Author Archives: Keith Garlington

K&M COMMENTARY: Why I need “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” to be good

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Is there anything in the vast expansive world of entertainment bigger than Star Wars? What started as an ambitious but questionable concept has blossomed into arguably the most recognized property in any entertainment medium. It spans decades. It spans demographics. It reaches out into nearly every marketing direction (in a local grocery store I actually saw a big display of Star Wars oranges). No franchise is as passionately loved, as passionately debated, or as  passionately supported by its fans as Star Wars.

All of that speaks to an incredibly rich and healthy franchise. But when I talk about Star Wars I’m almost always talking about it on a personal level. What I mean is Star Wars is something I genuinely love. It’s an affection that runs deeper than niche enthusiasm or rabid fanboyism. I’m thoroughly invested in this crazy universe that found its origin in the mind of George Lucas.

For me Star Wars wasn’t a spur of the moment discovery. I’m 44 years-old and I would call it the perfect age to be a fan. I was able to experience Star Wars as it was released in every phase of my life. The original trilogy came out when I was a kid. I had it all: action figures, pajamas, vehicles, lightsabers, lunch boxes, storybooks, comics, posters, trading cards. I was enamored with this amazing creation, its strange worlds, and its even stranger characters.

The controversial sequels came out while I was a young adult. Another phase of my life and more Star Wars. The prequels have their share of detractors and I don’t want to debate the value of them here. Suffice it to say I enjoyed them flaws and all. More importantly they showed just how beloved the franchise was. Star Wars was everywhere again. People talked about it. Purists debated it. Fans dissected it. It was a ringing reminder of the how Star Wars transcended the realm of entertainment.

And now Star Wars has returned and here I am in yet another phase of my life. I’m an early middle-ager and yet I’m as giddy as a child for J.J. Abrams’ new Star Wars pictures. I have invested so much over the years. I have so much affection for these characters. And after so much time and with so much passion, I can’t stand the thought of these new movies being bad. I want to be talking about Star Wars again. I want to be excited about a new generation of heroes and villains. I want to be fed a new story that leave me anticipating what’s next.

What I’m saying is I need “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” to be good. It’s important. I don’t want to see something that has been an integral part of each phase of my life to fail. I don’t want someone to turn it into something else. Star Wars is more than a movie for millions of us, and the thought of it being just another movie is too much. So J.J., now it’s up to you.

REVIEW: “In the Heart of the Sea”

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HEARTposter

It has been a while since we’ve had a Moby Dick movie. There has been an interesting variety of cinematic iterations (my favorite being John Huston and Gregory Peck’s 1956 version). Now we have Ron Howard’s “In the Heart of the Sea”. Well actually “In the Heart of the Sea” isn’t a Moby Dick movie. It is based on “the true encounter that inspired one of the greatest legends of all time” (aka it’s kind of a Moby Dick movie, but it really isn’t).

The Son of Odin and one time Sexiest Man Alive Chris Hemsworth stars in this nautical thriller which is more directly taken from Nathaniel Philbrick’s nonfiction book of the same name. It chronicles the fate of the whaleship Essex which in 1820 encountered a massive sperm whale in the Pacific Ocean. There is no Captain Ahad driven mad with bloodlust towards a massive underwater leviathan. No, instead this is an open-sea survival story that may end up surprising people with the grim and darker paths it takes.

Heart1

The story is told to us through an interview between writer Herman Melville (Ben Whishaw) and Thomas Nickerson (Brendan Gleeson). Melville is an ambitious young novelist who needs (both mentally and career-wise) a good story to tell. Nickerson served on the Essex as a young boy and since has been haunted by pent-up memories of survival.

 

Nickerson recalls his story through flashbacks. In them we meet a seasoned whaler named Owen Chase (Hemsworth). Although he had been promised the captaincy of his own ship, instead he is assigned to the Essex to serve as First Mate to an inexperienced and insecure Captain with a prominent last name (Benjamin Walker). The 21-man crew head out on a two and a half year voyage for highly coveted and profitable whale oil.

The crew-favorite First Mate Chase and the jealous Captain Pollard quickly butt heads. Pollard’s arrogant ineptitude nearly has them killed by a violent storm. But the first sighting of whales quickly mends the hostility. While restocking in Ecuador Pollard and Chase are told of an area of Pacific waters that is loaded with whales for the catching. They are also warned of a giant beast bigger than mind can fathom. They dismiss the warning and head towards the fishing grounds hoping to get their oil quota so they can head back home.

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I shouldn’t need to tell you they do encounter this massive sperm whale and the results aren’t good. Soon after the crew find themselves fighting to survive, not so much from the whale, but from starvation, the elements, and at times each other. The story ventures into some pretty dark areas and deals with some fairly complicated moral questions. It never fully dives into its darkness. In skirts around the edges of its PG-13 boundaries and it doesn’t spend as much time exploring the harsh survival aspect as it could have. Still, it definitely gets its points across.

The moments Melville has with Nickerson are fantastic and they have just as much going on dramatically. Gleeson is simply one of the best working actors. With an effortless poetry he allows us to see through the eyes of this scarred and emotionally fragile character. His scenes with Whishaw are fewer, but they are just as compelling as the high seas adventure. They are also inseparable. The story of the Essex is the cathartic release of a damaged psyche and since I bought into Nickerson, the story he was telling was made more important.

 

This is a big film for Hemsworth, an actor who needs a good meaty performance. He needs something to help him be seen as more than ‘Thor from the Marvel movies’. Other than some pretty solid work in “Rush” we haven’t seen it. Forgettable performances in forgettable films like “Red Dawn”, “Snow White and the Huntsman”, and “Blackhat” haven’t helped. Here he gives a much more seasoned and fitting performance. There are moments where he works a bit too hard, but overall he’s good. Hemsworth lost almost 50 pounds of that chiseled Asgardian physique for this one. He certainly went all in.

IN THE HEART OF THE SEA

Speaking of going all in, so does Ron Howard. “In the Heart” has no shortage a special effects most of which are strikingly effective particularly on the big screen. A lot of my pleasure came from how he and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle (a Danny Boyle favorite) framed many of their shots. There are so many cool angles and unusual perspectives. Some are used to heighten our senses to certain situations while others simply ground us in what’s going on. Some may be just to show off how beautiful a shot is. There is such a high polish to many of the visuals and sometimes that makes the effects a tad too obvious, but as a whole Howard gives us plenty of fantastic things to look at.

People will undoubtedly compare this to “Moby Dick” and that’s unfortunate. In fact walking out of the theater I overheard a guy saying “I like Gregory Peck’s version better.” The trailers have certainly helped to fuel these expectations. But his isn’t a man-versus-whale story. This isn’t “Moby Dick”. There is an entirely different story being told and I found it to be pretty compelling. Popular critical sentiment is that “In the Heart of the Sea” falls short. I’ll admit Ron Howard submits to a pretty firm and unbending structure and perhaps the film doesn’t explore certain themes as deeply as I wanted. But there is so much I appreciate both narratively and visually, and the film is definitely more than high seas eye candy.

VERDICT – 4 STARS

4 Stars

REVIEW: “The Boy Next Door”

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boy poster

There is a moment in “The Boy Next Door” (albeit a brief one) where I asked myself “Could this actually be a good movie?” It’s early in the film and despite its visible cracks the movie appears to be laying some fairly entertaining groundwork. But it didn’t take long before I had the answer to my question. It didn’t take long for me to realize that this was another silly, cliche-ridden, Lifetime caliber effort with seemingly no unique identity of its own.

Now some may disagree, but Jennifer Lopez is not a bad actress. You certainly wouldn’t know that by many of her movie choices. Why she attached herself to this film is beyond me. In it she plays Claire Peterson, a high school teacher who has recently separated from her cheating husband (John Corbett). She meets a teenager (going on 30) Noah Sandborn played by Ryan Guzman. He has just moved in next door with his disabled uncle following the death of his parents. Noah looks fresh out of a GQ shoot, flashes a million dollar smile, and knows how to fix a garage door opener. What a winning combination!

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Noah begins impressing Claire by befriending her 16-year old son Kevin (Ian Nelson). Noah helps Kevin talk to the ‘prettiest girl in school’ and deal with some obnoxious bullies (doesn’t that sound familiar). He teaches Kevin how to box and change out an alternator in a truck. How can Claire not like this guy? Of course we know where this is heading from the very first time they meet. Director Rob Cohen doesn’t allow us to wonder. Instead he bombards us with awkward smiles, googly eye contact,  and glaringly obvious perspective shots where his camera sits and lustily gazes. There isn’t an ounce of mystery.

The obvious happens and the two hook up. Afterwards Claire immediately knows she has made a mistake. The film portrays it as an act of vulnerability, but that’s really hard to buy into. The movie does a poor job of selling us a vulnerable Claire. After all, she is cutting eyes at this guy every time he walks into her house. Regardless, Claire tells Noah it was a mistake and (in an equally predictable turn) Noah suddenly turns from the perfect all-American guy to an obsessed raving lunatic. Of course clues to his instability suddenly pop up everywhere and soon Claire has a full-blown stalker situation on her hands.

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The script for this thing was written by a criminal lawyer named Barbara Curry. Her story was originally centered around Noah pulling Kevin away from his family and a determined mother fighting to get her son back. That idea offers a lot more potential than what we end up with. Instead we get an unoriginal stalker thriller that literally hits you with one overused cliché after another. The story gets wackier leading to an ending that flies completely off the rails and that leaves a number of loose ends when the credits roll that will have you shaking your head in disbelief.

“The Boy Next Door” is too unconsciously goofy to be taken seriously and it takes itself too seriously to be good campy fun. Lopez gives it a good go but you can only do so much with bad material. The story hasn’t an original  thought and it’s hard to buy into anything we see. Complicate that with a laughably bad ending with enough loose threads to knit a sweater. Perhaps some may find enough to qualify this as a guilty pleasure. Me, I just felt guilty.

VERDICT – 1.5 STARS

1.5 stars

REVIEW: “Brooklyn”

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Brooklyn poster

Saoirse Ronan has quietly put together a fine acting career. For almost ten years she has steadily delivered one good performance after another. In 2007 she became one of the youngest actresses to ever receive an Academy Award nomination. But what is truly surprising is the fact that Ronan is only 21 years-old and with each new film she continues to mature as an actress. That has never been more evident than in her new picture “Brooklyn”.

This beautiful period drama is from director John Crowley and scripted by Nick Hornby. It’s based on Colm Tóibín’s novel about a quiet Irish girl given an opportunity to make a better life for herself overseas in 1952 Brooklyn, New York. There is nothing cagey or complex about the story, but it’s simplicity is part of its charm and it works mainly due to a captivating lead performance.

Saoirse Ronan in Brooklyn

Ronan plays Eilis, an Irish girl whose life is dictated by the people and practices in her County Wexford village. She’s quiet and cordial even when working for her cuss of a boss at a local general store. Her older sister Rose (Fiona Glasscott) knows there is nothing for Eilis in the village so with the help of a priest named Father Flood (Jim Broadbent in a superb bit of casting), she arranges for Eilise to travel to New York to create a new and better life for herself.

There is one key thing I appreciate about the story itself and Crowley’s direction. There are several opportunities for the movie to wander down a conventional and cliché path. When Eilise first arrives in Brooklyn she is clearly in a new world. But it doesn’t turn into your standard ‘fish out of water’ story. Her struggles, her loneliness, her homesickness – it is all handled and presented in a way that is thoughtful and genuine. But most importantly it serves the character without drowning the audience in overwrought depictions of her circumstances.

Her struggles ease a bit when she meets a nice, hard-working Italian plumber named Tony (Emory Cohen). Again, the movie could have ventured off into a number of directions including the predictable Irish/Italian relationship complications. Thankfully it does not. That’s not the story it wants to tell. Instead it unfolds into a sweet love story that allows us to see a number of new sides to Eilise. She becomes more comfortable and more confident. The longing for home slowly subsides and takes on a new form. We see a new and different young woman.

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The idea of ‘home’ becomes one of the film’s central themes. Eilise is faced with a predicament that causes her to question where her true home is. Other people have no problems defining ‘home’ for her. The question becomes will she throw aside her newly found self-confidence to once again allow her life to be determined by the wishes of others? Or will she take the reins and define her ‘home’ and her life for herself?

“Brooklyn” maneuvers through a minefield of too much melodrama and sentimentality at times coming dangerously close to both. But it never overdoes it. Instead it focuses on its main character and everything works towards telling her story. And it is a lovely story. There is a rhythmic beauty to the storytelling and Crowley’s camera helps convey it. There are so many gorgeous shots that stuck with me well after the movie was over.

While the story is sweet and alluring and the film looks fantastic, this is mainly a sparkling showcase for Saoirse Ronan. I don’t know if there was a more sublimely expressive or emotionally earnest performance this year. I can’t imagine anyone else playing this role any better and Ronan deserves all the attention that is certain to come her way. This is her movie and she makes it one of the year’s finest.

VERDICT – 4.5 STARS

4.5 STARS

Random Thoughts on the 2016 Golden Globe Nominations

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The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has unveiled their precursor to the Oscars – the 2016 Golden Globe nominations. As with many of these things there were a few surprises while several nominations went just how you would expect. Here are a handful of random thoughts on today’s announcements:

  • Sylvester Stallone gets a Supporting Actor nomination. I finished my review of “Creed” by saying Sly could get some awards attention. Thrilled to see it. It is well deserved and it shouldn’t be viewed as some type of token nomination.
  • “The Revenant” received four Golden Globe nominations for 2015 films yet it doesn’t release until January 8, 2016. Yes I’m aware this is how it has been, but it is still annoying. Get the movie out. It’s finished for very select audiences but not for the rest of us?
  • What a morning for Idris Elba. He was nominated for both film and television. I can’t speak to his TV work, but his performance in “Beasts of No Nation” is top-tier. I would have no problem with him taking home the award.
  • Despite all of the praise we have heard throughout the year, I had a suspicion that “Mad Max: Fury Road” would conveniently miss out come awards time. Happy to be wrong. The film was nominated for Best Picture – Drama and Best Director. It certainly deserves the recognition. It’s one of the best films of the year and one of the best action movies from the past several years.
  • Who told Dennis Quaid how to pronounce Saoirse Ronan’s name? Was it John Travolta? But it could be worse. He could’ve said Dick Poop!
  • Who knew ” The Martian” was a comedy? Or was it a musical? 
  • Way back when the first trailer for “Carol” landed I tweeted that it was guaranteed a ton of nominations. It looked polished and primed for awards time. This morning it received five Golden Globe nominations. These things can be so predictable.
  • “Spy”? I mean it isn’t as teeth-grinding as a lot of Melissa McCarthy’s stuff, but nominations for Best Picture – Comedy or Musical and Best Actress? That’s a stretch.
  • I love seeing a smaller film like “Room” getting such recognition. For some reason I expect Oscar to give it the cold shoulder so I’m glad the Globes gave it some well deserved attention.
  • Quentin Tarantino got his obligatory screenplay nomination, but “The Hateful Eight” only landed two others (Jennifer Jason- Leigh for Best Supporting Actress and Original Score). But QT acolytes shouldn’t worry. The Academy loves him….kind of.
  • And Will Smith for “Concussion”? Obviously I haven’t seen the film or the performance, but this nomination seemed to come out of left field.
  • And no Meryl Streep? How can this be? How could this be allowed to happen? Thankfully Oscar always reserves a slot for her regardless of how undeserving the nomination may be. 
  • While I didn’t expect it to be nominated, I’m still a bit bummed that “Sicario” got nothing. Fantastic thriller and phenomenal supporting work from Benicio Del Toro. But again, not unexpected.
  • I think it’s safe to say that Alicia Vikander is pretty happy this morning. Two acting nominations but not a third for “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.”? The HFP must have forgot about that one.
  • We can now actually say “The Golden Globe nominated Fifty Shades of Grey”. Nothing about that sounds right!
  • I always forget that the Golden Globes and has no award for cinematography or documentary. That is a bit absurd.
  • The best and most intriguing category this year – Best Supporting Actor. I mean look at this group: Elba, Stallone, Shannon, Dano, and Rylance. Really strong.
  • What’s with all of the nominated one word titles? Room, Carol, Spotlight, Joy, Spy, Trainwreck, Trumbo, Brooklyn, Concussion, Grandma, Creed, Anomalisa, Youth, Spectre, Mustang. 

So there are just a few random thoughts about this year’s Golden Globe nominees. What did you think about the announcements? What do you see as some nice surprises or glaring omissions? Agree or disagree with any of my thoughts? Let’s talk about it in the comments section below. Here is a full list of the movie nominees:

Best Picture, Drama

  • Carol
  • Mad Max: Fury Road
  • The Revenant 
  • Room
  • Spotlight

Best Picture, Comedy or Musical

  • The Big Short
  • Joy
  • The Martian
  • Spy
  • Trainwreck

Best Director

  • Todd Haynes, Carol
  • Alejandro Innaritu, The Revenant
  • Tom McCarthy, Spotlight
  • George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road
  • Ridley Scott, The Martian

Best Actor, Drama

  • Bryan Cranston, Trumbo
  • Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant
  • Michael Fassbender, Steven Jobs
  • Eddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl
  • Will Smith, Concussion

Best Actress, Drama

  • Cate Blanchett, Carol
  • Brie Larson, Room
  • Rooney Mara, Carol
  • Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn
  • Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl

Best Actor, Comedy

  • Christian Bale, The Big Short
  • Steve Carell, The Big Short
  • Matt Damon, The Martian
  • Al Pacino, Danny Collins
  • Mark Ruffalo, Infinitely Polar Bear

Best Actress, Comedy

  • Jennifer Lawrence, Joy
  • Melissa McCarthy, Spy
  • Amy Schumer, Trainwreck
  • Maggie Smith, The Lady in the Van
  • Lily Tomlin, Grandma


Best Supporting Actor

  • Paul Dano, Love & Mercy
  • Idris Elba, Beasts of No Nation
  • Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies
  • Michael Shannon, 99 Homes
  • Sylvester Stallone, Creed


Best Supporting Actress

  • Jane Fonda, Youth
  • Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight 
  • Helen Mirren, Trumbo
  • Alicia Vikander, Ex Machina
  • Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs

Best Screenplay

  • Emma Donoghue, Room
  • Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer, Spotlight
  • Charles Randolph and Adam McKay, The Big Short
  • Aaron Sorkin, Steve Jobs
  • Quentin Tarantino, The Hateful Eight

Best Original Score

  • Carter Burwell, Carol
  • Alexandre Desplat, The Danish Girl
  • Ennio Morricone, The Hateful Eight
  • Daniel Pemberton, Steve Jobs
  • Ryuichi Sakamoto & Alva Noto, The Revenant

Best Original Song

  • “Love Me Like You Do,” Fifty Shades of Grey
  • “One Kind of Love,” Love & Mercy
  • “See You Again,” Furious 7
  • “Simple Song #3,” Youth
  • “Writing’s On the Wall,” Spectre


Best Animated Feature Film

  • Anomalisa
  • The Good Dinosaur
  • Inside Out
  • The Peanuts Movie
  • Shaun the Sheep Movie

Best Foreign Language Film

  • The Brand New Testament
  • The Club
  • The Fencer
  • Mustang
  • Son of Saul

5 Phenomenal Box Office Bombs That Deserved Better

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PHENOM 5

Just a few weeks ago The Phenomenal 5 list looked at bad movies that were huge box office hits. This time we are doing it a little different. I thought it would be fun to look at box office bombs that are actually much better films than their theater earnings indicate. These are movies that deserved the audiences that films like “Avatar”, “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”, and “Transformers” brought in. I tried to focus on films that have still never gotten over the box office drumming they took. The number of good movies brutalized by poor theater showings is pretty astonishing therefore I wouldn’t call this the definitive list. But there is no denying that these five box office bombs truly deserved better.

#5 – “Serenity”

SERENITY

It may surprise some but Joss Whedon was indeed directing movies prior to “The Avengers”. One such film was “Serenity” based on his science-fiction television series “Firefly”. The film follows the events of the series and brought back the entire cast led by Nathan Fillion. Actually I had not watched the series so I wasn’t expecting much from the film. I was wrong. This is fun, engaging, quip-filled sci-fi but it never caught much of an audience. It barely made back its budget and any possibly followups were quickly tossed out. What a shame.

#4 – “Waterworld”

WATERWORLD

To this day “Waterworld” is remembered for its cost controversy and its failures to cover its budget at the box office. At the time it was the most expensive movie ever made and the news focused more on that than the film itself. The movie deserved a lot better. There are some rough patches but overall the  dystopian vision of a flooded earth is very compelling. The movie does several interesting things within the setting and there are several scenes that still stick with me. Not a perfect film but one that doesn’t deserve the pounding it has taken over the years.

#3 – “John Carter”

JOHN CARTER

Yet another science-fiction movie with a mammoth-sized budget that fell well short of box office expectations. Disney went all-in with “John Carter”, a move that proved very costly. The film needed to make $600 million globally to break even. It didn’t even manage $290 million. Did Disney overspend? Absolutely. Is “John Carter” a bad movie? Absolutely not. It’s too long. It has a fairly stiff lead performance. It sometimes gets a bit too cheesy. But I think “John Carter” is a lot of fun. It’s filled with some amazing effects, jaw-dropping set pieces, and it lays the foundation for what could have been a strong sequel. That certainly isn’t happening now.

#2 – “Once Upon a Time in America”

ONCE

There is a frustrating and shameful story behind the American release of Sergio Leone’s fabulous gangster epic “Once Upon a Time in America”. This was the final movie in Leone’s brilliant filmmaking career. It was set to release with a running time of 229 minutes. It did so in Europe. Panicking over some early screening reactions, it was decided to not only cut the American version down to 139 minutes, but also to rearrange numerous scenes. This was all done without Leone’s consent and the results were disastrous. The film bombed and to this day the brilliant original 229 minute version doesn’t get the appreciation it deserves.

#1 – “Hugo”

HUGO

Movie fans often talk about Martin Scorsese movies. In those conversations you rarely hear any mention of “Hugo”. The 2011 film based on the Brian Selznick novel was generally applauded by critics and well represented at the Academy Award ceremony. But it is generally known as a box office flop and as a result it has been forgotten. Overall the film is believed to have lost around $100 million mostly due to the stiff competition it faced in the theaters (“Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1” and “The Muppets”). In reality it is a charming, stimulating, and poignant story told through the lens of a true filmmaking great. The fact that “Hugo” has been forgotten by many is discouraging. It was one of my favorite films of 2011 and it holds up remarkably well today.

So there are five good movies (in some cases great movies) that performed poorly at the box office and have never fully recovered. Each deserved a much better fate. Agree or disagree? Please let me know in the comments section below.