Tag: review

Movie review: Marriage Story

ScarJo with two acting noms

Marriage StoryThe movie Marriage Story was included in the Vanity Fair article Divorce Stories: Why the Oscars Love Miserable Couples. I realized how true the observation was. And I’m one of those folks who had been attracted to these.

Ordinary People (1980), Kramer v. Kramer (1979), the early oeuvre of Woody Allen. These are among the films I related to heavily at the time.

The beginning of Marriage Story was quite lovely. Charlie (Adam Driver), a theater director, and Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) are putting together lists. They are to write down the traits they like in each other. Alas, this is in anticipation of their inevitable divorce.

Still, they both agree to try to work out the arrangement without dragging lawyers into the mix. They want to protect their son Henry (Azhy Robertson) from too much drama.

Yet the arrangement becomes a transcontinental affair. Charlie has a theater gig in Manhattan. Nicole, whose family is from SoCal, has an acting gig in LA.

Send lawyers…

So Nicole gets a fiercely strong attorney, Nora Fanshaw (Laura Dern, NOTHING like Marmie in Little Women). Charlie is forced to respond, with the avuncular Bert Spitz (Alan Alda). High-powered lawyer Jay Marotta (Ray Liotta) may not be available.

Charlie and Henry are visited by a social worker, which was difficult. Charlie, back in NYC, sings to his cast. There is a rather emotionally brutal scene between the principals; THAT was exhausting. At the end, do they find the balance they sought?

Marriage Story was written by Noah Baumbach. He wrote and directed The Squid and the Whale (2005), which also touched on the themes of divorce and children. I haven’t seen it since I first viewed it at the time. But I recall enjoying it far more than Marriage Story. He also penned the screenplay to The Fantastic Mr. Fox. So he can write about happy families.

This was a very well-written, -paced, and -acted movie. The nominations for Johansson, Driver and especially Dern are warranted. I don’t imagine me seeing Marriage Story again, though.

Review: Jack Kirby’s Dingbat Love

looking for Ebony

Dingbat LoveHaving read an advanced copy (PDF) of Jack Kirby’s Dingbat Love, I now understand the title. It’s a bit of a portmanteau. I fear, though, tha the casual reader will misunderstand it as just romance comics featuring not very bright people.

As Steve Sherman, one of Kirby’s assistants in the 1970s notes in one of the text pieces, “Dingbat” is what Archie Bunker called his wife Edith on the TV show All in the Family. But Jack had named the “kid gang” he drew and wrote the Dingbats of Danger Street. They had a few issues in the mid-1970s, but I somehow missed them.

And I did read Kirby in this period: New Gods, Kamandi, and OMAC among them, even though I was primarily a Marvel fan then. Dingbats is an entertaining read, especially when inked by Mike Royer and D. Bruce Berry, and colored especially for the book.

All you need is…

The “Love” angle in the title is represented by True-Life Divorce, an abandoned newsstand magazine. Also stories from Soul Love, a romance book inked by Vince Colletta and Tony DeZuniga finally sees the light of day. The dialogue was occasionally clunky, but the stories were surprisingly good. The Kirby women, for the most part, were realistically zaftig.

The discussion of WHY these items were not published at the time is nearly as entertaining as the strips. Editor John Morrow examines the era, while Jerry Boyd analyzes Soul Love. Kirby assistant Mark Evanier explains going to several stores looking for Ebony magazines. Kirby wanted them as references for faces of black people, but they were hard to find in Thousand Oaks, CA.

Still, as Morrow noted, “What was unprecedented was Kirby’s inclusion of black heroes in his Marvel Comics series in the 1960s. In 1963, Gabe Jones debuted as a black member of Nick Fury’s Howling Commandos in Sgt. Fury #1. But the one that really broke down barriers was the Black Panther, first appearing in Fantastic Four #52 (1966).”

It’s odd. After Kirby’s tumultuous departure from Marvel c 1970, one might think that DC would be inclined to let the King do what he would like. That would be an erroneous assumption. As Evanier noted: “We’re talking here about Jack Kirby, the man whose rejects were more interesting than what most creators got accepted.”

You may order the book Dingbat Love, a 176-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER, from your local comic book store – I hope – or through Two Morrows. They’re the same folks who put out Kirby & Lee: Stuf’ Said!

Movie review: 1917 (Mendes)

My first film at the new Madison Theatre

The movie 1917 was the first film my wife and I saw at the newly refurbished Madison Theatre. It’s only three blocks from our house. We walked there on a rainy Saturday afternoon in January.

When we entered the room, there were some animated short films already running. One was the 2015 offering Ear Fear. They were followed by previews of three movies, including The Turning, which was playing on another of the Madison’s four screens.

In April 1917, two British soldiers – Dean-Charles Chapman as Blake and George MacKay as Schofield – are “sent to deliver an urgent message to an isolated regiment. If the message is not received in time, the regiment will walk into a trap and be massacred.” Blake has a brother at that imperiled regiment.

As one spoiler-laced review notes, “When done well, [the long take] immerses the audience in the scene. If the action is literally unfolding all around the camera, it’s easy to convince viewers that they, too, are in the thick of it. It’s a gimmick, to be sure, but Mendes and cinematographer Roger Deakins make it work for 1917.”

I agree with that assessment. It may have the best chance of the nine films nominated for Best Picture to take home the Oscar. Yet about 10% of the critics on Rotten Tomatoes gave it a thumbs down.

Sentimentality?

What’s the general complaint? Often that the film is style over substance. Richard Brody’s review in the New Yorker is informative.

“The character’s death would have been as wrenching for viewers if the soldier’s appearance remained unaltered and he merely fell limp. Instead, the director, Sam Mendes, chose to render the moment picturesque—to adorn it with an anecdotal detail of the sort that might have cropped up in a war story, a tale told at years’ remove…”

I suppose there is something to this criticism. Interestingly, Mendes gives credit to his grandfather for telling these stories. Yet it is the sentimentality that makes the penultimate scene feel so touching.

“‘1917’ is a film of patriotic bombast and heroic duty, The script is filled with melodramatic coincidences that grossly trivialize the life-and-death action by reducing it to sentiment.” There are coincidences, to be sure. They did not take away from our appreciation of the film. But 1917, in the end, was less gruesome than those horror film trailers.

The Madison Theatre has table service. I was wary that this would be distracting, but it was not, in large part because the seats and tables alternate.

Even the waitstaff aiding people to our right was not that distracting. It’s hardly as bad as the chuckleheads talking in front of us when we saw Richard Jewell at the Spectrum about a month earlier.

Movie review: Knives Out

not The Last Jedi

knives outI went to see the movie Knives Out alone at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany in January 2020. There might have been a bit of trepidation that there would be a lot of stabbings or the like. It is a murder mystery, but the violence is brief.

It is much more the comedic murder mystery, though the humor is earned one you’ve gotten to know the parties involved. The victim of the murder or the suicide was Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer), who the audience gets to know better in various flashback scenes.

Members of the household questioned by the police. They include Harlan’s daughter Linda Drysdale (Jamie Lee Curtis); her husband Richard (Don Johnson); and their son Hugh Ransom (Chris Evans). Also Harlan’s son Walt (Michael Shannon), in charge of the publishing, and Harlan’s widowed daughter-in-law Joni (Toni Collette), with a new-age line of products, plus others.

Certainly, one couldn’t suspect Harlan’s trusted caretaker, Marta Cabrera (Ana de Armas), an immigrant from Paraguay or Brazil or ONE of those countries. The family couldn’t keep track.

WB

Some guy sitting in on the interviews remained mostly quiet at first. Soon enough, he made himself known. He is famed detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), who has his own interest in the case. At one point, a family member says that Blanc sounds like Foghorn Leghorn. That’s a bit true, and note the detective’s surname.

I enjoyed Frank Oz as the put-upon probate lawyer, though I couldn’t place him until the end credits. “Of course,” I said aloud. A woman leaving in the row behind me whispered to me, “I love Frank Oz too.”

Rian Johnson, who wrote and directed Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi, has created a much different film here. It was funnier and more wacky as the dysfunctional family reveals itself. The movie even received a smattering of applause at the end. Agatha Christie might have been pleased.

I recommended Knives Out to my wife as the film I’d seen that was the most fun. My daughter was annoyed that I didn’t take her. I went on a school day and didn’t know if it’d be appropriate. It’s more like a sophisticated version of Murder, She Wrote, which is specifically referenced.

Movie review: Parasite (Gisaengchung)

Writer/Director Bong Joon Ho

ParasiteI have no idea how to review the movie Parasite (Gisaengchung). Except this. This movie is LOL funny at some points, utterly horrific at others.

Bong Joon Ho is a South Korean writer/director. The first people we meet are the Kim family, parents, college-aged son and a daughter a bit older. They live in dire poverty, all but jobless, dealing with life’s indignities.

Then by chance, the young man Kim Ki-woo gets a fill-in gig as a tutor for the daughter of the Park family. These are well-off, aspirational people, especially the father. Once Kim Ki-woo gets his foot in the door, he wonders if he can get gigs for the rest of his family.

This is a tricky task, because there are people already in a couple of these positions. But the Kims are creative and the Parks are fairly oblivious. And the first part of the movie ends. We discover, though that it’s not only the Kim family in the parasite role. Also, you can’t always get rid of the stench of poverty.

I suppose I should mention that the movie is in Korean, with subtitles. Well, except for those moment the Park mother tries out her minimal English.

What the writer said

Lessee, what did Ken Levine have to say? “So far PARASITE is my pick for movie of the year…

“Writer/Director Bong Joon Ho has achieved the near impossible – making a movie so engrossing that no one in the theater had to tell someone to turn off their phone. Now, THAT’S filmmaking.” Well, actually there was that one woman in my row…

“Happily, PARASITE doesn’t fall into any one genre. It cleverly and stylishly combines a few, bends a few, and creates a few into one compelling cohesive film. I was knocked out by the storytelling. I guarantee you won’t be able to predict what happens next. You’ll laugh, you’ll shriek – and isn’t that what entertainment’s all about?”

I went to this in early January 2020, without my wife or child, and it’s probably just as well. Naturally, I went to the Spectrum Theatre in Albany.

Ramblin' with Roger
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