"Tony" Review

The opening of Tony, the biopic about a young Anthony Bourdain - the famous chef, author, and TV host who decided a life of globe-trotting, meeting interesting foods and eating exotic peoples, plus banging Asia Argento, wasn't enough to keep living for in 2018 - is a title card with this quote from his book, Kitchen Confidential: “I was a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless young lout, badly in need of a good ass-kicking,” It's a fitting apéritif for what follows, the depiction of young man stumbling into a new vocation while being somewhat the ass in the process.

Dominic Sessa (The Holdovers) stars as Bourdain, going by "Tony" as a 19-year-old Vassar freshman with dreams of being a writer. He applies for a writing fellowship which would take him to New York and lies to his family that he got it when in reality someone else got it. Caught out, he decides to go to Provincetown, MA (at the tip of Cape Cod) to chase after Nancy (Emilia Jones, CODA), a girl he's got a crush on since high school who's a year older and told him she'd be staying for the summer.

When he gets there, he discovers she appears attached to another guy at the pizza place she's working. He goes to a seafood place called The Flagship and gets drunk and when he's rude to Mary (Monica Raymund, Chicago Fire), the barmaid, he's thrown out and beaten up, then later robbed by Sal (Leo Woodall, Tuner), a worker in the kitchen. The owner, Chef (Antonio Banderas, Desperado), takes Tony home and puts him in the hammock on the porch of his small beach house.

Broke, Tony apologizes to Chef and begs for a job at Flagship and to keep sleeping on the hammock. Chef, believing Tony when he claims to have kitchen experience, brings him on as a dishwasher, eventually advancing him to oyster shucking and more all while continuing to wake him up with water dumped on him. While he's interested in the cooking stuff, Tony still sees himself as a writer and persists in lying to Nancy and himself as to what his destiny is.

It is to the credit of director/co-writer Matt Johnson (lasts seen starring and directing Nirvanna The Band The Song The Movie) in approaching this part of Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential memoir that he doesn't lay on too thick the idea that a lightning bolt struck Tony to make him realize cooking was going to be his path to becoming an author. It's just a summer in a confused young man's life where he's still sorting out who he even is when he's not fronting what he wishes he was. 

During my traditional post-biopic fact checking, I found it was fairly true to the fictionalized references in Kitchen Confidential, though in order to create a more dramatic impetus to the plot it fudged the fact that Tony and Nancy had already dated for a few years before their planned mutual trip to Provincetown and that they eventually married about a decade later before divorcing 20 years after that. Tony wasn't chasing no skirt, yo!

In my review of The Holdovers I faulted Sessa's performance as the weak link, presumably due it being his first film role. Well, in the intervening few years he's really stepped up his game because here he balances the competing impulses of Tony while hinting at his future without obviously mimicking Bourdain's distinct style. Well done. It's also good to see Antonio Banderas getting some room to work as Chef instead of being wasted as he was in last year's Babygirl. (In a meta bit of IYKYK casting, when Tony applies to the Culinary Institute of America at the end, the main instructor is played by chef Eric Ripert, Bourdain's bestie and traveling companion who got to find his friend's body.)

While small-scale and slightly fibby, Tony is a decent coming-of-age biopic about someone whose talents are sorely missed. (The missus was so angry at his suicide she got rid of all his books and avoids his shows.)

Score: 7/10. Catch it on cable/streaming.

"The Runner" Review

The latest loaf of movie content from Amazon Prime Video is The Runner, not to be confused with at least five prior movies with the same title. Starring Gal Gadot (Date Night) stars as Maia Marten, a London prosecutor with a diabetic son. After dropping him off at school, she sets off for a jog before meeting heading to court where a star witness is going to testify against a previously untouchable crime boss.

However, she receives a phone call from a voice that sounds like Jason Statham (Damian Lewis, Homeland) telling and showing her that he has her son, Noah (Rory Wilmot), has given him an extra dose of insulin to put him in a coma and if she doesn't murder the witness within one hour he will die unless glucagon is administered. He orders her to run to the hotel the witness is sequestered and shoot him with the gun he has placed in Noah's backpack and left in a dumpster as proof he has him as if the video call doesn't do as much.

So, off she goes encountering obstacles like being hit by a car and waking up in an ambulance still wearing her phone headset so she can hear the Caller. When she rides the subway (yeah, Underground, I'm American and we fought a war against England to have our own words) to make up lost time, her phone is pickpocketed and she somehow is able to run ahead to get back on the train. Whut? That's the kind of movie this is.

Also to fill time is the Caller taunting her about her life, how she used a sperm donor to have Noah (why is never explained), how her mother murdered her abusive father - or did she? - while goading her to the destination. They even work in that she was a champion pentathlon runner which includes shooting, but there wasn't a single twist that was unexpected and when they flashback at the end to show what really happened, it seems to be for those who were too busy on their phones to pay attention to the hyperkinetic camera and editing work.

There's been a recent uptick of bashing Gal Gadot for her limited thespian skills. (That means acting, not making out with chicks, weirdos.) In a world where Dakota Johnson exists, that's somewhat unfair. Critical Drinker's review really slammed her performance, but I found it wholly adequate. As a real-life mother of four (while fit enough to justify some gratuitous butt shots), she shows affection for her spawnling and seems appropriately sad and stressed. This role requires physical fitness more than anything and as I said, Dakota Johnson.

 Director Kevin Macdonald has a varied filmography including Touching the Void and The Last King of Scotland which won Forest Whitaker an Oscar, so this seems a little out of place but he keeps the action frenetic without devolving into Paul Greengrass shaky-cam and nausea-inducing edit fu.

 While The Runner is just another piece of content that will sink into the endless shelves of Prime Video's lousy UX and never be thought of again in a couple of weeks, if there's "nothing else to watch" then a brisk 80-minute (sans credits) jaunt of sweaty Gal Gadot is better than nothing, if barely. 

Score: 5/10. Catch it on Prime Video.

"Balls Up" Review

On paper, Balls Up, the latest Amazon Prime Video Original has a solid comedic pedigree as it's written by Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick (Zombieland & Deadpool series) and directed by Peter Farrelly of the Farrelly Brothers who ruled the 1990s with Dumb and Dumber, There's Something About Mary, and Shallow Hal and went on to direct 2018's Best Picture Oscar winner, Green Book. Big laughs guaranteed, right? Unfortunately, not enough of them.

Balls Up opens with Elijah (Paul Walter Hauser, if you've seen a movie with a schlubby fat guy who wasn't Jack Black in the past several years, that was him) stammering through a presentation rehearsal for a revolutionary condom he has designed which has extra material to also cover the berries in addition to the usual twig. He calls it The Testicle Sentinel.

The company boss, Burgess (SNL's Molly Shannon), tells him the pitch will be done by Brad (Marky Mark, "Good Vibrations", The Departed) from Sales and his pitch with the new name, Balls Up! (roll credits), wins over the head of the Brazilian Travel Ministry, Santos (Benjamin Bratt), who makes Balls Up! the official condom of the 2025 World Cup. However, the celebration gets wildly out of hand and Santos loses his position and the condom deal goes to a competitor. After this turn, Burgess fires Brad and Elijah along with other workers.

Three months later, a courier delivers a package to Brad containing a plane ticket and full VIP credentials to the World Cup Final. Apparently, despite the whole deal going sideways, the goodies weren't canceled for him and Elijah, whom he discovers is on the same flight. They decide to get along to attend the game, but after getting drunk, Elijah decides to attack the giant sausage mascot on the pitch. Brad chases after him to prevent trouble, but inadvertently interferes with what would've been Brazil's game-tying goal. Due to his interference, Brazil loses to arch-enemy neighbors Argentina. 

They are arrested, but turned loose on the streets where they would surely be lynched by the takes-their-football-VERY-seriously mobs. They briefly appear to be saved, but are then captured by armed men and taken to the jungle compound of cartel warlord Pavio (Sacha Baron Cohen in a bonkers performance). Because he won money on the game thanks to Brad's head, he won't kill them but he won't let them go either. To stay in his graces they pitch him the idea of using their larger condom to provide more carrying capacity for cocaine trafficking leading to a typical Farrelly low humor scene involving swallowing these huge phallic coke loads. After escaping the cartel, the pair encounter a weird group of anti-poachers in the jungle as they try to make their way home.

Balls Up starts off hilariously, but then has many long stretches of dullness punctuated by explosive moments of laughter like a scene where they're forced to do karaoke. This happens a lot in comedies as the first act is polished to a diamond mirror shine and then the rest just floats after it which is why surprises like Bottoms and Pizza Movie are such treats.

Cohen is clearly having fun doing a weird voice in a long flowing wig that makes him look like rock singer Sebastian Bach. Hauser does his usual weird fat guy thing and Marky Mark does his usual adequate comedic thing. (He only really seems to spark in the Ted movies.)

I thought Amazon was paywalling all HDR 4K content behind their even more expensive ad-free tier, but this came up as Dolby Vision allowing for some bright colors, but the cinematography is the blah overly bright look that modern comedies adhere to.

While not a total loss that goes tits up, Balls Up is too uneven and too long (104 mins) to score many goals. But when it does get funny, it gets VERY funny, but it just makes the lengthy lulls more lully.

Score: 5/10. Catch it on Prime Video.

"Pretty Lethal" Review

Due to the way Prime Video lays out their virtual shelves, it's easy to miss what's available like the Amazon Original Pretty Lethal (not to be confused with 2015's Barely Lethal which I didn't review, but logged as a 3/10 Skip It), a slight-but-adequate action comedy about ballerinas in peril.

The girls in question are a LA-based troupe of stereotypes led by Bones (Maddie Ziegler, Dance Moms), a tough girl who clashes with spoiled princess, Princess (Lana Condor, To All The Boys I've Loved Before). Rounding out the group is Grace (Avantika, Mean Girls - the 2024 musical), Zoe (nepo baby Iris Apatow) and her deaf sister Chloe (Millicent Simmonds, A Quiet Place). How does a deaf girl know when to dance to the music? Shut up, bigot!

The group and their teacher, Thorna (Lydia Leonard, The Crown), travel to Budapest, Hungary, but on the way to the competition their bus breaks down. Fearing missing their date, they set off on foot, getting caught in the rain, but arriving at a castle-like structure, the Teremok Inn, where they take shelter in hopes of getting a cab. Once inside they discover it's a bar and gathering place for local mobsters (think: Temu Continental) run by Devora Kasimer (Uma Thurman, Kill Bill), a former ballerina herself. She suggests the girls change out of their wet clothes into their tutus because sure, why not?

Thorna witnesses Devora torturing someone and tries to gather the girls to get out of there, but is accosted by Pasha Marcovic (Tamás Szabó Sipos, no idea) who makes drunken advances. She knees him in the junk and walks away, but he responds to the rejection by shooting her in the head. (Ron Burgundy, "Boy, that escalated quickly." GIF goes here). Princess threatens to call the cops, but Devora has the quartet locked in the basement and destroys their phones and passports. If you're noticing I used the word for four people, that's because Chloe has met and started making out with Devora's youngest son, Artyom (Krisztián Csákvári, also no idea), because deaf girls, amirite?

Facing death, the dancers have to get over their interpersonal issues and commit to Sparkle Motion, and using makeshift weapons like razors in their toe shoes and scissors, begin their fight to escape captivity. 

It's a hoary trope about girls/women fighting men twice their size, but the "ballet fu" fight choreography by action choreographers 87North (The Fall Guy, Bullet Train) accounts for this by having the girls mob their foes and using speed and agility to take them down. That 3/5ths of the girls have dance backgrounds also helps sell the premise. When the guys do get hold of the girls, nature exerts itself painfully.

Thurman has fun camping it up with an imaginary Eastern European accent and Ziegler and Condor are fine in their narrowly crafted roles.

While nothing special, Pretty Lethal is an adequately entertaining action snack which does well enough with its "Ballerina but with ballerinas who aren't assassins" premise. Just switch off your critical thinking portion of your brain first.

Score: 6/10. Catch it on Amazon Prime Video.

"Paul McCartney: Man on the Run" Review

 If I had to pick a favorite Beatle it'd be Paul McCartney because he was the most pop sensible member of the Fab Four. While not a Beatlemaniac by any means, I was interested in Morgan Neville's (last seen doing the Lego Pharrell doc, Piece By Piece) Amazon Prime documentary Paul McCartney: Man on the Run which covers the decade between Paul's leaving of The Beatles, releasing his first solo albums then assembling Wings. A bigger fan friend of mine was raving about it, so I stepped up to check it out. Sadly, it wasn't particularly engaging.

Comprised of oodles of home movies, rehearsal videos, live footage, etc. supplemented by voiceover only remarks by Macca and others like members of Wings, musical contemporaries like Chrissie Hynde and Elton John, extended family like Sean Ono Lennon, etc. it marches through Paul's post-Beatles career as he tried to figure out who he was without the others. With many fits, starts, missteps, and misadventures, it took him longer to get his band on the run (heh, me clever) than I'd thought, but it never really digs into things because it's covering so much.

The fact I was listening more than watching as I played solitaire on my iPad says it all. While you can say, "You didn't like it because you weren't paying attention," the fact that I felt I could split my attention was strictly due to Neville's presentation not grabbing me. I'm not the Netflix viewer whom they feel the need to dumb down writing so that people on their phones can still follow the plot. I focus on the movies exclusively and if something comes up on my phone needed immediate attention, I pause playback. That Man on the Run lost exclusivity is on it, not me. Frankly, the fact I finished the movie was only because I was doing something else.

Your mileage may vary, but Man on the Run never took wing for me. (Again heh.)

Score: 5/10. Catch it on Prime Video if you're a fan, otherwise Skip It.

"John Candy: I Like Me" 4K Review

 Older Gen Xers grew up in a Golden Age of televised comedy as tag team of Saturday Night Live and it's lesser-known syndicated cousin SCTV introduced a Murderer's Row of comedic titans from Canuckia to audiences, most of whom not only are household names, but many are still working today especially from the SCTV crew as Martin Short (Only Murders In The Building), Catherine O'Hara and Eugene Levy (Schitt's Creek), Andrea Martin (The Gilded Age), and even Rick Moranis ending a nearly three-decade long absence from performing to appear in Spaceballs 2.

But one of those lost along the way like SNL's John Belushi and Gilda Radner was SCTV's John Candy who died of a heart attack at only 43 years of age in 1994. The creator of wild characters such as Johnny LaRue, horror movie host Dr. Tongue, Gil Fisher the Fishin' Musician, William B. Williams, Mayor Tommy Shanks and many more on SCTV, he left his mark in big screen comedy as well appearing in The Blues Brothers, Stripes, Splash, Spaceballs, Volunteers, and Planes, Trains and Automobiles which also showcased his dramatic depth.

Taking its title from his big scene in the last, John Candy: I Like Me is an interesting rundown of his too-brief life from his boyhood in Canada where his father died at only 35 when Candy was 6, a trauma that haunted his entire life. Charismatic, but at times desperate to please, the regard he is held in by his peers, collaborators and family is summed up by Bill Murray's early sardonic wish that the documentary may finally "dig up some dirt" on Candy because for all his foibles, being a terrible person didn't seem to be one of them. In fact, Murray's "negative" story boils down to a staged reading of something in which Candy "milked" during one part to the annoyance of director Sydney Pollack. That's it, he "milked it."

Director Colin Hanks interviews Candy's widow, children, SCTV co-stars (minus Joe Flaherty, who is dead, and Rick Moranis, who is absent perhaps due to his retirement from show biz until very recently), movie co-stars Steve Martin and Colin's father, Tom, who worked with Candy on Splash and Volunteers. There are interesting tidbits like how Candy tried to enlist with the US Army to fight in Vietnam and his late-in-life co-ownership of the Toronto Argonauts Canadian Football League team along with the occasionally melancholy recapitulation of his inability and/or unwillingness to reign in his excesses of food and drink which ultimately did him in. 

While one can quibble that Hanks (along with producer Ryan Reynolds) could've spent more time on one thing or another, overall John Candy: I Like Me is worth watching especially for those who grew up on his performances.

While it's presented in 4K HDR10+ (for those who didn't pay extra for ad-free Prime Video and get Dolby Vision), it's not a showcase for the format due to the nature of the film and material.

Score: 8/10. Catch it on Amazon Prime.

"Heads of State" 4K Review

Ah, summer - the time of year when temperatures rise and the IQ of movies drop, not that that's always a bad thing. People want escapist popcorn fare and on this Independence Day weekend that means dinosaurs running amok in theaters and streamers treating the stay-at-home crowd to a sequel like Netflix's The Old Guard 2 and the high concept action comedy Heads of State from Amazon Prime.

It opens with a prologue in Spain where a joint CIA-MI-6 operation goes horribly sideways resulting in the deaths of everyone including team leader Noel Bisset (Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Quantico) - spoiler: she's not dead; it's in the trailer - and allowing a hacker (Stephen Root, Office Space) working for Russian arms dealer Viktor Gradov (Paddy Considine, Mobland) to access the super spy network Echelon which holds all the secrets and sees everything.

We then meet our titular heads of state: Recently inaugurated American President Will Derringer (Jon Cena, Peacemaker) is a former action movie star nicknamed "the Venom in Denim" for his Water Cobra series and British Prime Minister Same Clarke (Idris Elba, Pacific Rim) has been PM for six years, is suffering poor approval ratings, and thinks Derringer is a clown. Derringer isn't too chuffed about Clarke either because during the campaign he had fish & chips with his leading opponent & considered that interference in the election.

After their personal beefs erupt during a joint press conference, their respective chiefs of staffs suggest Clarke riding on Air Force One with Derringer to the upcoming NATO Summit in Trieste, Italy with a side stop in Warsaw, Poland. It will make for a good photo op to tamp down the negative press. Unfortunately, a bad guy posing as a chef on AF1 kills the comms officers and turns off the radios, then attempts to kill the leaders while a cargo jet filled with attack drones appears and launches an assault on the plane. The plane critically damaged, a Secret Service agent gets them into parachutes and off the plane before it crashes into the woods of Belarus. (If you're thinking, "Wait? Isn't Belarus past Poland?" then give yourself a cookie because it is.)

While Derringer wants to call home to let his family and government know they're alive, Clarke believes that whoever could've pulled off such an audacious attack would be listening for such a call and probably had moles in their governments, so best to keep quiet and get the the CIA safe house in Warsaw that the agent directed them to. Through a series of hijinks they make it to Warsaw and into the hands of CIA station agent Marty Comer (Jack Quaid, Novocaine). On the downside, with control of Echelon Gradov's goons immediately show up to kill everyone.

The pair almost escape, but are caught and basically dead until a car appears out of nowhere to run down their captors. And who is this driver ex machina? Duh. It's Bisset! (Told you she wasn't dead!) The trio then make their way to the NATO Summit which is in a state of uproar because Gradov has leaked documents showing that everyone was spying on and interfering in their supposed allies business. While Acting President Elizabeth Kirk (Carla Gugino, Sin City) tries to hold the alliance together, things aren't looking good. Will the Prez & the PM (Free Band Name!) learn to get along and save the day?

While not breaking much new ground in the antagonist frenemies buddy Odd Couple genre, the script by Josh Appelbaum & André Nemec (Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, the 2014 & 2016 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles flicks) manages to be slightly better than necessary as it takes some time in between the punchy-shooty and mutual disrespect wisecracks to flesh out the characters more than the cartoons you'd expect.

Derringer gets ragged on for being "gym strong as opposed to strong strong" by the actual military vet Clarke, but they don't turn him into a punching bag for "stupid ugly Americans" or an avatar of a certain former pal of Hollyweird celebs who they decided was worse than Satan a decade ago because he changed team jerseys. Derringer is a bit of a goof, but he's a kind family man who's trying to do good in the world. Conversely, Clarke's dismissive snootiness is a front for being a lonely bachelor in a job he's getting jaded about as he still pines for the girl who got away but comes back into his life in time to run bad guys down with a car.

Director Ilya Naishuller (Hardcore Henry, Nobody) sometimes wobbles a bit on the tone when dealing with Gradov's brutality, but it's only briefly, unlike someone like David Leitch (Bullet Train) who wobbles for entire movies. The action is clear and there are a couple of genuinely brilliant instances of showing not telling to explain how characters got from one point to another.

While Heads of State may not be a towering achievement in action cinema, it's a notch above the usual dumped to streaming dreck we get served and watch only because we're paying for it anyway. A post-credit scene hints at possible sequel action and I wouldn't be opposed to more in this vein. 

Score: 7/10. Catch it on Amazon Prime.

"Another Simple Favor" 4K Review

 I have somehow failed to ever post a full review of 2018's snappy camp-trash classic A Simple Favor any of the three times we've watched it - first at the theater, then twice more on 4K digital - but it's one of our faves and each time I've logged it it crept up in its score, starting at 7.5/10 and currently at 8.5/10. It's a blast and made us reevaluate Blake Lively after years of clowning on her in Gossip Girl. (She was also good in the Girl vs Shark movie The Shallows.) So when word that a sequel was coming, great joy happened in Xanadu. So how does Another Simple Favor, sent straight to streaming on Amazon Prime Video because studios hate money, fare? It's OK.

We open with what listeners of the terrific Scriptnotes podcast will recognize as a Stuart Special with mommy vlogger/true crime solver Stephanie Smothers (Anna Kendrick, A Simple Favor) streaming from her hotel room in Capri, proclaiming her innocence from killing frenemy Emily Nelson's new husband. Ruh-roh.

We then flashback a few days to get caught up on where we are five years after the events of the first film. Stephanie has written a book about those events and built a large following with her amateur sleuthing. At a book reading she is shocked by the arrival of Emily (Blake Lively, A Simple Favor), sprung from prison pending appeal by the powerful lawyers of her new fiance, Dante Versano (Michele Morrone, Subservience), an old Italian boyfriend. Emily is there to ask Stephanie to be her maid of honor and if she doesn't there will be lawsuits, etc. So it's off to Capri she goes, accompanied by Vicky (Alex Newell, Glee), her literary agent whose hoping for another book to come from it.

Stephanie is on edge because she feels Emily wants to kill her for wrecking her life, shagging her husband Sean (Henry Golding, A Simple Favor), leaving her son Nicky (Ian Ho, A Simple Favor) without a mother, etc. Emily's mercurial nature doesn't put her at ease even as she somewhat reassures her.

At the rehearsal luncheon, the surprises continue as it appears Dante's family business is in the vein of The Godfather with another family, the Bartolos, being antagonists and Dante's mother, Portia (Elena Sofia Ricci, all Italian movies), none to happy with this blonde interloper so she ups the ante by springing that he'd brought Emily's estranged borderline senile mother, Margaret (Elizabeth Perkins, Big, taking over from Jean Smart, A Simple Favor), and her aunt Linda (Allison Janney, The West Wing), to the party, much to Emily's consternation.

After much snarky banter, the story shifts into a darker gear as the men in Emily's life begin getting dead and for some reason Stephanie is the prime suspect to the local police and they place her under house arrest. Fortunately, she has a FBI agent (Taylor Ortega, The Four Seasons) following her to protect her. Too bad she's very incompetent and not on the case very long. (Nudge wink.) It all leads to some twisty-turny hijinks that require more suspension of disbelief than how Emily's wardrobe manages to cover her naughty bits like the beads on the Na'vi in the Avatar movies.

 While I enjoyed Another Simple Favor overall, the screenplay by Jessica Sharzer (co-writer of A Simple Favor) and Laeta Kalogridis (Terminator: Genisys, Alita: Battle Angel) is simultaneously overstuffed and undercooked with too many scenes and/or characters which could've been trimmed or eliminated completely. It feels like 15-20 minutes more material got trimmed out when it should've been either left in, the overall runtime cut back from 120 minutes, or different choices made; the FBI and literary agents could've been omitted entirely.

 The tone also gets too dark in spots; we don't need to see a beloved character's grisly demise so graphically portrayed and then a family member seemingly totally unaffected mere hours later. And the denouement relies on something being used that there is absolutely zero way it could've been present; deus ex machinas don't get more deusy than this even when it is so foreshadowed that I called it at about the 20-minute mark. And the supposed big twist wasn't much of a surprise, though I'll admit another twist was news, though it also raises questions the movie isn't interested in answering; just go with it.

 That said, if you're here for some sparky, bitchy back-and-forth between Kendrick & Lively, Another Simple Favor delivers enough of the goods to carry the day. There is a stretch where Lively is offscreen and she's missed. Perkins is a poor substitute for Smart, playing Margaret's dementia too broadly. (I'm guessing Smart was too busy filming Hacks to come back.) Morrone has little charisma, same as in Subservience, so I'm not sure why Hollywood is trying so hard to give him the Cam Gigandet treatment.

Amazon's 4K HDR10 presentation is nicely bright, capturing the luxurious details of the Capri setting like a tourism board commercial. Why so many movies refuse to use contrast and color these days sucks, but this isn't a disappointment.

The end of Another Simple Favor hints at a sequel and I am here for it. Ignore the haters who are "Team Justin" are are review bombing the movie online because they're jealous bitches envious of Lively's life or the film critics who didn't see the first one, don't understand the humor, and called it the worst movie of the year (as if it was a threat to film, ahem) and settle in for a messy, but still entertaining visit with the pair whose ideal of "family relations" gets pretty twisted at times. If you haven't seen the first one, it's currently on Netflix and MUST be seen before this to appreciate it properly.

Score: 7/10. Catch it on Prime Video.

"Holland" 4K Review

Nicole Kidman's career is running on two tracks: One is her television work on series like Lioness and The Perfect Couple which has been pretty good and the other is her movie work which has been less qualitative with her last film, Babygirl (3/10), being a ridiculous mess and her latest, the Amazon original Holland, being a bland, weird disappointment which I only watched because it is set in Holland, MI, the quaint Dutch town renowned for its annual tulip festival which is on the west side of my home state.

Kidman stars as Nancy Vandergroot, a high school Home Ec teacher married to Fred (Matthew Macfadyen, Succession), an optometrist. They have a 13-year-old son, Harry (Jude Hill, Belfast), who helps his father work on the massive toy train diorama they have in the garage. They have an idyllic life where the worst thing that happens is she wrongly suspects and accuses the babysitter (Rachel Sennott in a 20-second "Why did they cast a big name?" role) of stealing an earring.

Fred frequently travels for conferences and when she discovers a receipt for a place in a town she wasn't aware he was in, she begins to suspect something. When she finds packs of Polaroid film in his toolbox, suspicion rises because they don't have a Polaroid camera. She enlists the school's woodshop teacher, Dave Delgado (Gael García Bernal, Old), in helping her snoop in his office where she finds a book full of Polaroids, but they're of house details, not kinky sex stuff. Also, these houses that are in his train diorama. Not satisfied, the pair follow Fred when he goes to another conference hoping to catch him in the act.

 Now there are a couple obvious paths this story can follow and the "she's imagining things" one is where I thought it'd lead, but where Holland ultimately goes is somewhat bonkers, leading to a spiral of a conclusion where it feels like they made it up the night before they shot it. It's so out of left field & unrealistic that whatever tone they were going for before gets pitched out the window.

The script by Andrew Sodorski also lacks cohesion as Bernal's character is implied, not specified. He tells Nancy he has a past and at one point digs up a gun buried in his backyard, but he never says what his deal is or why he's in Holland. He eats alone in the staff cafeteria and there's a subplot involving a fired abusive alcoholic bus driver and his abused son making a racist attack on him, but what's that about?
Even Nancy's flirting with Dave seems unearned. 

 Kidman can play these icy Stepford Wife types in her sleep and while she doesn't sleepwalk through her performance, it's mannered and too familiar. She's a producer here, so she imagined something in the material that didn't make it to the screen.

While Michigangsters may enjoy the opportunities to do the Leo DiCaprio pointing meme at the references to Zingerman's and Zehnder's, Holland remains best visited for Tulip Time, but not as a movie.

The HDR10 presentation is colorful and has some bright highlights in spots that remind it's a HDR format, but it's nothing to show off as demo material.

Score: 4/10. Skip it.

"Red One" 4K Review

 Less a movie then a massive business deal amongst long-running associates, Red One came out briefly in theaters where it disappointed commercially, except were were told that it didn't really matter because it was always heading for Amazon Prime so who cares how much it made? This was after a surprising amount of negative publicity concerning The Rock's Dwayne Johnson's prima donna behavior on set which allegedly added tens of millions to the production costs. This was especially ironic because of the beef that erupted between Rock & Furry Fastness kingpin Vin Diesel where Rock (it's less typing) called out lazy "candy-ass" behavior of Diesel on the production of 2017's The Fate of the Furious.

Then there's the stars and filmmakers involved: Director Jake Kasdan directed both of the Jumanji reboots starring the Rock. Writer Chris Morgan wrote every Furry Fastness movie from 3 (Tokyo Drift) through 8 (Fate of...) and the mediocre Hobbs & Shaw spinoff as well as Shazam! Fury of the Gods which co-starred Lucy Liu and whose first produced credit was 2004's Cellular which starred a pre-superhero Chris Evans. The story was by Hiram Garcia, producer of at least 16 previous Rock movies and TV shows.

 It's a tight group of creatives who have made a ton of money making mainstream popcorn entertainment, not that there's anything wrong with that. So why is Red One just another flat-feeling, made-for-streaming, forgotten-immediately-after-viewing piece of content like too much of what the Rock is putting out like the equally forgettable Red Notice for Netflix? (Quick: Who were the co-stars of that one? I'm not even asking what the plot was, just who the co-stars were when they've starred in their own vehicles which have made hundreds of millions of dollars. Give up? Ryan Reynolds (Deadpool) and Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman). See what I mean?)

 After a redundant prologue to set up that Jack O'Malley (Evans) was destined for the Naughty List as a kid, we meet him as he weasels his way into a university's seismology laboratory to attach a tap to the data lines. From stealing someone's coffee to a child's lollipop, he's all about himself. He's also a deadbeat non-parenting sperm donor to Dylan (Wesley Kimmel, nepo baby of unfunny crybaby Jimmy), whose mother, Olivia (Mary Elizabeth Ellis, It's Always Sunny), is a doctor who married some great guy who we never see and is unavailable, so Jack needs to pick him up from school. Apparently, this was some quick fling, but she's guilting him about not wanting to attend Dylan's school performances.

Meanwhile, we meet Rock's Callum Drift (what kind of name is that?), the head of Santa's (J.K. Simmons, being money as always) security detail. He's losing his faith in people being good and submits his resignation to Nick on Christmas Eve. But then Nick is kidnapped from the North Pole, so the race is on to find him in time to save Christmas.

The Director of MORA (Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority), the secret agency that enforces the peace treaty between mythological creatures and humans and isn't at all ripped-off from Hellboy's s Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (B.P.R.D.), Zoe Harlow (Liu), rightly figures that Jack supplied the data to find the North Pole's shield barrier (which is totally not ripped-off from the camouflage hiding Wakanda from the world in Black Panther), but realizes he didn't know what the data was for. Appealing to his mercenary sensibilities, she offers to double his money to help trace the path back to who initiated the caper leading to world-spanning hijinks.

The mastermind of the plot is Gryla (Kiernan Shipka, Mad Men), an Icelandic winter witch who was a former lover of Krampus (Kristopher Hivju, Game of Thrones, The Fate of the...oh look, another connection), who happens to be Nick's estranged brother which raises some unsettling questions considering Nick is a jacked human - no jolly round elf he - and Krampus is a 12-foot-tall goat-man, and whether he was involved. At first I thought Gryla was going to be some angry girl who didn't get the Barbie she wanted due to Shipka's youth and demeanor, but her actual plan is totally not ripped-off from Thanos to a degree.

 Will they rescue Nick in time to save Christmas because it's totally not a holiday celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ unrelated to the secular commercial season that glommed onto it. Will Jack & Cal rediscover the Spirit of Christmas and will Jack begin to be a father to the teenager who another man has been raising as his own for years? Duh.

Even when the destination is a foregone conclusion, it's possible to make the trip entertaining and Red One simply doesn't deliver the presents. It feels rote and tired, beginning with Rock's performance. I don't know if the drama preceding it adversely colored my perception, but Rock has always excelled at knowing just what kind of movie he's in and delivering the performance that's needed. But not here. This is a phoned-in candy ass performance where it feels like he felt showing up was all that was needed without turning on the charm. And his "power" is the ability to shrink himself down to a 30-inch version of himself in a manner totally not ripped-off poorly from Ant-Man during fights.

Evans is equally lackluster as he recycles his same persona that he's used since ending his decade as Captain America, the fast-talking-saying-nothing chatterbox he's been in Knives Out, The Gray Man, Ghosted and Pain Hustlers. The range he used to have a decade ago in roles as varied as Snowpiercer, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Sunshine and Push as well as seven Captain America and Avengers films is still missing and he needs to find it again.

Kasdan's direction is adequate. He has experience with VFX-heavy genre movies from the Jumanjis (I saw the first one and like it; didn't see the second) and the VFX are top-notch and seamless, but the overall tone is dark, both visually and tonally. Why is the North Pole a dark Blade Runner-feeling world. OK, it's dark up there in the winter, but a magical kingdom run by a guy who can deliver presents to billions of people in one night can't light it up like Times Square?

But the story, especially with Jack's son is muddled by him not really being his father. It all feels like plot contrivance to get a treacly ending. Estranged parents are a common trope of Christmas movies, so why introduce this stepfather figure only to sideline him? It would've been better if he had no idea he had a kid or to have him be divorced from Olivia. (Why do I need to even be thinking about this?)

While Red One isn't a particularly bad movie, it's not a good movie. If feels like a project generated by ChatGPT to fill the schedules (and pockets) of a cozy group of makers and cast members who wanted something to do without really needing to tell this story out of passion. When even the disposable entertainment feels cheap, that's not good.

Since Amazon hides the Dolby Vision and Atmos audio behind their additional ad-free tier, the presentation was just HDR10 with 5.1 audio. It's nothing spectacular to show off your home theater setup with, so if you're just watching in HD, you're not missing much except more detail in the gloomy scenes.

Score: 5.5/10. Catch it on Amazon Prime.

"My Old Ass" 4K Review

Sometimes you're disappointed by a movie even when it's not actually that bad and that's the case with My Old Ass (bad title even in context), the second feature by actress-turned-writer/director Megan Park (The Secret Life of the American Teenager). What is being touted as a sci-fi comedy co-starring Aubrey Plaza is not remotely sci-fi and it's more a dramedy as my tags indicate. Due to the incorrect expectations set by the trailer and reviews, we went in expecting something it wasn't, not that it was bad. Let's get into it.

 Maisy Stella (TV's Nashville) stars as Elliott (no explanation for the male name), a newly 18-year-old girl from a rural Canadian town in lovely country with a lake. Her family owns a cranberry farm, she has a couple of gal pals - Ruthie (Maddie Ziegler) and Ro (Kerrice Brooks) - and a girlfriend, Chealsea (Alexandria Rivera), who we know nothing about other than they're always making out, two younger brothers (the youngest of which is obsessed with Saoirse Ronan because that's a thing that really happens), nice non-stupid parents, and she can't wait to get out of this podunk town and move to Toronto to start having a real life.

 While her family sits waiting with her birthday cake at home, she and her pals go camping on an island and drink tea made with a lot of hallucinogenic mushrooms. While her friends start tripping balls, Elliot doesn't feel anything until suddenly Aubrey Plaza appears next to her and announces that she is Elliot at age 39. (How the vanilla white Stella transforms into the Puerto Rican Plaza is never explained either.) Older Elliot is cagey about telling her about the future, but only lays down one firm recommendation: Avoid a boy named Chad.

Of course, Elliot almost immediately encounters a boy named Chad (Percy Hynes White, The Gifted) who is doing summer work on the family farm. And also of course the more she hangs out with Chad, the more she becomes attracted to her causing confusion about her being gay because straight kids in movies aren't a thing much these days. Compounding matters is that she can't reach Older Elliot (who left her phone number in Elliot's contacts as "My Old Ass" leading to many chats); she's stopped responding to her calls and texts leaving her to wonder what's so bad about Chad?

The fundamental "problem" with My Old Ass is that we went in expecting much more Plaza than it delivers. (We're on a bit of a kick with her lately, having watched Agatha All Along just because she was in that and also wasn't in it enough.) About halfway through the missus grumbled that "this is an Afterschool Special" and groused about the trailer being misleading. (She also found White not hot.) Semi-valid complaints, but what remains is still a nice modest dramedy about not taking life for granted & appreciating the times you get to have with family and friends.

Park sets a naturalistic tone in the girls conversations and performances which gets tripped up when Elliot spouts off woke blather which also makes one wonder how a movie where a gay teen goes straight got financed and the little brothers Ronan infatuation. But it also shows Elliot not being such a self-absorbed brat under her older self's influence. Stella's performance is fine, but Plaza sparks so much when she's there, her absence lowers the energy level.

As for the supposed sci-fi element, it's reminiscent of the underappreciated 2000 film Frequency which starred Jim Caviezel and Dennis Quaid as a son and father who communicate across 30 years via ham radio enhanced by aurora borealis and how they literally change the world with their actions, albeit on a micro scale. All we learn of the future is that salmon are extinct, people aren't allowed to have three kids, and there are air raid sirens going off, but Older Elliot doesn't seem too concerned. 

The film's ending is nice, but requires one final massive suspension of disbelief to accept what's happening. How this connection works isn't explained and perhaps is besides the point. My Old Ass is a pleasant enough coming-of-age story. Just adjust your expectations going in.

Score: 6/10. Catch it on Amazon Prime. 

"Bye Bye Barry" Review

I frequently joke that I grew up in a city without a pro football team: Detroit. I also joke that the reason the terminally woeful Detroit Lions haven't won a championship since 1957 (predating the Super Bowl) and only ONE playoff game since then is because team owner William Clay Ford ran over an old Gypsy woman and thus the team was cursed for eternity.

Legions of great players have wasted their careers in Detroit; Heisman winners trapped here because the Lions have always had high draft picks thanks to their losing records. Occasionally some escape for greener pastures like Matthew Stafford who was traded to the L.A. Rams and won the Super Bowl the following year, but most play their pro careers here like Hall of Fame receiver Calvin "Megatron" Johnson and the greatest running back ever, Barry Sanders, whose sudden retirement is explained somewhat by Bye Bye Barry, a documentary on Amazon Prime.

With interviews from teammates, family members, and celebrity fans like Eminem, Jeff Daniels, and Tim Allen, as well as Sanders himself, we're given an overview of his career from his surprise Heisman Trophy win to being drafted third overall in 1989 to his shock retirement on the eve of training camp in 1999. While this was always treated as some great mystery - Was he looking to get traded? Did he just get tired of losing? - the ultimate revelation (mostly the latter along with concerns about a debilitating injury) is both anti-climatic and a quarter-century later, irrelevant.

I'm not a big sportball fan (being in a city of mostly losing teams does that), so there were a few factoids about Sanders that I picked up from Bye Bye Barry. He is a modest man who wasn't motivated by fame or acclaim; he bypassed the opportunity to set the rushing record his rookie year by pulling himself from the game with five yards to go. Unlike the other Sanders drafted his same year, Deion, his quiet let-the-playing-do-the-talking demeanor earned respect from teammates and fans. A class act whose own sons reflect the example his strict father inculcated in Barry and his siblings.

Bye Bye Barry could've probably been trimmed down to an even hour like an ESPN special, but if you're a fan of the sportball and the greatest player stuck on the worst team, you'll probably get more from it.

Score: 6/10. Catch it on Amazon Prime.

"Jolt" 4K Review

 It's been a while since Kate Beckinsale has made an action flick. Her last Underworld entry, Underworld: Blood Wars, was five years ago and I don't recall seeing it; probably skipped it after the abomination which was Underworld: Awakening in 2012. I wasn't even aware she had a new movie out until the missus mentioned Jolt, which is not about the awesome Eighties cola with twice the caffeine of puny Pepsi or Coke, the latest Amazon Prime Original title. 

She stars as Lindy, a woman who as a child was diagnosed with intermittent explosive disorder - which is a real psychological condition where the person has violent outbursts, not that they actually explode like the Marvel Comics supervillain Nitro. The only thing that can keep her rages in check is an electrode vest that she uses to shock herself into a state of lesser anger.

 Encouraged by her shrink, and the designer of the vest, Dr. Munchin (Stanley Tucci), to try and form some human connections to see if perhaps some love could chill her out, she goes on a date with Justin (Jai Courtney), an accountant who doesn't seem terrified of her skittish demeanor and charms her. After they hook up after their second date, Lindy is feeling better about life and controlling her temper than she's ever been. 

So it's pretty inconvenient that Justin turns up dead the next night they were supposed to get together. The police detectives on the case (Bobby Cannavale and Laverne Cox) don't think she's involved, but when she steals evidence from the police station, they're hot in pursuit of her as she sets out on her rampage to avenge her lover's death, finding herself getting close to some untouchable top dogs.

 Jolt squarely falls into the Big Dumb Noisy Fun genre. While its premise has been compared to the Jason Statham Crank films, it's just your basic action revenge flick (a la John Wick) with a mix of black comedy (her fantasies of brutally beating people are Grand Guignol) and a gender twist. People who want to bark about how implausible it is for even a rage-enhanced woman to beat up as many guys as she does are MISSING ALL THE POINTS. (I want to be there when they find out Hogwarts isn't a real school they can go to.)

What's unrealistic is the Generic American (or Maybe European) City atmosphere Jolt  has like how the police department logo just says "POLICE DEPARTMENT" without a city name, the lack of any recognizable chain stores or brand logos and how most of the streets look like backlots. The skyline shots aren't familiar either. (It was shot in Sofia, Bulgaria.) But what it does have is some slick neon-drenched style and the HDR cinematography gives some good highlight pop to the image.

 But even by the loose standards for this sort of movie, in the last 10 minutes or so the plot's wheels suddenly come off as we learn What's Really Been Going On and then the coda seems to be trying to set this up as a franchise. Come on, Hollyweird - not everything needs to be a series. Except John Wick. That can keep going forever (or until it becomes a clown show like F9 was). 

Beckinsale is fun and looks great at 47 years old (She turns 48 tomorrow.) Tucci is his usual fun self and even Courtney, whom I usually dislike, fills the bill until the plot sells him out. Director Tanya Wexler (niece of legendary cinematographer Haskell Wexler and half-sister to Daryl Hannah!) does a respectable job of keeping the performances and action humming along and the script by newcomer Scott Wascha manages to not be too cliched, though why the bad guys have a lone man standing in the middle of a large courtyard as a receptionist may take style a tad far.

 Clocking in at a tidy 90 minutes, Jolt may not be much more than a fizzy triffle with a flat aftertaste, but while you're imbibing its caffeinated aesthetic, it's generally satisying.

Score: 6/10.  Catch it on Amazon Prime.

"Without Remorse" 4K Review

 While I was a fan of Tom Clancy's earliest works - I've read The Hunt For Red October, Red Storm Rising, Patriot Games, The Cardinal of the Kremlin, and about half of Clear and Present Danger before dropping off because I simply stopped having time to read as adulting took free time away - I've had more contact with his works through various videogame series like The Division, Ghost Recon, and Rainbow Six than the books themselves. 

While I've seen all the movies based on his Jack Ryan novels, I'm totally unfamiliar with the John Kelly/Clark character upon which the new Amazon Original (they picked up the Paramount production after its theatrical release was nuked by Hot Fad Plague 2020-21) feature Without Remorse is built. Apparently, Clark is second only to Ryan in prominence in Clancy's oeuvre, but I know zero about him or the source novel. As such, while I've seen reviews mentioning the movie pretty much discards the plot of the book - a quick glance at Wikipedia confirms that as the novel is set during the Vietnam war - I can only judge the movie on its own terms, not as an adaptation.

 Opening in Allepo, Syria, we meet Kelly (Michael B. Jordan) and his squad as they are on a mission to rescue a CIA operative being held by ISIS. However, once they get their man, they realize that he was being held by Russian military, leading to a massive firefight and casualties as they escape. Kelly suspects the CIA spook in charge, Ritter (Jamie Bell), of running them into a trap. 

Things escalate a few months later when other members of the squad are assassinated in nearly simultaneously executed strikes around the country with a quartet of gunmen hitting his home and in the process killing his pregnant wife and unborn daughter. While he managed to kill most of the attackers, one was able to escape after surviving an exchange of gunfire that leaves Kelly badly wounded. 

When he recovers, he's told that while a Russian attack on US soil is provocative, his superiors don't intend to pursue the final shooter because it would cause an even greater escalation. Naturally, this doesn't sit well with Kelly as he takes matters into his own hands to avenge his losses and get to the truth. This leads to some showstopping actions that put him firmly on the wrong side of the law, though he does gets put on a mission to Russia to recapture the final shooter knowing that upon his return, he'll be back in prison. 

I've always been a fan of revenge films where a righteously aggrieved man just murders his way through a bunch of people to get to the One Responsible. Movies like Man on Fire and the first John Wick (before the series became more about Wick versus the world of assassins) are a blast and, for the most part, so is Without Remorse though the final denouement is a little anti-climatic to what comes before.

It's more of a throwback to the old school Cold War thrillers that Clancy made his bones with where the Ruskies were the bad guys, though that's the case now solely because they're the only country that's politically correct to have bad guys from these days. The film's action sequences are gritty and high stakes even when you're wondering just how the enemies managed to have all the angles covered. 

 The performances of Jordan and the cast are solid, though the "Are they traitors or now?" aspects of Taylor Sheridan (writer of Sicario, Wind River, and Hell and High Water) and Will Staples' script somewhat constrain them. Jordan is a Big Movie Star for a reason. 

On the technical side, Amazon's HDR10 presentation is very good with some stellar moments of HDR with bullet flashes and highlights looking punchy. Dark levels were also good, which is important when you have black actors in black clothes in near darkness and still want to see things, but a few instances of blobby blocky areas in near-black scenes were noted. Amazon has been bad about overcompressing video and causing banding in the past (Green Room was frequently cited by home theater aficionados as a painful example), but for the most part things are OK here. (Viewed on an LG OLED's native Prime Video app on a plenty fast connection.)

While it may not be a faithful adaptation of its source, Without Remorse does a respectable job delivering a good spy caper revenge thriller with solid action and acting. A mid-credits scene teases a Rainbow Six sequel and if it's as good as this, I'm interested.

Score: 6.5/10. Catch it on Amazon Prime.

"Sound of Metal" Review

UPDATE: This movie garnered an appalling six Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Actor, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Sound, and Editing. The problematic ones are Picture and Screenplay. 2020 was a bad year and the Oscar nominations reflect it.

-------

The most devastating thing that can happen to most musicians not related to physical infirmities like losing your hands would be losing your hearing. Other than Beethoven, there's not a lot of musicians known for performing while stone deaf and even good ol' Ludwig van was a composer and they can tell what music sounds like from reading the score. In general, "deaf musician" is as workable as "blind sniper." As a musician myself, it was with some interest that I approached Sound of Metal, the story of a drummer (and thus not a musician, hiyo!) whose life is upended when he suddenly goes deaf. Unfortunately, it's a woefully told tale.

 Riz Ahmed (The Night Of, Star Wars: Rogue One) stars as Ruben, the drummer in a two-man band with his girlfriend Lou (Olivia Cooke, Ready Player One) which is like a gender-flipped White Stripes except not good. While on tour, Ruben begins to experience profound hearing loss. Advised by a doctor that he may be able to salvage what remains of his hearing if he avoids loud noises (kind of difficult in his line of work), he naturally ignores the advice and blows out what remains. 

As a former junkie, Lou is worried that he'll relapse and gets the name of a program, a facility in a rural area for the deaf run by a deaf, recovering alcoholic, Vietnam veteran named Joe (Paul Raci). In meeting him, he lays down the strict rules of the place to Ruben, no contact with the outside world, everyone works, focusing on adapting to their condition. Lou has to go and Ruben initially rebels.

 Eventually he gets with the program, but is sneaking looks on a computer to see what Lou is doing, as she eventually starts doing music on her own. He sells his gear and the RV they lived and toured in to fund cochlear implants to restore his hearing, ultimately getting the surgery done. But because Joe and his group believe deafness isn't a handicap, Ruben is expelled from the group.

He  goes to Lou's father's house where we learn a whole bunch of backstory about her family; her mother committed suicide and her father is a wealthy French musician. Their reunion is strained and they end up parting.

 I only spell out the entire plot because there is so little to it and it ends up going nowhere slow. Why the sudden heavy stuff at the end? Why does Joe, knowing Ruben is a junkie and, rejected and cast out, likely to relapse, pretty much condemned to die for not adhering to the "we are not broken" mentality without care for how Ruben wants to live? That the cochlear implants don't sound right implies he wasn't counseled as to expectations beforehand or calibrated over time afterwards; it's not like getting a tooth filled. Also, the leap between Ruben resisting learning sign language and being shown as fluent is literally a hard cut to the next scene without as much as a "Six Months Later" or learning montage. It's as if a reel was missing.

The performances from Ahmed and Raci are very good, though Ruben being thinly-written means the Ahmed has to inflate the character himself. Press materials claimed he studied the drums for six months in order to appear credible playing, but that's laughable as all we ever see the band doing is bashing the finale chords of songs. Anyone could sit down and do what's shown. Tara Reid plays drums more credibly in Josie and the Pussycats and she's hit-and-miss in her accuracy. (Miles Teller in Whiplash fakes it really well.)

Raci is fine, but he is in real life not hearing impaired, but the child of deaf parents. This means he speaks perfectly clearly and not with the voice modulation issues that deaf people like Marlee Matlin (who won an Oscar for Children of a Lesser God) exhibit and this makes it hard to believe he is deaf. While those who go deaf as adults manifest less of the warble, they still have it; just record yourself talking with your ears plugged to see. 

One thing the movie really does well at is capture the sound of hearing impairment, muffling frequencies to get us in Ruben's head. (A Quiet Place did this as well with the daughter.) 

Despite a promising premise and good performances, Sound of Metal simply doesn't understand what it's trying to say as well as it imagines and ends up frustratingly inert.

Score: 4/10. Skip it.

"Not Another Teen Movie" Review

I was surprised to see while browsing that Amazon Prime Video had the 2001 teen comedy spoof Not Another Teen Movie in 4K UHD (albeit, no HDR), so I fired it up. I saw it when it originally came out, but probably haven't seen it again since buying the DVD in 2002, but have always remembered it fondly as an above-average parody of both then-recent teen movies like She's All and 10 Things I Hate About You as well as classic Eighties John Hughes movies  like Pretty In Pink and The Breakfast Club with heavy dashes of Cruel Intentions, American Beauty and American Pie among many others. (The Hughes connection is sledgehammered by having the school named John Hughes  High School and if you look carefully in the library, there's a Weird Science section.)

The central plot concerns football BMOC Jake (Chris Evans in only his 2nd movie role) being dumped by his girlfriend (Jamie Pressly) for a weird guy who's basically the Wes Bentley character from American Beauty. A teammate bets him that he can't turn an "ugly duckling" girl into a prom queen and selects as his project Janey (Chyler Leigh) who's from the wrong side of the tracks, has glasses and a ponytail, and absolutely disgusting (to Jake) paint-spattered overalls. (Janey is clearly a riff on Rachel Leigh Cook's character in She's All That of whom I remarked, "It's easy to transform an ugly duckling into a swan when she's got flawless skin and great bone structure," and the obligatory makeover scene calls this trope out.) Will Jake win the cynical bet or will he learn a Valuable Lesson about love and people? What do you think? The movie is so self-aware of this hoary cliche that when he makes his bets, they're exactly these conditions.

The rest of the movie is somewhat scattershot as it sometimes leans too hard into direct movie parodies with varying degrees of success and bounces from vignette to unrelated throwaway (like the Risky Business riff where a boy's parents are warning him not to have a party while they're away while kegs and a PA system are being loaded in around them), but it never gets too scrambled and if any specific segment annoys, it will be gone in a minute. A slightly larger issue is that now in 2020, many of the references are foggy memories citing movies from over 20 years ago. The immediate "this is mocking that" familiarity is gone.

But most gags work and there is a blink-and-miss-it cleverness in the details. For example, an early scene has a tour guide explaining to new students that at John Hughes there are no cliques then immediately says, "Let's get all you big jocky guys into a group here on my right and get all you slutty girls over here by me...and all you losers should hang out in the back. Take a good look at the kids standing beside you. They're going to be the only friends you have for the next four years." The five guys' varsity jackets spell out J-O-C-K-S and a banner in the background reads, "Welcome Prospective Cliques." A little obvious, sure, but funny. There's a great out-of-nowhere musical number setting up the prom finale, too.

The cast is uniformly good and there are a few meta cameos, though one may slip by due to the time factor previously mentioned. This sort of broad parody comedy can be tricky as actors have to calibrate just how aware they are of the humor, but it works. It's surprising that this is so early in Evans career - Captain America was a decade away - but it shows he's had a flair for comedy that being the Star-Spangled Avenger doesn't always showcase. (He showed his dramatic chops in Sunshine and more comedy in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.)

While revisiting Not Another Teen Movie I found that while it wasn't quite as good as I remembered, it's still a cut above other lazier parodies. It moves fast, has laughs in both smart and gross flavors, and it entertains.

Score: 7.5/10. Catch it on cable.

This trailer is surprisingly bad and also has several alternate takes not in the movie: