Every 2021 Film I Saw: Quick Takes

1.            Blue Bayou-Filmed, directed, and starring South Korean Justin Chon, the story of a Korean immigrant born and raised in Louisiana facing deportation is difficult with glimmering vestiges of human triumph. I was floored by the sentiment.

2.            House of Gucci-Very Shakespearean in all its delicious tragedy and back-stabbing. These people were larger than life and the story takes on that grandeur.  

3.            West Side Story-The degree of difficulty to adapt a classic and make it your own is high, so many great decisions went to make a fuller and richer story and put character developments in historic context 

4.            Last Night in Soho-I admire that a director who has always had comedy in each of his pictures was able to do something entirely without it. It was a great mystery, time capsule and comic of age story and I was overwhelmed with the kinetic frenzy. My one minor complaint is I didn’t love the horror elements.

5.            Licorice Pizza-There was an extremely icky age difference but I enjoyed so much of the nostalgic drench and vignette-like nature of the story.

6.            Nightmare Alley-This visually beautiful tragic tale of a drifter is very rewarding on second viewing

7.            Concrete Cowboy-Idris Elba played the hard black dad like Denzel Washington in Fences but convincingly added the layer of empathy and caring for his child and that vulnerability in their relationship really got to me. I didn’t understand what this horse stable was doing in the middle of Philadelphia but I also got that it was important to them

8.            Last Duel-Slightly slower than ideal in terms of authenticity but the trade-off is authenticity.

9.            Power of the Dog-An incredibly strong attention to detail, great performances, and, in my opinion, a thematic thrust worthy of a Best Picture win.

10.          Free Guy-Yes, it's fun, but a lot of world building and the kind of detailed storyline that could transfer over to a robust sci-fi film

11.          Jungle Cruise-More just fun, but I found the central relationships moving enough, and I'm a sucker for Amazon stories

12.          Courier-It had a first half that was markedly different than the second (kind of like the Dev Patel film Lion) that was tonally a bit jarring, but it was a spy film that moved at the speed of life.

13.          Mayday-Very eerie and quiet film that sneaks up on you about a violated teenager who's taken away to a fantasy land where she can be in the protection of woman but she's also lulling men to their deaths

14.          Don’t Look Up-Yes, it was depressing, but it was sharp

15.          Queen Bees-Another entry into the "Old People Team Up to Make a Movie" genre with Jane Curtin, Ellen Burstyn, Loretta DeVine, Ann Margaret, Christopher Lloyd, and James Caan. Very sweet and tuned into the twilight years

16.          Moxie-A high school melodrama directed by Amy Poehler (maybe a companion piece to Mean Girls?) that's sharp and funny at times. Navigates the current climate well without casting feminism or men as villains.

17.          Woman in the Window-A Hitchcockonian mystery that oozed suspense and mystery

18.          Val-The only documentary I watched this year about Val Kilmer. A very self-conscious look at fame and coming to terms with his physical demise

19.          Ride the Eagle-An impressive small-scale production about a guy (Jake Johnson) coping with the death of a mother (Susan Sarandon) he barely knew

20.          Eyes of Tammy Faye-A nicely focused biopic which picked the right parts of Tammy's life to focus on and had a good villain in Vincent D'Onofrio's Jerry Fallwell. There was a tremendous amount to appreciate in Tammy Faye's arc as evidenced by Jessica's Oscar BUT I would've liked a litle more development to Andrew Garfield's character

21.          Coda-It was sweet and it did show us a world we hadn't seen before, but I felt the music part itself was full of plot holes and the piano teacher to the rescue at the audition is an old trope. Still I'm happy it won in an odd way: The Oscars are extremely predictable with the glut of precursors so a bizarre upset is welcome.

22.          Passing-Well-shot and acted and I’d even buy the score on CD. The conversations were really interesting as well but at times they felt a little theatrical as if they were playing for a small art-house audience.

23.        Ice Road-I love the guts of whoever pitched this film: “Speed but twice as slow and they’ll be going on ice.” Amber Midthunder could be a star down the road.

24.       Space Jam 2-I love the Looney Tunes though they feel a little off in the looniness department and, even in the first Space Jam, Bugs, Duffy and Lola had bigger roles which set them up to fuel more of the comedy (Michael Jordan/LeBron James is the straight man). Still, the film was fun, the plot felt updated in clever ways (taking a page from the e-sports world and lampooning entertainment’s overemphasis on IPs), and I enjoyed the greater focus on the son-father relationship that the original Space Jam should have also been about.

25.          Beckett-It's a contextless action film like the Bourne series where we're just shown a guy doing lots of amazing fighting but we don't know the why of anything. Tonally, the film held but barely.

26.          Worth-The film was executed well, but it was kind of dull. At the same time, it's not that easy to make a film about an accountant making risk assessment calculations.

27.          Cruella-Beautiful to look at and Emma Stone's iteration of the character was a fun underdog to root for. Paul Walter Hauser and Joel Frye also make excellent sidekicks. Still it went on way too long and there’s a such thing as too many twists.

27.          Pig-It's nice to see Nicholas Cage celebrated for his acting, but the film is a bit self-serious. It’s just food seasoning, guys: No need to start a fight club over it or build an organized crime empire around it.

28.       Legend  of Shang-Tsi and the Ten Rings-I could predict almost every plot development five minutes in advance, and what I couldn’t predict, I didn’t care about.  I was also bothered that the film expected me to know who Trevor whatever-his-name-is, F--- Off Marvel, I don’t care about crossovers. And shouldn’t side kicks have some use? (I’m looking at you Seth Rogen as Green Hornet, who punched out maybe 2 people in comparison to Kato single-handedly fighting dozens of goons at once).  But, that sky scraper fight scene was next level.

29.         Flag Day-This was a film…..that I watched…..sorry, I barely remember watching this..

31.          Being the Ricardos-Aaron Sorkin had been on a really good streak—Molly’s Game, Trial of the Chicago 7—but this is like “Studio 60” backwards in terms of egotistical awfulness. Yes, the actors handle the smug material well, but the material is all about praising the ego of the creator at the expense of others (the producers, writers and co-stars are secondary to Lucy’s brilliance) and had little to do with Lucy who was funny.

32.          French Dispatch-The only Wes Anderson film I wouldn’t recommend. There is such a thing as too bloated of an ensemble and too much attention to detail.

33.          Electric Life of Louis P Wain-Too cutesy-wutesy and by the numbers.

34.          Lost Daughter-Slow and dreary. It might have all the right moves to offer but it didn’t hook me.

35.        Mitchells vs Machines-Don’t know if I remember this too much either. That’s not a good sign.

36.          Tomorrow War-Sooo much uncanny valley and ugly creatures on the screen and this is probably one of the few times when there’s no debate that a time travel film makes no sense. Normally that genre can hand-wave a lot of plot holes.

37.          Barb and Star Go to Mar El Vista-I know it had its fans, but I found this overly low-brow and couldn’t find a single scene that screams “Brilliant!.” Maybe Barb and Star being fired from their jobs comes close but that’s in the beginning of the movie and front loads with lots of expectations.  You realize that these two made Bridesmaids? It’s mostly standard mix-em-ups and a comedy of doors.

 This felt like when Mike Meyers or M. Night Shyamalan refuse to listen to studio notes about a bad idea.

38.          Thunder Force-Because it stars Melissa McCarthy, one might assume it’s a send-up to superhero tropes but the film plays the superhero story pretty straight despite the film still having the outlines of a comedy. It’s a pretty awkward clash. At least Jason Bateman seemed to know he was in a comic film.

39.          Breaking News in Yuma County-A dark comedy that feels as if someone read cliff notes on the Coen Brothers films (people fabricate dumb schemes, people get blackmailed, people are violently hurt, etc) and tried to make a film solely off that. It probably doesn’t help that the scheme is not just dumb but uninteresting. Allyson Janney pretends to know details about your husband’s death because she likes being on the news and the fame it brings her, but do people really like being a talking head on the news?

40.          Kate-Like Beckett, it’s a contextless action film (we’re not meant to know much about the hero) but, it’s also a contextless shoot-em-up and it’s too high in the ratio of violence to context for me to not see it as gratuitous.  

41.          Stowaway-Boring attempt at sci-fi and it’s lifeboat ethics weren’t anything I agreed with. 

Capsule Reviews: Braindead, Night Manager, and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

Braindead (CBS)-"Braindead" has a strong enough premise has enough thunder out of the gate to get you past the slow expositional burn of the first few episodes that typically sees viewers drop out when their attention spans are tested the most. After that, the show fails to maintain a sense of escalating tension. Still it's watchable enough that I made it to the end with a sense of relative satisfaction.

The premise is that aliens, in the form of ants, have invaded the brains of several power players on Capitol Hill with an as-yet-to-be-determined agenda that is up for the protagonist. Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays Laurel, the sister of a senator who is forced to resign to a Capitol Hill job after failing to make it as a documentarian. As such, she brings a jaded sense of been-there-done-that to her jobs that turns out to be one of the series' best features: As opposed to the usual intensity of policy wonks we see on TV, Laurel brings a sense of irony and detachment.

Laurel is given a love interest in the form of a senatorial aide from across the aisle (Les Miserables' Aaron Tveit) that does a decent job of padding the running time along (markedly better than Laurel's daddy issues). Her chemistry with brother Danny Pino also works pretty well.

I started this review by saying the show isn't lovable but would have trouble pinpointing specifically where the show fails. The political commentary is decent but not particularly engaging. The pace at which Laurel discovers the truth is a bit slow to hold our attention. Characters such as Gustav add a lot to the plot but others (like the woman Gustav is hitting on) are somewhat and forgettable and Tony Shaloub's villainous senator is amicable but not worth the hype.

The Night Manager (AMC)- A continental spy thriller that has the advantage of not being particularly convoluted in plot and having a sleak look. The exterior shots remind me visually of of Michel Hazanvicius's "OSS 117," "The Brothers Bloom" or "On Her Majesty's Secret Service." It's a spy thriller that feels much more like real espionage than even the more realistic James Bond films. The six-episode series contains its fair share of heart-pumping action but is also filled with a lot of bureaucracy and characters who sit and wait until the right moment. 
 

Tom Hiddleston (not to be confused with Tom Holland, Tom Hollander, or Tom Hardy) plays a concierge who is seduced by a mysterious woman one night who then gets maimed. She turns out to be a flash in a pan en route to a much larger story involving his recruitment to full-on spyhood with Olivia Coleman as his handler and David "I'm in literally every procedural on TV" Harewood as Coleman's American counterpart. Reminiscent of "Argo," there's a lot of split-screen action between Hiddleston's actions on the ground and the political and bureaucratic hoops the handlers have to jump through to give him any means of support when he gets there.

As far as I can remember, there's little detail as to why this hotel manager is so insanely good at every facet of espionage other than that he used to be in the army. He's just really good and that's pretty much all you need to know.

Hugh Laurie plays a Bond-like villain named Richard Roper who was on TV for nearly a decade as Roger Ebert's TV partner. Lines like "Richard Roeper is the worst, most ruthless, soulless man in the world. He will stop at nothing to get what he wants" sounds like the screenwriter has a vendetta against the guy for giving his last project a thumbs down (ed. note: I have recently learned that the book was written in 1993). 

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt Season 2 (Netflix)-The first season of this unusually quirky (in relation to Tina Fey and Robert Carlock's past work) show was defined by Kimmy's arc from impulsively freeing herself from her past to formally resolved. In contrast, the second season went out of its way to avoid any such grand movements in Kimmy's development. The Dong storyline -- a wonderfully racially unbiased romance -- zigged enough for one episode's filler (Dong can't see Kimmy), zagged back (Dong now can and will stop at nothing to see Kimmy) enough to fill another episode and resolved with a nice little bow. Consumation? check. Dong's put on a bus to his come country? 

Kimmy's main development this season was dealing with her inner demons through therapy. When a PTSD-related story arc is resolved through the victim resolving to ride the roller coasters, it's hard to take it as a serious treatment of the issue. 

At the same time, we have false expectations as viewers in TV's Golden Age (trademark) that all good TV must up the stakes every season and there's nothing inherently wrong with lateral development which is what can best be described here. The problem with "30 Rock" employing of such a strategy was that it kept going to the same well: Tracy's crazy, Jack's genuinely in love, Liz has one last chance for happiness before her ladyparts wither and it's with Matt Damon/James Marsden/Michael Sheen/whoever played the beeper guy. 

Fortunately, I have confidence that "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" can find new angles because it's about so much more than the typical workplace sitcom and gives room for the writers to find new beats and definitions of happiness for their characters.  

Elsewhere this season, there were a number of developments with the side characters. In particular, Titus found a boyfriend and it was a very refreshing portrayal of a homosexual relationship between two opposites. It was two guys awkwardly making their way through something they had never experienced before and had no road map for). 

If there's one beef to be had with the show, it's on the humor level which had a lot fewer home runs. Tina Fey and Co. are generally go-big-or-go-home with their jokes so that you might remember something funny from "30 Rock" years from now. The first season of "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" had the court trial, the dinner party and the GED quest which were brilliantly escalating comic plots that enveloped entire episodes. This season, we had a mentos gag which didn't dig as deep and Kimmy working as an elf which didn't lead to a single funny moment.