Chop-Sockey Caper: A Review of Bullet Train

 directed by David Leitch

written by Zak Olkewicz (based on Maria Beetle by Kotaro Isaka)

Ever since John Wick launched a new subgenre of action film nearly ten years ago, namely hyper-violent action flicks which are way too violent for children but which are too over-the-top to be taken seriously by adults, there have been quite a few of them which have tried to recapture the John Wick "magic," many of which have conspicuously failed, because they tried to repeat the formula with very little variation: a nearly superhuman killer comes out of retirement/hiding for one reason or another to kick some serious ass.

Bullet Train, which came out in the middle of last year and hit Netflix last December, is a notable exception which I thought to finally review after watching Nobody last night, another hyper-violent movie that only just came out on Netflix (and which I'm reviewing next). Bullet Train, directed by David Leitch, who actually co-directed the first John Wick movie, combines two genres, the hyper-violent action movie and the caper film, to surprisingly good effect.

In this film, hired killer Ladybug (Brad Pitt) has a very simple assignment from his boss Maria Beetle (Sandra Bullock), hop on board the famous shinkansen or the bullet train (hence the title) grab a certain briefcase and get off again.  Unfortunately, his actual mission is nowhere near as simple as he hopes it will be as a wide assortment of killers with different agendas, many of which conflict with his own, all happen to be on the same train at the same time he is, such as brothers Lemon and Tangerine (Brian Tyree Henry and Aaron Tayloy-Johnson), the Wolf (Bad Bunny), the Hornet (Zazie Beetz) the Prince (Joey King), and the worst of them all: the White Death (Michael Shannon).

It's been written that this film is evocative of the Guy Ritchie caper films of the late 90s and early 00s, and to be honest I quite agree. More than just the quippy humor, which pervades throughout the film, mostly courtesy of the banter between Lemon and Tangerine, this film is set apart by its interweaving narratives, with just about all of the characters' fates intertwined.  Sure there's plenty of violence along the way, but the fact that there's an underlying story and that the characters have motivations other than just laying waste to legions of cardboard cutout henchmen keeps the narrative properly engaging. As unlikely as this sounds, it was fun to listen to some of the dialogue of this movie. 

Also, the fact that Brad Pitt's highly-skilled killer isn't on a mission to kill everyone but on a simple snatch-and-grab errand that goes horribly awry makes him more sympathetic as a character. They couldn't well kill his dog at the beginning of the movie so at least this movie makes him quite distinct from the OTHER guy kicking ass well into his 50s.  It's also really funny to watch how almost everyone else's plans in the movie unravel as the titular bullet train hurtles on. 

It's not high art, of course.  It's sometimes a little too silly for its own good, and there are some tropes here and there. The storytelling isn't transcendent like it is in, say, Everything, Everywhere All at Once,  which actually managed to deliver a discourse on existentialism wrapped up in a martial arts movie, but Leitch and crew deserve credit for trying something a little different.

7.5/10

Effortlessly Toeing the Line Between Grimness and Hilarity: A Review of The Banshees of Inisherin

 written and directed by 

Martin McDonagh

One of the stronger contenders for Oscar glory this year is the off-the-wall tragicomedy The Banshees of Inisherin, directed by British-Irish writer-director Martin McDonagh, who reteams with Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, the gentlemen with whom he made his feature film directorial debut, In Bruges.  

Set in Ireland (or in a fictional island of the coast of Ireland) in 1923, during dying days of the Irish Civil War, The Banshees of Inisherin is the story of two lifelong friends and drinking buddies, Padraic (Farrell) and Colm (Gleeson) whose friendship takes an abrupt turn for the unexpected when Colm, a folk musician who plays the violin, suddenly decides he does not want to be friends with Padraic anymore, much to the latter's befuddlement as well as the confusion of the tiny village, including the bartender Jonjo (Pat Shortt) and Padraic's sister Siobhan (Kerry Condon). Eventually Colm explains that he wants to spend the rest of his life writing music for which he will be remembered rather than wasting his time idly chatting with a dullard like Padraic.  Heartbroken, Padraic at first tries to cope by hanging out with the town idiot, a boy Dominic (Barry Keoghan) who is constantly abused by his father , who also happens to be the local policeman (Gary Lydon), but it just isn't the same.  Padraic tries to force the issue with Colm, who then makes a chilling threat: if Padraic won't leave him alone, he will cut a finger off his violin playing hand every time Padraic talks to him.  Will he make good on this threat?

This movie with its strange mix of deadpan humor and downright grisliness makes a lot more sense when one has seen In Bruges, which featured two hitmen, also played by Farrell and Gleeson, who are lying low in the idyllic Belgian town of Bruges following an assignment gone wrong.  I enjoyed the strange mix of quips and occasional slapstick that permeated the film, so much so that when it came to its violent denouement, I really wasn't all that bothered by it. It was a film that featured hitmen, after all.

The Banshees of Inisherin has a very similar sensibility to In Bruges and its strength lies in its dialogue penned by McDonagh who was a playwright years before he started making movies. There's not a whole lot of broad humor here, but I found myself laughing time and again in spite of myself.  It's also genuinely interesting how it tackles concepts that people didn't really understand back then. Colm, for example, is grappling with what appears to be a deep depression, which his priest (David Pearse) refers to as "despair." This does put a lot of Colm's actions in the film into their proper context.  

It also helps that the actors have such great chemistry. Gleeson and Farrell, even when they're feuding onscreen, make a compelling comic duo, as do Farrell and Condon as siblings.  Keoghan, playing an awkward teen at the ripe old age of 30, whose Dominic has a crush on Siobhan effectively projects a figure that is both comic and tragic at the same time.  

If I had any nitpick about this film it would be with its occasionally anachronistic dialogue. I'd be happy to be corrected, but I feel relatively certain that expressions like "mental" and "judgy" were not in popular use a hundred years ago.   It doesn't really take anything away from the story but it is occasionally distracting. 

This film achieves the absurdist approach that Noah Baumbach tried a bit to convey with White Noise. Even when the characters are acting at their strangest, the whole thing seems believable because McDonagh has given them believable dialogue and not text that feels like it's being read out of a book. 

It is well worth the time to watch this  film.

9.5/10 

  

When Not Everyone Bites Your Awards Bait: A Review of White Noise

directed by Noah Baumbach

written by Noah Baumbach, based on the novel by Don DeLillo

Following his acclaimed, multiple Academy-Award-nominated divorce drama Marriage Story, writer-director Noah Baumbach brings his audiences a new film, the quirky comedy drama White Noise starring Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig and Don Cheadle. 

Driver plays college professor Jack Gladney whose life in a small town of Blacksmith, Ohio consists mainly of raising his mixed family of four kids together with his fourth wife Babette, played by Greta Gerwig, and promoting his very specific field of historical study, "Hitler studies" and bonding with his fellow professors, including Murray Siskind (Cheadle) who also wishes to promote an esoteric field of study he has dubbed "Elvis studies."   Everyone's lives are momentarily thrown into chaos when a train transporting toxic chemicals collides with a trailer truck and releases black pillar of smoke into the air, prompting a wave of mass hysteria and a subsequent exodus from the town.  Things are never quite the same after that as Jack is confronted with his near-crippling fear of death and learns that Babette is addicted to a mysterious drug that no one has ever heard of, a mystery he endeavors to solve. 

My only exposure to Noah Baumbach has been limited strictly to his work with Wes Anderson, with whom he wrote or co-wrote scripts, and so far the script that has left the biggest impression on me was his work on the Roald Dahl adaptation The Fantastic Mr. Fox, from which, oddly enough, Baumbach borrows some elements, including a snarky pubescent son and a bizarre dance at a grocery store.

Baumbach's quirky, sometimes surreal dialogue felt at home in that charming stop-motion cartoon which featured A-list actors like George Clooney and Meryl Streep but to my mind, it doesn't quite work in this 80s-set fable and, more often than not, feels a tad pretentious. Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig have terrible onscreen chemistry; as the viewer I never got a sense that these characters really meant anything to one another other than when the script told me they did. If anything, Driver has stronger chemistry with his colleague Siskind, who is one of the few bright spots on the film. 

Driver himself fortunately, manages to carry the film to its ungainly conclusion. Transformed from his ultra-cut Kylo Ren physique, either through prosthetics or some good old-fashioned goofing off, he convincingly wears his character's middle age like a comfortable suit, even when spouting out some of Baumbach's clunkier, stilted dialogue.   Gerwig is far less convincing as Babette; she's supposed to be wrestling with a mid-life crisis but her performance just doesn't sell it. She just feels like a Hollywood type pretending to have a mid-life crisis.  The way I see it she's a lot better behind the camera than in front of it. 

On the whole Netflix really does deserve kudos for championing films that would otherwise languish in movie theaters. That's how I felt when they released the German-language masterpiece All Quiet on the Western Front.  I don't quite feel that way about this film. 

 

6/10

Awards Season Ramblings, Part III: Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio

 directed by Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson

written by del Toro, Patrick McHale and Matthew Robbins

Thank God for public domain.  Why, you ask?

At a time when Disney mangled yet another of its beloved animated properties, Pinocchio, with an ill-advised live-action remake, Netflix and Guillermo del Toro reminded us that this classic tale about yearning and heartbreak, based on a story by Carlo Collodi, can be charming and expertly-crafted.  Their chosen medium for presenting the story was stop-motion animation, which had a nice rough and tumble feel to it. 

The story is familiar enough; an old wood carver makes a wooden puppet to be his son, and a magical fairy brings the puppet to life. Hijinks ensue. True to del Toro's style of storytelling, though, the story (which is already dark enough in its original form) has a very particularly dark twists. Here, Gepetto (David Bradley) loses his son Carlo (Gregory Mann) during the Great War when Italian bombers returning from a mission unload their excess bombs on what they mistakenly think is the middle of nowhere.  In a drunken rage, he later chops down the tree under which his son is buried and carves Pinocchio (also Mann).  The tree also happens to be the residence of a talking cricket (Ewan McGregor).  As in the original, the Wood Sprite (Tilda Swinton) gives Pinocchio life as a gesture of compassion to Gepetto, and as before hijinks ensue. This time, instead of being recruited by a talking fox, Pinocchio is approached by a sleazy circus Ringmaster named Count Volpe (Christophz Waltz). Like in previous versions he ignores the cricket's attempts to be his conscience and runs into serious trouble. Interestingly enough, though the trouble he runs into here actually involves Mussolini's fascist government...I kid you not.  

In an age where everything is computer-generated, it was really refreshing to see a film rendered in something as old-fashioned and quaint as stop motion animation, and infused, as well, with a decidedly different sensibility from what we've seen before. Infusing Gepetto's backstory with tragedy was interesting enough, but setting the story in the years between the First and Second World Wars was both a stroke of genius and madness, the kind of audacious move that only del Toro could have pulled off.  Another interesting twist to this story is how Pinocchio cannot die, and despite suffering mortal injuries throughout the movie he finds himself in the afterlife with Death (Swinton again) and her black undertaker bunnies, only to be promptly sent back to the land of the living. It really is such wonderfully quirky storytelling. 

Del Toro has enlisted a truly formidable voice cast, with Harry Potter alum David Bradley as Gepetto and Obi Wan Kenobi himself, Ewan McGregor as Sebastian J. Cricket (not Jiminy, mind you).  Two-time Oscar winner Christoph Waltz chews the scenery as the villainous Volpe, while regular Del Toro collaborator Ron Perlman also shines as the evil Podesta, a fascist official whose son Candlewick (Finn Wolfhard) also bullies Pinocchio. Tilda Swinton enchants in a double role as the Wood Sprite who brings Pinocchio to life and as her sister, Death itself. Casting legendary voice actor Tom Kenny as Benito Mussolini was another brilliant call from Del Toro and his casting director.  The eponymous wooden boy himself is played by newcomer Gregory Mann, who comes across as earnest and sincere in his performance. 

  It's a real charmer, this movie. For people sick of the CGI glut in the marketplace, this is bound to be a welcome balm. It certainly was for me. 

9/10

Awards Season Ramblings, Part II: A Review of Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (Very Mild Spoilers)

 written and directed by 

Rian Johnson

Last time I talked about a heavyweight contender for some serious awards, namely Netflix's new adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front.   The movie I'm about to review now still has quite a bit of awards potential, even though it is a significantly more commercial endeavor, so this review still counts as "awards season ramblings."  

I am speaking, of course, of The Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, an all-new murder mystery starring Benoit Blanc from writer-director Rian Johnson, who singlehandedly revived the whodunit genre with the original Knives Out film in 2019, in which Benoit Blanc, the Southern sleuth played by Daniel Craig, made his debut.

In the film, tech billionaire Miles Bron (Edward Norton), decides to host a murder-mystery themed party for his friends on his private island in Greece. These include Governor Claire Debella (Kathryn Hahn), scientist Lionel Toussaint (Leslie Odom, Jr.), model-turned-fashion designer Birdie Jay (Kate Hudson) and internet personality Duke Cody (Dave Bautista). All of them receive their invitations packaged in mysterious boxes that require puzzle solving to open, but more importantly, all of them have reason to want Bron dead. Also invited to the party is Bron's former business partner Andi Brand (Janelle Monae), with whom Bron has had a bitter falling out.  It all seems like a recipe for disaster, but notably, someone else shows up at the party, too: the seasoned sleuth Benoit Blanc.   The game is afoot.

It's a joy to see performers really sink their teeth into their roles, and this movie is a sterling example of that.  Daniel Craig has admitted to dialing his Southern drawl up to 11 since the last movie, which is ironically enough, one of the very few off-putting things about this film, but apart from that I could feel the energy every single actor brought to their role.

(Mild spoiler alert) I also appreciated how Johnson continues to put his own stamp on the whodunit, though he does cheat in the slightest by introducing a new set of facts deep into the narrative instead of giving the audience the pleasure of piecing together the mystery using facts that were presented at the very outset. He did it in Knives Out and he does it again here.   That aside the movie is still supremely entertaining, with the emphasis more firmly on the humor in the script rather than the traditional tension attendant to a whodunit.

This brings me to my one real gripe, which doesn't have anything to do with the quality of the film: this was a movie that deserved to be seen in theaters. As films like Top Gun: Maverick, Avatar: the Way of Water and even Bullet Train have shown, there is life in movie theaters outside of Marvel and Star Wars movies.  In its very brief theatrical preview release in only 696 theaters, The Glass Onion was able to rake in the rather handsome sum of $13 million. With numbers like that I feel it's fair to say that a full-blown wide theatrical release could have easily matched the $312 million global take of Knives Out and given Netflix even better momentum for eventually launching the movie on streaming. I'll join the chorus of many people who have already said this: Netflix is NOT a substitute for the theatrical movie experience; it's only a substitute for cable television or physical media. It can also provide a venue for movies that otherwise wouldn't find its audience, like All Quiet on the Western Front.  In contrast to that German-language, ultra-bleak war movie, Glass Onion could have quite easily flourished in theaters, had Netflix not castrated it.

9/10

Awards Season Ramblings, Part I: All Quiet on the Western Front

 directed by Edward Berger

written by Ian Stokell, Edward Berger and Lesley Paterson

As 2022 draws to a close, movie viewers and critics alike start to assess what their favorite movies of the year were.  I intend to vlog about some of my favorite entries, but while my editor works on my backlog, I've decided to jot down my ruminations on some of the gems I've caught on Netflix, Apple TV and other streamers in the last couple of months.

The first serious awards contender I'd like to talk about is the German-language remake of one of the most acclaimed anti-war movies ever made, All Quiet on the Western Front.  As reimagined by German filmmaker Edward Berger, the film marks the first-ever German adaptation of the 1929 German-language  novel by World War I veteran Erich Maria Remarque, the previous two adaptations in 1930 and 1979 being in the English language.

All Quiet on the Western Front tells the story a group of young German men who, caught up in nationalistic fervor stoked by their schoolteacher, join the Imperial German Army in 1917, in the final months of the Great War, only to find that it's not at all what they expected it to be. Youngsters Paul (Felix Kammerer) and his friends Albert (Aaron Hilmer), Franz (Moritz Klaus) and Ludwig (Adrian Grunewald) find themselves in the thick of things as they are marched to the frontlines straightaway, and though they make new friends along the way like Kat (Albrecht Schuch) and Tjaden (Edin Hasanovic), nothing can prepare them for the hell on earth that war inevitably is. Meanwhile, far from the frontlines, diplomat Mathias Erzberger (Daniel Bruhl) sues for peace with the Allied High Command to stop the senseless slaughter that continues to claim thousands of lives, while Imperial Army General Friedrichs (Devid Streisow), still grappling with his country's impending surrender, wants to end his campaign with one last hurrah, which means throwing even more young Germans to the meat grinder.  The lives of Paul and his friends and many others, lie in the hands of people like Erzberger and Friedrichs. 

I've seen my fair share of films set in wartime, but I can honestly say that this is the first truly anti-war film that I have seen in many years.  Not since Oliver Stone's Platoon have I seen a movie that has  more effectively highlighted the complete and utter pointlessness of war. There is no heroic sacrifice here, no redemptive character arc, nobody laying down their lives for a greater good. There is only gut-wrenching violence and the overwhelming sense of hopelessness in the face of forces beyond one's control. Curiously, as movies about war go, it's not even the most violent; films like Saving Private Ryan and Hacksaw Ridge had higher body counts and far more gratuitous depictions of gore and dismemberment.  What this movie has in spades over them both is its unrelenting bleakness.

Director Berger uses every single narrative tool at his disposal to startling effect. The very first scene, which depicts a young German soldier getting mowed down in combat, only to be stripped of his uniform, which is then stitched up and handed off to the next unsuspecting recruit, tells the audience exactly what to expect from this movie, which then proceeds to deliver on its truly grim promise.    

The craft at work here is awe-inspiring. In particular I was struck by the young Kammerer, whose transformation from fanatical youth willing to lie about his age to enlist into a thoroughly broken man who has stopped caring about anything at all is as heartbreaking as it is harrowing. Schuch, as the jaded, working-class soldier Kat is the perfect foil to Paul's exuberant aristocrat, and their camaraderie is the beating heart of the film. It's what makes the fates of these characters matter to me as the viewer, and it manages to do so in a way that isn't cloying or treacly, which brings me to the second part of the film that really stuck with me: the music. 

I was gobsmacked by the music score that, while at first blush seemingly anachronistic, is unlike anything I've ever heard in a film like this.  Instead of leaning on sentimentality by using more traditional instruments like brass or swelling strings,  Volker Bertelmann, the film's composer goes for something else altogether; an electronically-amplified harmonium, a choice as unconventional as it is unsettling.   As exemplary as the other aspects of the production are, it's this unique choice of music that really stood out to me.

Everything else about the production, from the art direction to the sound design to the color grading and the cinematography all work in striking unison to convey exactly what Berger wants to tell us. He really has brought us something extraordinary, and kudos to Daniel Bruhl and his production company for bringing us this tour de force, and also thanks to Bruhl for providing a memorable if brief appearance as real-life politician Erzberger.

As much as I like to trumpet the return of the theatergoing experience, I think this movie validates the role of streamers in keeping certain types of movies alive. This is not a movie that would get a wide theatrical release with its bleak tone, but it is a movie that definitely needs to be seen by as many people as possible.

At a time when certain people still think it's a good idea to invade another sovereign nation, this film is arguably more important than anything else showing right now.   It's obviously not suitable for children (though the novel is required reading in German schools) but if you have a Netflix subscription, please check it out. 

10/10  

Big Jim is BACK...Sort of: A Review of Avatar: The Way of Water

 directed by James Cameron

written by James Cameron, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, Josh Friedman and Shane Salerno

Here's a fun fact: famed auteur Quentin Tarantino, who auspiciously burst onto the filmmaking scene in 1992 with Reservoir Dogs, and who is quite well-known for taking his sweet time in making films, so much so that in thirty years he has only made ten feature films (nine if one counts Kill Bill as one movie), has actually made just as many movies as film titan James Cameron, who had a ten-year head start on him, having made his first movie in 1982.  To me, it is such a strange thing to consider that the quirky arthouse darling has made just as many films as one of the most commercially successful filmmakers of all time.  

After a fairly prolific run in the 80s in which he made four films and in the 90s in which he made three, Cameron has made a habit of making his audiences wait for his next movie.  The 13-year-gap between 2009's Avatar and its sequel Avatar: The Way of Water, is the longest that Cameron has ever made us wait for a new film from him. Inevitably, we have to ask, it is worth the wait?

Well, the answer is yes, and no.  

An undisclosed number of years after the events of the first film, in which the Na'vi, the native population of the fictional moon Pandora, expelled the marauding humans of the Resource Development Administration (RDA) from their planet, the formerly hero of the first film, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) has long since discarded his paraplegic human body and is living full-time in his Na'vi/human hybrid avatar, is living in peace with his wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) and their children. He has assumed leadership over the Omaticaya clan of the Na'vi and is living in relative peace and happiness, when the RDA come back, this time with bigger ambitions, and better guns.  They also have a bunch of grunts who died during their first tour of Pandora but whose consciousnesses were "saved" and who are back now, with new Na'vi/human hybrid bodies, and a score to settle. Foremost among these is Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) who died at Neytiri's hands in the last film and is now itching for some payback.  

The renewed threat from the RDA is no laughing matter and in a little over a year, they have Jake, whom they have identified as the leader of the Na'vi resistance, and his family on the run. They end up taking refuge among the Metkayina, a tribe of Na'vi who live along the ocean led by Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) and Ronal (Kate Winslet), many kilometers away from the forest that Jake and his family have had to flee to keep the RDA from laying waste to the Omaticaya.  Will they be safe there, or will the RDA find Jake and destroy everything he holds dear?   

To get straight to the point: I enjoyed myself.  I must qualify, though, that I think a large part of this was down to the conscious management of my expectations from the film. The first film has often been derided, (and not entirely incorrectly) as a high-tech version of the Australian-American cartoon "Ferngully: The Last Rainforest," so the decidedly derivative story was never the main draw of the first film. It was always about the visuals, and Cameron's remarkable world-building, which he kicked off in spectacular fashion back with the first film and actually manages to continue this time around.  The movie is truly a visual masterpiece, with just enough story to string the gorgeous imagery together. Presented in IMAX 3-D, the movie is astonishing to behold, and reminded me of what the format is really capable of. As much as I have enjoyed most of the offerings of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I must readily admit that they rarely ever came up with movies that justified the hefty IMAX 3-D premium. This, however, is not the case with Avatar: The Way of Water; it takes full advantage of the format and then some.   

Unfortunately, that really is all the movie has  going for it, as the film's characters are mostly flat and forgettable, with nearly no discernible arcs, and the story just trots out one trope after another. The ham-handed "save the whales" message near the end feels like it was shoved in with a crowbar. It was just fortunate that it was fun to behold. I will say, though that anyone who praises the storytelling here while putting down all Marvel movies as empty spectacle needs to have their head examined. And yes, the film was considerably too long.

Ironically, the one character in the entire film who displays anything even approaching some form of development is the antagonist, Miles Quaritch, who has to come to terms with the fact that he's basically a copy of his former self and the fact that when he died, his son was left on Pandora and has grown up fatherless. He is initially indifferent to his son Spider (Jake Champion) who has  grown up feral and actually more fond of the Na'vi than his own species, but this changes as the narrative progresses.  Quaritch actually gets to make the beginnings of a transition from one-dimensional cliche to nuanced character, which is more than one can say about any of the other characters in the story.

Another quibble I have is actually with the presentation of the film, which for reasons I truly cannot understand jumps from one frame rate to the other repeatedly throughout the film.   In other words, without any discernible transition or narrative reason, the film jumps between the normal frame rate of 30 frames per second rate that film's are shown in and the 60 frames per second.  It was extremely jarring and felt distinctly out of character for Cameron, who is normally on top of this kind of thing.

 In the end, I don't have any regrets. This was a good time at the movies, and really demonstrates quite emphatically why streaming is simply no substitute for the theatrical movie experience, but it definitely isn't the masterpiece that its promoters are insisting it is. 

7/10