by BoB Grimm
b g ri m m @ne w s re v i e w . c o m
SHORT TAKES
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“Everyone’s finally going to know the name Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta.”
Rise to fame It’s movie magic at its most beautiful when Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga share the screen in A Star is Born. It’s a rousing remake of the old warhorse rise-to-fame story, and it’s easily the best movie with that title ever made. Considering it’s the fourth, it’s amazing how original the film feels. Cooper makes his feature directorial debut and stars as Jackson Maine, a Southern rocker barely getting through his gigs thanks to too much alcohol, too many pills and a nasty case of tinnitus. The film opens with Cooper live on stage belting out “Black Eyes,” a song that clearly states this movie means business on the musical front. Yes, that’s him singing live—none of that lip-synching bullshit here—and playing a pretty mean guitar. He brings a lot of legitimate musical soul to the role. And he damned well better, because his counterpart in this story is played by none other than Lady Gaga in her fierce feature lead debut. (She had bit parts in Sin City and Muppet movies.) As Ally, a waitress who sings occasionally at the local drag bar, Gaga delivers so well beyond expectations it seems impossible. She’s so good it hurts, especially in the film’s dramatic moments, of which there are many. After his opening concert performance (filmed at Coachella in 2017), Jackson heads to Ally’s drag bar and, through an alcohol haze, witnesses her stirring version of “La Vie En Rose.” He’s instantly convinced he’s witnessing a diamond in the rough and implores her to join him on the road. She makes an impromptu appearance on stage with him performing “Shallow,” a song they wrote in a grocery store parking lot together. She’s an instant smash, and the road to fame and fortune has begun for Ally. As this oft-told story goes, when the one star rises, the other falls, and Cooper (who co-wrote the screenplay) stays faithful to that theme. But while past incarnations have been a bit shmaltzy—Streisand’s ’70s take was pretty goofy—his take is gritty, intelligent, heartfelt and, at times, emotionally overwhelming. Gaga cries a bit in this movie, and you probably will, too.
Speaking of the Streisand version, Cooper’s film makes many obvious nods to it: Jackson’s Kris Kristofferson look, an examination of Gaga’s big beautiful nose (just like Streisand’s), and even a moment including fake eyebrows. (There are prominent eyebrow scenes in all of the versions.) Cooper acknowledges the prior films without stealing from them. Fans of the Streisand version will appreciate what they see here. Gaga allegedly campaigned for the music to be performed live, and this is a huge blessing, because nobody sings live like Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta. What she does with tracks like “Shallow,” and the film’s closing number, “I’ll Never Love Again,” is the stuff of movie legend. And while this sort of magic is more or less expected from Gaga, to have Cooper up there, successfully trading musical punches with one of the best singers on the planet is some sort of musical miracle. Ally’s rise-to-fame story becomes a little predictable at times when her pop career takes off but not enough to hurt the movie or diminish the film’s instant classic status, especially in the realm of musicals. The songs, many of them crafted by Gaga and Cooper together, are the real deal. It was a lot of fun following this film’s production and reading about what inspired Cooper to make the movie and cast Gaga. It’s rare that a film lives up to the hype as this one has. Gaga is now a frontrunner for an acting Oscar, Cooper finds himself in the running for directing, and “Shallow” would seem predestined for an Original Song win. So, see this one knowing that the goosebumps will rise, the smiles will stretch your face muscles and the tears will flow. A Star is Born is one of the year’s best movies; Cooper and Gaga are one of the all-time great screen pairings. You’ll do yourself a disservice if you miss this one. Ω
A Star is Born
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Hell Fest
time. This contains the final score from the late Johann Johannsson, and it’s a doozy. It’s safe to say you have never really seen anything like this, and won’t again. (Available for digital download and rental during a limited theatrical release.)
Hell Fest is in the spirit of I Know What You Did Last Summer in that it rips off a lot of countless horror films that came before it, and it also sucks hard. Natalie (Amy Forsyth) joins some friends for an evening of terror as they attend an amusement park full of haunted houses, death mazes and masked cast members running around the park with a mandate to scare the shit out of them. Walking among the paid crew, wearing a mask and hoodie similar to many other characters in the park, is an anonymous man who isn’t going for makebelieve. He actually likes to really kill people with ice picks, mallets, guillotines, syringes and knives. Much of the action takes place in the dark, with flashing strobe lights and shades of red and backed by stock horror sound effects. There’s a pretty good reason why none of this is scary. Director Gregory Plotkin films in a way that renders the locales flat, cheap-looking and stagey, just like your average amusement park haunted house. Maybe this stuff is a little scary in real life, but is sitting in a movie theater watching folks enter into these themed rooms scary? No, not really.
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The House with a Clock in Its Walls
This feels like a mishmash of many kidfriendly Halloween tales, and a messy mishmash at that. It wants to be Harry Potter, Lemony Snicket and Goosebumps all rolled up into one wacky movie. It’s all a little too much, and it falls apart in its final act. Granted, it’s based upon a novel published in 1973 so, really, the entities mentioned above maybe got inspired by author John Bellairs and his ways of spooking kids with words on paper. As for the cinematic punch, Bellairs and his tome were beaten to it, and this movie adaptation pulls a lot of style choices from films that came before it. If your kids go to this one and then request permission to watch other films by its director, beware, for it’s directed by Eli Roth, frequent purveyor of gross-out torture porn like Cabin Fever, Hostel and The Green Inferno. Roth can conjure some enjoyable elements within the realm of a PG movie, but he can’t quite wrangle all of the story elements together to deliver something that makes sense. While it does contain some genuinely creepy stuff, many of its attempts at frights with living dolls and scary pumpkins feel recycled. Jack Black and Cate Blanchett deliver fun performances as a warlock and semi-retired witch, but much of the film rests upon the young shoulders of Owen Vaccaro as Lewis, an orphan sent to live with his uncle Jonathan (Black) in a creepy house. Jonathan and his neighbor Mrs. Zimmermann (Blanchett) eventually start coaching the misfit Lewis in the powers of witchcraft, an offense that would get child services on their asses, even back in the ’50s when this film is set.
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Mandy
It’s been a good year for gonzo Nicolas Cage. He got to go all psycho in Mom and Dad and now, courtesy of director Panos Cosmatos, he gets his best role in half a decade for this psychedelic ’80s horror throwback. Cage plays Red Miller, a lumberjack living a good life in the northwest with his wife, Mandy Bloom (Andrea Riseborough). Their world is overturned by a Manson-like religious sect led by crazed prophet, Jeremiah Sand (Linus Roache). Jeremiah wants to recruit Mandy for his cult, but when she has an unfavorable reaction to the folk album he recorded, things get really bad. Enter Cage in crazed/pissed mode, as the second half of the movie goes super crazy and super gory. This movie actually contains what will go down as one of the all-time great Cage moments: a bathroom tantrum that involves a Leaving Las Vegas-like vodka chug and crazed weeping on the toilet. It’s one of those movies where he’s allowed to do or say whatever pops into his head, and we get some great, weird lines out of him. We also get one of his most fiercely honest performances. His craziness and oddness are fueled by pure emotional destruction, and as “out there” as the movie gets, Cage somehow remains grounded in a consistent, flawless performance. Extra kudos to Roache, who does evil cowardice well, and Riseborough, who makes quite the impression in her abbreviated screen
Maniac
Here’s another Netflix series that plays like a long, but really good, movie. Jonah Hill and Emma Stone reteam (after Superbad) as two mentally exhausted individuals volunteering for pharmaceutical experiments that involve a lot more than simply taking pills. The premise, which allows for the Hill and Stone characters to essentially share dreams, places them inside different fantasy scenarios involving different people. Lemurs, Long Island, shootouts, odd dancing, seances, hawks and more play into those scenarios, all directed engagingly by Cary Joji Fukunaga. The different dreams have different styles, but Fukunaga keeps it all under control and unified. Stone is the true shining star here, especially in a sequence that places her in a Lord of the Rings type setting, one that her character’s true self can’t really stand. Hill plays it morose for much of the running time, which is necessary given his character’s state, but does get a decent amount of opportunities to go crazy when his character morphs into different people. Justin Theroux is fantastic as a pathetic doctor, as is Sally Field as his famous mother. In fact, Field has some of the series’ best moments, no surprise given that it’s the legendary Sally Field. If you are looking to binge, this is a safe bet. (Available for streaming on Netflix.)
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The Predator
Well, that does it. After decades of trying, it’s become definitively evident: Nobody seems to know how to make a decent Predator sequel. It’s not like the first film was a masterpiece. It was a goofy adventure pic featuring a superstar on the rise. Schwarzenegger, in fact, turned down a cameo in this latest franchise installment. The Predator, a movie that simply needed to be just OK to keep pace with the 1987 original, blows its chance. As for the Alien vs. Predator attempts? Let’s not go there. The Predator certainly had its reasons for getting us excited. Shane Black, who actually played the first character killed in this franchise 31 years ago, is its director. This is the man responsible for Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, The Nice Guys and Iron Man 3. That Iron Man 3 credit is the main reason to think Black would be a good pick to lead a beloved genre favorite back to greatness. Nope. In fact, The Predator actually represents a step backward from the extremely mediocre Predators (2010), the prior installment that squandered a decent idea with a cheap-looking film. The Predator is a lumbering stink bomb through and through.
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Venom
This is a sometimes entertaining mess, but it’s still a mess. Let’s get the obvious out of the way: you shouldn’t have a Venom movie without Spider-Man playing into the comic villain’s backstory, somehow. Venom looks like Spider-Man in the comic because the symbiote fused with Peter Parker first, resulting in the “Spider-Man on steroids” look. This film has no Spidey. Sony has loaned out Spider-Man to Disney, and no Spidey means the monster needs a different origin. Now it’s a space alien that passes through an evil scientist’s lab, a space alien that still manages to look a little like Spider-Man, having never met the guy. Tom Hardy labors hard at playing Eddie Brock, an investigative reporter who’s infected by the symbiote and starts biting off people’s heads in PG-13 fashion. Brock winds up with Venom’s voice in his head and an ability to make Venom sort of a good/bad guy. It’s all kind of stupid, playing things mostly for laughs and squandering a chance for a real horror show. Some of the action and effects are pretty good, and Hardy gives it his all, but the film feels like a botch job pretty much from the start. Michelle Williams gets what might be the worst role of her career as Brock’s girlfriend, and Riz Ahmed plays the stereotypical villain. There are hints of something cool, but they are buried under a pile of muck.
10.11.18
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RN&R
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