Tag: review

Movie review: Late Night [Kaling]

Mindy Kaling also wrote the screenplay

Late Night - PosterBefore my wife and I saw the movie Late Night at the Spectrum 8 in Albany, I’d read a discouraging piece. Specifically, Why Romcoms are bombing, in which Ken Levine wrote:

I’ll be very honest here. I don’t like Mindy Kaling. I don’t find her funny in any way. That’s me. That said, if all I heard was buzz that this was a laugh riot and the one movie to see this summer I would race to the theatre. I’d be thrilled to change my position on Mindy Kaling. Instead, I’m hearing, “not funny,” “on the nose,” and “formula.” Pass.

Late Night is a romcom? It’s not what I viewed. The Rotten Tomatoes description: “Legendary late-night talk show host’s world is turned upside down when she hires her only female staff writer” – she had been accused of being a “woman who hates women.” “Her decision has unexpectedly hilarious consequences as the two women separated by culture and generation are united by their love of a biting punchline.”

I enjoyed Emma Thompson as the prickly perfectionist Katherine Newbury. the host would rather book the author Doris Kearns Goodwin than the latest YouTube star. Some have compared her to Meryl Streep’s character in The Devil Wears Prada. She can’t be bothered even to learn her writers’ names. But the ratings have been down for a decade, so change is necessary.

Kaling, who wrote the screenplay, plays “diversity hire” Molly Patel. At first, she’s in way over her head, but she eventually discovers how to be useful. It is the evolution of Katherine, with Molly as catalyst, that’s the driving force of the film.

The boys’ club nature of the writers’ room is also touched on, as Molly discovers why all the guys are using the women’s bathroom.

The movie’s always good when John Lithgow, as Katherine’s husband Walter Lovell, who is experiencing Parkinson’s disease, is on the screen. Perhaps the best scene in the movie involves Katerine and Walter in a theater.

I also enjoyed the performance of Kaling’s former The Office colleague Amy Ryan as Caroline, the network executive. Late Night also stars Denis O’Hare as put-upon Brad, the show runner; the writers Charlie (Hugh Dancy), Burditt (Max Casella), Tom (Reid Scott), and Mancuso (Paul Walter Hauser); and Ike Barinholtz as stand-up comedian Daniel Tennant.

I thought Late Night was a good, not great movie, the kind of film that gets 79% positive review on RT. It could have dropped a subplot or a character and still be coherent.

But I appreciated the issues it brought up and the acting. The penultimate shot was a bit “on the nose”, I suppose. There were comic moments; not a “laugh riot” but I don’t think that was the intent. It was worthwhile viewing.

Movie review: Toy Story 4 (Pixar)

a fine coda

Toy Story 4I saw Toy Story 4 in a movie theater, the Spectrum 8 in Albany. Every Toy Story I’ve seen at a cinema. Since the first two movies came out in 1995 and 1999, respectively, pre-parenthood, it was my own volition in seeing them.

The third film I saw with my wife but without my daughter in 2010. Since my wife and daughter saw #4 without me, I saw it by myself.

Woody (Tom Hanks) and the rest of the toys are on a road trip with Bonnie (Madeleine McGraw) and her parents (Jay Hernandez, Lori Alan), just before Bonnie enters kindergarten. The toys’ primary task is keeping track of the new character named Forky (Tony Hale), who has issues.

Woody unexpectedly runs into his long-lost friend Bo Peep (Annie Potts), now a “lost” toy. They have philosophical differences when it comes to what the role of a toy should be. Bo, despite her porcelain construction, is impressive.

Ultimately, Woody, Bo, and some new friends such as Ducky (Keegan-Michael Key) and Bunny (Jordan Peele), have a mission. They have to sneak into the antique store run by Margaret (June Squibb), a place Bo knows too well. It’s not just the old-school doll Gabby Gabby (Christina Hendricks), but her friends, all of whom are creepy identical ventriloquist dummies named Benson.

There is a lot of insecurities revealed in Toy Story 4, including from daredevil Duke Caboom (Keanu Reeves). It can be difficult to find your place in the world, even if you’re a doll.

This is a fine coda to the franchise. Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) and Jessie (Joan Cusack) had smaller but vital roles in the narrative. I LOLed at a scene involving dependence on GPS.

Toy Story 4 received a 98% positive rating in Rotten Tomatoes. Matthew Norman of the London Evening Standard wrote: “The legislation it flouts is the law of diminishing returns which governs movies with numbers after their names.”

Disney Removes ‘Toy Story 2’ Scene That Recalled Hollywood Casting Couch Abuse.

Movie review: The Biggest Little Farm

the farmers are not alone?

biggest little farmMy wife and I had been seeing the trailer for The Biggest Little Farm at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany for months. It is an “environmental advocacy documentary with a satisfying side dish of hope for the future.”

The premise is that, in part as a promise to their dog Todd (seriously), John and Molly Chester left their city lives. They found themselves owning a fairly arid piece of land about 200 miles from Los Angeles that they were going to farm, despite an enormous dearth of experience.

In the beginning, they did have an agricultural guru to help them figure out how to start to create a diverse ecosystem. Each year was a series of successes – fruit trees! – and frustrations – birds eating the fruit on the trees?!

There are a lot of interesting characters, most of them non-human: the various birds and the snakes and the coyotes, Emma the pig and her BFF Greasy the rooster, to name a few? Do we need ALL of them or are some of them merely predators?

Slowly, after a number of years, it appeared that perhaps the promise that the farmers are not alone in cultivating the land was kicking in. Will the farm withstand the notorious southern California droughts, flooding and fires?

Some of the critics (90% positive on Rotten Tomatoes) thought that the filmmakers, John Chester and Mark Monroe – kept back some of facts from the narrative. Surely, the more grisly aspects were explained rather than shown. If it’s a little infomercially at the end, it was earned.

I suppose I left the theater a bit annoyed, but not at the film. Much of the concepts the Chesters were using I remember reading about it elementary school, MANY years ago. How did we end up with farm after farm with a single crop, year after year?

This, of course, eventually meant that unnatural, expensive and patentable fertilizers were developed to “fix” the land when all one really needed was biodiversity and and a bit of faith.

Book review: Love, Lucy by Lucille Ball

Ginger Rogers’ mother Lela became a stage mom to Lucy and many other aspiring actresses.

The book Love, Lucy by Lucille Ball I actually read last summer, on a transcontinental flight from Newark to San Diego. I meant to write about it then, but forgot. Now it’s nearly thirty years since Lucy died, so I guess it’s time.

If you don’t know, Lucy was the star of the most popular situation comedy in the US in the 1950s, I Love Lucy. She had successful programs in the 1960s as well, The Lucy Show/Here’s Lucy.

The existence of the book is a tale of its own. After Lucy died on April 26, 1989, her children, Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz, Jr., were tasked with wading through artifacts. Lucie came across a 300-page manuscript written by her mother c. 1964.

Most people, including Lucy’s closest friends, didn’t know about the existence of this work at all. Perhaps she didn’t want to share it because her portrayals would hurt her then-ex-husband Desi Arnaz. But he had died in 1986, so the book was published in 1996 and became a best-seller.

The details were astonishingly precise, starting with her birth on August 6, 1911, in her grandparents’ apartment in Jamestown, NY, in the southwest corner of the state. She had many challenges growing up, including her father dying at age 28 when she was not quite four.

She was raised by an extended family, including her beloved grandfather, who everyone called Daddy. Later, there was an what she thought was a legal injustice borne by Daddy which affected Lucy’s viewpoint throughout his life.

Lucy took almost any job in New York City: showgirl, extra in Broadway and road shows, modeling coats and dresses, posing for illustrators. It was as a “Chesterfield (cigarette) girl” that first got her to Hollywood.

Ginger Rogers’ mother Lela became a stage mom to Lucy and many other aspiring actresses. “Lela was the first person to see me as a clown with glamour.”

Many more tales were shared before she met this Cuban musician and band leader named Desi. They fell hard for each other, and married rather quickly after they met.

Keeping their marriage together, though, was challenging, as they were both on the road separately a lot. I Love Lucy, in part, was born from addressing that need.

If Lucille Ball, or her TV roles are interesting to you, or if you’re just trying how one young woman worked hard to make it in show biz, I highly recommend Love, Lucy.

Ken Levine: The History of Sitcoms podcast.

What’s My Line? game show (1954), Lucille Ball as mystery guest.

Movie review: Bohemian Rhapsody

In Bohemian Rhapsody, Rami Malek is as good as advertised as Freddie Mercury, the dynamic lead singer of the band Queen.

Bohemian RhapsodyOnce again, I played hooky from work to see a movie, this time Bohemian Rhapsody. I keep forgetting that just before the Academy Awards, the Regal Theater in Colonie Center brings back some of the Oscar-nominated films.

The good news: Rami Malek is as good as advertised as Freddie Mercury, the dynamic lead singer of the band Queen. He may I’ve read that when Malek had the false teeth in, it helped him in developing the character. Those who care about such things note: “After wins at the SAGs, BAFTAs, and Golden Globes, [he] has run away with the [awards] season,” and will likely win an Oscar.

Also, the makeup and casting people have created a cast that looks very much like the other members of the group: Gwilym Lee as Brian May, Ben Hardy as Roger Taylor, and Joe Mazzello as John Deacon, although they all appear more annoyed than angry during the band’s arguments, many of which, I’ve read, didn’t actually happen.

The real Mary Austin, Freddie’s sometimes girlfriend, played by Lucy Boynton, seemed satisfied by the portrayal of her relationship with Mercury.

I liked the stunt casting of an almost unrecognizable Mike Myers; the Wayne’s World movie (1992) helped a six-minute song to chart again.

Of course, the eclectic music of Queen is on display. The last scene of Live Aid in 1985 was fun. I saw a couple people in the theater crying at the end. All in all, it might have been a serviceable biopic with a (relatively) happy ending.

The BIG problem is that the movie is emotionally dishonest. It is well known that films based on the lives of real people take liberties with minor characters, dialogue, even chronology.

But the brief movie revelation is that Freddie had AIDS BEFORE the climatic Wembley concert in 1985, when he wasn’t diagnosed until 1987. As this article and others note, the movie then necessarily glosses over the societal response to the disease.

Bohemian Rhapsody is a mostly feel-good movie – did I mention it has the music of Queen? – and one can certainly enjoy it, particularly if you know nothing of the era. But don’t take it too seriously as a real depiction of Freddie Mercury’s life.

Undoubtedly, this is why it’s the worst-rated film of the Best Picture nominees among critics (61% positive on Rotten Tomatoes), yet is a crowd-pleaser (88% positive).

Ramblin' with Roger
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