REVIEW: “Priscilla” (2023)

November 3, 2023 by Keith Garlington

It was a little over one year ago that director Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis” hit theaters. The vibrant and stylish biography of music icon Elvis Presley won over both audiences and critics before eventually earning eight Academy Award nominations. How interesting that in such a short time we’re getting another movie set around the life of the “King of Rock and Roll”. But this one comes with a distinctly different focus and is told from a uniquely fresh perspective.

“Priscilla” is based on the 1985 memoir “Elvis and Me” by Priscilla Presley, the wife of the legendary Elvis Presley who also serves as the movie’s executive producer. It’s written and directed by the ever compelling Sofia Coppola and is her first feature since her underappreciated 2020 dramedy “On the Rocks”. Much like the book, Coppola’s film looks entirely through Priscilla’s eyes, showing how she first met Elvis in 1959, their soon after marriage in 1967, and the rollercoaster ride that eventually led to their divorce in 1973.

While at times Luhrmann’s film leaned heavily on its style and energy, Coppola takes a much more subdued approach to “Priscilla”. For most of its running time it’s patient and methodical, almost languid as it roots us in Priscilla’s experience. But that’s very much intentional and it does a tremendous job conveying her feelings while caught in the web of their high-profile relationship. Often lonely and isolated; other times smothered and domineered – it’s all sublimely realized through the quietly captivating performance from 25-year-old Cailee Spaeny.

Even more intentional is Coppola’s depiction of Elvis and her aim to stay away from anything that might be considered a reason why Elvis talks, thinks, and acts the way he does. In her movie he just is how he is. As a result Elvis (ably played by Jacob Elordi) is portrayed as an irredeemable monster, occasionally caring when it suits him, but mostly controlling, neglectful, and abusive. The majority of what Coppola shows us has been well-documented as true and snaps at the fabled image of Elvis Presley. But the lack of nuance in the portrayal, though still intensely effective, feels ever so slightly suspicious.

Coppola begins her story in West Germany where a somewhat shy 14-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu is introduced to 24-year-old rock star Elvis Presley. It’s immediately queasy and uncomfortable with words like predatory, grooming, and coercion coming to mind as they play out on the screen. There’s a striking delicacy in the way Coppola presents it, but also a unflinching honesty that forces the audience to reckon with what they’re seeing. And one of Coppola’s greatest tools is Spaeny who conveys youthful innocence with an alarming clarity.

From inexplicably winning her parents’ blessing to being whisked away to Elvis’ Graceland estate in Memphis, the movie follows the troubling pseudo storybook “romance”, with all of its red lights and warning signs, as it slowly erodes into something increasingly constrictive and toxic. Over time Graceland becomes a lavish prison for Priscilla. Her starry-eyed illusion turns to loneliness and melancholy as Elvis runs around with his meatheaded Memphis Mafia or is out West shooting movies and making tabloid headlines with his sexy co-stars. They eventually marry once she turns 21 and only months later they have a daughter, Lisa Marie. But things only get worse.

For most of the film Coppola keenly visualizes Priscilla’s crushing circumstances through her deliberate pacing and careful attention to emotional details. It all flows seamlessly until the erratic final third where the film begins jumping from point to point, hitting interesting marks in Elvis and Priscilla’s crumbling relationship but doing little to connect them together in a satisfying way. It’s so strangely at odds with the first two acts and goes by in a blur. But maybe that’s what Coppola is going for. Perhaps that’s the way Priscilla recalls those final months with Elvis – as a blur.

Aside from the strategic depiction of Elvis and the skittish storytelling near the end, “Priscilla” is a captivating experience that provides an inside look at one of the most well known celebrity couples of our time. It features bravura filmmaking and is driven by a bold vision that doesn’t follow the normal biopic model we’ve grown accustomed to. Coppola has more on her mind and watching her bring it to life is riveting, even if she doesn’t hit every mark. (Just a note: in my screening the dialogue, specifically from Elordi, was often mumbled and hard to understand. I’m not sure whether it was Elordi’s performance, the sound mixing, or my theater. Let me know about your experience with the sound). “Priscilla” is in theaters now.

VERDICT – 3.5 STARS

First Glance: “The Fall Guy”

November 3, 2023 by Keith Garlington

Universal Pictures has dropped the poster and first trailer for their 2024 action comedy “The Fall Guy” (see both below). Loosely based on the 1980’s television series starring Lee Majors and Heather Thomas, this remake (of sorts) is helmed by stuntman turned director David Leitch. The film was definitely on my radar due to its fun 80s connection and its stellar cast. But the first trailer may make me temper my expectations just a bit.

Ryan Gosling plays a past-his-prime stuntman named Colt Seavers while Emily Blunt plays his ex-girlfriend Jody Moreno. She’s all set to direct her first film. But when her hunky star, Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) disappears, she tasks her old flame Colt with finding him (or something like that). The trailer shows us an unapologetically goofy film full of over-the-top set pieces. It shows Gosling continuing his move away from somber to silly and Blunt doing what she can with what looks like a pretty flimsy role. The cheap and incessant use on Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name” doesn’t exactly help. We’ll see.

“The Fall Guy” hits theaters March 1, 2024. Check out the trailer below and let me know if you’ll be seeing it or taking a pass.

20th Century Studios Releases New Poster, Trailer, and Stills for “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes”

November 2, 2023 by Keith Garlington

20th Century Studios and Disney have released new details for their upcoming action-adventure film “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes”. Today we got our first in-depth look at the feature via a new trailer, new poster, and several new images from this long-awaited next chapter in the epic “Planet of the Apes” saga. The film is set to premiere exclusively in theaters on May 24, 2024. Here’s all the information from today’s announcement.

From the Studio:

Director Wes Ball breathes new life into the global, epic franchise set several generations in the future following Caesar’s reign, in which apes are the dominant species living harmoniously and humans have been reduced to living in the shadows. As a new tyrannical ape leader builds his empire, one young ape undertakes a harrowing journey that will cause him to question all that he has known about the past and to make choices that will define a future for apes and humans alike.

“Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” is directed by Wes Ball (the “Maze Runner” trilogy) and stars Owen Teague (“IT”), Freya Allan (“The Witcher”), Kevin Durand (“Locke & Key”), Peter Macon (“Shameless”), and William H. Macy (“Fargo”). The screenplay is by Josh Friedman (“War of the Worlds”) and Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver (“Avatar: The Way of Water”) and Patrick Aison (“Prey”), based on characters created by Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver, and the producers are Wes Ball, Joe Hartwick, Jr. (“The Maze Runner”), Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, Jason Reed (“Mulan”), with Peter Chernin (the “Planet of the Apes” trilogy) and Jenno Topping (“Ford v. Ferrari”) serving as executive producers.

REVIEW: “Rumble Through the Dark” (2023)

November 2, 2023 by Keith Garlington

I’ve always been a fan of Aaron Eckhart, but he’s an actor who rarely gets the kind of roles that does his talent justice. He gets one in the new film “Rumble Through the Dark”, a grimy rural thriller set in the Mississippi Delta that lets the 55-year-old Eckhart show his commitment and range both physically and dramatically. And while he doesn’t disappoint, the movie itself has a tough time matching its rather grand ambition.

From co-directors Graham and Parker Phillips and screenwriter Michael Farris Smith, “Rumble Through the Dark” is based on Smith’s own 2018 novel, “The Fighter”. It follows a broken down and tortured man fighting demons from his past while trying to preserve the few good memories he has left. It’s a sad and often bleak story, but it’s not without hope. The problem is its hope relies on a second-half convenience (or a twist of fate if you want to be nice) that’s pretty tough to swallow.

Eckhart plays Jack Boucher, a former bare-knuckle cage fighter who has fallen on hard times. He’s deep in debt with a dangerous local vice queen named Big Momma Sweet (Marianne Jean-Baptiste). He’s also on the verge of losing his dying foster mother’s old antebellum house to foreclosure. To make matters worse his health is rapidly deteriorating due to years of fighting. His body is battered and bruised. He has been steadily losing his memory. And he has crippling headaches that can only be relieved by popping illegal painkillers.

Jack’s backstory is told through a series of hazy flashbacks meant to give the movie some emotional heft. Through them we learn Jack was abandoned when he was an infant but later adopted by a caring woman who supported and encouraged him. There are some pretty big gaps in their story, mainly from his time as a young teen to the current day. We do see that she is in a nursing home suffering from dementia. And at some point during that time Jack got $30,000 behind with the bank.

Without getting into too many details, Jack is eventually faced with a near impossible predicament. If he doesn’t get some money he will lose everything his beloved foster mother entrusted to him. Oh, and he’ll also lose his life to Big Momma Sweet who has given him an ultimatum. But if he goes back to fighting (the only thing he knows) his beat-up body night not be able to take it.

The premise isn’t especially new, but a fiercely committed Eckhart and the rich Deep South setting make it interesting. Where the movie stumbles is in a side story involving a young woman named Annette (played by Bella Thorne). She’s an exotic dancer for a traveling carnival who unfortunately feels too much like a device. The Phillips brothers try developing her into someone compelling, and of course her path is destined to cross with Jack’s. But when they eventually meet, we’re hit with an impossible-to-buy ‘twist’ completely out of left field.

Though well-intended, the Jack and Annette relationship never feels organic and it can’t generate the emotional impact it needs. It tries to go somewhere unexpected, but it’s so out of the blue and you’re left wondering if that screen time could have been better spent. As it is, “Rumble Through the Dark” is a promising but weighted down thriller that gets by mostly on the shoulders of Eckhart. The material may not do him many favors, but he pours himself into his role which makes the story’s shortcomings a bit easier to maneuver. “Rumble Through the Dark” opens in select theaters November 3rd and On Demand and Digital November 10th.

VERDICT – 2.5 STARS

“Killers of the Flower Moon” and One of Its Most Common Criticisms

November 1, 2023 by Keith Garlington

Martin Scorsese’s Western crime drama “Killers of the Flower Moon” has been out for over two weeks and the reactions have been fascinating. The three-and-a-half-hour, $200 million epic has received widespread critical acclaim while making a modest but expected $90 million at the box office so far. But it has also received criticisms, the most prevalent involving Scorsese’s choice to tell so much of his story from the perspective of the white villains rather than the Native American victims.

To be clear, there’s certainly nothing “unfair” about wanting to see this story told from the Native American perspective. I would watch that movie in a heartbeat. But it is a bit unfair to criticize Scorsese for not being the one to tell that story. There are a number of reasons. Here are just a few…

1. This is Scorsese’s Story.

The most basic defense is also one of the more reasonable ones. Simply put, Martin Scorsese is the storyteller here. He’s the creator, the author, and the artist. We have to be careful when we begin making such demands on art. Part of what makes art of any kind special is the freedom of individual expression. Obviously in cinema it takes more than one person to create. But most of the time it’s driven by a filmmaker’s vision. And as critics, we should judge their execution of their vision rather than the story we would rather hear/see.

2. Is He the Right Person to Speak From Their Perspective?

As mentioned, there is nothing wrong with longing for a film that shows these events from the Native American perspective. Whether a documentary or a narrative feature, it’s a movie I’d love to see funded and distributed. But is Martin Scorsese the person people want representing such a meaningful and intensely personal perspective? It’s not hard to predict the criticisms (many of them legitimate) that would immediately arise if he were to try. And who knows, maybe Scorsese didn’t feel he could do the indigenous perspective justice. That’s a reasonable and admirable position.

3. There’s Nothing Wrong with the Perspective He Chose.

Scorsese is a smart filmmaker and storyteller therefore his use of perspective isn’t done without consideration or purpose. In the case of “Killers of the Flower Moon”, it’s a decision made with a very distinct goal in mind. His aim wasn’t just to show the faces of evil. He intended to show us how evil operates, often in plain site. He shows the machinations of unbridled power and the poisoning effects of unconstrained greed. And he vividly does so through the eyes of the purveyors of such evil. I found it to be extremely effective.

There is the broader question of whether or not a Native American filmmaker would be given the same resources to tell this story from their perspective. I have a hard time believing that studios would invest as much as they would for an established big name director. That’s a meaningful conversation to have. But that’s certainly not Scorsese’s fault. He has earned his reputation and his legacy speaks for itself.

Scorsese’s approach to “Killers of the Flower Moon” combines a gritty realism with an earnest sensitivity. Those are essential ingredients to the story he’s telling – one that fits his vision, passion, and convictions. And those things are what make the film uniquely his. That gets to the heart of artistry. And once we start judging art on what we want it to be rather than what the artist intends, it slowly begins to lose its power. And that’s something we should never let happen.

REVIEW: “Quiz Lady” (2023)

November 1, 2023 by Keith Garlington

The hilarious duo of Awkwafina and Sandra Oh lead the smart(ish), funny, and effortlessly charming “Quiz Lady”, the new comedy from director Jessica Yu. Written by Jen D’Angelo and featuring a collection of small yet wonderfully cast supporting roles, “Quiz Lady” is a welcomed late year addition to a genre that needed a boost. This breezy entertaining crowdpleaser takes a whimsical but heartfelt look at sisterhood through two dramatically different yet joyously compatible siblings.

Playing against type, Awkwafina plays a socially awkward 33-year-old introvert named Anne Yum. When not working her mundane office job at an accounting firm, Anne spends her time at home with her adorable pug named Linguine. Her one passion is the television game show “Can’t Stop the Quiz”. Since she was a child Anne loved “Can’t Stop the Quiz” and its gentlemanly Alex Trebek-ish host Terry McTeer (a wonderfully silly Will Ferrell).

Anne’s somewhat estranged sister Jenny (Oh) is a blustering ball of chaos. She’s erratic and irresponsible despite being ten years older than her kid sister. The two come together after getting news that their elderly mother has busted out of her nursing home and taken off to Macau with her new boyfriend Jeff. And this is where things get a little wacky.

**Image Courtesy of 20th Century Studios**

We learn that Anne and Jenny’s mother left after amassing a hefty gambling debt with a local loan shark (Jonathan ‘Dumbfoundead’ Park). He and his goons kidnap Linguine and give the sisters two weeks to pay off the $80,000 their mom owes otherwise the dog gets it. So Jenny comes up with a plan – get super-fan Anne to audition for “Can’t Stop the Quiz”. With her obsessive knowledge of the show, winning $80,000 should be a piece of cake. Of course there’s that whole issue of Anne’s social anxiety. Hijinks ensue.

Yu and D’Angelo have a lot of fun playing around with the wacky dynamic between the two sisters. The two central performances show off a great comedic chemistry with Oh getting the more in-your-face material and Awkwafina in the straight-man role. Then you have the supporting cast who routinely steal scenes. Along with Ferrell there’s also a priceless Jason Schwartzman playing the game show’s schmoozing returning champion. Holland Taylor is a hoot as Anne’s cranky neighbor Francine. We even get a zany turn from Tony Hale who plays the proprietor of a colonial-themed inn where he role-plays as Benjamin Franklin.

I laughed a lot during “Quiz Lady”, but not all of its jokes land. Some are a little too outrageous; others go the unfortunate and obvious cheap route. But for the most part Yu has a good grip on things as seen in the fleet-footed pacing and crisp comic timing. Meanwhile D’Angelo gives her characters some legitimately funny material to work with. Some may have a hard time buying the feel-good ending. But like the bulk of the comedy, it’s easy to swallow in large part thanks to the film’s two endearing and enjoyable leads. “Quiz Lady” premieres November 3rd on Hulu.