I had a great time appearing on Tavern Talk by Initial Reaction to discuss Adam McKay’s wacky end-of-the-world satire “Don’t Look Up”. It was late and we had screened two movies, so please forgive my rambling. But (as it always is on that show) I had a lot of fun.
Please click below and check it out.
I remember it like was yesterday. Waking up on Christmas morning in 1987, glassy eyes and my hair looking like I had just excited a wind tunnel. I hadn’t slept much that night. I never did on Christmas Eve, even during my teen years. Call it a side effect of being a big ol’ kid during the holiday season. But that year was special. It was the year when our parents completely surprised my brother and me with a Nintendo Entertainment System. It’s something we weren’t expecting as we walked into our living room on that chilly December morning.
Our Nintendo was quite the treat and I couldn’t begin to tell you the number of hours we logged on that console. Those with fond memories of the NES automatically have a nostalgic connection to the new Christmas comedy “8-Bit Christmas”. It comes from director Michael Drowse and screenwriter Kevin Jakubowski and chronicles a young boy and his friends as they try to secure a coveted Nintendo Entertainment System for Christmas.
Based on Jakubowski’s novel of the same name, much of the movie plays like a knockoff of the perennial Yuletide classic “A Christmas Story”. Instead of Ralphie pursuing a Red Rider BB Gun, it’s an 11-year-old named Jake (Winslow Fegley) after an NES. It has the same style of narration. There’s the neurotic yet caring father. It even has its own Scut Farkus (played here with a nice mix of menace and humor by Cyrus Arnold).
But the more you watch, the more you begin to notice that “8-Bit Christmas” has a few of its own unique markings that set it apart from its better and more memorable inspiration. It’s hard to recognize them at first, as it’s so blatantly pulling from “A Christmas Story”. But as it goes, it begins to develop its own identity. It delivers some well-landed lighthearted laughs and ends on a warm and touching note that frankly I wasn’t at all expecting.
Jake’s quest to get his own Nintendo is framed as a story told by his older self to his young daughter. Adult Jake (Neil Patrick Harris) is hearing it from his flustered daughter Annie (Sophia Reid-Gantzert) after telling her she’s too young to get a cellphone for Christmas. He begins telling her the story of certain Christmas in the late 80s when the Nintendo Entertainment System was what (almost) every kid wanted. Annie sours at the thought of listening to her dad blab, but over time gets sucked into the story.
We’re then transport back to 1987, the time of the Trapper Keeper, Lite Brite, leg warmers and Swatches. Jake lives outside of Chicago with his scatterbrained wannabe carpenter dad John (Steve Zahn), his coupon-clipping mom Kathy (June Diane Raphael), and his snarky little sister Lizzy (Bellaluna Resnick). All Jake wants for Christmas is a Nintendo, but as you would expect he runs into all sorts of obstacles.
Jake’s parents aren’t interested in getting him an NES and their reasoning is strangely murky. It’s made even weirder by the fact that the Nintendo seems easily available in stores. His folks just aren’t into it, I guess. Later they’re given a little motivation when an advocacy group rises up protesting the violence in video games. So Jake and his eclectic group of friends must hatch their own plan if they’re ever to get a Nintendo for themselves.
“8-Bit Christmas” has its rocky patches and the storytelling can be pretty uneven. And at times it seems handcuffed by holiday movie expectations. But you kinda look over those baked-in tropes that are in nearly every movie like this. Instead, it’s the funny bits that end up standing out. It’s the wackier side characters like psycho rich kid Timmy (Chandler Dean) or Farmer (Max Malas), Jake’s friend and well documented pathological liar. And then there’s the film’s heart which really comes out at the end. Sure, it’s a little sentimental, but who cares. I responded to it which is all I could ask. “8-Bit Christmas” is now streaming on HBO Max.
George Mackay stars in the upcoming World War II thriller “Munich – The Edge of War”. One of the first in Netflix’s 2022 slate of movies, “Munich – TEOW” comes from director Christian Schwochow and screenwriter Ben Power. It’s based on a Robert Harris novel of the same name and is set in late 1938 on the eve of Hitler’s planned invasion of Czechoslovakia. So automatically we’re in historically rich territory.
The story follows two young men, British civil servant (George MacKay) and a German diplomat (Jannis Niewöhner) who join together to try and broker a peace deal. With Europe on the brink of war, Neville Chamberlain (Jeremy Irons) and the British government hatch a plan to stop the inevitable attack that would eventually set in motion events that would lead to the deadliest military conflict in history (an estimated 75-85 million perished as a result). I’m a sucker for thoughtful historical war dramas and I like the look of this one.
“Munich – The Edge of War“ opens in limited release before dropping on Netflix January 21, 2022. Check out the trailer below and let me know if you’ll be seeing it or taking a pass.
What better day than Black Friday for an alien parasite to crash to earth turning bargain-hungry shoppers into flesh eating mutants? While COVID-19 and online shopping may have been the death knells for the “busiest shopping day of the Christmas season”, many of us still remember the absolute madness that was (and in a few places still is) Black Friday.
Director Casey Tebo’s horror comedy, fittingly titled “Black Friday”, takes its above-mentioned nutty concept and runs with it. Written by Andy Greskoviak, the story centers on a group of disgruntled toy store workers forced to work Thanksgiving evening as hordes of Black Friday shoppers line up across the front and around the corner of the store. Little do they know an alien parasite has made its way to earth. Soon the blood-thirsty shoppers are turning into blood-thirsty zombie-like mutants, leaving the employees to fight for their lives.
The characters mostly consist of a blend of personalities and the movie follows the familiar “who will survive” blueprint. Devon Sawa plays Ken, a divorced father of two who’s stuck in a go-nowhere job. Marnie (Ivana Baquero) is a young disillusioned clerk. Archie (Michael Jai White) is the brawny maintenance man. Chris (Ryan Lee) is a germaphobe still living with his parents. There’s the new guy Emmett (Louie Kurtzman). And running the store is regional manager Jonathan (the great Bruce Campbell) and Brian (Stephen Peck), Jonathan’s overly enthusiastic lackey in charge of the sales floor.
There’s not a lot in “Black Friday” that will catch you by surprise. We’ve seen variations of this kind of story several times before. The big difference here is the setting and a gooey alien parasite which is brought to life via some pretty cool makeup and practical effects. The problem is the movie never fully embraces the goofiness of its premise. Things starts off on a fun and silly note, but the humor gets a little more sporadic in the second half. The film never takes itself seriously. It simply doesn’t take the absurdity as far as it needs to.
It also never builds any real tension to speak of. It’s not that the story needs a lot. But when you dial back the humor you need something to take it’s place. As a result “Black Friday” sits and spins its wheels in the second half, seemingly unsure of how far to take things. We’re left with a middling and sadly forgettable horror comedy featuring not enough horror and not enough comedy. Still, it’s an entertaining premise and the cast are all onboard. That’s enough to keep your attention, but not enough to stick in your memory. “Black Friday” is now available on VOD.
In the world of cinephiles and movie critics, a new Paul Thomas Anderson movie is kind of a big deal. As with other seasoned filmmakers with well-defined styles (think Wes Anderson, the Coen brothers, etc.), PTA (as his fans affectionately call him) incites a high level of enthusiasm among his tight-knit faithful. A quick gander at the ever vocal Film Twitter and you’ll get a good sense of what I mean.
In what may be deemed sacrilege by some (friends of mine included), I’ve always been lukewarm on Anderson’s body of work. To his credit, I loved his last film, 2017’s “Phantom Thread”. And 2007’s “There Will Be Blood” remains one of my favorite movies of all time. But several of his other features, including the beloved “Boogie Nights”, “The Master”, and (to a lesser degree) “Inherent Vice”, are well made movies with enough cracks to leave themselves open to some criticism.
Now four years since his last film we get “Licorice Pizza”, a coming of age dramedy (I hate that word, but it fits) set in Anderson’s old stomping ground, the San Fernando Valley. Considering my history with PTA’s work, I went into our press screening wondering where his latest would land with me. To be honest, I’m still trying to sort that out.
Right off the bat you can’t help but notice its almost startling change of pace from the bulk of Anderson’s other films. This one’s breezy, free-spirited, and dare I say tender (a word rarely associated with PTA’s movies). At the same time, it’s not a movie without its issues including one big one that it mostly avoids until it doesn’t. More on that in a moment.
The film’s quirky title is taken from a former chain of Southern California record shops that were popular in the ’70s and ’80s. You won’t find a reference to them anywhere in the movie. No one utters the words “licorice” or “pizza” at any point. But according to Anderson, the two words together capture the vibe of his film. He’s not wrong.
The entire story (written by Anderson) revolves around the relationship between 15-year-old Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman, the son of Anderson favorite the late Philip Seymour Hoffman) and 25-year-old Alana Kane (Alana Haim). The movie opens with the two meeting at Gary’s school. He’s a student and she’s an assistant with a photography business on campus to shoot class pictures. Alana immediately catches Gary’s eye, and he’s certain he’s met the girl he’ll one day marry.
Anderson doesn’t put much effort into bringing the two together. Basically they meet at the school, Gary turns on the charm, Alana gets a kick out of him, he asks her to meet him at his favorite restaurant for a date, she laughs him off reasonably noting their age difference, and then she shows up anyway without much of an explanation why. From there, the rest of the movie plays out like ’The Adventures of Gary and Alana’, highlighting their various ups and downs both in business and in their fun-to-borderline queasy relationship.
That may sound like a slight, but I actually enjoyed Anderson’s free-wheeling storytelling. He bounces his two charismatic leads from one escapade to the next, showing their journey together yet also giving each time on the own. The film’s best scenes are when Hoffman and Haim share the screen. We see their flirty enthusiasm as they start up their own waterbed enterprise (older readers will remember that craze), and in my favorite sequence involving a movers truck, no gas, and an unhinged Bradley Cooper. All show a playful side to PTA‘s storytelling that gives the movie its heart.
But I also like that Anderson explores how their significant age difference sometimes pulls them apart. It creates a needed tension although it sometimes sends the story into less interesting directions. Such as Alana’s sudden zeal to work on a young councilman’s mayoral campaign and Gary’s foray into the freshly legalized pinball business. There’s nothing wrong with those storylines themselves. In fact they give PTA a chance to play around in his early 70s setting (which he exquisitely recreates on screen). They’re just hampered by a surprising lack of narrative detail – an issue that pops up throughout the movie.
For instance, how is a 15-year-old able to open up a waterbed store and pinball arcade seemingly on a whim (yes, there are references to him being a hustler and having a keen business sense, but come on)? Or what about Alana’s funny quirk of repeating everything twice which suddenly vanishes after a couple of early scenes. Taken by themselves, these are all little things. But when taken together they become more noticeable.
But then there’s the bigger more nagging issue – the budding romance between a 25-year-old and a 15-year-old. Anderson tries to have it both ways. There’s clearly a line he wants to straddle. But while he succeeds in hugging it for most of the way, he ends up crossing it on a couple of glaring occasions. Some may appeal to the honesty of Anderson’s depiction of Alana and Hary’s relationship and there’s truth to that defense. But as a father of two kids who fit right into that younger age range, I can tell you how I feel as a parent. The movie’s lack of conviction is a bit troubling.
“Licorice Pizza” won’t be for everyone. It’s a movie that doesn’t really go anywhere and it doesn’t have all that much to say. It’s more of an easygoing trip down memory lane, full of nostalgic callbacks and needle drops. But for some, their enjoyment may ultimately come down to their ability to overlook the ickiness that simmers underneath the central relationship. I’m guessing PTA will mostly get a pass (we tend to do that with filmmakers we really admire). But there’s enough there worth wrestling with, even if the movie never really does. “Licorice Pizza” is now showing in limited release and opens wide on December 25th.
Will Smith makes his bid for an Oscar nomination in “King Richard”, a sports biopic about Richard Williams , the father and coach of tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams. For some folks (including myself), the description ‘sports biopic’ comes with its own baked-in expectations. Both sports movies and big screen biographies have a history of following all too familiar formulas and relying on the tried-and-true rather than offering something new. I’m not sure “King Richard” offers anything new, but it does tell its story well. And when you have such captivating subjects, sometimes that’s all you need to do.
Director Reinaldo Marcus Green and screenwriter Zach Baylin present Richard Williams as a man driven by the scars from his own painful past. It’s what motivates him to push his daughters harder than most; to raise them in their home and off the streets; to encourage them to pursue their dreams and overcome adversity. He preaches conviction, humility, and hard work. He’s determined that his girls will succeed where he didn’t and that they’ll have the father he never had. It’s an obsession born out of love, but an obsession nonetheless.
With the girls in school, Richard hits country clubs around Los Angeles trying to convince local tennis pros to coach his daughters. After class, he practices with Venus and Serena on a rundown city court in a gang-infested part of town. He then ends his day working nights as a security guard. Lost in Richard’s aggressively up-front bravado is his wife Oracene (wonderfully played by Aunjanue Ellis), a stabilizing behind the scenes force who was crucial to the Williams sisters’ success.
Green and Baylin do a good job moving the story forward, and even at 138 minutes, the film never drags. It tracks Venus’ path to tennis stardom that takes the family out of Compton and to West Palm Beach, Florida. It covers their close relationship with renowned tennis coach Rick Macci (a terrific Jon Bernthal). It shows Venus’ decision to turn pro at only 14-years-old. And the movie doesn’t shy away from the inescapable racial component that simmers under the surface. It’s deftly handled by Green whose calculated restraint lets us sense it and feel it ourselves.
I don’t mean this as a knock, but I wasn’t prepared for how good Will Smith is in this. Grizzled and hunched, the star vanishes into the title role, delivering one of the very best performances of his career. Smith thoughtfully channels Richard’s confidence, his eccentricities, and his deeply buried bitterness in ways that never resemble mimicry. He’s helped by the warm and organic chemistry he has with Sydney and Singleton (both great). Meanwhile the film’s secret ingredient is Ellis who (much like her character) often sits in the background but speaks with strength whenever something needs to be said.
“King Richard” doesn’t quite avoid all of the sports movie trappings. Take the final 20 minutes or so which are spent on one long, overdramatized tennis match. It’s something sports movies love to end with – the big match, the big game, the big race, the big fight. Yet this film still maintains enough nuance to separate it from other feel-good crowdpleasers of its kind.
In the end, it’s hard to watch “King Richard” without being inspired, not by the money and fame, but by the fact that Richard Williams’ preposterous plan actually worked. It shows that any family, who’s full of love and deeply committed, can overcome their circumstances and do something great. Of course having two of the greatest athletes of all-time in your family probably doesn’t hurt. “King Richard” is now showing in theaters and streaming on HBO Max.
Keith & the Movies 