Boss Baby (2017)

Someone over at Dreamworks Animation is channeling the spirit of Chuck Jones. Try to watch Boss Baby without being reminded of Jones' specific style. Not just in look but in tone, the animators here have captured something right out of Jones' heyday. It's an homage which captures not only the look but the madcap nature of Jones' work.

It is a strange brew, putting together the wit spirit of Jones' irreverence with a story which is essentially sentimental.  Boss Baby is about the anxiety many firstborns feel upon no longer being an only child. The fears many people of all ages have about not being loved enough, or competing for attention, affection, emotion. Perhaps the story would have just been far to twee without the element of sardonic aftertaste.

So despite the general blase reaction to Boss Baby, I ended up falling in the camp of "it worked." Perhaps because I am a huge fan of Jones' style and the tribute touched me. Perhaps because I am a first born who somewhat relates to the fears explored here. Perhaps because I went in expecting high adrenaline pacing, poop joke infected dialogue, and standard CGI animation tropes that I was surprised to see the level of wit and class executed in Boss Baby. Until the end, I felt Boss Baby walked the delicate tightrope between irony and pathos. The ending was where the film needed to go and I don't fault it on that, but it reminded me that the film is about answering our fears and not upending our ideas of family.

Yes the poop jokes are there (how do you avoid them in a movie about babies?) but often they were cleverer than your average poop joke and sometimes even subtly crafted. The film pulls off the great American Animation trick of peppering the movie with both the pratfalls children enjoy with the side jokes adults like without feeling like we are oscillating between two extremes. So poop jokes and all, Boss Baby impressed. And no, it has nothing to do with any American president.

Boss Baby
Starring:  Alec Baldwin, Jimmy Kimmel, Lisa Kudrow, Tobey Maguire, Steve Buscemi
Director: Tom McGrath
Writer: Michael McCullers

A United Kingdom (2017)

A United Kingdom falls into a category of film which we have all seen many times. It is an encapsulation of western romantic ideals. It focuses these ideals through the lens of a romance, a true story romance, so that it is not only as palatable as possible but as attractive as possible. The films sells the idea of a better world than we live in which can be accomplished through love and that is beautiful, isn't it?

Director Amma Asante has lofty goals and films her story beautifully. She is an accomplished film maker and A United Kingdom is another achievement in her oeuvre. Lush and lovely she captures both the beauty of London and of what will become Botswana, both disparate worlds, both connected in a lovely way in Asante's vision.

But something bugged me the whole way through which I had difficulty putting my finger on. I am fully on board with her morality tale about transcending the racial and socioeconomic constructs we have created and nurture in the western world. For me the only problem with A United Kingdom is how overly simple Asante makes it feel.

Her Sir Seretse Khama and Ruth Williams are perfect people.  They are the sorts of interracial couples that are safe and acceptable, only disrupting the status quo to the effect of their love. But in this specific story, didn't they disrupt even more than that? Still, they face a very straightforward sort of racism when they unite. They encounter thugs in a London alley who make predictable cat calls. Their families oppose their union on the most basic of levels. They countries officially oppose their relationship on simplistic apartheid politics. Yes all of this is true. It really happened. But did it really happen in such a plain manner? And the film's focus on the triumph of their romance over the structural racism of empire and global politics seems like a bit of a fairy tale yet it is presented as history.

A United Kingdom is a lovely story with two accomplished performances and a lovely message but it's paint by numbers approach to one of the most pervasive and horrible problems of the modern worl is a weakness. What A United Kingdom is missing is an insightful analysis of the complicated barriers that this couple, and the people of future Botswana, and the colonized world, have been struggling with for centuries.

I do have to give credit to Asante for fitting in a bit of truth in how the British colonialism reinforces the conflict within Khama's African nation. She is able to show, somewhat, how the excuse is used that it is the people and culture of Bechuanaland that are opposing their king's relationship with his white wife, but that the seeds of this were planted and being fostered by the colonialist powers. There is a cleverly inserted scene where the British Prime Minister explains in a sort of "global politics for dummies" sort of way why "good people" support horrible bigotry for economic reasons. I wish the film had done more than just insert these moments. But it is there, along with the love story.

Still, it is a testament to Asante's skills as a film maker that she has made a film as compelling as this anyway. It is hard not to smile as you watch Oyelowo and Pike fall in love with each other. Even if you know the story is selling their true legacy a bit short, their story remains a powerful one and Asante has told it beautifully.

A United Kingdom
Starring: David Oyelowo, Rosamund Pike, Terry Pheto, Jack Davenport, Tom Felton
Director: Amma Asante
Writer: Guy Hibbert

Life (2017)

Life ends up as a fairly satisfying if standard thriller. It packs in all it needs to to entertain but doesn't really go beyond that. I felt that what was holding Life back was just how familiar it all felt. It is sort of a conglomeration of a number of other familiar and loved films from Alien to 2001 to The Blob to The Thing, to Gravity. It's a combination that generally works, producing a product which doesn't bore for 100ish minutes but feels a bit like it has all been done before.

This was most succinctly captured in Ryan Reynolds' performance which he just copied from Deadpool, you know the character we expect from Reynolds at this point. Life is a good idea just not an original one. And there really isn't anything wrong with that for 100ish minutes.

In fact there is so little to say about Life that I am pretty much done except to say that it has a rather bold ending which impressed me. It's one of those films that will make a good watch when there isn't anything better on.

Life
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson, Hiroyuka Sanada, Ariyon Bakara, Ryan Reynolds
Director: Daniel Espinosa
Writers: Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick

Beauty and the Beast (2017)

Disney has a spotty at best track record with their "live action" adaptations of their own animated library. Sure they rake in the money but often they leave me feeling cold. Their retelling of Cinderella lost almost all of the story's magic. Alice and Wonderland was a mess. Jungle Book managed to find a way to tell the story in a new way which resonated with me, but more often than not, I find myself longing for the superior animated films. Perhaps the lesson is just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should.

So along comes the "live action" Beauty and The Beast, a film which is almost as animated (like Jungle Book) as the film is it aping. As I first began watching it, I found myself getting excited as certain images appeared, certain melodies played, the film evoked emotions tied to the other film. You see Disney's 1991 Beauty and the Beast is one of my favorite films of all time. I've enjoyed other adaptations of this story but there is something (a lot of somethings) about that film which fill my heart. I can watch it over and over, tirelessly. I know it inside out. I think it it truly one of the best films ever made.

So the question becomes why remake it? I know, I know, the cash. I get it. Disney has never shied away from being all about the cash. But for audiences, fans? I've never bought the argument that "new audiences" need to discover something and therefore a new version is needed. New audiences can discover something old. I wasn't alive when The Wizard of Oz was made, neither was my mother, yet I discovered that and loved it. A remake of Casablanca isn't necessary for me to realize how amazing it is. We've all shown our children Disney's Beauty and the Beast and they can love it without seeing it "updated." So what is the point?

Well I imagine it would be to offer something new. So what does this new version offer? Spectacular visuals? Okay. Then in the age of War of the Planet of the Apes and Kong Skull Island why can't they make a Beast which doesn't look like video game animation? I felt his realization was horrible. Disney's approach to the enchanted objects is right out of a Michael Bay Transformers movie; they make they so over-the-top intricate they don't feel like real objects anyway. So for me the visuals weren't what was going to make this trip to the cinema necessary.

Perhaps new music. Here's a challenge. The work of Ashman and Menkin is among the best music cinema has ever produced. In fact it is in the moments of songs like Bell and Be Our Guest and Gaston are being performed that the film came the most to life for me. This is the first of Disney's "live action" remakes which embraces the fact that it's a musical and does the full on Hollywood musical treatment. I loved that! But the new music brings the film to a crashing halt. It's not terrible for sure but juxtaposed with the amazing original music they new songs feel so pedestrian, so un-singable. It brought the failings of this film into stark contrast with the magic of the original film. 

What I truly can't understand is why they went there when they already had more music to use. The Broadway musical version's additional songs are also not as amazing as the original film's melodies, but they are still better than what was produced for this. Why not use Human Again or If I Can't Love Her? They are far more memorable than the dreary How Does a Moment Last Forever and Evermore.

So what else can this new film offer? Perhaps a more fleshed out story? I'm not sure a more fleshed out story is needed or desirable but why not? Again, it is the moments where the film tries to fill in the holes where I felt it lost steam. Belle's mother's story really isn't needed, never resolved in a satisfying way, and bogs down the plot. Back stories for the objects really don't add anything either although I at least found them less distracting. Adding the enchantress to the story adds nothing either. None of the so called "plot holes" of the original film are problematic enough (if at all really) to need "fixing" so the attempt to do so actually feels more clumsy. 

But the secret to a good telling of Beauty and the Beast is the love story. Pulling that off, which is hard based on the realities of telling a story like this, is the true trick. And I felt all the rest of what this film was doing took away from that. I never got the chemistry between Belle and Prince Adam or his relationship with his staff which felt so real in the animated film. Like Cinderella, it feels like much of what is magical about the story gets lost in the attempts to make the film real.

Then there were the parts that I actively disliked. There is much hullabaloo about the film makers making LeFou gay. They spend a lot of time on this subplot but the vast majority of it is about making jokes about this. The most obviously gay scenes comic relief moments. There is a truly offensive scene where 3 men are attacked by a living wardrobe and are made to wear women's clothes (a similar scene is in the animated film but done completely differently). Two men run screaming but one revels in his realization that he loves wearing the dress, make up, and wig. And the audience burst out laughing. In 2017 are we not passed this? How would it make anyone feel to be in that audience if they could relate to that character's situation and be surround by people laughing at them? I don't care that the film is made by a gay film maker, that doesn't make this okay. And LeFou's character is so poorly handled. His love of Gaston is presented as his weakness. In the original film he's an idiot, a sycophant, clamoring after the town leader like the rest of the simple townsfolk. Here he's different, his same sex attraction corrupts him. And once he is freed from that, once he defects, there is a scene where he gets to dance with a man, and once again it is played for laughs. Ugh.

But there were parts which swept me up in the imagination. Director Condon is a wonderful director of musicals and seeing the original numbers play out like an old fashioned Hollywood musical were amazing. But then again that was true in the original film too... so why did I need it again?

For me Beauty and the Beast wasn't terrible it just proves that there is no reason for it. It wasn't terrible like Cinderella but it wasn't a reinvention like Jungle Book. I won't return to this time and time again. I won't pass it along to the next generation. It is just what it is. A copy. A facsimile of something better. Like remakes of Let The Right One In and Oldboy, this Beauty and the Beast just made me wish I was watching the original.

Beauty and the Beast
Starring: Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, Ewan McGregor, Emma Thompson, Ian McKellen, Luke Evans, Josh Gad, Stanley Tucci, Gugu Mbatha-Raw
Director: Bill Condon
Writers: Stephen Chbosky, Evan Spiliotopoulos

T2 Trainspotting

The original Trainspotting was part of the late 90s wave of new (mostly American) film makers redefining what popular cinema could be. Fincher, Tarantino, (Paul Thomas) Anderson,  (Wes) Anderson, Wachowskis, Jonze, Russell, and Boyle were bursting on the scene with their oh-too-cool first features which were accessible enough to move beyond the hipster crowd into the mall cinemas. They've all become establishment now, winning awards and settling into more mainstream media, Boyle with his Oscar winning Slumdog Millionaire and more traditionally respectable films like 127 Hours, Steve Jobs, and the upcoming Battle of the Sexes. But Trainspotting, like his slick debut Shallow Grave, holds a special place in the hipster filmography for the way it romanticizes heroine culture while simultaneously  terrifying us of it.

It's brilliance truly came in Boyles smart means of capturing the surrealism of altered reality, adding charm and humour, and patting its audience enough on the back for not being the subject. It's almost druggie tourism, where we love how cool it all is but enjoy being just voyeurs. We "choose life" and the humdrum lives we lead as critiqued by the film's subjects, is rewarded by the smugness we get as the audience.

What's fascinating with seeing Boyle revisit this 20 years later, featuring actors who have become  movie stars (and TV stars), is how he can't do this again. T2 (awkwardly already the name of a sequel to a pretty big movie) isn't focused on the travails of being addicted to drugs and drowning in crime. It's focused on the mundane questions of divorce, children, health concerns, employment, loss/regret and all those things we thought these guys were immune to. There was the excitement at the end of Trainspotting which came from "Rentboy" pulling off his escape. And the melancholy truth explored in T2 is that he escaped to the real world. For me T2 had more pathos than its predecessor.

Renton and Boyle have the same journey here, a return to something they just can't capture again. Boyle seems self-aware of that, and that's where T2 becomes the most enjoyable, most insightful.  T2 visually is reminiscent of the original film but it takes this story and its characters to a logical but somewhat tragic place. It is easy to just predict their deaths based on their lifestyles in the first film, but there is something much truer, much more disappointing, in seeing them get to here.  

Sequels and remakes need a reason to exist and it has to be more than just wanting to see more of the same. T2 and Boyle eschew the more of the same to find a fascinating exploration of aging past the reject the future lifestyle of the young Renton and friends. And that makes revisiting them more interesting than I expected it would. Being the same age of the characters, even if separated by culture, nationality, and socioeconomic class, I related to them finding themselves at this place in life. Boyle's achievement here is his honesty with his story.

For example, Renton has his iconic "choose life" speech only this time he says it, not as mantra, but as description of what he might say and why. He, and we, are reflecting on where we were and where we ended up, and where we are going. While it certainly feels less revolutionary, it feels more mature and perhaps even more substantial. T2 ends up being a worth follow up even if it may not have the impact of the film it is following.

T2 Trainspotting
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Johnny Lee Miller, Robert Carlyle, Kelly MacDonald
Director: Danny Boyle
Writer: John Hodge

Kong Skull Island (2017)

I believe whenever a movie is remade, or revisited, or continued (as in a sequel) there needs to be a reason. It needs to offer something new, something that gives us a purpose in seeing a new film and not just rewatching what has come before. In the case
of King Kong this is especially true as what has come before has been so strong.

The original King Kong is famously classic. It, like most of its successors is a critique of colonialism and imperialism. It has its flaws but remains powerful in its imagery and narrative. The 70s remake was an entertaining exercise in high camp. Peter Jackson's visually stunning 2005 take is a post-modern reminagining of the '33 original, glorious is scope if a little excessive. Each touched in its own way on the themes of empire. So what new can this new Kong film offer.

Kong Skull Island is the most unique of the big remakes. It is a hybrid of sorts in that it mixes the camp of the 70s remake (the era in which this film is set), a ties it to the grandeur of the other films to create something new. This isn't the Kong story we've seen before. It makes references to the original stories but tells something new. This, it turns out, is what I needed in a new Kong film. As I don't like to be fed the same thing I've already seen, I appreciated seeing something brand new.  The originality of this film is partially due to its role in setting up a "shared universe" for giant monsters (along with Godzilla - stick around past the credits) but mostly due to the masterful direction of Jordan Vogt-Roberts (Kings of Summer) who gives us something wholly kinetic and lush to watch in this adventure/morality tale.

Kong Skull Island takes very little time setting up its story and soon grabs you and throws you into the mess of things. Vogt-Roberts revels in his 70s camp and fills his story with character archetypes just up to a limit, and then uses that setting to tell what turns out to be a very smart and exciting adventure story. The theme of things "not belonging to us" is laid over a story which invests us in his thin but familiar characters. Vogt-Roberts shows us how a tent-pole film is done right. His film turns out to be 2 hours of intelligent, stylized fun. And by paying homage to but not repeating Kong films of the past, he refreshes the ideas for us so nothing feels stale.

The recent Godzilla remake which is tied to this film series, in its attempt to be serious, lost steam as it went along. But Skull Island will have none of that. If this series is going to find its groove hopefully it can ape this film's tone and style and make us excited about giant monsters again.

Kong Skull Island
Director: Jordan Vogt-Roberts
Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, John Goodman, Brie Larson, Tom Hiddleston, Jing Tian, John C. Reilly
Writers: Dan Gilroy, Max Borenstein, Derek Connolly

La Belle et la Bête (2016 North American release)

There are many tellings of the story of Beauty and the Beast. Common among them are some themes. For example, the Beast is truly monstrous, not just in form but in behavior as well. There is usually a stolen rose, for which imprisonment and or death is a harsh penalty that the Beast exerts. Another common trait is how heroic Belle (often the beauty's name) is portrayed. She sacrifices herself to save (at least) one other. Her beauty is also a physical manifestation of her inner soul. What truly draws us to her is her strength, courage, and loving heart. Finally she always redeems the Beast, so that his form can then match his saved soul. She rescues him, her captor, from his damnation, despite having no moral obligation to do so. Beauty and the Beast inverts the usual fairy tale heroic tropes, specifically commenting on gender and how it is constructed (perhaps because the original fairy tale was written by a woman, Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve), and confronts male violence and ownership of women. Belle's heroism isn't depicted through brute strength but through her powerful love. Any good adaptation picks up on these themes.

Of the many filmed versions, there are two generally considered classics, Jean Cocteau's 1946 French adaptation and Disney's 1991 animated film. Both add elements and change the story slightly. For example, both add a romantic rival as a villain, one who further embodies the least desirable qualities of masculinity in their eras. Both neuter the sexuality of the tale and focus on a more chaste affection. Both are spectacular examples of cinema.  Leave it to the French to inject some of that eroticism back into this feminist fairy tale.

Director Christoph Gans, whose Le Pacte des Loups is my favorite werewolf film, returns from a long absence behind the camera to do a new retelling of the classic story, the French way. He sticks close to de Villeneuve's tale with the merchant ships sinking, Belle's brothers and sisters, the stolen rose, but adds his own embellishments such as Belle seeing the Beast's story told through a magic mirror (yes there is always a magic mirror of some sort - this one is vagina shaped just so we don't miss the point). He adds a sexuality which is missing from the more famous versions which, in many ways, is an integral part of the story since it is about passion saving us although a different sort of passion than the Christian story.

He sets his story in the lushest of possible worlds. Even Belle's family's poverty is idyllically pastoral and lovely. And this Beast's castle is as magical and otherworldly as anything you've seen on screen. Belle, played perfectly by Léa Seydoux, is the ideal heroine, and like the Belles who have come before her she saves everyone around her, including her captor. Vincent Cassel (almost typecast as the Beast) is the sympathetic Beast. I think he manages the difficult task of being both horrible and lovable.  Beauty and the Beast tells us a difficult story, about loving those who hurt us and the power in that, about the power available to women in our world, about the vileness of male aggression. Redeeming the Beast is not an easy thing for a film to get us to do. Some (like Disney's film) do it mostly by minimizing the Beast's crimes. Others (like Cocteau's film) show the Beast surrendering his power. Here, the story shows us how the Beast is driven to his choices through the cures of his own beastly actions or hyper masculinity meaning only feminine power can redeem him.

Gans' film is lush and lovely and entirely entertaining. He tells it more as a fairy tale than literal story, showing us that the redeemed man and the heroic woman may or may not be the prince and princess of a fairy story and that story may just be the allegory we need to understand this tale. His visuals are as fantastic as anything American and his happily ever after feels well deserved. For me his take felt fresh enough to warrant a new telling and it's beautiful to watch as well.

La Belle et la Bête
Starring: Léa Seydoux, Vincent Cassel
Director: Christophe Gans
Writers: Chritophe Gans, Sandra Vo-Anh

XX (2017)

Being gender blind is as harmful as being colour blind. Ignoring the reality of women's voices not being heard in cinema is tantamount to silencing women's voices. So an exercise like XX, a horror anthology which gives a platform for women directors to tell their stories of what terrifies them, is fascinating in and of itself. Exploring how women experience horror outside the common parameters of the male gaze is what sets XX apart from other mainstream horror films.

Like any anthology, XX has its highs and lows.  The film is broken down into 4 stories with a fifth framing sequence (probably the creepiest part of the film) leading us into and through the rest. While one is straight up horror (a monster stalking and killing a group of campers), the rest are more explorations of creepy themes. One of those is more dark comedy than true horror. XX is a real mixed bag both in terms of content and impact.

For me the strongest pieces were the ones which explored the haunting fears more than the monstrous ones. Both Jovanka Vuckovic's The Box and Karen Kusama's Her Only Living Son delve into the disquieting terror that comes to parents as they wrestle with their responsibilities. Both were unsettling and powerful if not outright "scary." Both touch on the way our parenting roles are gendered in western culture and both end with difficult sacrifice. Kusama impressed me with 2016's The Invitation which struggled with parenting loss as well. I am eager to see where she is going next.

The one that left me the least impressed was the out right horror film Don't Fall, a fairly typical feeling monster movie which doesn't have enough time to get us to care about its story before it's over. The short running time just didn't allow for the sort of tension to build which this story needed.

So XX offers some things more fascinating than other parts but it is worth checking out just to explore how horror can look different when seen through various eyes.

XX
Directors: Roxanne Benjamin, Sofia Carrillo, St. Vincent, Jovanka Vuckovic, Karen Kusama

Table 19 (2017)

In many ways Table 19 is the quintessential Anna Kendrick movie. It's fairly awkward, somewhat charming, a bit adorable, not overly long on depth, and hard to dislike. It's pretty much any Anna Kendrick role, or at least the image she has started to become. I think Kendrick has a great deal of talent and potential but, like many in Hollywood, outside of a handful of roles that show that off, she gets slotted into these sorts of roles (awkward, charming, adorable, short on depth) and that's what we begin to expect of her. She is at risk of becoming a cliche of herself and Table 19 is not helping.

Table 19 is not terrible. There were many parts I enjoyed. But the film is thin, thin, thin on plot, character development, and engagement and mostly skates by on the charm of its cast. Robinson and Kudrow are an inspired couple if their story arc wasn't so cliche and wrapped up all to easily. Squibb is always a delight and is one of the highlights of the film. Mercahnt and Revolori are oddly placed here (I get they are supposed to be odd - but they feel odd even in this context). And then there is Kendrick in the midst of it all being Kendrick and not holding a rather pedantic film together.

I like a good "day in the life" movie which follows a group of misfits through a pivotal moment in their lives but it needs to feel more honest than this. There are moments where I felt it was almost working. I liked the wedding cover band playing 80s hits as the soundtrack. I liked that the film doesn't go where you think it will with Kendrick's romance. But it never quite gels into something more than forgettable.

I recommend Kendrick stop playing to her strengths and push herself outside her comfort zone or else all she'll get is films like Table 19.

Table 19
Starring: Anna Kendrick, June Squibb, Craig Robinson, Lisa Kudrow, Stephen Merchant, Tony Revolori
Writer/Director: Jeffery Blitz

Logan (2017)

"Mutation: it is the key to our evolution. It is how we have evolved from a single-celled organism into the dominant species on the planet. This process is slow, and normally taking thousands and thousands of years. But every few hundred millennia, evolution leaps forward."

In my opinion there isn't a "superhero genre." Despite the mold many movies about "superheroes" fall into, and it perpetuated by the successful Marvel Universe franchise, the formula which those movies play to isn't necessitated by the presence of fantastic powers or sci-fi abilities. The "superhero," like any trope of modern cinema, can be a place holder for whatever expression the film maker wishes it to be.

Superhero movies have been evolving for some time growing into films with deeper themes, exploring darker aspects of humanity, and we are still wrestling with how to process them as the "big" films remain rather popcorny. Logan, is a good example of that evolution, a film which takes its inspirations more from westerns and film noir, to explore themes such as finding meaning in ones life, loosing that which has made you who you are, passing along the torch to a future, a future which may not be very bright.  

Logan, like some other recent movies based on comics, is more like a cinematic equivalent to a graphic novel than to a comic book. It plays outside the boundaries which have been prescribed. It touches on stories that have come before but sets itself in a more self-contained narrative. Director Mangold has delivered both what fans have been asking for (the kind of Wolverine movie we all knew we wanted but didn't know how to articulate) and took us beyond our expectations.

Logan isn't just a triumph for the film maker, it is a triumph for its two main leads. Both Jackman and Stewart, who are always good in these roles, have delivered the very best performances these characters have received (or will ever get). Certainly they are both talented actors, but perhaps, like a stage performer who has grown so intimate with their characters over the course of a long theatrical run, these actors have found a peace with their roles after playing them so many times on screen. Logan is a fitting tribute to the personas and the performers.

Logan is very engaging and entertaining but it's also not an easy watch. It asks a lot of its audience but it makes it worth it. It is not only one of the strongest films in the X-men franchise, but a strong film overall.

Logan
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Laura Kinney, Richard E Grant, Stephen Merchant, Boyd Holbrook
Writer/Director: James Mangold