BY BOB GRIMM
b g ri m m @ne w s re v i e w . c o m
SHORT TAKES
5
“Ah dammit, I forgot I ditched the spare tire to make room for the body.”
Have a blast There are many reasons to happily hop to your local cinema for a showing of Guy Ritchie’s return to gangster comedy, The Gentlemen. Chief reason is the cast, led by Matthew McConaughey and an extremely amusing Hugh Grant. Throw in Colin Farrell, Charlie Hunnam, Michelle Dockery and Eddie Marsen, all in top form, and you’re talking about what’ll probably be one of the best casts of the 2020—and it’s only January. Also, if you’re a big fan of weed, this movie might be your bag. The film, directed and co-written by Ritchie, isn’t an amazing piece of screenwriting. It feels like the other films Ritchie contributed to the gangster comedy drama (Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels), in that it has zippy dialogue and a fairly routine mystery at its core. But it’s also a lot of fun, from start to finish, and you will forgive it its familiarities and foibles. McConaughey is at his best as Mickey Pearson, a pot gangster who has built a large illegal weed empire as that particular plant seems headed for legalization. He’s toying with getting out, offering his empire to Matthew (Jeremy Strong) for a tidy, yet semireasonable sum. Wife Rosalind (Dockery), a shrewd businessperson, is fine with him retiring, as long as it doesn’t mean he will always be hanging around, bothering her while she’s trying to get stuff done. Bodies start piling up. Mickey’s farms are getting raided, and somebody in the cast is responsible. That includes Farrell as Coach, a local boxing trainer who has shrewdly constructed a little side game involving street thugs. Ray (Hunnam), Mickey’s right hand man, seems loyal but, hey, maybe he’s looking to move ahead in the crime world. Lord George (Tom Wu) and Dry Eye (Henry Golding) have the motive to screw Mickey over because, like Matthew, they want his empire. Then there’s private investigator Fletcher (Hugh Grant), who has been following everybody around,
gathering evidence to blackmail Mickey while writing a screenplay based on the whole mess. Fletcher, in what counts as a framing device, tells Ray his observations throughout the film, and the action plays out along with his storytelling. Grant gets a chance to go full sleaze in this movie, and it becomes him. Bearded, bespectacled, and going full cockney accent, he’s a crack up, and one of the only real reasons to call this movie any kind of comedy. McConaughey isn’t a laugh riot here, with his role calling on a combination of his laidback strengths with flashes of his brilliant raging mode. I believe this movie might contain two of my favorite ever McConaughey raging moments. Farrell, starting with In Bruges, moved into my “favorite actors” file and has managed to stay there. His Coach actually feels like an offshoot of his In Bruges persona, with, perhaps, a dash more bravado. His role is small, but he makes the most of all his minutes. Everything plays out in a way that’s not surprising at all, so if you go to The Gentlemen looking to judge it on the basis of its mystery contents, you might find yourself disappointed. It’s nothing extraordinary on that front. It’s not bad on that front either, just nothing all too memorable or shocking. When everything is revealed, the results are slightly ho-hum. That doesn’t prevent the film from being an overall good time. The Gentlemen provides a good chance to see a cast having a blast, and to see Ritchie playing in the sandbox that suits him after a recent slump that included dreck like Aladdin and King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. He’s definitely more at home with the snappy, profane dialogue and comic violence over magic carpets and blue genies. Ω
The Gentlemen
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1917
A couple of British World War I soldiers stationed in France have themselves a harrowing time in 1917, a war action/drama from Director Sam Mendes that amounts to one of 2019’s greatest technological achievements in cinema. It’s also one of the past year’s best movies. Mendes, along with his special effects team, editing crew and legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins (an Oscar winner for Blade Runner 2049), designed the film to look like one continuous “real time” shot. They do a seamless job, to the point where you stop looking for the places where edits might be happening and you just take the whole thing in. The story never suffers in favor of the filmmaking stunt. Lance Corporals Schofield and Blake (George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman) are seen napping at the beginning of the movie. Blake is ordered to wake up and report to command and takes Schofield along with him. The two pals figure they have some sort of nothing assignment coming their way involving food or mail delivery. Not long after, in a plot that owes a little to Saving Private Ryan, Schofield and Blake get their unusual assignment: go beyond a recently abandoned German front line and reach the next British battalion before they mistakenly advance into a trap set by the enemy. It’s up to them to save the lives of 1,600 soldiers, one of them being Blake’s older brother. The movie is set in motion and never really stops. Schofield and Blake venture out into a body-riddled, fly-infested battlefield with very little time to spare. Deakins’ camera follows them as if you were a third party along for the mission. This results in a completely immersive experience.
3
Bad Boys for Life
Twenty-five years have passed since detectives Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) and Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) first suited up for Captain Michael Bay in Bad Boys, and 17 years have passed since they joined him again for Bad Boys II. For this third helping, the directing team of Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah does a sufficient job of continuing the mayhem, easily topping Bay’s lame original and providing a chapter that is as good, and sometimes better, than chapter two. Burnett is eying retirement, while Lowrey is dealing with the psychological and physical ramifications of aging. (He’s dyeing his goatee, so it’s all good.) A crazy witch lady gangster Isabel (Kate del Castillo) has escaped from prison and has put out a hit list for her son Armando (Jacob Scipio) to work his way through. Isabel has some vengeance in mind. The targets are former associates, and they have connections to Lowrey. Lowrey himself is on that list, and he takes a couple of bullets early in the film. I’m not giving too much away here in telling you that Lowrey doesn’t die. There’s no movie if Lowrey dies. So, a brief healing time later, Lowrey and a very reluctant Burnett are back in action, wisecracking and shooting people in slow motion. Some familiar faces return, including Theresa Randle as Burnett’s long suffering wife. She’s good in a subplot that has Burnett becoming a grandad while getting more house time in attempted retirement. House retirement doesn’t go well. Bad things happen with ceiling fan repair. Joe Pantoliano makes a welcomed return as Pepto-Bismol-swigging Captain Howard, a still capable riff on all of those screaming captains from Beverly Hills Cop movies.
3
Just Mercy
Michael B. Jordan stars as civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson, a real-life attorney who has dedicated his life to freeing wrongly convicted death row inmates. Destin Daniel Cretton’s film focuses primarily on the case of Walter McMillian (Jamie Foxx), a man sentenced to death for
the murder of a girl, even though evidence showed him with friends and family at the time of the killing. What happened to McMillian is depicted competently in the movie, as are some other cases and Stevenson’s struggles to bring injustices into the light. Jordan and Foxx are very good, as are a supporting cast of Brie Larson, Tim Blake Nelson and O’Shea Jackson, Jr. The film is well done, but perhaps a little too routine for stretches. Still, it’s a showcase for fine acting, especially by Jordan and Foxx. It’ll also get you thinking on the downfalls of the death penalty, and the kinds of horrors men like McMillian went through.
4
Little Women
3
Underwater
This is the umpteenth adaptation of the classic Louisa May Alcott novel, and it’s safe to say this one is in the running for best adaptation of the story—ever. Directed by rising directorial juggernaut Greta Gerwig (the magnificent, ultra-fantastic Lady Bird)—who has a vision with her films that declares, “Hey, we aren’t screwing around here!”—her third feature is an across-the-board stunner. It’s also chock-full of tremendous performances, and it’s written and directed by Gerwig, whose vision makes this an admirable update of a precious work. The incredible Saoirse Ronan, who also starred in Lady Bird, headlines as Jo March, eldest sister of the March clan, which includes three others: Meg (Emma Watson), Amy (Florence Pugh) and Beth (Eliza Scanlen). Ronan, not surprisingly, makes the intrepid character of Jo her own, a budding writer who is trying to get her ideas past a crusty editor (Tracy Letts, who had a damn fine 2019). Gerwig, in a departure from past adaptations, focuses more on the girls as adults, with flashbacks to their younger days. In doing this, she has chosen not to cast Amy with two different actresses. Pugh, who is well into her 20s, plays Amy at every stage, even falling through the ice as a pre-teen. I’d say that was an odd choice, but the other choice would be to have less screen time for Pugh, and I say a big no to that. Yes, she doesn’t look like she’s 12, but who cares? She’s a master in every scene. Timothée Chalamet steps into the role of Theodore “Laurie” Laurence, and there couldn’t have been a better choice for the role.
Kristen Stewart goes into badass movie star mode in Underwater, a long delayed and surprisingly decent deepsea horror/thriller from director William Eubank. While it stands to be the second big-budget box office disaster in a row for Stewart after Charlie’s Angels, it deserves a better fate. The movie is actually pretty good. The film doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel or work any miracles. It’s successful in a very basic way in that it engages from beginning to end, with an occasional effective scare, a constant sense of dread and high-pressure tension. Stewart stars as Norah, an underwater engineer on a drilling rig in the middle of the Mariana Trench. We first see her brushing her teeth as the lights around her flicker, accompanied by some dull thuds. She glances around, plays a little with a spider in the sink, and she isn’t too concerned. Then, “boom!,” her section of the rig implodes, blasting water all around her as she and another crew member narrowly escape to a temporary safe place. And by temporary, I mean safe for the next 30 seconds or so. Norah eventually finds herself squaring off against sea creatures on the ocean floor in a deep sea horror flick that’s decent enough to warrant a viewing, but far from classic. Stewart’s star power, and some decent effects, put this one over-the-top.
01.30.20
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RN&R
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