The Bad Guys (dir by Pierre Perifel)

Posted on August 21, 2022 by Leonard Wilson

I’ve always loved movies about heists, and The Bad Guys hits the mark on so many levels. Based on the Scholastic books by Aaron Blabey, The Bad Guys focuses on a group of thieves known for their dastardly deeds. They also happen to be some of the scariest animals around. We have Mr. Wolf (Sam Rockwell, Moon), the charismatic leader of the group. Mr. Shark (Craig Robinson, This is the End) is a master of disguise. Mr. Snake (Marc Maron, Netflix’s Glow) can slither through any vent and doubles as rope when necessary. Mr. Piranha (Anthony Ramos, In the Heights) is the brute force / muscle of the team. And finally, my favorite is Ms. Tarantula, a.k.a. “Webs” (Awkwafina, Jumanji: The Next Level), who can hack into any computer system. They are the 2nd most wanted thieves in the city (the top spot going to the elusive jewel thief , The Crimson Paw) and Officer Misty Luggins (Alex Bornstein, Amazon’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) is doing her best to apprehend them.

After a cool opening that introduces us to the team, they’re challenged by Mayor Diane Foxington (Zazie Beetz, Deadpool 2) as being off their game. This turns the crew’s attention to Professor Marmalade (Richard Ayoade, The Watch) and his Golden Dolphin as a possible trophy. When their plot fails and they are arrested, Professor Marmalade strikes a deal with the Mayor to help turn The Bad Guys into The Good Guys. Will the team put their thieving ways behind them or are they incapable of change?

Pierre Perifel previously worked on Kung Fu Panda 2 and directed the animated short film Bilby, the latter of which is closer in style to The Bad Guys. It’s almost a comic book style that reminds me of Spider-Man: Into the Spider Verse, mostly. I liked it overall, but there are some moments where it seems like the anthropomorphic characters have better designs to them than their human counterparts. It’s not terrible (It’s not even truly noticeable unless you’re really paying attention), but just a nitpick.

Where The Bad Guys shines is the cast. Each main character has a good match with the voice actor behind it. Robinson’s Shark is a huggable bear at heart. The only one who threw me off in the cast was Ayoade’s Marmalade, who reminded me a lot of Rhys Darby (Jumanji). He’s still great, though, trying to help the group turn over a new leaf. It’s Rockwell and Maron’s performances that are the strongest here, even from the start of the film. Rockwell’s Wolf is charismatic and smooth (and is a great dancer). Maron’s gruff and grumbly, unless the moment brings a guinea pig in view. I couldn’t imagine anyone else for these roles.

Ms. Tarantula (Akwafina) is an expert hacker and a member of The Bad Guys.

The pacing for the film is pretty quick, for a movie that runs an hour and 40 minutes. I would have preferred a few more heists in the film, but the story we are given works. Although the last 3rd of the film is a little over the top and I would have liked to have seen more with the ending, The Bad Guys comes with a number of twists and surprises that had me laughing and cheering on the team. Much of the dialog and style seems like it could have come from films like Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, Mann’s Thief or Soderbergh’s Out of Sight, but set in such a way that it’s tailored to younger audiences. While the story does have some morals to it, the film never really reaches early Pixar levels of emotion. Only the youngest of fans may want to reach for a tissue or two at some point, if that. I wouldn’t mind seeing this get a sequel at some point.

Daniel Pemberton (Spider-Man: Into the Spider Verse) brings a blues/jazzy tone to the score of The Bad Guys. It almost channels David Holmes’ Ocean’s 11 in some ways, but again, that just the genre. Additionally, tracks like “Brand New Day” by The Heavy, “Good Tonight” by Anthony Ramos, and “Stop Drop Roll” by Can’t Stop Won’t Stop help are great touches to the movie. One nitpick I did have was that the trailer used Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy” to promote the film, but it wasn’t actually used in the movie. I thought it would have made a perfect fit.

Overall, The Bad Guys is a great little heist film for kids (and adults alike), with a great set of characters. The redemption arc isn’t a heavy hitting one, but it does offer the notion that even the scariest of characters aren’t as bad as they appear.

Film Review: Worth (dir by Sara Colangelo)

Posted on September 17, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

How much is one life worth?

That’s the question that is asked in a film that’s appropriately titled Worth.

Based on a true story, Worth centers around Kenneth D. Feinberg. Played by Michael Keaton, Fienberg was the Washington lawyer who, in the days after 9/11, was appointed the Special Master of the September 11th Victims Compensation Fund. In that role, Feinberg was in charge of determining how much money should be given to the families who lost someone in the 9/11 attacks. At first, Feinberg tries to reduce his job to just numbers. He resists the efforts of his law partner, Camille Biros (Amy Ryan), to convince him to meet with any of the families one-on-one. Instead, he tries to make it all about how much the victims would have earned if they had lived. When Camille tries to get him to listen to a recording of the final phone call of a man trapped in the Pentagon, Feinberg refuses to do it.

Not surprisingly, Feinberg gets a reputation for being insensitive and many of the families signal that, rather than accepting the government’s compensation, they would rather sue the airlines and the city of New York, a move that we’re told could crash the U.S. economy or bankrupt the families or both. It’s only after the workaholic Feinberg makes the mistake of staying in the office after everyone else has left that he actually meets one of the families. With the help of activist Charles Wolf (Stanley Tucci), Feinberg finally starts to care about the people behind the numbers.

Worth is a bit of an old-fashioned film, a throw-back to the type of well-meaning, competently produced films that used to come out every December so that they could compete for the Academy Awards. Even the film’s rather stolid, middle-of-the road liberalism feels like an artifact of another age. (I had to laugh a little when the film assured us that, despite sometimes coming across like a jackass, Feinberg was a good guy because he had been a senior aide to Ted Kennedy, the senator who left a woman to drown in a car while he went back to his hotel and got some sleep.) At a time when Adam McKay is being treated as a serious thought leader and Aaron Sorkin has somehow been recast as a sensible moderate, Worth’s fairly even-handed and nonjudgmental approach feels like almost an act of rebellion. That said, Worth’s approach works for the story that it’s telling. 9/11 was such a huge tragedy that it doesn’t need to be talked to death, as it would be in a Sorkin film. Nor do we need the heavy hand of Adam McKay to tell us that there’s something inherently disturbing about reducing the value of someone’s life to a mere number. Unlike the films of McKay, Sorkin, or Jay Roach (Hell, why not throw him in there, too?), Worth trusts the audience to be able to figure out certain truths on its own. After a decade of heavy-handed political agitprop, Worth’s nonshowy approach is actually a bit refreshing.

As a character, Kenneth Feinberg is not always easy to like. That’s especially true during the first half of the film, when Feinberg seems to be more interested in the challenge of running the compensation fund as opposed to the people that he’s supposed to be helping. When the film begins, Feinberg is the epitome of the technocrat who can figure out the numbers but who has no idea how to actually deal with human beings. Fortunately, Feinberg is also played by Michael Keaton, who is one of the few actors to be capable of projecting the natural authority necessary to make Feinberg compelling without also resorting to begging us to like the character. Keaton does a good job portraying both Feinberg’s quick mind but also his social awkwardness. When we first meet him, he’s someone who has been an insider for so long that he can’t even imagine that an outside exists. Keaton plays him as a man who does not mean to be callous but who is so work-obsessed that he doesn’t understand how his job comes across to other people. Even more importantly, though, Keaton does a good job of portraying Feinberg’s transformation from being a detached bureaucrat to being someone who actually cares about the people who will effected by his decisions. A lesser actor would have overplayed these scenes and the film would have felt mawkish. Keaton underplays and it saves the film.

As I said before, Worth is an old-fashioned film. Visually, it sometimes resembles the type of movie that HBO used to win Emmys with in the mid-aughts. Keaton so dominates the film that, only afterwards, do you realize that the talented supporting cast was often underused. Worth is not a perfect film but it is a good film and a thought-provoking one. It’s currently showing on Netflix.

Film Review: Spenser Confidential (dir by Peter Berg)

Posted on March 7, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Spenser Confidential, which is currently streaming on Netflix, is the latest Mark Wahlberg/Peter Berg collaboration.

It’s a crime film and it’s set in Boston and it will probably remind you every other Boston-set crime film that you’ve ever seen. It’s got all the usual ingredients. People sing Sweet Caroline. A fat gangster wears a tracksuit. We get a long overhead shot of the streets of Southie and there’s a scene set in an Irish bar. One of the film’s big scenes takes place at what appears to be a deserted racing track. (I’ve never been to Boston but, just from the movies, I know that the city is basically made up of Harvard, Southie, and hundreds of deserted race tracks.) The Red Sox get a shout-out. And, of course, the movie stars Mr. Boston himself, Mark Wahlberg. Seriously, if your Boston movie doesn’t feature Mark Wahlberg or an Affleck brother, it might as well just be a St. Louis movie.

In this one, Mark Wahlberg plays Spenser. Spenser was a cop until a gangster in a tracksuit murdered someone from the neighborhood and the head of homicide tried to bury the case. This led to an angry Spenser beating the man up in front of his own house. Spenser was sent to prison, where he served five years as an ex-cop in the general population. That’s right! He wasn’t even put in protective custody but somehow, he survived. Right before Spenser is released from prison, he’s attacked by a Neo-Nazi who is played by Post Malone. It’s not really that relevant to the overall plot but it does give viewers a chance to say, “Wait a minute …. is that Post Malone?”

Anyway, once he gets out of prison, Spenser moves in with his mentor and former boxing coach, Henry Cimoli (Alan Arkin). He also gets a new roommate, an aspiring MMA fighter named Hawk (Winston Duke). After Captain Boylan, the head of homicide — yes, the same guy that Spenser beat up five years ago, is decapitated by 20 sword-carrying assailants, Spenser is the number one suspect. Fortunately, for Spenser, another cop commits suicide and it’s quickly announced that the cop who killed himself also killed Boylan. It’s a murder/suicide! So, Spenser’s off the hook and I guess the movie’s over, right?

Nope, it doesn’t work like that. It turns out that Spenser has his doubts about the whole story and he wants to investigate because he has “a strong moral code.” Unfortunately, as a convicted felon, Spenser is not allowed to become a private investigator. So, Spenser and Hawk conduct an unofficial investigation, which largely amounts to talking to Spenser’s former partner, Driscoll (Bokeem Woodbine) and getting into a brawl while Sweet Caroline plays in the background.

It’s a Boston thing.

The mystery are the heart of the film pretty much leads exactly where you think it’s going to lead. For a 2-hour crime thriller, there aren’t exactly a lot of twists and turns to be found in Spenser Confidential, which is a problem. The mystery’s solution is so obvious that it’s hard not to resent the fact that Spenser is apparently too stupid to figure it out on his own. There’s an extended scene where he gets attacked by a dog and you know what? That would have never happened to any other movie detective because every other detective would have figured out who the murderer was long before getting attacked by that dog.

On the plus side, Peter Berg knows how to stage a fight scene and he also knows how to make the best use of Wahlberg’s mix of sensitivity and working class arrogance. Unfortunately, the rest of the cast is let down by a script that doesn’t give them much to do. Winston Duke is physically imposing as Hawk but he spends too much of the film standing around and waiting for Spenser to take the lead. Alan Arkin appears to be having fun in the role of Henry but again, his character is underwritten. About the only person, other than Wahlberg, who gets to make much of an impression is Iliza Shlesinger, who is cast as Spenser’s ex-girlfriend. Shlesinger may be playing a stereotype (she’s loud, crude, and has a thick Boston accent) but she fully embraces the character and makes her seem like the only person in the film who actually has a life beyond what’s happening onscreen at any given moment.

Anyway, Spenser Confidential isn’t terrible as much as it’s just forgettable. It’s a generic Boston crime film and you can probably safely watch it if you’re not looking for something to which you would actually have to pay attention. Some of the action scenes are well-shot. If you liked Mark Wahlberg in other films, you’ll probably like him in this. Whether you enjoy it or not, you’ll probably forget about this film about an hour after watching it.

Joker (dir. by Todd Phillips)

Posted on October 5, 2019 by Leonard Wilson

JokerPoster When I used to play games like Vampire: The Masquerade, they had this disclaimer that said: “You are not really a Vampire. If you can’t distinguish between fantasy and reality, you need to put this book down.”

I think the same can be said of Todd Phillips Joker, and it may be the source of a lot of the fear associated with it.

I believe the big fear that everyone has with Joker is that it’s going to incite people to violence and/or mimicry. It’s the same kind of fear that probably happened with films like Death Wish and Taxi Driver. It’s also the kind of thing that did happen with 1993’s The Program, a film that contained a scene with kids laying down in the middle of a busy road. Someone actually tried it, and ended up dying. As a result, people get a little nervous when Hollywood produces something that could lead to someone mimicking what they see on screen. In that sense, any film has the potential to have an idiot try it out, despite all of the warnings.

If that makes you in any way uncomfortable, the movie will be out on VOD in 3 months time, not a long wait. Still, Joaquin Phoenix’s performance is easily worth the price of admission.

Looking past all that, Joker is actually very good. The Crow, The Dark Knight and Conan the Barbarian are comic book films, but are so serious that you wouldn’t really associate them with a comic unless you knew it beforehand. Joker falls into the same category for me. This might be a little off putting for some who are expecting a more “comic action” like performance along the lines of say, Batman Forever. It’s the kind of film where if you stripped the credits from it and sat someone down to watch it, they might not figure it all out until 3 quarters of the way in. It feels like just another film, save that happens to be dropped in Gotham City.

Joker is the story of Arthur Fleck, a man with a variant of Tourettes that causes him to laugh at inappropriate moments, among other issues. Working as a clown and hoping to become aThrough a series of events, Arthur falls and is pushed until he reaches a breaking point. That is the quickest way to explain Joker without divulging too much. Let’s focus on the particulars.

Todd Phillips’ direction is good here. We move from scene to scene with ease, and as far as I could tell, there didn’t appear to be any editing issues (which is more than what I can say with The Dark Knight). Gotham is a dark, gritty city, reminiscent of NYC during the late 70’s. The film also manages to make connections to DC Lore in some great ways, My only complaint there is that while it’s a city that could use the Batman, it wasn’t exactly screaming for help. Personally, I thought it would be better if you saw that Gotham had more issues of corruption or crime. Nothing bad, just a nitpick.

From a casting standpoint, Phoenix is the heart and soul of Joker. Having dropped some weight for the role, Phoenix throws himself fully into the role of a man trying to keep it together while his world slowly crumbles. Come awards season, I would be shocked if he wasn’t at least in talks for nominations. Between the moments of laughter, there’s a lot of pain being expressed. Granted, this isn’t entirely new to Joaquin Phoenix, who had a similar role in The Master, but he definitely takes it to some new levels here.

Zazie Beetz (Deadpool 2) is okay here as a woman living in the same apartment complex as Arthur, but isn’t given too much to do here. The same could be said of Frances Conroy (Six Feet Under), who plays Arthur’s mother, who tries to keep him on the right path. Robert DeNiro also stars as a late night tv show host who Arthur admires, which will remind some viewers of Martin Scorcese’s The King of Comedy. Of particular note is the score of the film, handled by Hildur Gudnadottir (Sicario: Day of the Soldado), which ties in nicely to every scene with its haunting themes.

If I had any problems with Joker, it would be that the film makes it sound like being a loner automatically qualifies you for crime. There are tons of people who prefer solitude to companionship (or at least in short doses). It showcases both Mental Illness and firearms in such a way that could scare some audiences, suggesting that if you are medicated and stop, you will eventually cause someone some harm. If you own a gun, someone will probably be harmed. Having grown up around cops, guns, and family members with Bipolar Disorder, I don’t agree with that. This didn’t make the film bad in any way for me. In the context of the film, however, Joker is bound to raise some concerns.

Again, it’s mainly nitpicks, but for a story that shows the rise of a villain, it does work. There’s nothing mystical about Joker’s rise, and perhaps that’s scarier than finding out he was irradiated by gamma rays or some other superpower. I will say that watching Phoenix have these strange moments of slow tai chi like movements had me wondering what was up with him. That was strange, indeed.

Joker is also a film that doesn’t have a whole lot in the way of action. If you’re expecting a major third-act action sequence, it’s not exactly there. As a dramatic piece, Joker excels at moving the story forward, and as someone who was originally tired of the idea of yet another Batman related story (with all of the heroes /villains DC has at their disposal), this film was quite the surprise.

Overall, Joker is definitely worth the watch for Joaquin Phoenix’s performance, though if you’re not ready for it at the theatre, you can always wait for it on Digital / VOD.