgar Wright thrill ride) and WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES (not actually a lot of war in it, but so, so good).  Looking to the fall and winter, there are more than a few weirdly high profile movies coming our way in addition to the usual awards and family fare, most notably among them, a Star Wars movie (the third Star Wars movie released in as many Decembers) and a Justice League movie (probably a mangled mess, but could be an interesting mess as long as it isn't three goddamn hours), and on the more awards-centric side of things, there are films coming from both Steven Spielberg and Guillermo del Toro.  So, uh, here's my nine most anticipated for the rest of the year.  It was going to be ten, but then we found out that BLADE RUNNER 2049 is 150 minutes, and while I'm still interested to see what Denis Villeneuve brings to his newest film, I'm sorry, but no, it doesn't make the list.  150 minutes?  Blech.


Coming September 15th
MOTHER! 
(HORROR/THRILLER) 
Directed by Darren Aronofsky
Screenplay by Darren Aronofsky
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer, Kristen Wiig, Domhnall Gleeson, Brian Gleeson, Jovan Adepo, Stephen McHattie
Rated R for strong disturbing violent content, some sexuality, nudity and language.
115 minutes
Synopsis: A young woman's tranquil life with her husband at their remote country home is challenged by a mysterious and uninvited couple who arrive to lodge with them.
There's a slight possibility that MOTHER! is the kind of movie that will just piss people off in the end, including myself, but that's a risk with a Darren Aronofsky film.  Personally, I think it's a worthwhile risk.  Aronofsky's most uplifting film so far and by far was NOAH, and that pissed a lot of people off (I thought it was wonderful; imperfect, but wonderful), and he's made a lot of really beautiful but deeply sad films like BLACK SWAN, THE WRESTLER and REQUIEM FOR A DREAM (some people really love THE FOUNTAIN, but that's a movie that's interesting without being particularly engaging), but MOTHER! looks more aggressive.  Jennifer Lawrence is reliable and this promises to be an actor's showcase for her, and she's playing opposite 20-years older Javier Bardem as half of a romantic couple, which is...interesting.  They've kept the basic plot largely under wraps, and I wonder if it's sort of a WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? or ROSEMARY'S BABY sort of thing, but my curiosity is piqued.  Plus, Jennifer Lawrence...woof.


Coming September 22
KINGSMAN: THE GOLDEN CIRCLE
(ACTION-COMEDY) 
Directed by Matthew Vaughn
Screenplay by Jane Goldman & Matthew Vaughn
Based on The Secret Service comic by Mark Millar & Dave Gibbons
Rated R for sequences of strong violence, drug content, language throughout and some sexual material.
135 minutes
Synopsis: When the Kingsman headquarters are destroyed and the world is held hostage, their journey leads them to the discovery of an allied spy organization in the United States called Statesman, dating back to the day they were both founded.  In a new adventure that tests their agents' strength and wits to the limit, these two elite secret organizations band together to defeat a ruthless common enemy, in order to save the world.
More than a little rough in some spots and occasionally off-putting, but surprisingly entertaining, the first KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE was a lot of fun, and with director Matthew Vaughn returning with his regular creative collaborator Jane Goldman, THE GOLDEN CIRCLE returns to the kinetic, progressively absurd if occasionally problematic world of the Kingman with a promising  and fresh new culture clash twist that introduces the United States' Kingsman equivalent, the Statesman, with Channing Tatum and Jeff Bridges as cowboy-style secret agents, in an English-American culture clash from a distinctly European but heavily stylized perspective.  If nothing else, it's atypically fun, frothy and action-packed fare for September, and Vaughn and Goldman usually know what they're doing.

Coming September 29
AMERICAN MADE 
(ACTION-COMEDY/THRILLER) 
Directed by Doug Liman
Screenplay by Gary Spinelli 
Starring: Tom Cruise, Sarah Wright, Domhnall Gleeson, Jayma Mays, Jesse Plemons, Lola Kirke, Lara Grice, Frank Licari, Alex Quarles, Jay Jablonski, Jed Rees, Caleb Landry Jones
Rated R for language throughout and some sexuality/nudity.
117 minutes
Synopsis: The true story of Barry Seal, a commercial airline pilot who is recruited by the CIA in the 1970s and '80s to fly increasingly perilous and legally questionable missions running drugs and weapons between warlords and cartels from South America.
Doug Liman's second directorial feature of the year (following the low-budget war thriller THE WALL, released with little notice back in May) reunites him with his EDGE OF TOMORROW star Tom Cruise in a truth-based story about an American pilot for TWA who gets a taste for luxury and dangerous living as an undercover informant and smuggler for the CIA and various South American governments and cartels whilst also being investigated by the DEA and attaining a $1 million price on his head.  Cruise stars as the pilot, Barry Seal, a role that could give him the opportunity to stretch his acting legs more than he has been recently (THE MUMMY, what the hell?), and Liman, who's usually a bit more hit than miss, appears to be drawing from THE WOLF OF WALL STREET and other Scorsese films for his approach.  Although it doesn't open in theaters nationwide until September 29, it has been released in many other international markets and been reviewed by critics who have had a largely positive opinion so far.

Coming November 3
THOR: RAGNAROK 
(ACTION-ADVENTURE/FANTASY) 
Directed by Taika Waititi
Screenplay by Eric Pearson
Story by Craig Kyle & Christopher Yost and Eric Pearson
Based on characters created by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and Jack Kirby
Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Cate Blanchett, Jeff Goldblum, Idris Elba, Mark Ruffalo, Karl Urban, Tessa Thompson, Anthony Hopkins, Benedict Cumberbatch, Taika Waititi, Rachel House
Not Yet Rated
Synopsis: Thor is imprisoned as a gladiator on the other side of the universe and finds himself in a race against time to get back to Asgard to stop Ragnarok, the destruction of his homeworld and the end of Asgardian civilization, at the hands of an all-powerful new threat, the ruthless Hela.
Despite the first two Thor films being a couple of the weakest installments in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (even while it's not totally terrible, THOR: THE DARK WORLD just might be the worst in the franchise so far, and if not, it's close), THOR: RAGNAROK is probably my most anticipated movie for the rest of the year, at least from what things are looking like right now.  Eccentric Flight of the Conchords director Taika Waititi (also director of the hilarious mockumentary WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS and the funny, more varied HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE) has been let loose on Thor's third "stand-alone" film, and if the previews are any indication (to be fair, SUICIDE SQUAD had great trailers but sucked butts), he's brought his colorful, kinetic and irreverent style in full force.  The Hulk is along for the ride in what appears to be a significantly character-expanding role, and Cate Blanchett looks fantastic as the big-bad Hela, who will hopefully carry on into later films and is rumored to be an unrequited love interest for the Avengers villain, Thanos.  CREED actress Tessa Thompson is also joining in as a "hard-drinking" Asgardian warrior who may become a new love interest with Thor (Natalie Portman having apparently fallen out with the folks at Marvel), which sounds amazing.  I find myself lately more wanting movies that are just eccentric and weird as balls but familiar in the fundamentals (you know, like how MAD MAX: FURY ROAD is all-out insanity on its uppermost layers, but the plot is fairly traditional), and, I'm hoping, THOR: RAGNAROK looks like it might be exactly what I'm looking for.



Coming November 22
COCO 
(ANIMATION/FANTASY-ADVENTURE) 
Directed by Lee Unkrich
Co-directed by Adrian Molina
Screenplay by Matthew Aldrich and Adrian Molina
Story by Lee Unkrich
Featuring the Voices of: Anthony Gonzalez, Gael Garcia Bernal, Benjamin Bratt, Renee Victor, Edward James Olmos, Jaime Camil, Sofia Espinosa, Luis Valdez, Lombardo Boyar, Alanna Ubach, Selene Luna, Alfonso Arau, Gabriel Iglesias, Cheech Marin
Not Yet Rated
Synopsis: Despite his family's baffling generations-old ban on music, Miguel dreams of becoming an accomplished musician like his idol, Ernesto de la Cruz.  Desperate to prove his talent, Miguel finds himself in the stunning and colorful Land of the Dead following a mysterious chain of events.  Along the way, he meets charming trickster Hector, and together, they set off on an extraordinary journey to unlock the real story behind Miguel's family history.
Pixar's not what they used to be, but every once in a while, they still come up with something that can stand along side their 1995-2010 modern classics, INSIDE OUT, for example, and COCO could be one of those.  It's director Lee Unkrich's long-awaited follow-up to TOY STORY 3 (the last of the studio's epic 15-year winning streak), and Jorge Gutierrez's Guillermo del Toro-produced THE BOOK OF LIFE didn't turn out to be a Dia de los Muertos classic, so that slot is still open.  COCO resembles something of a blend between my personal favorite Pixar film, RATATOUILLE (despite his family's disapproval, the main character aspires to be a great musician and idolizes a celebrity musician from television), and SPIRITED AWAY in the story of a character trapped in fantastical foreign realm where they have a coming of age, and the visual panache of the studio has never faltered, appearing in full force here.  Most of Pixar's most recent stumbles have involved the passing of the torch from their original generation of creative minds to new ones, but Unkrich is the proven goods.


Coming November 22
MOLLY'S GAME 
(DRAMA) 
Directed by Aaron Sorkin
Screenplay by Aaron Sorkin
Based on Molly's Game: From Hollywood's Elite to Wall Street's Billionaire Boys Club, My High-Stakes Adventure in the World of Underground Poker by Molly Bloom
Starring: Jessica Chastain, Idris Elba, Kevin Costner, Brian d'Arcy James, Chris O'Dowd, Michael Cera, J.C. MacKenzie, Bill Camp, Graham Greene, Jeremy Strong, Samantha Isler
Not Yet Rated
Synopsis: The story of Molly Bloom, a beautiful, young, Olympic-class skier who ran the world's most exclusive high-stakes poker game for a decade before being arrested in the middle of the night by 17 FBI agents wielding automatic weapons.  Her players included Hollywood royalty, sports stars, business titans and finally, unbeknownst to her, the Russian mob.  Her only known ally was her criminal defense lawyer Charlie Jaffey, who learned that there was much more to Molly than the tabloids led us to believe.
Ever since THE SOCIAL NETWORK, I'll try just about anything written by Aaron Sorkin, and MOLLY'S GAME has an additional point of interest in that he's also the director.  It's unclear whether that's a good thing or not, but the script will probably be sharp as can be, and you can't make a totally bad movie with Jessica Chastain in the lead.

Coming December 8 (Limited Release)
THE SHAPE OF WATER 
(DRAMA/FANTASY) 
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
Screenplay by Guillermo del Toro & Vanessa Taylor
Story by Guillermo del Toro
Starring: Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Octavia Spencer, Richard Jenkins, Doug Jones, Michael Stuhlbarg, Lauren Lee Smith, Nick Searcy, David Hewlitt
Rated R for sexual content, graphic nudity, violence and language.
120 minutes
Synopsis: An otherworldly fairy tale, set against the backdrop of Cold War America circa 1962, in which lonely Elisa, the mute janitor in a hidden high-security government laboratory finds her life changed when she and a co-worker discover and befriend a top-secret amphibious creature experiment subject.
Guillermo del Toro is one of my favorite filmmakers.  His films have an incredible grace, romance and eclectic, esoteric love for the Gothic, the weird and wonderful, and the man is an undeniable master of monsters.  If you've seen his two Hellboy movies though, THE SHAPE OF WATER looks weirdly like an awards-friendly origin story of the amphibious "fish-man" Abe Sapien, who was played by Doug Jones in those films, and Jones plays a similar-looking creature here.  If Abe Sapien weren't original to the Hellboy comics and had instead been a creation of del Toro's from one of his famous creative journals, it might make sense that he'd just be reusing one of his creature ideas over again in a different context, but as it is, I'm not sure what to make of the similarity.  Particularly interesting about this film though is the idea of a del Toro film set in the Cold War, and it looks shamelessly weird, branching out into something that's almost an erotic romance between a human woman and an amphibious man with gills.  Whatever it is, it's Guillermo del Toro, and that counts for a lot.

Coming December 15
STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI 
(ACTION-ADVENTURE/FANTASY) 
Directed by Rian Johnson
Screenplay by Rian Johnson
Based on characters created by George Lucas
Starring: Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Oscar Isaac, Adam Driver, Peter Mayhew, Domhnall Gleeson, Andy Serkis, Lupita Nyong'o, Benicio del Toro, Laura Dern, Gwendoline Christie, Kelly Marie Tran
Not Yet Rated
Synopsis: Having taken her first steps into a larger world in STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS, Rey continues her epic journey with Finn, Poe and Luke Skywalker in the next chapter of the saga.
So, I mean, it's Star Wars, so of course it's one of the most anticipated movies of the year, although, personally, the excitement is not uninhibited.  It's the third year in a row with a Star Wars movie, and the trend doesn't appear to be changing anytime soon, but the new iteration of Lucasfilm is off to a strangely bumpy is thoroughly competent start.  I'm sure it's a controversial opinion in some circles, but while George Lucas's prequels were weighed down in bad dialogue, clumsily-drawn characters, misguided casting, wooden acting and an overwhelming abundance of blue-screen environments, the stories were ambitious, insightful and full of sincere emotions, and those two sides were swapped in THE FORCE AWAKENS, giving us good dialogue, solid characters, great casting, good acting and a lot more in the way of practical effects and on-location filming, but the story was an uninspired retread of the original STAR WARS and most of its emotional impact didn't expand past simple nostalgia.  Don't get me wrong, it's a really fun movie once you get past the hangups and just ride with it, and the characters and casting of the main heroes goes a long way, but the only reason it landed on so many critics best movies lists of 2015 is because the hype was still in full effect when they went to print.  Then, ROGUE ONE went through reshoots and wound up being weirdly dull until the last 15 minutes when it became such an adrenaline rush for about 15 minutes that I about messed my pants, and now the brilliant Phil Lord and Chris Miller have gotten fired from the upcoming "Young Han Solo" movie and been replaced by the dreadfully safe choice of Ron Howard, and the new direction of the Star Wars franchise is becoming increasingly frustrating.  That said, Rian Johnson is a competent and clever storyteller, and maybe now that the foundations have been reset by J.J. Abrams, maybe Kathleen Kennedy and Disney have given him a little more creative leash.  It's going to be good, I'm fairly certain, but I'd really, really like it to be more than that.  I mean, come on, guys, it's Star Wars!

Coming December 22 (Limited Release)
THE POST 
(DRAMA) 
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Screenplay by Liz Hannah and Josh Singer
Starring: Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Alison Brie, Carrie Coon, David Cross, Bruce Greenwood, Tracy Letts, Bob Odenkirk, Sarah Paulson, Jesse Plemons, Matthew Rhys, Michael Stuhlbarg, Bradley Whitford, Zach Woods, Pat Healy
Not Yet Rated
Synopsis: A cover-up that spanned four U.S. Presidents pushed the country's first female newspaper publisher and a hard-driving editor to join an unprecedented battle between journalist and government in publishing the Pentagon Papers.  Inspired by true events.
Before his next big-budget action blockbuster, READY PLAYER ONE, crashes into theaters next March, master filmmaker Steven Spielberg has found time to throw together one of his stripped-down awards dramas, and besides the fact that it's a Spielberg film and demands a trip to the cinema, THE POST (only just recently changed from its original title, The Papers) is relevant as hell right now.  It's the story of how the "Pentagon Papers" were leaked to the press in 1971, exposing the hidden truths behind the history of the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War under the administrations of Richard M. Nixon, Lyndon B. Johnson, John F. Kennedy and Dwight D. Eisenhower, including lies to the public and Congress.  "Miss Oscar" herself, Meryl Streep, stars as the first woman newspaper publisher, Kay Graham at The Washington Post, with repeat Speilberg collaborator, Tom Hanks as the paper's editor Ben Bradlee, both using the power of the press to keep the corruption of a world power in check.  It's prime material with an all-star cast, directed by Steven-freaking-Spielberg, one of the greatest filmmakers ever, and he's still churning them out.

Review: IT (2017)

IT 
(HORROR/FANTASY) 
★★
Directed by Andy Muschietti
Screenplay by Chase Palmer & Cary Fukunaga, and Gary Dauberman
Based on the novel by Stephen King
Starring: Jaeden Lieberher, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Sophia Lillis, Finn Wolfhard, Chosen Jacobs, Jack Dylan Grae, Wyatt Oleff, Bill Skarsgard, Nicholas Hamilton, Jake Sim, Logan Thompson, Owen Teague, Jackson Robert Scott, Stephen Bogaert, Stuart Hughes
Rated R for violence/horror, bloody images, and for language.
135 minutes
Verdict: IT has a very good look and will no doubt be very popular, but it never lives up to the hype, nor is it a particularly good or scary movie in its own right.

Walking through a video rental store and seeing the VHS cassette sleeve of the 1990 two-part TV miniseries It, starring Tim Curry as the sinister, clawed clown poking out through the corner, ranks fairly high in the collective memory of the Millennial generation's childhood chills (as far as unsettling video store clown-sightings go, SHAKES THE CLOWN was close behind IT, personally), and like the Baby Boomers, we Millennials have an all too apparent hard-on for our childhood memories.  I suppose that makes sense.  It's a lot nicer to say our big childhood fear was Tim Curry in clown makeup and not getting blown into oblivion by terrorists once 9/11 happened (the Baby Boomers thought the 1950s were a paradise because it was before the Vietnam War, Watergate, the JFK assassination and all the civil unrest; Millennials think the 1990s were a paradise because they were before 9/11), and the hype is now crazy hot for the new and shiny IT, partly because we're nostalgic to an obnoxious fault and partly because it's easier to cope with the evil clown in the movie than it is to deal with the evil clown in the Oval Office (lol, jk, he's not "evil", but you know, dang, topical...).  As far as horror goes, clowns are kitschy and feel more ironic than genuinely scary, furthermore, the one played by Bill Skarsgard in this film looks too much like a Victorian Juggalo, but the hype is high, people are saying great things, and I was hoping for a pleasant surprise.  Unfortunately, the new iteration of IT is a lot like a gory version of THE GOONIES, which I realize might sound like a sound recommendation to some folks, but no. 

I've never read the book (although I did watch the miniseries while binging horror movies in college, and it was boring, except for Tim Curry, who was a lot of fun in his frustratingly few scenes as the clown), but I suspect this is a pretty faithful adaptation except for the time in which it's set (the part of the book which this covers is set in the 1950s, while the movie is set in the 1980s, allowing them to milk all those '80s pop culture references that are so hot now thanks to Stranger Things).  Beginning in 1988, in the small town of Derry, Maine, a little boy chases a runaway paper boat down the street before it falls into a storm drain, right into the hands of a clown strangely standing there named "Pennywise" (Bill Skarsgard), and the boy never returns home.  A year later, the missing boy's older preteen brother Bill (Jaeden Lieberher) is convinced that his little brother, whose body was never found, must have washed down the town's sewer pipes, so he persuades his group of eccentric friends, dubbed "The Losers' Club", to help him investigate.  Along the way, the Losers incorporate a few new members who've had similar encounters with "It" or Pennywise the Clown, as It sometimes manifests along with other apparitions of It's victim's greatest fears, including Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor), whose interest in local history reveals a pattern of It's attacks going back decades, and Beverly (Sophia Lillis), a bullied and slandered girl who quickly catches the eyes of the formerly all-boy Losers.
There's quite a few cliched and/or contrived kids to juggle in the Losers' Club; Bill, Ben and Beverly (whoa, Bs) emerge as the closest to a main trio, but then there's also Richie (Finn Wolfhard), the obnoxious loudmouth with oversized glasses, Stanley (Wyatt Oleff), the Jewish kid practicing the Torah for his upcoming bar mitzvah, Eddie (Jack Dylan Grazer), the short hypochondriac, and Mike (Chosen Jacobs), who's reluctantly learning the family business in the slaughterhouse.  It's at least two kids too many, and all of them have their own storylines about the adults in their lives who oppress, abuse and terrorize them.  Plus, there's a whole b-plot with the out-and-out sociopath bully with a mullet, Henry Bowers (Nicholas Hamilton), the kind of recurring Stephen King bully character who entirely lacks any realistic sense of consequences.  It's a lot of characters and plot, bloating the movie to two hours and fifteen minutes, and it's only the first half of the source material.  There seems to be some illusion that the Losers' Club is an impossibly endearing crowd, but they're all very contrived and not a one of them feels like an authentic kid.  There's an idea that if a you show kids swearing and acting rough that automatically feels real, but the kids of IT always stink of self-important attempts to be funny or honest, while rarely being either.  Bill has a stutter and wispy hair, Beverly is simultaneous bullied and abused but also outgoing with manic pixie dream girl levels of confidence, stripping down to show up the Losers cliff-diving before they've even met, and for all its supposedly raw depiction of adolescence, the briefs the boys are wearing in the swimming scene look like they were just barely bought at Wal-Mart five minutes before shooting.  I don't know, that just really stood out to me.

As to the clown, Skarsgard (probably best known previously from Hemlock Grove, and appearances in ALLEGIANT and ATOMIC BLOND) is fine, playing with no shortage of enthusiasm, even when the look of Pennywise is overdone and the teeth are absurd.  Neither he nor the movie as a whole is uniquely scary though, even compared to what's been shown in the previews, and use of cheap tricks like the use of a sudden loud beat to create a jump scare when his eyes come into view, even before there's any clear indication of his true menace is disappointing.  Admittedly, if you come across a clown sitting behind a sewer grate, maybe don't trust that clown, but the little kid talking to him doesn't know any better, and it's obnoxious that the movie feels the need to go right for the jump instead of a more confidently quiet chill.  Going full in with the R rating, it's also sometimes unnecessarily gory in a way that comes off as unintentionally funny (particularly an early scene involving the loss of a limb), when subtlety would have gone a lot further.  There are a few nice moments and spooky imagery though, and the investigations of horrors in the town's history add some points of interest.  Overall, the movie has a very strong, crisp and polished look, being shot by South Korean cinematographer Chung-hoon Chung, whose other work includes multiple Chan-wook Park films, including the iconic look of the original OLDBOY.  The look and sound of the movie is all very fine, standing out among the often faster and looser approach of cheaper contemporary horror films, but child personalities and screenwriting fall way short.  It was never likely to live up to the hype, but it burn brightly enough in the moment for most of those who are looking forward to it, even if it falls out of memory as soon as the next hot thing comes along.

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Review: LOGAN LUCKY

LOGAN LUCKY
★★★
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Screenplay by Rebecca Blunt
Starring: Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Daniel Craig, Riley Keough, Seth MacFarlane, Katie Holmes, Katherine Waterston, Brian Gleeson, Jack Quaid, Sebastian Stan, Hilary Swank, Dwight Yoakam, Farrah Mackenzie
Rated PG-13 for language and some crude comments.
119 minutes
Verdict: Gifted with a colorful, talented cast and a goofy sense of humor, LOGAN LUCKY is more fun than flawed.
YOU MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN LOGAN LUCKY IF YOU LIKED:
OCEAN'S ELEVEN  (2001)
MAGIC MIKE  (2012)
MASTERMINDS  (2016) 
BABY DRIVER  (2017)
HELL OR HIGH WATER  (2016) 

Steven Soderbergh, who has returned after a short-lived intended retirement from directing feature films after the one-two punch of SIDE EFFECTS and BEHIND THE CANDELABRA in 2013, is widely considered one of the great filmmakers working from the past couple decades to the present, although I admit that I've never been able to ascertain a distinct style in his films the way I can with a Spielberg, Scorsese, Fincher or the films of any other director working on a similar level.  Maybe others see a distinct directorial stamp, but honestly, I don't.  He's not what I would consider a "journeyman" director (sort of a filmmaker-for-hire, someone who will get the job done but without a strong artistic through-line or auteurism; a journeyman's career is typically steered by the kind of films they make, while an auteur steers their career with the kinds of films they make, if that makes any sense), because he has more creative control and builds his films up, but his filmography is prolific and widely varied, and the unifying "themes" are sturdiness, quality, well-balanced, and I like most of them, but don't really love most of them.  LOGAN LUCKY is not a departure from that, and it's a lot of fun.
Channing Tatum (teaming up with director Soderbergh for a fourth round, following HAYWIRE, MAGIC MIKE and SIDE EFFECTS) stars as Jimmy Logan, a divorced father and blue collar worker in West Virginia, who gets laid off his construction job at the Charlotte Motor Speedway, and after suffering one indignity too many, he recruits his combat veteran brother Clyde (Adam Driver, best known as Kylo Ren from STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS), and their sister, Mellie (Riley Keough, from MAD MAX: FURY ROAD) in a plan that seems downright decent compared to voting an orange/thin-skinned vulgarian into office: they rob the Charlotte Motor Speedway.  During his recently terminated work resetting the speedway's foundation, Jimmy learned about the pneumatic tubes the speedway uses to transport its money into a vault, and with the help of a seasoned vault-blaster, Joe Bang (Daniel Craig), they plan to break open the tubes and siphon out all the cash at the Coca-Cola 600 NASCAR race.  Trouble is, Joe Bang is currently in prison, so they also have to find a way to break him out, do the job, and get him back into the prison before anyone notices that he's gone.
An obvious comparison point for LOGAN LUCKY is Soderbergh's Ocean's trilogy, beginning with 2001's OCEAN'S ELEVEN, but smashed up with the quirky redneckisms and utter lack of stylishness of Jared Hess's underrated 2016 hillbilly heist comedy MASTERMINDS.  If you've seen MASTERMINDS (it's on Netflix US, folks, get on it), it's like that, but less ridiculous and more intelligent.  Daniel Craig, who, in his most famous role as James Bond is the epitome of English class, hams it up here as an outrageous hillbilly hell-raiser, carefully staying just on the right side of funny/annoying, and Adam Driver (who himself is a veteran of the U.S. Marines), in contrast, is hilariously understated and droll as the quietly cantankerous Clyde Logan, who attributes his last minute loss of a hand as he was ready to return from service in Iraq to a family curse.  Like the Ocean's films, LOGAN LUCKY is star-studded and wonderfully cast in major and minor roles, like Katherine Waterston (star of FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM and ALIEN: COVENANT) as a kindly nurse who Jimmy knew in school and now works in a mobile free clinic, Sebastian Stan (the Winter Soldier, but without his mop) as a pretentious health-obsessed race car driver, Katie Holmes as Jimmy's ex-wife, as well as Hilary Swank and Jim O'Heir (Jerry/Garry/Larry Gergich from Parks & Recreation), among others.  Brian Gleeson and Jack Quaid, who star as Joe Bang's brothers Sam and Fish, run a little closer to the goofier side, as does Seth MacFarlane, in a weirdly unimportant but more extended than expected role as an obnoxious and self-important British businessman who manages one of the racing teams and insults the Logan brothers, but otherwise, the cast is very good all around.  
As with most heist movies, there are confusions that arise and twists, turns and revelations that clarify them, and the matter of whether it ultimately all makes sense or not is debatable in some cases, but the overall movie is fun and funny enough that whether it makes sense or not usually doesn't matter while watching.

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Review: WIND RIVER

WIND RIVER 
★★★
(CRIME-DRAMA/MYSTERY-THRILLER)
Directed by Taylor Sheridan
Screenplay by Taylor Sheridan
Starring: Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen, Graham Greene, Gil Birmingham, Jon Bernthal, Julia Jones, Kelsey Chow, Martin Sensmeier, Tyler Laracca, Gerald Tokala Clifford, James Jordan, Eric Lange, Ian Bohen, Hugh Dillon, Matthew Del Negro, Teo Briones, Tantoo Cardinal, Apesanahkwat
Rated R for strong violence, a rape, disturbing images, and language.
107 minutes
Verdict: Grim and atmospheric, with a lot on its mind but little to say, WIND RIVER is a gripping crime-thriller from a first-time director.
YOU MAY BE INTERESTED IN WIND RIVER IF YOU LIKED:
HELL OR HIGH WATER  (2016)
SICARIO  (2015)
FARGO  (1996)
SMOKE SIGNALS  (1998)
WINTER'S BONE  (2010)

WIND RIVER is described as the third part of a loose trilogy of films written by Taylor Sheridan, a "Frontier Trilogy" comprised of the 2015 drug war thriller SICARIO, directed by Denis Villeneuve, the 2016 cops-and-robbers story HELL OR HIGH WATER, directed by David Mackenzie, and now WIND RIVER, directed by Sheridan himself.  It isn't exactly much of a trilogy, obviously not in terms of narrative, but also not all that much thematically.  They're all neo-westerns (that applies more to WIND RIVER and HELL OR HIGH WATER than SICARIO) and they all deal with relevant social, political and economic issues of modern life in the rural Southwestern United States, but some filmmakers just have recurring themes and films in the same genre without it having to be a trilogy or series or whatever, and these films are about as connected as that.  The idea that Sheridan has expressed though, is of showing how much and how little the western frontier has changed.  The lawmen and bandits have traded in their ponies for trucks, and the concepts of civilization and law are tenuous at best, and the harshness of the land is a cruel reality.
In WIND RIVER, Jeremy Renner stars as Cory Lambert, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agent who works in and around the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming by killing predatory animals like coyotes and mountain lions that pose a threat to local livestock (the movie makes no moral commentary on this type of work), and one morning while tracking a lioness and her cubs on the reservation, he discovers the frozen corpse of a young Native American woman who was beaten and raped before running out barefoot into snow and below-zero temperatures where she died.  Tribal Police Chief Ben (Graham Greene) calls it in to the FBI, and a driven but inexperienced special agent, Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olsen), arrives to investigate but with little inside knowledge of the community or terrain, so she recruits Lambert, and despite being surrounded by uncooperative locals and weather, they begin to peel away the layers of dark secrets to reveal the bitter truth.
Renner's Lambert is a curious contradiction, both advising the victim's father (played by Gil Birmingham, who appeared as Jeff Bridges' Texas Ranger partner in HELL OR HIGH WATER) to not hide himself away from or internalize the grief while steeling up his own like a traditional western strong-man quietly burdened by his guilt and taking the case more personally than he lets on.  Jane mirrors Emily Blunt's SICARIO character as a somewhat naïve but also more good person in the midst of a world that refuses to be governed by law or decency.  It's strange to have this story come so heavily from the perspective of two white characters, even while Birmingham and Greene pull a lot of weight in their screentime, but it's not a case of the movie whitewashing an Native American story in the manner of something like DANCES WITH WOLVES (which, to be fair, is more misguided than outright wrongheaded).  WIND RIVER blurs the lines between tradition of Cowboys and Indians, where Lambert, the "cowboy", is loosely tied to the tribe by marriage, having married an Arapaho woman, and even though they have since divorced, he's trying to be a good father to their young son and associate him to his mother's culture, even after she has left the reservation for good.  He's a familiar presence, but an outsider in important respects. 
Like HELL OR HIGH WATER, WIND RIVER raises questions without getting to direct about things, and rarely with answers, and it doesn't feel like a specific metaphor or commentary.  It's a raw story about modern western frontier, and that brings up questions on its own.  While bringing something more interesting to the table than HELL OR HIGH WATER, Sheridan is clearly not yet as accomplished a director as those who have directed his previous screenplays, and occasionally it feels like a beat has been missed; whether intentionally or not, the effect can be confusing.  It doesn't have the aggressive power of SICARIO, but the material has a lot of strength to it, and the acting is great all around, adding up to a solid and richly atmospheric piece.

                                                                                                                                              Images via The Weinstein Company