Knives Out

Sometimes you come across a movie that just hits the sweet spot—something crisp and fun and nicely satisfying—and you walk out of the theater with a slight smile on your face thinking… that was swell. Knives Out is such a film. And go figure, delivered to us this holiday season in a hard-to-find-nowadays wrapping—the classic whodunit. The genre may be infrequently used lately but you know the drill—someone has been murdered (usually someone important and/or rich), lots of likely suspects in close quarters, and a sleuth with nigh super human deductive powers. Knives Out lacks none of these. But the film is more than classic formula, it has that special it. Acclaimed writer and director Rian Johnson (Brick, Looper, Star Wars: The Last Jedi) has injected the schtick with an intelligent whimsy and stylized the glorious cast of suspects and their Clue-board setting into a feast for eyes, mind, and funny bone. 

Successful crime novelist Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) has died, violently, in his ornate mansion, the night of his birthday party attended by all of his loving family members. Ruled a suicide initially, now enter Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), private investigator of “great renown” into the investigation. His presence and purpose in the investigation is a mystery in and of itself, but his skill is not, and he immediately finds reason to suspect foul play and begins to untangle the “twisted web” laid out before him. He is surrounded by the usual numerous suspect motivations: greed, jealousy, desperation, fear. But Blanc has a special gift for seeing the trajectory of the mystery and, thus, the ability to follow it to its inevitable landing place… the truth. The ensemble cast is perfectly over-stuffed and wonderful, especially Michael Shannon (as usual) playing the son-in-law heading Thrombey’s publication business and in fear of losing his place in the family fortune, and Christ Evans as the reckless black-sheep grandchild who Harlan sees so much of his young self in. But Craig steals most scenes with Blanc’s “Fog-Horn-Leg-Horn” drawl and the projection of an all-knowing yet little-revealing understanding of the complex pieces of the game that is afoot. The case is, indeed, following an arc, and you know that Blanc see’s it which just builds our anticipation to see it too.

Knives Out is simply smart, off-balance fun and sharp as a tack. A throwback yes, you could say, and yet completely fresh. The film is, in a word, delightful and we all require a little delight in our lives; go see this one. 8.5 out of 10.

Spider-Verse’s Spider Man is Amazing!

Even the opening titles were striking… different… and it just kept being striking and different all the way through.

Fresh is not a complete enough description for this splendid adventure of a movie—you need more adjectives to smash together like the smashing together of multiple universes that contain the odd array of potential Spider men, women, and pigs populating this Bizzaro-style (to borrow a term from the DC boys) Spider-Man animated romp. Let’s not waste time comparing Spider-Verse to any of the previous Spider-Man efforts—it’s made of completely different DNA. Imagine the best of the super-hero comic-book and graphic-novel style and artistry brought to life (animation life) in the brightest of fashions. Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (The Lego Movie and 21 Jump Street) incorporate, what I believe, is a unique mashup of animation styles into a plot vehicle that allows for maximum whimsy, and just about everything they do within that cool and shiny container works.

Let’s go through it one last time… as they’ll all say: A kid, an interesting but a common-enough kid, gets bitten by a radio-active spider and begins to display super, spidey-like powers—but, his name is not Peter Parker. He’s Miles Morales, just a boy trying to make sense of a new school with a new vibe. The first… the real… the first, real, Spider-Man in Miles’ universe, Peter Parker, is nearby trying to stop super-villain Kingpin from creating a black hole and multi-universe portal beneath Brooklyn, an act that Mr. Parker surmises could spell the end of the world as we know it—common super hero stuff. But when Peter (the first Spidey) gets caught in the black-hole-making beam, multiple universes begin to intersect, sucking their own, customized spideys along and through the hole toward Miles and his new-found powers. From there, Lord, Miller and the rest of the Spider-Verse creators take maximum advantage of the multi-verse palette to create this visually dense and super-crafty new thing. 

Spider-Verse is frenetic with machine-gun-fire witty zingers constantly coming at you—traits common with Lord’s other animated success, The Lego Movie. With Spider-Verse, however, the creative team has struck on something cleverer than the plastic Batman. Although the imagery and story come fast and furious, I never felt pummeled by them—the film displays more slickness and savvy than bombast. The intelligent use of Marvel graphic-novel specials like multi-panel illustration, disproportioned character depiction, and text bubbles (even though you’re hearing the characters) create an effect that is stand-alone entertaining. The cast is outstanding with specific nods to Brian Tyree Henry as Miles father and Jake Johnson (New Girl) as Peter B. Parker, a less-healthy version of the Peter we’re familiar with—but all are good. Spider-Verse’s end game is a bit busy but there’s, overall, great super-hero story telling going on. I suppose, since universes are colliding there at the end, literally, a little confusion is to be expected. When the credits rolled and all was calmer, I felt extremely satisfied, brightened by the thought that I had just seen something completely different… different and really good, and that made me happy. I’d see this film again – I may need to see this film again to catch all of the good stuff that must have passed by me in the blast – 9 out of 10.

If you are at all a fan of the Rocky Franchise, you’re going to love Creed II

The “Sweet Science” (that’s boxing for you non-pugilistic types) is deceivingly complex – full of stratagem, complicated by opposing styles, and subjective in its measure and scoring. But, at its core, and as viewed by most casual spectators, its boils down to the landing of four basic punches – the jab, the cross, the hook, and the uppercut. These may be thrown in different combinations, with different speeds and from various angles, but they make up what the boxer does over and over again until it is done. When he or she is not defending against those four things, he or she is throwing those four things. The Rocky franchise has fought this way for three decades now, pivoting occasionally, rolling out left or right at times, but always throwing the same punches - hoping that enough land. Creed II is no exception – it is no less predictable than any other Rocky film, no more mysterious in its end game. And yet, it excels; like the champion fighter, it lands and lands often – to the body to the head to the body – until you can’t resist and you’re just rolling with the punches.

It’s hard to say why one Rocky movie (and we count the two Creed movies in this genealogy) is better than the other. Like a good boxing match, I suppose it depends on the combination of the ingredients in the ring – the skill and the heart and the story of the participants – Creed II succeeds in all areas. For the latter, the film reaches back into Rocky lore (Rocky IV) to the death of Apollo Creed in the ring at the hands of the evil Russian boxer Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren). Now, Apollo’s son, Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan), who came out of obscurity to challenge for a title under Rocky’s tutelage in the first Creed film, is a world champion experiencing all of the trappings of boxing greatness. On the other side of the world, Ivan Dragos (played again by Dolph Lundgren), having been forgotten by his country since losing to Balboa all those years ago, has been training his only son Vitor (Florian Munteanu) to one day redeem them in the ring. With Adonis Creed now a world champion and with his old nemesis Balboa his trainer, Drago knows that it is time to strike a deal for the fight of the century – a Creed/Drago repeat.

This soap-opera plot seemed ripe to produce some jump-the-shark story telling. I entered the film worried that I might see all the good that was done in Creed I turned to corn ball. My worries were unfounded. I’ll grant that the writing (Stallone returns as part of the team) and direction (new guy Steven Caple Jr. directs) in Creed II are not as deft as its predecessor’s, particularly in the mixing of the tough and the tender – a bright attribute of Creed I. But, Creed II, it turns out, doesn’t really need gracefulness. Oh, the film has its poignant pieces, but it’s the chemistry of its characters, the balance of new and nostalgic, and the adrenalin rush of its battles that intoxicate. Jordan and Stallone are just superb together in their struggle up the mountain. And training and fighting montages – a Rocky-film staple, moving between Adonis’ and Viktor’s camps - are as impressive as any from the parent films. Heck, there’s even some defense displayed by the young Creed – a fight component never shown by Balboa (Rocky never slipped a punch in his career). Creed II pushes all the right buttons and by the time the original Rocky theme music makes its appearance during that final battle, you are ready, yourself, to step into that ring, double roll as you pass through the ropes, pound your gloves together and rumble. Creed II gets an 8 out of 10.  

Sleepers Logan Lucky and Maudie are well worth catching at the dollar show

Let me recommend to you, as their inglorious runs at the box office come to an end, two quite-good, lower-profile films that I think you’ll find to be a good value at the dollar show or for home viewing.

Logan Lucky 

What would you do to turn around a long string of bad luck? I mean long string… generational… maybe curse-level. I know what you’re thinking… you’d rob a bank right? Of course, that’s the obvious answer. OK, maybe it’s not the obvious answer but it’s an interesting answer in spite of its nonsensicalness. Logan Lucky is not a tight, make-sense movie - it’s a bit uneven, its motivations for the oddness that ensues within it are dubious and loosely linked, its resolution predictably impossible. It’s not tight, but it is fun – a bit of sharp whimsy in a movie season of bombast.

Lucky’s director Steven Soderbergh (Oceans 11) assembles a quirky set of characters around the bumpkin-like West Virginian Jimmy Logan (played by a thicker-than-normal Channing Tatum). A once promising athlete, Jimmy is now a camouflage-wearing divorcee with a bum knee and a freshly-minted pink slip from his construction job. Commiseration with his one-armed, bartender brother Clyde (Adam Driver, The Force Awakens) reveals the sad history of the bedeviled Logan family including Clyde’s own injury suffered just before getting on a flight home from a tour in Iraq. It’s not clear that Jimmy believes in a Logan curse, that’s Clyde’s thing, but his depressive situation is enough for Jimmy to resort to planning, of all things, a grand crime to get off the mat.

It would be easy to just categorize Logan Lucky as a southern-fried Oceans 11 redo. But it would be just as easy to believe that Lucky was a Coen brother’s flick (think Raising Arizona) or even a Jared Hess (Nacho Libre) product. Yes, there’s a heist, but the perpetrators and surroundings are more important and more intriguing than the actual deed. There is not a dull piece in the ensemble: Daniel Craig (007) kills as safe-cracking Joe Bang, and his sleepy, drunk, and morally-motivated brothers and comrades in crime, Fish and Sam played by Jack Quaid (Hunger Games) and Brain Gleeson (Mother), are as equally out there as their bleached-haired, crew-cut older brother. Even Dwight Yokam as Bang’s jail warden connects – and they’re all obviously having a great time horsing it up during the romp. Granted, you may experience some periodic head scratching as the ridiculous caper unfolds. But the gusto of the gathered eccentrics more than make up for the lack of cohesiveness. 7 out of 10

Maudie

Muadie, a film inspired by the life of Nova Scotian folk artist Maud Lewis, is a simply-painted story of an unlikely life and a surprising rise. It is a subtle telling of a hard life given brightness and color beyond what it should have had. The film's poignancies, within an unlikely romance and a measured re-birth, are deftly communicated by director Aisling Walsh and a strong cast with small but powerful visuals; two fingers squeezing a drop of paint, a slow short stroke of a brush, the flight of a bird on a grey Canadian landscape, the swing of a screen door. The story that these scenes highlight is certainly sentimental, but Maudie turns out to be less about an underdog’s triumph and more about the multiple sides of humanity and the odd way it sometimes is achieved.

Maude Lewis, played marvelously by Sally Hawkins, is “crooked” as Maudie might say; challenged by rheumatoid arthritic (we presume) from her youth on. She understands her circumstances but believes she can live and independent life. Desperate to remove herself from an aunt’s demeaning oversight, she takes an offer from a local recluse, Everett Lewis played by Ethan Hawke, to house-keep his small shack. Everett is a hard-scrabble fisherman. He is coarse and crude, limited socially from growing up in the isolation and uncertainty of an orphanage and with little inkling of how to interact with his new live in. As Maudie finds a natural outlet to her loneliness through painting the walls, windows and furniture of Everett’s small home with flowers, birds, and people, Everett softens. The two mismatched, odd socks evolve something deeper than there should have been.

The color that Maudie Lewis added to her life in this story moved from the screen to me. Maudie is not a completely joyful story though. Hard lives - all lives I guess - have hard beginnings, or hard middles, or hard endings. These are all there in Maudie, but always alongside the color and persistence of her art and spirit – and it all seems better than it should be. 8 out of 10.

Dunkirk

Ever get that “something’s missing” feeling? You’re in a situation where everything appears in place but you still sense there’s a missing piece. That was me watching Dunkirk, the just-released World War II epic about the evacuation of Allied troops from that French city during the Nazi invasion of France. At some point during the film, I flashed briefly to a memory of my mother tasting her delicious spaghetti sauce simmering on the stove – manipulating a spoonful as if testing a fine wine but with a perplexed expression – “did I forget the oregano?” That’s what I was feeling. I was watching a fine film, an extremely well-built recreation – but if felt somehow incomplete.

 Notwithstanding my vague sense of a gap, there is certainly no denying the significant craftsmanship in Dunkirk, the movie. Christopher Nolan (writing and directing) has created and aligned an array of amazing images and brilliant set pieces to re-enact this critical event from the early stages of the war. He tells the story from three perspectives - the Ground, the Sea, and the Air. On the ground waits over 300,000 British, French, and Dutch soldiers having retreated from the Nazi invading offensive to the beaches of Dunkirk, a site well suited for evacuation across the English Channel. Their situation is desperate. German battalions are pressing hard – held back, precariously, by what remains of the French army. The evacuation must happen soon or, as Churchill described, "the whole root and core and brain of the British Army” will perish or be captured. On the sea sail pieces of the British Navy, ships too large to reach the men waiting in shallow water. They are trailed by hundreds of conscripted citizen craft – fishing boats, pleasure craft and yachts - scrambling to reach the beach and ferry men to the larger ships or back home. In the air, sparse teams of RAF fighter planes attempt to fend off German bombers and strafing Stukas working to prevent the evacuation.

Nolan, creator of some my favorite films – Momento, The Prestige, Batman Begins, Interstellar – seems to be using Dunkirk to stretch his considerable movie making talents into the large-scale action film arena. He goes old school in his detailed reenactment, employing thousands of extras to create a massive war landscape instead of relying on CGI; assembling boats that had participated in the real Dunkirk evacuation, and using genuine era-appropriate planes for aerial scenes. This all pays off in giving Dunkirk an amazingly authentic feel. Nolan is at his best in the air where a battle is waged between three spitfires and several sets of Luftwaffe bombers and fighter escorts. You are almost in the cockpit as the rat-tat-tat of the Spitfire’s guns is answered by the hard bangs ahead from the German bombers’ rear cannons. Combining these detailed images and sounds of battle with Hans Zimmer’s meager and haunting score, Nolan has created a rare and effective dark realism.

Dunkirk will certainly get high grades from the paid critics for its minimalistic approach – as Nolan leans heavily on his detailed images in place of dialog and sentiment. But that minimalism, including the film’s limited-scope focus on small chunks of the crisis, also kept me from feeling the gravity and grandness of the event. The intensity and desperation of those pinned down, the urgency of the rescuing naval force, the skill and the bravery of the air-borne warriors – are all adroitly illustrated; but the story was light on the humanity of it… the complete drama of the miracle rescue is somehow lacking. Nolan gives brief and late-coming glimpses of the heart in the event – the calling out of the places the tiny rescue ships had come from as they approached the peer to take on soldiers, the remembering of lost young heroes in home towns. But it seemed too little to harmonize Nolan’s minimalism with the massiveness of the event. Dunkirk has all the pieces – so well assembled and with such fine detail - the story is real and important. But for all its fine attributes Dunkirk lacks the emotional power to move it from good to great. 7 out of 10.