The Weekend - 11/17-11/19 [2017]
My very first adaptation of Ebenezer Scrooge is none other
than The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992). I think I actually watched it for only
the second time last year (and then before that sometime in the 90s). I’m not
sure what it was but I wasn’t quite in the spirit. Maybe perhaps it was just
too many holiday movies in a row and I was enduring a bit of a rough patch. It
could have been burn out or just exhausting work schedule. Whatever the case I
was in good spirits Friday Night, and my plans were similar to what I did for
October…scatter Christmas movies and such across the Holiday season which will
be mid November through the 25th of December. Anyway, I have to say
I was quite impressed with Michael Caine as Scrooge, and I’m very glad he
decided to play the character straight and allow the muppet silliness that is
Gonzo and Rizzo, following his visits by Marley(s), and the Three Ghosts, as
Gonzo portrays Dickens, the narrator (and Rizzo his tagalong, always a foil for
burning his feet on roasting bird or dropping into a icy pan of water when his
tail is caught on fire, or a bewildering decision to climb a fence instead of
just crawling between two rods considering he’s small enough) not to intervene. The muppets aren’t
a liability and kids should love them. I consider how they move about within
the action of Scrooge whimsical movie magic. Caine adopts all the expressions
expected of the character, his snarling, contempt for the holiday and those
looking for charity, his fear of the visits and what they will reveal, the
touching heart when visiting the Cratchetts and especially Tiny Tim, and his
exhilaration when he’s spared death in favor of embracing good cheer and a
caring, giving spirit. Caine doesn’t do the character an injustice, instead
taking the role seriously and giving it the respectful performance Scrooge
deserves. And the Henson touch brings London to life with the muppets very much
replacing most of the humans that would normally buy and sell, busying about
during the foot traffic of the day. And the ghosts (even in the form of muppets)
remain larger than life and true to the character traits we have come to expect
in the Christmas Carol presentation. The “Marley and Marley” segment, Statler
and Woldorf as “Jacob and Robert Marley” is probably my favorite. But Dr.
Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker as charity seekers, left uncomfortably to try and
encourage a donation from Scrooge in his office is close…And anytime I see the
Swedish Chef, I immediately giggle. Fozzy as Fozziweg, that’s just priceless.
Kermit as Cratchett and Miss Piggy as his opinionated, strong-willed wife are
appropriately casted. But Gonzo and Rizzo just steal the entire picture as the
narrators, going almost everywhere Scrooge does, except Ghost of Christmas Yet
to come because they’re both too scared. ***½ / *****
I only really watched Keeping Up with the Joneses (2016)
because I was waiting on Krampus (2015) to come on and it featured Isla Fisher
who I adore in the right part. Zach Galifianakis and Fisher are a square
suburban middle class couple with kids away at summer camp who find themselves
embroiled in CIA action heroics accidentally when becoming a bit too interested
in their handsome neighbors (John Hamm and Gal Gadot). They end up in the
backseat of Hamm and Gadot’s car as gunmen (packing C-4 ultimately) on
motorcycles give them chase with bullets firing, crashes, windows shattering,
bodies flying, and explosions result. Patton Oswalt, of all people, ends up
being an arms dealer called The Scorpion that Hamm and Gadot are trying to
locate and take down. A lot of the film is Zach G and Fisher reacting in equal
parts terror and exhilaration as their lives encounter peril and excitement
thanks to the mad skills of Hamm and Gadot who know how to stunt drive cars
around and through warehouses and hit targets at long distances with marksman
agility and precision. There is plenty of PG-13 violence, Zach freaking out as
bullets wiz by as he must yank an explosive off the back of a moving car at
high speed, Fisher fitting that amazing figure in a cocktail dress that clings
to her (particularly her breasts), Gadot and Hamm becoming heated over job
unease, Zach G confronting another neighbor over arms dealing due to financial
issues (involving braces on kids’ teeth, among other problems), and Oswalt
easily seeing through Zach G and Fisher’s attempt as an undercover seller of
his merch, and Fisher talking to her kids on the phone while in the back of
Hamm and Gadot’s car as a lot of noise and guns firing carry on around her.
This came and went in theaters rather quickly and with enough bad press and
audience disinterest it failed to recoup its budget. The cast of four do their
best to make the material work but it just doesn’t really transcend its basic
premise. It really is a suburban couple inadvertently ensnared in a CIA plot
while bonding with agents right out of a Jason Bourne movie. There’s
personality to spare, though, and that helps. Fisher is just a treat, and Zach
as the uptight therapist who finds some mojo when called upon to help Hamm and
Gadot out plays scared-shitless well. Hamm and Gadot look like a million bucks
but play their roles as the straight man to Fisher and Zach’s zaniness. **
I so disliked Cell (2016), I didn't even want to write about it. So I sat on it a couple days and will briefly mention it here. I kind of avoid writing scathing reviews anymore, even if I really feel like just fucking unleashing. Cusack's decision to go into an obvious den of cellphone zombies at the end to locate a son so obviously no longer absent the signal just takes me even further out of the story and film's graces than the pacing and general apathy in the direction and performance already had. I hung in there even as I wanted to head for the next flight out. If I had a choice of taking the signal or watching this movie again it'd be easy to decide. Sam L and Cusack really look like they were brandished a no-win and checked out. No sense of passion or investment at all. This is clearly an agent's worst nightmare, having their actors squandered in lost causes such as Cell I imagine. A write-off they try to put behind them. At any rate, this puts them in an apocalyptic scenario where a signal sends those on cellphones into a mad frenzy, attacking each other. Cusack is a graphic novelist and soon he meets Sammy L as they attempt to avoid the horde operating seemingly as part of a hive minded signal. They meet a young woman, then a bright private school kid and his professor mentor (played by Stacy Keach). Burning bodies of hibernating zombies, "rebooting" as they communicate aloud this type of "music", while driving over them in one scene, I do wonder if Cusack and Sam L were contemplating their career choices. Television and film resurgence for Stephen King is at 1980s level interest right now but Cell looks to be the Graveyard Shift (1990) of this most recent boon. It dissolves into road movie adventure without ever squeezing the anaconda vice so that we feel the intensity of the situation. The direction is too uninvolving and personality so remote of serious interest I was also overcome with disillusionment. I wanted the characters to talk to me, the film to grab me with it's storytelling, but nothing. The initial launch of the signal and the airport collapse into madness as violence escalates with Cusack narrowly avoiding disaster is cool, but despite patches of smaller scaled attacks due to obvious budget restraints slow down the film considerably. Keach briefly makes his appearance worth something, attune perhaps to what is going on, more or less an exposition device. The ice cream truck nut who blows himself up, talking in that speedy twitch, makes for a jolt out of the boredom. The brief stay in the bar with a few patrons holing up and getting liquored up is also a nice little interlude, interrupted by the signal now spread by mouth instead of just phone. *
News flash: Hollywood is full of fucked-up people. Map of the Stars illustrates this. This was the opening for what was to be a review here for my weekend thread. But watching it, in realized I will probably move it to an official write-up later tomorrow.
I so disliked Cell (2016), I didn't even want to write about it. So I sat on it a couple days and will briefly mention it here. I kind of avoid writing scathing reviews anymore, even if I really feel like just fucking unleashing. Cusack's decision to go into an obvious den of cellphone zombies at the end to locate a son so obviously no longer absent the signal just takes me even further out of the story and film's graces than the pacing and general apathy in the direction and performance already had. I hung in there even as I wanted to head for the next flight out. If I had a choice of taking the signal or watching this movie again it'd be easy to decide. Sam L and Cusack really look like they were brandished a no-win and checked out. No sense of passion or investment at all. This is clearly an agent's worst nightmare, having their actors squandered in lost causes such as Cell I imagine. A write-off they try to put behind them. At any rate, this puts them in an apocalyptic scenario where a signal sends those on cellphones into a mad frenzy, attacking each other. Cusack is a graphic novelist and soon he meets Sammy L as they attempt to avoid the horde operating seemingly as part of a hive minded signal. They meet a young woman, then a bright private school kid and his professor mentor (played by Stacy Keach). Burning bodies of hibernating zombies, "rebooting" as they communicate aloud this type of "music", while driving over them in one scene, I do wonder if Cusack and Sam L were contemplating their career choices. Television and film resurgence for Stephen King is at 1980s level interest right now but Cell looks to be the Graveyard Shift (1990) of this most recent boon. It dissolves into road movie adventure without ever squeezing the anaconda vice so that we feel the intensity of the situation. The direction is too uninvolving and personality so remote of serious interest I was also overcome with disillusionment. I wanted the characters to talk to me, the film to grab me with it's storytelling, but nothing. The initial launch of the signal and the airport collapse into madness as violence escalates with Cusack narrowly avoiding disaster is cool, but despite patches of smaller scaled attacks due to obvious budget restraints slow down the film considerably. Keach briefly makes his appearance worth something, attune perhaps to what is going on, more or less an exposition device. The ice cream truck nut who blows himself up, talking in that speedy twitch, makes for a jolt out of the boredom. The brief stay in the bar with a few patrons holing up and getting liquored up is also a nice little interlude, interrupted by the signal now spread by mouth instead of just phone. *
I wish I could watch and enjoy Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
like I used to but the #MeToo movement and allegations against Allen (and what
we know about his current wife) just leave me so jaded, viewing this on Turner
Classics was disturbed by it all. The cast is just top-to-bottom uniformly
excellent: Michael Caine as a therapist with designs for his wife, Mia Farrow’s
sister, Barbara Hershey, Dianne Wiest as a struggling actress/caterer with new
desires to be a writer, Woody as a harried hypochondriac television producer
(who is Farrow’s ex-husband), Carrie Fisher as Wiest’s sister competing for the
affection’s of Sam Waterston’s architect (with his own box for opera at the
Met), Max von Sydow as the painter/intellectual Hershey’s involved with (but is
not sure should be), and a host of who’s-who talent (Julie Louis-Dreyfus,
Daniel Stern, John Turturro, J.T. Walsh, Lewis Black, Christian Clemenson, and Richard
Jenkins) eventually to make a name for themselves. Lloyd Nolan and Maureen O’Sullivan
(Tarzan) are the sisters’ parents, having a row about sexual interests of the
past during their tested marriage but during Thanksgiving dinners recalling the
best of old times. Farrow and Wiest have some good dramatically tense scenes
where they test each other over career advice, while Caine as the aching
husband desiring Hershey hits it out of the ballpark. And Allen debating what
religion to join after he thought he had a brain tumor had me laughing out
loud, and his Marx Brothers existential episode certainly provides food for
thought. Poor Farrow, no matter how much she’s considered a treasured member of
the family often comes off as a tiresome know-it-all who cares too much and is
always there to offer her two cents. I thought von Sydow was quite fascinating
as the grumpy, egotistical, “superior to everyone else” painter whose work is
too good to go on the walls of rock star Stern (the idea of Stern being a rock
star cracks me up…), while Hershey debating whether or not to continue an
affair with Caine shows the internal struggle to figure it all out. The use of
the city is always an asset in Allen’s films, and Roberts as his buddy (who
went to Hollywood to make a bigger name of himself) has a brief role. Wiest and
Allen ending up together is always a surprise to me, considering where the film
starts and ends. Allen in a punk concert while Wiest grooves to the noise just
always tickles my funny bone. Allen’s parents at odds with his brief stint
towards Catholicism is also a highlight. ****
I always assumed I had watched WarGames (1983), but upon
what I thought was a revisit turned into a first experience. I hadn’t seen
this! The sleeper of the week, for sure, and held me under its grip all the way
until the end. Of course, the ending was never in doubt in terms of the
avoidance of thermonuclear war, but seeing how the film’s heroes would do so
was what held my interest. Matthew Broderick is a computer and arcades genius,
Ally Sheedy is Broderick’s teenage love interest, Dabney Coleman runs a defense
computer program WOPR created as “Joshua” by John Wood’s (who is wonderful)
reclusive dinosaur-obsessed scientist, Barry Corbin swears and quips as the
chief military general at odds with Coleman over who should be “dictating the
turn of the key to determine the firing of nuclear warheads”, and Juanin Clay
as Coleman’s assistant make up the main cast of characters. The “war room”
tensions where Corbin and Coleman go at each other over whether humans or
Joshua should be in charge of the decision to fire nuclear warheads with
Broderick and Sheedy trying to secure Wood who has hidden away, considered “dead”,
to help determine if they can halt Joshua from firing upon Seattle and Las
Vegas. Broderick hacks into WOPR when looking for new games to play,
inadvertently, locating Joshua who believes he is Dr. Stephen Falken (Wood).
Broderick unknowingly requests to play Joshua in a game of thermonuclear war,
not realizing that his actions (“playing as the Soviet Union” setting missiles
for Seattle and Vegas “for fun”, encouraged by Sheedy who is equally excited
about his ability to locate Joshua) will set off a search by the FBI and
military for him, considering him a possible Russian spy! Broderick escaping
WOPR headquarters with the FBI about to arrest him for espionage (!) in order
to locate Sheedy and later Wood is more than a bit implausible but nonetheless
entertaining. Sheedy has a glowing smile, doesn’t she? She is quite bubbly
while Broderick is appropriately “in over his head” and exasperated by the
whole experience. Coleman running around harried while Corbin sweats and mocks
him had me in ribbons. I always enjoy seeing how big political plots involving
the government, military, and the possibility of war gets kids involved. And
how the kids can help to solve a possible apocalyptic dilemma. The early era of
hacking and use of arcades with old school computer tech appeals to me since I
was a kid during the 80s. I ate that stuff up. ****
News flash: Hollywood is full of fucked-up people. Map of the Stars illustrates this. This was the opening for what was to be a review here for my weekend thread. But watching it, in realized I will probably move it to an official write-up later tomorrow.
Comments
Post a Comment