Tag: review

Movie review- Mufasa: The Lion King

Very leontine

I’m steeped in the Lion King mythos, so that’s why my wife, daughter, and I saw the Mufasa movie at the Spectrum Theatre in mid-January. My wife and I saw the original 1994 animated film, as did our daughter subsequently. The musical production at Proctor’s Theater in Schenectady, which my wife and I saw twice, once with our daughter.  The daughter was in the production at church. I saw a junior high school production, and I suspect there’s another. But I didn’t see the 2019 live-action film.

The reviews for Mufasa have been mixed, with only 56% positive on Rotten Tomatoes. A positive review: “A remake of ‘The Lion King’ was an unnecessary move from a cinematic point of view, but a masterstroke from a business point of view.”

A couple of negative takes: It “would have been perfect if its characters had fewer lines, and if the songs were in the background rather than emerging through the mouths of clearly computer-generated figures.” “The songs fall flat, the story is basic, and the movie falls for all of the prequel tropes we’ve grown tired of.”

Profitable

I agree with all of that. It is a Disney money grab, for sure, and a successful one at that. While the animals were rendered wonderfully, it was a bit difficult to distinguish some of them, particularly the lions.

Watching them sing was a bit distracting. Some of the songs were exceptionally cutesy. Although I had forgotten he was involved, a few,  in particular Bye Bye, immediately sounded like Lin-Manuel Miranda’s signature style. Interestingly, listening to them without watching the action was less distracting.

We were surprised that the film suggested, albeit off-screen, incredible violence as the vultures headed towards what had to have been a killing field.

But I think the film got better as it centers on five characters, three lions and two others. There was an interesting lesson at the end, which I suspect some people will think is a bit too “woke” for their taste, but which I thought was true. By the end of the movie, I’d given into the storyline.

 I got enough out of it that it wasn’t a waste of my time, but your experience may differ.

Movie review: Wicked

Ozian authoritarianism

For my wife’s and my Tuesday date night in mid-December, we went to the Spectrum Theatre in Albany to see the movie Wicked. I had seen the touring show of the Broadway play a dozen years earlier and liked it quite a bit. I also read the book and was not as enthusiastic about it.

However, the novel is important as it creates a reimagining of the L. Frank Baum books, with a certain amount of homage to the 1939 movie. The character we knew as the Wicked Witch of the West has been named Elphaba, a direct homage to Baum’s initials. That the protagonist is not inherently evil is an interesting concept. 

The movie leans into both the book and the Broadway show. As described by Alex Mell-Taylor here: “The book chronicles her life as she struggles against the authoritarian Wizard of Oz, a fascistic figure who scapegoats entire classes of people to stay in power, including, eventually, Elphaba herself.

“It’s ultimately a tragic tale about how the winners of history can turn fighters for justice into villains.

“The musical never abandoned this theme, but it does become less prominent, with the emotional core switching to Elphaba and Glinda’s relationship and the rise of Ozian authoritarianism becoming more of a B-plot. While Maguire’s original retelling had some flashy, risque elements, it’s undoubtedly more substantive than the musical. A large part of the book is about Elphaba’s activism — something the musical only briefly touches upon.

This AND That

“The movie is a hybrid of these two visions. It follows the structure of the musical but uses visuals to heighten the authoritarian (arguably fascist) aesthetic that first came from the book. We are aware of Ozian’s discriminatory nature throughout the film in a way that feels much more consequential than a simple B-plot.”

This explains, if not necessarily justifies, the movie’s length—or, more correctly, the movies. Wicked: For Good will be released in November 2025.  

I liked the first movie well enough. As enemies turned friends, Cynthia Erivo (Elphaba) and Ariana Grande-Butera (Galinda) gave strong performances. Jeff Goldblum, as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Michelle Yeoh, as Madame Morrible, and Jonathan Bailey, as the eye candy Fiyero, were also very good. 

Still, the movie’s length wore me down. Somebody (Roger Ebert?) suggested that a movie could be too long at 90 minutes and too short at 4 hours. This movie, which was about 2:45, had many elements that I enjoyed, including most of the music, but somehow, I was a little disappointed.

The movie received an 88% positive critics’ rating and 95% from audiences.  As Keith Garlingrton noted: “’Wicked’ doesn’t quite dazzle the way it wants to. It’s an uneven and unwieldy production.” It felt like an oversized truck careening down a narrow highway when you worry that the payload will tip over.

Then there’s the “you have to see the next episode” aspect. I experienced this with Marvel movies, so I and many others were not rushing to see the later outings after Avengers: Endgame. I will probably see Wicked For Good, but it will make me cranky. 

A few articles

‘Wicked’ and Hollywood’s Bumpy Road to Oz. Jon M. Chu’s musical… is defying gravity at the box office — but it was a winding yellow-brick road of Hollywood adaptations to get here from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ (1939)

‘Wicked’ Easter Eggs for Your Second (or Third) Watch. Two of the elements were obvious to me. “The title card for Wicked also uses the same font as the title card for The Wizard of Oz... Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, who originated the roles of Elphaba and Glinda, respectively, in the Wicked Broadway stage musical,” have a number.

Shawn Levy (Deadpool & Wolverine) and Jon M. Chu (Wicked) — Directors on Directors

Cynthia Erivo Reveals She Co-Wrote an Original Song for Elphaba in ‘Wicked: For Good.’  ‘Wicked: For Good’: Here’s What We Know About Part 2.

Movie: A Real Pain

pilgrimage

My wife and I recently went to a Friday matinee of the movie A Real Pain at Albany’s Spectrum 8 Theatre.  Here’s a description from a positive review in the New York Times. “Jesse Eisenberg races straight into life’s stubborn untidiness in…a finely tuned, melancholic and at times startlingly funny exploration of loss and belonging that he wrote and directed. He plays David, a fidgety, outwardly ordinary guy who, with his very complicated cousin, Benji (Kieran Culkin), sets off on a so-called heritage tour of Poland. Their grandmother survived the Holocaust because of ‘a thousand miracles,’ as David puts it, and they’ve decided to visit the house where she grew up. Theirs is an unexpectedly emotionally fraught journey and a piercing, tragicomic lament from the Jewish diaspora.”

Benji points out that David was more emotional as a kid, in a way only family can hone in on. Still, David is a relatively successful businessperson with a wife and a kid.  The cousins have drifted away, yet they still care quite a bit about each other.

While he can be maddening, Benji has a “frenetic exuberance that draws people to him when it doesn’t overwhelm them.” Among them are the British tour guide James (Will Sharpe), Marcia (Jennifer Grey), the sad yet perky newly divorced, Eloge (Kurt Egyiawan), a survivor of the Rwandan genocide who converted to Judaism, and Diane and Mark (Liza Sadovy and Daniel Oreskes), an older bourgeois Jewish couple.

I believed in the pain these people, especially the leads, felt. A reference to Binghamton made me laugh.
OTOH

The Rotten Tomatoes critics were 96% positive, but the audience was only 80%. An audience poll showed that about half of the 235 responses gave it a five out of five rating. However, about a third of them gave it but one star.

Here’s one example: “The plot is non-existent; it is just some random events that do not tell any story in particular. Characters are flat, with no development whatsoever. The two mismatched cousins are just as flat, inadequate, and unrealistic at the end as they were at the beginning. They didn’t go through any personal challenges or transformation. Just had a fun trip to Poland to goof around the war monuments.” It wasn’t the movie I saw, but many people HATED it.

Two last things. David Oreskes is one of those actors who some used to refer to as “Oh, THAT guy.” He’s been in many things I’ve seen, though I could not have placed any of them.

The other weird thing is that four people remained seated after the movie ended and the lights came up. A  young man in his 20s or maybe 30s explained the story they had just seen. He started, “The story was about these two brothers…” I wanted to interrupt to say they were cousins. Very odd.

Movie review: Anora

not Pretty Woman

I went to see the new movie Anora, largely because it had been so widely acclaimed.  Sean Baker won the Palme d’Or, awarded to the director of the Best Feature Film at the Cannes Film Festival; he also wrote the story. The film was nominated for several other awards. I saw it at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany, one of only two people present on an early Wednesday matinee.

Fandango describes it as “an audacious, thrilling, and comedic variation on a modern-day Cinderella story.”  Ani (Mikey Madison) is a young sex worker from Brooklyn who is good at her job.  One of her clients is a young, brash, fairly obnoxious, but very rich young man of Russian heritage named Ivan or  Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn), who specifically asked for an escort who at least understood Russian. Anora’s grandmother had never learned how to speak English.

They are having a good time, in a wretched excess way, with him shelling out beaucoup bucks for her exclusive company, and in short order, they decide to get married. This is a problem for Vanya’s handlers when they find out. They worked for his parents and were supposed to keep him on a loose leash.  Now, the marriage must annulled, which is complicated.

Evolution

The early part of the film was a bit boring to me. There’s a lot of sex, not just with Ani, and it’s very unsexy. 

The film finally starts getting interesting when two of Vanya’s handlers rush to the lavish home where he and Ani are staying. These guys are intimidating but not lethally scary. Still, they and their immediate boss are determined to get their way and have the means to grease the legal machinery. At this point, I see Ani’s strength and vulnerability come through. And the film becomes a black comedy.

So I liked the latter half of it, although, as some critics pointed out, “Anora’s outbursts of fury, incessant trash talking, and relentless screaming can wear on the ear.” The Rotten Tomatoes reviews were 96% positive with the critics and 90% with the fans. 

I’m reminded that when the movie Pretty Woman was being made, it started as a “gritty dark comedy about the dehumanizing nature of sex work,” much darker than the frothy tale that Garry Marshall engineered with Julia Roberts and Richard Gere’s characters. This is NOT Pretty Woman. 

Movie review: Conclave

the opposite of faith

The pope is dead. Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes), as Dean of the College of Cardinals, is tasked with organizing the conclave to select a new pontiff. That’s the premise of the movie.

The candidates emerge. Cardinal Bellini (Stanley Tucci) is a liberal favorite, while Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellito) is a conservative alternative. Could Cardinal Trembley (John Lithgow) emerge as a compromise? And there’s never been an African pope—how about Cardinal Adeyemi ( Lucian Msamati)? And there are others.

A potential scandal or two colors the proceedings. On the face of it, this should be a boring, stuffy process based on issues that people not steeped in Catholicism would not care about. Nope, it is not. The wardrobe and set look realistic, and the cinematography is lovely. “Costume Designer Lisy Christl on Why the Cardinals’ Crosses Were an Important Character Detail.”

The acting—including by Isabella Rosellini as Sister Agnes—is wonderful. The nuns may be invisible, but they do see. Even cardinals struggle with the notion of their calling. One of the resonating quotes is that “the opposite of faith is not doubt; the opposite of faith is certainty.”  What are the perils of ambition?

A review I saw notes that Conclave is “among other things, an actual thriller, of character rather than jeopardy.” Well, maybe a little bit of jeopardy. It was surprisingly riveting.

Smoky back rooms

It reminded me somewhat of political conventions, not the ones we have more recently where the outcomes are preordained, but the old-fashioned smoky back rooms, where there was horse trading for votes amongst the delegates. The favorite sons from a given state held their delegates in abeyance for some trade-off.

I saw Conclave at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany on a Thursday afternoon. The room was about 1/3 full, which is not bad for that time of day. The reviews on Rotten Tomatoes were 91% positive with the critics and 85% positive with the audiences.

One of the negative reviews was from Hosea Rupprecht from Pauline Media Studies, who wrote: “From the perspective of the Catholic Church, Conclave offends by taking this sacred ritual which is supposed to inspire faith, humility, and trust in the providence of God, and turns it into a disturbing commentary on human weakness and ambition.”

I’m not feeling it. As a Protestant kid who’s had an utter fascination with the papacy from childhood, I think it reflects what people of faith have told me over the many decades about internal struggle.  Others complain about the “final twist that is, arguably, one twist too far.”It’s a fictional story, but the conclusion seems internally consistent.

I highly recommend it.

Ramblin' with Roger
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