REVIEW: “I Feel Pretty”

March 15, 2019 by Keith Garlington

Amy Schumer puts aside her raunchy comedy shtick for “I Feel Funny”, a movie that aims for the PG-13 crowd while offering them very little in return. It’s a conflicted movie that wants to have its cake and eat it too. It spends a lot of time getting us to laugh at the very thing it’s trying to support before stamping a disingenuous and moralizing self-esteem message on the end.

Schumer plays Renee Bennett, a young New Yorker, insecure about her appearance, who manages the website for a high-falutin’ cosmetic company. Her ‘office’ is crammed into a basement in Chinatown but her dream job is working in the fancy corporate headquarters on 5th Avenue. Problem is Renee doesn’t fit the shallow runway model physical profile the company is looking for.

But in a goofy turn of events Renee smacks her head at a fitness gym (one of many lazy weight jokes we are supposed to be laughing at). It results in her seeing herself as a gorgeous knockout. Not because of a meaningful change in self-esteem, but because she genuinely sees something in the mirror that no one else does. Of course this leads to a steady flow of gags hinging on confusion and miscommunications.

Her delusion leads her to unwittingly gain an overflow of self-confidence. It results in a job promotion although for reasons her bump on the head won’t allow her to see. You can probably guess where things are heading. Our sad sack protagonist is launched into a world of pomp but it’s all built on a paper-thin foundation. The story goes exactly where you expect it to and ends with a message statement at odds with much of what has preceded it.

Schumer gives it a good go but just isn’t that funny. Part of it is the sub-par material which treats her character like a punching bag before begging for sympathy in the end. But Schumer is just as inconsistent. Mildly amusing in scene, trying way too hard in the next. Fairly sympathetic one minute, strikingly insincere the next. The supporting characters are just as sporadic. A weird squeaky-voiced Michelle Williams performance doesn’t quite land while Rory Scovel is really good as Renee’s timid love interest.

“I Feel Pretty” is a movie with a message – a genuinely good message. And we are constantly getting whiffs of it throughout. Unfortunately it’s buried in a tonally challenged film with an glaring identity crisis. Despite not being a fan of Schumer’s other films I was frequently rooting for the one. Sadly I spent just as much time frustrated at how widely it was missing it’s mark.

VERDICT – 2 STARS

First Glance: “Avengers: Endgame” Final Trailer

March 14, 2019 by Keith Garlington

The final trailer has dropped for what is sure to be one of the year’s highest grossing movies. Marvel Studios has been putting all of its pieces in place for “Avengers: Endgame” and this last trailer certainly revs up the excitement.

We do get a lot of old footage from previous MCU films but it fits well as a ‘look what we’ve been through together’ montage. And of course there is a smattering of “Endgame” snippets not to mention that fantastic final shot. This trailer does exactly what they need it to do – tease us, excite us, and (perhaps) prepare us.

“Avengers: Endgame” will be here before you know it. The guaranteed box office juggernaut lands April 26th. Check out the trailer below and let me know if you’ll be seeing it or giving it a pass.

REVIEW: “The Hole in the Ground”

March 14, 2019 by Keith Garlington

There is a new installment in horror’s intensely popular ‘creepy kid’ sub-genre. It’s “The Hole in the Ground” from Irish writer-director Lee Cronin. His film premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival to some nice reactions but it was moody and genuinely chilling trailer that caught my attention.

Seána Kerslake plays Sarah who has moved with her young son Chris (James Quinn Markey) to a remote countryside fixer-upper. We are given the impression she has left an abusive relationship and is looking for a new start for both her and her son. Sarah has found a pocket of friends in the nearby town but it hasn’t been as easy for Chris who struggles to make friends at his new elementary school.

Late one night Chris wanders out of the house and Sarah tracks him into a dense and eerie patch of woods. There she discovers a mammoth (and obviously metaphorical) sinkhole (think Sarlacc pit but about 20x bigger). She fears the worst but then Chris suddenly appears behind her. She takes her son and hurries him back home.

But then things get a little weird. Sarah begins noticing inconsistencies with Chris. As his behavior becomes more peculiar and out of the norm she can’t help but recall an earlier encounter where a demented elderly neighbor (Kati Outinen) who hissed “He’s not your son.” Was the crazy old woman warning her? Is the sinkhole somehow responsible? Is it Sarah who is losing her mind?

“The Hole in the Ground” digs deep into the anxieties of parenthood much in the same vein as 2014’s “The Babadook”. In many ways that Jennifer Kent film trained me to be suspicious when watching horror movies featuring a distraught mother with a spooky child. Cronin wants his audience to wrestle with the uncertainty of what we are seeing which is pretty effective for most of the 90 minute running time. It’s only in the last 15 minutes that things are made clear, perhaps even too clear.

One thing is for sure, Cronin has a knack for creating mood and atmosphere. It’s often done through some very clever visual choices (the opening scene of Sarah driving through the countryside is a great example). He is also smart in how he utilizes Stephen McKeon’s haunting score. It’s tense, a bit unsettling, and never overused. It all makes for a satisfying bit of psychological horror that loses a little air with its ending but never loses its ability to manage and maintain a really effective tone.

VERDICT – 4 STARS

First Glance: “Brightburn” Trailer

March 13, 2019 by Keith Garlington

On paper “Brightburn” sounds ridiculous, even a bit lazy. Essentially taking the guts of Superman’s origin story and adding an evil twist doesn’t sound highly original. But then I saw the new trailer and suddenly my perspective has changed…pretty drastically.

“Brightburn” is produced by James Gunn, written by Mark and Brian Gunn, and directed by David Yarovesky. It’s clearly borrowing the basic ideas of Superman’s origin but doing something dramatically different with it. Instead of setting out on the path of Earth’s greatest protector we see a young boy with something much darker and sinister at his core. The trailer sets up its premise well and I’m genuinely excited to see where it goes.

“Brightburn” will be here before you know it. It opens up May 24th. Check out the trailer below and let me know if you’ll be seeing it or giving it a pass.

REVIEW: “Custody” (2018)

March 13, 2019 by Keith Garlington

“Custody” is a searing domestic drama and the first feature from French director Xavier Legrand. The 39-year-old started as a child stage actor but is most known for his 29-minute short from 2013 “Just Before Losing Everything”. It was his first effort behind the camera, catching a lot of eyes and even earning Legrand an Oscar nomination for Best Live Action Short Film.

Interestingly, with “Custody” Legrand takes on the same subject as his award-winning short, even using the same characters and key performers. His feature-length look at a fractured family is more observant and slightly ambiguous. It allows us more time in the heads of his characters to plow their mindsets and decide for ourselves whose side we’re on. You could say we the audience are positioned to be the judge.

Miriam (Léa Drucker) and Antoine (Denis Ménochet) are in a contentious custody dispute with their 12-year-old son Julien (Thomas Gioria) caught in the middle. They have a daughter Joséphine (Mathilde Auneveux) but she is a few days away from being of age to decide things for herself.

The film opens with a mesmerizing closed-door court hearing where the judge sits across from the parents and their lawyers who each make their case for and against custody. Through affidavits the children declare their desire to be with their mother. Miriam’s lawyer poses allegations of violence and abuse. But the claims clash with Antoine’s desire to be involved in his son’s life and the glowing character references from friends and co-workers. It prompts the judge to ask them both “Which of you is the biggest liar?”

Nothing Lagrand does is without thought and purpose, from the quiet intense closeups to the absence of a score. His film is all about the characters and placing them in the most authentic, real-life situations possible. We the audience simply sit back and take it all in, watching as this layered drama unfolds into a tense and unsettling thriller.

Even the casting feels intentional – the brawny and physically imposing Ménochet; the petite and tightly wound Drucker. These deftly handled characters slowly and meticulously give us all the information we need before the lid bursts off in a final 15 minutes filled with simmering white-knuckled tension. This is where Legrand’s well-calculated restraint pays off the most.

Lagrand comes at everything from a deeply human perspective and tells his story with a hushed realism. It’s the exact opposite of how Hollywood tends to approach these subjects today. Think Dardenne Brothers but with a slightly sharper edge. And it helps to have such top-notch performances from Ménochet, Drucker, and especially young Gioria whose worried eyes and soulful gaze shatters your heart. Actually, the entire movie does.

VERDICT – 4.5 STARS

REVIEW: “Just A Breath Away”

March 12, 2019 by Keith Garlington

A lethal toxic fog of unknown origin is the chief antagonist in Canadian director Daniel Roby’s “Just A Breath Away”. French language films set in Paris tend to be romantic comedies, dramas, or period pieces. Roby and a team of three writers offer us a light blend of genres but at its core their movie is very much a disaster thriller. And despite its modest budget, the scale and scope of the disaster is larger than you would expect.

The film’s lone shortcoming is in the development of its characters. It’s not a huge issue since we do get all the information we need to have emotional connections with them. But it does feel like it misses some opportunities to dig deeper into these people and what makes their relationships work.

Romain Duris and Olga Kurylenko play Mathieu and Anna, parents of a young daughter named Sarah (Belgian actress Fantine Harduin) who suffers from Stimberger’s Syndrome. It’s a genetic condition that restricts Sarah to living in a hermetic bubble chamber. For over 12 years Mathieu and Anna have searched for a cure and it has clearly taken a toll on their marriage. Anna seems content with finally having her daughter home. Mathieu is still looking for a cure and willing to try anything, even an experimental treatment in far off Canada.

Then along comes trouble. A sudden earthquake unleashes a toxic gas from underground. It sweeps through the entire city sending Paris into chaos and killing anyone who inhales it. As the deadly fog-like cloud settles, only those in top floor apartments and on rooftops are left to survive. Mathieu and Anna are forced to leave Sarah in the protection of her bubble as they scramble to the top floor of their apartment building.

What makes the tension even thicker is a city-wide blackout which forces Sarah’s chamber to switch to auxiliary power. With a limited battery life and their daughter on a gas-filled lower floor, Mathieu and Anna must find a way to keep their daughter alive amid seemingly impossible circumstances.

Ruby cut his cinematic teeth in cinematography and you get a really good sense of that. He and his cinematographer Pierre-Yves Bastard offer up several striking and creative images. Some of the best are rooftop shots looking out across the city while capturing the fog’s widespread effect. Just as impressive is his clever use of camera angles and movement specifically in some of the more action-oriented scenes.

Duris and Kurylenko both give really good performances as does 88-year-old Michel Robin who plays the kind elderly owner of the top floor apartment who gives Mathieu and Anna refuge. They all help give “Just A Breath Away” just enough emotional heft. Daniel Roby does the rest, directing a tense and imaginative disaster picture that doesn’t get bogged down in origins. We never fully know what caused the catastrophe which may frustrate some. I must say it didn’t bother me at all.