Rabbit Season

Year: 2018

Director: Will Gluck

Cast: James Corden, Rose Byrne, Domhnall Gleeson

Run Time: 1 hour 33 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

Over the past month, my heart has warmed considerably to children's entertainment. After being bowled over by Babe, Paddington and Paddington 2 swept in with a double decker blow of adorable earnestness that laid me flat. I've always been open to watching kids' movies, but I'm typically a hard sell, so I was wondering if my resistance was finally beginning to crumble. So Peter Rabbit came at the perfect time to see if my dulled resistance just needed a non-masterpiece as a whetstone.

As an updated feature based on a classic British children's story, it has a very similar pedigree to Paddington, so what could go wrong?

Peter Rabbit begins with a story you know well. Mischievous bunny rabbit Peter (James Corden), with the support of his sisters Flopsy (Margot Robbie, for some reason), Mopsy (Elizabeth Debicki, for slightly more understandable reasons), and Cottontail (Daisy Ridley, for no reason whatsoever) among other woodland creatures, sneaks into the garden of Old Farmer McGregor (Sam Neill, for a reason so nanoscopic that scientists are still debating its existence) to steal some delicious vegetables. So far, so familiar. Until the part where Peter Rabbit tries to shove a carrot up the old man's ass and then he dies of a heart attack. Yeah, I don't remember Beatrix Potter jotting down that one.

Bring in the younger, sexier cast! The rabbits have always been cared for by McGregor's sensitive painter neighbor Bea (Rose Byrne), but when McGregor's fussy, city-boy nephew Thomas (Domhnall Gleeson) moves in, the rabbits are frustrated to discover that the two are falling in love. Thomas has managed to convince Bea that he is a wildlife lover, but in the meantime, he is engaging in a war against Peter Rabbit and his cronies, attempting to keep them off the property he has inherited and is attempting to sell.

Also, his laundry bill must be insane, considering all the produce that gets smashed into the fabric.

Peter Rabbit is actually two movies that are constantly warring with one another. The first is a delightful romantic comedy starring a pair absurdly underrated and hilarious actors. The second is an execrable "family friendly" hash of violent slapstick and clunky gags starring irritating CGI monstrosities. Peter Rabbit obviously only desires to be the latter, but the former keeps accidentally slipping in and reminding you how pleasurable this whole experience had the opportunity to be.

But let's focus on that good - perhaps even great - movie for the time being. Domhnall Gleeson is in terrific form here, flipping between big physical comedy and subtle, character-based humor without breaking a sweat. There's a sequence where he attempts to understand birdwatching that frankly belongs on his future lifetime achievement reel. Rose Byrne is given considerably less to do, considering that her character is clueless of the entire plot, but she provides an excellent foil for Gleeson's antics, and has a couple standout moments of her own.

The human plot is so swell that a huge belly laugh line is even given to a taxi driver character who appears in two scenes. There's more than enough to go around here.

But I literally can't even find a proper still of Rose Byrne, so that just goes to show how little the filmmakers value this film's strongest elements.

Ay, there's the rub. There's no way Peter Rabbit wasn't going to be about Peter Rabbit, but when he hops into the frame he brings with him everything that's unbearable and generic about the movie. At least the anthropomorphic animal CGI is mostly fine (save for one scene involving the rabbits in a football huddle, which we see at an angle that's downright criminal in its ugliness), but the second he opens his mouth you know you've been locked into an iron maiden of subpar children's movie material.

James Corden's performance style is what makes him perfect for a late night show: every word out of his mouth drips with the desperate demand that you find him charming and lovable. Honestly, this isn't a liability for a kids' flick, but when you combine that with the fact that the character is an unmitigated asshole, it's incredibly grating, like rubbing sandpaper directly on your eyes. For some reason, the screenwriters seem to think that the height of comedy is having a character make a joke, then immediately undermine it by either explaining it to death or making a quip about just how wacky they're being. 

Every gag is a one-two punch; an unfunny joke, then a follow-up that saps whatever minuscule scrap of energy it had to its name. Then there are all the requisite cliché details that come with being a movie for children in the 2010's: a million unnecessary dance sequences, random jokes "for the adults" (including a horribly misguided "pour one out for a fallen homie" gag that is repeated more than once, for heaven's sake), and an obnoxiously trendy soundtracks full of on-the-nose needle drops, including the most inescapable songs of the day (most egregiously "Feel It Still" by Portugal the Man, which is the most dangerously saccharine earworm this side of "Can't Stop the Feeling!" and "Happy").

None of them are BAD songs per se, but you wouldn't want to meet one in a darkened alley.

All of this is interspersed with incredibly violent slapstick that is just plain cruel (there's a gag about inflicting anaphylactic shock that has no business being in a movie not directed by, say, Quentin Tarantino) and occasionally nonsensical (a scene about McGregor being pelted with fruit while attempting to hold a conversation with Bea really tests the limits of Rose Byrne's ability to play oblivious). 

In short, almost nothing about these scenes that form 70 percent of the movie works on any level. There's the occasional spot of brilliance, like the 2D animated flashback sequence that uses the aesthetic of the original novels to tremendous effect, or a montage of Old McGregor's unhealthy choices that shows the filmmakers probably at least saw the trailer to Paddington. But in the end, it's all for naught. It's a noxious, irritating experience made even more painful by the fact that it mars what could have honestly been a pretty fun movie about two humans navigating a relationship, though it's quite self-evident that that was in no way the movie anybody wanted to make.

I'm happy those splendid moments are there, but there's no way they're worth sitting though the rest of this drivel. Also, on the Babe front, there's a "that'll do, pig" joke that made me want to screech with righteous fury. Rule of thumb: Don't strive to remind audiences of movies that blow yours so far out of the water you've entered the Earth's orbit.

TL;DR: Peter Rabbit is an irritating kids' movie, with just enough of a much better movie peeking through that it's not entirely a slog.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 1170

The Killing Joke

Year: 2016

Director: David Ayer

Cast: Will Smith, Jared Leto, Margot Robbie 

Run Time: 2 hours 3 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

With three women (only one of them white), two African-American men, a Hispanic, and a Native American playing major roles, Suicide Squad is easily the most diverse Hollywood film of the entire year. Which is a damn shame, because Suicide Squad shouldn’t be the most anything. Obviously, I love that fact that DC’s other properties are challenging Zach Snyder’s faintly misogynist White Dude-iverse, and Suicide Squad is head and shoulders above Batman v Superman’s soul-sucking chaos, but it’s still – you know – not that good.

Shall I count the ways Suicide Squad is only OK?

Well, here’s the plot. Governmentperson Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) has initiated a project that will team the world’s strongest supervillains (only one and a half of which actually seem to have superpowers) to defend the world from extreme threats against their will. This motley crew is Deadshot (Will Smith) a trigger-happy assassin whose one weakness is his love for his daughter, cue the orchestra; Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), the unpredictable right-hand woman of The Joker (Jared Leto), who needs no introduction nor is he given one; Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), a ludicrous Australian stereotype who frustratingly turns out to be one of the best characters in the movie; Diablo (Jay Hernandez), a hot-tempered gangbanger who can shoot flames from his hands; and Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), who is a C.H.U.D.

Then the movie tosses in its two most racially offensive characters at the last second, hoping we won’t notice: the stoic Native American Slipknot, who is not affiliated with the shock rock band and is actually like a good climber or something who cares, and Katana (Karen Fukuhara), a Japanese swordswoman who is tasked with protecting Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman), the soldier helming this operation.

And what is this operation, exactly? Stopping the Enchantress, an ancient being possessing the body of Flag’s One True Love, Dr. June Moone (Cara Delevingne), who slept late on the day God was handing out cool superhero names. Enchantress is supposedly creating a machine to take over the world, but she mostly just belly dances in front of a pillar of magic for an hour.

Does our team band together despite their evilness to fight through a series of video game levels until they reach the belly dancing endboss and learn a little something about friendship along the way?

You bet your sweet bippy they do.

While Suicide Squad is the most fun movie of DC’s pale shadow of the MCU thanks to its relaxation of the “absolutely no jokes” mandate, it’s a movie that essentially only serves to remind you of other, better movies. It’s like a slightly grimmer Oscar clip reel.

The quickest comparison that spring to mind is Guardians of the Galaxy, thanks to Suicide Squad’s constant pilfering from the classic rock songbook. Both films even feature Norman Greenbaum’s existentially irritating “Spirit in the Sky.” But Suicide Squad lacks GotG’s ironic sense of juxtaposition, landing more in Bratz: The Movie territory by slamming on a new record every time the mood shits, which is about every 12 seconds. It so desperately wants you to know how Very Very Cool it is, but it’s about as impressive as a junior high student in a Queen T-shirt.

I should know. I’ve been one.

When you dive deeper into the film, the comparisons get even bolder and more inscrutable. The flick I found to be most on my mind while watching Suicide Squad was Ghostbusters. Obviously, I’m not accusing it of ripping off a movie that came out weeks earlier, but the similarities are stunning and say a lot about the current state of studio cinema. First we have the poppy color scheme full of radioactive greens, reds, and blues that’s by far the most exciting visual element of the whole shebang. As the plot progresses, the palette becomes more muted, drab, and impossible to differentiate, but the intro is an eye candy sugar rush, full of comic booky and refreshing color extremes.

Then there’s the less kind comparisons, like the forced subplot about creating your own family that has the emotional resonance of a cinderblock, or the idiotic third act where the plan revolves around using a bomb to reverse magic because science(?).

You might have noticed a pattern here, in that everything good tends to degrade the closer we get to the finale. That’s because the third act is the film’s closest approximation of the Batman v Superman manifesto, meaning it’s drab, stupid, and all too full of itself. We’re treated to some suuuuuper slooooow action that attempts to hide its juvenile simplicity beneath a veil of keening orchestral grandeur. And the already spotty dialogue (“We locked him in a hole and threw away the hole.”) completely gives up the gun at this point, so characters shout the plot at each other in between winking comments about how EVIL and BAD they are.

That’s not to say the rest of the movie isn’t stupid. It’s very stupid. Will Smith is forced to attempt to pull sympathy out of a shot of him staring at a little girl mannequin, for crying out loud but it’s popcorn movie stupid, full of decent enough – if forgettable – action, and a bristling set of hard-nosed character dynamics.

Some harder than others.

There are a smattering of other similarities, including Ju-On (Enchantress’ emerging from Dr. Moon’s body is achieved in an elegantly creepy effect), Lights Out (Enchantress’ whole deal), and Deadpool (who knew we’d get two separate superhero movies this year that cover the difficult topic of unicorn fetishes?), but do you know one movie Suicide Squad DOESN’T want to draw comparison to? The Dark Knight.

Unfortunately, Jared Leto is here to remind us that Heath Ledger was really great in the role. Many people have played The Joker before and many will after, and they all bring something different to the role. Leto, however, is playing Heath Ledger. And not well. It doesn’t help that he’s asked to perform the film’s most dizzily inane  material in a series of grotesquely bad flashbacks that actively undo Harley Quinn’s character.

Luckily, he’s barely in it. And the people we do spend time with are actually pretty decent. Will Smith is far and away the best addition to the cast, wringing a wry humanity from a traditional badass role. Jai Courtney also makes a particular impression, packing so much personality into Captain Boomerang that it makes up for every other bland cypher he’s been asked to play in franchise pictures. And obviously the talk of the town is beloved character Harley Quinn, but while Margot Robbie brings a playful, electric charm to the role, she’s written with such grating insincerity that her relentless quipping is like being clubbed in the cerebral cortex. And there’s only so many times I can watch a hot woman kick ass while everybody gapes at her in astonishment. She’s a good fighter, get over it.

I think the character could blossom with a better screenwriter behind her, but for now she’s an abortive standout, trapped between her undeniable energy and the film’s single worst storyline. So, you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both, and there you have Suicide Squad. It’s not as bad as the detractors would have you believe, merely a little dunderheaded, but it’s certainly no argument for more DC comic book movies.

TL;DR: Suicide Squad is less stupid and more fun than Batman v Superman, but it's still no triumph.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1273

Reviews In This Series

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (Snyder, 2016)
Suicide Squad (Ayer, 2016)

Best Picture Roundup: And None For Gretchen Wieners

Although I certainly enjoyed the Academy Awards this time around, I have done a shockingly dismal job as a film major, having only watched one of the nominees for best picture. Although I'm generally in disagreement with the Academy about what movies deserve the prize (far too many of the nine nominees had no beheadings), it's still important to know the state of cinema in 2013, the year in which I started my reviewing in earnest.

So, in order to right my wrongs, I'll be spending some time catching myself up so I can at least complain about the Best Picture nominees with the added comfort of knowing what I'm talking about. And, oh look! Here comes the first one down the pike!

Year: 2013

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie

Run Time: 3 hours

MPAA Rating: R

The Wolf of Wall Street is the true story of Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), a sleazy stockbroker who made his fortune selling penny stocks through... illicit means. His favorite hobbies are snorting coke, banging hookers, and/or snorting coke off of hookers. For three hours.

I know I notoriously bag on any movie longer than, say, 17 minutes, but give me a break. The film is entirely rising action. Endless debauchery and F-words (which tend to blend together after a while - every single person I talked to about seeing this movie mentioned that it holds the record for most F-bombs, but honestly it's less about the density of cursing than it is about the sheer volume of the movie) are all fine and dandy, but if that's all your film has to offer with no coherent or consistent conflict.

It's just three solid hours of drugs and whores and then it ends.

I know, I know. It's based on a true story. But you know the thing with true stories about rich guys? There's no consequences. That's the way real life goes, kids. And it doesn't make for interesting movies.

Plus we already had one Great Gatsby.

The filmmakers' personal goal seemed to be to cram the film with as many offensive lines as possible. Any group of people who could be even tangentially considered a minority could find something to hate in this film, but this is a film about awful people, so I guess that gets a pass.

What doesn't get a pass is the awkward and jarring editing style that somehow manages to start scenes too late yet still make them go on for far too long. Honestly, I have no idea what black magic the editors performed to get this combination, but it was obviously too powerful for such inexperienced mages and things got out of hand.

I'm just gonna get all my complaining out here before we get to the good parts (Of which there are actually several. I mean, it's not like Scorsese is new to this). First off, Matthew McConaughey was entirely useless to the plot, which is not something the promotional material and excessive use of that dumb chest beating song would have you believe. 

And perhaps I'm just irritated at his douchey behavior at the Oscars (in which he pretty much thanked Matthew McConaughey for his Best Actor award), but I could have done without him entirely. Although he did turn in a better performance in ten minutes than the entire rest of the cast could manage in three hours. Not that anybody was particularly bad, just turning in a lot of workmanlike performances.

Quite literally, in some cases.

And I'm sorry, but Jonah Hill using an accent does not mean he turned in a game-changing performance. His Best Supporting Actor spot should have gone to Sarah Paulson. 

She needed to get in there somewhere.

Also there was some terrible CGI in a sailboat scene that temporarily convinced me I was playing a 90's computer game: Yacht Tycoon or something like that.

Or Sims: Orgy.

OK, it's out of my system.

Turns out there's a good side to this whole mess! Who knew?

Several of the debauching scenes are actually quite entertaining, most notably what I like to call the Quaalude Interlude, in which Hill and DiCaprio make the freshman mistake of taking a few too many pills because the first ones didn't kick in soon enough.

Again, it was far too long, but at least it was hilarious.

And when the film is subtle, it really works. One of my favorite elements was the way Wolf of Wall Street used pop music to imply the passage of time rather than obvious methods like title cards (thankfully, because a title card early on in the film looked like it was pasted on using Windows Movie Maker).

Also I loved the use of an unreliable narrator that manages to both humanize and demonize Jordan Belfort simultaneously. I dunno if that makes sense. You just gotta see it. Or don't. See it if you have the attention span. Otherwise, steer clear like it spat on your mama.

Also, there were a lot of shots from the backs of people's heads. I'm sure this has some very symbolic and deep meaning, but for the life of me, I can't tease that one out. If you can think of something, keep me posted.

Maybe the cinematographer was a parrot and was just used to being on people's shoulders.

TL;DR: The Wolf of Wall Street is entertaining enough, but hardly worth the three hour trek.

Rating: 6/10

Did It Deserve Best Picture? Naw, but it didn't win so I'm not gonna rub it in.

Word Count: 932