Nope

 

I was a big fan of "Get Out", Jordan Peele's feature directorial debut. His second film "Us", however, was maybe the most laughably bad movie I saw in 2019. So I was worried about which way this film was going to go. The original trailer was intriguing, but not convincing on it's own. The subsequent trailers were less inspiring and I started having big doubts about how this would all work out. I am relieved to say that the film is solid, with a good deal of suspense, a couple of good scares and some humor. The action based last act seems to come out of nowhere and it feels like a slightly different movie at that point, but not a bad different movie, just not one that feels closely tied to what came before. 

Regular visitors know that I do not regurgitate the plot of the film in these reviews and I avoid as much as possible spoiler material. I am going to share something with you however that may be interpreted as a spoiler by some, so be aware...this movie is filled with red herrings and when it is done, you may very well wonder why they were all there. This is especially true with the flashback sequences to a different horror story that is told in the movie. There is no logical reason for it's presence except as a story telling piece of legerdemain, designed to distract us at times from things that are goin on in the main plot.  It is a well told story with it's own elements of suspense and horror, but it has no relationship to the events that happen here, except both stories take place in the entertainment industry.

Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer play siblings who are part of a show business group that provide horses and wrangle them on Hollywood productions. After the mysterious death of their father (an underused Keith David), they are struggling to keep their ranch together and selling off horses that are part of the family legacy. Kaluuya plays OJ, a man who has a hard time making himself heard on set and off. Keke Palmer is his sister Emerald, who has trouble in the opposite direction, she can't turn it off most of the time. When they discover something unusual taking place in the gulch where their ranch is located, they try to find a way to use that discovery to save them from financial ruin. Down the dirt road is Ricky "Jupe" Park, played by Steven Yuen, a former child star with his foot in a different branch of the entertainment industry, and he too has plans to use the discovery to his advantage. It is the convergence of these two stories that is the only thread which brings the horror elements we are shown together. 

Because OJ is so quiet, his character starts off without much relatability. I did feel that his character grew as a presence in the story and by the end, he had earned a heroic plotline. In one of those red herring sequences in the film, he gets to play against the hard type that he is shown as, and it works as a moment of humor.  Another character, Angel, Brandon Perra, is added to the mix and he also jukes the story humor up a bit while still keeping the suspense going. The slow build first act of the film sets us up really well for the edge of our seats fear and terror of the second act. There are some big unexpected moments, and the twist of the horror/sci-fi concept is revealed and sort of interesting. Michael Wincott joins the group as a mysterious cinematographer, and I don't quite get what his actions at the end are supposed to mean, but he does tend to add a little gravitas to the last section of the film. 

So not everything in the story comes together, and the resolution feels like it came out of left field, but it was fun anyway. I think the movie does mostly what you want a horror film to do. It creates a creepy atmosphere, it tells us enough about the characters to make us care and enjoy being in their company, and it ultimately produces some thrills that are fear based and suspenseful. It's nice when a movie offers you things that you were not expecting, it just odd when those things are disconnected from the plot. Enjoy going down a few dead ends, but you will get a fine amount of entertainment from everything else. 

Cabaret Fathom Events 50th Anniversary

 

As amazing as the performances are and the staging of the musical sequences is fantastic, this movie and story are haunting in a way that is difficult to explain. As the nation of Germany is about to be swallowed up by the fanaticism of the Nazis, the decadent entertainment seems to be a distraction from the coming storm. Even when the characters acknowledge the impending doom, they can't seem to escape from the complications they are living through while the pawl of doom is closing in. 

Director Bob Fosse has made a movie musical for people who don't like movie musicals. Characters don't break out in song, unless they are on a stage, or at one point in an audience listening to a staged song. His background in theater shows as these sequences of the performers at the "Kit Kat" club, are all choregraphed with just enough vulgarity to be fitting for this kind of venue, but also enough professionalism to keep us watching closely. The stories that the film is based on sound like they focus on the decadent behavior more than the Nazi threat, and maybe the poverty of the time is not fully conveyed, but I don't think any of us living today would choose this era to live in. It is the antithesis of glamour, with the exceptions of the characters of Max and Natalia, both of whom seem to have bleak futures despite their wealth.

Liza Minnelli is of course the shining star in the film. She has an unconventional beauty at this point in her life, and her persona was perfect for the somewhat deluded Sally Bowles. I get the impression that the less we know about the real characters that were the inspiration for the stories that the play and the musical are based on, the greater we will enjoy the experience. Michael York seemed to be everywhere in the 1970s, and he was very well cast as the sexually ambiguous Brian. The uncertainty of his character about his own sexuality would be a no no in today's world, where questioning an impulse is frowned upon. In 1930s Berlin, I would imagine this difficulty was much more understandable. We should have known that the romance between Brian and Sally was doomed, but there are moments when they seem to make each other happy and more confident and that is the sort of thing that drama can thrive on. 

The editing of the musical sequence with the beat down of the maître d' of the Kit Kat Club was very clever and cinematic. I also liked the choices of audience shots for some of the songs, including the one song that is performed in front of an nearly empty cabaret. There are a few scenes of violence, and knowing what the future held, I am sorry to say that the moment that disturbed me the most involved the death of an animal rather than violence at a person. The mental cruelty of the moment hangs over the rest of the film, and I don't know how people could continue to seek pleasure in times where this was widely practiced victimization. At the moment, such horrible behavior remains the exception, although every time I look at news articles, I wonder if the fascists on the left and right are aware of how much they do come off as Nazi progeny. 

I too want to enjoy the moments of singing and dancing entertainment on the stage, but Fosse manages to make us pay for that with a guilty conscience. Joel Grey steals the stage every time he shows up, and that is frequently. In spite of the fact that he has no off stage dialogue, he is as central a character as the lovers are. It is a great performance. The Master of Ceremonies is guilty of taking the anti-Semitism of the culture very lightly and that it becomes part of the entertainment may be answers the difficulty of explaining my disquiet in the opening paragraph here. 

"Cabaret" is a terrific film, that will entertain you but also challenge your sensibilities. It is a much more complex film than some seem to realize. 
 

The Gray Man

So before I talk about the movie itself, a little bit of background on the film, exhibitors and myself. This is an expensive Netflix production, that is getting a limited theatrical release ahead of it's debut on the Netflix steaming service. The reported budget was near $200 Million and that looks like it made it to the screen. The Directing brothers Anthony and Joe Russo, who did some of the most successful MCU films, were in charge for this show. The reason that the release is limited probably has something to do with the fact that several film chains require exclusivity to theatrical for a set amount of time, and Netflix was not prepared to accept those conditions.  AMC is one of those exhibitors who will not play a movie that is going to compete with itself, at least not after the pandemic restrictions which had call most bets off. I am happy to see a film on streaming, but I much prefer the theater experience, so when given the opportunity, I took it and traveled to a nearby town to be able to see this since it was not within a ten mile radius of where I now live. With rare exceptions, this site is devoted to the cinema experience. There is too much content on streaming for me to keep up with, and I don't want to review TV. However, since Netflix make the effort to put this in theaters and I made an effort to see it in one, it will get some attention from me here.

"The Gray Man" is a spy film, which focuses on the assets that are primarily in place to kill someone. Although there may be comparisons to Mission Impossible" or the James Bond films, this is really closer to "Atomic Blonde", "The Hitman's Bodyguard", "The Accountant" or "The Eiger Sanction", which all pretend to be spy films but are really cat and mouse games between paid killers. "The Gray Man" is not a character that works in intelligence, they do not infiltrate conspiracies to bring them to an end, there is not really much suspense in the work they do. The Gray men exist in the shadows, executing directions that have been given to them rather than forging their own path. Sierra Six, Ryan Gosling's character in this film, is basically a weapon for action, not a tool of investigation. As long as you keep that in mind, you will probably be able to enjoy this film for what it is. 

The Russos have managed, along with the screenwriters and editors, to cut the story down to the minimal outline required in order to have a plot, and then filled in that skeletal structure with as much screen action as is possible, staying just this side of the nonsense that shows up in the "Fast and Furious" franchise. There are wild shootouts in crowded locations every few minutes. There are also over the top car chases on city streets between the shootouts and while they are happening. Cars don't fly between buildings or swing from one cliff to another, but people do emerge from wrecks that would kill most of us at half the speed, and they simply jump up, dust off and get in the next ride. The foot chases are sometimes tough because of the shaky cam that is used to film them, but the car chases are problematic so often because the use of frequent close ups keeps us from observing the context and knowing what the risks are.   

There are certainly joys to be had in the overkill that is employed in providing mayhem on screen. All of that is OK for an audience interested in pyrotechnics only. Any viewers who were looking for a plausible story with characters facing consequences for their choices will be disappointed. It is as if the CIA, sent it's own forces en masse to London, to collect Julien Assange or to Moscow to get Edward Snowden, and along the way they wiped out half of the security services of those countries and there were no ramifications. That's because this movie is not about anything, it is simple a diorama for moving the toy soldiers around and blowing things up. If you have seen the MCU films the Russo Brothers have directed, you will see that they are quite capable of showing interesting mayhem. They continue to be able to do that. 

Gosling is delivering an understated character as an action hero pretty well. He keeps the sardonic quips to a minimum and provides a voice that is exhausted, injured or optimistic as the situation calls for. His co-star and fellow agent Ana de Armas, is proficient physically as she was in "No Time to Die", but her character here lacks the joyful enthusiasm of that character and she is simply another action figure without much personality or purpose. That was certainly not the actress's fault, it is the screenwriting team that left her high and dry. Chris Evans plays against type in this film, as he did with his previous effort which starred  Ana de Armas, "Knives Out". The antagonist Lloyd Hansen is a psychopath with skills but no off switch. The notion that the CIA deputy director that turns him loose had any idea what was coming, undermines the credibility of the plot. Evans is not required to do much, but his hostile passive aggressiveness, combined with actual torture, will make you hope he gets what is coming to him. As usual, the gravitas of a film he appears in is provided by Billy Bob Thornton, who in the last couple of decades has become one of my favorite on screen performers. 

This film seemed to have a stink on it before it opened. I'm not sure why. It is not great but it is certainly not a terrible picture. It is an action film that goes all in on that avenue and abandons any attempt to make us care much about who gets killed except for the two leads. If you see it in a theater, you will get your entertainment value, but not much else. 

Thor: Love and Thunder

 

While there are some references to the MCU stories, this is largely a stand alone Thor film, and it has the same vibe as "Thor Ragnarok", for the obvious reason that it was directed by the same Taika Waititi who directed that film. It is in large part successful at being amusing with some fun comedic moments, but it does not quite live up to the standard set by the earlier film. "Love and Thunder" lacks some of the elements that made "Ragnarok" work. Those missing elements are critical characters from the other stories. There is no Loki or Hulk to play against, we are provided with Valkyrie and Jane Foster, two good characters but they don't stack up well in comparison. 

The Guardians do make an appearance in this film, but it is basically an extended cameo, and they are gone within the first ten minutes of the movie. That means that the main link to the Asgardians and the events of the past is Korg, voiced by Waititi himself, as a sort of storytelling narrator, injected sometimes in odd places to provide exposition, but also present for much of the action. The device has a comic effect, but it also tends to take us out of the flow of the story, which makes the movie feel a little bit like a mess. I certainly would not get rid of the character, he is too amusing to leave out of the film, but the way he is utilized emphasizes the comedy and not the narrative. 

The plot, such as it is, concerns a being who comes into possession of the NecroSword that can slay a god. The character becomes Gorr, the God Butcher, played by Christian Bale. Initially, the story seems to be about Gorr's mission of vengeance, and there is a plot device added to make the danger seem more immense, but it turns out that the ultimate goal is a means to rectify a problem, or lay waste to all the Gods at one fell swoop. The strategy for achieving the objective involves Thor's weapon Stormbreaker which has somehow assumed the power of the Bifrost bridge. To be honest, there is a pretty clear shortcut in the story that doesn't get used, and it seems like it would have been something the God of Thunder might have considered. 

A secondary plotline, and one that is actually more engaging and dramatic, involves Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) and her acquisition of  Mjölnir, giving her the powers of Thor. Following this story line makes it clear why Natalie Portman was willing to return to the series after having abandoned it subsequent to "The Dark World". Jane Foster is a more interesting character here and she faces a crisis that makes the decisions she choses feel more justified. The Restored  Mjölnir, Stormbreaker and Jane, all vie for Thor's attention and the comedic bits that come from that are quite clever and character based. 

There is an extended sequence in the hysterically named Omnipotent City, where Thor and his band of heroes, implore the Gods, in particular Zeus, to aid them in fighting Gorr. This scene is mostly a plot point for humor rather than necessity. Zeus is portrayed by Russel Crowe, and he assumes an accent that is both offensive and whimsically hilarious at the same time. I have already pointed out in other films, that Crowe has been slammed by middle age weight issues, but he is still a compelling persona, even if he lacks the musculature of Hemsworth's Thor [and by the way, Chris Helmsworth looks amazing in physical form.]  This is the eighth time he has played Thor, and given the credit stingers it looks like we can anticipate some more work from the current iteration of the God of Thunder. 

My reaction is positive but not with the same level of enthusiasm I had for Ragnarok. Of the four Thor Centered films (minus the Avenger movies) this ranks above "The Dark World" but below "Ragnarok "and "Thor".  I think the movie has potential to grow on me, but for the moment this is only a mild endorsement.