by BoB Grimm
b g ri m m @ne w s re v i e w . c o m
SHORT TAKES
4
20th Century Women
Annette Bening, Elle Fanning, Greta Gerwig and Billy Crudup shine in Mike Mills’ ode to his unusual mother, who raised him in the late ’70s and tried to like punk music as much as she could. Bening is terrific as Dorothea, perhaps the best work of her career. She represents the late ’70s woman, still cool but perhaps slowing down a bit due to too many cigarettes and a general disillusionment with certain aspects of the changing culture. Mills uses Dorothea as a sort of narrator from the future who talks about the events of the film while observing from a perch in years ahead. It’s an interesting technique, and Bening’s performance is a career milestone. Gerwig and Fanning are great as two different women who hang around Dorothea’s apartment, both with their own interesting subplots. Cruddup chimes in capably as a local handyman who will sleep with you if you ask him to. I love the way this film uses music on its soundtrack, from Talking Heads to the Buzzcocks.
“i’m telling you, ever since Dallas Buyers Club, it’s like i can do no wrong, man. People love me.”
All that glitters
and another substantial part of the film that deals with the business/stock exchange ramifications of Kenny’s dealings. It all becomes a bit much, a little too hard to keep track of, and ultimately too routine You have to give Matthew McConaughey an A for to distinguish itself. effort in his latest film excursion, the “loosely In the end, it plays like The Wolf of Wall based on a true story” Gold. Street minus most of the fun, but not minus the McConaughey not only stars as wannabe gold McConaughey. (He’s in both!) It’s the same basic magnate Kenny Wells, he also co-produced the plot: A headstrong guy tries to take the fast track to movie, thinned his hair, put in some weird teeth and big riches and gets his butt kicked hard in the end. gained some weight for the role. Unfortunately, this movie doesn’t feature Kenny Sadly, maximum effort doesn’t result in optiWells trying to get in his car after taking a bunch of mized return for Gold. The movie is an uneven, slow-release Quaaludes. confused endeavor, and McConaughey’s physicality Bryce Dallas Howard, who had a lousy 2016 comes off looking like a guy who’s in really good with this and that god awful Pete’s Dragon shape simply messing himself up for the few remake, plays Kenny’s long suffering girlfriend, months it takes to shoot a movie. He doesn’t look a role that uses absolutely none of her talents. like a real guy in the way Robert De Niro did when She shows up every now and then looking mildly he destroyed his physicality for frustrated, than disappears for Raging Bull. He just looks slightly large swaths of the story. out-of-shape and made-up, which is If the film has a partial saving distracting. grace, it’s McConaughey, who Even if he looked like a fuzzy remains fully committed to the elephant wearing sunglasses, Gold role and makes Wells an engaging would still be a bit of a mess, albeit Director: Stephen Gaghan character, even when the events a sometimes entertaining one. Starring: Matthew McConaughey, swirling around him are confusWells is a fictional character, Bryce Dallas Howard ing and lacking originality. The and the film is based loosely upon movie is almost worth seeing if the Bre-X gold scandal of the 1990s. only to see a good actor giving his all. The original scandal occured in Canada, while As for simple storytelling, there’s nothing new director Stephen Gaghan (Syriana) brings the story here, and the big twist isn’t a surprise at all. The to the U.S. movie wants to be a jungle adventure movie and McConaughey goes full throttle as Wells, business adventure all in one, and the two don’t owner of a prospecting business in Reno, who’s meld together well. The movie winds up feeling looking for that one strike that will make him like four or five movies mushed together. legendary. In his search, he comes across a While it’s hard to feel bad for a multi-millionrenowned explorer, Michael Acosta (Edgar aire, Oscar-winning actor, it is a bit depressing to Ramirez), who has the ties and ingenuity to mine see one of the good ones do all of this for naught. unsearched parts of Indonesia. Kenny pawns his This is definitely one that plays on paper better than watch, goes into business with Acosta, and starts it does on the big screen. panning for the real deal. It’s not worth the strain he must’ve put on his This is where the movie goes a little haphazard. cardiovascular system to obtain added weight, There are a lot of shots with Wells flying around although I’m sure he had some fun nights pounding to different locations like Indonesia and New milk shakes and burgers. So, at least he’s got that York. There’s a substantial sequence where Wells going for him. Ω runs around in the jungle with Acosta and gets ill,
Gold
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02.02.17
2
The Comedian
Robert De Niro delivers a good performance in a film that doesn’t match his prowess from director Taylor Hackford. De Niro plays Jackie Burke, an aging standup comedian dealing with a TV sitcom past he isn’t all too proud of. De Niro does a nice job playing a Don Rickles-type, old school standup. He’s not entirely hilarious, but he’s convincing in his standup sequences. He’s also good when Jackie is off stage being an ornery bastard. Where the film lets him down is in its handling of modern day things like viral videos and reality TV. Hackford’s take on modern media is woefully out of touch, and De Niro finds himself stranded in some rather ridiculous, tone deaf scenes. Leslie Mann is her usual great self as a younger woman Jackie winds up trying to romance; the two actually make for a convincing almostbut-not-quite couple. Harvey Keitel is a little overbearing as Mann’s dad, but Danny DeVito scores as Jackie’s bemused brother. However, for everything that works in this movie, there are two things that don’t. There are lots of cameos from standups like Richard Belzer, Hannibal Buress, Brett Butler and Jimmie Walker. Yes … Jimmie Walker is still alive.
3
The Founder
Michael Keaton is flat-out great as Ray Kroc, the sorta-kinda founder of McDonald’s. Director John Lee Hancock’s film tells the story from when Kroc was selling milk shake mixers door-to-door up through his wife-stealing days as the head of the McDonald’s corporation. Hancock’s movie desperately wants you to like Kroc, but maybe we shouldn’t? After all, he swept in and took the name of McDonald’s from the McDonald brothers (Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch), effectively cutting them out of most profits and leaving them in his dust. The film is at its best when it is in old-time, Americana mode. It’s a beautiful looking movie that captures the essence of those old timey fast food joints that replaced the traditional drive-in diners. It slows down a bit and gets a little muddled when it tries to depict Kroc as some sort of commerce hero. I suppose if they went into details about how his co-creating McDonald’s has contributed to worldwide obesity and environmental concerns, McDonald’s themselves would’ve mounted up the lawyers and put the kibosh on the whole thing. Offerman is great as the well-meaning, high-standards McDonald brother who regrets the day he met Kroc.
4
Hidden Figures
Katherine Johnson was part of a segregated division at NASA in the ’50s, a wing of mathematicians who did the work that computers do today. Hidden Figures depicts the humiliation she and two other historical African-American figures, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, went through while solving equations that helped put men safely into space. The women had to put up with a lot of racist bullshit, and the film shows their hardships, albeit in PG fashion. Taraji P. Henson plays Johnson, the “smart one” astronaut John Glenn personally demanded check the co-
ordinates before his historical flight launched. Octavia Spencer is her usual great self as Vaughan, doing the work of a supervisor without the title and curious about that new IBM thing they just installed down the hall. Vaughan would become crucial to the implementation of computers at NASA, as well as being the agency’s first African-American supervisor. As Jackson, NASA’s first female African-American aeronautical engineer, singer Janelle Monae is so good, it’s easy to forget that this is just her second movie role. As a composite, fictional character named Al Harrison, Kevin Costner does some of his best acting in years.
5
La La Land
4
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
4
Split
This is an all new, original musical from director Damien Chazelle (Whiplash) that’s surprisingly low on melodrama while full of vibrancy, beautiful tunes, outstanding set pieces and a stunning sense of realism for a movie where the characters bust out singing. It’s the best original movie musical ever made. The story follows wannabe actress Mia (Emma Stone) and jazz composer Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) as they try to make it in crazy Los Angeles. They meet, they don’t like each other much at first, but then they fall in love, which provides Chazelle and his performers ample opportunities for musical numbers that surprise at every turn. This solidifies Gosling as one of the best actors of his generation. He can wow you with insightful indies and carry big-budget blockbusters. Now, with La La Land, he takes his game to a new level. He proves he can pretty much do anything when it comes to movie characters. He can sing and dance with the best of them. Stone doesn’t just make her mark with a beautiful voice and expert footwork—she embodies the character with the honest and almost tragic drive to “make it” in the business.
There was a quick little moment in the very first Star Wars (now known as Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope) where a character mentions rebels possibly obtaining vulnerability secrets regarding the Death Star. That group of people actually gets their own movie in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, a Star Wars spinoff that’s technically another prequel. In fact, it tells a story that leads right up to where A New Hope begins. It’s also a little different from your typical Star Wars movie in that it doesn’t mainly deal with the Skywalker saga—although a couple of them make notable appearances—and doesn’t prominently feature the John Williams score (although that makes some appearances, as well). Director Gareth Edwards (Godzilla) goes for something a little different here, a tonal shift that reminds of the big change The Empire Strikes Back brought to the saga. Felicity Jones is terrific as Jyn, a woman who finds herself with strange ties to the Death Star, and becomes part of the effort to destroy it.
Writer-director M. Night Shyamalan has finally made his first good movie since Signs (2002) with Split, a down-to-thebasics, creepy thriller propelled by excellent performances from James McAvoy and Anya Taylor-Joy (The Witch). The film reminds us that Shyamalan can be quite the capable director and writer when he isn’t getting too carried away. Taylor-Joy plays Casey, a high school outcast who attends a birthday party and soon thereafter finds herself and two classmates imprisoned by a strange man with multiple personalities (McAvoy). In addition to the angry man who kidnaps them, he’s also a stately, mannered woman, a 9-year-old child and, well, a few others. One of those other personalities plays a big part in taking the film into other realms beyond psychological thriller. McAvoy goes nuts with the role, and Shyamalan takes things into supernatural territories in a chilling climax. Taylor-Joy is quickly becoming the new scream queen, McAvoy’s work will surely stand as one of the year’s most fun performances, and Shyamalan finds himself back from the dead. Stay for the credits, which include a nice cameo.
