Tag: movie

“Blue Moon,” and the Love of Language

November 23rd, 2025

A couple of us went to see Blue Moon Friday night. If you’ve not heard of this movie, it is inspired by the letters between Lorenz “Larry” Hart and the object of his late-in-life affection, Elizabeth Weiland. Hart, for those unfamiliar with the name, was the first principal writing partner of Richard Rodgers, before Oscar Hammerstein entered the picture. Rodgers and Hart write some pretty big musicals back in the early decades of the twentieth century, Babes in Arms and Pal Joey being perhaps the most famous. But Hart was a troubled soul, and years of drinking coupled with bouts of depression made him an unreliable writing partner. Which is when Hammerstein stepped in. The film takes place on a single night, unfolding in realtime at Sardi’s, the famous Manhattan bar where the Broadway stars would gather after their shows. (Still do.) The fateful night in question is the opening of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s first collaboration, and enormous hit, Oklahoma! And of course, Rodgers and Hammerstein would go on to be the most successful duo in Broadway history, with classics like The King & I, and The Sound of Music.

We follow Larry Hart as he arrives at Sardi’s early, full of piss and vinegar about this new musical, unable to hide his disdain for the writing, at least until Rodgers and Hammerstein and entourage arrive in a swirl of merry noise and telegrams wiring in about how much the critics are talking about it. He vacillates between jealousy, desperation, egotism, and love-sickness in a way that is, for the audience, at times hilarious, at times painful to watch, and never not riveting.

This may seem a long-winded preamble to what I really want to say, to what I really loved about the film. For while it’s well-imagined screenplay of conversations that may or may not have happened, and it may be a tour de force performance from Ethan Hawk as Lorenz Hart, the thing I loved the most about the film is how much it loved language.

Hart, in the beginning section of the film (if thirty minutes in can still be considered “the beginning” is talking to Eddie the bartender about the language of Oklahoma!, laying down a diatribe about how absurd the first lines of the opening number are. For those who don’t know, the opening number is “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning”, and the line in question is “The corn is as high / as a elephant’s eye”. Hart is borderline vitriolic about the comparison, for what would be the odds that an elephant would be loose on the Great Plains, hiding in the cornfields? He even goes so far as to question the title, and the use of an exclamation point, often referring to the musical as “Oklahoma exclamation point”.

In another sequence, he’s talking with Andy White. “Andy” was the nickname of E.B. White, as only his friends knew. White, by this time a well-established writer for the New Yorker, happens to be in Sardi’s, and Hart, in his usual display of frenetic dialog and uninhibited honesty, sits with White and discusses the language. In moments where Hart’s words are racing ahead of his brain and he stumbles looking for the right noun, verb, or adjective, White always manages to quietly, humbly provide the best choice.

I loved how “Blue Moon” focused, in part, on Hart’s love of language, how it drove him to write such memorable songs as “My Funny Valentine,” “The Lady Is a Tramp,” and, well, “Blue Moon.” But it’s not just Hart in love with the language. The film’s screenplay writer shows just as much love. In a quieter moment, after White confesses non-fiction has burnt him out and he’s trying to write a children’s novel, Hart relays a story about a mouse he catches in his kitchen every morning and releases into the park every day. And the next morning, the mouse is back in the kitchen. He’s even given it a name. Stuart. White considers this for a moment, then asks “With a U, or a W?”

It’s little moments like this that struck me and even now, two days later, I’m still thinking about it. And admiring it.
Movie Review: “Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens”

January 4th, 2016

Just to make sure I really got the full experience, I’ve seen this film twice. And this review will be largely spoiler free, and made upon my own careful reflection of the film.

I’m probably going to get trouble with this one. But here it is: Star Wars: The Force Awakens is not a great movie. It barely qualifies as a good one. Is it better than the prequels? Yes…and no. From a movie-making perspective, including directing, acting, and writing, yes, it’s light years better. From a storytelling perspective it’s a dud.

The storytelling failure of this one is in what it fails to do. The primary purpose of the canonical and eventual nine movies that are “Star Wars” is to tell the story of the Skywalker clan. (I’m leaving the forthcoming “Anthology” movies out of this.) Lucas started with chapter four in 1977 because it was the only story he thought he could get made at the time. And because he was unsure if he would make another, the original Star Wars (now called A New Hope) was a complete story arc unto itself. With its unprecedented success, Lucas was able to make the next two movies, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. These three movies completed the storyline of a young Luke Skywalker and his attempt at redeeming his fallen father. They closed the loop on that segment of the Skywalker clan storyline.

The prequels were an attempt, sixteen years later, to tell the first part of the story of the Skywalkers, the impressive rise and spectacular fall of Anakin Skywalker. Yes, the execution was clumsy, to say the least. Who, after all, finds a dispute of trade routes and intergalactic bureaucratic red tape interesting? Lucas does, as do legions of Star Wars fans who are fully immersed in the world and cannot see past the world to the failings of the movies. I can’t help but think that, were the prequels only books and not movies, they might have been compelling reads. Compelling books do not always translate into compelling movies, as book narratives and cinematic narratives often require different components to work. The Lord Of the Rings is a perfect example of this.

The Force Awakens does virtually nothing to move the next story arc of the Skywalker clan forward. Luke Skywalker, in this film, is really nothing more than a MacGuffin. This movie is less about moving the canonical story to the Skywalker clan forward, and more about crafting a multi-million dollar love letter to the most famous franchise is modern history. The result is a film that borders on pastiche, a fan-film made with high-priced camera equipment, yet with the same super 8 mindset. The plot is a rehash of earlier plots, the characters are recycled from old parts, and the story is stale as a result. There are plot holes in this movie big enough to choke a space slug.

To a degree, it feels as though JJ Abram and Lawrence Kasdan are trying too hard to make a movie that atones for the prequels. This is a noble idea, but the road to the Dark Side is paved with good intentions. I’m reading a lot of reviews that say it’s the best Star Wars movie since Empire, and that the order of movies, from best to worst, now goes 5, 7, 4, 3, and then the prequels, which are all mostly equally bad. I would disagree. I think this movie sits solidly between Revenge of the Sith and Return of the Jedi, with Jedi, for its problems with teddy bears, exceeding this one easily in quality.

It’s not for lack of trying on the part of the filmmakers. JJ Abrams does what he does best, which is to create a film of ridiculous kinetic energy, with the crazy skin-of-their-teeth escapes and near misses that you might find in the last two Star Trek movies. There is a scene with monsters that escape from the cargo containers on a freighter that reminded my of Chris Pine being chased across a snowscape by beasts you can’t quite fathom. The high-octane nature of this movie is too much, and the JJ Abrams influence cannot be ignored. Stormtroopers do not fall down when hit by a blaster blot, they fly backwards as hit with a 400 pounds steel bar. Settings do not explode under blaster fire without bodies sailing end over end to accentuate the destruction. People are not cut down by lightsabers, they are impaled mercilessly and left to die. And for the first time since the original ’77 movie, we see blood. And it’s not Walrusman blood, it’s human.

There is a decided lack of newness to this movie that is sorely missed. With each new Star Wars film, the viewer could count on new ships, new aliens, new settings, new equipment. The Force Awakens skips most of that, with only a handful of new items, including a mean-as-cat-shit looking lightsaber and a beachball droid. The ships are largely as they were in previous films. You have X-Wings, TIE Fighters, a Star Destroyer, and a transport with wings that fold upward upon landing.

Not to seem that I hated the movie, it does have some shining moments. It has the best flight sequence for the Millennium Falcon of any of the movies, as well as the best droid of any of the movies. BB-8 may very well be the best new character period. And as lightsabers go, none are sacrier than Kylo Ren’s, with its laser crossguard.

In the end, however, the return of origin characters and a rehash of older plots does not make a great movie. It makes one hell of an homage, and with inside jokes such as Rey saying, “This ship made the Kessel Run in 14 parsecs,” and Han replying testily, “It was twelve.”, the movie feels like a fanboi’s daydream, and little else.
Movie Review: “The Martian”

October 3rd, 2015

Rarely do I make a point of going to see a movie on opening night. There are few that I want to plan my schedule around. But after reading Andy Weir’s relentlessly readable debut “The Martian“, and after seeing the commercials and trailers for the movie version for the last few months, I knew I’d have to crave a slot in my calendar to fit it in.

And I’m so glad I did. Holy cow, what a movie.

For the uninitiated, the premise of the book and movie is that, in a near future when mankind has made successful exploratory missions to Mars, one mission goes wrong. A powerful storm descends upon the mission and they are forced to abort the remainder of the mission. But in the effort to get to the evacuation ship, one crew member, Mark Watney, is struck by debris from a collapsing communication array and lost to a gust of Mars-strength wind. With his bio-monitor returning nothing, the remaining crew members blast off from the red planet, leaving the body of their fallen comrade behind.

Except that Mark’s not quite dead yet. And having been presumed dead and left behind, he’s now stranded on a planet that does not support human life. This then is the crux of the story: how to survive on a uninhabitable planet for the three years it would take for NASA to mount a rescue mission? That is, presuming he can figure out how to contact them in the first place.

The book was one hot read that I opened on a Friday over Christmas and didn’t put down until I finished it that Sunday. Given that I essentially unhinged my literary jaw and swallowed the book like a python, I couldn’t wait to see the movie.

Is it a fully faithful adaption of the book? Of course not. What movie is? The book is one life threatening sequence of events after another. As Scott Kelly once said, “Space is hard.” In the interest of time, there was simply no way to put every single struggle that Mark Watney, the titular Martian, has to overcome. The movie would be four plus hours. As it stands, the movie clocks in and two hours and twenty-one minutes, not a short stretch by any means.

The key for director Ridley Scott, then, is to focus on those things that are the most dramatic. And there are several. Anyone who has read the book will tell you that the challenges range from the of farming potatoes in Martian soil to deliberating starting fires inside the habitat (or “HAB”), from rovers with short battery life to the lack of water, from the lack of food to the unbelievable dust storms–the list goes on and on. These, and a few others, are more than enough to fill one film.

Scott does a remarkable job with the material, making sure we are in close with Matt Damon’s Mark Watney so that we can feel Watney’s plight, and then offering huge sweeping visuals to remind us of just how alone Watney is. He keeps the pressure on, allowing victories over overwhelming odds before throwing another problem at Watney. In some ways, the approach reminded me of how James Cameron treats his characters, throwing as much as he can at them to see what they’re capable of. The narrative toggles back and forth between Watney’s attempt to survive in the red wasteland and the key players at NASA who are trying to figure out how to get him home, struggling with their own boundaries, knowing that they must push past them if they are to save Watney.

Matt Damon is the perfect choice for Watney, conveying as he does so well the likability of the character, letting us feel his fear when things go bad, feel his excitement when he solves another life-threatening problem, and feel his tense sense of near-relief when he’s on the verge of being rescued. He keeps his spirits up by focusing on each task at hand and by making occasional light of the situation. There’s a gentle sarcasm to the character that never veers into snarky or nasty, but is always just on the precipice of defeated, without falling into that crater. Damon has always done a marvelous job of allowing the audience into his characters, eliciting empathy from the viewers, whether he’s trapped on Mars, hunted by the CIA, or being rescued by Tom Hanks.

The other standout for me was Jeff Daniels as NASA Director Teddy Sanders. If you boil the NASA Director’s job down to brass tacks, Teddy Sanders is a paper-pusher, the highest paid account in the building, with whom the buck stops. Each decision regarding the rescue mission goes through him and the weight of each decision is evident on his face. He keeps up the steely-eyed resolve even as some of decisions are not the popular ones. But someone has to be in charge, and Sanders is that man.

There are many great performances, including Chiwetel Ejiofor, Donald Glover, Jessica Chastain, and Benedict Wong. Even actors who are given very little to do, such as Kristen Wiig and Sean Bean, stand out, making the most of the material at hand. (There is a “Lord of the Rings” joke in there that had me on the floor.)

You could boil this movie down to the simple catch-phrase of “Apollo 13 on Mars”, but that does it a disservice. Is it as good as “Apollo 13“, to which it will likely be compared? Probably not. “Apollo 13” is one of the finest films of the thirty years. But Ridley Scott and crew know how to deliver tense, riveting entertainment, and I was on the edge of my seat even though I knew how the film would end. It’s helluva good film and one of the best you’ll see all year.
Movie Review: “Furious Seven”

April 14th, 2015

I actually made it out of the house to see a movie last week. This is a pretty rare occurrence since I have a pretty active home life and, quite frankly, most movies that come out I’m only passingly interested in. Certainly not enough to spend $12 to see them.

So, you may ask, why did I waste hard earned money of Furious Seven?

As Mallory once proclaimed regarding Mt Everest: “Because it is there”.

(Also, a friend asked me to go see it with her husband so that she wouldn’t have to.)

Before we even begin, let’s level set some expectations. This is not high cinema. No one expects it to be. If you go into this anticipating Gone With The Wind on wheels, you’re going to be unbelievably disappointed. This is B-movie popcorn fair, period. As such, it hits all the right notes.

Everything about Furious Seven is overblown and overdone. The opening sequence (some minor spoilers follow) featuring Jonathan Statham as Deckard Shaw sets the stage for the rest of the film. The film opens with him talking to his younger brother who has been put in the hospital by Vin Diesel’s F&F crew (see the sixth installment for the details). As the camera begins to pull back and we see the state of the hospital, we gain a dawning understanding that the chaos that Shaw is capable of delivering. Even as parts of the hospital fall down around him, he remains completely unscathed. It’s the kind of over the top opening that sets the character up as a villain to be feared and reckoned with, while simultaneously letting us know that this film is going to be nothing short of over ridiculous, with each sequence trying to top the sequence before it.

By and large, the movie is full of this level of absurdity. The car chases are physics-defying. The dialogue is so cliché that you come to expect it, and that any dialogue that doesn’t fit into what is essentially a movie comic book feels out of place. The fight sequences are bone shattering, without any bones actually being shattered. The sound effects when The Rock hits Statham should have its own sound effects bubble. THWOK! KA–POW! (The best fight sequence in the movie actually belongs to Michelle Rodriguez, who is forced into a mano-e-mano with Ronda Rousey.) The finally sequence requires the most suspension of disbelief I’ve needed in the past decade. How is it that Shaw, the F&F crew, and an out of control terrorist, played by Djimon Hounsou (he seems to be playing a lot of villains recently) can destroy most of downtown LA and I only counted three cop cars before the final fight was over?

But this is why we go to these movies. We don’t go to see reality. We go to be entertained, and as such, Furious Seven is one of the most entertaining films you’ll see all year. Well, at least until the next Avengers movie.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the gray cloud hanging over the movie, and my guess as to why it’s made a bo-billion dollars in the first few weeks: Paul Walker.

Walker’s death was a shocking blow to this franchise and its players, all of whom had grown very close. His death sent Michelle Rodriguez into self-destructive nosedive she has only recently pulled up from. The curious are flocking to this movie to see how they finished it without him. I was no exception to the curiosity. The verdict: seamless. The vast majority of the principal photography must have been complete at the time of his death, with body doubles (played by his surviving brothers) filling in occasionally. The end sequence is particularly affecting, scripted as if a decision had been made to write Walker out of the film franchise prior to his death. It ends up being a fitting coda for his involvement in the series.

In short, this movie is nothing but silly fun. If that’s what you’re looking for this April, look no further.
Movie Review: Muppets Most Wanted

May 12th, 2014

My wife and I took the kids to see “Muppets Most Wanted” this weekend. As a matter of full disclosure, I should state up front that I didn’t really want to see it in the first place. From all the commercials and trailers, it didn’t look like it was up to the caliber of the last movie, “The Muppets”. In the context of my disinterest, I was not disappointed. It was as poor an outing as I expected.

I won’t try to give away too much of the movie, though it’s not so full of plot twists or turns that you don’t see any of them coming. This is a movie geared to children after all, and you don’t want to lose your core audience. As the movie opens, we find ourselves right where we left off with the previous movie. Literally. The streets are thronged with fans and supporters all cheering on the Muppets. Then the “cameras” stop rolling and the crowd disperses, with the Muppets learning that the crowd were mostly extras and a few paid performers. But just as quickly they learn that there is at least one camera still rolling, still framing them. With a sudden realization they deduce that the studio must have greenlit a sequel. At which point we get the Exposition Song, which cleverly states that everyone knows the sequel isn’t quite as good. This might be the highlight of the movie. It is certainly the most clever part.

As plot goes, it’s not much more than an update on The Great Muppet Caper. A con man, played with a fair amount of sleaze and slime by Ricky Gervais, tricks the Muppets into riding their newly rediscovered fandom to a world tour. Little do they realize that the world tour is a simply a way of taking advantage of particular settings, venues that are all situated next to a museum of some sort. Each museum holds a key to the ultimate heist, which concludes in London. But while Gervais gives a nice turn as Dominic Badguy (“It’s pronounced ‘Bah-jee’. It’s French.”), the mastermind behind this dastardly heist plot is the nefarious Constantine. He is billed as “the world’s most dangerous frog”, and the fact that he bears a striking resemblance to one Kermit the Frog is, shall we say, convenient.

After escaping from the Siberian gulag where he was imprisoned for an undetermined length of time, he manages to switch places Kermit, taking on the role of Muppet emcee, while at the same time serving as the brains behind the upcoming heist. Kermit meanwhile ends up trapped in a Siberian gulag and, despite the fact that it’s immediately evident he is not Constantine, he is held captive nonetheless by a moon-eyed gulag warden played by Tina Fey. Yet even while imprisoned, Kermit cannot escape the call of the stage, directing the gulag prisoners in a ridiculous the music and dance review.

There’s plenty more, with all manner of gags and jokes, riffs on the past, and characters given some time to shine that were not seen in the last outing. Some of it’s funny, but not enough of it. Some of it could have been brilliant had it been given more chance to shine. Ty Burrell turns in a hilarious performance as the French interpol investigator, teamed to discover the root of the heist with Sam the American Eagle. Together they steal the screen, with Burrell turning in the best Non-Frenchman-As-Frenchman performance since Peter Sellers. It’s too bad we didn’t see more of him.

What really struck me, and why I came away from the theater with an underwhelmed feeling, is that this movie, unlike the last one, felt just like what it is: an attempt to capitalize on a franchise line that was reinvigorated by a previous outing. I felt a similar way toward “Star Trek Into Darkness”, which tried too hard to please the fanboys, but still didn’t leave me as wanting as this one. I found “Muppets Most Wanted” largely without heart and without comedy, a kiss of death for a movie like this. Contrast it with the previous movie, which was the most touching love-letter to a lost franchise that I think I’ve seen in years. “The Muppets” was lovingly crafted first and foremost by Jason Segel, a self-proclaimed number-one-fan of the Muppets, and it showed. “Muppets Most Wanted” felt crafted by Disney accounts trying to pad the bottom line.
My Holiday Movie Pick

December 10th, 2013

You may not be interested at all, but I feel compelled to tell you about my pick for the best holiday movie. In these days of ABC Family’s 25 Days Of Christmas, and the never ending cavalcade of movies like Santa Buddies, I feel we have to throw a little darkness into the season.

(Anybody who knows me is currently saying to themselves, “Scott, you’re going to go toward the dark end of the holidays? Go on!”)

Yes, it’s true, I have a history of leaning toward things with an edge, the kind of things you read or watch, and like, but don’t tell anybody you like because you don’t want them to think you’re weird or something.

Except this time, the darkness to which I’m leaning is just a tense, visually compelling, sometimes silly fun movie.

Queue up the movie, please:

Rare Exports is a Finnish movie that takes the wholesome image of Santa Claus and makes him perhaps a bit more demon than saint. When a scientist orders the excavation of a nearby mountain, the local reindeer herders find their Christmas harvest disrupted. But when the reindeer end up slaughtered and the local children start disappearing, then a small band of herders and one of their sons realizes perhaps there is something more going on.

This movie is just plain fun. It’s in Finnish with English subtitles, at least on Netflix. It’s possible, even probable that there is an English dubbed version on the DVD, but since I caught it on Netflix I can’t guarantee it.

What makes this film work for me is that you never quite know what to expect next. The herders eventually catch a strange and withered being that looks like a naked, wild-eyed Santa Claus after a couple of years on meth. And when you begin to think that maybe you have a handle on who this mysterious mute being is, it turns out you’re horribly horribly wrong.

There are some moments in the movie that don’t necessarily work as well as the creators intended. When the herders end up at the base camp for the scientific team, trying to make some money by selling off their new-found “animal”, there is a sudden violence that caught me off guard. The heroics at the end are edge over into melodrama and border on downright corny. And the final sequence after the climax of the film stretches the credibly of the entire story.

But who cares? Some of the visuals in this movie are spectacular, the tension is top notch, and it’s easily the most original take on the Santa myth I’ve seen or read about I years, maybe even ever.

Do yourself a favor: sit down and watch this one. Only, not with the kids.