Tag: Mig's Reviews

UNITED 93 (2006)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Paul Greengrass
Cast: Ben Sliney, Khalid Abdalla, Corey Johnson
My Rating: 10/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 90% Certified Fresh

PLOT: A real-time account of the events on United Flight 93, one of the planes hijacked on September 11th, 2001, and of the chaos on the ground as the FAA and the military grasped what was happening.


There are a handful of movies that can still make me cry when watching them, even on repeat viewings, and even then it doesn’t always happen.  Fearless, directed by Peter Weir, is one of them.  The finale of Edward Scissorhands still has the power to choke me up.  The transition from black-and-white to color at the end of Schindler’s List can still bring a lump to my throat given the right circumstances.

But only one movie has made me shed real tears every single time I watch it, and I’ve seen it now at least four times.  I used to watch it every time September 11th came around, as a sort of (morbid?) remembrance of that terrible day.  I haven’t done so the last couple of years simply because the emotional reaction I have to the movie and the events it depicts is just too much to deal with.

Paul Greengrass’ United 93 is unlike any other film about 9/11 that I’ve ever seen.  Many people praised Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center when it came out, but I found that movie too pumped up with melodrama and forced situations.  United 93, on the other hand, takes a documentary approach and simply follows the passengers and crew boarding their flight, like any other, on their way to a date with destiny that nobody saw coming.

Intercut with the flight itself are scenes on the ground, in various air traffic control centers, and the FAA itself.  One of the masterstrokes of the film was to cast Ben Sliney as himself.  Ben Sliney, for those who don’t remember, was the FAA Operations Manager on 9/11.  In fact, it was his first day on the job in that new position that very morning.  It was his decision, after seeing the carnage in NYC and the Pentagon, to take the unprecedented step of grounding ALL air traffic over the United States.

The movie’s effectiveness comes partly from the re-enactments of the ground controllers, trying to make sense of garbled messages coming from first one, then two, then three flights, something about people taking control – and then seeing those flights disappear from radar coverage.  And then someone in the tower sees smoke coming from downtown New York…  Those scenes, more than any documentary I’ve seen, really bring back the memories of that morning for me, the disbelief and utter shock of seeing that building burning and smoking.  And then the second plane hits…

But the movie’s real power is with the flight that ultimately didn’t hit a significant target, crashing instead in a field in Pennsylvania.  (There has been some speculation about its intended target, but the truth is we’ll never know.)  The scenes aboard United 93 have been pieced together using recorded phone conversations from passengers, flight deck recordings, and data on the plane’s flight path.  There’s no way to know how accurate some of these events are, but the point of the movie is that it feels 100% real.  The fear on the face of the hijackers, the fear of the passengers, the slow realization that this flight is headed to another target, and their gradual determination to do something about it.

Watching those scenes, with the knowledge that this flight will eventually crash with total loss of life, is an unbearably sad experience.  The final few minutes of the film, as the passengers rush their attackers and frantically try to break down the cockpit door, fills me with dread.  I find myself thinking, unreasonably, “Maybe this time they’ll get to the cockpit in time…maybe THIS time they’ll get the one pilot among the passengers behind the wheel this time…”  But no.

So WHY, oh, WHY do I give this movie a “10” when it’s such an immensely tragic experience?

Because this movie does not feel like a cheap attempt to cash in on a national tragedy.  Instead, it feels more like a memorial to those brave souls who did everything they could to keep themselves alive, to keep their attackers from fulfilling their evil deeds.  As much as any soldiers who gave their lives attacking a beach head, these everyday civilians deserve our gratitude, and they should be acknowledged as genuine heroes.  I believe United 93 treats them as such.

TOY STORY 4 (2019)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Josh Cooley
Cast: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Annie Potts, Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele, Christina Hendricks, Keanu Reeves, Joan Cusack
My Rating: 9/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 98% Certified Fresh

PLOT: A new toy called “Forky” joins Woody and the gang, and a road trip with old and new friends reveals how big the world can be for a toy.


Frankly, one of the best “perks” of Toy Story 4 is the return of Bo Peep.  I had always wondered what had happened to her in Toy Story 3 that had Woody so sad.  I’m glad we got to see why she was no longer around, and I’m glad we get to see how she’s fared in the intervening years.  Just wanted to get that out of the way.

Toy Story 4 is not quite the pinnacle of perfection that is Toy Story 3, especially when it comes to the heartstring-tugging, but it’s a marvelous film on its own, and the ending is a fitting curtain call to the franchise.  Woody, Buzz, and the gang have gone through more hair-raising, death-defying adventures than Indiana Jones, it sometimes seems, and the fact that they reach the start of truly new chapters in their lives by the time the credits roll is comforting.

This fourth film introduces an intriguing element in the form of a doll named Gabby Gabby.  She’s one of those dolls that every girl seems to have owned at some point in her life…at least, every girl born before the year 2000, I’d guess.  She resides in an antiques store, and she has a problem: her voice box is defective.  When you pull her string, instead of a little girl’s voice, you hear what sounds like a 45 being played at 33 1/3.  (You older readers can explain that to the younger ones.)

Her potential salvation: Woody’s voice box is in perfect working order.  All she has to do is somehow exchange voice boxes with Woody, and she’ll have the chance to get a little human girl to love her enough to take her home.

This is…creepy.  There’s something unsettling about this Gabby Gabby character because she’s a cute little doll who essentially wants to perform an organ transplant whether Woody wants to or not.  She’s just so…matter-of-fact about it.

I’m doing a lot of simple play-by-play, and not really giving a sense of the movie itself.  That’s because, while it’s skillfully made and emotionally engaging, it’s not like this movie breaks new ground, exactly.  I think it’s a good thing this will finally be the last Toy Story film.  It’s becoming much harder to imagine what else Pixar can put these characters through, and I’d hate for them to push things too far like they did with the Cars franchise.

But don’t get me wrong, it was incredibly entertaining, and I loved every minute of it.  If you liked the first three movies – heck, if you love ANY Pixar movie – you won’t be disappointed by this one.  It’s just…you’ve gotta see it for yourself.  At this point, any further reviewing of the movie would involve spoiler alerts and scene descriptions and re-telling my favorite lines, and that’s not really a review anymore, that’s just a synopsis.

Suffice to say: “Toy Story 4” delivers the kind of movie we’ve come to expect from Pixar.  It’ll make you laugh, jump, laugh some more, give you a couple of hanky moments, and it’ll look GREAT doing it.

RUNNING SCARED (2006)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Wayne Kramer
Cast: Paul Walker, Cameron Bright, Vera Farmiga, Chazz Palminteri
My Rating: 8/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 41%

PLOT: A low-ranking thug (Walker) is entrusted by his boss to dispose of a gun that killed corrupt cops, but things spiral out of control when the gun somehow winds up in the hands of his neighbor’s son (Bright).


So…okay.

First of all, this is most assuredly NOT a remake of the quintessentially ‘80s comedy thriller of the same name, starring Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines, who, although they were very funny, were two of the most unconvincing street cops since…ever.

No.  This is one of the most twisted, sordid, blood-soaked retelling of a Grimms-esque fairy tale I’ve ever seen.  Like someone kidnapped Quentin Tarantino and force-fed him only moonshine and methamphetamines for a week, then told him to sit down and re-write the story of Hansel and Gretel, but to make it take place in modern-day lower-middle-class New Jersey, and don’t forget the guns, Russian thugs, and brief, um, cunning linguistics.

Yeah.  It’s that kind of movie.

I haven’t read the negative reviews of this film, so I couldn’t tell you what turned so many people OFF.  I can only report what turned me ON.

A big part of it is the energetic storytelling at work: lots of digitally enhanced camera tricks, the occasional rewind, tilting the camera when you really didn’t have to, sudden speed-ups…very stylistic.  Tony Scott did a bit of the same thing in Domino, released a few months earlier, and Oliver Stone sort of pioneered this kind of thing with the wildly weird Natural Born Killers.  So it’s not like I haven’t seen this before, but it really works with this lurid material.

Which brings me to another big part of why I like this movie: the story.  On the surface, it’s your standard kid-in-peril, race-against-time thriller.  Paul Walker absolutely, positively HAS to get his hands on the dirty gun that Cameron Bright manages to steal and go into hiding with.

But tilt your head and squint your eyes, and you can see the whole thing is basically a guns-blood-and-broads version of a classic fairy tale, where a young innocent traverses the unforgiving countryside while being pursued by deadly forces.  On the way, he meets up with various colorful characters, who aren’t all bad, but they’re certainly not all good.

In this case, instead of trolls and ogres, our innocent character encounters, not necessarily in this order: the Russian mafia, a hooker with a heart of gold, her vengeful pimp, a creepy homeless guy, crooked cops, his own abusive father, and, in the movie’s squirmiest moment, a creepy married couple who show an inordinate amount of compassion for, and interest in, this lost child, and who seem to have the most nefarious motives of anyone else in the film.

And that’s just the “B” story.

The “A” story revolves around Paul Walker’s character trying to retrieve the gun Bright has stolen.  He bounces around like a pinball with his own son in tow, spewing profanity like it’s going out of style, beating up lesser thugs, lying to superior thugs, always just one step behind Bright who is sure Walker is going to kill him.

I dunno, for me, the dynamic camerawork and the shocking subject matter all worked.  It’s a fun, trippy ride, with just desserts getting served all around.  I’m sure people have an issue with the ending, but what would they have preferred when it comes to a popcorn movie like this?

After all, how do MOST fairy tales end?

LATE NIGHT (2019)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Nisha Ganatra
Cast: Emma Thompson, Mindy Kaling, John Lithgow
My Rating: 7/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 79% Certified Fresh

PLOT: After being accused of hating women, the female host (Thompson) of a popular late-night talk show makes a “diversity hire” for the writer’s room: Molly Patel (Kaling), whose straight-talking instincts put her at odds with her boss and co-writers.


On the whole, Late Night is like the best movie Judd Apatow hasn’t made yet.  It’s funny (not explosively funny, but pointedly funny), smart, and actually has something relevant to say about a host of topics, but mostly it’s about women: women in the workplace, in Hollywood, in positions of power, in traditionally male-dominated industries, even women and sexual indiscretions.

Mindy Kaling (who also wrote the screenplay) plays Molly Patel, a chemical plant worker who lands an interview for a writing job at one of the most popular (fictional) late-night shows on television, and also the only one hosted by a woman: Katherine Newbury, played with style and wit by Emma Thompson.

(For the record, I could watch Emma Thompson read the phone book, and I would say that was also done with style and wit, and I’d probably be right.  But moving on…)

Molly’s interview is perfectly timed, because Katherine desperately needs a “diversity hire” after she is accused of hating women.  The fact that her writer’s room consists of all white men does not help her case, so Molly is hired more or less on the spot.  IMDb tells me that Mindy Kaling once interned for the Conan show, so I personally have no idea how accurate the characterizations are of these writers, but I got the feeling they were pretty spot on.  For example, when she’s first introduced to the room, a couple of the guys immediately ask her for sandwiches and coffee.  In another twist, she uses the ladies room, only to discover that, since there are so few women employed there, all the male writers use the ladies room as well…but only when “duty” calls. (…he said as he chuckled to himself.)

We have the makings of what could have been a great comedy.  As it is, we have a pretty good comedy.

My issues are at the screenplay level.  The story is awesome, the characters are awesome, and the screenplay does make some sharp criticisms of the current status quo.  (The best and funniest scene occurs when Katherine takes to the streets, a la Conan or Jimmy Fallon, and does a “White Savior” bit; it sounds terribly racist when I write it out like that, but I assure you, it’s hilarious and not a bit racist.)  But…there were times when I thought the screenplay was pulling its punches.

For example, there’s a moment when Katherine decides to deliver a politically charged joke in her monologue (it’s a doozy, by the way).  Given the plot developments by that time, I thought there would be more of that kind of material later on.  But there isn’t.  Alas.

There are lots of moments like that, when the screenplay felt like it was building to some kind of climactic, powerfully-written dialogue or monologue that would really lay into the characters and the audience, like an Aaron Sorkin script, or even like a comedy from earlier this year, Long Shot.  But it never QUITE happens.

(Okay, there IS one scene that does deliver a great payoff…it’s played out on an empty stage between two of the main characters, and it has as much heartfelt emotion and drama as any Merchant Ivory film.)

I liked this movie.  I felt like there was MORE that could have been said and done with this material that could have elevated it even more. But it is ultimately a feel-good movie that has some very funny scenes and has a lot to say. 

THE LOBSTER (2015)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Cast: Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, John C. Reilly, Olivia Colman
My Rating: 4/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 87% Certified Fresh

PLOT: In a dystopian near-future, single people, according to the laws of The City, are taken to The Hotel, where they are obliged to find a romantic partner in forty-five days or be transformed into an animal.

[So, yeah, this is about 1,800 words of how much I disliked the majority of this movie, so this review is FULL OF SPOILERS, because it pissed me off so much…if you have ANY interest in seeing this movie, I’d seriously advise against reading this review.  I’d advise you MORE against SEEING the movie, but whatever, dealer’s choice.]


“The course of your relationship will be monitored closely by our staff and by me personally. If you encounter any problems, any tensions, any arguing, that you cannot resolve yourselves, you will be assigned children. That usually helps, a lot.” – Hotel Manager (Olivia Colman)

(That’s the best line in the movie, just thought you should get the highlight now.)

——————


I first became interested in The Lobster after discovering The Favourite, one of the very best films of 2018.  I thought director Yorgos Lanthimos’s vision and directorial style were stunningly original, and the story was exquisitely well-acted by all three of the female leads.  So, by extension, I figured The Lobster would be more of the same.  It came highly recommended by other friends, and I remember seeing it in stores with that now-familiar “Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes” sticker.

Well, I just finished watching The Lobster on Netflix.  It was, putting it mildly, a major letdown.

It had a promising start.  The opening scene features a woman driving wordlessly through some countryside.  She stops on the side of the road, and as she exits the car, you can see she’s carrying a revolver.  She calmly walks into a field and approaches a nearby donkey and…well, let me just say that my attention was immediately grabbed.

Eventually, the audience is fed enough information to deduce that, for reasons left unexplained, single people from The City (it’s never referred to by its proper name) are being trucked to a resort hotel in the country.  Their personal possessions are confiscated, and they are assigned small rooms with single beds.  They are calmly informed that, if they manage to pair up with another hotel guest, they will both be relocated to a room with a queen bed, and from there to a yacht.  (They are mum about what’s supposed to happen after that.)

If, however, you are unable to pair up with someone after 45 days, you will be literally transformed into an animal.  You are permitted to decide which animal.  Well, naturally. (David, our “hero” (Colin Farrell), wants to be a lobster if his time comes, although not for any reasons that Phoebe Bouffay might celebrate…)

So…yeah.  You’ve basically got Logan’s Run meets Black Mirror.

—————–

For the first section of the film, taking place mostly in and around the resort, I was mesmerized.  It felt like the best films of Spike Jonze, or even Monty Python.  For example, The Hotel strictly prohibits masturbation.  When John C. Reilly’s character breaks this rule, his punishment is bizarre but, I would imagine, 100% effective.  (And let me just say, it’s probably not what you’re thinking.)

Another bizarre moment: sexual intercourse with any other guest while still single is also strictly prohibited, but as part of the “treatment” for a single person, once a day, a maid comes to your room to replace any tranquilizer darts you may have used the previous night (long story) and then performs, for lack of a better word, a lap dance.  This dance, while technically “erotic”, is drained of any sexual chemistry.  It defies description.  It is one of the most bizarre things I’ve seen on film in recent years.

Now, I LIKE bizarre.  This whole opening third of the film is right up my alley.  I had literally NO idea where any of this was headed, and that thrills me. But then…disaster strikes, at least from my point of view.

David, Colin Farrell’s character, can take it no longer and engineers an escape from the Hotel.  In the surrounding forests, he discovers a band of Loners, single people who survive off the land, as they are unwelcome in The City.  They pride themselves on being able to do what they want where they want (as long as it’s not in The City), but they ALSO have strict rules about not pairing up.  Masturbation: A-OK.  Hooking up: VERBOTEN.

From an allegorical point of view, I believe The Hotel represents the cult of Couplehood, or Marriage, if you like, that tends to assault single folks, in one way or another, their entire single life.  (Argue with me all you want, but if you want concrete examples, look no further than television commercials, game, set, match.)  On the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got the cult of Singularity [my own name, not from the film], the folks who love being single so much that, when their friends couple up, the single friend backs off from invitations and begs off of parties and fades away, because who needs that pressure, am I right?

So the rules of the Loners make sense from that perspective.  But…from a STORY perspective, the movie comes to a stop once David finds himself in that forest.  He meets a beautiful woman (Rachel Weisz, credited only as “Short Sighted Woman”), they flirt surreptitiously, they develop a forbidden relationship, they go undercover into the city with another faux couple (just to prove they can, I guess), and then they are discovered by the leader of the Loners.  The Loner leader tricks Short Sighted Woman into seeing an eye doctor on the pretense of getting her vision corrected, but instead, the doctor [SPOILER ALERT] blinds her as punishment for her transgression.

BLINDS her.  Don’t you think a severe tongue-lashing and two nights without food or water would have sufficed here?  I mean, what the actual f***?

At this point, I was getting tired of this story.  I felt bogged down by melodrama after a seriously promising start.  (For example, the way in which the forbidden relationship between David and Short Sighted Woman was discovered was absurdly preventable; it felt like something that happened only because the screenplay required it, not because it was something the characters would actually do.)

——————————

So, now we’re at the REAL reason I disliked this movie so much.  If you’ve stuck with me this long, we’re at the home stretch.  MAJOR spoiler follows, so last chance to bail.

David and the newly-blinded S.S.W. engineer a second escape and wind up on foot on a country road, presumably heading into The City.  At this point, I made a startling realization.  From an allegorical point of view, David and S.S.W., at least to a small degree, represented my relationship with my own girlfriend.  They were in a relationship, but not an officially “sanctioned” one (Marriage), so they don’t belong in The City.  And they’re a couple, but not truly “single”, so they don’t belong at The Hotel.  They’re in relationship limbo, at least as far as cultural designations go.

I was like, “Hey!  Finally, a movie that acknowledges a relationship like mine!  …although I certainly don’t feel like I’m navigating a no-man’s land, but at least we’re being represented in some small way.”

So.  They wind up at a diner, where David makes a decision: he will blind himself with a steak knife.

What.  The f**k.  What is this plot point supposed to represent in this allegory?  The need (requirement?) for one partner in a relationship to make drastic changes to themselves, physically or otherwise, in order to belong with the other person?  I understand the need for change and compromise in ANY relationship, but here’s my two cents: if you decide your relationship depends on you BLINDING YOURSELF for your partner, you need to check yourself before you wreck yourself.

So, picture the scene: David leaves blind S.S.W. at the table and heads to the bathroom.  We see him preparing to do the deed.  The knife is in his hand.  He stuffs paper towels in his mouth to stifle the screams that are sure to come.  He holds the steak knife with the point JUST about to penetrate the eyeball.  Suddenly, CUT back to S.S.W. at the table.  Waiting.  And waiting.  And waiting some more.  A waiter refreshes her water glass.  She continues waiting.  Through the diner window, construction is in progress across the street.  She waits.  And waits.  And waits.

Suddenly…CUT TO BLACK…ROLL CREDITS.

Reader, I am being 100% truthful when I say, at that point, I literally flipped the double-bird at my TV screen and yelled out, “WHAT THE F**K!!!”

I mean, seriously…what is the POINT of that dangling participle of an ending?  There are only three possible outcomes: he blinds himself and returns to S.S.W., OR he chickens out and returns to S.S.W., OR he chickens out and bails on S.S.W.  Since we get the Schrodinger’s Cat ending, it is simultaneously ALL of those endings and NONE of those endings, which is extraordinarily FRUSTRATING BEYOND BELIEF.  I got NO resolution to the story OR the characters.  Do they try to find safe harbor in The City, perhaps on forged documents?  Do they travel the country, taking only the back roads and taking shelter in backyard sheds or hastily dug shelters?  ARE THEY BOTH BLIND during all this?

Don’t tell me, “Well, it’s up to you what happens.  What do YOU think he does?”  I don’t know, I DIDN’T WRITE THE SCREENPLAY.  Farrell plays the character with an almost childlike simplicity, so it’s impossible to predict what he’ll do.  This serves the story extremely well in the first part of the movie, but it does the viewing audience no favors when it comes to this absurd anti-climax.

I felt short-changed and cheated at the end of this movie.  And I really liked the characters, and I liked the first third of the story, and I stuck with it hoping it would arrive at a grand conclusion, some epic, symbolic imagery that would bring things full circle or SOMETHING.  And I got bupkis.  That’s not how you treat a viewer, folks.  I felt insulted.

So.  Despite my hatred for the ending, I still give it a 4 (rounding up 1/3 of 10) because of how original and oddball the first third of the film was, and how much promise it displayed.  If they had stuck with that tone all the way through, I could see this REALLY being a gem.  As it is, I would like to quote Admiral Ackbar:

“IT’S A TRAP!”

GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS (2019)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Michael Dougherty
Cast: Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, Millie Bobby Brown, Ken Watanabe, Bradley Whitford
My Rating: 6/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 40%

PLOT: Five years after the events of Godzilla (2014), humanity finds itself once again at risk as multiple titanic creatures awake from slumber and wreak devastation on the planet.  Who can stop them?  Indeed, WHO?


In many ways, Godzilla: King of the Monsters reminded me of Guillermo del Toro’s kaiju epic Pacific Rim, although, to be fair, the monster battles were far superior in del Toro’s film.  But that’s the framework in which this movie should be measured: the monster battles.  With a title like King of the Monsters, one shouldn’t walk into a screening of this film expecting a screenplay by Ernest Hemingway.  You won’t find self-reflexive, multi-layered dialogue here.  You want that, wait for Oscar season later in the year.

No, this is a popcorn movie, pure and simple, and on that level, I believe it succeeds.  We got two monster “species” total in 2014’s Godzilla reboot, and in this sequel, we get an additional six at least.  We got two major monster sequences in the first film…this time we get, jeez, four, I think?  I lost count.  In the summer blockbuster vein of “bigger is better”, G:KotM pulled out all the stops.

At least, in terms of the monster battles.  The screenplay is one giant cliché after another.  Think of the screenplay for Independence Day and square the cheesiness factor.  Then think of all the monster movies you remember from your youth, and imagine someone funneled every cliché from those terrible scripts into this one.  Yeah, it’s like that.

  • One character talks about humanity being a scourge to the planet, and how it ought to be eradicated by the titans in order for the planet to survive.  As my friend Marc Sanders pointed out, they should have just called Thanos; he could have fixed the problem in a SNAP, thank you, I’m here all night.
  • At one point, a kidnapped little girl is taken to a military-style bunker and, in a feat that rivals Houdini, manages to steal an EXTREMELY important piece of hardware, climb into an air shaft, and literally stroll out the UNGUARDED front gate, presumably while all the grownups are too busy watching the world end on their computer monitors.
  • At another point, it’s determined that the best way to revive an injured Godzilla is to fire a nuclear weapon into his radioactive underwater lair.  Alas, the launching mechanism has failed, and it’s impossible to detonate it remotely, meaning someone must volunteer to hand-carry a nuclear warhead, place it literally RIGHT NEXT to Godzilla, and blow themselves up.  Because, why not?  Instead of feeling like a heroic moment, it felt really, REALLY contrived.

But, I mean…it’s not like any of that really matters here, does it?  To re-state an important factoid, the title of the movie is Godzilla: King of the Monsters.  KING OF THE MONSTERS.  This is simply a mindless, monstrous summer diversion that oddly appealed to me, but only when we saw the monsters fighting.  It kinda took me back to my childhood, watching one of any number of Godzilla films in syndication.

I’m not saying it’s better than the 2014 film, let me be clear.  I thought that film, helmed by Gareth Edwards (who went on to direct the sensational Rogue One), was a more “awesome” movie in the most literal sense of the word.  There was a sense of grandeur, almost, to Godzilla that bordered on reverence. King of the Monsters is all about the fight.  The rumble.  The battle for dominance.  Only one can be king, and Godzilla will not give up his throne without a fight.  Or three.

Many moons ago, I went with my good friend Marc to see what promised to be a cheesy movie: Freddy vs. Jason (2003). Was it cheesy? Yes. But did it deliver on its title? Brother, we got, not one, but THREE showdowns between the two title characters. I got what I paid for and had no complaints.

Same principle applies here.

SUSPIRIA (2018)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Luca Guadagnino
Cast: Dakota Johnson, Tilda Swinton, Chloë Grace Moretz
My Rating: 8/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 66%

PLOT: Berlin, 1977 – A young American woman (Johnson) joins an elite ballet troupe run by Madame Blanc (Swinton), but sinister events occur that lead her to believe that not all is as it seems…


[SOME SPOILERS FOLLOW – CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED]

In 1977, Italian director Dario Argento released a horror film called Suspiria.  I have never seen it, but I am aware of its place in film history.  A brief scan of Wikipedia provides these tidbits:

  • It’s #18 on Entertainment Weekly’s list of the 25 scariest films ever.
  • One website called it “the closest a filmmaker has come to capturing a nightmare on film.”
  • It is frequently cited for its use of vibrant colors, particularly when it comes to the copious amounts of blood present.
  • It is director Argento’s highest-grossing film in the U.S.

I mention all this to reassure readers that, even though I have NOT seen the original, I am aware of its legacy.  I also want to stress that I do not believe a thorough knowledge of the original is necessary for enjoyment, because this was one of the most supremely disturbing horror films I’ve ever sat through.  I don’t know how closely it follows the original, but who cares?

The movie is entertainment, but portions of it are so grotesque that I found myself wondering, “Should I be enjoying this?  What’s wrong with me if I am enjoying this?”  I have a couple of issues with the ending, which I can’t discuss without spoiling some key plot developments, but aside from that, this was a riveting film…but, again, a very disturbing one.

The plot: A young woman, Susie, travels from Ohio to join an elite ballet troupe in Berlin, run with an iron hand by the imposing Madame Blanc, played by the shape-shifting Tilda Swinton.  Susie thoroughly impresses Swinton at the audition, and is hired almost immediately and shown to her dorm room (all the dancers and instructors live under one roof).  The next day, a fellow dancer, Olga, storms out of a rehearsal after expressing concern about Patricia, another dancer who has gone missing, and suggests Madame Blanc had something to do with her disappearance.

This sets up the first of several intensely disturbing sequences in the movie.  Olga tries to leave the dormitory, but gets turned around and winds up trapped in a small rehearsal space, one floor below the main rehearsal space.  Blanc asks the new girl, Susie, to dance a particularly demanding routine.  As Susie throws herself into the dance (with some striking choreography), Olga, one floor below, suddenly finds herself flung through the air by unseen forces, apparently in concert with Susie’s movements above.  She gets tossed around like a life-size voodoo doll, from one wall to the other, down to the floor and up again, and I found myself thinking of poor Chrissy Watkins from Jaws as she was shaken from side to side before being eaten alive.

I haven’t even mentioned the grotesque things that start happening to her limbs.  Or how the dance instructors use meat hooks for clean-up afterwards.

And that’s just in the first two acts of the movie.

A sense of foreboding suffuses nearly every shot of Suspiria.  It’s a stress sandwich that doesn’t have the kind of cathartic scream moments one might expect from the horror genre.  With Suspiria, it’s all about the slow burn, followed by moments of revelatory horror and eye-popping imagery, particularly when it comes to Susie’s dream sequences and the final revelation of what happened to Olga and Patricia.

But I STILL haven’t mentioned the climax.  [AGAIN…SPOILER ALERT.]

All of the quease-inducing tension and visuals are nothing, NOTHING, I say, when compared to the finale, a grand guignol nightmare of blood, violent death, disembowelment, and gratuitous female nudity.  It was at that point that I realized: this is one of those films that you dare each other to watch, just to see how long the other will last before turning it off or throwing up.  The first couple of minutes of the climax involve more blood and off-putting makeup than any two Saw movies.  And then, just when you think it’s over, the REALLY bloody part begins.

(There is a key question to which I did not get a satisfactory answer, thus my rating of 8 instead of 10.)

I honestly don’t know who to recommend this to.  Horror aficionados, obviously, though many of them may be purists with no desire to see a 40-year-old masterpiece of the genre get the modern treatment.  I stress again that I don’t believe knowledge of the original is necessary to enjoy (if that’s the right word) this movie.  If it were made in a vacuum, with no original from 1977, I believe Suspiria would be able to stand alone as a new horror classic.

Just don’t eat anything before watching it.

ROCKETMAN (2019)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Dexter Fletcher
Cast: Taron Egerton, Jamie Bell, Richard Madden, Bryce Dallas Howard
My Rating: 8/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 86% Certified Fresh

PLOT: A musical fantasy about Elton John’s (Egerton) breakthrough years in the 1970s.


Much more so than Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman feels like a genuine musical.  On top of that, it also provides much more insight into the lead character than Rhapsody did.  I did feel that it was stretching a bit, trying a bit too hard to pluck the old heartstrings towards the end of the film.  But the fact remains that I was more invested in the Elton John character than Freddie Mercury.

I think a big part of that improvement is due to the way Rocketman is structured.  The entire film is played out in a series of flashbacks, ostensibly during a group therapy session at a rehab clinic.  I say “ostensibly” because, in the opening moments of the film, he apparently walks into the session moments after abandoning his Madison Square Garden concert.  He is in full Elton John regalia: a flaming orange and red outfit complete with spreading wings on his back and devil horns on his head.  Through most of the film (after his meteoric rise to fame), he will do his best to live up to the devilish nature of this costume.

(This structure is not new…see, for example, De-Lovely, in which Cole Porter defends his life to a mysterious figure at the moment of his death.)

I have said over and over again, on Facebook and to my fellow cinephiles, how I cannot handle movies or TV shows with loathsome characters as the leads.  I can never and will never watch the TV show Mad Men.  No power on earth will ever compel me to sit through another screening of What About Bob? If someone had shot Jennifer Lawrence’s character in American Hustle with a shotgun, I would have cheered.

And yet here is Rocketman, featuring a lead character who, in the course of the movie…let me see…gets himself addicted to drugs and alcohol, succeeds in alienating anyone and everyone close to him, attempts suicide, gets the venue city name wrong during a massive concert (that’s a BIG no-no), ditches the people who made him famous in the first place out of misplaced affection for his smarmy manager/lover, and marries a woman (out of nowhere) knowing full well he is gay.

He does all of these things, and yet I was still on his side.  Weird, right?  The last time I felt that kind of empathy for a troubled lead character was in Ray.  (I’m not equating the two films, just remarking on their similarity.)  If I had to draw a line connecting those two films, and why I was able to handle their anti-social tendencies, the first things that come to mind are their music and their backstories.  The music produced by Ray Charles and Elton John (and Elton’s inseparable collaborator, Bernie Taupin) is on such a level that it was intriguing to me to watch their characters evolve, to see where such music comes from, and how much suffering is sometimes (always?) necessary for greatness to be achieved.

Another aspect of Rocketman’s success is the way unique visual tricks were used to convey the extreme emotional impact of certain events in Elton John’s life.  I’m thinking especially of his first concert at the famed Troubador nightclub in Los Angeles.  After a few agonizing seconds of nervous silence, Elton and his band break into “Crocodile Rock”, and when the bouncy chorus begins with its high, ‘50s-esque falsettos, there is a glorious moment when Elton, the band, and the crowd slowly levitate in the air, transported by the music.  I can imagine the real Elton John describing that moment in that specific way.  Or any number of performers describing their one supremely perfect moment in the spotlight, that one fleeting moment in time when it felt like the world revolved around them and their music, or their monologue, or their pas-de-deux.  It’s a magical sequence.

I cannot call Rocketman a perfect biopic.  As I mentioned before, it tries a little too hard at the end.  There is a bit of speechifying that is intended to get a gut-wrenching emotional reaction, but which I felt was a little too much of a muchness.  But it is an improvement on Bohemian Rhapsody.  I got a much fuller picture of Elton John’s life before he became THE Elton John, and as such, I was much more invested in how things turned out.

BOOKSMART (2019)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Olivia Wilde
Cast: Kaitlyn Dever, Beanie Feldstein, Jason Sudeikis, Lisa Kudrow, Will Forte, Billie Lourd
My Rating: 9/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 98% Certified Fresh

PLOT: Two over-achieving high-school seniors (Dever, Feldstein) decide to experience, at long last, the party life on the night before graduation.


Booksmart goes on the list of the best comedies of the new millennium, along with Bridesmaids, Superbad, and a few others.  It is simply told, hilariously funny, and genuinely touching when it comes to the two lead characters and their friendship, which is put to the test when they decide to venture WAY out of their comfort zone for one last night of partying before senior high graduation.

If the trailers make Booksmart look a little like a female version of Superbad or American Pie, well, maybe that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because hopefully that will drive people to the theatre, people who wouldn’t normally care about a girl-centric comedy that doesn’t involve losing-our-virginity pacts or having carnal relations with flutes and baked goods.

In fact, the trajectory of the story most closely resembles certain comedies from the early ‘80s, the ones where everything (or ALMOST everything) happens in one crazy night, with the main characters bouncing from one bizarre scene to another, all in pursuit of that one legendary party.  Booksmart feels like the R-rated girl-power comedy that John Hughes never got the chance to make.

I don’t want to tick off the different situations in which the heroines find themselves; that would be giving too much away.  But I will mention one scene that is worth the price of admission.  The two girls find themselves at a murder-mystery-themed party, and begin to have a drug-fueled hallucination (long story).  The nature of the hallucination, and the way it manages to induce genuine laughs, while simultaneously making a statement about smashing traditional notions of female beauty, is breathtaking.

The movie does manage to capture real pathos, as well, the kind of teenage heartbreak that is unique in the human experience.  Unfortunately, I felt that the scenes in which this occurs really slow down the momentum of the movie.  However, I can’t imagine the movie being complete without it.  It felt absolutely necessary, no matter how much it may have dragged a bit.

I’m being intentionally vague with a lot of my review here.  I’ve read other reviews that have given WAY too much away, and I’m trying to avoid that here.  I simply wish to convey that this is the funniest movie I’ve seen so far this year (and I LOVED “Long Shot”), and it would be a shame to miss seeing it with a large crowd in a big movie theater.  Don’t miss this one.

JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 3 – PARABELLUM (2019)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Chad Stahelski
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Halle Berry, Ian McShane, Laurence Fishburne, Anjelica Huston
My Rating: 9/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 89% Certified Fresh

PLOT: Picking up precisely where John Wick 2 left off, legendary assassin John Wick (Reeves) must fend off wave after wave of bounty hunters intent on collecting the $14 million bounty on his head.


You gotta love how John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum starts.  About 30 seconds of opening credits, and then bang, the action picks up exactly where John Wick: Chapter 2 ended.  Wick is on the run through New York City, trying to find safe haven for himself (and his dog, aptly named “Dog”) before he becomes “excommunicado”.  At that point, a global network of assassins will make him their target and kill him.

Well…they’ll TRY to kill him.

Let’s be blunt: you’re either a fan of the John Wick franchise, or you’re not.  These films are not for the casual moviegoer.  There’s just enough story to hang the fight scenes on, no more.  Everything we need to know about the John Wick character, we’ve gleaned from the first two films, and even that is minimal.  There’s no subtext, no neo-modern, meta-textual considerations to be discussed in terms of the screenplay.  The movie has but one purpose: to show off spectacularly choreographed fight scenes in which the good guy obliterates a crapload of bad guys.

I think I read somewhere there are eleven separate fight scenes in the film.  As such, the filmmakers were careful to make the fight scenes as distinctive as possible, especially when it comes to the weapons that are used.  Among these weapons are (let me see if I can remember them all): fists, knives, swords, axes, pistols, shotguns, machine guns, several thick books, a chisel, a couple of pissed-off attack dogs, and a belt.

Watching this movie was exhilarating for me.  The action scenes tapped into that teenaged part of me that used to love watching Enter the Dragon or The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.  I mean, I still love those movies, but for some reason, during Parabellum, I was positively giddy.  There was a sense that the filmmakers were attempting to provide us with the ULTIMATE action movie, the zenith, the ne plus ultra.  And I’ve gotta say, the last time an action movie gave me those kinds of vibes was The Matrix Reloaded during the freeway car chase.

There’s not much more to say about the movie.  Like I said, it has one purpose, and it does it extremely well.  If you love great fight scenes, congratulations, Christmas came early.