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Scream 6 (2023)

Mar 22

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When horror franchises dramatically shift their locations to somewhere new, like New York City, it’s usually a bad sign that the series is desperately looking for new creative life. Not every franchise can rebound like a Leprechaun in Space. Most of them just become another Jason Takes Manhattan, where now instead of Character Group A running and dying from the masked killer, it’s now Character Group B running and dying from the same masked killer. It’s more reminiscent of cartoons where the backgrounds might change but the on screen events are stuck in the same drab routines. The Scream franchise was rebooted with 2022’s satisfying fifth installment, so I hoped that a sixth Scream could at least exceed where so many others have failed. Those hopes were quickly fulfilled in what I consider to be one of the best sequels of the seminal slasher series with all of its air-quote irony.

There are more than a few entertaining new turns as the bloody hi-jinks head to the Big Apple. It feels bloodier and gorier than most of the Scream movies, but it also has well-developed suspense sequences that work extremely well at making you squirm. Every brutal burst of violence elicited a “oomph” exhalation from me, and I found myself tensing up as the initial scene constructions transformed. I was quite enjoying myself from set piece to set piece. Take for instance an escape that requires the characters to flee from one high-rise window to another across an alley via a rickety ladder. Or take a subway escape packed with masked Halloween revelers to make you paranoid who among the many Ghostfaces might be the potential killer (I enjoyed the other costumes of horror old and new – I saw you Midsommar May Queen). Even a hide and seek sequence inside a convenience store can be thrilling. All credit to returning Scream 5 directors Matt Bettinelli-Opin and Tyler Gillet, the same pair that delivered 2019’s wonderfully twisted Ready or Not. These gentlemen have proven that they know how to squeeze the most tension from any scenario no matter how bizarre. I loved that the opening kill (Ready or Night alum Samara Weaving) goes in a different direction, revealing the culprit right away, and then it goes in even another direction. There are still some new cool tricks to be had with the sixth installment in a 27-year-old horror series.

I was asked if you had to watch any of the prior Scream movies to enjoy Scream 6, and while it’s not necessary, you will be missing out on some of the larger connective tissue and themes. You should definitely have familiarity with Scream 5 since it’s a direct sequel and continuation of the core (four) characters. I was surprised how much more emotional resonance I found with the Carpenter sisters than any of the other characters, new or legacy, from the earlier movies. I think it was smart having Sam (Melissa Barrera) be the daughter of the first Ghostface as was her seeing visions of her late father, this time as an adult Skeet Ulrich, which might have been the wrong choice considering the character never lived to be this age (is her imagination doing one of those age approximations you see for runaway kids?). Our lead heroine is trying to navigate where her instincts are taking her, which might be a darker path that she feels trepidation about ignoring for only so long. Sam’s therapist balks when he discovers her actual parentage, which makes him maybe the worst therapist. Her relationship with her younger sister Tara (Jenna Ortega) is more complex than any of the close friendships of Sydney Bristow. Even with all the carnage and bloodshed, Scream 6 still finds breather moments to let the sisters react realistically to their dilemma and how it affects their own relationship. I’m glad these characters returned because they serve as the emotional focal point of an otherwise famously glib franchise.

The biggest drawback from Scream 6 is the tacit understanding that this will not be the final film in the franchise given its box-office success, the first film to cross the $100 million-dollar threshold since 1997’s Scream 2. This feels like a culminating climax as the characters now view their lives not as their own but as part of a “franchise,” which means the stories will keep going on beyond them and that nobody is safe, not even the “leads.” For a series entrenched in heavy meta-textual irony, it feels like it’s reaching the end of its genre self-awareness cycle when the movie acknowledges itself as its own IP. The scope of the movie is retrospective, not just reaching back and acknowledging the history of where things began for the legacy characters but for every movie. Each one of the former Ghostfaces is being collected and commented upon, with murder nerd Easter eggs left at each crime scene or in its contextual arrangement. It’s the kind of totality that I would expect from a movie franchise coming to an end, and nodding at its various twists and turns, finding places to even include elements from the lesser beloved Scream sequels. There’s even an unspoken satirical jab at the number of characters that miraculously survive, as if the film is throwing up its hands and saying why not, as if this is the last movie and the rules of who survives and who dies are inconsequential because we’re subverting expectations, as we’ve been explicitly told, so expect the unexpected.

The other aspect of this drawback involves some slight spoilers but I’ll try and tread lightly. After our genre-savvy movie geek explains the stakes of this new episode, the characters start to review one another as potential suspects, and the new supporting characters even cast an accusing eye on the returning characters saying they could have cracked from their trauma. There’s emphasis on the drive to subvert expectations and break away from the patterns of old.

And here is where I’ll venture into some light spoilers so if you want to skip ahead to the next paragraph, please do so, dear reader. There is an ongoing thread where an Internet subculture has re-framed the Carpenter sisters as the real villains of their own horrendous story, and it’s an intriguing element that brings the echo chambers and confirmation bias and novice sleuths-in-the-making of the Internet to further examination. It’s reminiscent of any bottom-feeding conspiracy that asks people to pick apart their reality for “the real story” magically hidden in plain sight. The Scream franchise is famous for its fun guessing game of who the real killers could be from our gallery of suspects, and Scream 6 is no exception. However, the subversion that could have really separated this Scream from its elders is by having the killers actually be… nobodies (the Rian Johnson twist). What if the mask comes off and it’s a brand new character? I’m sure many viewers would feel like they had been betrayed, but then the point emerges that it’s simply some conspiracy theorist who has gone full-tilt crazy into the cult and taken matters into their own hands, attempting to hold “the real killers” to account or to prove they were truly guilty. And the larger point is that the “fake news” has already won out. It doesn’t matter what happens from here, what news coverage should stamp out ignorance, because you can’t pull every cult member out of their self-inflicted cocoon of delusion, which means there will always be more to take their place. That’s the legacy of what has transpired, that there will never be a real escape any longer. I thought that would be such a jarring and thematically intriguing and summative ending.

For the many fans of the slasher series, I believe Scream 6 retains plenty of the same pleasures of its prior movies while stretching out into new and interesting directions. It helps that I cared about the central sisters, at least enough by the low bar of horror movie standards. It’s bloody, fun, twisty, and satisfying enough that it could have served as a capper for the entire franchise. But it won’t be. I look forward to this new creative team re-evaluating trilogies better than Scream 3 did. In the meantime, this is a bloody good time to be had for long-term fans and newcomers from the 2022 reboot alike.

Nate’s Grade: B

Posted in 2023 Movies

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The Novice (2021)

Jan 6

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The Novice could be deemed “the Whiplash for rowing,” and that is it in a nutshell but it also distinguishes itself separately from that Oscar-winning 2014 indie. Debut writer/director Lauren Hadaway was actually on the sound editing team behind Whiplash, and that’s her area of expertise with over 40 credits, and right away you can tell her attention to details as far as filmmaking being an immersive experience for the viewer. It’s been nominated for five Independent Spirit Awards, including Beat Feature, Best Director, and Best Actress. It’s the little indie that could right now, though it also seems like the kind of well-received indie that gets forgotten around award season. That would be a shame, because while not quite at the level of Whiplash, this is a hypnotic and visceral and disturbing portrait of competitive obsession.

Alex Dall (Isabelle Furhman) is a freshman for her East Coast university. She joins the crew team with the goal of being the best. Her coaches encourage her competitive spirit but even they try and warn her to take it easier with her relentless training regiment. Nothing else matters to her.

You feel Hadaway’s background in sound design, how she uses it to disorient and produce a rhythm to her movie, the inhale and exhale of pushing one’s self to their physical limit. It’s accompanied by dizzying edits that feel completely matched by their auditory components (Hadaway also served as a co-editor). It’s frenetic and places you in the mindset of our protagonist, whose single desire is to be the best no matter what. That solitary focus blurs out the outside world, so when we get into trance-like states of close-ups, repetitive edits, and slow-motion extensions, we feel trapped inside her restless state of mind. One critic compared the training montages to the drug use montages from Requiem for a Dream, and this is completely accurate. Alex would never view herself as an addict but that’s precisely what she is. Her personal addiction is at winning, and winning at all costs and being the best.

In Whiplash, Miles Teller’s protagonist was a capable drummer that wanted to be excellent. He already had talent and was pushed to the brink by his monstrous teacher/drill sergeant/abusive father figure. Alex throws herself into unfamiliar situations. She is a physics major even though she doesn’t really like or understand the subject. She joins the rowing team even though she lacks any experience whatsoever. And yet, she still sets her sights on the near impossible. She doesn’t want to be the best freshman, and she doesn’t just want to join the varsity squad; she wants to break all the individual records as soon as possible for a team sport. A normal person would view these goals as unrealistic and potentially out of reach, but that’s the point for Alex. It’s the best or nothing, and her toxic win-at-all-costs mentality is even more toxic because she expects to win even in the most unlikely scenarios. It would be like never driving a car and expecting to win the Indy 500. That adds a different dynamic for Alex but it also makes her even more self-destructive and misanthropic.

The movie becomes a tale of obsession, a downward spiral much akin to an addiction narrative. Alex gradually cuts off all other parts of herself she deems to be a distraction. It’s only small moments where we try and catch a different definition of Alex, the version of her when she might allow herself to relax, but this feels like the “weak Alex” that she’s trying to snuff out, because there shall be no other version of Alex except the one in service to her goal. When she starts having a potential relationship with her T.A. (model Dilone), you think this might be the character’s off ramp, an opportunity for her to settle and realize something else that is meaningful, building an interpersonal relationship. It becomes another distraction to remove. This achieves the artistic vision of showing the mental and physical decline of Alex. Everything in the movie is likewise in service of serving Alex’s grueling goal. However, this also makes her a less dimensional character. If all we know about her is how obsessive she can become, then we’re left to pick up whatever other scraps we’re given to piece together a fuller understanding of her. Perhaps Hadaway doesn’t want any definition beyond Alex’s obsessions. It makes the character less complicated and by extension less compelling, but there is that rubbernecking quality of just watching to see how far she will go before reaching a breaking point. Maybe even death?

This movie would not work as mightily without the committed performance by Fuhrman (Orphan, The Hunger Games). She’s been working ever since she was a child but this is a breakthrough performance for the actress. The intensity of her performance is so conveyed that you might feel like you had a workout yourself. The actress gained ten pounds of muscle over the course of the punishing film experience and athletic training. I had to imagine the movie was shot linearly so they could trace her physical transformation, but I haven’t confirmed it.

Another sound area that greatly elevates the movie is the stirring score by Alex Weston (The Farewell). This is my favorite film score of 2021. It is haunting, moody, and appropriately frantic, with jangling strings and a propulsion that echoes its main character. It has an easy presence of sliding in and out, mimicking the pace of the compulsive training, and standout tracks include the motif “Training” and “Legs Body Arms” and “Seat Race.” Listen to it, folks. Weston has put together greatness and deserves far more recognition than he is being given.

The Novice could do worse than patterning itself after Whiplash, one of the best films of the last decade. What it lacks in originality and characterization it makes up for in execution, immersing the viewer in the insane obsessions of its lead character. Film has always been an empathetic medium and sometimes it’s a trip into the dark side of the human psyche. Why is Alex this way? It’s unknown. Will she ever break free from this toxic mentality? It’s unknown. Even the ending leaves you with enough ambiguity to wonder what Alex will do now. Is she fulfilled, has she had some important introspective breakthrough, or will she never be satisfied, always finding a new mountain to climb even as her body gets painted in bruises and scars? The Novice is an impressive film debut for Hadaway. It’s not the most in-depth movie from a substance standpoint, but the packaging, presentation, and style give it something extra special.

Nate’s Grade: B+

Posted in 2021 Movies

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Shithouse (2020)

Nov 27

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This should have been a winner for me. I’m a fan of mumblecore dramas that drop you into people’s ordinary lives. They’re character-driven and built upon naturalistic dialogue that can still be compelling and revealing of its participants. However, Shithouse seems to have found that middle zone between stylized dialogue and naturalistic dialogue; throughout the 100 minutes, the movie involves ordinary people sounding like they’re having real conversations, which means they are generally boring. If you were eavesdropping on these people in real life you would leave. There’s a fine difference between natural but still plot-driving and engaging dialogue and dithering dialogue that holds to the awkward starts and stops of real life but fails to keep your attention. Just because the scene feels realistic does not mean it is the same as being interesting. Writer/director Cooper Raiff stars as Alex, a college freshman with a serious case of homesickness. He spends one long night with his RA, Maggie (Dylan Gelula), and it feels like maybe these two will connect and become romantic. The problem with Shithouse is that it feels like each half-hour is its own different movie. The first is introducing an emotionally fragile young man having difficulty adjusting to collegiate life away from his family. The problem is that I didn’t care about Alex and I didn’t find him being mopey intriguing. It took too long to open him up. The next part is the film’s best and it’s Alex and Maggie spending hours together walking, chatting, having little adventures on the path to burying her dead turtle. It’s the best part of the film and where I felt the movie was starting to coalesce, even with a protracted setup. This is the Before Sunrise part. However, the next morning, Alex and Maggie seem to have very different views of their long night and eventual hookup. He’s overloading her with messages and she’s being distant and indifferent, and this is where the movie becomes like 500 Days of Summer, holding up for scrutiny the romantic aspirations of those grown up with the media of pop-culture happy endings. Had Raff left us in this direction, I could even argue that his structure served a larger point of condemning his protagonist’s viewpoint. I might not enjoy it but I could mildly respect it. However, Shithouse then undoes this part with a resolution set two-plus years in the future that doesn’t feel earned and is tonally disjointed from this prior section. If this was the intent, then why did Raiff even prolong us with this extended morass of missed Instagram messages and angry outbursts over misreading what the night meant to both parties? Regardless, there are glimmers and moments in this gentle little movie that worked, that hit upon a deeper truth, but mostly you’re stuck with dull people having boring conversations.

Nate’s Grade: C+

Posted in 2020 Movies

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Wonder Boys (2000) [Review Re-View]

May 23

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Originally released February 25, 2000:

A rather warm but ultimately meandering tale of Michael Douglas as a college professor going through one crisis after another, Tobey Maguire as a creepy kid (again?!), and Robert Downey Jr. as an editor who seems to have a taste for transvestites. Though likable, Wonder Boys goes nowhere and nowhere slow. It carries the feel of a novel that was never intended to be brought onto the screen because of what it would lose in transition and it does. Douglas’ performance is sincere and syrupy but Wonder Boys is not a night out on the town.

Nate’s Grade: C+

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WRITER REFLECTIONS 20 YEARS LATER

This was another film that I was curious to revisit because I was wondering whether or not I would find more of value than when I was 17-years-old and seeing Wonder Boys at a rare promotional screening with my good pals Kevin Lowe and Natalia Riviera (I recall none of us being particularly taken with the movie). It’s based upon an acclaimed book by Michael Chabon (The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier & Clay, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union), starring the eventual first big screen Spider-Man (Tobey Maguire), Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), the first Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes), and Oscar-winner Frances McDormand (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri). It was director Curtis Hanson’s follow-up from his 1997 masterpiece, L.A. Confidential. The screenwriter, Steven Kloves, would go on to adapt every Harry Potter movie minus one. The studio even re-released the movie later in the fall of 2000 under new more ensemble-focused marketing to push for awards consideration (to my surprise, it was nominated for three Oscars: Editing, Adapted Screenplay, and winning Best Song for a craggy Bob Dylan tune). Maybe my indifferent review earlier was just a young man unable to connect with this brand of middle-class ennui. Now two decades later I can finally say… I still don’t connect with this ennui.

Wonder Boys is one of those shaggy dog stories where it’s not so much the destination but the journey, so you better enjoy the characters or else it will feel like a long ride. The problem with this story is that its protagonist feels so self-pitying and yet the universe seems designed to cheer him up. Grady Tripp (Douglas) is a celebrated creative writing professor just going through his days in a pot-fueled haze to dull the pressure of living up to his big breakout novel. It’s been over seven years and his next novel has no end in sight, already clocking over 2000 pages. Grady thinks he’s a has-been but every other character in this tiny bourgeois universe tells him how great he is. His publisher (Downey Jr.) is eager to peek at Grady’s next surefire literary hit. His students adore him and hang on his every word. He has multiple women throwing themselves at him, including McDormand, who wants to have his baby, and Holmes as his infatuated student/boarder. Everyone tells him how great he is as a writer. James Leer (Maguire) confesses that it was Grady’s book that inspired him to even be a writer, and he seems poised to become a great one. It’s exhausting for every other significant character to proclaim repeatedly how great our lead is and to have him repeatedly respond, “Yeah, but I just don’t know, you guys.”

Self-doubt is already relatable enough, on top of imposter syndrome for an artist or even just an adult, so the material is there for an introspective story about the struggles of creativity and responsibility, but that’s not what Wonder Boys presents as a movie. It’s filled with zany mishaps to fill up those meandering two hours. There’s Downey Jr. and his wandering eye, first with a trans women and then with James. There’s a man incorrectly labeled “Vernon” who stalks Grady demanding what he says is his car back. There’s also a dead dog that gets carried around for almost the entire movie, even though the plot covers days and it would seem like a very bad idea to continue hauling a decaying animal in one’s car. There’s no real reason why this dog’s corpse is even held onto. It belongs to Grady’s boss, the chair of the English department, and the husband to his mistress (McDormand). Why not dispose of the evidence especially with the personal connections? It’s yet one of several signs of the movie trying to be quirky and edgy over the consequences of character actions. Much of the plot beats follow retrieving a stolen coat once owned by Marilyn Monroe. Does the coat represent something of time gone by? A promise never fully able to be fulfilled? America’s innocence? Does it even matter? If Wonder Boys was going to explore the inner turpitude of Grady, why does the movie need so many dead ends and loping storylines as a means of distraction?

It’s not a terrible viewing experience but it feels like the movie is definitely missing material that made the book so effective. As I stated in my early and remarkably on-point review in 2000, it feels like a novel that would lose its appeal in translation and it has. The plot is treading water until Grady finally makes a big personal decision at the very end. He even gets a happy ending where his next great book is the recollections of the film’s events. The many supporting characters are not as interesting as the actors might make them appear. Even Maguire’s wonderkid writer, where the title is derived from, is a walking awkward quirk machine, an early representation of an autistic student before many of the characteristics were wider recognized. He provides a detached sense of comedy with his bluntly direct approach, like his encyclopedic knowledge of famous Hollywood suicides (fun fact: the home video versions edited out Alan Ladd’s name at request from his family estate). The problem with James as a character is he’s meant to represent promise to Grady, further compounding his sense of inadequacy. He’s the shiny new up-and-coming talent headed for great headlines, the kind Grady might have enjoyed but might now be too far in the rear view mirror. James has his own mini-arc of “cutting loose” but he wasn’t tightly wound from the start, just antisocial and aloof. He’s a symbol by design and an impenetrable autistic mumbly sidekick for offhand comedy observations, not so much a person.

Curtis Hanson’s direction is fine, the acting is fine, and even when relatively uninspired, the story is fine as it meanders and goes in self-defeating circles. It’s a movie that I think will be more remembered for weird little trivia, like a scene where future Iron Man and Spider-Man are in bed together. I don’t regret re-watching Wonder Boys but I didn’t get much more out of the experience than when I was 17. The main character is hard to fully embrace, especially his self-pitying problems of middle-class privilege, and the story is more a collection of chapter-based anecdotes and hasty character resolutions. Even if the two hours is amiable enough, it’s hard to connect with the characters and their conflicts, and it’s a prime example of an adaptation that can’t replicate its specific authorial charms. If I were 17 again, I’d make a pun on the word “wonder” but I’ll refrain. After all, I’ve grown.

Re-View Grade: C+

Posted in 2000 Movies, Review Re-View

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Down to You (2000) [Review Re-View]

May 19

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Originally released January 8, 2000:

The latest sacrifice to almighty gods that are the teenage market with wide pockets arrives and proves not only is the teen comedy dying, it is having its grave danced upon. And with eight inch heels worn by the fiend known as Down To You.

Want an old-fashioned love story? Boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy tries to get girl again, and boy gets girl. Pretty old and pretty much nothing more to Down to You, minus the addition of two porn stars and a nymphomaniac. The story is the same well-beaten path where they keep the leads as far away from each other and just let ’em loose at the end. Everyone hugs and we can all go home. Geez, I’ve seen more substance in a bag of fat-free potato chips.

The movie is very uninteresting and rather pointless as it drones on. Freddie Prinze Jr. can smile all he wants to but I’ll still never believe he’s a down on his luck college coed. At least he’s out of high school in this one. Everything in this movie has a recycled feel to it, so much so that some environmentalist group should confiscate this entire movie. People, it’s that bad. Imagine every cliché, expanded character stereotype, redundant joke, and you still have no idea how bad this script is. What the writer/director believes is quirky and cute falls closer to annoying and irresponsible.

The rest of the actors are faceless unknowns that you might as well search for on the back of a milk carton. Julia Stiles and Freddie Prinze Jr. have zero chemistry between them and are either bickering or blushing in embarrassment. Doesn’t sound like a good relationship worth a dozen flashbacks to me. Stiles at least puts forth an effort but Prinze just runs through the motions of another teen flick for his resume and comes off as nothing more than a mannequin with a goofy grin.

I stand and make a plea; please for the love of God end this Hollywood fascination with high school romantic comedies. It might have been cute to start out with but this trend has run its course. The only way the madness of teen romantic comedies will end is if the teens themselves stop supporting them. Wise up America. Take action! If this comedy is supposed to be about the school of life I’d say it overslept its class.

Nate’s Grade: C-

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WRITER REFLECTIONS 20 YEARS LATER

I’ve been wondering for years if maybe, just maybe, I was too hard on the forgettable rom-com, Down to You. Not that it was a great movie but maybe the 17-year-old version of myself at that time in my senior year of high school had an axe to grind against blandly popular art. I can recall vividly how incensed I felt as a teenager growing up in the 90s with the rise of pop music like Britney Spears and Hanson and boy bands, the idea that these fleeting confections were somehow squeezing out the spaces for the bands and artists that I felt were more deserving of attention, alternative rock bands that were formidable for me, like Smashing Pumpkins and Radiohead. I can feel that intensity in my derogatory use of the term “teenybopper” to describe art that was made for mass appeal. Now, decades hence, I look back at my younger self and wonder why I got so upset about people liking art that didn’t appeal to me and why I felt such a passionate intensity to take down the art I personally disliked. Who cares? You don’t like Taylor Swift’s music? Fine, but what does it matter if others happen to like it? I can appreciate the pop stylings of Ms. Spears and the boy bands of yore. I’ve learned through time not to take offense that people just have different tastes (unless people enjoy the Friedberg-Seltzer “comedies,” because that is all the judgement I need).

That’s why I was wondering whether Down to You was a victim of my teenage animus and might, upon retrospect, perhaps be a better movie than I gave it fair credit for back in 2000, the dawn of a new century. Dear reader, I am here to inform you that, having recently re-watched this Freddie Prince Jr.-Julia Stiles romance, that Down to You is even worse than my teenage-self had warned.

For starters, this movie rings astoundingly inauthentic with every moment. It was written and directed by Kris Isacsson (Husband for Hire) who was close to thirty years old when Down to You was released but it feels like a 50-year-old was trying to replicate the speaking patterns of hip young twenty-somethings and flailing badly. Every word of dialogue just has that unshakable feeling of being off, or bring cringe-worthy, or failing to articulate the rhythms of youth. It’s not even in the Kevin Williamson-Dawson’s Creek style of hyper-verbal, overly clever youth that never existed except in television writers’ rooms. It’s not even entertaining in-authenticity.

These college students sound interchangeable from their older parents; one pompous thespian friend (Zak Orth, channeling Orson Welles) feels completely transported from another movie. He has a test where he challenges Al to drink out of two cups, one representing true love and the other representing illusion. I did not understand the point of this game. I assume it was like Three Card Monty and he had to pick the right one after watching it be shuffled, but that’s just proving Al can follow a cup. This moment is played like some grave insight and it makes no sense. Even more than that, the behavior of the “kids being kids” can be downright cringe-inducing. Imogen will turn on music and walk around lip synching to the adoration of any crowd, but it just feels so awkward to watch, and it happens multiple times. Rosario Dawson (Men in Black II) is a one-note “hippie” friend who makes lame drug jokes. Selma Blair (Hellboy) is an active porn star and an active student at the school but is just a vampy attempt to tempt our male lead. He even keeps naughty pictures of Blair under his bed even after he’s dating Imogen. There’s also Ashton Kutcher (The Butterfly Effect) as an obtuse artist. Every character feels phony and bereft of charm and wit.

Romantic comedies live and die on two things: 1) your level of amusement in the characters, and 2) the chemistry of the lead characters. Down to You regrettably whiffs on both accounts. These are very boring characters and even by the end of the movie we know very little about them. Al says he wants to be a chef but we never see him do any cooking on his own, which seems like quite an oversight for a budding relationship. She’s an aspiring artist and we at least see her paint and describe why she likes art. Isacsson employs a Woody Allen-esque device where both participants break the fourth wall from the future to talk about their relationship ups and downs. You would think this framing device would allow for better insights and you’d be wrong. At one point, Imogen leaves for France for three or more months for an internship. You would think this would provide a difficult period for boyfriend and girlfriend to adjust and maintain intimacy, perhaps throwing some question over whether they’re fully invested. One minute later, she’s back and this entire excursion has meant nothing to their relationship. Why even include it?

Their coupledom feels as inorganic as everything else, and this is magnified by the powerful lack of chemistry between Prinze Jr. (She’s All That) and Stiles (The Bourne Identity). You don’t feel any urge compelling Al and Imogen to get together because they seem like chummy friends at best. When they have sex for the first time, three months into their collegiate relationship, the camera slowly lingers over their faces and uncomfortably frames their dispassionate and awkward kissing far too long. I defy anyone to watch that scene and argue that these two people have a spark of chemistry. I even hate their names. “Imogen” feels like it’s trying too hard and “Al” not hard enough. With the poor character writing, bad plotting and development, and no palpable chemistry, it makes Down to You feel like a painfully confounding experience lacking romance and comedy.

I was amazed at Isacsson’s sense of scene building and how wrong many of the endings come across. A scene, when well written, should serve as its own mini-movie with a beginning, middle, and end, and hopefully some conflict to explore. In a comedy, the conclusions of scenes would end on an upturn or a downturn but it’s also a good idea for there to be a discernible punchline the previous moment was leading up to. There’s one scene where Al’s roommate (Shawn Hatosy), a peculiar presence throughout that never knows what to do in any given moment, is drunk at a party and talking to an inflatable gorilla wearing a brassier. Al grabs the gorilla away and his inebriated roommate whimpers. That’s it. The generally off nature to all the writing is compounded in the comedy writing, which is compounded in its lazy or non-existent punchlines.

The worst example is when Al literally drinks a bottle of Imogen’s shampoo in a misguided suicide attempt. This is the thing I’ll always remember this absurd movie for. Al has his stomach pumped and undergoes a psychological review in the hospital, where he argues he was testing himself to see if he “needed the shampoo” and turns out he still did. This reckless act of self-destruction should provide more insights and changes to our male lead and those around him; he did, after all, attempt to end his life over being distraught from an ex-girlfriend. Al shrugs and it’s forgotten. What was the purpose of doing something this weird and harmful if it wasn’t going to matter in the bigger picture? Don’t transform a suicide attempt into a quirky anecdote for a non-dark comedy. This is what Down to You feels like as a whole, a series of contrived anecdotes crashing against one another.

There is one lone saving grace for this entire enterprise and that’s Henry Winkler (so brilliant on HBO’s Barry) as Al’s father, a famous TV chef who has an exciting idea for a reality TV show. He’s modeling it after Cops, that stalwart of 90s television, but it would be called Chefs. It would feature a traveling truck of chefs that would come to a stranger’s home, prepare a delicious meal, and teach the family how to do it themselves. Not only does that sound like a great idea for a TV show in 2000, I’m positive some show has run with this concept and had great success since. I would have rather watched the movie from Winkler’s point of view trying to get this show on the air and dealing with a son who drinks shampoo as a cry for help.

Looking back on my original review in 2000, I was wincing at how many joke-slams I was attempting at the film’s expense. Look, Down to You is still a bad movie but I didn’t need to add lines like, “I’ve seen more substance in a bag of fat-free potato chips,” and, “if this comedy is about the school of life I’d say it overslept its class.” This was still less than a year into my pursuit of critically reviewing movies, so I think I was forcing ready-made blurb-tendencies. My critical charges were on par but failed to go into more detail and seemed too general, which is why I wondered if my charges were colored by my teenage biases at the time. Given the time and distance, Down to You feels even more phony and confusing to watch as an adult. I was muttering to myself and my girlfriend while re-watching it and trying to understand the distaff storytelling choices. It’s flabbergasting and dated and even worse than I remembered. Down to You might be the nadir of the teen comedy movement from the early 2000s. I will never have to see this again. So, future me reading these words, heed this warning – stay away. Stay far away.

Re-Review Grade: D

Posted in 2000 Movies, Review Re-View

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Life of the Party (2018)/ Breaking In (2018)

May 11

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Just in time for Mother’s Day weekend comes two eminently bland, safe, and unmemorable movies that generally waste their female stars. Melissa McCarthy has proven herself one of the most funny and dynamic performers in comedy, but Life of the Party is a listless and groan-inducing back-to-school comedy that feels tonally off, adopting the persona of its tacky, talky, and awkward middle-aged mother. You would think the premise would lead to plenty of R-rated shenanigans, but instead the film adopts a very sedate PG-13 atmosphere, dulling the wild collegiate experience into something so predictable and safe as to be completely inoffensive. It feels like a caricature reminiscent of a feature-length rendition of a Saved by the Bell: The College Years. McCarthy falls back on tired, corny jokes that don’t attempt to be anything else, and the supporting cast is left to gasp and grasp for anything to spark laughs (special credit Gillian Jacobs for doing everything possible as “coma girl”). McCarthy is best when given room to improvise and discover interesting odd angles for jokes, but she also needs a stronger comedic vision, and that’s not going to come from husband/co-writer/director Ben Falcone (Tammy). It feels like they had a general outline for a comedy and, in grand collegiate tradition, pulled an all-nighter and sloppily finished a serviceable draft. I chuckled about four times, mostly involving an exuberant Maya Rudolph and the one clever structural payoff revolving around a much younger fraternal hookup. Mostly, Life of the Party lacks a sense of stakes, credibility, surprises, development, and laughs, though the middle-aged mothers in my preview screening lapped it up, so take my opinion with a grain of salt if the trailer seemed moderately appealing for you.

On the other side, Breaking In is a mundane, low-budget home invasion thriller that disappears almost instantly from memory. I’m struggling to even come up with enough to say in this review that isn’t just repetitions of the word “boring.” Gabrielle Union (Bring it On) plays a mom who brings her two children to visit the estate of her recently deceased, estranged father. Also visiting is a trio of stupid robbers searching for a hidden stash of money. They take the kids hostage though keep them locked in a room and in little danger. Union’s determined mother must break in and save her children. It’s a thriller without anything genuinely thrilling to experience, as each chase or near miss hums along ineptly and tediously, finding the least interesting conclusion. There are no well-drawn suspense set pieces to quicken the pulse, no clever escapes or near-misses, no intriguing villains with strong personalities, and no entertainment to be had through its strained 88 minutes. There are glaring plot holes, chief among them why doesn’t she just flag down a car and call the police rather than hack it alone. Depressingly, Breaking In is actually directed by James McTeigue (V for Vendetta) who seems to have exhausted any sense of style and excitement he may have had earlier in his directing career. It feels like nobody really cared about the movie they were making, and that lack of enthusiasm and effort translates into one very boring and very poorly written and executed thriller. Union deserved a better showcase but, then again, the audience deserved a better movie too.

Nate’s Grades:

Life of the Party: C-

Breaking In: D+

Posted in 2018 Movies

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Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising (2016)

May 23

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zac-efron-neighbors-2-poster-baywatch-set-01The first Neighbors was a pleasant surprise, a gross-out comedy with heart, cross-generational appeal, and a surprising degree of sincere attention to round out its cast and supporting characters. For my money it was a comedy that checked all the boxes. Now two years later comes a sequel that looks to repeat just about all the plot mechanics of the first except with a sorority replacing the fraternity. It looks like it’s checking the standard more-of-the-same sequel boxes. I was again pleasantly surprised, especially how little Neighbors 2 repeated the comic setups and jokes of the original (the malignant comedy disease known as Austin Powers Sequel Syndrome) and how much I still enjoyed these characters. Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne are now expecting their second child and trying to sell their house. They have to pass a 30-day escrow period without their buyers rescinding their purchase. That’s when Chloe Grace Moritz transforms the next door home into an off-campus sorority. She’s appalled at the gross and derogatory nature of fraternity-hosted parties and an unfairly arbitrary rule that sororities can’t host parties. She and a couple one-note stock fiends throw a female-friendly party house (Feminist Icon parties and bawling your eyes out to The Fault in Our Stars) where they won’t cotton to uncheck male ego. I was laughing throughout the movie with some big laughs at key points. Rogen and Byrne maintain a wonderful comic dynamic and the warring generations premise can still produce plenty of entertaining set pieces. The jokes can be sly and come at you from different angles, taking you be surprise (a “bun in the oven” joke had me almost spit out my drink). There are some things that don’t quite work, mostly how listless and self-involved the female coeds come across and some of their hollow arguments in the name of feminism. I guess equality does mean that women can behave as badly as men. Neighbors 2 replaces a bit of the heart of the first film with an excess of slapstick. There’s also a weird corporate synergistic tie-in with Minions that never quite settles. Still, Neighbors 2 is a satisfying sequel that reminds you what you enjoyed about the first film while not being indebted to what made it succeed.

Nate’s Grade: B

Posted in 2016 Movies

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Neighbors (2014)

May 16

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neighbors_xlgThe first side-splitter of the summer, Neighbors is a bawdy comedy that has enough big laughs that you may miss how well it draws its characters, punctuating preconceptions. The premise is boiled down to family versus frat, as a pair of new parents (Seth Rogen, Rose Byrne) has a college fraternity, lead by Zac Efron, move next door. You expect the raucous humor, and there are plenty of well-conceived visual gags and payoffs. I did not expect to like the characters as much or see different shades of them. Rogen and Byrne are not yet ready to be official grown-ups, and their attempts to hang with the frat parties are hilarious as well as cringe-inducing. I especially appreciated that Byrne is given the chance to be just as careless and selfish as the men; there’s even a fight between husband and wife who is the Kevin James in their relationship. Byrne is terrific and deserves even more work that lets her cut loose and be in on the joke. Then there are the frat brothers who could easily come across as brainless hedonists, and many do, but Efron and his co-bro Dave Franco have an engaging relationship where they fear what happens next after school. The movie’s theme isn’t subtle (fear of growing up) but provides enough extra substance to make the film more than the sum of its jokes. And it’s quite funny. Rogen and Byrne have great chemistry, their angry riffs are often amusing, and the escalating tit-for-tat prank war is memorable and entertaining. Neighbors works on a cross-generational level; as a man in my 30s, I related to Rogen and Byrne’s plight but also their shifting concepts of what they consider fun that they once may have mocked in their younger years (“I love brunch”). Neighbors builds to a nice climax, the cast is uniformly funny, and with enough surprising shades with the characters, it satisfies the R-rated funny bone.

Nate’s Grade: B

Posted in 2014 Movies

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Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)

Jul 4

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Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen pretty much sells itself. More giant freaking robots. That was enough to make the first movie a worldwide blockbuster. My own teenaged brother-in-law, when he first saw the first Transformers movie, declared it his favorite live action film. Director Michael Bay completely empties his creative cupboard into a bladder-unfriendly two and a half hour endurance test. It’s too bad that that cupboard was bare when it came to story.

Sam (Shia LaBeouf) is headed off to college, and he’s leaving behind his girlfriend Mikaela (Megan Fox) and robot guardian, Bumblebee. Optimus Prime and the other Autobots have been working with the U.S. government to hunt down Decepticons around the globe. There?s a war on the horizon, and weasely U.S. bureaucrats want the Autobots to take a hike. Sam discovers a tiny shard from the super Cube, which was the source of life for the alien robots. His brain is zapped with an alien language that will lead him to a secret location to a secret ancient machine. The Decepticons want this info and chase after Sam and Mikaela. The biggest bad of them all, The Fallen, is sitting at home waiting to return to Earth and exact interstellar vengeance. The Fallen was foiled in 17,000 B.C. by the Prime family line, and only a Prime can kill him. The Decepticons resurrect their leader Megatron and go about trying to snatch Sam, kill Optimus Prime, and destroy man’s planet.

Bay has been condemned for his erratic ADD-shooting style, and this was the first film where I really felt pounded and punished. To contest that this movie is just “a popcorn summer movie” is just making excuses. What the hell was going on? The movie is simply a blur of colors and noise. Transformers 2 is entirely incoherent, both from a story standpoint and simply from a visual standpoint. Bay at least pulls back his camera so that the audience can identify the fighting robots easier this time; this time it’s not like deciphering scrambled porn. It’s the rest of Bay’s characteristically bombastic display of carnage that suffers. Bay is a man that doesn’t know the meaning of the word “small,” and so nonstop explosions and massive destruction litter the movie. Sam is always running or riding in his car to escape. At one point, Sam and his posse hide in a campus library only to have the building turned into cinders (showing Bay’s opinion on what books are really good for). But what exactly is happening? Why does it matter? What are the obstacles? Everything is way too busy and accomplishing so little. Half of the movie consists of the human character running and screaming. It’s excessively excessive and taxingly so.

A strong example of the film’s incoherence is the 40-minute climax set amidst the pyramids of Egypt. At no point does Bay establish the geography or bother to let the audience follow along. The stakes and parameters have not been made adequately understandable. Ordinarily, in large action sequences there will be different groups of segments and we’ll watch each progress. Here we disjointedly cut back and forth between the groups but I have no idea what?s going on, where the characters are, where they need to be, and what is stopping them. Megatron calls down 13 different evil Decepticon robots to take part in the climactic battle but Bay never introduces these new figures; they get no setup to explain each of their unique weapons systems or general appearance. We see them only at a distance walk through wafting smoke clouds. So when they do pop into battle in quick blurs it’s just another point to be confused about. If you’re like me, you can only endure so much confusion before your brain just gives up. Bay is a fantastic visual stylist, but his action sequences are poorly developed and poorly staged. He needs to check out The Hurt Locker and take notes. Transformers 2 is nothing but non-stop careless mayhem. For what it?s worth, the special effects are incredible at every stop.

The highly ramped-up action would have been acceptable if we knew what the hell was going on and we actually cared about the story. Transformers 2 makes the first film look like poetry in comparison. The story for this movie is simply atrocious and it’s made worse by the merciless attempts at comedy. This movie is stuffed with tin-eared exposition, so our only break to try and assess what the hell we just saw is when the characters take a breather and rapidly spout more plot vomit. It’s like listening to a homeless man shout nonsense for an hour. After a while you just tune out the crazy. If the Decepticons can construct a robot that has the ability to take human form, why the hell aren’t they doing this all the time? Why aren’t they infiltrating government offices instead of prancing around colleges in hot pants? Why in the world would an 18-year-old boy leave the mega hot Megan Fox and his TALKING ROBOT CAR? Why would anyone leave these two to live in a dorm and shower in flip flops? What universe does this college that Sam attends exist in? The place is crawling with leggy, waif-thin bombshells. The movie doesn’t even resort to college stereotypes; there isn’t a single gal that doesn’t look like a magazine cover girl. The Fallen is kind of like the evil leader of the Decepticons and he’s, what, confined to sitting in his robo La-Z-Boy on his home world like Archie Bunker? Get up and do something. The Transformers fought ages ago amidst man?s loin-clothed hunter and gatherer ancestors but leave no record? You’d think some caveman type might consider that worthy of painting on a wall. Why is Megatron even in this movie? What was the point of bringing him back alive if he’s just another lackey to The Fallen guy? Why does no one consider turning over Sam to the Decepticons if it could save the planet? In the big Egyptian battle sequence, where is the Fallen the whole time? He just kind of lazily shows up at the end. Also, ancient robots made a special key to jumpstart an ancient planet-destroying machine, but then we are informed when Sam visits, no joke, Transformers heaven that this key does not work unless the holder has earned the right to use it. It’s like some high tech moral barometer. Why didn’t these alien robots say anything about this? It would have spared a lot of time and energy trying to make sure the Decepticons never got a hold of it. How does a dead human end up going to robot heaven anyway? Does that mean there’s a robot God? Was robot God created by our God? Is there a robot Devil? Does Bay do the work of the robot Devil?

This time the comedy is puerile and embarrassing. The jokes make this movie tonally feel like a cartoon strictly for snickering adolescents. In the span of 150 minutes we’re given dogs humping twice, a tiny Transformer humping Megan Fox’s leg, Sam’s mother going berserk from ingesting pot brownies, a Transformer testicle joke (why would a robot even need genitals?), and let us not forget John Turturro in a thong. The humor aims low and still finds a way to be even worse. To save you the trouble, I am going to spoil the only two good jokes in this self-indulgent, bloated mess. Here there are, enjoy:

1) Sam is at a frat party, and it’s a frat party unlike anything ever seen unless modern fraternities can afford expensive interior decorators. One unamused frat guy asks Sam what he’s doing. Sam responds, “Going out to get you a tighter shirt.” The frat guy’s flunky clarifies: “There isn’t a tighter shirt. We checked.” I laughed. Sue me.

2) Sam and the gang at one point talk to a Transformer that’s thousands of years old. Apparently the guy is being housed at the Smithsonian Museum, which means that this is the second summer movie that is trying to inform the public that there’s something weird over at the Smithsonian. The old Transformer even has a robot cane, which is too bizarre. He rambles about the old days like Grandpa Simpson, and then finally gave this gem: “My father was a wheel. The first wheel. You know what he could transform into? Nothing! And he did so with honor.” This made me want to think about a period Transformers costume drama, where they exist as textile steam engines and phonographs and Model Ts. Would that not be a vastly more entertaining movie?

Despite all the painfully juvenile attempts at comedy, by far the biggest eyesore would have to be Bay’s Sambot twins, Mudflap and Skids. To say that these two irritating robots are politically incorrect does not go far enough. It’s one thing to reflect a cultural or ethnic stereotype, and it’s another thing entirely to keep digging deeper and deeper. These robots talk in eye-rolling faux gangster street talk, one of them has a big gold tooth, and these robots admit to being illiterate. It’s practically breathtaking to watch how racially insensitive and appalling these characters become. It’s essentially a robotic minstrel show. I’m surprised Bay stopped short of having Mudflap and Skids eat a big bowl of watermelon. This got me thinking about what other highly insensitive Transformers characters that didn’t make the cut over these two. Was there an Asian bot that turned into a car that didn’t drive well? Was there a Jewish bot that chided Optimis Prime to settle down and quit running around with those shiksa sports cars (“You know those aren’t her original parts?”). Bay can dismiss these characters as merely dumb robotic comic relief, except for the fact that these two bumbling, detestable heaps of scrap metal are never, ever funny.

The actors have little impact in this type of movie. I like LaBeouf (Eagle Eye) but he’s got little to do but stretch his legs. Fox became a star thanks to the previous Transformers flick, and she hasn’t gotten any less attractive. Amazingly enough, she manages to lose more clothes the more she runs in slow-mo, allowing the male audience members to follow the nuance of her bouncing breasts. She’s clearly not the next Meryl Streep but this girl deserves more than being wordless arm candy. Many words have been spilled about the quasi-racist twin robots, but I’m disappointed that people aren’t as equally up in arms over the film’s blatant misogyny. Women don’t seem to exist in the Michael Bay world, only parts and pieces of women. They are all like Alice, the robot programmed to do nothing else but seduce the men. All of the special effects and noise just overwhelm the other actors. The robots themselves have no personality to offer, good or bad.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is an obnoxious block-headed mess that feels like it’s being made up as it goes along. It’s sensory overload without a lick of sense, clarity, wit, and general entertainment. This sequel takes everything that was good about the first Transformers film and undermines it, and it takes everything that was awful and magnifies that awfulness. The first Transformers movie was fun. This is just work to sit through. Apologists will try and rationalize their disappointment, decrying anyone who hoped for something more than a big dumb summer blockbuster about rock’em, sock’em robots. Bay wants to show you everything and as a result you rarely get a chance to process little in this movie. There is absolutely nothing more than meets the eye here. It’s all arbitrary and tedious and it goes on for what feels like an eternity. It’ll make a gazillion dollars at the box office but will anyone remember a single moment from this exhausting junk? Make sure to bring the earplugs and aspirin in abundance.

Nate’s Grade: C-

Posted in 2009 Movies

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The House Bunny (2008)

Jul 2

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Anna Farris (Scary Movies) is proving herself to be one of the most adept physical comedians of today. This is formulaic fish-out-of-water comedy set in the familiar territory of collegiate coeds, so you’ll be excused for thinking you’ve seen this movie before in a dozen incarnations. The nerdy outcast sorority adopts Farris as their housemother, and through no shortage of makeover montages, the girls come out of their shells and embrace their outer midriffs. However, The House Bunny doesn’t just stoop to pandering a hypocritical “believe in yourself” message tied to beauty makeovers to win over the fellas, but it almost does. Farris is the true draw for the film and she goes for broke as the daffy Playboy Bunny. She’s sweet and effervescent even at her most dimwitted; this woman knows how to sell a joke. Her comedic timing and line readings are superb. The movie isn’t anything more than a pleasing diversion, but without Farris and her comic gifts it would be something much worse. The House Bunny does what it does well enough to be disposable entertainment. She’s got the dumb blonde routine down cold, now it’s time for filmmakers to allow Farris more opportunity to hone her other comedic chops.

Nate’s Grade: B-

Posted in 2008 Movies

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