Playing Catch Up With The Films of 2016: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (dir by Glenn Ficara and John Requa)

Posted on December 25, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Some day, someone will get around to making the ultimate Tina Fey movie, which will basically just be 4 and a half hours of people talking about how much they love Tina Fey while Tina makes silly faces in the background. Until that day comes, viewers will just have to settle for Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.

In Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Tina Fey plays Tina Fey playing real-life journalist, Kim Baker. When the film starts, Kim accepts an assignment as a war correspondent in Afghanistan. Though she starts out as neurotic and intimidated, Kim soon steps up and emerges as a passionate and committed journalist, one who is dedicated to revealing the truth — both good and bad — about what’s happening in Afghanistan. Helping her along the way is a BBC reporter, Tanya Vanderpool (Margot Robbie) and a Scottish photographer named Iain (Martin Freeman). Iain and Kim may be attracted to one another but Kim has a boyfriend (Josh Charles) back in New York. How long do you think it takes for Kim to catch her boyfriend cheating via Skype?

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is one of those movies that you just know was made to be an Oscar contender. Not only does it deal with a big important subject but it stars a popular performer in a change-of-pace role. Except, of course, it’s not really that much of a change-of-pace. Tina Fey’s a good actress but you never forget that you’re watching Tina Fey. You never think to yourself, “Kim is caught in the middle of a firefight” or “Kim is getting addicted to the rush of being a war zone.” Instead, you think, “Any minute now, Tina Fey’s going to start shooting a gun and it’s going to be funny because she’s Tina Fey.” Towards the end of the film, when a U.S. soldier who has lost his legs tells Kim to never stop trying to tell the people the truth about what’s happening in Afghanistan, you don’t think, “Don’t give up, Kim!” Instead you think, “Wow — so that soldier lost his legs so that Tina Fey could have an Oscar moment.”

If I haven’t already made it clear, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is an extremely uneven film, one that never seems to be sure if it wants to be a relationship comedy, a media satire, or a serious look at the realities of war. The film works best when it concentrates on the friendship between Tanya and Kim and it’s nice to see a film about two women who are colleagues and friends. When Tanya first showed up, I was worried that the film would devolve into one of those “Women can’t work together” diatribes or that Tanya would immediately be set up as some sort of mean girl rival for Iain. Instead, the film explores how women support each other through even the most difficult of circumstances. But then there’s other scenes that just don’t work as well, like the scenes with Alfred Molina as an Afghan politician who has a crush on Kim.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot has its moment but ultimately its too uneven to be of much consequence.

Film Review: Focus (dir by Glenn Ficara and John Requa)

Posted on March 1, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The snow and ice finally melted today so, this afternoon, Jeff and I went down to the Alamo Drafthouse and we saw the just released Will Smith/Margot Robbie film, Focus.

You know how there’s some films that you see and you know that you had a good enough time while you were watching it and then, a few hours later, you realize that the movie itself is quickly fading from your memory? It’s not that you just saw a bad movie as much as you just watched one that was not exceptionally good. To a large extent, that sums up how I felt about Focus. I watched it. I was mildly entertained. And I have a feeling that, 6 months from now, I’m going to come across this review and say something like, “Oh yeah, I guess I did see that movie.” It gets the job done but it doesn’t do much else.

(I was actually tempted to start this review by saying that Focus was good for a “March movie” but then I remembered that last year, The Grand Budapest Hotel came out in March and proved that the date of release is no longer an excuse.)

In Focus, Will Smith plays Nicky Spurgeon. Nicky’s nickname is Mellow but he didn’t get that nickname for the reason that you probably think he did. (Though, rest assured, we do find out the exact reason why Nicky is called Mellow and yes, it does factor into the film’s final twist.) Nicky is anything but mellow. Instead, he’s a professional con artist who is always scheming, who always considers every detail, and who is always focused on getting what he wants.

The film is split into two parts and the first part is actually pretty good. An inexperienced con artist named Jess (Margot Robbie) attempts to rob Nicky and gets a lecture as a result. Nicky isn’t so much upset that Jess tried to con him as much as he, as a professional, is annoyed that Jess did such a bad job of it. This leads to Nicky eventually becoming Jess’s mentor. Nicky teaches Jess all the tools of the trade, introduces her to all the properly quirky members of his crew, and he even goes against his own advice (which is to never get close to anyone) when he and Jess become lovers.

The highlight of the first part of the film is a football game where Nicky and a compulsive gambler (B.D. Wong) end up making a series of increasingly ludicrous bets. B.D. Wong gives such a memorably unhinged performance that he briefly made the entire film seem more interesting than it actually was. In fact, as I look back over Focus, I find myself wishing that the entire film has just been about his character.

But, unfortunately, the film isn’t about B.D. Wong. Instead, it’s about Nicky and Jess. The second part of the film, which takes place three years after the first part, features Jess and Nicky as equals and it feels like almost an entirely different movie. Whereas Smith and Robbie had a nice chemistry as teacher and student, that chemistry vanishes after the time jump. Unfortunately, that’s not all that vanishes. The film’s pace and playful sense of fun disappears as well. If the first half of the film felt like an above average first episode of a quirky TV show, the second half felt like a long-running sitcom on which the show runner had been fired and suddenly replaced. It was similar to what had come before but, ultimately, it felt very different.

Focus does end with a big twist but, long before it was revealed, Jeff and I both guessed what it was. The problem is that we’ve seen so many movies about con artists that we know that all of them are destined to end with a big twist that reveals that there was another con going on that we didn’t know about. It’s impossible to be surprised by the eventual twist because we all know that it’s coming. For a “con movie” like Focus to work, it has to either be so cleverly written or so much fun to watch that we actually stop thinking about the inevitability of the upcoming twist. But, since Focus is never as clever as it thinks it is, we instead spend our whole time thinking about the twist and, seeing as how you’re a clever and experience filmgoer, you probably won’t have much trouble predicting it.

But here’s the thing: I think it’s possible to be too critical of a film like Focus. Focus may not be good but it does have it fun moments. Will Smith could play Nicky in his sleep. (And, to be honest, he occasionally seems to be doing just that.) Margot Robbie looks like she belongs in an old film noir. The settings are glamorous. The clothes are to die for. Ultimately, Focus is both moderately enjoyable and extremely forgettable. If you don’t see it in a theater, you won’t regret it. However, when it show up on cable in December, it’ll make for inoffensive background noise.

6 Quickies With Lisa Marie: Atlas Shrugged, Beautiful Boy, Crazy Stupid Love, The Devil’s Double, Sarah’s Key, and Water For Elephants

Posted on November 11, 2011 by Lisa Marie Bowman

For my first post-birthday review post, I want to take a look at 6 films that I saw earlier this year but, for whatever reason, I haven’t gotten a chance to review yet. My goal has been to review every single 2011 release that I’ve seen this year. So far, I’ve only seen 106 2011 films and I still need to review 21 of them. So, without further ado, let’s “gang bang this baby out” as a former employer of mine used to say. (*Shudder* Seriously, what a creepy thing to say…)

1) Atlas Shrugged, Part One (dir. by Paul Johansson)

What to say about Atlas Shrugged, Part One? When I recently rewatched it OnDemand with a friend of mine who had just gotten back from Occupying somewhere, he threw a fit as soon as he heard wealthy 1 percenter Graham Beckel declaring, “I am on strike!” When I first saw it earlier in the year, in a theater full of strangers, they broke out into applause when they heard the same line. Atlas Shrugged is a wonderfully divisive film. If you’re a political person, your enjoyment of this film will probably come down to which news network you watch. If you enjoy those MSNBC spots where Rachel Maddow won’t shut up about the freakin’ Hoover Dam, you’ll probably hate Atlas Shrugged. If you truly believe that Fox News is “fair and balanced,” chances are you’ll enjoy it. But what if you’re like me and the only politics you follow are the politics of film and you only bow at the altar of cinema? Well, I enjoyed Atlas Shrugged because the film really is a grindhouse film at heart. It’s an uneven, low-budget film that has a few good performances (Beckel and Taylor Schilling), several bad performances, and ultimately, it goes totally against what establishment films have conditioned us to expect when we go to the movies. Ultimately, the film is a big middle finger extended at both the film and the political establishments and who can’t get behind that? Add to that, Roger Ebert hated it and when was the last time he was right about anything?

2) Beautiful Boy (dir. by Shawn Ku)

I’ve read a lot of rapturous reviews of this film online and my aunt Kate loved it when she saw it at the Dallas Angelika earlier this year. So, admittedly, when I watched this film via OnDemand, I had pretty high hopes and expectations but, unfortunately, none of those expectations came anywhere close to being met. In the film, two of my favorite performers — Michael Sheen and Maria Bello — play the middle-class parents who have to deal with the consequences (both emotional and physical) of a terrible crime perpetrated by their son. The film is based on the Virginia Tech massacre and both Sheen and Bello give excellent performances but overall, the film feels like a thoroughly shallow exploration of some various serious issues. Ultimately, the film’s refusal to provide an explanation for the crime feels less like a brave, artistic choice and more like a cop-out. The film is less abstract than Gus Van Sant’s Elephant and Denis Villeneuve’s Polytechnique but it’s also a lot less effective.

3)Crazy, Stupid Love (dir. by John Requa and Glenn Ficarra)

I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive Steve Carell for abandoning The Office and forcing upon me the current, almost painful season of the show. Still, I can’t totally blame him because the guy is totally a film star and he proves it in Crazy, Stupid Love by holding his own with other certifiable film stars like Ryan Gosling, Kevin Bacon, Marisa Tomei, Julianne Moore, and Emma Stone. In the film, Julianne Moore plays Carell’s wife who leaves him for a coworker (played by Kevin Bacon, doing his charming jerk routine). The depressed Carell is taken under the wing of womanizer Gosling who teaches Carell how to be more confident and appealing. Things seem to be working out well until Gosling starts going out with Carell’s daughter (played by Emma Stone). The movie, itself, isn’t anything special and it’s really kind of a mess but it’s saved by a massively appealing cast. And, by the way, Ryan Gosling —très beau! Seriously.

4) The Devil’s Double (dir. by Lee Tamahori)

Taking place in pre-Desert Storm Iraq, The Devil’s Double claims to tell the true story of Latif Yahia, an Iraqi who was forced to serve as the double for the sociopathic young dictator-in-training Uday Hussien. I’ve read that there’s some debate as to how faithful The Devil’s Double is to the facts of the story and it is true that Latif is portrayed as being almost too good to be true but no matter. The Devil’s Double is a compelling and oddly fascinating little gangster film, one that manages to show the dangerous appeal of the excessive lifestyle of a man like Uday Hussien without ever actually being seduced by it. The film is dominated by Dominic Cooper, who gives a great performance playing both the tortured Latif and the cheerfully insane Uday.

5) Sarah’s Key (dir by Gilles Paquet-Brenner)

Sarah’s Key tells two stories at once and, the result, is a film that feels very schizophrenic in quality. The better part of the film deals with Sarah, a 10 year-old Jewish girl living in Nazi-occupied France. When Sarah and her parents are sent to a concentration camp, her younger brother is left behind in Paris. Sarah eventually manages to escape and desperately tries to get back to Paris to rescue her brother. Meanwhile, in the modern-day, a journalist (Kristen Scott Thomas) researches Sarah’s story and discovers that her French husband’s family has a connection of their own with Sarah’s story. The film is compelling and heart-breaking as long as it concentrates on Sarah but, unfortunately, the modern-day scenes feel forced and predictable and the end result is a film that’s never quite as good as it obviously could have been.

6) Water For Elephants (dir. by Francis Lawrence)

Look, I make no apologies — I freaking loved this movie. Yes, plotwise, this film feels almost like a parody and yes, so much of this film was over-the-top and kinda silly but I don’t care. I loved this film for the old-fashioned, melodramatic, and rather campy spectacle that it is. Robert Pattinson plays a Depression-era Ivy League college student-turned-hobo who ends up joining the circus and falling in love with Reese Whitherspoon, the wife of insane circus owner, Christoph Waltz. Pattinson isn’t much of an actor but he’s easy on the eyes and he and Whitherspoon have just enough chemistry to remain watchable. The film, however, is totally dominated by Waltz who is both charming and scary. The next time your man makes you sit through anything starring Jason Statham, you make him watch Water for Elephants.