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Mike Schulz discusses with Dave Levora and Darren Pitra the fact that, when you’ve seen nine films since the last time you appeared on the radio, you might need to use lightning rounds. To whit:
- Ridley Scott’s Napoleon was, in Schulz’s words, amazing — and that also applies to Joaquin Phoenix’s job as the titular Corsican conqueror, which he says is “bonkers.” It’s rare when a film with as many reported logistical challenges as Scott’s epic can succeed both as an awe-inspiring spectacle (with some of the most amazing battle scenes Schulz has ever seen) and also provide a camp kick, insasmuch as Phoenix’s depiction of Napoleon seems to draw the kind of attention to the runt — for whom a whole personality complex had to be invented by British propaganda — which Bonaparte might not have appreciated. Vanessa Kirby portrays Napoleon’s wife, Joséphine de Beauharnais, who played her husband like a fiddle and did much to make him the insanely-ambitious, overcompensating, strutting, homicidal weirdo that he was.
- Saltburn, directed by Emerald Fennell and starring Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Rosamund Pike, Richard E Grant, Alison Oliver, Archie Madekwe, and Carey Mulligan, is described by Schulz as “The Talented Mr Ripley meets Downton Abbey.” Schulz decrees the film to be three-fourths great, one-fourth terrible. The film’s deficits kick in when Keoghan, who plays Oliver Quick, a latter-day, up-from-poverty Oxford student who becomes infatuated with Felix Catton (Elordi), becomes obsessed to a pathological degree with Catton’s traditional-wealth rich family. Quick’s volte-face seems generated by the exigencies of plot rather than the organic inevitability of a character’s psychological undoing. Fennell’s screenplay also becomes obsessed with explaining plot points rather than allowing the characters to illustrate them. Up to that point, though, Saltburn is a well-acted affair, albeit one that doesn’t sound like it will entice enough Oscar votes for a nomination.
- Speaking of looming Oscar snubs, Wish, a Disney animated musical-fantasy film directed by Chris Buck and Fawn Veerasunthorn and voiced by Ariana DeBose, Chris Pine, Alan Tudyk, Angelique Cabral, Victor Garber, Natasha Rothwell, Jennifer Kumiyama, Harvey Guillén, Evan Peters, Ramy Youssef, and Jon Rudnitsky, distinguishes itself with Schulz as “the worst Disney animated film [he’s] ever seen.” The film is supposed to be the studio’s explanation for the origin of the star atop the Disney symbol, which should give you a sense of Disney’s self-cannibalizing priorities at this point. Jennifer Lee and Allison Moore’s script feels like it was rushed along by the studio, heedless of the need for some logical consistency to justify the show. The very message of the film — “everyone should get to have their wishes come true” — is itself dubious, given what real-life people like, oh, some Austrian fellow, have done with their wishes. But then, nothing about Wish makes sense. One imagines Schulz stumbling out of the darkness of the movie room clutching his head in agony from all the subjects and predicates that refused to correspond with one another. Best avoid.
- Levora figured Schulz wouldn’t like The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes on principle, given most prequels fail to justify their existence and leave a movie-goer X amount of dollars lighter and a pound or two heavier from the concessions fare. Well, Francis Lawrence managed to buck that trend. Tom Blyth plays a young Coriolanus Snow, who goes on to become the future dictator of Panem, portrayed by Donald Sutherland in the canon films. Schulz didn’t know if he wanted to find out anything about The Hunger Games’ backstory, and Lawrence managed to convince him that the narrative was essential entertainment. Also features Rachel Zegler, Peter Dinklage, Jason Schwartzman, Hunter Schafer, Josh Andrés Rivera, and Viola Davis.
- Compared to Wish, Trolls Band Together, a sequel to the 2020 Trolls World Tour, is the kind of animated jukebox musical you wouldn’t/shouldn’t feel bad about dragging your offspring along to see. “It’s just fun, it’s light, it’s stupid,” says Schulz (glowing testimonial, that) “but in a good way” (oh, good). Voices furnished by Anna Kendrick, Justin Timberlake, Zooey Deschanel, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Icona Pop, Anderson .Paak, Ron Funches, Kenan Thompson, Kunal Nayyar, Walt Dohrn Eric André, Kid Cudi, Daveed Diggs, Troye Sivan, Camila Cabello, Amy Schumer, Andrew Rannells, RuPaul and Zosia Mamet.
- Rustin, a biographical drama about Bayard Rustin, the oft-overlooked civil-rights leader who managed to pull off the March on Washington in 1963, during which Dr Martin Luther King Jr gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. Currently streaming on Netflix, Rustin makes the case for its subject, who mentored Dr King in the methods of non-violent protest, and who chose to remain behind the scenes much of the time, owing to his homosexuality. Colman Domingo portrays Rustin, and is supported by a stellar cast, featuring Chris Rock, Glynn Turman, Aml Ameen, Gus Halper, CCH Pounder, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Johnny Ramey, Michael Potts, Jeffrey Wright, and Audra McDonald. Produced by Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company Higher Ground, Rustin doesn’t take any experimental liberties with the historical-bio cinematic template — and that’s perhaps for the best.
- Taika Waititi’s sports comedy-drama Next Goal Wins might have been a major disappointment for Schulz if it endeavored to be anything more than it was. As it stands, “crummy” is his judgment. Featuring Michael Fassbender, Oscar Kightley, Kaimana, David Fane, Rachel House, Beulah Koale, Will Arnett, Elisabeth Moss, and a bunch of otherwise-engaging West Samoans, the film doesn’t work owing to Fassbender in the lead role. As accomplished an actor as Fassbender is, comedic roles don’t figure heavily in his filmography — and if you plunk down the money for Next Goal Wins, you’ll find out why in excruciating fashion. Moving on. . .
- Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving would have disappointed Pitra, given that none of the killer’s victims wind up on the dinner table with an apple in their mouths. Schulz was more equable about it, determining the film to be an effective, though not especially memorable, horror film. For those who dig Roth for the extreme brand of horror with which he’s made his cinematic bones, who makes up in carnage for any failure to evoke and maintain suspense, and a cast featuring Patrick Dempsey, Addison Rae, Milo Manheim, Jalen Thomas Brooks, Nell Verlaque, Rick Hoffman, and Gina Gershon, “good enough” seems like a damning indictment. Oh, well. . .
- Both Schulz and Levora are over the moon about the documentary Albert Brooks: Defending My Life, which is basically Brooks reminiscing with director, and long-time friend, Rob Reiner, about his career in show-business, interspersed with clips of his act as well as adoring testimonials from David Letterman, Sharon Stone, Larry David, James L Brooks, Conan O’Brien, Sarah Silverman, Ben Stiller, and Marc Maron — and more. Basically, every comedic powerhouse whom you might have revered in your childhood cites Brooks as The Comedian’s Comedian. Starting in the early Sixties, when Rob’s dad Carl Reiner told Ed Sullivan that Ed had to have Brooks on his show, on the strength of AB’s escape-artist act (wherein he attempts to “escape” from a handkerchief draped over his wrist), Brooks played all the big prime-time shows into the early Seventies, when he had a well-documented breakdown (Brooks wanted to be an actor, but all he could get were stand-up gigs, which he grew to hate; and he had some unresolved trauma from the death of his father, Harry Einstein, aka Harry Parke, aka “Parkyakarkus,” a Greek-dialect comedian, who went down in legend as an act that actually died on-stage. Think about that), became a filmmaker (Real Life, Modern Romance, Lost in America, Defending Your Life), appeared on Carson and Letterman occasionally (such as this Tonight Show appearance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DnkJI0gYWY), and has distinguished himself down the decades with acting roles in enduring, sometimes-unexpected classics (Taxi Driver, Drive). Brooks also has hours of show-biz anecdotes to spare, which, by itself, has one lamenting about the documentary’s length. It’s streaming on HBO Max, which is one reason why one might consider acquiring that service. . .
- Then there are previews. . . Yeah.
- And an appreciation of the new Last Picture House movie theatre in downtown Davenport, opened recently by filmmakers (and local boys) Scott Beck and Bryan Woods. Until one goes to see it for oneself, one basically has the secondhand praise of actors like Hugh Grant, who said there isn’t a theatre like this in London — good grief! Will Hugh Grant actually fly all the way to Davenport to check the place out for himself? Especially given what happened to that other famous Grant (Cary) in Davenport in the late Eighties? We shall see, won’t we?. . .
“Napoleon,” “Saltburn,” “Wish,” “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” “Trolls Band Together,” “Rustin,” “Next Goal Wins,” “Thanksgiving,” and “Albert Brooks: Defending My Life”