Tag Archives: will ferrell

“I can only see the world as it should be.” Murder On The Orient Express (2017) AND Daddy’s Home 2

26 November 2017

8 Comments

Hollywood gets a lot of flak, much of it deserved, but the crime perpetrated by Tinseltown that may bother me the most is when a talented cast is completely squandered in servitude to a lame script and lousy direction.

The Thanksgiving movie offerings this year all have left something to be desired, but we were misfortunate enough to see two of the worst offenders back to back last night. Murder on the Orient Express and Daddy’s Home 2. Yes, you read that sentence correctly. We paid money to see these two movies in sequence. Maybe the problem is with us.

The first is an unnecessary remake of a far superior Sydney Lumet film, based on the original Hercule Poirot mystery by Agatha Christie. It is yet another self-serious, self-satisfied confectionery indulgence from director/star Kenneth Branagh, who fancies himself the poor man’s Laurence Olivier, when he, in reality, may be the poor man’s Benny Hill.

The second is an unnecessary sequel to an unnecessary broad farce, holding a far too indulgent and yuppified mirror to the mixed up sociopolitical and familial dynamics in modern middle-class America. It stars Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell as an ex-husband/father and new husband/stepfather, respectively, whose own fathers John Lithgow and Mel Gibson, also respectively, crash Christmas and demonstrate that they are as boneheaded and as consumed with unflattering male ego as their sires.

NOTE: the movie isn’t smart enough to actually do anything with that premise, and it’s too frightened of its Trump-triggered audience demographic to actually skewer these idiotic men.

Both films favor set decoration and bleak whimsy over script and character development. Orient Express pursues arch tedium over anything resembling flesh and blood characterization, fetishizing starched linens and glistening martini glasses and anthropomorphizing its titular train to the point one wonders if Branagh is simply trying to capture the imaginations of too many young adults weened on the also creepy and tedious Polar Express.

Daddy’s Home conversely, is the kind of film that seems to hold National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation as a kind of high art that could only be improved if the “Nancy Meyers’ school of filmmaking” (middle-class characters living amidst-Better Homes and Gardens residential-porn they couldn’t actually afford in real life) had installed a Sub Zero fridge in Randy Quaid’s “the-sh*tter’s-full” Winnebago. Daddy’s Home is the kind of movie where a character cuts down a cell phone tower, thinking it is a Christmas tree, and gets charged $20,000, and everyone just laughs and shrugs and says, “Now, who is going to pay for that?” This inane, unrelatable incident occurs after the cast has engaged in an interminable sequence where they decorate – top-to-bottom, inside-and-out – a vacation home they are RENTING for the holidays. Who does that? In real life, this family would be trying to figure out how to pay the credit card bills they ran up to buy presents nobody actually wants and would end up in both divorce and bankruptcy courts when slapped with a $20,000 bill for destruction of public property. Or maybe they would be in jail. Fa la la la.

Orient Express is the kind of film where all of the characters have less depth than those found in a Clue board game, but lounge around all casual-cool-dramatic in beautifully appointed train cars (which seem much larger than humanly possible) as if they are posing for a Vanity Fair cover. It is the kind of film where people spout portentous philosophy (“I can only see the world as it should be.” – Poirot) and glower at each other across petits fours. Whodunnit? Who cares?

When one film (Orient Express) offers the best Johnny Depp performance in years (not saying much … and, by the way, spoiler alert, he is the titular murder) and the other (Daddy’s Home) makes John Cena as its final act complication seem practically Oscar-worthy, something ain’t right in the mix.

NOTE: Kenneth, a mustache that covers half your face and renders your speech incomprehensible is not character development. You are no Wes Anderson. And I don’t like Wes Anderson.

NOTE: Mel, swaggering around like an aging muscle man whose tummy has become a beach ball and who believes FOXNews offers great lessons in parenting and social graces is not character development. That is just you. And we don’t like you.

To the rest of the luminaries who collected a paycheck to appear in these movies – John Lithgow, Linda Cardellini, Judi Dench, Penelope Cruz, Willem DaFoe, Daisy Ridley, Leslie Odom, Jr., Michelle Pfeiffer, Josh Gad, I’m looking at you – you all know better. Next time an easy payday comes along, please just say no.

Finally, I want to correct the statement with which I began this piece. The worst crime Hollywood commits is hypocrisy. Women are not disposable commodities. Violence is not comedy. Respect for each other, for our individuality, for our unique spirit is essential.

Daddy’s Home 2 is by far the bigger offender because jokes about kissing/spanking little girls or about men “just being men” in Las Vegas or about fathers hitting on the mothers of their sons’ classmates are not funny. They are gross.

Hollywood, if you want us to buy the rhetoric that you are rejecting the worst offenders in your midst, make better movies. More responsible movies. Movies that don’t joke out of both sides of their mouths where animal rights or gun control or human equality are concerned. Stop trying to cater to every demographic. That lack of moral compass is the antithesis of what these holidays are truly about.

Rant over.

Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital).

In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan.

My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

“You know, you are going to lose us the right to vote!” Trainwreck

24 August 2015

16 Comments

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

I finally saw Trainwreck. I’m probably the last person in America to see it. I’m so glad I did.

It’s not a perfect film. I think Amy Schumer, the film’s lead and screenwriter, is a brilliant sketch artist with a sharp POV that is so dead center and incisive that it seems skewed, if not downright avant garde, in a world strangled by artifice and hypocritical self-satisfaction.

As a satirist, Schumer typically works in bite-size toxic nuggets, and her first feature film script meanders (not that unusual for a Judd Apatow-directed flick – see 40-Year-Old Virgin or Knocked Up). Unsurprisingly, the strongest punches come from the frequent sidebars with broadly drawn characters like Amy’s addled viper of a boss (an unrecognizable and genius Tilda Swinton, zinging every big-haired, proud anti-feminist walking the planet).

Schumer is at her best in commentary mode, contrasting her wide-eyed cynicism with the empty-headed happiness of a society that blithely has no idea how sexist, racist, homophobic, ageist, and just plain dumb it can actually be.

So, the trick of planting her in the middle of a summer romantic comedy confection like this is keeping that tart, chewy Schumer nougat at the airy center. The film stumbles in its early scenes, working just a bit too hard at the Apatow-brand of gross-out-with-a-heart-of-gold shenanigans. We get it. Schumer is not Meg Ryan (thank heavens!) – she drinks, she screws, she takes drugs, she has a glorious jackass of a father (Colin Quinn, brilliantly channeling the dark side of every borough in Manhattan as a philandering papa whose MS derailed his high-life but not before he imploded his happy marriage/family). She works hard and she plays hard as a writer for the kind of men’s magazine that would make Hugh Hefner blanch.

In other words, she’s the character Will Ferrell used to play in these productions … or worse Seth Rogen did.

Yet, the canniness of the film is in how it questions that frat boy cliche, defying gender convention and blessedly, by the second and third acts, revealing the human underneath the costume – the whip-smart, emotionally-raw Amy who lives out loud in defiance of a culture that loves its cheerleaders.

Amy hates sports and cheerleaders and anything remotely associated with either, which prompts Swinton’s character to (of course) assign her a profile on an up-and-coming sports medicine/orthopedic surgeon Aaron Connors (played by a winning Bill Hader). At one point in the film, Schumer sneers at the group of gyrating Knick Girls in front of her, “You know, you are going to lose us the right to vote!”

As Amy and Aaron connect as people and as friends, they (no shock) fall in love, much to Amy’s consternation. The humanity of the film rests in Schumer/Hader’s dynamic. They are so believable, so gentle, so kind, and so spiky together, thereby grounding a film that otherwise would fall apart as a loose collection of (albeit very funny) character bits.

Hader’s character just happens to be besties with NBA star LeBron James who ends up being the stealth comic genius in the madcap proceedings. (Seriously, between James and WWE’s John Cena, playing Amy’s heartsick, kicked-to-the-curb boy-toy, who’d a thunk some of the funniest bits would be offered by two pro-athletes? Not this guy. Color me surprised.)

The film insinuates itself in a good way. The onscreen relationship between Schumer and Hader is so scruffily relatable (but still frothy fun) that it, well, sneaks up on you. The film (and Schumer) seem to be challenging you to care, and, by gum, you really do.

However, there are the typical final act complications that always seem to ensue in these kinds of films; though, in this case, they aren’t as ridiculous as Hollywood tends to dictate. And the final reunion of our intrepid couple, while quite adorkable, undermines a bit of Schumer’s central conceit that she is an everyperson who doesn’t need to bend to anyone’s constrained view of gender roles.  Sadly, the ending feels tacked on, like a focus group told the filmmakers, “We want to feel goooood! Can’t you just make us happy?!”

Well, I know what makes me happy and that’s seeing Schumer turn the stereotypical romantic comedy on its head and for about 75% of Trainwreck she does. I’ll take those odds.

____________________________

Reel Roy Reviews 2

Reel Roy Reviews 2

Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital)In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

“Destroy anything that’s different…” The Lego Movie

8 February 2014

13 Comments

Description: Film poster; Source: Wikipedia [linked]; Portion used: Film poster only; Low resolution? Sufficient resolution for illustration, but considerably lower resolution than original. Other information: Intellectual property by film studio. Non-free media use rationales: Non-free media use rationale - Article/review; Purpose of use: Used for purposes of critical commentary and illustration in an educational article about the film. The poster is used as the primary means of visual identification of this article topic. Replaceable? Protected by copyright, therefore a free use alternative won't exist.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

“Destroy anything that’s different,” exclaims one of the ubiquitous yellow-faced citizens of The Lego Movie‘s Orwellian-metropolis Bricksburg … employing such a chipper voice that he may as well be ordering a $37 cup of coffee or watching a mindlessly mind-numbing sitcom (which, by the way, he does).

This is how the deftly satirical “kiddie movie” opens, with the peppy denizens of a perfectly ordered society (constructed from little plastic bricks) extolling the virtues of conformity and their brain-dead escapist indulgences (like instruction manuals, caffeinated beverages, and reality TV).

As this gonzo movie opened, I wondered for a moment if I was watching Toy Story … or South Park. The Lego Movie, directed with sharp wit and a kind heart by Phil Lord and Chris Miller (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs), has both worlds in its DNA, along with bits of Wreck-It Ralph, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Wizard of Oz, Star Wars, Pink Floyd’s The Wall, and the granddaddy of “toys that come to life and teach us important life lessons” flicks Raggedy Ann and Andy’s Musical Adventure. However, it never feels derivative for a second.

With a hero’s quest screenplay that seems like it was written by Joseph Campbell on crack, the movie details the journey of a lowly schlubb named Emmett (Chris Pratt) who revels in the petty details of his mundane, ordered, predictable life but who also can’t avoid the empty ache of loneliness. One thing leads to another, including finding a magic brick (the cutely named “Piece of Resistance”) that will inspire creativity and save the day from the villainous Lord Business (Will Ferrell), a shameless capitalist who spends his days plotting how to keep all the Lego-heads busy and bored and static.

Along the way, as in all such narratives, Emmett is joined by a ragtag group of allies – Wyldstyle (saucy Elizabeth Banks), Vitruvius (wizened yet whimsical Morgan Freeman), Batman (a very funny and very vain Will Arnett who nearly steals the show), and assorted other residents of the bottom of the toy bin (including an adorable cat/unicorn hybrid named Uni-Kitty that captured my heart … darn you, Alison Brie!). Oh, and Liam Neeson is a comic delight as a quite literal “good cop/bad cop” who chases our intrepid heroes all about Legoworld.

The plot is intentionally inconsequential and dripping with juvenilia (by design), all as set-up for a reveal that is a telling critique of our arrested development era. I don’t want to spoil it (though I think anyone over 12-years-old will see it coming), but the filmmakers offer a spot-on (though never mean-spirited) critique of adults (like yours truly) who can’t let go of the playthings of their youth but who have also put those material goods on such a pedestal they have forgotten what made those items special and treasured in the first place.

In this transformative moment, we see who we are (and shouldn’t be) today: a society that prizes ironic sentiment over real-time connection, materialistic perfection over messy emotion.

The movie zaps our middle-class, cookie-cutter lifestyle where everyone loves the same song, the same drinks, the same clothes, the same rules and where everyone overuses the word “awesome” to nauseatingly hyperbolic levels. In fact, the characters are lulled, as if by the Greek Sirens of yore, by an ear-wormy disco cheer-anthem (written by Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh) that infinitely repeats the chorus “Everything is Awesome.” The Lego Movie, an incisive allegory disguised in the Trojan Horse of a children’s film, seems to caution, “If everything is awesome, then nothing truly is.”

Countdown: The Campaign

7 February 2014

4 Comments

From my wonderful publisher Open Books…

Just 21 days until the release date of ReelRoyReviews, a book of film, music, and theatre reviews, by Roy Sexton!

“On behalf of the American people, I just want to thank the filmmakers of The Campaign for nailing beyond a shadow of a doubt the shallow, overproduced, manipulative, hypocritical circus that politics have become in the post-millennial U.S. of A. Regardless whichever end (or hopefully middle) you sit on the political spectrum, this film should be required viewing to help us all regain our senses as we head into the fall. Oh, and by the way, this movie is freaking hilarious.”

Learn more about REEL ROY REVIEWS, VOL 1: KEEPIN’ IT REAL by Roy Sexton at http://www.open-bks.com/library/moderns/reel-roy-reviews/about-book.html

On behalf of the American people…this movie is freaking hilarious: The Campaign

19 August 2012

4 Comments

Description: Film poster; Source: Wikipedia [linked]; Portion used: Film poster only; Low resolution? Sufficient resolution for illustration, but considerably lower resolution than original. Other information: Intellectual property by film studio. Non-free media use rationales: Non-free media use rationale - Article/review; Purpose of use: Used for purposes of critical commentary and illustration in an educational article about the film. The poster is used as the primary means of visual identification of this article topic. Replaceable? Protected by copyright, therefore a free use alternative won't exist.

[Image source: Wikipedia]

On behalf of the American people, I just want to thank the filmmakers of The Campaign for NAILING beyond a shadow of a doubt the shallow, overproduced, manipulative, hypocritical circus that politics have become in the post-millennial U.S. of A. Regardless whichever end (or hopefully middle) you sit on the political spectrum, this film should be required viewing to help us all regain our senses as we head into the fall. Oh, and by the way, this movie is freaking hilarious.

Director Jay Roach, whose career has run the gamut from the farcical and absurd (Meet the Parents and Austin Powers trilogies) to the incisively au courant (Recount, Game Change), marries both worlds beautifully here. I will admit that I am not much of a Will Ferrell fan, and I’ve begun to grow tired of Zach Galifianakis’ whimsical man-baby-isms. However, both actors are on top of their games here, and Roach uses them, their cumulative screen personae, and their particular quirks to great, inventive delight. You will see threads of John Edwards, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and even Sarah Palin in both performances, but, while broadly drawn, both actors show a sweetly grounded, yet irreverent respect for any and all who are vainglorious enough to “throw their hats in the ring.” They are all of those famous political names wrapped up in the guise of the great Looney Tunes pairings: Elmer Fudd and Daffy Duck; Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner; Bugs Bunny and Marvin the Martian.

The supporting players are all fine, though I felt John Lithgow and Dan Aykroyd phoned in their parts a bit as the uber-rich Machiavellian political manipulating Motch brothers (thinly veiled spoofs of the truly scary Koch brothers). Dylan McDermott has quite a bit of fun as some mad hybrid of Karl Rove and Kenneth Cole. (I loved the fact that the filmmakers were cheeky enough to give him the alias “Dermot Mulroney” at one point – I admit I often get the two actors confused myself). Rounding out the cast, Brian Cox does his winky, mellifluous, “aren’t I above it all” thing as Galifianakis’ dad (which works here); Jason Sudeikis does his exasperated, panting, “aren’t I above it all” thing as Ferrell’s campaign manager (which works even better here); and Sarah Baker does her good-natured, wryly comic “aren’t I beneath it all” thing as Galifianakis’ oft-suffering wife (and nearly steals the movie).

I loved that no topic was off-limits for the film, and that they bravely (and pretty warm-heartedly) went after every superficial pose co-opted in modern politics: religious pandering, macho swaggering, family values, hetero-normative sexuality, liberal self-righteousness, drummed up political scandal, small town/big business “job creation,” and even “let’s go kill some helpless animals but actually shoot each other” hunting. And the fact that the film ends with a sweet affirmation that good may just conquer all was a happy little surprise. The Campaign is a late-summer delight, and I’m glad that in its second weekend, it has already nearly doubled its production budget in box office receipts. Do go see it, and laugh yourself silly…and, perhaps, like I did, you will get a nice little gut check on how far afield we have all gotten in this current presidential race. I think I may just write in Ferrell/Galifianakis on my ballot come November….