How Could I Resist Ya?

Year: 2018

Director: Ol Parker

Cast: Lily James, Amanda Seyfried, Cher

Run Time: 1 hour 54 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

I don't wanna talk about things we've gone through, but as a reviewer it's kind of my obligation. The 2008 Mamma Mia! is a frankly disastrous film adaptation of a shallow but fun stage musical based on the songs of Swedish disco supergroup ABBA. Nevertheless I love it, for reasons almost entirely separate from the movie itself. And I couldn't help but be excited for its ten-years-later sequel, for the twin reasons that it's a movie that should never have existed (the type of thing I'm unduly fascinated by) and that I love the ABBA discography, and going deeper into it is far more rewarding than just skimming off the top of ABBA Gold like the last film did (for more of my thoughts on that, check out my first contribution to one of my favorite film sites: Alternate Ending). Also Cher. But I could have never predicted what I actually got, and I'm all the more dazzled by that. Let's jump in.

Because if there's one thing that's incredibly safe and comfortable to do in those outfits, it's jumping.

That history book on the shelf is always repeating itself, which is how we got this belated sequel in the first place, but the notes of Here We Go Again's plot are still somewhat unfamiliar for this particular glittery universe. We meet up again with Sophie Sheridan (Amanda Seyfried) on the eve of the grand re-opening of her mother's hotel on the Greek island of Kalokairi. It has been a year since Donna Sheridan (Meryl Streep) has passed, of causes unknown (though the random screengrab of her white-knuckling a glass of wine that's hanging on the wall might offer some clues), and she and one of her three dads Sam (Pierce Brosnan) are still heartbroken over it.

Those happy days, they seemed so hard to find, but never fear! Our old pals are back to play, including Sophie's beau Sky (Dominic Cooper), her other two dads Harry (Colin Firth) and Bill (Stellan Skarsgård), and her mother's glee team Rosie (Julie Walters) and Tanya (Christine Baranski). Joining them are Andy Garcia as the hotel manager Fernando (gee, I wonder when that'll turn out to be important) and Cher as Sophie's absentee grandmother Ruby. As Sophie tries to navigate into the newest stage of her life, she finds that her story is mirroring that of her mother's way back when in 1979, as played out by Lily James alongside younger versions of Rosie (Alexa Davies) and Tanya (Jessica Keenan Wynn) as she flirts with and beds future dads Bill (Josh Dylan), Sam (Jeremy Irvine), and Harry (Hugh Skinner).

Although it's possible she didn't know they were three separate people, because they all look more or less exactly the same.

It was like shooting a sitting duck to make a Mamma Mia! movie that I'd actually enjoy, whether it was incredible, terrible, or anything in between. But the absolutely terrific thing about Here We Go Again is that it edges up against incredible, at least on the admittedly very adjusted scale that comes from being in continuity with Mamma Mia!. 

Having the time of your life is obviously the movie's biggest priority, and there are certain aspects in which the movie fails as a whole in its efforts to achieve this. For one thing, the narrative is completely inert. Sure it has more thrust and structure than the previous entry, but that's like saying you have more character drama than a Transformers movie. It's not exactly an achievement. Most of the movie, at least in the present day scenes, is just about people sitting around waiting for a party (which I could relate to, having gotten to the theater an hour early). And the flashback sequences are slavish retreads of the exact material implied by dialogue and lyrics from the original (the "walk along the Seine" line from "Our Last Summer" even gets a totally superfluous nod). And yet, the way the film connects Sophie's experience with her mother's miraculously achieves a sort of tenderness and genuine emotion of which I would have previously thought this franchise completely incapable.

But I won't feel blue like I always do, because this movie has so much more to offer than a mere story. For one thing, it has a director who actually seems to know how movies are made. The first time the camera moved in a scene, I almost jolted out of my seat, because that never happens in the original. Mamma Mia! just plunks down on a tripod and lets its cast of high wattage stars do their karaoke. In Here We Go Again, Ol Parker's camera roves around the set, snatching glamorous and sometimes even glorious images from the tumult of turquoise and glitter. It's entirely refreshing and allows the manic energy of the material to be captured in a way that actually highlights and accentuates its key components rather than sitting back from the material and letting its gaudiness shine through.

The picture clear, everything seems so easy to Parker, who crafts a musical theatre spectacle like his life depends on it. It helps that he doesn't have to rely on the A-listers who wander in and out of the present day portion like they're in one of the Netflix seasons of Arrested Development. He has the freedom to keep them around as their schedules allow, toss them a few bones here and there (thankfully, not too many are caught by Pierce Brosnan, who has not taken singing lessons in the intervening decade), and focus his best on the young, relatively unknown cast in the 1979 sequences. Because their characters are attached to the famous people, he knows audiences will still care, and his casting could focus on actual talent and not star wattage. And they sure are (mostly) talented! Some of the boys sing a little too emphatically, like they're worried they'll be fired if you miss a single syllable, but the production numbers (especially "Waterloo" and "Why Did It Have to be Me?") are lovely little trifles with grand choreography that utilize every little element of the setting and create imaginative dreamscapes that remind one of the best of classic movie musicals.

Although, as much as I love the song "When I Kissed the Teacher," what compelled them to include such a track in 2018 is still a mystery to me.

Would you laugh at me if I said I cared for Lily James' outfits more than most human beings? Costume designer Michele Clapton knows how to make the human body look cinematic, and Lily James is the perfect canvas for some of the best movie costumes of the decade, perfectly flowy and retro yet effortlessly modern and stylish at the same time. But I digress. This is a musical, let's talk about some more music! Here We Go Again resists temptation to repeat too much of the original soundtrack (of the canonical songs that appear in the actual film and not the credits, we just get "Mamma Mia," "Dancing Queen," an expanded "I Have a Dream," and a blissfully brief reprise of "S.O.S." with the rest of the songs being relegated to the instrumental score during dialogue scenes), and pulls some truly special, unexpected tracks like "Andante, Andante" and "Angel Eyes," two songs I love so much I could't help but thrill with delight.

All my sense had gone away, but I can still admit that there are certain... flaws in more than just the plot. There's still a bit of abrupt song introductions and flat singing (Brosnan and Cooper being the worst perpetrators), Seyfried is sleepwalking so hard you can practically see the drool, and Cher is a lot of things but she's not particularly convincing, as much as I love the fact that she's here at all. And it's a little hard to ignore the fact that they seem to have forgotten that Colin Firth's character is gay (the biggest mention of his character's sexuality is secreted away in an end credits stinger), and that the glitz and glamor of this musical about rich tourists ignores the economic plight of the Greek people they use as props (the film has one scene about fishermen being out of work, and it's used as an excuse to get a character a boat). I'm not saying they're bad for not mentioning it, I'm saying they shouldn't have introduced the concept in the first place if they were going for full musical theater fantasia, because it introduces a bit of a rankling cognitive dissonance.

But the destination makes it worth the while, because - especially in the second half - Here We Go Again is actually genuinely funny as well as entertaining spectacle. The script is much stronger this time around, building gags and character dynamics out of the thin air that was the original characters. Plus, Baranski and Walters (and their younger counterparts) are given some material that's actually quite dirty instead of innuendo so subtle that Christian Grey would even be scratching his head. So, let's add this all together. Terrific, non-obvious ABBA songs, actually talented cast members, solid humor, a director with a head on his shoulders, colors that pop, and a heartfelt emotional throughline? Are you sure this is a Mamma Mia! movie?

Knowing me, knowing you, it's the best they can do.

TL;DR: Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again is surprisingly tender and terrific.

Rating: 8/10

Word Count: 1591
Reviews In This Series
Mamma Mia! (Lloyd, 2008)
Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (Parker, 2018)

Q2 Review Purge: Volume 3

You saw this coming, didn’t you? Underestimate my backlog once, shame on me. Underestimate my backlog twice, shame on YOU. Here’s the third and final (?) set of mini-mini reviews as I reboot my system and get back on track.

All About My Mother

Year: 1999
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Cecilia Roth, Marisa Paredes, Candela Peña
Run Time: 1 hour 41 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

After her son dies, Manuela travels to Barcelona to tell his father, helping an aging actress, a transgender hooker, and a pregnant nun along the way.

You might not be able to tell from that synopsis, but All About My Mother is pure Oscarbait through and through. There was a period in Almodóvar’s career where he was on his hands and knees begging for the Academy to take him seriously, and this film is smack dab in the middle of it. Naturally, it won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

Always the staunch Oscar contrarian, I must contest that All About My Mother is far from the director’s best work (winners are rarely as good as their competitors, as evidenced by the fact that his masterpiece Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown lost to Pelle the Conqueror). Although there is some delightful comic relief from the talented transgender actress Antonia San Juan, the movie takes itself way too seriously.

While Almodóvar admittedly crafts some stunning imagers and weaves in a tapestry of parallels between the film’s wide variety of mothers, trying to find the line between reality and fiction, All About My Mother is one of Almodóvar’s few films that feels typical. It might push the envelope with its depiction of gender and sexuality, but it’s just an Oscar tearjerker, yanking its characters through sad sad situations so they can spout elegant monologues at the drop of a hat. Obviously it’s far from a bad movie (I don’t think Almodóvar has made one of those), but it just doesn’t make an impression, which is usually what he’s best at.

Rating: 6/10


Talk to Her

Year: 2002
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Rosario Flores, Javier Cámara, Darío Grandinetti
Run Time: 1 hour 52 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

Two men become friends at a hospital while caring for their loved ones, who are both in comas.

If you thought All About My Mother was Oscarbaity, wait till you get a load of Talk to Her! A movie so wildly overbearing that even the Oscars were a little put off, shuffling it into the Best Original Screenplay category, it’s by far the least funny Almodóvar movie I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen a lot at this point. What I admire most about the director is his ability to draw comedy from even the most dire of situations, but here he sets all that aside and doubles down on the sincerity, to muted effect.

It lacks the serene beauty of All About My Mother, though if anything its intricate web of metaphor is even more complex. The film is about transition and metamorphosis, two disparate halves coming together to form a whole. It maybe goes without saying that this theme results in the most f**ked-up Almodóvar relationship yet: the friendship between the lover of a female bullfighter and the lonely stalker of a beautiful young dancer. The queer overtones prevalent in his filmography are almost entirely absent, stripping away all veneer to showcase a story about two people bonding.

Unfortunately, Talk to Her trips over itself in the third act, pointlessly extending the plot for some melodramatic waffling. This isn’t an uncommon occurrence in Almodóvar’s work, but when it lacks so much of his signature style, it also lacks the charm that allows you to cling to the bull’s back. Talk to Her bucks and you go flying, which is an extremely disappointing outcome.

Rating: 6/10


The Lives of Others

Year: 2006
Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Cast: Ulrich Mühe, Martina Gedeck, Sebastian Koch
Run Time: 2 hour 17 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

An East Berlin secret police agent tasked to bug the apartment of a suspected dissident finds himself wrapped up in the man’s life as he listens from the attic.

Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and those who make historical movies are almost always talking about the present. It’s no mistake that The Lives of Others came out during the time of the Patriot Act and America’s surveillance controversy. And it’s certainly no mistake that the film is set in 1984.

The Lives of Others is a thriller about sitting down, about the sociopolitical intrigue that can change lives and enact deaths without stepping out from behind a desk. It’s a terrifying snapshot of a bleak reality that has existed, does exist, and will exist. In essence, it’s a very German film.

However, despite its dour setting and even more dour production design, dripping with greys and mottled greens, The Lives of Others is a story of hope. About the flowers that can grow in the cracks of the concrete. This is thanks in large part to Ulrich Mühe, whose stony visage captures every last chink in his armor as he learns that the people he has been victimizing are actual human beings. The Lives of Others is a terrifying film about bureaucracy and a reassuring one about humankind. It’s not often that something like that comes from a film set in historic Germany (unless Spielberg is involved), and The Lives of Others is a powerful break from the mold.

Rating: 8/10


Star Trek

Year: 2009
Director: J. J. Abrams
Cast: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Simon Pegg
Run Time: 2 hours 7 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13

The Star Fleet rebel James T. Kirk finds himself on a stranded student vessel facing the alien threat that killed his father.

I know it’s a popular joke to make fun of J. J. Abrams’ use of lens flares, but I’d never until now experienced them for myself. The legends were true. Star Trek 2009 is an ocular freak show. People have counted, there’s literally a lens flare every 12 seconds on average. It’s like standing on the red carpet at the Oscars for two hours. Every single heroic shot is marred by these hideous distractions. They even go off in quiet, indoor scenes with no discernible light source. The lens flares will make your eyes water far more than any of the drama.

But there’s a movie beneath all that digital tampering, so let’s talk about it. As an origin story for a franchise I have not one shred of nostalgia for, it does a decent job of telling its own story. This could be a movie about James T. Bumblefart overcoming great odds as a cadet, and it would still be a coherent, engaging yarn. And there would be even less reason for Zoe Saldana to be there, because Uhura’s extremely discomfiting romance with Commander Spock happens entirely backstage.

As an exercise in J. J. Abrams crashing his CGI action figures into each other, Star Trek is a fun popcorn adventure, if a little beholden to the Star Wars standby of having important battles take place over yawning chasms. There’s only one scene that reaches the dizzy heights of summer fun I was hoping for (Bones follows Kirk, injecting him with a variety of wacky vaccinations to stabilize him as he attempts to deliver an important message) as the film tends toward the over-serious, but it’s never dull.

And Chris Pine is honestly a terrific choice, giving young Kirk a frat boy braggadocio that puts his flaws on his sleeve while retaining his natural charm. Star Trek’s a swing and a hit, even if it’s not a home run. Those lens flares can rot in Hell.

Rating: 6/10


Mamma Mia!

Year: 2008
Director: Phyllida Lloyd
Cast: Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Amanda Seyfried
Run Time: 1 hour 48 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13

A young woman wants to invite her dad to her wedding on a Greek Isle. Only she doesn’t know which of three men it is, so she invites them all. Then they sing a bunch of ABBA songs.

The Mamma Mia! title card appears as a young girl runs screaming through a cloud of sparkles. That should pretty much tell you all you need to know about it. Mamma Mia! is loud, stupid, deranged, and I love it from the bottom of my heart.

While Mamma Mia! attempts to harness the glittery camp of attending a Broadway musical or a disco show, it frequently swings over the top into wholly unintentional bad-good delight, then back around the horn again into genuine fun. It spins around and around again between these two registers like a gymnast on the horizontal bars, afraid to let go and stick the landing. And stick the landing Mamma Mia! doesn’t, backloading about 90 ballads that suck the energy out of the third act, leaving it so ravaged that not even “Take a Chance On Me” (the most perfect pop song of the 70’s) can resuscitate it.

But despite its sputtering denouement, I love both angles from which Mamma Mia! approaches its content. For all the too-bright lighting that makes every location look like a sitcom set and the herky jerky variance in quality between the celebrity singers (Meryl Streep is at the top with a shockingly good belt, and Pierce Brosnan flounders at the bottom, sounding like Fozzie Bear in the middle of getting his tonsils removed) there’s a genuinely good vin running through it all, like the Greek chorus that resurrects an ancient form of theater to great effect, the bubblegum disco magic of “Super Trouper,” or the beach party sizzle that underscores “Lay All Your Love On Me.”

At the end of the day, Mamma Mia! is a movie that makes me sublimely happy. It is great and it is terrible, frequently at the same time, but it never stops being tremendous fun to watch.

Rating: Please don't make me do this. 7/10? 9/10? 5/10? 9/10. Don't hold me to that.

Last Night

Year: 2010

Director: Massy Tadjedin

Cast: Keira Knightley, Sam Worthington, Eva Mendes

Run Time: 1 hour 33 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

A wife and husband both find themselves faced with the opportunity to cheat while he’s away on a business trip.

Last Night is one of those ponderous indie dramas that’s so excessively low key it would easily have been a TV movie. Or a commercial. With minimal sets, a tiny cast, and an abundance of agonizing close-ups, there’s nothing that screams “feature film.” To be frank there’s nothing to look at whatsoever.

Much like Looking: The Movie, Last Night is mostly composed of a string of conversations rather than any real incident. This is fine, especially when the conversation is as thought-provoking as it is. But the inhuman frankness and eloquence of these conversations make it screamingly apparent that the dialogue is Written. Luckily the actors that perform this series of treatises are well suited to the job.

Keira Knightley and Guillame Canet are a better match than Sam Worthington and Eva Mendes (though Mendes shades a surprising amount of depth onto a thankless sex symbol role), but for the most part Last Night is well-delivered, if coldly intellectual drama.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1882
Reviews In This Series
Star Trek (Abrams, 2009)
Star Trek Beyond (Lin, 2016)

Mamma Mia! (Lloyd, 2008)
Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (Parker, 2018)

Abe Ruthless

Year: 2012

Director: Timur Bekmambetov

Cast: Benjamin Walker, Rufus Sewell, Dominic Cooper

Run Time: 1 hour 45 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Let me just say that there is very little reason for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter to exist. Based on the lesser-known mashup property by Pride and Prejudice and Zombies scribe Seth Grahame-Smith, the concept is so fundamentally strange that it seemed unlikely that the ever-so-safe Hollywood studios would ever take a whack at it, let alone throw Tim Burton on as executive producer and pour 70 million into its coffer. 

The fact that it's quite fun - much better than it should have ever possibly been able to be - is also surprising, but I continue to lie back in awe at the fact that the monstrosity was ever given the chance to exist in the first place. But here we are. Also, we can all look forward to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies in cinemas in 2015 directed by the guy who did 17 Again, so never ever tell me that the world isn't an incomprehensibly wonderful place sometimes.

There should be whole new fields of science invented to discover how this film came to be. And to see if we can tap into that to get Saw VIII: The Battle of Jigsaw Island off the ground.

The plot is presumably self-explanatory, but I'll jam through it for formality's sake. Abraham Lincoln (Benjamin Walker) lost his mother to a vampiric plantation owner (Marton Csokas) as a child and, once he grows up, is taken under the wing of expert hunter Henry (Dominic Cooper). While he attempts to balance his friendship with childhood buddy Will (Anthony Mackie) and relationship with - of all people - Mary Todd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) with the stern, lonely life of a vampire hunter, a team of vicious Southern vampires led by Adam (Rufus Sewell) and his sister Vadoma (Erin Wasson) make eeeeeevil plans in the shadows.

There's actually a rather large amount of mythology bundled up in the film (evidently vampires can endure sunlight just fine, but they lack they ability to murder one another), both vampiric and otherwise. The attention to detail is impressive, though I am of the opinion that the film leans far too heavily on the book for an accurate understanding of the universe's (and the characters') mechanics.

Far too many moments feel rushed, especially some of the more emotional beats, leaving the impression that maybe you accidentally sat on the remote and skipped ahead a couple scenes. Attempting to coast through on the details of the novel, Mary Todd's character is glossed over with a generic "modern woman in olden times" sheen and Henry especially is (from what I have been told) not given his due diligence, his brutal and vivid origin story from the book instead replaced with a treacly vignette.

Now we'll never know how he can tree-lean so flawlessly.

But for all the dashed-off character material (Why does Mary Todd fall in love with Lincoln? Because history says so, that's why.) and chockablock narrative, AL:VH makes up with gonzo action setpieces that not only go over the top but send the top itself careening into a different dimension. We get slow-mo explosions of blood and splinters! A combination battle axe/musket! Men atop a runaway train on a burning bridge! A footrace atop a stampede of horses!

The whole affair is unfortunately laden with a heavy blanket of CGI, but the action is too nonstop to be bothered with handwringing about it. And while the details are a little cloudy, the broad strokes of the plot are campy genius. The film elects to ignore historical fact (I mean, duh) in favor of a stark black-and-white Civil War tale in which the Pure Good Abe Lincoln fights off the Wicked Monsters of the South - all the vampires are plantation owners who keep slaves in order to feed. If that's not the most zanily patriotic metaphor you've ever in modern American cinema, please let me know in the comments so I can watch that other movie right now.

And honestly, the screenwriter and make-up artist conspire to create what can only be described as an inutterably accurate portrayal of how our 16th president would speak, look, act and think if he had come from a background of vampire hunting rather than whatever the hell it was that early American teens did with their time. Tending fields and tipping cows I guess. The style of his speechcraft (if that's not a word, I'm making him so) is alarmingly accurate to the period and his look as he ages only improves.

I never saw the movie Lincoln, but this frame tells me I might as well have.

So yes, there are rough patches in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. In fact, this movie could be sold at Bath & Body Works as an exfoliant. But it rather makes up for them with a masterful sense of style and horror movie fun that makes it a uniquely strange thrill ride. It's not going to rewrite cinema history, but this buoyant look back over America's alternate past is worth visiting for fans of vampires, exuberant action, or hot presidents.

More like BABE Lincoln, amirite?

TL;DR: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is a little too reliant on its source material, but is a wacky fun retelling of a historical turning point.
Rating: 6/10
Word Count: 898