Asteroid City: A Review - The Unbearable Quirkiness of Wes Anderson

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT/SEE IT. Cinephiles should watch it because it really is masterfully photographed, but normal people will find its excessive twee-ness and unorthodox storytelling tiresome and/or irritating.

The word “twee” is defined in the dictionary as “excessively or affectedly quaint, pretty or sentimental.” Surprisingly, filmmaker Wes Anderson, whose films include Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Darjeeling Limited, Moonrise Kingdom, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Isle of Dogs, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The French Dispatch and his newest cinematic venture, Asteroid City, is not pictured next to that definition in the dictionary since his movies are the ultimate cinematic embodiment of the word – for good or for ill.

Asteroid City, Anderson’s 11th film, hit theatres this past June 16th and barely anyone noticed. The film, which boasts a large ensemble cast of stars, including such luminaries as Scarlet Johansson and Tom Hanks, quickly came and went, but it just premiered on the streaming service Peacock – where I got a chance to finally see it.

As a general rule I love that Wes Anderson films exist even when I don’t love the Wes Anderson film I’m watching. This is very true of Asteroid City as it is an impeccable piece of cinema, but not a very good movie.

On its surface, the film, set in a sort of hyper-stylistic 1950’s America, follows the travails of a disparate group of people who come to a remote desert town (Asteroid City) for a youth astronomy convention and science competition.

Of course, Wes Anderson being Wes Anderson, he doesn’t just tell a straight forward story about people and a place. Asteroid City is really like a cinematic Matryoshka Doll (Russian Nesting Doll), as it is really a stage play, within a stage play, within a stage play, within a movie.

That set up is as twee as can be, and the execution of the film is twee too…but in a good way.

Anderson, as always, shoots a glorious movie. His highly stylized approach is visually stunning and includes sharp framing, crisp camera movements and exquisite colors and lighting. Anderson and his longtime collaborator, cinematographer Robert Yoeman, once again create a film with a stunning level of visual precision to it that is greatly appealing and extraordinarily impressive.

But despite the visual feast on display, the film’s storytelling and drama is pretty thin gruel.

There are, as is par for the course in a Wes Anderson movie, the cavalcade of eccentric, emotionally distant characters who behave in idiosyncratic ways as they experience dramatic life anomalies.

In terms of storytelling and character development, like much of Anderson’s recent work, it falls very flat. Yes, the story is clever…but much too clever for its own good, and the end result is a film that feels too cute by half…or considerably more than half.

The story’s Matryushka Doll/multiple layers don’t add to the drama but consistently detract from it and feel like a cheap cinematic parlor trick to try and enhance a shallow idea. The characters are all thin caricatures, and the dialogue feels less stagey and theatrical than just plain phony.

The lead of the film is Jason Schwartzman, a frequent face in Anderson’s films. Schwartzman is a mystery to me as he has never been good in anything in which I’ve ever seen him. Schwartzman is cousins with the co-creator of the story for Asteroid City, Roman Coppola of the vast and impressive Coppola family. Hmmm…maybe I’m beginning to understand why Jason Schwartzman has a career despite his minimal talent.

Scarlet Johansson is very good in Asteroid City as Midge Campbell, an actress and mother, and her work in this film is a pretty notable reminder that she is a movie star and would’ve been one in any era of Hollywood.

The rest of the cast are fine, I guess. From Tom Hanks to Bryan Cranston to Tilda Swinton to Maya Hawke to Jeffrey Wright to Steve Carrell and on and on, are all pretty forgettable. Watching this cast perform this script is unfortunately like watching a junior high drama class play out an inside joke that no one else gets or even remotely cares about.

Like seemingly all of Wes Anderson’s films, the movie also features oddball teenagers and kids who act like adults, and goofy adults who act like kids. This formula has occasionally worked in Anderson’s past, but here it feels tired to the point of cliché.

As for the deeper analysis of Asteroid City, it is interesting that it deals with the notion of aliens, UFOs and visitation all while those topics are in the headlines in the real world.

As congress holds hearings on alleged crashed UFOs that have been retrieved along with Non-Human Biological Entities, and military pilots share their stories and data of interactions with UFOs, it is pretty interesting to watch a film that somewhat grapples with the question of how earthlings would handle the notion of not being alone in the universe, or that they’re not on top of the knowledge food chain.

I’ve been interested in, and studying the UFO topic for a very long time, and Asteroid City portrays a scenario which feels surprisingly pretty realistic despite being played for laughs.

If a UFO landed on the White House lawn and aliens got out and waved for the cameras, there would probably be a gigantic freak out by the populace accompanied by a reflexively authoritarian and tyrannical response from government. And then, after a few weeks (or even days considering our attention deficit culture) people would basically go back to their lives and their usual petty bullshit. Governments, of course, would keep their newly pronounced and always-expanding powers – in order to consolidate their power, silence dissent, line their own pockets and cover their own asses, forever and ever.

The aliens would probably not really care about us one way or the other, which may be the most frightening prospect of all…that the human race is utterly irrelevant.

Anyway, those are the thoughts I had after watching Asteroid City, which to its credit, at least had me mulling the future of mankind, aliens and the impact of disclosure.

As for whether I recommend Asteroid City? Well, if you work in the film industry or are a cinephile, then yes, I’d say you should watch it because Wes Anderson is a very particular talent and his films are important in the grander arc of cinematic history and within the current art of cinema. But if you’re a normal human being who just wants to watch a good movie, maybe be entertained or enlightened or deeply moved, then Asteroid City is not for you because, unfortunately, it doesn’t really do any of those things.

 Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2023

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 45: Black Widow

On this episode Barry and I head back to the MCU and do battle with Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow. A wide array of topics are discussed including ScarJo's falling star, Florence Pugh's bright future, Marvel's few missteps and The Rock as Humphrey Bogart.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 45: Black Widow

Thanks for listening!

©2021

Pentagon UFO Report Viewer's Guide

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 59 seconds

The Pentagon is releasing their UFO report, so now might be a good time to check with movies to see what to expect when we make contact.

This Friday the Pentagon is supposed to release its highly anticipated report on UFOs, or as the government now calls them, UAPs – unidentified aerial phenomena.

Similar to Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, I’m a long-time, self-confessed, tin-foil hat wearing UFO enthusiast/fanatic. As such I’m delusionally hoping the recent government and media pivot to taking UFOs seriously will lead to some sort of “disclosure”, where the truth out there will finally be revealed.

Of course, my more rational side knows that anytime you’re relying on the government or media for transparency or truth you’re playing a fool’s game.

Regardless of what the new UFO report says, the possibilities of what’s going on in our skies and under our seas span from the mundanity of mistaken perception combined with malfunctioning equipment to the momentous notion of extra-terrestrial/inter-dimensional visitors. Despite the alleged implausibility of it, my bet is on the latter, which means that aliens are indeed traversing our air space and ocean depths with technological aplomb and military impunity…so it might be a good idea to figure out their intentions.

As a film critic, I thought the best way to prepare for contact with our elusive galactic visitors the Pentagon cannot confirm or deny exist was to turn to movies as a guide, as our collective imagination has projected onto the silver screen and our culture a cavalcade of useful alien archetypes.

The Benevolent Aliens

Movies about human-alien contact that feature gentle aliens we’d be lucky to have visit us are very reassuring, and among the very best that cinema has to offer.

In this archetype, which features fantastic movies like E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Abyss, Arrival and The Iron Giant, the aliens are good guys and the villains are our aggressive and deceptive government.

In some of these types of films, like Starman, The Man Who Fell to Earth and Midnight Special, the alien can be a pseudo-Christ figure, and government bureaucrats a nasty combination of the Sanhedrin and brutish Roman soldiers.

These benevolent alien stories put us at ease because in them humans are still in power. These movies are philosophical in nature and posit that the problem isn’t the aliens, it’s our own corrupt human nature, something we foolishly believe we can eventually overcome.

The Malevolent Aliens

Hollywood has inundated audiences with a plethora of malevolent aliens with distinctly human-mindsets over the years as well, which may lead us to assume nefarious intentions on the part of actual visitors from space.  

For instance, in the less than stellar Independence Day, War of the Worlds (1953/2005), Edge of Tomorrow, Battle: Los Angeles and Starship Troopers, aliens, despite their non-human appearance, seem remarkably human in their militaristic behavior and thirst for blood and conquest. The malevolent alien archetype scares us because it renders us powerless and reflects our violent aggression back onto us.

The creators of these fictional aliens assume that extra-terrestrials share our depraved belligerence and can only be defeated by military force (and accompanying bigger budgets), which is not surprising considering Hollywood’s long-standing, fierce commitment to making shameless propaganda for the Pentagon.

A similar archetype is the vastly superior malevolent alien with a specific weakness. For example, in the taut thriller A Quiet Place the terrifying aliens are blind but have super-sensitive hearing…maybe too sensitive. In the often-over-looked M. Night Shyamalan gem Signs, the alien’s weakness is water, while in War of the Worlds it’s susceptibility to the common cold.

This specific archetype is actually religious in nature as it spotlights humanity’s desire to think they exist under God’s divine protection against the demonic evil of alien invaders, which is sort of amusing considering there are actually reports of some real-life military brass believing UFOs/Aliens are “demonic” entities.

The Hunters

To me the most terrifying alien archetype is that of the alien hunter whose prey is humans.

In Predator, the alien hunts humans for sport, and in the Alien franchise, the alien is a horrifying beast relentlessly hunting humans in order to propagate its species by incubating its eggs in our bellies. Alien in particular forces humans to consider the prospect of being moved down the food chain, and while that’s exhilarating in fiction, in reality it’s absolutely chilling.

The Shapeshifters

Another terrifying alien archetype is the shapeshifter that can assimilate and mimic humans. Films like The Thing (1983), Species, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956/1978) and Under the Skin all turn humans into potential aliens.

This archetype is unnerving because it makes us suspicious of other people and ourselves. Aliens might already be among us, and anybody, including us, could be an alien. That said, if aliens are seductresses that look like Scarlett Johansson (Under the Skin) and Natasha Henstridge (Species), there are worse ways to die.

In conclusion, to be optimistic about alien visitation, watch E.T. For a realistic portrayal of how all this UFO stuff will go down, check out Close Encounters or Robert Zemeckis’ under-rated Contact. For a philosophical/religious alien experience dive into Arrival, Starman or The Iron Giant. For a tense thrill ride, go with A Quiet Place. To indulge the nightmare scenario, go with John Carpenter’s The Thing (1983) and Ridley Scott’s masterpiece Alien. To see a fantastic documentary that seriously examines the UFO phenomenon, watch Out of the Blue (2003). And to find the truth regarding UFOs, keep your eyes on the prize and to the skies, and trust absolutely no one.  

A version of this article was originally published at RT. 

©2021

Anne Boleyn and Color-Conscious Casting

Anne Boleyn is so dull that the lead’s race is the only worth discussing…as intended

The Channel 5 mini-series has attracted a lot of attention for its unconventional casting, but it is an underwhelming piece of television.

The first episode of the highly anticipated three-part drama, Anne Boleyn, which has generated a great deal of conversation because it cast Jodie Turner Smith, a black actress, in the titular role, premiered Tuesday night on BBC Channel 5.

The casting of a black actress to play a white historical figure has garnered much attention, which seems to be the point. I certainly wouldn’t have watched Anne Boleyn if it weren’t for the casting controversy…so mission accomplished.

This color-blind (casting without considering an actor’s race) or color-conscious (intentionally casting a minority because of their identity) casting approach has been a hot topic in recent years.

“Whitewashing”, where a white actor or actress plays a role that’s a minority in the source material, such as Scarlett Johansson in Ghost in the Shell or Tilda Swinton in Doctor Strange, or where white actors/actresses play “people of color” like Emma Stone in Aloha, Angelina Jolie in A Mighty Heart or Jonathon Pryce in Miss Saigon, has been labelled culturally insensitive and all but banned.

In a case of “race-washing for me but not for thee”, during this same time-period “artists of color” playing characters that are white in the source material, even when that source material is actual history, has been met with cheers for being a sign of victory for “diversity” and “inclusion”.

A Wrinkle in Time, Hamilton and Mary, Queen of Scots(2018) are just a few of the examples of the race-washing of white characters, including white historical figures, with actors of color in recent years.

As a traditionalist who believes in respecting source material, particularly when the source is history itself, I always find it ironic that the woke are so enthralled with color-blind or color-conscious casting when it comes to white historical figures or originally white characters yet are so addicted to classifying people by their racial identity in real life.

Of course, the argument from the pro-color-blind/color-conscious side is rather disingenuous and unserious. Author Miranda Kaufman’s recent article on the subject in the Telegraph is a perfect representation of the vacuousness and vapidity of that position.

Kaufman opens her piece by declaring she is “always exasperated by the uproar when a new historical drama comes out with a cast that isn’t solely white” and then goes on to reveal her ignorance and stunningly obtuse perspective on the issue.

According to Kaufman, since there were blacks in England during the Tudor era that means it’s no big deal if a black actress plays Anne Boleyn.

There were white people in the civil rights movement, so should Joaquin Phoenix, Daniel Day Lewis and Meryl Streep play Malcolm X, MLK and Rosa Parks? There were white abolitionists so should Sean Penn and Jennifer Lawrence play Frederick Douglas and Harriet Tubman? This is obviously absurd.

Equally absurd is Kaufman’s reasoning that because there were 200 free blacks out of a total of between 2 and 4 million people living in Tudor England, then a black Anne Boleyn is perfectly reasonable even though, as Kaufman admits, “of course” Boleyn wasn’t black.

Kaufman’s article is titled, “Yes, there were black Tudors – and they lived fascinating lives”, so why not make a tv show about one of them and cast black artists in the roles instead of turning history into fantasy by casting Jodie Tuner Smith as Boleyn?

My opposition to color-blind and color-conscious casting is purely a function of wanting to see the very best film and television possible. Film and tv is all about ‘make believe’, as the actors are playing ‘make believe’ in order to make the audience believe what they are witnessing is genuine.

This is why movie and tv studios pay millions of dollars for top-notch CGI to make it look like superheroes are really flying and dragons actually exist, and why taller actors play Abe Lincoln and pretty actresses play Marylin Monroe.

By casting a black woman as Anne Boleyn, or any other white figure, the critically important suspension of disbelief needed to lose oneself in entertainment has one more obstacle to overcome in our jaded age, and the ‘make believe’ is made markedly less believable.

Which brings us to Anne Boleyn.

I wanted Anne Boleyn to be good because I want every-thing I see to be good, but unfortunately it isn’t just Anne’s head that will roll in relation to this show, but viewer’s eyes as well.

This drama is a rather flimsy and flaccid retelling of the Boleyn tale that brings nothing new to the table except for the race of its leading lady.

The show is not underwhelming because of Jodie Turner Smith, it would probably be anemic regardless of who played the titular role, but it isn’t helped by her presence either.

Smith is an undeniable beauty but she’s not particularly charismatic, and she certainly lacks the magnetism and skill to elevate this rather shallow and stilted drama.

The rest of the cast, be they white, black or other, don’t fare any better, as the production feels decidedly cheap and devoid of drama.  

Episode two and three of Anne Boleyn air over the next two nights and maybe it will find its dramatic rhythm and improve significantly, but I doubt it as the first episode was so dull it left me wanting to chop my own head off.

The bottom-line reality regarding Anne Boleyn is that the virtue signaling of color-blind or color-conscious casting may make pandering studio executives and the woke feel good, but it often doesn’t make for good art and entertainment.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

The Crown Just Cast an Australian to Play Princess Diana and I am in a Woke-Fueled Rage!

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 39 seconds

If wokeness is going to survive, the scourge of actors portraying characters that are in any way different from themselves must end now.

I consider myself a devout crusader for the Church of Wokeness, a brave Knight of the Woke Table if you will.

Whenever an injustice is committed here in Hollywood I am the one who fiercely follows the crowd and does the most courageous thing imaginable…write a scathingly pithy article about it.

My specialty is scouring the trade papers searching for violations of the new woke Hollywood commandment that “Actors shall not portray characters that aren’t exactly identical to them in real life”. I call this the “No Acting Allowed” rule.

This noble calling of mine isn’t an easy one, there are so many micro-aggressions and so little time to cancel all who commit them, but still I soldier on.

The newest and most heinous of injustices that I unearthed occurred the other day and was so horrifying it literally left me shaking.

*Trigger Warning for the sensitive – a story of brutal casting violence follows.

The injustice of which I speak is that Netflix just announced that on their hit show The Crown, Princess Diana – the most iconic of British Royals, will be played by Elizabeth Debicki who is…gasp…Australian!

I know, I know, it is an awful and tone-deaf maneuver, especially considering the history of it all. I mean, Australia really only exists because the British wanted their riff raff out of sight and mind, and they certainly didn’t want them portraying their most beloved of royals on some binge-worthy tabloid drama. An Australian portraying Princess Diana only highlights how far the once mighty British Empire has fallen.

Think of it this way…imagine if you will, an Aussie women worthy of having a tv show or movie made about them…I know it is far-fetched but just try…and then imagine a non-Australian actress playing that woman…talk about a dingo stealing your baby!

Now, some people may be thinking that since Elizabeth Debicki is a gloriously gifted actress blessed with exquisite skill and talent that it is just fine for her, despite the black mark of her Aussie background, to play Princess Diana. That is blasphemy…wokeness never considers ability!

Oscar winning actress Octavia Spencer concurs as she recently declared in regards to casting, “Nothing can replace lived experience and authentic representation…it’s imperative that we cast the appropriate actor for the appropriate role…”

What Spencer was actually talking about was the woke sin of able-bodied actors playing disabled characters, but if we follow her ideology to its logical conclusion, we end up crucifying the Aussie interloper Debecki for daring to play the very English Princess Diana. 

I wish there was a woke time machine so we could see who Octavia Spencer would cast instead of Oscar-winner Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot and Oscar-nominee Leonardo DiCaprio in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.

Those able-bodied bastards are acting abominations. Their crimes are almost as bad as cis-gendered actors playing trans characters.

Halle Berry recently said she was contemplating playing a trans character but after being shouted down by my woke comrades, Halle apologized, and the world was once again made safe from acting.

I wish someone stopped Felicity Huffman from playing a trans character and scoring an Oscar nomination for her work in the dreadful 2005 movie Transamerica.

Thankfully we woke got revenge on Huffman when she was sent to prison for that blasphemy! She actually went to prison for trying to bribe a college into admitting her daughter…but that’s beside the point…the important thing is she was ultimately punished! I don’t think that punishment went far enough though. If it were up to me Felicity Huffman would have the scarlet letter of a penis sewn onto her forehead, so that with every step she took her forehead penis would swing before her eyes and forcefully remind her of the unforgivable trans-phobic sin she committed.

Another transgressor of woke trans dogma is Scarlett Johansson. ScarJo was set to play a trans man in the film Rub and Tug, but woke warriors fired up the outrage machine and forced her to back out.

In addition, the monstrously white ScarJo had previously earned woke ire when she starred in Ghost in the Shell as a character that was Asian in the original source material. Oh the humanity!

Of course, even if an actor is the same race or ethnicity as a character they aren’t safe from the righteous sword of wokeness.

Zoe Saldana thought she could play Nina Simone in a bio-pic about the legendary singer. Not without woke outrage she couldn’t! Saldana’s crime was that she is light-skinned and Simone was dark-skinned…in other words Zoe Saldana wasn’t black enough. Saldana has since apologized for her heinous hate crime.

A similar thing happened with Ruby Rose, a lesbian actress cast in the role of lesbian superhero Batwoman. Rose was excoriated by the woke brigade on social media because apparently she wasn’t lesbian enough.

To avoid this woke backlash and the cancel culture mob, white actresses Jenny Slate and Kristen Bell quit their roles voicing black characters on cartoons.

Slate stated, “black characters should be played by black people” and that her portrayal was “an act of erasure of black people.”

Bell said, “ This is a time to acknowledge our acts of complicity.”

If only that Aussie Elizabeth Debicki would do her part and acknowledge that playing Princess Diana on The Crown makes her complicit in the erasure of English people and declare that English characters should only be portrayed by English people, then we could be one step closer to eradicating the art of acting and finally living in the glorious utopia of talentlessness we woke are obviously so desperate to manifest.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

Marriage Story: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 1.75 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A vacuous, vapid and phony film riddled with mannered and manufactured performances that are so grating as to be repulsive. This interminable mess of a movie is an art house poseur and critical fool’s gold.

Marriage Story is written and directed by Noah Baumbach and is his pseudo-autobiographical tale of the Barbers, a married couple with a young son going through a divorce. The film stars Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson with supporting turns from Laura Dern, Ray Liotta, Alan Alda, Julie Haggerty and Merritt Weaver.

Marriage Story has marketed itself as a dramatically potent and poignant domestic drama, which is a genre that, when properly executed, appeals to me greatly. Due to its marketing campaign and the overwhelming amount of critical acclaim Marriage Story has been receiving, I was very excited to watch the movie over the Christmas holiday. Thankfully the film is currently streaming on Netflix which meant I wouldn’t have to trek out the theatres to catch it, but I would have to find two hours and sixteen minutes of my life to dedicate to watching it uninterrupted…no small task. Last night I finally got the chance to see it…and to say it was a let down would be the understatement of the new decade…and maybe the last one too.

The bottom line is this…Marriage Story is awful. It is really, truly awful. The acting, which has gotten resounding praise and is generating very loud awards buzz, is abysmal. The directing and writing is utterly atrocious. I am genuinely shocked and appalled that serious people think this mess of a movie is a serious film.

Marriage Story is supposedly loosely based on writer/director Noah Baumbach’s own divorce from actress Jennifer Jason-Leigh in 2013. Like Baumbach, the lead male character Charlie is a director and New Yorker, and like the female lead character Nicole, Jennifer Jason-Leigh is a Los Angeles born and bred second generation actor (her father was Vic Morrow), and like Baumbach and Leigh, Charlie and Nicole have a young son caught in the middle of their divorce.

Writing about yourself, even under the guise of slightly different characters, is standard operating procedure for artists, but in Baumbach and Marriage Story’s case…it feels like some pretty toxic narcissistic behavior. The reason for this is that the film unabashedly holds Charlie in the highest regard and can’t stop saying what a genius he is…going so far as to bestow upon him a MacArthur Fellowship Grant. Charlie’s greatest fault is that he cares about his art too much and is too dedicated. Baumbach seems to be using Marriage Story as some sort of art house fake out in order to humble brag.

The issues with Marriage Story are numerous, and one of the most glaring is the acting. The film is a sort of character study with the character being a married couple played by Scarlett Johannson and Adam Driver. The acting approach deployed in this film by the vast majority of the cast is a heightened, very theatrical style. The end result of this acting approach is that the characters all all feel incredibly phony and manufactured…like something you’d see in any acting class on any night of the week in New York or Los Angeles. I have lived my entire adult life in the New York and Los Angeles acting world and I can tell you that none of the characters in Marriage Story even remotely resemble real people. Marriage Story is populated by hyper-shticky, sitcom level cardboard cutout characters.

Nothing on screen in this movie is genuine, grounded or even remotely interesting. Due to the acting in Marriage Story getting so much acclaim, I have a genuine fear that this movie will set back the art and craft of acting decades, if not millennia…and if there are any aspiring actors out there, please listen to me now, do not try and emulate the style of acting on display in Marriage Story as it is the polar opposite of what you should be trying to do.

Now, to be fair, the two main characters, Charlie and Nicole, are a theatre director and actress, so I understand somewhat the theatrical flair on display, but the tone-deaf, over-the-top nature of the entire cast is so pronounced that no one and nothing in this world rings true. The lack of genuine characters and situations drains the film of all potential drama and emotional impact, thus rendering the film entirely impotent.

Adam Driver is getting serious Oscar hype over his performance as Charlie, the esteemed theatre director. Driver’s work in Marriage Story barely rises above being not-embarrassing, and should never in a million years be considered Oscar worthy. Driver tries to push and prod himself to give his performance depth and meaning but he strains so hard against the flaccid script it is like watching a constipated dog trying to take a much needed dump. Regardless of how hard he is working, the end result is the same as the dog…an itchy case of hemorrhoids and/or a stinky mess on the carpet.

Scarlett Johansson play Charlie’s wife and one-time theatrical muse, Nicole. It is difficult to put into words how repulsed I was by Johansson’s performance. At one point Johansson does an extended monologue that is so mannered and forced I felt like I was watching a high school drama student rehearse her audition for the school play in her bedroom mirror. It was at this point that I turned to my movie watching companion, an actress of some note who shall remain nameless, and asked, “is the acting in this movie as bad as I think it is?” She turned to me and in the most droll way possible simply replied, “yes…it most certainly is.”

Laura Dern plays Nora, Nicole’s divorce attorney, and she one ups Johansson in acting awfulness. Dern’s performance is so relentlessly fabricated and false it actually made my stomach hurt. I consider myself a fan of Laura Dern but her work in Marriage Story is excruciatingly vacuous and fraudulent.

By far the worst performance of the film is Julie Haggerty as Nicole’s mother, Sandra. Haggerty’s work in Marriage Story would be considered ‘too big’ even if she were wearing a red nose and big shoes center stage at a circus. Haggerty is not quite matched in acting awfulness by Wallace Shawn, but he does give it the old college try.

The only quality performance in the entire film is delivered by none other than Alan Alda. Alda plays Charlie’s lawyer Bert, and does such subtle and grounded work it is remarkable, especially considering the shitshow of acting going on around him. Alda’s Bert is the only character in the entire film who even remotely seems like a real person living in a real world. I found Alda’s performance, which is not very big, to be the most profound and poignant in the whole movie.

As for the direction and writing of the film, Noah Baumbach gets to take all the blame. Baumbach is obviously trying to pay a little bit of homage to movies like Scenes From a Marriage and Kramer vs Kramer, but he is simply in way over his head in trying to make a movie of any meaning or worth. Marriage Story proves, without question, that Baumbach is no Bergman (Scenes From a Marriage), hell, he isn’t even in the same class of movie makers as Robert Benton (Kramer vs Kramer).

It is Baumbach’s fault that the film is disjointed dramatically and entirely devoid of any notable craft or skill. Baumbach’s writing rings completely false and is akin to a really bad stage play for its artistic bombast, faux sincerity and grandiosity. In addition, all of the film’s characters are cutesy caricatures that bear no resemblance to any normal human being, they are one-dimensional props in Baumbach’s autobiographical fantasy. The film even has a couple of musical numbers that are so trite and contrived they made me throw my shoe at the television in frustration. Nothing in this film is believable, no dramatic notes ring true, none of the settings or characters feel in any way, shape or form, to be genuine. The entire film is a fraud and at best a farce.

The visual style of the film is flat and dull, which only emphasizes the absurdity of the performances and writing. Cinematographer Robbie Ryan, whose most notable work was on The Favourite, is filming a serious and gritty domestic drama (which is what the film is marketing itself as), but Baumbach and cast are making a farcical, near-absurdist comedy, and the mismatch is painful to watch.

I am not a superfan of Noah Baumbach, but I have enjoyed some of his other work. I thought The Squid and the Whale, another but much better “divorce movie”, was excellent, and was even pleasantly surprised by While We’re Young. But beyond those two films, I find his work to be strikingly sub-par. Other critics absolutely adore Baumbach…but I have yet to figure out why that is. My best guess is that, much like Van Halen front man David Lee Roth once said about critical adoration of Elvis Costello, maybe critics like Noah Baumbach so much because they look so much like Noah Baumbach.

Another theory I have as to why Baumbach is a critical darling is that critics are desperate to fill the Woody Allen void now that the old pedophile is radioactive. So critics have chosen Baumbach to be the perpetual winner of the Woody Allen Memorial - Critical Darling For Writing Hackneyed Shit Award. Woody Allen’s critical success has always baffled me, as his movie’s cinematic value are minimal at best, and it seems I will have the same relationship with Baumbach going forward. In my opinion, Noah Baumbach is not much of a serious director but is instead a cinematic charlatan, a maker of vacuous and shallow films who is incapable of creating anything of much artistic significance or dramatic profundity.

Marriage Story is nothing but vacant critical hype and, as a friend said to me after I saw it, is akin to a “Hallmark movie for hipsters”. The film is nowhere near worthy of your time or attention and should be avoided at all costs. Besides Alan Alda’s Bert, I had a visceral hatred for every single character in this movie, even the little kid, so much so that at one point Charlie walks into Nicole’s house and asks if anyone is home and is met with eerie silence and I said out loud “God I hope there was a gas leak that killed every single one of them”. Sadly, there was no gas leak, in the movie or in my own house, to end the suffering that was my experience of Marriage Story.

In conclusion, do not wed yourself to Marriage Story, instead run as fast as you can from this piece of fraudulent phony baloney. There are other cinematic fish in the sea besides this movie, and I promise that there is no possible way they will stink as much as Marriage Story.

©2020

Jojo Rabbit: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT/SKIP IT. This film is funny at times and definitely worth seeing, but only at matinee prices, or until you can see it for free on Netflix.

JoJo Rabbit, written and directed by Taika Waititi, is based upon the Christine Leunens novel Caging Skies and tells the story of Jojo, a ten year old Hitler youth in Nazi Germany whose imaginary friend is Adolf Hitler. The film stars Roman Griffin Davis as Jojo, with supporting turns from Taika Waititi, Scarlett Johansson, Thomasin McKenzie, Sam Rockwell and Stephen Merchant.

Jojo Rabbit is an ambitious cinematic undertaking that describes itself as an “anti-hate satire”. As someone who hates the vacuous woke rhetoric of “anti-hate” and believes that hate is not only normal but a vital part of the human condition, that tag line is a turn-off. But then I discovered that the film was a dark Nazi comedy, and since I have long whined about the fact that World War II movies, be they drama or documentary, always and every time make Hitler out to be the bad guy*, the film then became more intriguing to me. After being lured in by the prospect of Nazi-induced laughs, I pulled the trigger and went to see Jojo Rabbit. Thankfully, the film lives up to its premise and remedies the past anti-Hitler cinematic injustices and gives audiences the wacky and zany Hitler we’ve always wanted. (*This is a joke!)

In all seriousness, making a Nazi comedy, especially in these hyper-sensitive, hot-take abundant times, is an act of artistic derring-do. Jojo Rabbit for the most part succeeds in pulling off this most difficult of feats. If I am judging the movie on pass/fail, it passes. That said, it is a good film, not a great one.

The credit and the blame for the film’s better than average and less than terrific outcome, is writer/director/supporting actor Taika Waititi. The first and only other time I’ve seen a Waititi film was when I watched Thor: Ragnorak while bleary-eyed on a cross country flight. I hadn’t ventured out to the theatre to see Ragnorak out of sheer Marvel fatigue, and so, due to boredom, checked it out on my flight. To say I was blown away is an understatement. I was totally mesmerized as I watched this Marvel masterpiece that was funny, smart and insightful, play out on the tiny screen mere inches from my face on the cramped plane. Waititi brings the same level of inventiveness and ingenuity to Jojo Rabbit that animatedThor: Ragnorak.

Waititi not only wrote and directed the film but co-stars as Jojo’s imaginary friend Adolf Hitler. The film is at its best when Waititi, a charismatic performer, is on-screen. Waititi’s masterful Hitler bits crackle and had the audience at my screening, myself included, laughing out loud. The problem though is that they are too few and far between. After the first fifteen minutes or so, Waititi’s Hitler vanishes from the film for long stretches, and those stretches scuttle all of the film’s giddy and insane momentum.

In my opinion I think the film should have been more of a Harvey-esque story, with Hitler being a constant companion to Jojo rather than the star of brief interludes. I think this approach would have not only made the film more consistently funny and bizarre, but also more dramatically potent and poignant. Again, I understand that the film must’ve been limited by the source material, but source material needs to be adapted to the screen, and my suggestion should have been part of that adaptation.

As for the cast, it is as wildly uneven as the film. Roman Griffin Davis is very good as the Jojo, the committed Nazi boy with the active imagination. Davis plays everything straight and it is his commitment to truth that makes his Hitler sidekick so funny.

Sam Rockwell does his usual stellar work as Captain Klenzendorf, a down on his luck German soldier. Rockwell elevates what could have been a Sgt. Schultz level caricature into a brilliantly comedic yet painfully human portrayal. Rockwell fills each moment and movement with a dynamic intentionality that is simply brilliant.

Stephen Merchant has a small role as a member of the Gestapo and he is both funny and exceedingly unnerving. Merchant’s usual banal goofiness takes on a menacing tone as he is imbued with the dark power of Nazism.

Thomasin Mckenzie is an actress I really like, her Mickey Award®© (Breakout Performance of the Year) winning work in Leave No Trace was fantastic, but here she does the best she can with a rather pedestrian role. McKenzie’s Elsa is the dramatic counter-weight to the film’s comedy, but the character is so one-dimensional as to be cliched, and thus the film never sustains the dramatic heft it desires. The narrative shift to Elsa is ill-conceived and feels like an albotross around the film’s neck.

Scarlett Johansson does not fare so well either, as she is handed a paper thin character and does little to put any meat on the bones. Johansson’s Rosie is like a #Resistance manic pixie dream girl for the World War II set. I found her performance to be grating, aggravatingly shallow and irritatingly frivolous.

Rebel Wilson has a small role as a Nazi Fraulein that goes over like a lead(Pb) zeppelin. I have often wondered aloud “what in the world is the appeal of Rebel Wilson?” I don’t get it…I don’t get it at all..NOT…AT…ALL. Wilson is not funny…not even a little bit. Her bits in Jojo Rabbit are painfully unfunny and fall thunderously flat. Rebel Wilson is one of the great mysteries of our time and I am hoping she goes away before I have to exert any mental energy trying to figure out her appeal.

The bottom line is this regarding Jojo Rabbit…it is most definitely a flawed film, but it does pull off an amazing feat by being a crowd-pleasing Nazi comedy. Waititi’s Hitler humor and Rockwell and Merchant’s Nazi comedy are uproariously satisfying. While the film can be at times cinematically uneven and dramatically trite, at other times it is tantalizingly original and combustibly hysterical.

Jojo Rabbit is the type of film, both politically simplistic and emotionally manipulative, that may catch fire and garner Oscar buzz. I do not think it is an Oscar level film, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t an enjoyable cinematic experience. I thoroughly enjoyed Jojo Rabbit despite its faults, and I think people should see it, they just shouldn’t pay $14 to see it. My recommendation is to either pay matinee prices or wait until it hits Netflix before seeing Jojo Rabbit. It isn’t a perfect film, or even a great one, but it is an interesting one, and in these artistically cowardly times, that ain’t nothing.

©2019

Avengers: Endgame - A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

Popcorn Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. If you like Marvel movies you’ll love this one. A satisfactory conclusion to the epic twenty-two film run of this phase of the Marvel Cinematic Unvierse.

Avengers: Endgame, written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely and directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, is the story of the Marvel Avengers as they do battle with super villain Thanos. The film stars Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Paul Rudd, Chris Hemsworth, Josh Brolin and a plethora of other movie stars.

Avengers: Endgame is the fourth Avengers film and is the direct sequel to last years smash hit Avengers: Infinity War. Endgame is also the twenty-second film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and marks the conclusion of this cycle of Marvel movies.

Just as super villain Thanos became a de facto god by acquiring the infinity stones, Disney, under the leadership of my dear friend Bob Iger, has turned into an all powerful entertainment industry god by acquiring over the years Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm. Now, with the additional purchase of Fox, Disney will hold an astonishing 40% market share of the box office.

The crown jewel, at least right now, in Disney’s empire is the aforementioned Marvel behemoth, which Disney bought in 2009 for $4 billion and which has brought in around $20 billion in box office gross alone over the last ten years. I have not always liked the Marvel movies, in fact, I’ve downright loathed a good number of them, but I readily admit that what Disney has pulled off with their Marvel Cinematic Universe is a stunning achievement in popular entertainment that will never be duplicated. To be able to roll out twenty-two different movies over a decade and weave all of the characters and story lines together into a coherent and cohesive whole that culminates in two gigantic movie events, Infinity War and Endgame, is a Hollywood miracle. One need look no further than the shitshow over at Warner Brothers and their inept handling of the DC Cinematic Universe (Batman, Superman etc.) post Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy to recognize how remarkable Disney’s efficiency and acumen regarding the Marvel properties has been. No doubt Disney will be further rewarded for their corporate diligence by Endgame’s box office which will break all sorts of records as it rockets past the two billion dollar mark in two weeks with ease.

As previously stated, I have disliked some of the Marvel movies, the first two Avenger movies in particular were quite dreadful. The Marvel movie formula has always been geared more toward adolescent boys…even the middle-aged ones, with lots of light-hearted action, noise and destruction all with some witty one-liners and comedic self-consciousness thrown in. The Marvel universe is decidedly fictional, a piece of escapist fantasy…whereas something like Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy for example, is more grounded in a recognizable, but very dark, “reality”. Marvel’s lack of grit has always irked me because their line up of characters is chock full of archetypal riches which are begging to explored in a psychologically and culturally serious way.

But with that said, I have also loved a few of Marvel’s formulaic films, with Infinity War and Thor: Ragnarok being prime examples. Infinity War is easily the best film in the MCU and that is because its narrative is the darkest and most consequential of all the movies. While Endgame has a certain darkness to it, is not as nearly as good as Infinity War, but it isn’t awful either.

Endgame is really more an event than a movie, a culmination of the franchise that is the perfect embodiment of everything good and bad in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. On the plus side it has fascinating archetypal characters and great moments of poignancy and levity, but on the downside it also has some narrative incoherence, sense-assaulting battle scenes that are relentlessly vapid, and a heavy dose of cringe worthy “wokeness” and political correctness that is shameless in its corporate human resources level pandering.

All of that said, Endgame succeeds because it ultimately satisfies on an emotional, psychological and narrative level as a conclusion to the twenty-two film Marvel epic that has dominated popular culture for the last decade. The story leaves no loose ends or arcs unfulfilled, and that is really all you can ask from a movie like this.

The sun at the center of this cinematic universe is Robert Downey Jr, whose skill, charisma and charm have propelled the MCU forward from day one. Without Downey Jr as Iron Man, none of this stuff works…none of it. Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Pratt, Mark Ruffalo and all the rest do solid work as their respective super heroes, but none of them could carry this franchise like Downey Jr. has. When Downey Jr. stops being Iron Man, and that day will eventually come, Marvel/Disney is going to take a big hit…I promise you that.

The ensemble of Endgame all do decent if unspectacular work with a few notable exceptions. On the plus side, Paul Rudd and Chris Hemsworth are fantastic, as both of them fully commit and have impeccable comedy chops (who would’ve thought that Thor would be the comedy gold in the Marvel universe?). As for the negative side…good lord…Brie Larson is just dreadful. Now to be fair, I have not seen Captain Marvel…so maybe she is great in that, but in Endgame you could’ve replaced her with a cigar store wooden Indian and it wouldn’t have made the slightest bit of difference. Larson is so dead-eyed it seems like she died on the table while undergoing a charisma bypass and we are left to watch her corpse be animatronically maneuvered throughout the movie.

There are also some issues with narrative incoherence in the film, mostly dealing with the topic of time travel. The lack of “time travel rules” clarity makes the whole enterprise pretty confusing and logically unstable if you try and follow it too closely. The best approach is to leave logic at home, where it is hopefully safe and sound, and just go with where the movie takes you. The logic/time travel issue though is a big reason that the film doesn’t soared like Infinity War did, which had a very clear and concise plot from which all of the action seamlessly flowed. In Endgame the plot feels more like a manufactured way for Disney to escape any commitment to what took place in Infinity War that could dare harm the corporate bottom line by taking away some cash cows.

While Endgame is the end of this phase of the MCU, Disney has a plethora of Marvel movies lined up for the next few years as they keep the assembly line going. As stated, the next phase is going to have a bumpy time of it as Disney is trying to transition to younger and more diverse stars to refill some roles. Disney is betting big that Brie Larson and Captain Marvel will be the female equivalent of Robert Downey Jr. and Iron Man, the new sun at the center of the Marvel universe. That is a bad bet, as Larson has big shoes to fill and very little feet with which to fill them.

Disney’s desire for more diverse Marvel movie characters, like a Black Captain America or a Latina Hulk, may (or may not) be a noble idea, but just as it did in comic book sales, it will negatively affect the bottom line at the box office. In my opinion it will also affect the artistic and cultural value of the films, for as I keep saying, “wokeness kills art”….but that is a painful discussion for another day.

In conclusion, Avengers: Endgame is a worthy finish to this phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise. The film has its ups and downs but ultimately is a satisfactory ending for the long journey we’ve all been on with these characters over the last decade. If your a fan of super hero movies, you should plunk down your Disney tax and help pad Bob Iger’s bank account by seeing the movie in the theatre. If you have just a passing interest in super hero movies, then wait for it to come out on cable or on Disney’s soon to be active streaming service, which will no doubt bring in even more gobs of money for Mickey Mouse. But Mickey should enjoy this ride while it lasts, because it won’t last forever. Just over the horizon there could be some some stormy weather waiting for Disney.

©2019