Everything You've Heard About Me Is True

Year: 2018

Director: Ron Howard

Cast: Alden Ehrenreich, Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke 

Run Time: 2 hours 15 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Before we dive in, I want to say a few words. As we can obviously see from the example Marvel is setting, maybe franchise fatigue just doesn't exist anymore, but I think we should remove that argument from the table completely anyway. Disney might be cravenly pumping out sequels in the MCU and the Star Wars universe, but the fact that somehow Hollywood has decided to turn two redheaded stepchild genres (superheroes and science fiction) into massive blockbuster tentpoles every six months or so is not a bad thing. We're living in an unprecedented time for effects spectacle filmmaking and we are very lucky we get to have what we have. That said, Solo: A Star Wars Story kinda sucks, but that's definitely not because I'm fatigued with the genre. It just happens to suck.

It's OK, it happens to the best of us.

So, have you ever wondered why Han's last name is Solo? (The real question is have you ever wondered why any character has a last name?) Have you ever wondered how Chewie got his nickname? (Again, this shouldn't really be a concern; this is how nicknames work) Have you ever wondered why Billy Dee Williams can't pronounce "Han"? (Honestly, I think this one might be the actual reason the movie exists. Rogue One was made to clear that plot hole about the Death Star having such a lame weak point, so maybe each of these Star Wars Stories will just be taking a caulk gun to every plot hole in the franchise)

Well, you'll get the answer to all these questions and about twenty million more in Solo: A Star Wars Story. We follow young Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich) as he escapes from the planet of Dickensian orphans he was born on, unfortunately having to leave his girlfriend Qi'ra (Emilia Clarke) behind. He joins the army with an aim toward eventually earning enough to buy a ship and come back to save her. While he's away and she's not onscreen, he has the opportunity to pretend they actually had chemistry.

Anyway, he falls in with rogue bandit Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson) and gets involved in a chain of double-crossing criminal syndicates to pull off a major heist with the help of Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo), Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover), and the equal rights activist droid L3-37 (Phoebe Waller-Bridge).

This makes even less sense in practice than on paper, but she's still the best character in the movie.

To be completely honest, the one reason I was even remotely interested in watching this movie in the first place was Alden Ehrenreich. Although he certainly doesn't need help getting noticed considering that he made his feature film debut in a Francis Ford Coppola movie (granted, it was Tetro, but still), his true star-making role was in the Coen Brothers' Hail, Caesar!. That movie was barely a movie, rather a series of disjointed shards of humor, but he stole each and every one of those shards like he was in an Ocean's movie, owning the screen for every millisecond he was on it.

Unfortunately, such is the soul-sucking power of Solo that not even Ehrenreich could do anything with the Everest of a role he was handed. He's still charming and does more with it than probably any other actor his age could have (consider Valerian, in which Dane DeHaan was given a very similar role to much lesser effect), but this Solo as written barely resembles the person we met at the beginning of Star Wars, and forty years of nostalgia mixed with the general magnetism of young Harrison Ford just can't be captured by an impression, however solid it may be. And it's not like I'm even a huge fan of the character, so I'm not being precious about his arc or consistency or whatever. But forcing poor Ehrenreich to imitate a well-known badass outlaw while reading the lines of a Skywalkerian young dreamer just doesn't get results.

That hair is still working for me, though.

Unfortunately, nobody else seizes their opportunity to steal this movie. Everyone is completely functional in their roles, but there's not a standout among them, not even Donald Glover, who is perfectly fine in his interpretation of Lando's bluster and bravado, but not exactly blowing the roof off. And Emilia Clarke is just inches away from slipping completely into the background.

Everyone and everything is burdened with a script that is abjectly terrible, with scenes falling into place with sickeningly predictable thuds, obliterating subtlety along the way. In addition to committing the worst sin of soft sci-fi (the Aaron Sorkin-esque dialogue the Star Trek movies indulge in so much, in which an entire soliloquy of gleep-glop spacebabble gets split up between five people as if they're having a conversation instead of just reading a paragraph directly from Wookiepedia), this script pulls in an alarming number of hackneyed crime thriller tropes ("If you get into this life, you're in it for good.")

There's not an ounce of finesse to be found. The exposition sprays in every direction like shrapnel, the plot beats and double crossings are hampered by the film's limited scope, and for a movie that's primarily concerned with explaining every single element of Han Solo's character - from his name to his gun to the way he ties his shoes - it opens up an abundance of plot holes that make the whole affair intensely confusing in addition to being infuriatingly stupid.

Another of my favorite bad movie tropes is present in spades: Han does something kind of simple and unimpressive and other characters feel the need to comment, "Wow, what a great pilot this kid is!"

Now, there are some good things about this movie. The goofy character design of the Star Wars universe is continued with gusto here, including an awesome old lady space worm and some sort of robot creature that drips orange goo from his mouth pipes. I will always appreciate any movie that embraces the kiddie matinee quality of these films, and there is one terrific action setpiece involving a magnetic train that feels the appropriate amount of popcorn-munching fun. And maybe the most important thing: this is probably the closest we'll get to an acknowledgement that Chewbacca's son Lumpy from The Star Wars Holiday Special is canon.

Justice for Lumpy!

Really, the worst of Solo is just how mediocre it is (the only wholly terrible thing is the choir of children who burst in on the score from time to time). Even the much storied Kessel run is a jumbled, overstuffed waste of time when it so clearly should have been a sleek, bad-ass race through a meteor field. At every opportunity, Solo takes the safest, blandest route, never pushing itself to do anything but gently nod at Star Wars fans, saying "You know how there was dice before? Here's the dice. Do you see the dice? Make sure you notice the dice. Didn't we do a great job?" I'd warn you away from seeing it in theaters, but judging from that Memorial Day weekend box office pull, that's not something I should be worried about.

TL;DR: Solo: A Star Wars Story is a bland film that is corrosively devoted to explaining every last detail of the previous Star Wars movies.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1238
Reviews In This Series
Star Wars (Lucas, 1977)
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (Kershner, 1980)
Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (Marquand, 1983)
Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (Abrams, 2015)
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Edwards, 2016)
Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (Johnson, 2017)
Solo: A Star Wars Story (Howard, 2018)

Through The Fire And Flames

Year: 2016

Director: Ron Howard

Cast: Tom Hanks, Felicity Jones, Irrfan Khan

Run Time: 2 hours 1 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

I have a love-hate relationship with Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon series, in that they’re terrible but I have an urgent, pathological need to read them and mock them. The art-based puzzle adventures are ludicrous works of revisionist history so transparently indulging in the lusty fantasies of an aging academic that they give pretty unprecedented access to the inner workings of a pulp author’s soul. They’re fascinating, personal stories cobbled together from the gaudiest ingredients of James Bond and Indiana Jones.

The Ron Howard-Tom Hanks film adaptations of said franchise fail to capture this garish self-indulgence (probably because not even the most hard-up individual in the world would consider Tom Hanks as a scholarly but smoldering sex symbol), so they’ve never been of particular interest to me. However, I needed some candidates for my worst of 2016 list, so I went to see Inferno (the third movie, based on the fourth book). You can imagine my surprise when it turned out to be kind of OK.

Even if you can’t, allow me to replicate that feeling now.

Florence, Italy. Real-job-haver, symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) wakes up in a hospital with no recollection of the previous 48 hours or how and why he is not in his apartment at Cambridge. When people begin shooting at him, he and his new sexy sidekick, ER doctor Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones), flee.

Then, for reasons too convoluted to explain in a single paragraph, they must follow yet another path of art-based clues (this time all related to Dante’s Inferno) to discover the location of a world-destroying plague set to be released in 12 hours. This plague was developed by the mad billionaire/TED Talk-giver Bertrand Zobrist (Ben Foster) who killed himself three days ago. They’re also being chased by pretty much everyone in the known world: the W.H.O., assorted double agents, and a mysterious syndicate led by the amoral Harry Sims (Irrfan Khan). But WHO can they trust?

Geddit?

Let’s get this straight. Inferno is goddamn pulp. Adding a vague, age-appropriate love interest into the mix does not improve the source material, so it’s still a garbled, convoluted mess of a story. But it’s also the best of the bunch, opening with a bang by tossing us into the situation at the same time as the amnesiac Langdon. Although this sequence is frustratingly marred by constant reminders of his mental state in the form of nauseating, blurry Paul Greengrass camerawork, it also produces some of the best imagery of the whole series.

I should mention that this imagery is also balls-out terrifying, depicting – in the form of Langdon’s post-injury hallucinations – the grotesque stages of Dante’s Hell in lurid, live-action glory. It’s almost too disturbing, but the disgusting (sinners with their heads twisted around, etc.) blends with the elegant (a building with glass windows that explode into a geyser of blood like The Shining on amphetamines) to create something truly arresting. It’s been a long time since an image in a Ron Howard movie has actually wowed me, and while it might be too horrific for average audiences, I find its boldness refreshing.

What are YOU lookin’ at?

It might sound like I’m just being an easy lay for horror imagery, but I assume you I’m not. I love when a cookie cutter blockbuster takes off in any unique direction, and horror is one of many fringe genres Hollywood should call upon more often in their tentpole flicks. On the flipside of that coin though, I am always an easy lay for synth-driven soundtracks and the delightfully Carpenterian tangents in Hans Zimmer’s score fascinate me to no end.

There’s a lot of unique and interesting stuff going on in Inferno, which pushes it to the head of the pack. But it’s still a Dan Brown movie, so let’s not get carried away. To be frank, the film assumes that we’re drooling idiots. Langdon reads a four-line email to himself about three times while the camera lingers over every word, just to make sure we get it, and every major clue is repeated ceaselessly like this is a kindergarten math class.

"See those N, Y, and C symbols? Those probably point to New York!"

Because it assumes we know nothing about anything (except, apparently, the finer details of Dante’s Inferno, which it completely fails to elaborate on), the film indulges in two of the hoariest tropes of adventure cinema: the magical doctor and the magical academic. Although Langdon’s area of expertise is symbology (still not a real job), he’s also apparently an expert on art, history, architecture, city planning, and –what the hell – probably rocket science. The sheer amount of pseudo-intellectual babble that spills from Langdon, a character who is actively suffering from a head injury, is Hollywood shortcutting at its worst.

Obviously this is a carryover from the novel, as is the dreadfully wooden dialogue (“I can’t believe you have the temerity to ask that I simply decide to…”), but Hanks drowns in the nitty-gritty of the role, which stifles his own natural charm and considerable dramatic talents to provide a truly boring protagonist. But I don’t blame him. Boring is better than irritating, which his constant outbursts about the thematic importance of doorways threatens to have him become.

So, yeah. Don’t think I’m singing Inferno’s praises to the high heavens (the scene where someone is shocked that a European speaks French because she’s – gasp - a woman, was already enough to knock off a point or two). But its daring horrific elements, a killer final setpiece, and an incoherent but reasonably twisty plot fueled by Irrfan Khan’s deliciously banal evil performance make for a decent enough popcorn thrill ride.

TL;DR: Inferno is a surprisingly decent popcorn thriller, possibly the best of its anemic franchise.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 986

Popcorn Kernels: Aw, Screw It

Hello, hello, hello, faithful readers! Normally I do my best to bestow full length reviews on current films, but I am so damn close to clearing my backlog that I can’t resist knocking out some of the less important, less current selections from last year with another slate of mini reviews. There’s got to be a statute of limitations on this kind of thing, right?

In the Heart of the Sea

Year: 2015
Director: Ron Howard
Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Cillian Murphy, Brendan Gleeson
Run Time: 2 hours 2 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13

In the story that inspired Moby Dick, the captain and first mate of a whaling ship pursue a massive white whale that destroys the vessel, leaving the crew stranded.

As helpfully pointed out by Hunter Allen (of Kinemalogue) in the comments on my Muppet Treasure Island review, I’m a hard sell on ship movies. So right off the bat, I was disinclined to adore Ron Howard’s massively ill-advised seafaring epic In the Heart of the Sea.

But you know what I dislike even more than schooners? Movies that use the lazy framing device of an author coaxing a story out of somebody for the express purpose of reminding people that hey, they read this book in middle school, isn’t that neat? This technique can be used well, but here it’s just an excuse to slice the film’s pacing into ribbons in order to bridge plot gaps by using the “storyteller” to handily provide us with an airdrop of exposition and convenient analysis. There is literally zero reason why the Chris Hemsworth storyline couldn’t have stood alone, and the film takes on a lot of water thanks to this decision.

You know what I dislike even more than flimsy framing devices? The fact that Chris Hemsworth can apparently only get roles if they take place either centuries ago or in ultramodern yet inexplicably Medieval cultures. The man has talent, but he’s constantly shunted into stuffy roles with awful hair that clamp down on his range like an iron vise and surround him with such illustrious (read: pale) performers as… That guy from Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. And maybe wait until his Marvel contract is finished before you strand him on a desert island. With his scraggly beard and perfectly waxed chest, he looks more like a hipster barista than a marooned sailor.

But you know what I dislike even more than Hemsworth’s Buff, Waxed, and Stranded photo shoot? The whale! The CGI technicians do not commit to making this khaki monstrosity seem huge or white or menacing in any way, shape, or form. I’m all for cinematic realism, but would anybody be mad if the whale was a couple yards longer and bone white? If I had to hazard a guess, marine biologists are not in the primary demographic for this flick. Plus, it really doesn’t do anything impeccably beastly other than trawling around after our heroes like it’s Jaws: The Revenge and providing really obvious metaphors to conclude Our Hemsworth’s character arc.

If you don’t particularly mind any of these things, we are not on the same page and you can feel free to check out In the Heart of the Sea. But even putting those gripes aside, it’s still only a blandly functional adventure picture populated with stock characters and depicting oddly brutal animal violence. So have fun with that.

Rating: 5/10

Goosebumps

Year: 2015
Director: Rob Letterman
Cast: Jack Black, Dylan Minnette, Odeya Rush
Run Time: 1 hour 43 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG

A teen boy moves in next door to R. L. Stine. He befriends the author’s teen daughter, then must team up with the two of them when he accidentally unleashes Stine’s creations upon the town.

Because I am nothing if not a consummate academic, I am much more familiar with the Goosebumps books than the TV show. As such, I had absolutely no nostalgia for any visual R. L. Stine property and came to the Goosebumps film unclouded by expectation. This is the best way to approach it, though I feel that all but the grumpiest among us would be hard-pressed not to have a good time.

Goosebumps might be fashionably generic (new kid in town, single mom, struggling to find place amid wacky mayhem, it’s not exactly Proust), but it enacts those typical plot beats with an energy that at least makes them feel fresh. Dylan Minnette and Amy Ryan forge an excellent mother-son relationship, and the movie’s humor and heart branches out from there. This is primarily a comedy film of course, especially when Jillain Bell (as an eccentric aunt) or Timothy Simons and Amanda Lund (as two inept cops) are on the scene, but there actually is a decent amount of juice in the horror side of things.

The monsters are all rendered with a cartoonish CGI, which in a family film isn’t actually a liability (Mama, eat your heart out), but the effects spring into high gear when they get sucked back into the books from whence they came. Their bodies begin to unravel in a tornado of ink that’s both beautifully rendered and quite gruesome. It’s Goosebumps, so it won’t turn your stomach, but it’s just raw enough to remind you that kids movies can be scary too. Anybody who has seen Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory can attest to that.

Funny, scary, campy… Sounds like Goosebumps to me! The movie plays with a lot of classic monsters and scenarios, even conjuring up its own wicked twists. It might not be a perfect iteration of the Goosebumps mythos (sometimes the structure of a feature inhibits its ability to evoke some traditional Goosebumps storylines), but it captures the gleefully macabre atmosphere with no shortage of charm.

Oddly enough or perhaps no quite so unexpectedly, even taking into consideration the green teen talent, the weakest link is most obviously Jack Black. He hams it up like he works at a deli, and the taste of flop sweat curdles the tonal mixture a little bit. Goosebumps does exist in a heightened reality, so it makes a game attempt at assimilating his boisterous performance, but there are many moments that he tramples over by pulling faces and generally clowning around. It’s immensely frustrating, but this isn’t a movie about him. It’s about the young generation that loves Goosebumps, and for them the film is mostly a blast.

Rating: 7/10

We Are Your Friends

Year: 2015
Director: Max Joseph
Cast: Zac Efron, Wes Bentley, Emily Ratajkowski
Run Time: 1 hour 36 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

A young DJ meets an older producer, igniting a friendship that will lead to love, loss, success, failure, and eventually growing up.

We Are your Friends is not a lucky movie. If no for the box office cavalry of Jem and the Holograms, WAYF would have scored the lowest opening weekend of the entire year. Seeing how I’m obsessed with cinematic failure and Zac Efron is on my celebrity freebie list, I couldn’t rest giving the film a looksie. Boy, am I glad I did.

We Are Your Friends isn’t ever going to be unearthed as a true buried gem, but taken as the generic coming-of-age story in the modern world that it is, it couldn’t be better. It’s a mini prestige picture, hitting all the beats of larger, more successful films with just enough twists to keep it lively. My single favorite element is the editing, which a voids the temptation to turn the whole thing into an EDM music video, rather creating a slick visual rhythm that jumps off the screen with graphic and text overlaps. It’s an edgy, modern style that has certainly been seen before, most recently in The Big Short, but it’s an exciting cinematic presentation that works wonders for the film. These flashy technical moments unfortunately decrease as the movie foes on, but their presence gives WAYF a spark that never fades.

Also, honestly, the cast is pretty incredible. Wes Bentley is magnetic as a self-destructive mentor, Walking Dead alum Jon Bernthal gets his Matthew McConaughey in Wolf of Wall Street moment in the sun, and Zac Efron turns in what is unequivocally the best performance of his career, one that’s tempered, at least slightly layered, and miles away form his standard dreamboat duties.

Please don’t leave this blog thinking We Are Your Friends is a life-changing motion picture, but aside from a bit of an unfocused narrative drive and a deeply generic plot structure, it really ain’t half bad. It’s messy, it’s foolhardy, occasionally deep, and plugged into some great beats; an imperfect love letter to modern youth that doesn’t talk down to them. I genuinely enjoyed this movie. That may or may not be a socially suicidal admission, but it’s the truth. Check it out!

Rating: 6/10
Word Count: 1468