Popcorn Kernels: Runners-Up

In my quest for Oscar nominees, I’ve come across a couple flicks that didn’t quite manage to snag the coveted Best Picture slot. Here are my mini-reviews. These are their stories.

The Danish Girl

Year: 2015

Director: Tom Hooper

Cast: Eddie Redmayne, Alicia Vikander, Amber Heard

Run Time: 1 hour 59 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

In 1920’s Denmark, celebrated painter Einar Wegener begins to transition into a woman (Lili Elbe), becoming a transgender pioneer while attempting to maintain a relationship with his wife Gerda. Incidentally, it’s almost impossible to pick the right pronoun when somebody is transitioning mid-sentence. Somebody should get on that.

Tom Hooper is the arthouse counterpart to Tobe Hooper. Both men with dubiously inconsistent directing prowess, they’ve managed to stumble their way into wide acclaim and the occasional masterpiece. While Tobe might be more of a household name thanks to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Poltergeist, Tom has earned himself a ludicrously high number of Oscar nominations. It’s up to you to decide which fate is better. So here we have The Danish Girl, his follow-up to The King’s Speech and Les Misérables, and the Oscarbaitiest film of his career to date, which is saying something.

Let me tell you right off the bat, the man’s direction is quite distinctly one of the worst things about the film, which is actually pretty decent, all things considered. Stagey and far too focused on geometry rather than human emotion, Hooper’s work stifles the film while keeping the audience at arm’s length. He frames people behind objects to an almost obnoxious degree, as though deliberately baiting viewers to call him out. It’s a load of distracting nonsense that obscures what could be a fun, lush melodrama. 

The material is already so far from reality (based on a book that’s a fictional account of the lives of Lili and Gerda, it is two planes removed from the truth, which is more interesting but light-years less angsty) that a truly wonderful over-the-top weepy could have been born from The Danish Girl. However, as it stands, the film is just a dry vehicle for two incredibly strong performances. If you think of stars Eddie Redmayne an Alicia Vikander (fresh from her starmaking turn in Ex Machina) as a work of art, the film itself is just a particularly ostentatious frame in which they are being displayed.

As far as the co-stars have terrific, bristling chemistry together, their individual performances are even better. Eddie Redmayne really is a triumph here, playing a real person rather than a dramatic type. There is one moment early on in the movie where his breath catches nervously upon being discovered. It’s a microscopic moment, but it took my breath away. Even more notable for her subtlety, Vikander holds her own, frequently hoisting the movie on her back and carrying it single-handedly across the finish line. For all that Redmayne is spectacular, Vikander is steadfast and never flickers. This is partially the script and partially her performance, but The Danish Girl is primarily her story and for good reason.

There are many better films that The Danish Girl could have been, but at least the one that it is has some incredible elements. And Amber Heard doesn’t have enough scenes to be a distraction, even though her skill has much improved in the decade since All the Boys Love Mandy Lane. Thank goodness for small favors. So really, the movie succeeds in spite of Hooper and there’s absolutely no question why The Danish Girl is leading the Oscar acting categories yet notably absent from Best Picture.

Rating: 6/10

Joy

Year: 2015

Director: David O. Russell

Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Bradley Cooper 

Run Time: 2 hours 4 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

A young woman puts her life’s savings on the line to pursue her dream: inventing things that improve the lives of others and selling them on QVC.

I’ve been compromised. After avoiding the twee-looking ensemble exploits of David O. Russell’s two previous Oscar-nominated films, I finally caved and watched Joy. Although it’s more of a Jennifer Lawrence showcase than anything, it’s nevertheless the third of a decreasingly prestigious bunch. We don’t have much time, so let’s get into it.

For the first half of its run time, Joy is – let’s be frank – uncompromisingly messy. A nervous attempt at evoking the fairy tale charm of Amélie, it’s too clammy and self-serious to pull off that live action cartoon feeling. This section is filled to the brim with broad characterizations, meta narration, and metaphors so clunky that you couldn’t even sell them for scrap. One in particular, a deranged and obvious cicada metaphor that treats the insects like metamorphosing butterflies, is actually rejected by the film itself in a line explicitly decrying its presence.

Even the technical aspects come crumbling down around Joy’s first act. The pacing goes haywire, leaping through scenes at a breakneck speed, the young actress playing Joy’s daughter (oh yeah, Jennifer Lawrence’s character is both named Joy and a mother of two – roll with me, here) seems to be actively attempting to tank her scenes with a dizzy, blank-faced performance, and there’s a flubbed line reading that somehow managed to avoid getting excised despite being in glaring need of another take. It’s amateurish at best, hopelessly pandering at worst.

The film finally pulls itself together with the introduction of Bradley Cooper’s character, who gets an entrance that treats him like an actual king. With all the fanfare his appearance gets, you’d think that Joy had resurrected Elvis. It’s deeply mystifying, but Cooper does a terrific job injecting the proceedings with raw, unfiltered life, finally giving Lawrence something concrete to play off. Up to this point, she’s been performing in a vacuum and she finally gets to blossom, giving her role an anxious, immediate humanity.

Joy’s newfound coherence and quality doesn’t make it an exquisite film – a series of obligatory and profoundly hollow melodrama beats see to that. But the film finally comes into its own, finishing off its lot with engaging pizzazz, even managing to make a QVC infomercial breathe with crackling energy. Here, the camera is actually awake, transforming its initial lunatic aspirations into a more straightforward and satisfying story.

All in all, Joy isn’t terribly recommendable, though it’s a light enough trifle that it’s not a trial to sit through. The vastly improved second half effectively cancels out the first half’s muddled tangle, resulting in a film that leaves exactly no impression. I’ll take this over a bad impression any day, but I can’t help but wish I got more out of it.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1107

Funnily, Last Summer

Year: 2001

Director: David Wain

Cast: Janeane Garofalo, David Hyde Pierce, Michael Showalter

Run Time: 1 hour 37 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

It's a surprise I've managed to avoid seeing Wet Hot American Summer for so long, considering that I have a long-documented love affair with 80's summer camp movies and absurdist comedies. 

What's not a surprise, however, is how long it took me to write this review. Considering how a list of great jokes doesn't really count as legitimate film analysis and considering how there's precious little more than great jokes in the construction of WHAS, there's not a lot else to say.

But guess what! I'm gonna say it anyway. Suckers.

Wet Hot American Summer is essentially a series of interconnected sketches given context through the location and residents of Camp Firewood, a 1981 Jewish summer camp in the forests of Maine. Because he is shown first and has the most complete character arc, the de facto protagonist is nerdy counselor Coop Cooperberg (Michael Showalter), but the story is mostly composed of vignettes starring a clown car of contemporary and future stars.

We've got Romy and Michele's Janeane Garofalo as the head counselor, Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers' Paul Rudd as the resident bad boy, Elizabeth Banks as his bikini-clad companion, David Hyde Pierce as the astrophysicist next door, and Amy Freaking Poehler and Bradley Hulking Cooper as the officious siblings who run the talent show. The ensemble is fleshed out with Ken Marino (In A World...), Michael Ian Black (Ed), and Molly Shannon (SNL), among about a dozen others. Seriously, the wattage on this tiny 2001 comedy could short out every circuit breaker in a large city. Or one of Paris Hilton's smaller vacation homes.

My face every time a new character comes onscreen.

Think of all the Ant-Man/Pitch Perfect spin-offs this pairing could create.

Over the course of its 97 minutes, WHAS runs the gamut of just about every type of comedy under the sun (not to mention one or two lunar styles), but its biggest strength lies in absurdist subversion of the typical tropes of the teen sex comedy. Entire lung-busting scenes are built from the insertion of just one cliché line and the exploration of its implications. The screenwriters pick apart semiotics of the genre that the typical audience would never pick up on because they're so accustomed to the formula that they just don't think about it anymore.

Wet Hot American Summer is willing to do that thinking, and as a result, many of its parodic scenes are intelligently tilted into the absurd. In general, the absurdity of the film is its shining light, as the gods of comedy arbitrarily raise the stakes in low drama scenes, thwart any possible expectations, and spur laughter from even the stoniest of guts. Also, the denouement creates a surprisingly feminist thesis, and the films treatment of homosexuality as a running gag is similarly sensitive, surpassing even the genre titan Will & Grace in terms of its treatment of minority sexualities.

You might notice that I'm tip-toeing around the actual contents of these scenes, but that's because spoiling the jokes completely removes any reason to view the film. And therein lies the biggest flaw of Wet Hot American Summer. 

Besides this haircut, I mean.

Much of the comedy is genuinely enjoyable, but the film has no meat and potatoes. It's all sugar, and the rush wears off quickly. The sketches have no geographical or character continuity between them, and some of them are exceedingly pointless, tossing themselves like boulders in the path of the film's pacing. Two of the film's worst moments are given favored run times, and one recurring gag culminates in a sputtering finale that not only utterly fails to even attempt to be funny, but interrupts the film during a key third act moment.

But all in all, Wet Hot American Summer is necessary viewing for any fan of teen romps like American Pie or scatterbrained absurdity like Monty Python or National Lampoon. In spite of its flaws and its relative shallowness (as compared to true classics like Airplane! and other Leslie Nielsen vehicles, in both senses of the word), it has a lot of joy to give and I can't bring myself to deny anybody of its pleasures.

TL;DR: Wet Hot American Summer is an intelligent absurdist comedy that's genuinely funny, but perhaps too thin to be a truly unimpeachable classic.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 745

Awesome Mix: Volume 1

Year: 2014

Director: James Gunn

Cast: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista

Run Time: 2 hours 1 minute

MPAA Rating: PG-13

For any but the most die-hard comic book fans (*coughcoughHenry*), the Marvel Cinematic universe has been wearing out its welcome. Despite the relative merits or deficits of Captain America: The Winter Soldier or Thor: The Dark World (this year also overloaded us with another Amazing Spider-Man and X-Men: Days of Future Past), the overwhelming feeling is that of one long drawn breath while we anticipate Avengers: Age of Ultron.

Notice how none of those films are numbered. No easy-to-follow chronology like Iron Man 2 and 3. That's because Marvel knows that if they give us Cap 2 or X-Men 7, they'll tip us off to just how many of these darn movies they're shoving into cinemas and the weariness will set in like a rot. Again, to be clear, I'm not saying there is anything wrong with these movies, merely that the stranglehold of Marvel in American cinemas has been slowly draining the enthusiasm of the public.

Luckily, almost supernaturally, the company managed to transform an almost unknown series into a ringer. It is quite obvious in retrospect that Guardians of the Galaxy would reignite the Marvel craze like no other film since Avengers for one reason and one reason only. They hired an auteur. Because, frankly, nobody cared about the Guardians of the Galaxy comics, director/writer James Gunn was allowed to make a film imbued with his traditional sense of humor (derived from years of writing for the notorious production company Troma and fighting his way through the horror trenches) rather than just dumping out another homogenized and slick superhero thriller.

Also, considering that he is the man who made this happen, he is nothing less than a god.

So, the story. Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) is an intergalactic outlaw who operates under the name Starlord, abducted from Earth at a young age in 1988 and raised by Ravagers, a roving band of thieves led by Yondu (Michael Rooker of The Walking Dead and Slither), a blue dude with a hella cool magic science arrow.

After some plot happens, Starlord ends up thrown together with a ragtag band of escaping prisoners after stealing a mysterious orb from a deserted planet. These prisoners with their clashing motives and personalities, end up becoming unlikely friends and guarding some galaxies or whatever. 

Anyway, they are Rocket (Bradley Cooper), a wisecracking bounty hunter raccoon, his best friend/partner/house plant Groot (Vin Diesel), an animated tree-being who only has enough intelligence to say "I Am Groot," and Drex (Dave Bautista), a muscle-bound warrior whose race has no concept of metaphor, so he takes everything quite literally to hilarious effect.

Last but (debatably) not least is Gamora (Zoe Saldana, who must have gotten so fit from all the times she had to walk up stairs so we could see her butt), a green alien woman adopted by Thanos (Josh Brolin), this film's obvious sequel tag villain who, despite his vast power and supposed menace mostly just looks like a blue Jay Leno. When Thanos lends her and her sister Nebula (Oculus' Karen Gillan) to the eeeeeevil Ronan (Lee Pace) as assassins, she betrays him in an attempt to obtain the orb he so covets and sell it so she can buy a ticket to a better life.

Any life is a better life with him.

I really don't want to get into the mechanics of the plot beyond the level of character because, let's face it, it's really not important. Everybody wants the MacGuffin. MacGuffin holds infinite power. Bad guy meets with bigger bad guy on mysterious hunk of rock. Stop the bad guy from using it to destroy the galaxy. (I know it's the title, but man what a narrow-minded evil plot. Just one galaxy? Color me unimpressed.) Bing bang boom.

The plot is typical Marvel, but it's the trappings that allow it to transcend as one of the best superhero movies of... definitely the decade, maybe even the century. It's not what you say, it's how you say it. And James Gunn can really... say.

Guardians of the Galaxy puts witty humor at the forefront, shoving action and plot into a secondary position (smart, because it is both of these elements that are the weakest in the film - the first thanks to some occassionally haphazard editing, the second due to a certain lack of emotional heft). This is a witty comedy movie with some superhero elements, not the other way around like your Iron Mans or your Avengers.

Because of its ability to exist almost entirely unbeholden to a truly large-scale story, the characters have room to breathe and bounce off one another, providing thoroughly comic entertainment. By which I mean two things, in that it is consistently, effervescently hilarious and that it provides the joy and amazement of experiencing an actual comic book with all the flash and glamour and not-so-thematic bedazzlement that that entails. Although those looking for a more solid thematic throughline or character arc certainly have material to work with, that's not what we're about here.

We are too cool for school by a considerable margin.

With a fantastic soundtrack of 70's and 80's pop songs that acts as both an ironic underscore to a sci-fi extravaganza and a link to Starlord's eternal childhood and connection to Earth, Guardians of the Galaxy really didn't have to work hard to get me on board (AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH'M, hooked on a feelin'). And it shouldn't have to work hard for you either, if you're receptive to a wonderful bit of popcorn movie mayhem.

Of course there are flaws. The largely unmotivated villains are too generic to ever feel like a legitimate threat, despite game performances by two wonderful actors. The editing will occasionally slip up and cram too many images together to make sense of a few sequences. There is a tendency to overexplain plot points in the dialogue. Glenn Close is wasted in a weak "point and gasp" role.

But honestly you don't notice any of that when the lights go down and Gunn hits you with the good stuff. This is his first big break to show off his style to the world and he pulled out all the stops, coordinating gags so effortlessly that they hit with the impact of a missed step when walking down the stairs.

And last but not least, the actors are delightful. The movie with be nothing without them, considering how much of the humor is grounded in their characters and interactions. Chris Pratt is the obvious anchor, combining his awkward and adorable Parks and Rec style with an action hero stud body. If, after this, there's not more Chris Pratt in cinemas, I will personally tear down my local theater brick by brick.

Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel are also standouts as comic relief characters that almost supernaturally fail to get on my nerves. The digital animation for both these characters is astounding and their timing is pitch perfect. And Dave Bautista makes you forget he was ever involved in the WWE, a gargantuan feat if you ask me. Only Saldana gives a performance not worth raving about, but in a less-developed, more straight-faced role. You can't blame her for the character. And she does get some great moments.

Anyway. Guardians of the Galaxy. Go see it. It might not be the most important movie of the year. It's not going to change your life or alter your worldview. But if you want to go to the movies and just have yourself a meaty slab of fun, get your tickets now.

TL;DR: Guardians of the Galaxy is a dazzling sci-fi comedy bolstered by impressive performances and an auteur for the ages.

Rating: 8/10

Should I Spend Money On This? Yaaaaaaaas!

Word Count: 1311

Reviews In This Series

Guardians of the Galaxy (Gunn, 2014)

Avengers: Infinity War (Russo & Russo, 2018)

Ant-Man and the Wasp (Reed, 2018)

Archive: May 26, 2013

Never Drinking Again - The Hangover Part III

Year: 2013
Director: Todd Phillip
Cast: Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis
Run Time: 1 hour 40 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

Let’s start with the good. Evidently, the filmmakers listened to the critics ofThe Hangover II. The major complaints about that film were as follows:

 1) It was an exact rehash of the events of the original.

 2) The series unabashedly reveled in offensive frat boy comedy, relying on bodily humor, and generally being homophobic/racist/misogynistic/offensive to whatever groups those categories might have missed.

Part III’s plot certainly did manage to avoid the established Drug/Party/Hangover/Lather/Rinse/Repeat cycle of the first two, and the crude humor was at a low ebb – not entirely absent but generally not too aggressive.

Unfortunately, this was at the cost of alienating any fans the franchise might have had left. I’m in no way supporting the direction the movies were going, but by removing the elements the critics found unappealing they also removed anything that might make this film worth watching to anybody who actually enjoyed the first two.

A Hangover movie without the frat comedy is like a smore without the chocolate and marshmallow – less unhealthy but still not a satisfying treat. Without its trademark style, Part III didn’t have a leg to stand on – it’s not like there was a probing character drama hidden underneath the veneer of fat jokes.

 
Not exactly the Meryl Streep of comedy

I suppose I can’t call this a review if I don’t briefly touch on the actual plot of the film.

Alan (Zach Galifianakis)’s lazy manchild behavior has finally gotten to his father (Jeffrey Tambor, always a welcome presence) who loses his patience and begins a tirade which ends in his collapse on the floor. Cut to that scene from the trailer where Alan sings Ave Maria, which would be funny if I hadn’t already seen it 21 times.

His sister (Sasha Barrese) decides to hold an intervention for… something? I guess? He’s off his meds. Is this intervention to get him to start taking drugs? Anyway, she invites the Wolf Pack - his friends Stu (Ed Helms), Phil (Bradley Cooper), and her husband Doug (Justin Bartha, who is tragically underused in these films – and, may I say, much more handsome than Mr. Cooper in my opinion. Sorry Aunt Jill).

Also Melissa McCarthy is in the movie for approximately 12 seconds

So blah blah blah the Wolf Pack is driving him to the New Horizons rehabilitation center in Arizona. Before we continue, two things: First, these centers are almost always called New Horizons. I guess it’s a national chain. Second, I’m still not entirely sure why he’s going here. After some deep digging it seems that they are seeking to stop him from being such a lazy unmotivated weirdo. Correct me if I’m wrong, but this man doesn’t need rehab. He needs a firm slap in the face.

Then after some truly impressive narrative strong-arming, gang boss Marshall (John Goodman, who is phoning it in so hard that I can practically hear a dial tone) has captured Doug and is threatening to kill him if the Wolf Pack doesn’t track down Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong), who is on the run, having escaped from a Thai prison. Chow has hightailed it to Tijuana and he is the only person who knows where Marshall’s 21 million dollars of stolen gold bars are hidden.

There follows an inexplicably large number of scenes where the gang tries to drug Chow, after which he (rightly) locks them in a basement, pinning the blame for a robbery on them. They chase him back to Vegas (because of course) where he has taken up in the penthouse of Caesar’s Palace (because of course). Mr. Chow is basically a Bond villain at this point, hiding in his Evil Lair.

Anyway, things happen and the movie ends. I don’t want to spoil it and I don’t really care enough to write about it anyway. The events presented are largely devoid of discernable jokes, unless you think “haha, Alan’s a three-year-old” is so hilarious that it can carry an entire film.

The film is consistently dull, and in the patches where it isn’t, is mostly just annoying. One of the central relationships of the film is that between Alan and Chow, two lightning in a bottle characters who have no business having an entire plot built around them. At this point they are shrieking caricatures of what they used to be and prove once and for all that sometimes a bit part in a film is so effective because it is so brief.

It’s funny because he’s Asian

The strongest moments of The Hangover Part III are unambiguously those that call back to the original Hangover – the sequence with Heather Graham and her son in particular is alarmingly sweet and sincere. Of course, it’s much too early to feel nostalgia for a movie that debuted in 2009, but it was a far better film than this one and the scenes allow some relief from the plodding story of Part III while also reminding us that there was once life in these listlessly jerking marionettes known as Alan, Stu, and Phil.

This film is presented as the finale to the Hangover trilogy and, assuming that box office revenue isn’t so large as to necessitate a sequel, it’s nice to finally put a nail in the coffin of this uninspired, shuffling comedy. This film will undoubtedly fade into history as a milquetoasty nothing, which I suppose is better than being universally reviled.

TL;DR: The Hangover Part III is the third installment to a crass comedy franchise that is neither particularly crass or particularly comedic.

Rating: 3/10

Should I spend money on this?  If you are devoted to these characters or are a member of that resolute minority group that call themselves fans ofPart II, it might be worth it to watch their storylines be tied off. If you aren’t, skip it.

Word Count: 1027