Star Struck: A Star is Born and Shines.

Movie Reviewed: A Star is Born

Director: Bradley Cooper

Date: 13 October 2018

jamesintexas rating: ***1/2

"Maybe it's time to let the old ways die / Maybe it's time to let the old ways die / It takes a lot to change a man / Hell, it takes a lot to try / Maybe it's time to let the old ways die" -Jackson Mayne

Maybe it's time to start thinking of Bradley Cooper as a nuanced, emotive director as well as a phenomenal actor/raccoon voice.  A Star is Born, a familiar story that has been filmed before though unfamiliar to me, arrives fully formed and beautiful, deeply moving and sad, with performances that are memorable and songs that are haunting. Cooper stars as Jackson Mayne, an alcoholic declining country star who drunkenly wanders into a drag bar after a show and is struck by the voice and performance of "La Vie En Rose" by the remarkable Ally (Lady Gaga); the two form an instant connection and spark which leads to a long night together of talking and bonding.  Cooper wisely lets this section of the film breathe: the connection of one artist with another, both at different ends of the spectrum of success. Jackson (now, Jack) extends an offer to Ally to join him on the next stage of his tour, and though she returns home that morning without accepting it, she is nonetheless intrigued, attracted to, and excited by the possibility of this opportunity.

A word about Ally.  Her balancing of her work as a server and her performing is quickly sketched as well as her having a dynamite introductory shot and scene.  The camera lingers on her walk past the garbage dumpster at work, ascending the long tunnel leading up to the street and to the light, and Cooper includes this shot later when Ally has made the pivotal decision to go see Jackson's tour.  Ally's home life is rendered through her relationship with her father Lorenzo (Andrew Dice Clay), a limo driver with a phalanx of well-dressed older men all sitting around the kitchen table drinking coffee and providing a sort of Greek chorus.  Lorenzo's love for his daughter is palpable and restrained, and though Dice Clay is known for his bombast and over-the-top theatrics, here he proves reliably touching and human, evoking his great work in Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine.  He urges his daughter to think about this moment and offer.  Cooper chooses to focus a bit more on his character, which left me hungering for more of Ally, Ally and her best friend Rez, and Ally and her dad.  Lady Gaga owns the film and could inhabit even more of it.

The film carries Ally to the concert and sweeps her onstage in my favorite sequence.  Jack provides a platform and a microphone for her, and the camera stays directly on a close-up shot of Ally's face, depicting the emotions of terror, nervousness, exhilaration, and joy from this moment.  For me, it was the most affecting moment of the film, capturing both the minute and epic nature of this decision to walk forward and to seize one's destiny.  Jackson and Ally become lovers, and they experience the roller coaster of her rising career and his diminishing one. 

Jacks tangles with his manager older brother Bobby (Sam Elliot) and wells of deep pain related to his own upbringing and relationship with his father.  As his drinking and addiction spiral, Ally contends with her own values and integrity. What kinds of songs does she want to sing? What image does she want to project out onto the world? What does success mean?  Lady Gaga is completely up to the task of playing this marvelously strong and complex woman; she should be Oscar-nominated at least twice for Best Actress and Best Song.  Dave Chapelle, Ron Rifkin, and Anthony Ramos all have wonderful scenes playing off of the leads.  The performances in general are heartfelt and strong, a clear strength of Cooper's work behind the camera.  Scenes between Cooper and Elliot are heartbreaking and tense and gruffly restrained, in one case with the camera leaving Jack behind and traveling with Bobby in the car, focusing on the tears in his eyes as he drives away.  The ocean of pain between them is evoked without too much telling of its specifics: jealousy, generational conflict, and a heartbreaking relationship with their father.

And the music!  The film lives by its music, and I found it completely compelling. From a drag bar to a quiet parking lot, from a concert to Saturday Night Live, the film showcases a panoply of performances, virtuosity from Lady Gaga and grizzled gravitas from Bradley Cooper.  Ultimately, the film lingers on its sadness, an elegiac study of fame and success.  The inverse of A Star is Born is A Star is Dying, and for some reason, the study of two people connecting as their life paths cross for a little while is exceedingly more powerful because of the juxtaposition.  The film leans into its own sadness and seriousness throughout, never descending into melodrama.  I feel and hope that people will be talking about this film and all of its achievements for a long, long time, especially come Oscar-season.  I loved this film.

"I'm glad I can't go back to where I came from / I'm glad those days are gone, gone for good / But if I could take spirits from my past and bring 'em here / You know I would / Know I would" -Jackson Mayne

The Best Film of 2018: BlacKkKlansman's Undeniable Voice & The Grandiloquence of Donald Trump.

Movie Reviewed: BlacKkKlansman

Director: Spike Lee

Date: 12 August 2018

jamesintexas rating: ****

BlacKkKlansman, Spike Lee's broadside attack against the deeply rooted racism within our country, takes place in the 1970's with its heart firmly in 2017-2018, thus offering a critique of our own times through the lens of history. Lee's work here is astounding because of its cinematic daring, its audaciousness, and its willingness to take on all-comers: the white power structures encoded in and enabled by police departments, political narcissists on a path towards respectability, meetings of klansmen in basements and hidden churches, and those who love them. Lee pointedly pivots to social critique at several moments in the film, resulting in explosive laughter and gasps, the solid recognition that his points have hit home.  Released on the one-year anniversary of the Charlottesville Marches, BlacKkKlansman opens with the famous zoom out shot of Scarlett O'Hara searching through the wounded Confederate soldiers in the hospital from Gone With The Wind, a stunning shot in its size and scope, which ends with a tattered Confederate flag blowing in the top left of the frame. By directly referencing  the deeply racist themes of Gone With The Wind and the inflammatory Birth of a Nation by D.W. Griffith, Lee is confronting Hollywood and cinematic history as well, holding it accountable for its images, its resurrection of the Klan, and its potency.  At one point in the film, characters view that iconic film, and a speaker references President Woodrow Wilson screening it at The White House and approving.  Of the film, President Wilson stated, "This is like writing history with lightning.  My only regret is that it is all so terribly true."  Here, the target is not merely President Wilson or President Nixon.  President Trump's appearance at the end of the film has been forewarned by white supremacist statements and imagery, narrow definitions of patriotism, and the bamboozling of portions of the populace.

After a Patton-esque series of close-ups on Dr. Kennebrew Beauregard (Alec Baldwin, never not oozing a bit of President Trump) who coughs, flubs, and practices his way through a proto-scientific lecture on eugenics and white supremacy with images and words superimposed over his face, Lee brings us to the 1970's. Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) joins the Colorado Springs Police Department as their first African-American officer and is placed in the Records Room by Chief Bridges (Robert John Burke) where he endures the stinging, casual racism of fellow officers requesting files on "toads," an epithet for African-Americans. Hired because of his stalwart response to such hatred, Stallworth struggles under the day-to-day assault from his peers, engaging in a fantasy Kung Fu attack gestures when alone.  Stallworth's recruitment by Chief Bridges to go undercover on the Black Student Union's bringing of outspoken leader Kwame Ture, formerly Stokely Carmichael (Corey Hawkins) to town leads to him attending the rally and connecting with Black Student Union President Patrice Dumas (Laura Harrier), while observing the reaction to Ture's rhetoric. Lee's film offers Stallworth as a bit of a cipher: he graduated college, feels ambivalent about the war in Vietnam, does not reference a family or his past, and seems without a crystallized sense of consciousness about the world. His drink with Patrice after a terrifying interaction with the local police stopping her car with Ture for some harassment and threatening makes him consider his role as the Jackie Robinson of "the pigs" and the work that must be done within his own ranks.  Ron pulls Patrice to the dance floor, and a Soul Train-style dance sequence begins, gorgeously shot with tight close-ups, call and response singing, and dazzling footwork all set against a disco ball. The chance reading of a Klan recruitment ad in the paper leads Ron to make a phone call, leave a message in his best white voice, and instantly receive a call back, all to the amazement of his fellow officers who listen to his incendiary remarks, all uttered matter-of-fact.

Ron's rapport with the Klan turns into face-to-face meetings, necessitating undercover officer Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) to play the white Ron Stallworth. So, they will be speaking with Ron over the phone but meeting with Flip in person.  "With the right white man, we can do anything" he reasons.  Infiltrating the Klan becomes thornier and thornier, with Flip needing to keep his stories straight with Ron's, as well as his quick-trigger collusion with the ugliest possible racial sentiments of his company. Scenes become fraught with tension as Flip must calmly talk his way into being trusted. Simultaneously, Flip's Jewish identity means according to Ron that he's "got skin in the game," but he has never had to really deeply quantify what his identity means to him. His epiphany is a quiet one of realizing to the extent that he has been passing.  Meanwhile, Patrice pushes Ron, who vaguely tells her he is in construction, to consider how deeply he is entrenched in the work for black liberation. She speaks of DuBois's double-consciousness of being both an American and a black American, and for Ron, there's at least a triple consciousness of him posing as a white American, and a possible quadruple consciousness as the sole representative of his race on the police force.

The film's most powerful sequence involves cross-cutting between the pageantry of the secret Klan rituals held in an underground church, complete with iconography, holy water, and hoods and a Black Student Union meeting inside of Patrice's home, where witness Jerome Turner (Harry Belafonte) recounts his youthful experience hiding in an attic and seeing a neighborhood friend brutalized, castrated, burned, and lynched in the street, all while the crowd gathered, police and politicians and children, to watch, to take photos used and sold for postcards later, and to desecrate the body by taking it as souvenirs. In its robes and hoods, its statues and grandiloquence, Lee reveals how easy it is to misconstrue what is really at stake here: the brutality and subjugation of black Americans. He projects footage from Birth of a Nation, with its inexcusable racial caricatures and directives, a film that I remembering studying in college for its technical mastery of the elements of cinema while being simultaneously repulsed by everything about it. Here, the klansmen gorge on popcorn, laughing along to the film as it is a sort of playbook of their philosophy: comfort food.   Lee's alignment of these two scenes is most potent because he uses the iconic Belafonte's strong voice and stark black and white photos as counterpoint to the soaring, empty rhetoric of the white supremacy movement. "If not now, when?" he offers.  "If not me, who?"

The Klan members whom we meet are a disjointed group.  Ivanhoe (Paul Walter Hauser), the burly, bearded, distorted in speech and appearance, and incoherent member, is also ironically the most literate. Felix (Jasper Paakkonen) seems the most vicious and quick to violence, quick to spout the rhetoric of Duke which is playing on a loop in his pick-up truck. Connie (Ashlie Atkinson), Felix's wife, seems content with their relationship and desirous of being a part of something greater than herself, happily serving cheese plates at their meetings but hungering for something more. Walter (Ryan Eggold), is Ron's contact point with the Klan and seems a bit more thoughtful, more practical than the others, aware of Ron's leadership capabilities and his own inadequacies. And there are other, more shadowy members, whom Lee reveals through some Mr. X-JFK-like developments, offering up another level of fear when considering how high up in the country Klan members operate. There's omnipresent beer bottles and weaponry, target practice set against metal figurines only shockingly revealed at the scene's conclusion. Ron must lurk in the background during some of these scenes, armed with his Nikon and his wits, and when talk turns to explosives and retribution against The Black Student Union, the stakes increase exponentially for Ron and his team.

Washington carries this film, doing incredible work as Stallworth, and Adam Driver remains one of our most exciting actors to watch. Driver and Michael Buscemi (whom I swear was his brother Steve in this) offer the resigned approach to crooked cops in their midst. Yeah, he's a jerk, one offers, but I'm not going to the sergeant to rat him out. Stallworth powerfully states how the police remind him of another organization. As in the work of any auteur, there are touch points to many of Spike Lee's other films. A discussion about their favorite athletes leads Flip and Jimmy to discuss Willie Mays and OJ Simpson, in a direct through line to Mookie and Pino's discussion in 1989's Do The Right Thing.  The film's provocative ending utilizes one of Lee's favorite film techniques, the free floating dolly that puts his characters on a cart and wheels them through scene in a powerful moment of realization.  They are both moving and still, a powerful metaphor to end this film and to consider the state of our country in 2018.  Like Malcolm X's inclusion of the Rodney King beating by the LAPD footage in its opening scene, BlacKkKlansman's powerfully uses real life footage from Charlottesville, the violent car crash into the crowd of demonstrators, and the aftermath with President Trump infamously intoning "I think there is blame on both sides" in his speech.  This film made me shake my head, horrified at where we are as a country, while also being thankful for artists like Spike Lee who energetically use their art to confront the status quo, to render up an America that showcases its implicit inequality and brutality as a part of its true heritage. This film continues threads from Do The Right Thing, 4 Little Girls, When The Levee Breaks, and Chi-Raq most notably.

In my freshman year at Kenyon, I read Black No More, George S. Schuyler's scathing satire of a black man transformed into a white man who infiltrates the South and its infamous Knights of Nordica.  Schuyler states, "When one-third of the population of the erstwhile Confederacy had consisted of the much-maligned Sons of Ham, the blacks had really been of economic, social and psychological value to the section. Not only had they done the dirty work and laid the foundation of its wealth, but they had served as a convenient red herring for the upper classes when the white proletariat grew restive under exploitation....The deep concern of the Southern Caucasians with chivalry, the protection of white womanhood, the exaggerated development of race pride...were all due to the presence of the black man. Booted and starved by their industrial and agricultural feudal lords, the white masses derived their only consolation and happiness from the fact that they were the same color as their oppressors and consequently better than the mudsill blacks.”  Lee hints at this stratification in the more polished, well-dressed David Duke (Topher Grace, excellent), a man who always strove to be photographed in a suit, not a hood, while espousing vile hate speech, white supremacy, and eugenics.  Duke is the man collecting the money from the klansmen, sending out laminated membership cards, attending ceremonies in a place of honor, and positioning himself for a run at higher office.  "National director," he reminds Ron during one of their many powerful phone conversations where Duke is unaware of to whom he is speaking.  His comeuppance is one of the film's delights, but there is both mockery here and menace. Yeats' lines from "The Second Coming" ring true here: "The best lack all conviction while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity." The inclusion of 2017 footage of David Duke in Charlottesville speaking to his beliefs in conjunction with President Trump's campaign promises are pointed and sharply rendered. As is a toast delivered by Duke near the end of the film: "America first."

A Police Captain offers that the Klan's goals include polishing up its members for higher office and political movements around immigration, affirmative action, and more, to which Ron replies, "America would never elect a President like that," earning the guffaws of the modern audience.  His Captain tells him, "When are you gonna stop being so naive?"  Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman offers a dismantling of the naivety by plunging us straight into the waters of 2017-2018, where we must consider how racist thought, white supremacy, and systemic injustice undergird much of what America is built upon and subsists upon, from African-American NFL players kneeling at the national anthem and being called "sons of bitches" by President Trump to his coded, dog whistle language from the debates about "Chicago violence" (the site of Lee's most recent classic Chi-Raq) and the Inauguration line about "American carnage." The specter of Richard Nixon and his Silent Majority haunts the back of several scenes in a re-election poster just as Donald Trump haunts this film.  "The centre cannot hold," Yeats reminds us, and the confrontation of what America is and what America has been make Spike Lee's incendiary and passionate film the best film of 2018.

Three and a Half Stars for Three Billboards

Movie Reviewed: Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri

Director: Martin McDonagh

Date: 21 July 2018

jamesintexas rating: ***1/2



A rough, profane trip through the heart of darkness in Missouri, Irish playwright and filmmaker Martin McDonagh crafts Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri with a fever-pitch, volcanic performances, and a surprisingly touching ending.  The film has stayed with me much longer than I thought it would, and I'm eager to see it a second time. 

Francis McDormand is the vengeful Mildred Hayes, a grieving mother whose daughter's heinous death inculcates a fierce desire to see justice meted out in their small town.  Mildred rents three billboards, posing explosively accusatory questions at Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) for not solving the crime yet.  The seemingly incompetent, bumbling, near-caricature of stupidity and racism enshrined all in one character is Officer Dixon (Sam Rockwell), a would-be opponent of Mildred's, and a kind of institutional obstacle in his cluelessness, his insouciance, and his white male prerogative and privilege in a small town, codified by his power as the police.  Mildred's provocative act spurs his even more provocative acts of violence and abuse, events that pit much of the town against Mildred's myopic pursuit of justice, a pursuit that estranges her from her son Robbie (Lucas Hedges), her ex-husband (John Hawkes), various townspeople including her dentist, while attracting James (Peter Dinklage).  It is an assemblage so remarkably strange, but it works for the most part because of the profane poetry spewed by Mildred and others in a sort of backwoods Shakespearean vernacular of pain, viciousness, and shock.  And Mildred's histrionic media-grabbing billboards push the case forward into unforseen places. 

All the performances are stellar.  McDormand and Rockwell are the stars and the Oscar-winners, but Harrelson is dependably, solidly the core of the film with his much-maligned Chief Willoughby containing depths and surprises.  There's one particularly Mildred memorable monologue about culpability delivered with venom by McDormand to the local Catholic priest who has come to persuade Mildred to take down her billboards.  Her point is "You joined the gang. You're culpable" when dissecting priest sexual abuse scandals.  Another turn, late in the film, is surprising in its scope and its bringing us out from the microcosm to the macrocosm of war, American foreign policy, and those whom we ask to fight our wars.  It is breathtaking when it arrives and consumes the remainder of the film.

The ending of the film suggests hope for its travelers, hope (maybe) for America in 2018, as unlikely allies find ourselves full of fire and fury, dangerous but simultaneously aware that we need time to talk and think ourselves out of actions that may destroy our souls.  Maybe.  In a film swirling with police brutality, darkest violence, and Cormac McCarthy-level nihilism, that's the best that we can hope for, the best that we can get.

Del Toro's Majesty and Grandeur: The (Odd) Shape of Water

Movie Reviewed: The Shape of Water

Director: Guillermo Del Toro

Date: 21 July 2018

jamesintexas rating: ***



Guillermo Del Toro's The Shape of Water has an assured quality in its storytelling, a loving hand which offers homages to The Creature from the Black Lagoon and other touchstones of Del Toro's cinematic life, and its weird assortment of creatures, human and non, make it one of the most unusual films of the year.  It did not move me, and writing about it in July after it won Best Picture means that the film has taken on a life of its own.  It is a phenomena of creativity.

Mute janitor Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins) works alongside Zelda Fuller (Octavia Spencer) in a secret 1960's lab run by autocrat Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon), and one night after seeing a bloodied Strickland emerge sans fingers from the lab, Elisa begins to communicate with the creature that is kept chained up in a pool, the remover of those fingers, an amphibious gilled-creature (Doug Jones).  Elisa starts a burgeoning friendship with the creature, and she begins to fantasize about rescuing him from his torture at the hands of the government, including Dr. Robert Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg) who offers a more humane way to treat him opposed to Strickland's ferocity.  To do anything of this magnitude, Elisa would need help from her artistic neighbor Giles (Richard Jenkins), himself an outcast of sorts because of his hidden sexuality. Strickland's harassment of Elisa in addition to his authoritarian control over the creature and the lab lead to an inevitable showdown of sorts. The film is about being outcast because of ability, race, sexual orientation, and even politics, and Del Toro lovingly shoots it with attention to the blues and yellows of neon, the windows on the bus Elisa takes to work where she traces the raindrops.

The film works best with Hawkins and Jones marvelously playing off of each other, or Hawkins and Spencer, or Hawkins and Jenkins.  Sally Hawkins really shines, making Elisa a compelling and dramatic figure.  What troubled me was so much time spent by Del Toro on and with Strickland.  Michael Shannon is a fine actor giving a fine performance, yet the amount of screen time given to him in the second half of the film undercuts the power of Hawkins and Jones.  And, it does not lead to any greater understanding of him, any epiphany, or any denouement that seems worthy of the amount of time spent with him.  Del Toro is sure to include scenes of Strickland's viciousness and also his insecurity with his superiors, especially with him being a veteran.  I guess that I just don't think the shape of the script matches the grandeur of Del Toro's images.  But to see the creature watching a film in the old-fashioned style of theater with water dripping from Elisa's underwater apartment above is a special moment.  What an odd choice of film to be enshrined forever in the public consciousness as a Best Picture!  I think I would always prefer Pan's Labyrinth over this film, but Del Toro delivers his own unique vision in his own unique way.

Alienated: Alien Disappointment

Movie Reviewed: Alien: Covenant

Director: Ridley Scott

Date: 29 June 2017

jamesintexas rating: **



I think an Alien film will always get me in the theater door because of my unqualified love for the first two films and even my nostalgia for the darkness of the third film.  I was a Prometheus apologist, and now, I'm turning on the franchise.  Despite an interesting prologue conversation between David (Michael Fassbender) and Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce) about the nature of humanity, the film swerves into expected territory, with a damaged colony ship full of couples needing to make a quick decision about continuing their on their mission or stopping at this perfectly normal hospitable planet which is really close by.  What could go wrong, eh?  The exploration of the unfamiliar place leads to the sniffing of germs that lead to infection that lead to alien infestation, naturally, and then the film goes really off the rails.  Characters make very nonsensical decisions that lead to greater chaos and bloodshed, and despite a Fassbender tour-de-force moment that is one to savor, the film just seems to be comfortable in its complacency.  Katherine Waterston, Danny McBride, and Billy Crudup cannot save this film, which just does not seem to work very well.  I think Alien: Covenant misfires, ultimately.

Powerful Panther Power

Movie Reviewed: Black Panther

Director: Ryan Coogler

Date: 20 June 2018

jamesintexas rating: ***1/2



Ryan Coogler's Black Panther is a marvel, dramatically rendered in textures and special effects that enhance the storytelling.  He's out-Star Wars-ed Star Wars this year, and his film fits with his previous two films Creed and Fruitvale Station in their strong casts and well-developed character arcs.  Here, Coogler explores the hidden African country of Wakanda, led by T'Challa, aka Black Panther, (Chadwick Boseman) and the much more captivating and interesting warriors Nakia (Lupita Nyong'o) and Okoye (Danai Gurira), as well as sister Shuri (Letitia Wright).  The film's prologue in Oakland features a contrast of styles in how to confront injustice in the modern world with some devastating consequences of choices made by leaders that may not be fully felt for many years.

Coogler's steady hand leads us to London, where Erik Killmonger (Michel B. Jordan) espouses a philosophical reclamation of tribal artifacts and African history from the London Museum before leading an actual reclamation of a vibranium axe, the element being an integral part of the technology that makes Wakanda so strong.  Killmonger works with Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis, sans CGI) but has his own personal reasons for challenging T'Challa.  There's also the sleuthing of Nakia and T'Challa, as they try to figure out the next moves of Killmonger and Klaue. The teaming-up-with-the-CIA part of the film is probably its weakest aspect, even though Martin Freeman does as much as he can. There's much to like here from the elaborately conceived and majestically purple-colored dream sequences where T'Challa communicates with his elders, as well as the ritual combat set against thunderous waterfalls and edges.  Coogler handles the intensity of this world by giving us so many characters to care about, with Nakia, Okoye, and Shuri leading the way.

Chadwick Boseman's work is more subdued in contrast and less interesting.  Nyong'o, Gurira, and Wright are given much to do, humor, and significant screen time.  Alan Hook's art direction, Ruth Carter's costumes, and Jay Hart's set decoration should all be remembered come Oscar season.  The film really looks original and unique, and though I've fallen off the Marvel bandwagon and am many, many movies behind, Black Panther succeeds as a stand alone film because of Coogler's confident streamlining of the story and rooting it in characters that we care about.  For my eyes, the final fight sequence with T'Challa and Killmonger loses its power in CGI muddled imagery, with the final moves that end the fight being hard to follow. But in nearly every other respect, Black Panther is one of the best films of the year.  The film ends back in Oakland with a philosophical unpacking of isolationism vs. globalism, the idea of sharing, not hoarding what you have that makes you special, exploring elements of social consciousness in a film far more interested in ideas and characters than in the superficial.  Bravo!

Wanted: More LeCarre Films

Movie Reviewed: A Most Wanted Man

Director: Anton Corbjin

Date: 29 June 2017

jamesintexas rating: ***1/2



My memory of this film is that it is world-weary, heavy, thick with plot and character, and it is the kind of thing that is right up my alley.  James Bond-esque, but then decidedly not very James Bond-esque, A Most Wanted Man features one of Philip Seymour Hoffman's last performances, and he is just great here.  Based on a John le Carre novel, which means to me that it will feature the less glamorous but fully essential minutia of spycraft, Gunther (Hoffman), the head of German spying in Hamburg, finds himself close to locating and bringing in Chechan immigrant Issa Karpov (Grigoriy Dobrygin) who would be a key asset in the War on Terror.  The swirling politics and geopolitics surrounding capturing Karpov and what he represents gives glimpses into both refugee advocacy and activism and cutthroat, utilitarian politicians, represented by both Rachel McAdams and Robin Wright.  As a fan of this genre in film and in literature, A Most Wanted Man did not disappoint in its thoughtfulness, its calibration of storytelling, and its explosive ending with its vertiginous powerlessness.  Hoffman's work here is spectacular, and his choices reveal Gunther to be both haunted and idealistic, and damned either way because of forces greater than he can fathom.

Scary, Naturally: Hereditary's Horror.

Movie Reviewed: Hereditary

Director: Ari Aster

Date: 11 June 2018

jamesintexas rating: ***



In my inaugural trip to an Alamo Drafthouse Movie Theater (and in Kansas City with my brother Danny, NOT Texas), I experienced the traumatic, unnerving new film Hereditary, and I have to report that it is a deeply, deeply upsetting film that wears its influences (The Shining paramount among them) firmly on its sleeve in its pursuit of serious, adult, wince-inducing horror and suspense.  It is a wicked ride, albeit one that I do not fully understand.

A review of this sorts needs to keep much of the plot a mystery, and I will say this: the less you know about this film, the better it is.  Annie (Toni Collette) is a miniatures artist who lives with her husband Steve (Gabriel Byrne) in the forested mountains of Utah along with their two children, Peter (Alex Wolff) and Charlie (Milly Shapiro).  And until recently, Annie's mother lived with them, and her death is the catalyst for much of what is to follow.  The house is all wooden corners and high ceilings, pull-down attics and intricate tiny spaces in Annie's workshop.  Asher's sequencing of the film involves slow zoom-in close ups of those houses and recreations of scenes in Annie's life, and often we are so disoriented by them, it is difficult to tell if they are establishing shots of the house or of the miniature.  That disorientation continues as Annie unfolds her grief for her mother, whom she was not close with and harbored deep resentments with about the raising of her children.  Peter wanders the early portions of the film as a mildly disaffected teen, staring off in History class, eager to get to a party to meet the girl.  Charlie seems to have inherited her mother's penchant for art, and she's jarring in her wandering off and sourcing of material for her art, as well as her tic of "clock-ing" with her mouth.  I don't know a better word for it.  There's a show deadline looming in six months or so, but with the painstaking work that Annie does, her grief interferes and disrupts, sleep provides no respite, and a local mourning group allows her the chance to vent but does not provide relief.  The insular world of the miniatures just seems to heighten everything, particularly in the camera's casual gazing at Annie's renderings of traumatic moments in their family history.  Steadily and surely, things fall apart.

Toni Collette is a force of nature, and her work here is extraordinary, full of range and intensity.  My first movie memory of her is The Sixth Sense, a high watermark of acting in my opinion as Lynn Sear, and I haven't seen her in something that showcases her talents in quite this way.  She's the centerpiece of this disturbing film, in most every scene, and she carries it fully.  The film is disquieting, which means that I had to keep looking over at Danny multiple times, in a "Can you believe this?" kind of way.  The shocks are not big jump scares but more of revelations, slow builds, something that is in the frame already, and you just need to realize its power.  The film's lingering themes are of family and religion's pernicious influences, as seen through the lens of the title.  Hereditary: genetic factors and often diseases beyond our control.  In a film that is willing to offer its dark vision in a summer of superheroes and fantasy, Ari Aster has crafted something worth seeing and being upset by, though I do not believe it lives up to its The Shining-level pretensions or aspirations.  Still, the cast and in particular, cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski, do a terrific job of providing luster to this tale. 

Semi-Incredible!

Movie Reviewed: Incredibles 2.

Director: Brad Bird

Date: 8 June 2018

jamesintexas rating: ***



Pixar has its formulas, and tried and true, they deliver an entertaining, rollicking ride in Incredibles 2, a film that I found quite fun if not as inventive or memorable as its predecessor.  We've been watching that first film a bunch in our home in anticipation of this one, and from its stunning art design (Art Deco, early 1960's fashion, fun angles) to its soaring Michael Giacchino score, it moves with energy and humor simultaneously as a super-family emerges from hiding, mostly playing on the dynamic between Bob/Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) and Helen/Elastigirl (Holly Hunter) who wrestle with middle age and family responsibilities as much as the mighty villain Syndrome.

Here, the story picks up at a police station interview, unpacking the scene that ended the previous film through the lens of  witness Tony Rydinger (Michael Bird).  Jack-Jack (Eli Fucile) monitoring Violet (Sarah Vowell) removed her mask momentarily and was spotted by HS classmate Tony, while Dash (Huck Milner) ran crowd control for the parents who unsuccessfully try to stop The Underminer (John Ratzenberger), resulting in major damage for the city and city hall, terrible press for the Supers, and the shutting down of their program.  Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson) at least has the sense to leave before the party ends, as he puts it, but their existence is threatened until stylishly-named mysterious millionaire Winston Deavor (Bob Odenkirk) and Evelynn Deavor (Catherine Keener) invite The Supers to help them reassert the role of superheroes on the planet, in part to right a tragic wrong from their childhood.  The film hinges on Helen being the one they want to focus on with the positive media attention; Evelynn's cost-benefits analyses prove more beneficial for her than for the destructive Mr. Incredible.  So, he takes on the domestic front, meaning lots of time with Jack-Jack, Dash's New Math, and Violet's embarrassment of being seen with him, all set within a stylist mid-century modern mansion, like something out of Alfred Hitchcock's North By Northwest.  Elastigirl finds herself drawn further and further into the mystery of a masked criminal who is terrorizing the city, and a dazzling train rescue which would rival James Bond's best on a motorcycle sequence leads to more and more clues and uncertainty.  The story lines are separate between the home front and the family front, and though the dramatic tension is not as strong as the previous film, we get lots of fun sequences: Jack-Jack vs. his neighborhood backyard nemesis; Edna (Brad Bird) and her marvelous reappearance, stealing the film; a wonderful Bond-esque Incredi-mobile that needs to be reacquired.  There's a big deal giant fight scene at the end, of course.

So, what gives?  The voice work delivers great performances, especially from Hunter, who is a national treasure.  Frozone gets a little bit more to do.  There are some fun, nice supporting new characters.  But, overall, the film has a by-the-numbers feel to it, and is overall less special than its original partially because of the less than incredible villainy.  The indulgences of playing up sequences and characters that work (Jack-Jack, Edna) cover up the ones who lack development or just anything to do (Violet and Dash).  The animation is truly incredible, naturally, and it is astounding to see how far the art from has come in just fourteen years.  The fourteen years in between signifies to me that there wasn't a need or a narrative drive to re-establish this universe beyond fun (and oodles of box office cash).  I won't lie: sitting next to Gus-Gus and watching Jack-Jack, cackling with glee, the film hits all of its marks.  Liking Finding Dory before it, Incredibles 2 is superfluous and fine.  You could spend your time (and money) in many worse ways.  So, that's not a ringing endorsement, but as a summer movie, enjoyable with little ones, Incredibles 2 does the job.

Never Going Back: Jack Reacher Falls

Movie Reviewed: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

Director: Edward Zwick

Date: 8 June 2018

jamesintexas rating: *



Rarely does a film title implore you to do something that you're readily able to oblige.  In this case, despite the good will harbored from the first Jack Reacher film (and my irrational, complete investment in Tom Cruise's work), please skip this second Jack Reacher film which does not really offer much in terms of characters, plot, storytelling, or energy.

I want to start with energy.  Tom Cruise plays the world weary ex-military man known for wandering the earth, thumb extended, who is making his way to Washington D.C. to rendezvous with Cobie Smulders' character, Turner, whom he keeps calling from pay phones along his way.  I don't remember if this relationship was established in the first film or not, but it seems like a long distance to travel for a bizarre first date of sorts.  When Reacher arrives, everyone knows him, but Turner has been jailed for espionage, resulting in Reacher figuring out a way to evade capture himself while also springing Turner from a maximum security facility.

As for character, plot, and storytelling, Edward Zwick has a few hokey tricks up his sleeve by having Reacher sequence out in his mind where someone went who just left a room.  There is the possibility of Reacher having a long lost daughter, Samantha (Danika Yarosh) who experiences some heavy trauma before going right back to normal, providing some of the least effective sequences in the film.  But she is trying.  Cruise seems on autopilot here, not doing as many fight scenes or talking scenes, mostly staring and thinking very hard.  He figures out one major revelation, as much as I can figure, by simply looking at something and asserting, "Something doesn't add up" making him a mystical character of sorts.  The bad guys are forgettable, with one of them being called "The Hunter," (Patrick Heusinger) as he seems to sit around comfortably waiting for phone calls to do heinous things. A fight sequence on rooftops of New Orleans has some undeniable beauty to it, with the bridges twinkling in the distance, but the film just never really comes together.  The first film had a kinetic, revving-engine type of fun to it with some wordplay from Reacher, some unscored car chases, and Robert Duvall.  This film, not as much.  The title says Never Go Back, but I would go
back to the first film.  Never Watch This One. 

Movie Reviewed: Valerian and The City of a Thousand Planets

Director: Luc Besson

Date: 7 June 2018

jamesintexas rating: **1/2

Luc Besson has built-up enormous good will with me because of the 1997 classic sci-fi adventure The Fifth Element, which is part of the architecture of my college years with its kaleidoscopically colorful alien worlds, marvelous Gary Oldman villainy, and its action sequences set to a marvelous Eric Serra score.  Without knowing the source material of Valerian (a comic book, apparently), I was drawn into the trailer of this film and then promptly forgot about it.  Now, as I catch up on missed films from the past year, I spent time with Besson's mouthful of a title Valerian and The City of a Thousand Planets, and I enjoyed it for the most part, despite its flaws.

First of all, it should be called Major Valerian and Sergeant Laureline and The City of a Thousand Planets, but that's probably an ever bigger challenge for the poster, but the duo are the center of this rollicking adventure film that has lots of the elements needed but maybe just not in the right sequence.  The titular role is played by Dane DeHaan in a flat, Keanu Reeves-ish monotone that never seemed to sit right with me.  Cara Delevingne plays Laureline, a bit more fun though heavy on the scowling, and both are a couple of space officers sent on impossible missions throughout the galaxy.  After a most-fun opening sequence set to David Bowie's "Space Oddity," which establishes how the galaxies formed a gigantic super-station through peace, love, and handshakes, a conflict erupts on planet Mul, a beachy utopian of pearls containing endless energy and long, thin Naavi-type creatures who harvest the pearls and like in harmony with everything.  Valerian receives a mind-message from Mul which he cannot shake, and though they are tasked with a different mission, he keeps being haunted by his dream.  Or so he says.  

The film is an excuse for large, detailed set-pieces (think the police chasing LeeLoo and Korben in the taxi cab), that are really endlessly inventive.  One takes place in a desert world that features a sort of virtual reality market with loads of creatures and levels if you are wearing the right helmet and goggles.  A satisfying sequence with a great ending to the chase leads to a tongue-lashing by Defence Minister Herbie Hancock, who directs the duo to return to see Commander Filitt (Clive Owen) and protect the galaxy with the item retrieved.  A surprise attack leaves great vulnerability and confusion, and Valerian and Laureline try to figure out the labyrinth of lies and deception.

It is truly wonderful to see a big budget sci-fi film that is this weird.  Its moxie shines through in scenes with creatures galore, lots of purple-tinted shots of characters' helmets and heads, and its commitment to some slapstick silliness, particularly in a fight scene inside of a giant banquet hall.  Rhianna shows up all too briefly as a shape shifter for an indelible sequence before delivering a moralizing speech about sex trafficking. The film's major revelation involves white men in power being unable to apologize for decisions made that caused great harm, and Besson hammers home zero nuance in these flashback scenes, making everything a bit too easy.  There are a lot of shooting and explosions.  There are fun magnetic spheres that attach themselves to the first target one of them hits.  There's a nifty bug that you can use to cut yourself out of a cocoon if you find yourself embalmed.  There's that opening sequence where lots is suggested to the strands of Bowie's voice.  And those details will stick with me, much more that DeHaan's flat, uncharismatic performance, the feeling that the lead characters needed to be a bit older and more world-weary.  A fun time, but maybe not enough fun?

The Quietest Theater that I've Ever Been In

Movie Reviewed: A Quiet Place

Director: John Krasinski

Date: 25 May 2018

jamesintexas rating: ***1/2



A Quiet Place immerses the audience in a near-liquid silence, an enveloping and pervasive rapture that resists the crinkling of candy bags or the shuffling of ice cubes in a soda cup.  John Krasinski has done something special here, giving us a terrifying monster movie wedded to a silent film's meticulousness, a dance of movement, body and facial control, and sound architecture.  It is brilliant and deserving of great praise.

Noise draws them, apparently, as a crackerjack suspenseful opening scene reveals a couple and their young children scavenging in a pharmacy and then walking an ominous path through the woods.  Title cards reveal the number of days that have passed, though we never fully see the inciting incident.  Krasinki's insular focus on Evelynn and Lee Abbott (Emily Blunt and Krasinski) and their family and its workings means that we never fully see the big picture, though far away lights in the distance from their farmhouse and silo indicate that there might be some hope for humanity.  Pathways are illuminated by sand trails, and all means of noise have been removed, though there is always room for human error. Regan Abbott (Millicent Simmonds) clashes with her father, and her brother Marcus (Noah Jupe) tries to keep the family together despite the terrifying ramifications of any small noise. 

It is an exercise in form to structure a 2018 film as nearly silent, with so much sign language and close-ups of eyes and faces. Krasinski, as a director, does something astonishing here by ratcheting up the tension and holding it, holding it, holding it, with the Spielbergian mantra of hide-the-monster paying off quite well.  There's a sequence with a nail that made my skin crawl and took me back to an incident on Myrtle Ave in the 80's.  There's some really dark moments where it appears that all is lost, as well as escalating awfulness with Lee hidden in the basement.  The last shot of the film is really perfect, and though I am not sure A Quiet Place is an allegory for anything in our modern world, it is surefire entertainment and very controlled and deliberate in its suspense.  My students are proud that Jim from The Office made a film, but more importantly, he has made a great film.

It: Chapter One. Wow.

Movie Reviewed: It: Chapter One

Director: Andy Muschietti

Date: 22 April 2018

jamesintexas rating: ***1/2



There was a Missing Persons poster on the door to my daughter's school two weeks ago, and the straightforward terrifying proclamation of a loved child disappeared was completely chilling to me as a relatively new parent.  Movies have changed for me now that I am a dad.  I watch fewer of them, I might be more forgiving or less harsh towards their mistakes, but I think that horror films especially offer a new level of malevolence for me as a parent.  It is a revelation, not because it always steers this story in the right direction (often times, no), but it wins out because of its audacity and unsettling qualities, its burrowing into the sections of my brain that are attuned to this kind of scariness.  I watched It twice, turning it back on immediately after finishing it, but in full disclosure, I broke it up into multiple tiny pieces (15-20 minute chunks) which no doubt diluted its full effect but made it possible for me to finish.  Wow, this is rough stuff.

The Losers Club fight against an indescribable force of evil lurking in the mysterious sewers of Derry, Maine, a force that manifests itself as their deepest fears, often a clown named Pennywise who offers balloons from sewer grates before dragging a victim down to its lair.  The film has so many characters to introduce that it moves at breathtaking speed, as we might Bill (whose brother Georgie succumbs to the balloon trick in the opening scene), Beverly, Ben, Eddie, Mike, Richie, and Stanley, each with their very briefly defined character personality.  There simply is no time.  Derry is also haunted by the menace of the malevolent Henry Bowers (Nicholas Hamilton), who bullies and brutalizes with authority; I like to draw a line between him and Ace, Kiefer Sutherland's baddie from Stand By Me.  The Losers Club come together, rather quickly, as they realize what is happening to the town, and for the most part, we are off and running.  The film's running time (set against the book's epic thousand plus page scope, even when jettisoning the modern day stuff) means that it has to keep things moving, and in some ways, it really does.  Pennywise (Bill Skarsgard) appears frequently in many forms, often as frightening as a painting that chases you, a diseased transient near the spookiest old house ever (seriously: it looks like a house  straight out of Mordor), and even in a car driving by a violent scene as a red balloon floats gently to the rear ceiling.  It says a bunch about the film's power if it can wrench true terror from a slide show projector in a garage and a floating red balloon across a near-silent library.  The changing of forms is often a bit of stagecraft; a person will look away, and then It will be there.  Or, he will transform into the form of another character.  It delivers on the story's most terrifying image: Bev being haunted by voices from her sink.  The resulting deluge of blood is positively Kubrickian and breathtakingly terrifying its redness juxtaposed against the light above the spewing sink.  The film's signature set piece is not the sewers, like I thought; it is the creepy house with its doors and unseen menace.  There's a moment of pure body movement horror in Pennywise's emergence from a refrigerator is bone-chilling and unforgettable, and Muschietti wisely plays up the weirdness of Pennywise, his speech patterns, his references, and his gigantic forehead, plastered with white paint and orange tufts, demonic red lines that seem otherworldly and medieval.  The film goes too far and over-the-top only a few times, taking me out of the irrational horror of it, but I really admired its chilling moments.  It earns its R-rating.

Finn Wolfhard is the stand-out here as Richie Tozier, a profanity-spewing jerk of a thousand jokes who seems to be channeling the great Corey Feldman.  The rest of the cast does fine work with what they have.  The set design is pretty terrific too, as is the music and the make-up.  The scares are frequent and real.  I like the often twisted, tilting cinematography of Chung-hoon Chung.  In a darkened theater, this film must have been incredible.  There are a couple of musical cues that play up the late 80's nostalgia nicely.  It's flaws include a denouement that feels a bit off or light in consideration of the horrors of the moment.  There is some editing that suggests Henry Bowers has done some pretty heinous stuff to his friends, but maybe not?  And, I'm wondering where they go with Bowers' character because of some late changes to the story.  And speaking of changes to the story, the film commits to its R-rating, but it concisely tells the story without some of the major moments of the novel, and I'm not a purist who is ridiculous, but I think I'm just eager to see what other changes they will make because the story line is now significantly different and possibly less powerful.  The resulting 27 years will be rough ones for The Losers Club, as Pennywise will no doubt draw them back to Derry, but luckily, this film made so much money that is seems we will have to wait far less for Chapter Two.  What is a bit sad is that there is going to be a complete jettisoning of the cast because of the age jump, unless Muschietti commits to flashbacks.  I cannot imagine what horrors Bill Skarsgard will come up with for the second round.  He's pretty terrifying, though maybe because of my age and association with the novel and original miniseries, I think that I'm a Tim Curry guy, all the way. 

In closing, I think it is a bit unforgivable to deny Eddie Kaspbrak his pivotal moment with the inhaler, speaking for all asthmatics.  Not sure how they screwed that up. 

And, I'm said to note the passing of Harry Anderson, the adult Richie Tozier in the 1990 miniseries. 

Logan Rides into the Sunset

Movie Reviewed: Logan

Director: James Mangold

Date: 25 January 2018

jamesintexas rating: ***



I think that it gets stars just for cursing.  Logan, a neo-western in the guise of a comic-book film, is director James Mangold's updating of the dated, PG-13 formula, and it is a welcome breath of fresh air.  A grizzled, beat-down Logan (Hugh Jackman) shines in as scuzzy, messy, and lived-in a performance as you'll ever see in this type of universe.  Protecting Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart, awesome as always) from those who would do him harm, he crosses path with a new, younger mutant, a version of himself many years ago in the form of Lara (Dafne Keen), mute but lethal, who is making a journey towards the Canadian border to find refuge.  Logan must make a decision to protect himself from bounty hunter Pierce (Boyd Holbrook) or make a run for it, against all odds.

Stephen Merchant, Richard E. Grant, and Eriq La Salle round out an excellent cast as supporting characters along the journey.  Some of the action sequences are delightfully wicked.  What fun this must have been for Hugh Jackman to do after many years of playing this character.  Its depiction of Logan as an Uber driver near the border in the near-future is inspired, and the film's constant nodding to the western genre is quite fun.  I found the ending to be a bit less inspired, but overall, the film delivers a thoughtful (at times) and fun end to a story that probably went on too long and didn't have enough great movies (I loved X-Men 2).