Popcorn Kernels: Q2 Review Purge, Vol. 2

OK, I'm trying my best here, but it's been super busy so here's a bunch more mini reviews to get us caught up on current releases.

Alex Strangelove

Year: 2018
Director: Craig Johnson
Cast: Michael Abela, Daniel Doheny, Brendan Archer
Run Time: 1 hour 39 minutes
MPAA Rating: TV-MA

A young teen must struggle to figure out his sexuality when his girlfriend starts to want to have their First Time but he begins to develop feelings for an older guy he met at a party.

Netflix hasn't made a great name for themselves in the original movie realm lately, which is why they should make way more midbudget movies like Alex Strangelove. There's no stakes or expectations like the overindulgent Bright or The Cloverfield Paradox, and it's a pretty dang special movie to boot!

Alex Strangelove is the smaller, weirder little brother to this year's Love, Simon, and it's the movie the world needs even more. Where Simon was buffed and polished by Hollywood to within an inch of his life, Alex grabs the reigns with an American Pie sensibility and is off like a shot. The film doesn't shrink away from the realities of life as a teen, from the awkward sexual fumblings to the filthy language to the first, failed drug experiences (I usually hate the obligatory "drug trip" sequence in this kind of comedy, but that even works here!). For a gentle teen romance, it actually has a bit of an edge, which is exactly what was missing from the charming but saccharine Simon.

The one thing I will say about Alex Strangelove insofar as it's a gay film is that its male love interest takes a backseat for way too much of the run time. We don't get to explore his character much, or why he would be particularly interested in Alex, and Alex's internal struggle is amusing, but it largely takes place when he's separated from his object of affection.

But for the most part, this flick is a right gem, sprucing up that on-the-ground teen realism with some quietly delightful creative visual effects. Alex's struggle is presented in a way that's actually - dare I say it - stylish, actually engaging with the power of cinema to give us images and ideas that no other medium is capable of. Maybe I'm rhapsodizing too hard about cereal boxes labeled "heter-O's" or the animal biology metaphor ripped straight from Mean Girls, but it's been so long since we've gotten a teen comedy that's in any way actually interesting to look at in any respect other than the beefy 25-year-olds playing the teens. Alex Strangelove is incredibly pleasant, and I highly recommend it for that and so many other reasons.

Rating: 7/10


Set It Up

Year: 2018
Director: Claire Scanlon
Cast: Zoey Deutch, Glen Powell, Lucy Liu
Run Time: 1 hour 45 minutes
MPAA Rating: TV-14

Two assistants set up their bosses so they'll be treated better, but maybe they just happen to fall in love along the way too.

OK, maybe my Sunday nights are just going to be owned by Netflix from now on, because Set It Up is the exact sort of forgettable romantic comedy I've been craving from the market for some time. Everyone in it is impossibly gorgeous and oozes charisma, nothing of much import happens to any of them, and we get a few standout comic cameos, most notably from Kimmy Schmidt's Titus Burgess.

Now, I know that poster looks ten kinds of awful, but I promise the movie is completely bearable and even, dare I say it, funny? My knees aren't exactly going to be sore from slapping, but there are definitely some solid jokes that crop up from time to time. It's just thoroughly charming, generously bestowing you with good cheer for its entire run time and not challenging you for anything more. The only even minor quibble I have with it is the fact that we've hired Pete Davidson to play the gay roommate in the now-stock role of "gay dude who is just a straight bro who likes ass." It's a massive overcorrection from the swishy queens that used to populate screens in the 90's, and it's become just as irritating. And now that he's engaged to Ariana Grande, Pete Davidson's smug face is beaming at me from all the ads for this movie on Netflix, and please, give me a break with that.

I really don't have much else to say about this film, because it's not designed for one to think about or analyze. It's designed to be a completely inoffensive soap bubble that blows in the wind, brings you joy, and then pops into thin air, never to be thought about again. As I'll probably mention with one of my later picks, it isn't a sin for a movie to be designed this way. It's just not especially rewarding to really dig into the meat of it with a full review.

Rating: 6/10

Ocean's 8

Year: 2018

Director: Gary Ross

Cast: Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway 

Run Time: 1 hour 50 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

A group of eight ladies seek to fix the wage gap by running a jewel heist at the Met Gala, as if Rihanna needed help getting in.

The cast to Ocean's 8 is great. The concept to Ocean's 8 is great. The music and costuming of Ocean's 8 is great. The director of Ocean's 8 is unremarkable. Now, the blame for the movie falling short of greatness certainly shouldn't fall squarely on the shoulders of Gary Ross (let's give some credit to the screenwriters for also fumbling the ball), but the exercise in pure style and fun that this film should easily have been just isn't quite gelling.

Mind you, the movie is fun, but in a truly insubstantial popcorn movie way. Much like the all-female reboot of Ghostbusters, which was likewise... fine, the movie plays it way too safe, leaning back on a story about fast and easy female friendship that doesn't allow a lot of wiggle room for these people to actually become well-rounded characters. We get to watch a lot of shallow people be very good at stealing things, and that's not a bad time at the theater, but it's not a movie I'll be thinking about the second I type the last sentence of this review.

Really, the only thing to really dive into on this movie is the all-star cast, so let's go with that. Sandra Bullock is in top form here, prickly and unlikeable yet nevertheless charismatic in a way she hasn't been since The Proposal. The two runners-up for best in show would have to be Anne Hathaway and Helena Bonham Carter, who both are essentially playing cartoon characters toned down just enough to be palatable. But boy are they palatable, and it's an ebullient good time whenever they're onscreen together. 

Sarah Paulson and Cate Blanchett, on the other hand, are actresses I know to be terrific who are given absolute bupkis to do. They're good enough to avoid becoming wallpaper, but they are too handcuffed by the script to do anything remotely interesting. And then there's Awkwafina and Rihanna, two musicians turned actors who have pleasing personalities but aren't going to be winning any awards anytime soon.

It is nice to watch these people hang out, but that's pretty much all that happens in Ocean's 8. By the time you get to James Corden's noxious cameo as an insurance investigator, all the energy has long since been sucked out of the movie, and Gary Ross has forgotten every one of the stylish fillips with which he introduced the story and its characters. Oh well. It wasn't a waste of air conditioning, at least.

Rating: 7/10

Hereditary

Year: 2018

Director: Ari Aster

Cast: Toni Collette, Milly Shapiro, Gabriel Byrne

Run Time: 2 hours 7 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

After the death of their grandmother, a family must cope with the emotional fallout of loss, guilt, betrayal, and demonic possession.

I really don't mean to be the guy who comes in to trash the A24 horror films, but at the very least I'm aware that they are horror. Movies aren't disqualified from the genre if they're slow-paced, nor if they reflect deeper themes. So at least I have that going for me before I say that I really didn't care for Hereditary.

Honestly, this movie has all the ingredients to be a movie I truly love (read: Toni Collette), and it succeeds heavily in the first act. Right at the end of the first act, there is a terrifying standout sequence (anybody who has seen the movie will know exactly what I'm talking about) that is perfectly, excruciatingly executed. This has a lot to do with the performance of Alex Wolff, who has graduated from being in the peanut gallery of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle to blowing the roof off in a single close-up of his face that takes you on a riveting roller coaster ride of emotion. It's a transcendent performance that goes toe to toe with the always superb Toni Collette, who is operating at 11 throughout this entire film (it's a bit exhausting, but it's what the movie asks her to do and she does it great).

Unfortunately, these stellar performances are given a script that, without spoilers, feels closer to Paranormal Activity 4 than The Witch. Hereditary really falls down a rabbit hole of overworn horror tropes that undermine any sort of specificity and power the story had created in the first act. And the title clearly indicates that we're meant to be really invested in whether or not Toni Collette has inherited a mental illness and everything that's happening is all in her head, but like most movies of this ilk, completely forgets what it's supposed to be doing in favor of shoving creepy imagery down your throat at every opportunity. I don't blame a horror film for wanting to be a horror film, but don't introduce that kind of doubt if you're not really going to do much with it.

It's a frustrating watch for someone who has received a steady drip of these kinds of movies for years, so the fresh and exciting bits are fully drowned out by the clunky, generic material that gums up the works. Maybe if I wasn't so familiar with these types of movies, it wouldn't feel so uninteresting, but this one just didn't do it for me at all.

Rating: 5/10

Ideal Home

Year: 2018
Director: Andrew Fleming
Cast: Paul Rudd, Steve Coogan, Jack Gore
Run Time: 1 hour 31 minutes

A bickering gay couple find out that one of them has a long-lost grandson, who they must care for while his father is in jail.

Ideal Home is one of those indie comedies where you can predict every beat of the plot from the opening credits, but it's also one of those indie comedies that earns its right to be generic. It's comfort food cinema at its best, delivering well-worn tropes with a low key but effervescent sense of humor that is perfect for a lazy Sunday afternoon.

And hey! The fact that we can make material this rote with a gay couple as the leads is a remarkable thing about the year 2018. Of course, Ideal Home ain't winning any Spirit Awards anytime soon, having cast two straight men in the roles and considering that literally nobody knows this film even came out, but their sexuality factors into the plot of the movie not one bit, and that actually turns its genericness into a political strength. It's just like every slightly edgy family comedy you've ever seen, and the fact that there's two men in charge doesn't impede the progress of the bland plot one bit.

Then there's the fact that Paul Rudd instantly makes any comedy at least one point better just through sheer charisma. He's rocking an incredibly sexy indie movie beard, but he's still our good ole Rudd, delivering his trademark brand of goofy yet naturalistic humor, this time through a sheen of everpresent supercilious disdain. Ah, and there's the real way this movie differentiates itself at all. The tone of Ideal Home is unusually bitter, refusing to cut its snide, posh characters any slack, as much as it loves them and wants them to love each other.

The film won't blow you away or anything, but at the end of the day, it's a nice way to spend 90 minutes. Also give money to gay movies that don't end in AIDS, tearful coming outs, and/or tragic death. Please, I'm begging you. I don't want to have to sit through The Normal Heart every time I want to feel represented in the culture. Look, if you even have a toe on the Kinsey scale, you're going to find Paul Rudd especially attractive in this movie, so that's a reason right there.

Rating: 7/10
Word Count: 2164
Reviews In This Series
Ocean's 8 (Ross, 2018)

New Year's Resolutions: Yuk Yuk Yuck

Who’s ready for a tsunami of white posters? Here’s a heaping platter of mini reviews for comedy films I screened in the fourth quarter of 2015.

Miss Congeniality

Year: 2000

Director: Donald Petrie

Cast: Sandra Bullock, Michael Caine, Benjamin Bratt

Run Time: 1 hour 49 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

A tomboyish FBI agent is given a makeover to go undercover and stop a terrorist attack on the Miss USA pageant.

What is there that I can possibly say about Miss Congeniality that could contribute to the conversation? See, there’s the trouble with comedies. You know what you’re going to get and you get it. It works or it doesn’t work, but only in a very finite number of combinations. Sandra Bullock is a charmer as an FBI agent so flamboyantly tomboyish that she doesn’t own a brush I mean, come on. I’m as macho as they come and I own a brush. Don’t fact check that.), her sassy gay mentor can’t figure out how he could possibly make her beautiful despite the fact that she looks like goddamn Sandra Bullock, and she finds a balance between love and work. It’s funny. Bada bing, bada boom.

The truly interesting thing about Miss Congeniality is the gender politics that form the story’s backbone. At its heart, the film is a story about a woman learning to love other women and accepting that traditional femininity is a valid choice, even if it’s not one that she personally wishes to make. More than romance or action sequences (of which there are a surprising amount of the latter), the film focuses on female friendship, which is always a welcome addition to any comedy, especially such a humorous fish-out-of-water extravaganza.

Rating: 8/10

Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous

Year: 2005

Director: John Pasquin

Cast: Sandra Bullock, Regina King, William Shatner 

Run Time: 1 hour 55 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Gracie Hart is now the public face of the FBI, but she struggles against the organization’s restraints when her friend, the former Miss U.S.A., is kidnapped.

First and foremost, I would like to commend Miss Congeniality 2 for forgoing the typical comedy sequel route. It could very easily have been, “Gracie! We need you to go undercover at the Miss Universe Pageant in Acapulco! It’s bigger so it’s funnier!” However, instead of that claptrap, this film continues the universe of the original in a realistic and satisfying way. There is no pageant this time, because there’s no way such a high profile mission could actually be repeated, but the skills and friends that Gracie made there must come into play again, all with the undercurrent of women from different walks of life forming bonds: this time in the shape of a buddy cop story between Gracie and an aggressive new recruit.

The comedy itself is broader and glitzier, and never quite as effective, but as a story continuation it’s satisfying as hell. Drag shows, celebrity cameos, and old lady shtick prevent Miss Congeniality 2 from launching itself above the lowest common denominator, but strong women are once again front and center in this action-comedy, so it ain’t all bad. Plus they save their absolute worst tawdry callback to the original film until the final scene, so there’s plenty of goodwill saved up to cancel it out. All in all, it’s not a film I’ll ever feel the need to watch again, but I’m not sorry I saw it in the first place.

Rating: 6/10

Ghost Town

Year: 2008

Director: David Koepp

Cast: Ricky Gervais, Greg Kinnear, Téa Leoni 

Run Time:  1 hour 43 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

A misanthropic dentist briefly dies during a botched surgery and discovers that he can now see ghosts. He reluctantly agrees to help one out in exchange for being left alone and ends up falling for his newly engaged widow.

As you can probably tell, this is pretty much a comedy remake of The Sixth Sense, one of my favorite horror movies. I find no shame in admitting that, as a result, Ghost Town is one of my favorite comedies. They’re also two of the only movies that make me cry every time. I feel like with those last three sentences, I have given you a pretty deep glimpse into my soul. Geez, buy me a drink first.

Giving Greg Kinnear his Jason Bateman The Gift role, in which he finally embraces the fact that his stock character is kind of an asshole, Ghost Town matches his acid-tongued charms with the professional curmudgeonry of Ricky Gervais. It’s a match made in Hell, and these two awful people bounce off one another until they slowly learn what it means to be human. It’s a typical comedy setup, really, but with a fantastically offbeat cast. Throw in Téa Leoni as the begrudging love interest and Kristen Wiig as a vacant surgeon and you have an utterly unforgettable ensemble.

The comedy isn’t flash-bang, light up the room funny, but it’s never a dud, always hitting its marks with idiosyncratic charisma. As delivered by its stunning cast, it presents an emotionally valid storyline that vies for subtle humanism over grand romantic overtures. Plus, it probably has the best soundtrack of the century (Drive would probably be a close second). I love this movie, perhaps way more than anybody else in the entire world, but that’s fine. If you want to experience life through my eyes for 90 minutes, pop this movie on and bask in the glow.

Rating: 10/10

What's Your Number?

Year: 2011

Director: Mark Mylod

Cast: Anna Faris, Chris Evans, Ari Graynor

Run Time: 1 hour 46 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

A woman who has slept with 20 men finds out that women with over 20 sexual partners rarely find their soulmate. She teams up with her lothario neighbor to track down her exes and see if they’re The One because she has already hit her ceiling.

For totally safe, female-led sex comedies, What’s Your Number? is totally adequate. It ticks all the boxes to be what it needs to be without striving for something more. Imminent wedding of a close friend/relative? Check. Kitschy hobby that’s more satisfying than actual job, but she only needs a push to make it a career? Checkaroony. Somehow affording an enormous apartment on literally no salary? Hell yeah, that’s a check. Two people who don’t realize they’re perfect for each other until the very end? Ding ding ding! We have a winner. And don’t you dare complain that that’s a spoiler. You literally don’t need to have seen a single movie in your life to predict the end of What’s Your Number?.

Its two main functions, both of which is performs with mechanical perfection, are to provide a heaping hors d'oeuvre tray of man meat courtesy of Chris Evans (who graciously braves the cold every other scene) and give a showcase to Anna Faris’ ever-underappreciated talents. Faris and Chris Evans(’ torso) are both served well, but the thin script holding them up sags a bit in the middle, like a generic brand paper towel in one of those comparison commercials. It’s nothing you haven’t seen before, but it’s charming and has font jokes, so it’s an at least tolerable good time.

Rating: 6/10

Sex and the City

Year: 2008

Director: Michael Patrick King

Cast: Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Cynthia Nixon

Run Time: 2 hours 25 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Carrie Bradshaw and her friend continue to struggle with the responsibilities of life, love, work, and sex… in the city.

Sex and the City was a huge hit, so it was no surprise when it was bestowed with one of TV’s very rare movie continuations, four years after it went off the air. What is surprising is that director/writer Michael Patrick King attempts to jam an entire season’s worth of material into the feature, leaving it teetering with a bloated and unwieldy 2 ½ hour runtime. In sitcom format, Sex and the City is a sprightly watch, but at this staggering volume, the flaws of the show become concentrated into one punishing punchbowl of pain.

Our tacky materialistic single gal Carrie Bradshaw is now a tacky, materialistic engaged gal, and she calls upon her far more interesting friends to coo and fawn over her while suppressing their vomit at the sight of the mammoth plastic flower she has grafted to her sternum. You can tell that they’re matured since the show’s finale, because sometimes there’s a toddler in a high chair shoved into the corner of the frame. 

While her friends deal with a variety of realistic human problems (well, Miranda and Sam at least deal with spousal betrayal, sexual dry spells, and unsatisfying relationships. Charlotte has a series of successes quietly in the corner and resurfaces every once in a while to chirp and make shocked faces over lavishly overpriced lunches), Carrie whines about having the wrong area code and wrecks her relationship because this movie needs a plot.

Sex and the City is greeting card comedy for miserable white 40-somethings, at least whenever Carrie is around. The only recognizable jokes she makes come in the form of truly ludicrous brand name-dropping and self-centered bleating. Cut her out of the movie and it would be a sultry breeze. But alas, that’s the one thing that’s never going to happen, so we’re stuck with this interminable Titanic of nauseating commercialism.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1565

Reviews In This Series

Sex and the City (King, 2008)

Sex and the City 2 (King, 2010)

Chartreuse Overkill

Year: 2015

Director: Pierre Coffin & Kyle Balda

Cast: Sandra Bullock, Jon Hamm, Pierre Coffin

Run Time: 1 hour 31 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

Two films came out this weekend. One was about an eternal, murderous presence laying ruin and waste upon all who come across it, and the other was The Gallows. I’m not kidding when I say that – of these two films – Minions left the most lasting emotional scars. Children’s films have a long history of embracing the macabre*, but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a kiddie flick so grimly invested in depicting murder, torture, and mayhem.

It’s all tangential of course, like in the equally inexplicable Seinfeld insect massacre classic Bee Movie, but it’s quietly alarming all the same. And that’s but one facet of the massive, hyperactive, inert conglomerate that forms the sweaty, heaving, surreally self-deluded mass that is Minions, the spin-off of the Despicable Me franchise that focuses on its most marketable and least narratively viable characters: the thousands of tiny yellow sight gags that bumble around Gru’s villainous laboratory.

*I still have physical injuries from the tunnel scene in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Bello.

Minions tells the story of three Minions in particular, who set off in 1968 to find a villain to serve and thus save their tribe from extinction: Kevin (director Pierre Coffin), the headstrong leader, Stuart (director Pierre Coffin), the lazy musician, and Bob (renowned egotist Pierre Coffin), the obligatory Dumb One. Bob has a teddy bear named Tim who you will grow to love far more than any of the malign growths we shall henceforth call characters. Through a series of delightful (to someone, I’m sure) misadventures, these Three Minionteers end up in the service of the baddest villain in all the land: Scarlett Overkill (Sandra Bullock), and her groovy, gadget-peddling husband Herb (Jon Hamm).

Scarlett enlists the Minions to help her steal the crown of the Queen of England because this films feints at empowering women include her sole motivation being “wanting to be a pretty princess.” Through a series of delightful (see above) escapades, the Minions end up accidentally overthrowing the monarchy. Scarlett hangs out in her lair while this is happening, because Sandra Bullock doesn’t come cheap. Beyond this, I’m at a loss to explain the plot because there really isn’t one.

Despite its surprising ingenuity in creating a scenario for this cash-in prequel that has potential and feels organic to the universe of Despicable Me, Minions has an astonishing lack of narrative drive. It’s like a building abandoned in the middle of construction. The framework is there, but the wind echoes hollowly through it.

Coincidentally, that's the title of my upcoming poetry collection.

It’s a curious thing. Show the opening scenes of Minions to any producer or screenwriter worth their cocaine and they could fill in the rest, giving you a generic but marketable movie: Kevin wants to save the tribe himself. Bob and Stuart accidentally save the tribe. Kevin learns to swallow his pride and value teamwork over fame and recognition. Bam. It’s treacly but its sells. 

And that’s clearly where Minions wants to go, but despite its obvious setup, it forgets its purpose, sloughs off any recognizable conflict or resolution, and sets its villain on a bungee cord of incomprehensibly shifting motivations, all in order to fit in a series of scatological gags, high-pitched jabbering, and heaps upon inexplicable heaps of nostalgia for a franchise that began a scant five years ago and has only had two films, only one of which was any good, all of which relies on an interminable series of jokes extrapolated from literally one line in the first film about bananas.

That would be like a Star Wars spin-off all about Wookies playing chess.

That said, Minions isn’t all bad. It’s shallow and childish, of course, but it’s family entertainment in 2015. We’re not exactly re-animating Walt Disney’s frozen head here. Relying heavily on the cultural touchstones and iconography of the 1960’s is a peculiar touch, considering that this film’s target audience was still in diapers when Britney was shaving her head, but it provides a quirky, groovy backdrop for some of the film’s silly humor.

Here’s the thing, though. The Minions were consistently the breakout stars of the previous two films, but - as we have constantly been failing to learn, seeing as we got a second season of Joey – giving a beloved side character an expanded role is an exercise in despair. Where the Minions were charming in small doses, here they are wan and overwrought, wrung out and exhausted of every last ounce of their potential. They still show glimmers of their previous buoyance, but are crushed by the sheer weight of the material they are called upon to perform.

Kind of like Britney, actually. Maybe that’s why they’re bald.

And, of course, it wouldn’t be a Despicable Me flick if it wasn’t trafficking in hideously distorted stereotypes! Nobody is safe from the broad scope and closed mind of the film. The British, of course, get a thorough dress-down, as is to be expected (nobody cares), but Minions also goes out of its way to mock the Indians, the elderly, and the gays before the credits roll, fret not. Before this franchise is buried in its tiny yellow grave, it’ll have achieved a blackout on its minority bingo card.

It’s a shambling disappointment to say the least, especially after the trailers made it look like maybe somebody tried even a little bit to make it palatable. The best thing I can say about the film is that it at least provides us a solid Jon Hamm performance, though he is forced to deliver lines across from Bullock who is phoning it in something fierce. Heck, she’s texting it in for everything but the lines they play in the trailer.

What I’m trying to say is that I like the Minions, the characters. I really do. But I did not like Minions, the film. I don’t suppose there is any reason on Earth that anybody with more than a single digit in their age should particularly want to go see this film anyway, but if you do, stop. Just watch Despicable Me again. Give Steve Carell your money, not this pile of squeaky toys masquerading as a film.

TL;DR: Minions is a spectacularly messy, plotless, if slightly charming kids' film.

Rating: 4/10
Should I Spend Money On This? No.
Word Count: 1078

November Cleanup

As we exit the month of November and hurtle full force into finals, Christmas, and New Year's I am struck by something: I have seen hella movies this month. Because I have a personal commitment to write about each of these films, I am going to expedite the process somewhat by releasing this series of mini-reviews for the older films I've seen that have already received a lot of coverage by reviewers and thus require my expert opinion somewhat less than the new releases I've seen. Or the important horror stepping stones that I'm still working on covering. Or my special holiday features.

I have a lot to do, is what I'm saying. So I'm spending this morning catching up.

The Apartment

Year: 1960

Director: Billy Wilder

Cast: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray

Run Time: 2 hours 5 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

The Apartment, an early 60's sex farce by master of the form Billy Wilder (best known for his comic triumph Some Like It Hot) is the lurid tale of an everyday working bachelor (Jack Lemmon) who lets his superiors at the Company use his apartment for their extramarital trysts. When his tyrannical boss (Fred MacMurray) seduces the woman of his dreams (Shirley MacLaine), an elevator worker in his building, he begins a path to finding his courage and putting his foot down.

It's a silly comedy that still holds up fairly well today (his neighbors can hear through the walls and think the shy bachelor is some kind of ladykilling Lothario) but it is also notable for being decades ahead of its time with its discussion of sex, suicide, and short haircuts. In a pixie cut straight out of that same year's French masterpiece Breathless, Shirley MacLaine wows as a woman on the verge. 

Wilder was always one to push the envelope (just the year before he had made a mainstream comedy about cross-dressing) and his depiction of a suicide attempt is heartbreaking and tender in a way that had certainly never been explored in many films before. It's certainly unexpected in a sexy comedy but it adds depth and beauty to an already quite well done film.

Rating: 7/10

Crash

Year: 2005

Director: Paul Haggis

Cast: Don Cheadle, Sandra Bullock, Thandie Newton

Run Time: 1 hour 52 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Perhaps my favorite moment in Crash is in the very beginning. A very self-serious Oscarbait monologue about how humans crash into each other just to feel alive turns out to be the delusions of an addled man waking up after a fender bender. Although Crash would end up taking those Important Themes very seriously, a moment of levity is very welcome.

Basically a racism-themed version of Love Actually, Crash follows a multitude of different storylines about Los Angeles residents of every imaginable race and how their lives intersect. The theme seems to be "everybody is a racist prick, even the people who know what it's like to be discriminated against," which is a compelling and heartbreaking thematic center point.

It's really not my cup of tea (I usually prefer movies that are either more lighthearted or feature more decapitations), but Crash is a good piece of "slice of life" storytelling and I always appreciate films that make it their goal to both tell a story about humanity's eternal struggle to stay afloat and make you feel something while they're at it.

Rating: 8/10

Elf

Year: 2003

Director: John Favreau

Cast: Will Ferrell, Zooey Deschanel, James Caan

Run Time: 1 hour 37 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

Elf is a charming movie that is always welcome at Christmas time. Will Ferrell's over-the-top antics have a habit of landing on the more annoying side of things, but they fit in perfectly with this film's comic register. It's hard to take a film about a human who was raised by elves and returns to New York to find his biological father seriously and the film paints its emotional beats with enormous broad strokes that highlight the hyperbolic comedy.

Zooey Deschanel has a starmaking turn as a sarcastic love interest, but this is Ferrell's show. His childlike glee and lust for life are the backbone of a funny and loving film about bringing joy back to the New Yorkers stuck in the Rat Race. Like most children's comedies the directing and editing are mostly anonymous but the forced perspective visual effects and the epic and cheerfully wintry orchestral score by John Debney are platinum.

Rating: 7/10

Enchanted

Year: 2007

Director: Kevin Lima

Cast: Amy Adams, Patrick Dempsey, James Marsden

Run Time: 1 hour 47 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

Possibly the most entertaining live action Disney film to this day. Amy Adams shines as a cartoon Disney princess who is transported to real life New York City by a wicked stepmother. Much like Elf, this story is about a fantasy character learning to come to grips with the harsh realities of urban life while bringing her own brand of joy and love to the bitter city folk.

Perfectly cast and featuring wonderful songs by genre veteran Alan Menken (in one of the many many overt and subtle Disney references that pepper the film), Enchanted is endlessly rewatchable and features one of the most memorable production numbers in recent history. 

An exploration of the Disney film and its impact on society and their perceptions of love as well as a rollicking fish-out-of-water romantic comedy replete with dancing rats and poison apples, Enchanted is effervescent fun no matter how old you are.

Rating: 9/10

Clueless

Year: 1995

Director: Amy Heckerling

Cast: Alicia Silverstone, Paul Rudd, Brittany Murphy

Run Time: 1 hour 37 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Although I've never been as much of a fan of Clueless as the bulk of my generation, it is unavoidably a high school classic. A decade before Mean Girls, Cher Horowitz (Alicia Silverstone) ruled the campus with her matching plaid ensembles and boxy cell phone. 

This film is the celluloid embodiment of the 90's and the hairstyles, fashions, slang, soundtrack, and brown lipstick only increase the film's hilarity as time goes by. Based on Jane Austen's second-tier classic Emma, Clueless tells the story of a vapid California teen who discovers her place in the world after the matchmakes herself into a catastrophe.

Although the 15-year-old characters are rendered totally unbelievable by an obviously adult cast, the jokes are funny, the boys are cute, and the highway scene will strike fear into the hearts of anybody less than a stone's throw from age 16. Tremendous fun.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1096

Stars In Space

Year: 2013

Director: Alfonso Cuarón

Cast: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney, Ed Harris

Run Time: 1 hour 31 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Do you hear that sound?

That's the sound of Sandra Bullock's maid clearing a space on her Oscar shelf.

Way back when in July when the incredible first trailer for Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity was released, it was hard to imagine that an entire feature film could be as tense and horrifying as that one and a half minute exercise in pure terror.

It's easier now.

Space is the worst.

There are only two (living) faces in the entire film. Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock), a computer scientist who has been sent to update the programming on the Hubble telescope, and her crewmate Matt Kowalski (George Clooney), a cocky space jockey who's trying to beat the world record for longest space walk.

The film opens in the middle of their operation and hits the ground running. Within ten minutes a cloud of debris created by a chain reaction of exploding satellites has ripped through their shuttle, destroying their crew and their ride home and leaving Ryan and Matt stranded in the middle of a zero gravity nightmare.

The International Space Station is visible but a hundred miles away. Matt's prototype jetpack is running out of fuel. And the debris cloud is due to return within 90 minutes to rip them apart.

If you think humans belong in outer space, watching these two drifting helplessly and spinning around uncontrollably above the Earth's atmosphere will certainly change your mind. It's impossible to comprehend the abject horror of being adrift in the void and Gravity leaves you with a pit in your stomach before anything even remotely unpleasant happens.

I can't even.

(MILD MID-MOVIE SPOILERS IN THE NEXT TWO PARAGRAPHS) What follows is an 80 minute adventure to return to the Earth's soil before the outer atmosphere turns into a whirling dervish of sharp metal and desiccated corpses. The two are separated early on and the inexperienced Ryan must fight her way through a series of dilapidated and hull-damaged space stations to get to a functional escape pod as her oxygen tank dwindles away to nothing. It's a bare bones escape plot that provides a backdrop to Ryan's rebirth and transformation. 

She begins the film as a shell of a person. Her young daughter died in a playground accident and she no longer has the drive or motivation to do anything with her life. She just exists. She's, dare I say, drifting. The film is heavy on visual metaphors for this rebirth process, starting off with the "umbilical cord" connecting her to Matt and an unforgettable shot that, clear as day, imitates a fetus in the womb. I am loathe to spoil any of the rest of the film or take away the joy that comes with unpacking a film's symbolism, but I'll just say the final act and closing shots of the movie are masterful and elegant.

If you've seen the film and are interested in my interpretation of her development, please highlight here [She is "born" through the atmosphere in the escape pod and "baptized" when she is submerged in the water of the ocean. Her crawling out of the muck and onto the beach, then taking a few shaky steps into the light resembles both the child development process and the evolution of man. She is a different person with a newfound lease on life thanks to her evolution in outer space. And the three times Ryan is pelted with debris mirror the three trimesters of pregnancy. If you want to read that far into that.]

Sorry about spoilers. Does this picture of George Clooney make it better?

Gravity manages to be a high octane action thriller and a subtle meditation on the nature of being thanks to Alfonso Cuarón's delicate visuals. His predilection for long tracking shots has never been put to better use than this film (the majestic and detailed opening shot is a staggering 17 minutes long), with its sinewy zero G camera that suggests weightlessness almost as much as the manifold angles with which we view the characters. There's no gravity here, it doesn't matter if the characters' feet are pointing up or down or any which way but loose. Cuarón knows this and his camera moves with the grace of a pirouetting ballerina.

And about the 3D: I had my doubts about it going in, but it absolutely wouldn't be the same experience without it. In 3D, you can peer through the curved glass of an astronaut's helmet, cower in fear at the shrapnel flying out of the screen (in a way that avoids the gimmicky side of "things coming straight at your face" and opts for the more organic approach of "Holy crap we're gonna die!"), and have space to sit back and marvel at how the hell they did any of this.

But the film's images, nimble and refined though they are, can barely hold a candle to the gale force that is the soundscape. Gravity is an out and out miracle of sound design. An entire satellite is smashed to bits, ripped apart by flying scrap metal and all we hear is breathing and a heartbeat. There's no sound in space, yo. Every single thing you hear apart from the score (which is wonderful as well, by the way) is a noise either produced by the human body or within the confines of the suit. Suck on that, Star Wars.

The lack of noise on visuals of massive destruction provides a dissonance that racks the tension up to eleven in an already supernaturally anxiety-producing film. And the surround sound. Oh, the surround sound! I beg you to see this film in theaters, where every little blip and click has a precise location that throws you headfirst into the world of Gravity.

Though that may not be desirable. 

So why is Miss Congeniality in this massively beautiful film? Frankly, because she earned it. Sandra Bullock's performance is an exquisite ballet of physically challenging and precise action and utterly breathtaking and natural emotion, injected with a raw humanity that will penetrate your soul. This is a one woman show, and nobody but Sandra Bullock (I honestly never thought I'd be saying this) could be that woman.

Gravity is a marvel of engineering, suspense, performance, and storytelling. And, like I always say, no good story can't be told in 90 minutes. Cuarón knows how not to overstay his welcome and the film zips along at an unprecedented clip. It's taut, airtight, and manages to avoid being a bloated and overwhelming ego trip (couugh cough 2001: A Space Odyssey cough).

I'm well aware that it must not be perfect, but so help me I can't seem to find a single flaw. In the middle of one of the worst runs of Hollywood filmmaking in the history of the medium, Gravity has singlehandedly restored my faith in cinema.

It's one hell of a ride.

TL;DR: Gravity is about as close to a masterpiece as a sci-fi/action film could ever be. If the pile of Oscars this film wins doesn't weigh more than my car, I'll be surprised.

Rating: 10/10

Should I Spend Money On This? Absolutely yes, go see it now. In 3D. Surround sound. Before it's too late. Hurry. Right now.

Word Count: 1233