Lambcast Podcast Movie of the Month: Batman Returns

This was the Christmas Themed Movie of the Month for December. Join me and several other movie bloggers in looking at Catwoman and The Penguin as they take on the caped crusader.

Christmas Draft Poll

If you have not already voted on the Lambcast Christmas Draft Poll. please take a minute to go there and vote for my slate of films. I did not get the Muppets , Die Hard or Gremlins, but I do have a superior set of five to the other candidates.

Just click on the picture and make Ralphie and George Bailey happy.

I have reviews up for two of my five films, you can look at those here.

Merry Christmas to all.

Lambcast Christmas Movie Draft

Edge of Seventeen

WARNING!!! The above trailer is a Red Band, it contains extreme language.

This film is far more accomplished and thoughtful than it has any right to be. You might expect a large serving of teenage angst, served with a side of sexual exploitation and finished off with a dessert of sweet homilies. While it does have some common ancestry with the John Hughes films of the 1980s, "The Edge of Seventeen" has a far more realistic view of life as an adolescent than teen comedies usually manage. It also has a strange relationship that is central to the tone of the movie but not to the plot. The history teacher as confidant is a twisted but honest relationship with an adult that every seventeen year old ought to have. Maybe not with their teacher but with some adult figure in their life.

Hailee Steinfeld is Nadine, a bright, cynical and nice looking junior at her High School. She is however socially awkward and compensates with a bitterness that is only tempered by her life long friendship with Krista, played by another Hayley, Hayley Lu Richardson. When that friendship is threatened, Nadine finds herself at wits end, acting out in ways that she sometimes regrets but also speaking without the restraint that another voice usually provides her. Even in adulthood, a friend can be an influence on our behavior in both positive and negative ways. When the loss of a friendship occurs in the depths of adolescent angst, the consequences are likely to be earth shattering, at least for the kids involved.

Writer/Director Kelly Fremon Craig seems to get the mindset that is a seventeen year old girls. The world is against her one moment, and then incredibly great the next. Nadine is often a figure of sympathy but just as often, she is unpleasant and spiteful. That is the reason that her sparring matches with Woody Harrelson's Mr. Bruner are so inspired. Harrelson is a High School teacher that is not really inspirational like Robin Williams in "Dead Poets Society", or sympathetic like Nick Nolte in "Teachers" (notice how dated my references are? Yeah, I'm old) , instead he is just an average man who has enough life experience to recognize a drama queen and separate it from a future tragedy. Instead of taking her suicide threat seriously and turning her emotional tantrum into an even bigger deal, he counters her with the same biting, sardonic attitude that she exudes. She may not recognize it, but he is a kindred soul who has managed to live life with some satisfaction, in spite of the bitter attitude he owns and can see reflected in Nadine. He has the advantage of having grown up. Not everyone reaches that degree of maturity, and it is Craig's writing that lets us see that Nadine's future does not have to be horrible, all she has to do is look at the guy in front of her.

Because Nadine's story does have a bitter piece of tragedy in it, we are able to understand her anger a little more. That does not excuse the way in which she treats her Mother and Brother. These two characters are also imperfect, but they manage to grow a little in the course of the film. Kyra Sedgwick is Nadine's Mother Mona. She is prickly and self centered and a little desperate. In other words, she is Nadine in thirty years. Blake Jenner is Darian, her perfect older brother. I saw Jenner earlier this year in "Everybody Wants Some!" . His character is not a antagonist, but Nadine wants to make him one. His big emotional scene near the end of the film felt really honest without goingover the top. Another great find in the movie is Hayden Szeto ( what is with all the first names starting with Hay in this movie). He plays a classmate of Nadines, who actually wants a relationship, but for whom Nadine is too blinded by her attitude to take seriously. He was terrific as a quiet kid with a lot more depth to him than anyone would notice, a common character in these kinds of movies but one that is probably as real as any other.

The film does have it's share of laughs but it is closer in tone to "Pretty in Pink" than "Sixteen Candles".  The bittersweet nature of growing up gets mixed with some outrageous moments of dialogue or action. There is a bonus animated sequence in the movie that also provokes both laughter and a sharp jab of honest teen age self righteousness. My daughter has a friend who saw this film and thought she was going in to see a teen comedy, and instead she said she saw a movie about a teenager. That's a very fair assessment of the film. It is ultimately more serious than comedic, but those moments of humor are what help make the characterizations here acceptable. It is a bit strange that one relationship in the film can be managed with a simple text of two letters, but it is a credit to the director, that those two letters are so satisfying. That sort of thing happens a lot in the movie and it is what makes this film special.

Moana

Back in 1991, I took my two small children, 3 and 5 at the time, to see "Beauty and the Beast". It was one of my favorite memories of their childhood and my fatherhood. They loved the movie and my oldest was so passionately involved that she cried out to warn Belle and the Beast when the villagers are led by Gaston in an attack on the castle. Three years ago, I saw "Frozen" and I imagined that little girls would love it much as my kids had responded to the '91 film, and it seems they did. My youngest daughter, 26 at the time was unimpressed, and while I thought it was a fine film, it did not have the same impact on me as the early film did. Today I saw a movie that reminded me so much of that late November 1991 experience, I wished I had two small children to share it with. Nostalgia, not being what it once was, leaves me to respond to this movie mostly on my own. "Moana" is great.

Pins a got as a Premiere Stubbs Card Holder at The AMC Theater Today

I don't think I even saw a teaser for the movie before we went today. I'd listened to a podcast or two where it had been discussed, and since I mostly avoid reading reviews until after I have seen a movie, this was really more surprise than I had anticipated. The look of the animation is marvelous. The characters are designed to accurately depict south sea island people and the characters of "Moana", her father and grandmother but especially "Maui" are spectacularly authentic and beautiful. The opening sequence with Moana as a toddler, being called to the ocean is charming as all get out. Even the animated water tentacle that reminded me so much of the early CGI work in "The Abyss" had personality to it. The island home is lush and the people, songs and way of life are the sorts of things that drab landlubbers are going to dream of when they imagine escaping to a deserted island and retiring to the good life.

There are some of the same patterns of defiance, growth and independence by a young girl that I saw in the story of Belle 25 years ago. There is also a character song like in so many of these films, where the heroine sings of her dreams and obligations and the burden that she feels. So it might seem that the story is conventional Disney Princess territory. I think that's going to be a cliche that gets used anytime a young girl is the featured character in a Disney story and I think it's a little unfair. "Moana" is very different, especially in one of the most important ways. Unlike Ariel, Belle, Mulan, Rapunzel and the rest, there is no love story here. Romance is not part of this equation, unless you count the love that Moana has for her island home and people. This is a very straightforward quest film with high adventure and a lot of humor built in, but there is no subplot about marriage or choosing the one you feel the most for. The writers of the story seem to have drawn heavily from Polynesian mythology, but almost certainly there are the usual Disney variations to keep the story on track and simplify the points being made. I thought it was a unique perspective and made the peoples of the area so interesting to me. There were some similar themes in "Whale Rider" from 2002.

Auli'i Cravalho is a nice discovery as the voice of "Moana". I loved the line readings she gives as she practices the speech she plans on giving to Maui when she tracks him down. The greatest treasure in the film however is the presence of a man who might have at one time been a punchline in the film business, but today stands astride the movie world as a major star and an ambassador of goodwill from film makers everywhere. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson has charisma oozing out of his whole body, and it fills the screen here, even though he does not appear on the screen and only his voice is used to act his character. The animators do their job to make Maui fun and interesting. He is a bit of a goat to begin with, but a very confident demi-god and able to ignore his own transgression, up to a point. His performance of the Lin-Manuel Miranda song, "You're Welcome", is right up there with "Gaston" and "Prince Ali" as odes to characters that are self inflated and hysterical at the same time. The use of tribal tattoos on his body to tell his backstory and his faults is a brilliant story telling trick that works very well for an animated feature.  It's one of the many things that reminded me of that soon to be live action film, just as the film makers in Beauty and the Beast found a way to make the story sing with the anthropomorphic furniture, the drawing on Maui's body let us know more about the character without having to leave the main plot. 

There are at least two very entertaining sequences where Maui and Moana have to work together to overcome adversaries. The Kakamora warrior attack will remind you of every Mad Max film. The chase across the ocean looks like something right out of "Fury Road". While  I was less impressed with the fight against Tamatoa, the jewel encrusted crab monster, it still had a number of clever bits to it and again, it shows the creativity of the film from a number of different points.  There were times in which I felt I was watching something a little more strange than is expected from a Disney film. The Ocean voyage was sometimes reminiscent of a Japanese Anime film. There were some meta jokes about the whole "Princess" concept, and the focus on the two main characters was much more involved than the usual pack of side kicks and comic relief.

This has been a particularly good year for animated features. For once , Pixar is unlikely to be the favorite at Oscar Time. I might still give the edge to "Kubo and the Two Strings", but "Moana" is a worthy entry and I thought it was very much more fulfilling than even some of the most financially successful animated films this year. If you have kids, take them and make it a special holiday excursion. Get them some popcorn, go Christmas shopping afterwards, and laugh with them over the jokes in this movie. I think you will be making a memory for them which will be something they can treasure decades from now. I wish I had grand kids that I could have taken to see this movie, but if you go because of anything I wrote here, it will be a little bit like I was there, taking you to see it. Merry Christmas memories to you.

Allied

This movie feels really old fashioned and stilted. Usually a Robert Zemekis film is dynamic and the performances are energetic. The two quite attractive stars are mostly just being attractive and it frequently feels like they are play acting instead of acting acting. I am having a hard time putting my finger on it, but this film feels like a misfire to me. Maybe it would have been more intriguing if the premise of the film were not given up in the trailers, and instead we were allowed to find the drama on our own. Instead, I felt like I was watching for clues and waiting for a tell as the story played ourt.

So may shortcuts in story are necessary to keep a film going, but there are really a lot of steps missing in the opening of the film. Brad Pitt puts on his Paul Henreid white suit and traipses around Casablanca looking for the letters of transit. No wait, that's a different and much better film. Instead he acts surly toward his contacts and disregards his own personal rules when operating behind enemy lines. The most attractive woman in the country is his implanted contact, and together they plot an act of terror that in war time counts as espionage activity. It requires a brutal disregard of emotions, except of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walked into his. Whoops, slipped again. In truth, nothing will bring characters with no common background together quicker than participating in an assassination.

The contrivances in the first part of the film that are designed to sell Pitt and Marion Cotillard as a couple are cute but don't really make sense since her husband really is supposed to be a stranger to the city. Their romantic clutch in the car in the desert reminded me so much of that moment when she pulled the gun on him and demanded the letters of transit for her husband, damn, I keep slipping. The next thing you know they escape French Morocco and he awaits her arrival in Paris, I mean London.

A montage of events come by in a blur, including the birth of their child in the midst of a blitz that sees her delivering on the street while all around are being bombed. It is perhaps the second corniest moment in the film, and we are expected to accept it without much preparation or set up, it just happens. When the turn that was revealed from the very first trailer arrives, we get a sequence of events that is too cliched to believe. Pitt disobeys orders and conducts his own investigation. Peter Lorre shows up at a party at their house and begs for Pitt to hide him, no, sorry again, a guy who mysteriously sells jewellery to lonely housewives during the war, appears along with every horny couple in London looking for a place to shag. Pitt chases down leads in a reckless manner, including his own expedition into Nazi occupied France where Captain Renault lies for him to the German High Command. No, that's not right, a local French policeman sells the resistance out to the Nazis and a battle occurs where our hero single handily defeats the Germans, before he flies back to England on a plane he commandeered from the Royal Air Force and managed to get to the Continent and back on without stirring any anti-aircraft fire.

True love triumphs in the end as the situation is resolved. I have done the best that I can to avoid spoilers but I will say that Boogie and Claude Raines do not walk off into a beautiful friendship. Instead another pair walks off into the future with the aura of love hanging over them. Maybe I make it sound like I did not like this film. I liked it well enough but not well enough to suggest that anyone else bother to see it. I frequently have low standards when it comes to romantic-WWII movies and desert intrigue. My guess is most of you do not.

Rules Don't Apply

Director Warren Beatty has wanted to do a biopic about Howard Hughes for years. After Scorsese put together "The Aviator"  more than a decade ago, I thought he would have abandoned the project. Instead, it seems he retooled it to focus on a different aspect of the legendary billionaire's life, and turned it into a fantasy love story where the main figure is only tangentially a part of the romance. Hughes is the most interesting character in this film, but he is not the lead. Earlier this year I thought that "Swiss Army Man" might be the strangest film I saw in 2016, we now have a worthy competitor for that title.

This movie is a disjointed drama which takes strong comedic elements and focuses on them without maintaining the tone very well. Hughes' eccentricities are a big part of what drives the story, and the greatest asset the film has is Beatty's performance as the sometimes manic genius/playboy that could give Tony Stark a few lessons in arrogance. Beatty is sometimes genial and quiet as he interacts with the two young people who have entered his sphere. He seems quirky and charming but not particularly mad. As the story goes on though, the quirks become obsessions and the charm turns into dangerous mania. Beatty has been a notoriously odd interview subject for his whole career.  In a Rolling Stone story in the early 1990s, his pauses and quirks were the featured players and deserved their own story. What he has done here is turn those peculiarities into a character that fits the billionaire eccentric to a tea. His performance is a combination of befuddle silences and questioning expressions as he sits in semi-dark locations and frequently refuses to interact with his business associates and confidants. I'm not sure how much is acting and how much is just Beatty putting his real self in front of the camera.

The two young people who mix in the life of Hughes are Alden Ehrenreich's Frank Forbes, an ambitious young Methodist from Fresno and Lily Collins who plays Marla Mabrey, a contest winner from Virginia. Both of them are employees of Howard but in very different capacities. She is a contract player for a film that Hughes appears to have no intention of ever producing, while he is a driver for her and eventually Hughes himself. When the story is about the budding attraction they feel for each other and the complications of their religious upbringing, is is a mildly dull romance. When Hughes stirs things up, it becomes more interesting but it takes so long to get to that point, and once we do, there are so many tangents that get followed, that the story loses any focus. Except for the song that Collins writes, we don't really get why Howard is drawn to Marla, except that she might be venereal disease free.

The film is loaded with stuff that I would like regardless of the subject. Most of it is centered in Southern California and Las Vegas in the late 50's and early 60's. As stock footage of Hollywood Boulevard from the era is rolled out in the background, I could remember the look of the locations myself, having spent a lot of time in Hollywood as a kid. There are some very nice touches as the town becomes a player in the story. The house where Marla awaits her big chance is in the hills above the Hollywood Bowl, so he nights are filled with classical music from the L.A. Philharmonic. Palm Springs is referred to as a dream destination for weekends  out of town. And the Beverly Hills Hotel, which still looks much the way it did at the time, becomes a place where Hughes can play hide and seek from the people he needs to speak with but won't. Cinematographer Caleb Deschanel gives an appropriate romantic era look to the proceedings which also does a lot to sell the movie.

The problems with the film are it's pacing and schizophrenic story telling. There are truly moments of pleasure as the story develops, but in the end it feels like the life Hughes himself must have lead, chaotic and neurotic.   The charm of the actors is not really enough to make the film come alive and it meanders around, showing a great sense of style but without any purpose. I'm glad I saw this but I can't say it is a good film. For every moment of wonder and joy, there are two that just induce shoulder shrugging and impatience.