Category Archives: Film Review

Playing Catch-Up With The Films of 2017: The Dark Tower (dir by Nikolaj Arcel)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What the Hell was The Dark Tower about, anyway?

It’s a legitimate question.  I know that the film was technically a continuation of Stephen King’s overrated Dark Tower books.  Matthew McConaughey was Walter, the Man in the Black, the man who is kidnapping psychic children so that he can weaponize their powers and destroy The Dark Tower.  Idris Elba was Roland, the last of the gunslingers, who is obsessed with killing Walter because Walter killed his father.  And Tom Taylor is Jake, an eleven year-old boy who lives in New York City and who keeps having visions of the Tower, Walter, and Roland.  Walter wants Jake.  Roland wants Walter.  Jake wants to understand it all…

And that’s pretty much the entire movie.  Jake switches back and forth between his world and Roland’s world.  Walter occasionally pops up in New York so that he can kill Jake’s family and assure that Jake won’t have any reason not to continue traveling with Roland at the end of the movie.  It all basically feels like the pilot for a television series and, to be honest, it probably wouldn’t be that bad of a show.  For one thing, if The Dark Tower was a tv show, there would be more of an opportunity to develop the characters of Roland, Walter, and Tom.  The Dark Tower movie only last 95 minutes and the majority of those minutes feel very rushed.

Obviously, if you’ve read Stephen King’s Dark Tower books, this film will be easier for you to follow than it will be for people who have never had to suffer through them.  I know I’m in the minority as far as this is concerned but I find The Dark Tower series to be King at his most pretentious.  Interestingly enough, a little bit of pretension probably would have helped the film version of The Dark Tower.  As it is, The Dark Tower is almost too workmanlike and straight-forward.  It could have really used a pointless Stephen King-style soliloquy about faith, innocence, and horror.  At the very least, they could have had someone in the background, droning on about politics in a Maine accent.

I have to admit that I really, really, really wanted to like The Dark Tower.  I love Idris Elba.  I love Matthew McConaughey.  Even more importantly, I love being a contrarian.  Whenever a film gets as many negative reviews as The Dark Tower, my natural instinct is always to assume that it has to be a secret masterpiece.  I mean, seriously, who trusts critics?  I really wanted to watch The Dark Tower and then write a 1,000-word defense of it.  I was hoping that, much like The Counselor, it would turn out to be a masterpiece that only I could recognize.

Sadly, that didn’t turn out to be the case.  I will say that Matthew McConaughey seemed to be having a sincerely good time playing the bad guy.  And Idris Elba had just the right mix of weariness and compassion to play Roland.  But otherwise, the movie just felt so pointless.

Overall, this has been a pretty good year for Stephen King film adaptations.  It deserves to be nominated for an Oscar, though it won’t be.  Gerald’s Game made people thankful for Netflix.  The Dark Tower, though, will be quickly forgotten.

Playing Catch-Up With The Films of 2017: Fist Fight (dir by Richie Keen)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

While I wouldn’t begin to argue that it’s been a great year for movies, there were still some really good movies released in 2017.

Unfortunately, there were also some really bad ones.

Which do you think Fist Fight was?

If you answered really bad, congratulations!

Actually, I don’t think anyone was expecting Fist Fight to be a classic or anything like that.  Basically, the film is about a conflict between two teachers, a conflict that seems destined to end with the event promised by the title.  The two teachers are played by Ice Cube and Charlie Day.  Of course, in the movie, they have different name but it doesn’t matter.  Neither character has an identity outside of the actor who plays him.  Charlie Day is nerdy and quick to yell.  Ice Cube is tough and intimidating and not the type to back down from a fight.

Now, at the risk of losing all credibility, I’m going to be honest about something.  When I first saw the trailer for Fist Fight, I thought it might not be as bad as it turned out to be.  Charlie Day is hilarious on It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia.  One of the more appealing things about Ice Cube is his willingness to poke fun at his tough guy image.  More often than not, I tend to like movies about teachers acting like children because, when I was in school, I always suspected that was the way teachers actually behaved when they were safely in the teacher’s lounge.  Charlie Day desperately running around the school, hyperventilating while Ice Cube pops up to remind him that they have a fist fight scheduled?  Seriously, it sounded like it could be funny in a dumb way.

Well, I was wrong.  Fist Fight is one of the most painfully unfunny films that I’ve ever seen.  This is a movie that should have been focused on one thing: the fist fight at the end of the day.  The entire movie should have been Charlie Day preparing for a fight that he knows he can’t possibly win.  Instead, the movie kept getting distracted with unnecessary subplots.  For instance, because it’s the last day before summer, all of the students are pulling pranks on their teachers.  In fact, the entire student body is out-of-control.  But who cares?  We’re here to see Charlie Day try to throw a punch at Ice Cube.  We don’t care about a bunch of obnoxious students pulling pranks that seem like they were directly lifted from a Crown International high school movie.  If we want to see that, we can rewatch The Pom Pom Girls or Joy of Sex.  And if we want to watch a teacher stand up to his students, we can watch Class of 1984.

The film is full of funny people but it never really takes advantage of them.  Actors like Tracy Morgan, Kumail Nanjiani, and Christina Hendricks pop up but just as quickly disappear.  Charlie Day does his best but the level of writing never rises to the level of It’s Sunny In Philadelphia.  (I personally would love to see “The Gang Gets In A Fist Fight With Ice Cube.”)  Compared to Fist Fight, even something like Horrible Bosses looks like nuanced and subversive humor.  There’s a lot of screeching in Fist Fight but very little of it is funny.

A Movie A Day #349: The Bedroom Window (1987, directed by Curtis Hanson)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

The Bedroom Window opens with quite a quandary.  Sylvia (Isabelle Huppert) has just witnessed a woman named Denise (Elizabeth McGovern) being attacked by a serial rapist/killer named Carl (Brad Greenquist).  The problem is that the window that Sylvia’s standing at is located in the bedroom of Terry Lambert (Steve Guttenberg).  Sylvia is having an extramarital affair with Terry and she knows that there’s no way to tell the police what she saw without also exposing the affair.  Terry decides that he’ll go to the police and tell them what Sylvia witnessed but he will claim to have seen it himself.

Terry does well enough with the police that Carl gets arrested but, at Carl’s trial, Terry’s testimony falls apart when he is revealed to be so near-sighted that there was no way he could have seen what happened from his bedroom window.  Carl is not only acquitted but has now figured out that Sylvia was the one who witnessed him attacking Denise.  When the killings start up again, Terry becomes the number one suspect.

An underrated and overlooked thriller, The Bedroom Window was directed by the late and missed Curtis Hanson.  It’s not a perfect film.  Terry does an excessive amount of stupid things over the course of the movie.  But Hanson did a good job creating suspense and he got good performances from his entire cast.  Steve Guttenberg may seem like a strange choice to play the lead in a Hitchcockian thriller but he actually gives a credible performance and the fact that he is not a traditional hero creates some suspense.  Brad Greenquist is chilling as the killer and keep an eye out for the great Wallace Shawn in the role of Carl’s weaselly attorney.

Here Are The 2017 Nominations From The Chicago Independent Film Critics!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Chicago Independent Film Critics Circle should not be mistaken for the Chicago Film Critics Association.  However, since they’re both in Chicago, that does give me an excuse to once again use this picture of Al Capone.

Here are the nominees!

THE 10 BEST INDEPENDENT FILMS (in alphabetical order):

The Big Sick, Call Me By Your Name, The Florida Project, Get Out, A Ghost Story, Lady Bird, Lucky, Mudbound, The Shape of Water, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

THE 10 BEST STUDIO FILMS (in alphabetical order):

Baby Driver, Blade Runner 2049, Dunkirk, Logan, The Lost City of Z, mother!, Phantom Thread, The Post, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Wonder Woman

The complete list of nominees for the 2017 CIFCC Awards:

BEST INDEPENDENT FILM

BEST STUDIO FILM

BEST FOREIGN FILM

  • Raw
  • The Square
  • Thelma

BEST DOCUMENTARY

  • Faces Places
  • Jane
  • Whose Streets?

BEST ANIMATED FILM

BEST DIRECTOR

  • Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird
  • Christopher Nolan, Dunkirk
  • Jordan Peele, Get Out

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

  • The Big Sick– Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani
  • Get Out- Jordan Peele
  • Lady Bird- Greta Gerwig

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

  • Call Me By Your Name- James Ivory
  • The Disaster Artist- Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber
  • Mudbound– Dee Rees and Virgil Williams

BEST ACTOR

  • Timothée Chalamet, Call Me By Your Name
  • Daniel Kaluuya, Get Out
  • Gary Oldman, Darkest Hour

BEST ACTRESS

  • Sally Hawkins, The Shape of Water
  • Frances McDormand, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
  • Saoirse Ronan, Lady Bird

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

  • Willem Dafoe, The Florida Project
  • Richard Jenkins, The Shape of Water
  • Sam Rockwell, Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri
  • Michael Stuhlbarg, Call Me By Your Name

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

  • Tiffany Haddish, Girls Trip
  • Allison Janney, I, Tonya
  • Laurie Metcalf, Lady Bird

BEST ENSEMBLE CAST

  • Get Out
  • Mudbound
  • The Post
  • The Shape of Water
  • Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

  • Blade Runner 2049– Roger Deakins
  • Dunkirk- Hoyte van Hoytema
  • The Shape of Water– Dan Laustsen

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN

  • Blade Runner 2049– Dennis Gassner
  • mother!- Philip Messina
  • The Shape of Water- Paul D. Austerberry

BEST EDITING

BEST COSTUME DESIGN AND MAKEUP

  • Darkest Hour– Jacqueline Durran (costumes), Kazuhiro Tsuji, Lucy Sibbick and David Malinowski (makeup)
  • Phantom Thread– Mark Bridges (costumes), Paul Engelen (makeup)
  • The Shape of Water– Luis Sequeria (costumes), Jordan Samuel and Paula Fleet (makeup)

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

TRAILBLAZER AWARD

  • Sean Baker, The Florida Project
  • Jordan Peele, Get Out
  • Dee Rees, Mudbound

IMPACT AWARD

  • Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird
  • Patty Jenkins, Wonder Woman
  • Jordan Peele, Get Out

A Movie A Day #348: Ride In The Whirlwind (1966, directed by Monte Hellman)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Three cowboys — Vern (Cameron Mitchell), Wes (Jack Nicholson), and Otis (Tom Filer) — are riding their horses across the old west when they come upon a cabin that is inhabited by one-eyed Blind Dick (Harry Dean Stanton) and his friends.  Though they suspect that Dick may be an outlaw, the cowboys accept his offer to stay the night.  The next morning, they wake up to discover that they are surrounded by a posse.  Mistaken for members of Dick’s gang, Vern and Wes go on the run.  Eventually, they find themselves hiding out at the home of Evan (George Mitchell), Catherine (Katherine Squire), and their daughter, Abigail (Millie Perkins).  While Wes and Vern wait for their chance to escape, the posse grows closer and closer.

A minimalistic western with a fatalistic outlook, Ride In The Whirlwind is today best known for being a pre-Easy Rider credit for Jack Nicholson.  Nicholson not only co-produced the film but he also wrote the script.  With that in mind, it’s not surprising that Nicholson not only gets the best lines but that he also comes close to getting the girl.  Of all the roles that Nicholson played before his star-making turn in Easy Rider, Wes probably comes the closest to being what would be considered to be a typical Jack Nicholson role.  Wes is sarcastic, quick with a quip, and alienated by mainstream society (represented here by the relentless posse).  Nicholson gives a confident performance and it is interesting to see him co-starring with some of the same actors, like Harry Dean Stanton, who would continue to be associated with him once he became a star.  Though the film may be dominated by Nicholson, Stanton also makes a strong impression and comes close to stealing the whole movie.

(Also of note is an early appearance by Rupert Crosse.  Years later, Crosse was set to co-star with Nicholson in The Last Detail but his early death led to Otis Young being cast in the role.)

With its dark outlook and anti-establishment theme, Ride In The Whirlwind was before its time and it struggled at the American box office.  (According to Monte Hellman, it was very popular in France.)  It would be another three years before American culture would catch up with Nicholson’s anti-establishment persona and Easy Rider would make him a star.

A Movie A Day #347: High-Ballin’ (1978, directed by Peter Carter)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Hey, good buddy, remember the Snowman?

The Snowman was the handle of Cledus Snow, the independent trucker who, along with his basset hound Flash, helped the Bandit escape Smokey in three different movies.  Cledus was played by the country western singer, Jerry Reed.  Interestingly, when Smokey and the Bandit was still in preproduction, the film’s producers envisioned a low-budget drive-in movie with Reed in the role of the Bandit.  When Burt Reynolds signaled that he would be interested in playing the man in the black Trans Am, Reed was instead cast as Cledus.

The box office success of Smokey and the Bandit led to several road films being rushed into production and more than a few of them starred Jerry Reed.  Several other of them starred Peter Fonda, who had already proven himself to be the king of the road with Easy Rider.  However, High-Ballin’ is the only trucker film that can claim to have starred both Jerry Reed and Peter Fonda.

In High-Ballin’, Jerry Reed may be playing “Iron Duke” Boykin but he might as well just be Cledus Snow again.  Once again, Reed is an independent trucker with a family at home and a love for the road.  (Just as he did with Smokey and the Bandit, Reed even performed High-Ballin‘s theme song.)  The local trucker’s union is putting pressure on the independent truckers and trying to intimidate them into joining.  Iron Duke has no intention of doing that.  Iron Duke has been hired to haul a load of liquor to an isolated lumber camp and he is not going to let the union or its thugs stop him.  Helping him along the way is his friend Rane (Peter Fonda) and another independent, Pickup (Helen Shaver).

High-Ballin‘ was not as bad as I was expecting it to be.  Reed, Fonda, and Shaver are likable in the lead roles and the action scenes are exciting.  Fonda may have been a notoriously inexpressive actor but he was always believable whenever he was cast as a rebel or an outsider and the friendship between him and the more expressive Reed is as believable as the friendship between Cledus and the Bandit in Reed’s previous trucking film.  Of course, the main reason you are going to watch a movie like High-Ballin’ is to see how many different ways that a car or a truck can be destroyed and this movie does not skimp on the vehicular destruction.  It’s nothing great but, as far as 70s trucking films are concerned, High-Ballin’ is better than average.

One final note: keep an eye out for Michael Ironside in an early role.

10-4, good buddy.  I’m out.

Cleaning Out The DVR: Christmas In Mississippi (dir by Emily Moss Wilson)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Hi there!  So, as you may know because I’ve been talking about it on this site all year, I have got way too much stuff on my DVR.  Seriously, I currently have 193 things recorded!  I’ve decided that, on January 15th, I am going to erase everything on the DVR, regardless of whether I’ve watched it or not.  So, that means that I’ve now have only have a month to clean out the DVR!  Will I make it?  Keep checking this site to find out!  I recorded My Christmas Prince off of Lifetime on December 9th!)

When I saw the title of this one, I immediately started thinking about William Faulkner.  I thought about the tragic Compson family and the scandalous Snopes family and the complicated legacy of Colonel John Sartoris.  I found myself wondering what Yoknapatawpha County looks like today and whether the town of Jefferson had changed much since Faulkner’s day.

Of course, Christmas In Mississippi is not based on a Faulkner short story, nor does it claim to be.  Instead, it’s a thoroughly pleasant Lifetime holiday movie, a good-natured celebration of Christmas tradition and romance.  Still, it’s rare that you ever seen any movie set in Mississippi, outside of the occasional Faulkner adaptation or stories that focus on Mississippi’s past.  Much as with New Jersey, it sometimes seems like the only time you see or hear about Mississippi on television or in a movie is when it’s being set up as the punch line to a joke so I guess my point  is that it’s nice to see a positive movie about Mississippi.  Not only is this film set in Mississippi but it was actually filmed there, in the lovely city of Gulfport.

As for the movie itself, it deals with Holly Logan (Jana Kramer), a photographer who returns to her hometown of Gulfport for the holidays.  Not only is she visiting her mother, Caroline (Faith Ford) but she’s also helping to set up the holiday light show, the first one to be held since Gulfport was hit by a destructive hurricane five years ago.  (In real life, Gulfport was hit and seriously damaged by Hurricane Katrina.)  The only real complication for Holly is that the festival is being supervised by Mike (Wes Brown), who broke her heart in high school.  Even though Caroline insists that Mike has changed and matured since high school, Holly doesn’t want to risk getting hurt again.  Fortunately, Mr. Kriss (Barry Bostwick) is working at the festival and he’s good at bringing people together.  And yes, Mr. Kriss is playing Santa Claus.  If you’re surprised by that, you’ve obviously never watched a holiday movie before.  (That’s not a complaint.  If you make a holiday movie where St. Nick isn’t the one bringing your couple together, you’re doing it wrong.)

Christmas In Mississippi is a nice little movie.  Though the plot may not take you by surprise, Jana Kramer and Wes Brown make for a likable couple and the entire cast has a charming chemistry.  You really do believe that they are all neighbors and they all did grow up next to each other.  It’s a sweet movie.  In the end, Holly does a good job with the light show and so does the movie.  For that matter, so does the city of Gulfport, which looks great in Christmas in Mississippi.

Cleaning Out The DVR: My Christmas Prince (dir by Sam Irvin)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Hi there!  So, as you may know because I’ve been talking about it on this site all year, I have got way too much stuff on my DVR.  Seriously, I currently have 193 things recorded!  I’ve decided that, on January 15th, I am going to erase everything on the DVR, regardless of whether I’ve watched it or not.  So, that means that I’ve now have only have a month to clean out the DVR!  Will I make it?  Keep checking this site to find out!  I recorded My Christmas Prince off of Lifetime on December 3rd!)

PRINCE CHARMING IS PRINCE CHEATING!

That’s an actual headline that is seen in My Christmas Prince.  The prince in question is Prince Alexander Theodore William Hendricks (Callum Alexander), who is the next in line to take the throne in some little European country that’s definitely not the UK despite the fact that everyone there speaks with a British accent.

Everyone knows that Alexander as a prince, everyone but his girlfriend, Samantha (Alexis Knapp).  She just thinks he’s a diplomat and technically, he is.  It’s not so much that he lied to her about being royalty.  It’s just that he didn’t tell her the whole truth.  He wants to be judged based on who he is and not his royal heritage.  Of course, by not telling Samantha that he’s a prince, he also hasn’t told her that he will eventually be expected to return home and rule his country.  Samantha has plans of her own, which don’t involve being the Queen of a small European country that is definitely not the UK.  She’s just been hired to design a summer school program for every school in the Bronx!  The children need her!

(Personally, if I had the chance to be the ruler of a small country that pretty much only exists to support its royal family, I would say screw the children and catch the next flight to Monaco.)

Anyway, when Samantha decides to spend her Christmas with her family in Wyoming, Alexander decides to follow.  And no sooner has Alexander stepped into the local diner then a waitress immediately recognizes him as the crown prince of whatever country it is that he is from.  It turns out that she saw pictures of him online, attending a cocktail party with the royal family of Sweden.

(Of course, it wouldn’t be a Lifetime movie if the Internet didn’t somehow threaten to destroy everyone’s happiness.)

Anyway, it takes Samantha a few minutes to get used to the idea that her boyfriend is a royal prince.  Of course, her parents are excited.  The entire state of Wyoming is excited.  But you know who isn’t excited?  Alexander’s mother!  Nope, she is scandalized at the thought of Alexander marrying a common American.  She’d rather Alexander marry a baroness.  Could this possibly lead to a bunch of misunderstandings and unlikely visitors coming to Wyoming?

What do you think?

Every Christmas, it seems like there’s at least a handful of Lifetime and/or Hallmark films that feature obscure European royalty falling in love in small town America.  Once you’ve seen one of these movies, you’ve seen them all.  There’s not a surprising moment to be found nor a disparaging word to be heard in My Christmas Prince, which is a mildly pleasant but eminently forgettable movie.  To be honest, I don’t really demand too much from these movies but My Christmas Prince just didn’t work for me.  For a predictable movie like this to work, there needs to be a real chemistry between the two leads but there really didn’t seem to be much of a spark between Knapp and Alexander.  Much like the movie, they just seemed to be going through the motions.

I’ve often been asked which member of the Royal Family I relate to.  Usually, I say Pippa Middleton but, to be honest, it’s the little girl in the picture below:

A Movie A Day #346: Closet Land (1991, directed by Radha Bharadwaj)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

It has been nearly two years since the death of Alan Rickman and it is a loss that film lovers are still feeling today.  When Rickman was with us, it was easy to take him for granted.  It was only after his death that many started to look at the films he made, both the good ones and the bad ones, and realizing just how much Rickman brought to every role he played.

Take Closet Land, for instance.  This was made early in Rickman’s film career.  It is a very theatrical film, all taking place on one set and featuring only two major roles. Madeleine Stowe plays the Victim, a writer of children’s books whose latest autobiographical work deals with a girl who uses her imagination to escape from unhappiness.  Alan Rickman plays the Interrogator, a government functionary who demands that the Victim confess to hiding anti-government propaganda in her books.  When the Victim refuses to sign the confession, the Interrogator continually switches techniques in his attempt to break her, trying everything from physically torturing her to blindfolding her and pretending to be other people to even claiming that he abused her when she was younger.

There are many problems with Closet Land but Alan Rickman’s performance is not one of them.  Rickman is hypnotically malevolent as the otherwise cultured Interrogator and the most fascinating part of the movie is watching him switch back and forth from being a harried bureaucrat just doing his job and a manipulative sociopath who views the Victim’s sanity as a trophy for him to claim.  Closet Land is too stagey and heavy-handed to be effective but Rickman’s performance reminds us of what a great actor we lost when we lost Alan Rickman.