Beauty and the Beast (2017)

** ½ out of ****

When my oldest daughter was 2 or 3 years old, she was utterly obsessed with the 1991 animated version of “Beauty and the Beast”. For months she watched it no less than three times a day. Every time it ended, she asked for it to be played again. And I guess her mother thought it made a good babysitter, because the damned thing was always on.....

The point to that is that I am intimately familiar with that version, which truly was a wonderful movie and the first animated film ever nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. It was an excellent piece of storytelling with very few lags or downtime and the songs were all terrific and well performed. The new live-action version is pretty true to the animated film, but the downtime is considerably more and the songs (especially) are not very well done.

You probably know the story. Belle (Emma Watson) lives in a small town in France, where she feels out of place because she's a dreamer, and likes to read. Most of the townspeople think she is very peculiar, except for Gaston (Luke Evans) who wants to marry her. Unfortunately Gaston is a self-absorbed creep with whom she has nothing in common;  he only wants to marry her as a trophy wife due to her great beauty.  The story really starts when Belle's father (Kevin Kline) gets lost in the woods and takes shelter in a hidden castle. Bad luck for him..... it is the home of a prince who was transformed into a beast by an enchantress due to his selfishness and cruelty. All of the prince's servants were also transformed into household items, like a candelabra (Ewan McGregor), a clock (Ian McKellan) and a teapot (Emma Thompson).

The beast takes Belle's father captive for trespassing, which leads to Belle coming and swapping places with him so the Beast will grant her father his freedom. The inhabitants of the house know that if the Beast can love someone, and make her love him, their collective spell will be broken and they will all be restored to their human form, so everyone does everything possible to set the mood for romance between the two. Sounds girly, I know.... but it's still entertaining for the boys too.

My biggest problems with the movie were the running time (well over 2 hours) and the way the songs were performed. As for the length, unlike the animated version, there are periods of this film where things drag out unnecessarily. But even worse is the mix of the music. Most of the songs are too busy, with the backing music too loud. I knew the words of most of the songs because of my daughter's preoccupation with the original, but it was very noticeable that the lyrics of most songs were unintelligible. They could have been mixed far, far better, but it was also due to many of the songs being performed by actors instead of singers - the singing of the songs just lacked the oomph of real pros.

One thing I can compliment without reservation is the performances of the cast. Watson is enchanting as Belle, and Dan Stevens is suitably menacing as Beast. I thought that Kevin Kline was fantastic as Belle's father, and even Luke Evans brought a lot to the role of the horrible Gaston. I saw this movie with four 12-year-olds (2 boys and 2 girls) and even the boys stayed quiet and never wavered from the screen. The girls cried at the appropriate times, and all four said afterward that they loved it. I guess that's a pretty ringing endorsement for a Disney film.

Still, I stick to my 2 and a half star rating, mainly because this is simply a lesser film than the animated version, and really isn't even close. The young girls sang along with the songs in the 1991 version, but they won't be doing it here as they won't be able to distinguish most of the words. A nice little movie to kill the time, but if you want a better telling of the same story, get the 1991 animated version instead.

O.J.: Made in America (2016)

**** out of ****

I generally stay away from ESPN documentaries because I have found them to be very superficial; they touch on all the obvious points but don't delve into their subjects to uncover anything new. When I saw EPSN's 30 for 30 did a documentary on OJ Simpson, I never even considered watching it for that very reason. But when this movie won an Oscar last month for “Best Documentary Feature” I decided to give it a chance.

Man, am I ever glad I did. The best and most important documentary I've ever seen is 1985's “Shoah” about the Holocaust. It was some 11 hours long and, at least for what it wanted to do, the length was totally justified. “O.J.: Made in America” is every bit as comprehensive.... even sometimes more than we want or are comfortable with. But it is excellent, and almost as good as "Shoah" (if not nearly as important).

O.J. Has always fascinated me. When I was in grammar school, right around the time he retired, I found a “sports heroes” book that, among many other sports achievements, chronicled his 2003-yard rushing season for the Buffalo Bills. I saw him star in “The Towering Inferno” and “Capricorn One” on TV. I went to “The Naked Gun” movies at the theatre. I can't remember a time when I didn't know who OJ Simpson was..... and when he murdered his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, I found it every bit as shocking as everyone else.

I'm almost embarrassed by how closely I followed his trial. When it was over, I knew for a fact that he was guilty, despite all the smoke and mirrors tossed up by his defense team. And I remember the verdict. I was sitting in a waiting room before a job interview when the verdict was announced, and I stumbled into the interview in total shock that he was not convicted (and I didn't get the job).

“O. J.: Made in America” does more than just rehash the trial. It's an eight hour journey that follows OJ from childhood, to his rise to being one of the most famous men in America through to his eventual incarceration in 2008 for armed robbery and kidnapping. But even more than that, it spends a lot of time examining the divide between black and white in the Los Angeles area. OJ's rise as a college football star happened very shortly after the Watts riots, he became well known during the worst events of the civil rights movement (especially the death of Martin Luther King and the LAPD shooting of Eulia Love), and his fame continued as the buildup of tension in LA peaked. Rodney King and the LA riots all happened shortly before the OJ murders and trial, and the documentary tells all the relevant stories in parallel.

While much of this might seem unconnected to those that weren't around at the time, it was all very much tied together. When OJ's trial went to jury, the divide in the opinion of black and white was a chasm – just about every white person believed him guilty and wanted him jailed for life, and just about every black person believed he had been framed by the LAPD and wanted him freed. There were massive fears of another riot if he was convicted. And there was shock and numbness, as well as celebration and jubilation, when he was exonerated.

The film has five separate chapters – the first two cover OJ's youth, football and movie careers, and examine his life up to the murders. They pull no punches and show OJ to be at the same time a charismatic guy with a lot of positive attributes as well as a man who was terribly self obsessed and abusive to the women in his life. The third chapter covers the murder and beginning of the trial, the fourth spends its time entirely on the trial, and the last on the verdict, aftermath and OJ's life after the trial. Due to it's length, there are times that the story drags a little, but for the most part is endlessly fascinating.

You need to brace yourself at times for the crime scene photos. They are gruesome and disturbing. The pictures showing Nicole's slashed throat caused me to turn away. But these moments are few, and important to the story to show how brutal the murders were. The filmmakers (happily) never suggest anything about OJ's “innocence”; they tell the facts and treat OJ as “guilty as hell”, which he clearly was. They treat the defense team with moderate disdain, even to the point of having the courtroom story told by prosecutor Marcia Clark where a little girls asked her mother “What is the “N” word the defense keeps saying should never be mentioned”. And the mother's reply, “Nicole.”

You can watch the entire five episodes for free at the link below. I recommend it - it is worth the 8 hour investment:  

OJ: Made in America

The Edge of Seventeen (2016)

*** ½ out of ****

I was fifteen years old when “The Breakfast Club” (1985) was released, and it had a big impact on me. None of the six primary characters were actually much like me but I saw parts of myself in all of them, and their onscreen struggle to find their identities was one of the first times a high-school movie really resonated.

And though I would never argue with anyone calling “The Breakfast Club” the best high-school film ever, my personal favorite is “Pump Up The Volume” (1990). I wasn't a teenager anymore, but the lead character in that movie (Mark, played by Christian Slater) was someone I TOTALLY identified with. I WAS Mark Hunter in high school, I just never started a pirate radio station. So seeing someone on the screen that you think of as just like you is something I can identify with.

And that is what makes “The Edge of Seventeen” something special. In it, Nadine (Hailee Steinfeld) is a high-school student with exactly one close friend, Krista (Haley Lu Richardson). She feels awkward in every last social situation unless it's just her and Krista together, which is when they feel comfortable, loose and can be themselves. Nadine has an older brother (Blake Jenner) who is extremely popular, an athlete, and a huge circle of friends. Nadine, of course, hates him and everything he represents.

So when her best friend Krista and her brother end up dating, Nadine feels abandoned, alone and willing to do virtually anything to try to better her situation. Or so she tells herself. Because she's not really willing to do anything at all to change her situation, she just wants to wallow in the unfairness of it all. This takes her on a few uncomfortable journeys, one including the boy she has a crush on, and another involving a boy who has a crush on her. But Nadine's personal inability to find any empathy with anyone always causes each situation to be a disaster.

The constant throughout it all is Mr. Bruner, her history teacher (Woody Harrelson). Easily my favorite role ever for Woody, he is the adult that always calmly says what every adult would want to say, but never does for fear of hurting a youth's fragile feelings. Basically he tries most to help by letting Nadine know that each problem she drops in his lap is her own, not something for him to fix for her. If more adults acted like this, perhaps the youth of today wouldn't enter their 20s with the same attitudes previous generations dropped when they entered their teens....

What make “The Edge of Seventeen” so wonderful is its universality. Nadine thinks herself a rebel, a social misfit and totally unique at the same time. However, she's just like everyone else – awkward, dying for acceptance and wishing she had the courage to let everyone know what only her best friend knows – that she's pretty cool if you give her a chance. But what she doesn't realize is that this is how EVERYONE, even the most popular kids, feel about themselves in high school. That when you're seventeen, your lack of understanding of your own identity makes everyone incredibly fragile. Some of us are just better at dealing with that than others.

This isn't the new “Breakfast Club”. But I bet for a lot of young girls out there it will be a new “Pump Up The Volume”. Just as I thought of myself as Mark from that movie, there are going to be a tremendous number of young girls who think of themselves as Nadine. And they will learn an important lesson from her – that once you can see past the fact that you're not the only person in the world, that other people's feelings matter just as much as your own, that's when you start to grow as a person and become an adult.

And watching Nadine do it is a lovely exercise in fun and pathos. I give it a very, very high recommendation.

Get Out (2017)

*** out of ****

Ok, so we all know it has a stupidly high rating on Rotten Tomatoes (currently 99%). That's higher than “It Follows” (2014), the scariest film I've seen in many years. Is this one is good as “It Follows”? Not on your life. But it's entertaining as hell and has some damn good spooks in it too.

Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) is a talented young photographer, and he and his girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams) have gotten serious enough that he's going with her to meet her parents. He's moderately concerned how he'll be perceived as he's black and she's white, but he appears more resigned than anything. He expects a typical “white liberal” welcome, where everyone will go out of their way to show how accepting they are of him, while dropping the odd comment here and there to show they are really, really not okay with it. And at first he's right......

Her Dad keeps calling him “m'man” and insists on a hug when they meet. Mom (Catharine Keener) says all the right things, but keeps glancing at him with very distasteful looks. She's a therapist who can hypnotize patients, and one evening under the guise of help Chris quit smoking, she hypnotizes him without permission. And if you thought when watching this movie that things had been tense and weird up to that point, well, you ain't seen nothing yet.

There are other non-Caucasions around, but Chris notices that they act really, really bizarre. The gardener Walter (Marcus Henderson) for instance, seems like an NFL-sized combination of Uncle Remus and Hymie from “Get Smart”. The maid (Betty Gabriel) appears to be a constantly terrified robot (when I saw her I leaned over to the friend I was with and said, “She's like a Stepford Wife”). Clearly there are weird things afoot..... but for a very lengthy part of the movie we have no idea what the weird things are.

Believe it or not, this is the genius of the story. You know something is amiss, you know that Chris is in serious danger (and so does he, most of the time), but you really don't know why or from whom. It could be only one or two of the characters that are dangerous..... or it could be all of them.

Without giving too much away, your worst fears about how dangerous things are weren't as bad as how dangerous things REALLY are. But what's really going on is so friggin' weird that it's borderline awesome! I suppose I might have guessed what the danger was if someone forced me to guess, but then I would have dismissed it as too far out there. But the way the plot unfolds makes the eventual explanation crazy, but still almost believable. ALMOST.

It has some good jumps, some really creepy stuff, and the occasional really great laugh. For a fluffy horror picture that's enough for me to give it a good recommendation. But this is better than the average horror flick, full credit to them, but it isn't exactly as good as a 99% Rotten Tomatoes rating would lead you to believe. If you like the genre you'll love it, if you can tolerate the genre you'll like it, but this won't make any non-fans of scary movies into new fans. A solidly entertaining effort.

The Founder (2016)

*** out of ****

When I was a kid, I knew who Ray Kroc was – he was the always-smiling, benevolent owner of the San Diego Padres. I also knew he'd made his money in McDonald's (which confused me, as his name was not McDonald), but really I didn't know much more than that. The film “The Founder”, based on his entry into and building of the McDonald's empire, shows that Kroc was a considerably different man than that perception I had of him in the 1970s.

The film begins in 1953, with Kroc (Michael Keaton) chasing his million-dollar dreams. He's one of those guys that doesn't believe in building his life and wealth slowly – he wants it all and he wants it now. This has left him chasing one get-rich-quick scheme after another, and as he entered his 50s he was selling multi station milkshake mixers to burger stands. But when he receives an order one day for 8 multi-mixers, he thinks it must be a mistake – what kind of restaurant could possibly need to mix 42 milkshakes at a time?

So he travels to San Bernadino, California where he meets Dick and Mac McDonald (Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch). Their hamburger stand is built entirely around quality and speed – creating the same food over and over again, exactly the same every time..... in almost NO time. Kroc is fascinated by everything they've done; the “speedy system”, the disposable packaging, and the fact they only had five things on their menu – hamburgers, cheeseburgers, french fries, milkshakes and soda. Kroc finds out that they've tried franchising their system, but that it didn't work. Seeing it as another “million-dollar-idea”, Kroc convinces them that he can do better and sets off to build an empire.

Keaton is absolutely wonderful as Ray Krok, especially for the second half of the movie when Kroc's “kill or be killed” ruthlessness in business becomes a centerpoint of the story. Offerman and Lynch are equally excellent, one as the hard-assed bossman (who really is a small thinker) and the other as a “can't we all just get along” rube with good intentions. Laura Dern has a small part as Kroc's long-suffering wife, but it's an extraneous part with no meat, and she simply takes up space in her scenes.

“The Founder” is really a very good film. I don't know enough of the real-life story to know how accurate the depiction is, but the movie is just flat-out enjoyable, even if more from a historical standpoint than a purely entertainment one. Keaton, who started out as a rom-com guy has been showing how good his acting chops are for a long time – in 1990 he played his first bad guy in “Pacific Heights” and since then has turned in some fabulous performances. He didn't get any award nominations for his portrayal, but I would call it every bit as solid as any work he's done lately (if not quite as eclectic as some of the roles).

Not one that will go down in history as the subject matter isn't for all tastes, but absolutely a fine film that I highly recommend.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

*** out of ****

This feels like it's going to be one of the more tortured reviews I've ever written because of the terribly mixed emotions I have about the film. But I suppose my feelings could most easily be summed up with one statement: while “Rogue One” is a very good movie, it isn't a very good “Star Wars” movie.

In (very) short, the film tells the story leading up to the very first moment of the original “Star Wars” (1977), where Darth Vadar's star destroyer is chasing Princess Leia's small ship across the screen. The pursuit was due to the knowledge that the plans for the Death Star were somewhere on board. “Rogue One” tells the tale of how they came to be on board – specifically how a rebel detail led by Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), who is the daughter of the Death Star's creator, stole the plans to deliver to the rebellion.

Sounded like a pretty interesting plot to me, and in many ways it is. It's action-packed, has some interesting characters and dialogue, and even a few chuckles. But there were a myriad of problems with it that made it, for me, a failure as a Star Wars story.

In the best of the Star Wars films (the original trilogy and “The Force Awakens”) the story and objectives are very clear, the lines between good and evil plainly defined, and we deal with a controlled set of characters who are very nicely developed. ALL of those things are missing in “Rogue One”. The first half of the movie is almost hopelessly convoluted, following several different story-lines that seem to go in countless directions. We're introduced to about fifteen key characters (instead of the 6 or 7 that were crucial to the plot of those better films), and often you can't even remember what their names are of what their supposed to be doing. One of these characters, Saw Gerrerra (Forrest Whitaker) is one of the worst “heroes” in the galaxy – he was apparently supposed to be heroic but I found him so awful that I was happy when (spoiler alert) he was blasted into oblivion by a giant shockwave.

Another thing that bothered me might be my own perceptions, as it seemed to me that a successful infiltration of the Empire's data store to steal the plans would have been far better served by a small force working under the radar – in “Rogue One” it's a battle as big as the Death Star engagement in “Return of the Jedi” (1983). There is just soooooo much going on all the time that it's hard to be really engaged by the story. And since so many of the characters are involved in the battle, you lose any tension that the small incursion would have delivered.  Why was it so tense when Luke, Han, Leia and Ben Kenobi were sneaking around the original Death Star?  Because we cared about all of them and they were being stealthy and trying not to be noticed.  "Rogue One"s infiltrators, with similar goals, attack the empire base like a pack of hungry wolves on an unsuspecting deer.

But even with all that, “Rogue One” is a great action movie. For a generation brought up on Halo and Call of Duty, it's probably cinematic ambrosia. But for those of us that were children when the original three films were on the big screen, where we found magic and fun and love and laughter and heroes that we pretended to be during play with our friends, this is really little more than a very good action movie. And it is simply greatly lacking in the tremendous fun that “Star Wars” is supposed to be.

Arrival (2016)

** ½ out of ****

I'd heard so much about “Arrival” before I went to see it that I knew I would have to be careful not to get my expectations too high. Everything I'd read suggested that this was a highly intelligent film that would challenge you and didn't make any attempt to be “Hollywood”. Now right off the top I can say that I understand why people are writing such things, but they've all left out that it's also very slow moving and offers a payoff that really isn't quite worth the wait.

Amy Adams is Dr. Louise Banks, a renowned and highly respected linguist with a history as a translator for the US Government. When 12 huge alien crafts, dubbed “shells” by the media due to their shape, arrive in varied locations all over the world the government contacts her to come try to communicate with the aliens. The shells are in many different countries, all of whom seem to be trying to do their own thing to communicate with them, so the government sees it as a race to be able to talk with the aliens.

Banks, along with theoretical physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner), seems to be making slow but steady progress in her communications, no small feat considering the aliens communicate solely through visual images they secrete in smoke. The progress  she makes isn't enough for the military, who appear to feel that whichever country is able to talk to the aliens first will be rewarded with a weapon that would give them terrible power over the other nations of the world. The other teams communicating with the shells feel similarly, believing the aliens are trying to set the nations of the Earth against each other, and the film becomes a race to confirm or disprove this idea before the army tries to destroy the shell.

Where all of the standard critics are saying this is “thinking man's sci-fi” and that it expresses interesting ideas that will get people talking, I have to admit I just don't see it. The film poses the government and military in their familiar role of “shoot first ask questions later”, with the scientists as the heroes trying to save the day, both of which are pretty standard sci-fi themes. "Arrival"  gets into some semi-interesting time/space ideas at the end, but though they're delivered in a way we haven't seen before, I'm not sure that makes the whole thing unique or especially great.

I've given the movie two and a half stars, which may not be fair to it as it is overall a pretty enjoyable film, if the slow-moving parts don't leave you too cold. But they left me pretty cold, and since the marketing of the film has had a tremendous amount to do with its “Rotten Tomatoes” rating (currently around 94%) they're pretty much begging you to look at it as a critical wonderkind. And to be frank, I just don't think it is. It's a solid, not-particularly-exciting piece of work that, unlike the really great sci-fi films, didn't leave me with any feeling that I needed to see it a second time.