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4/29/2023 0 Comments renfield The redemptive ballad of Nicolas Cage has been quietly percolating for some time now. The combination of the former Oscar winner’s infamously loopy and increasingly unhinged method acting and his rapid descent into straight-to-DVD oblivion made him an easy punchline… but even at his nadir, he remained that rare movie star who possesses a truly distinctive stamp. Recent years have seen several noteworthy titles rise above the flotsam - Mandy, Color Out of Space, Prisoners of the Ghostland, Pig… the sort of movies that, even if they don’t entirely work, at least hum invitingly with a genuine cinematic pulse. They proved, if nothing else, that Cage’s career - while badly winged - was far from terminal.
Renfield - arriving one year after the enjoyable meta-comedy The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent - continues Cage’s… well, if not exactly a renaissance, then at least a cautiously curated re-entry into the high society of theatrical features. If you’ve seen the trailer, you know that Cage plays Count Dracula (cue him running across the screen in Vampire’s Kiss, shrieking “I’m a vampire! I’m a vampire!”)… and Nicholas Hoult is his long-suffering familiar Robert Montague Renfield, framed as the victim of a toxic working relationship. There’s not really a whole lot to the movie beyond that comedic conceit. Renfield relocates to New Orleans after a close-shave with some vampire hunters in Europe, so that the grievously injured Count can recuperate, and ends up joining a co-dependency support group (part of the joke is that he targets their abusers as potential victims for Dracula to feed on, in order to minimize his guilt). But when he inadvertently comes to the aid of crusading cop Rebecca Quincy (Awkwafina) after she’s targeted by the notorious Lobo crime family (consuming bugs gives him a temporary surge of supernatural power, like a 5-Hour Energy shot), he begins to seriously contemplate what a life of normalcy might look like. Renfield is fun, though basic; it never really evolves beyond the more obvious contours of its tongue-in-cheek premise. There are some clever flourishes for sure - such as flashbacks that are staged as spot-on, black-and-white recreations of Tod Browning’s original 1931 Dracula (with Cage bearing a rather uncanny resemblance to Bela Lugosi)… or Renfield being forced to chug a neighboring child’s ant farm when in desperate need of an immediate combat boost. This sort of material seems like a far better fit for director Chris McKay (The Lego Batman Movie) than Amazon’s indifferent facsimile of a mega-budget tentpole, The Tomorrow War (which felt like it was assembled in a cinematic 3D printer). But this is also a movie that tends to confuse the joke; it mistakes absurdist carnage (Renfield tears limbs clean off and paints the screen with fountains of CGI plasma) as a substitute for actual humor to a degree that starts to feel wearisome. A little bloodletting goes a long way - after a while its coppery taint simply becomes a numbing agent. Cage is obviously having a ball… but the prospect of him playing Count Dracula was such a hammy delight, people started laughing the moment his casting was announced (and continued when the trailer debuted) - by the time he appears, leering with bug-eyed menace and rasping each line of dialogue with evil relish, the joke almost feels played-out. His screentime is relatively limited anyway… it’s on the rest of the cast to do the heavy lifting (including Shohreh Aghdashloo, whose smoky purr is put to good use as the head of the Lobo family, and Ben Schwartz as her nitwitted son). Awkwafina may be dialed down a touch, but her idiosyncratic comedic energy still has its own tangy buzz - Hollywood continues to circle her warily, like a plutonium reactor, trying to figure out the best way to harness her unique power. She and Hoult are mismatched in the best possible way; their weirdly unorthodox chemistry gives the film an extra bounce whenever its edge threatens to dull. Hoult, fusing frayed nerves and pale, Burton-esque styling with the fidgety Englishness of early Hugh Grant, was a great choice for the title character. With an ensemble cast this marvelously eclectic, it’s too bad the end result is merely and acceptably amusing, rather than a dizzyingly euphoric rush of blood to the head.
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4/18/2023 0 Comments saturday double feature: the super mario bros. Movie and Dungeons & dragons: Honor among thieves It seems inconceivable that it took until 2023 to get a proper Super Mario Bros. movie (please ignore the social media rabble-rousers trying to retcon the doomed 1993 live-action version as some sort of misunderstood classic) - and the film’s record-breaking box office numbers would appear to confirm the longstanding appetite for it. Those hoping for a dose of childhood nostalgia dipped in Pixar honey may be disappointed by how fundamentally basic the film is on a storytelling level. This is an animated feature of decidedly modest ambitions, emphatically geared towards children and unapologetic about its innocuous and comfortably commercial creative approach. You can grumble if you so choose, but kids will love it, so why be needlessly churlish? Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) are Italian-American brothers of indeterminate age trying to get their struggling plumbing business off the ground when they get sucked through a magical pipe in the Brooklyn sewers. Mario ends up in the Mushroom Kingdom, where he quickly aligns with Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy) against Bowser (Jack Black), fire-breathing leader of the turtle-like Koopa race, who hopes to use his newly acquired “Super Star” to strong-arm Peach into marrying him (Luigi has also fallen less-than-fortuitously into his clutches). Mario and Peach head to the neighboring Jungle Kingdom to recruit the Kong army (with Mario forced to square off against Donkey Kong - voiced by Seth Rogen - in single combat), there’s a Mario Kart sequence, and suddenly we’ve reached the climax. The movie passes by in a pleasant, confectionary 85-minute blur. Chris Pratt’s casting was met with considerable online mockery, but much like the film itself, his performance proves wholly adequate (Black’s Bowser is the obvious vocal standout). Like most Illumination productions, the needle drops are sturdy but unimaginative (Take On Me; Thunderstruck), the pop culture references reliable yet shopworn (Kill Bill; The Matrix). Character conflict is kept to a minimum (Mario’s dad isn’t supportive enough - Donkey Kong can relate). The action is peppered with a steady barrage of jokes, gags, and Nintendo-related references (the Punch-Out Pizzeria is a standout). And while the script may be wafer-thin, the animation is eye-poppingly gorgeous - from the candy shop palette of the Mushroom Kingdom to the psychedelic expressway of Rainbow Road. That may not be enough to make Super Mario Bros. a great movie, but it should at least keep one’s facial muscles twitched firmly upwards for the duration.  At first glance, Dungeons & Dragons is the sort of movie that elicits an extremely tired sigh. It’s a recognizable but rather meaningless IP that can seemingly be slapped onto any vaguely medieval fantasy adventure in the desperate name of brand recognition (also, the less said about the 2000 version - with Jeremy Irons doing his “Can you believe I used to be an Oscar winner?” scenery chewing - the better). Suffice it to say, this felt very much like a needless attempt to service pseudo-demand for a pseudo-franchise.
And yet, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves proves as comfortably light-footed as a prancing troubadour, dexterously plucking at his lute strings. The plot hits the ground running as silver-tongued bard Edgin (Chris Pine) and his barbarian companion Holga (Michelle Rodriguez) bust out of prison and set off to find Edgin’s teenage daughter, who’s in the care of their former compatriot Forge (Hugh Grant) - now a wealthy lord in the realm of Neverwinter (any requisite exposition or backstory is cleverly folded into the tongue-in-cheek sequence in which Edgin pleads his case to the parole board). But when Forge betrays them (as characters played by Hugh Grant tend to do these days), Edgin and Holga plot to rob his vault as payback… recruiting the bumbling sorcerer Simon (Justice Smith), cynical druid Doric (Sophia Lillis), and the earnestly noble paladin Xenk (Rege-Jean Page). But it turns out there’s an evil sorceress who wants to, uh… do something, so — You know what? Forget the plot. Dungeons & Dragons is a movie fueled by its own cheeky lack of self-seriousness. It’s irreverent sense of fun isn’t necessarily surprising, given that the movie was entrusted - oddly, yet fittingly - to the Game Night team of Jonathan Goldstein & John Francis Daley (the latter, of course, having played a D&D fanatic during his Freaks and Geeks days). As was the case with Guardians of the Galaxy, cast chemistry and team dynamics go a long way. It’s hard to believe it took this long for a film to fully harness Chris Pine’s rakish charm (it was at least partially baked into his iteration of Captain Kirk) - it’s a reminder that he’s a star who hasn’t quite been the star he probably should have been (if that makes sense). The story - particularly throughout the second act - feels like a lot of idle questing (in order to breach the vault, they first need to track down a legendary helm capable of neutralizing the enchantments, etc…)… but when the actors are so clearly enjoying themselves, why resist? The movie has the sort of puckish sparkle missing from most modern blockbusters. It was basically made for Saturday afternoon filmgoing. 4/9/2023 0 Comments john wick: chapter 4
Here’s a dose of hard cinematic truth - the original John Wick really ain’t all that. It’s a relatively slick and well-made action movie that harnesses the fundamental “Keanu-ness” of star Keanu Reeves… but it’s an almost painfully basic revenge thriller with tissue-thin characters and an absolutely repellent point-of-attack (it isn’t just the grim fate of Wick’s doe-eyed beagle… it’s the meta-smugness of taking the old screenwriting adage of hurting a puppy being the easiest means of establishing villainy and making it literal). It was the sequels that elevated this largely unremarkable creation to new heights of operatic action grandeur. It’s a credit to director Chad Stahelski, who’s basically dedicated himself entirely to this franchise over the past decade, making a specific point of honing his craft and ratcheting up the scope and ambition with each subsequent entry. To paraphrase Walter White, Stahelski isn’t just in the filmmaking business. He’s in the empire business... and his empire is John Wick. John Wick: Chapter 4 feels very much like Stahelski’s magnum opus, and a Taj Mahal of action moviemaking. Once again, the plot is almost beside the point. John Wick, having narrowly eluded death yet again at the end of the third entry, has vaguely set his sights on taking down the High Table, the shadowy, all-powerful global cabal that pulls all the puppet strings… a goal that crystalizes itself in the form of the Marquis Vincent de Gramont (an exquisitely prissy Bill Skarsgard), who’s been given free rein to eliminate Wick by any means necessary (his first order of business - razing the New York Continental to the ground). The story unfolds with a certain video game logic and rhythm (Wick’s best option is to challenge the Marquis to single combat, but in order to do that he has to be reinstated by his former family, the Ruska Roma, and in order to do *that* he has to carry out a designated act of vengeance… and so on, and so forth). The movie operates with shark-like efficiency - as long as it’s in constant motion, propelling itself forward (all muscle and killing power), it functions beautifully. The Wick films have never been especially deep, but this time the story’s emotional girders feel particularly skeletal. This is arguably Keanu’s most minimalist performance to date… and while John Wick has never been one to mince words, he’s becoming more concept than character. That being said, the supporting cast picks up much of the slack. There’s little need to reiterate what series stalwarts such as Ian McShane, Laurence Fishburne, and the late Lance Reddick bring to the table; it’s the new faces who particularly shine. This includes Hiroyuki Sanada and model/pop star Rina Sawayama (ripe for her own spin-off) as the proprietor of the Osaka Continental and his daughter/concierge… and action star Scott Adkins as the grotesquely villainous head of the German Table, Killa Harkan (the fact the balletic Adkins is stuffed into a Dick Tracy-style fat suit and it pays massive dividends is a sign of the franchise’s unwavering bravado). But the sequel, at the end of the day, belongs to martial arts legend Donnie Yen, in a performance of such effortless charisma and confidence and cool, it makes one wonder why his Hollywood profile has been largely nonexistent up to this point. Yen plays the blind assassin Caine, an old friend of Wick’s who’s dragged out of retirement and coerced by the High Table into doing their dirty work. Blindness has been incorporated into martial arts films before, but the characters tend to function a lot like Daredevil - moving as if by echolocation, their skills so prodigious they simply transcend their disability. Yen actually incorporates sightlessness into his fighting style… fluid and graceful, yet constantly using tap and touch to reorient himself and regain his physical bearings (at one point he moves stealthily through space, affixing motion sensor doorbells to the surfaces in order to give himself the upper hand). The John Wick franchise has been rightfully celebrated for the goofy glee of its world-building - in which professional killers congregate at fancy hotels where the sommelier traffics in firearms rather than wine - but the series has been no less skilled at addressing its tragic existentialism. The chains of service are never truly broken. If the first John Wick was about vengeance driving the title character back into the clutches of this world, the sequels have been about the hell he’s endured trying to claw his way back out again. John Wick: Chapter 4 clocks in at a whooping 170 minutes, which feels like the height of self-indulgence for what’s essentially a jacked up ocular sugar rush… and yet the runtime rarely feels oppressive. Credit Stahelski and his increasingly versatile, Willy Wonka-esque bag of tricks. You might think you’ve seen it all when the final hour unexpectedly morphs into an impromptu ode to Walter Hill’s 1979 cult classic The Warriors… or when Wick engages in fisticuffs while simultaneously dodging high-speed Parisian traffic in front of the Arc de Triomphe… or when the film pulls off an improbable, single take bird-eye’s tracking shot through an apartment complex as Wick’s shotgun blasts phosphoric thunder (an apparent nod to the relatively obscure video game The Hong Kong Massacre)… or when Wick embarks on a Sisyphean fight up the 222 steps to reach the Marquis at the Sacre-Coeur Basilica. These are sequences that should just play on continuous loop in the Louvre. Box office demand may eventually dictate a fifth Wick film, but for now it feels like Stahelski and Reeves left the mic lying on the bloody, bullet casing-riddled streets of Paris. What more could they possibly have left to give?
4/1/2023 0 Comments cocaine bear There’s an adage that you can’t simply will a cult film into existence, and there’s good reason for that. A cult film operates on its own particular, esoteric wavelength… and the burden is firmly on viewers to somehow find their way onto it (many won’t… and frankly, that’s sort of the point). Those who deliberately set out to make a cult film, however, essentially adopt the opposite approach - there’s a naked eagerness to please; an aggressive attempt to woo an audience through self-conscious craziness, the filmmaking equivalent to bashing yourself over the head with a frying pan repeatedly. And it rarely - if ever - works… the creativity comes from a place that’s too clearly been compromised.
What does that have to do with a movie called Cocaine Bear? Well… maybe nothing. Maybe everything. The film was inspired by a true story about a black bear who, in the mid-80s, came across a drug drop in the northern mountains of Georgia and ended up consuming a large quantity of cocaine. In actuality, the bear overdosed and died almost immediately. But in the Hollywood version, this rather dispiriting turn of events has been reconceived as a campy horror-comedy in which the bear immediately embarks on a tweaked-out, drug-fueled rampage. There’s not much more to the movie than that oft-repeated punchline (“A bear… did cocaine!”), beyond the disparate cross-section of characters who run afoul of the titular creature and its powdered snout. These include divorced nurse Sari (Keri Russell), who heads into the forest looking for her daughter Dee Dee (Brooklynn Prince) and her best friend Henry (Christian Convery) after they ditch school… and local kingpin Syd (Ray Liotta - not the greatest of posthumous releases), who dispatches his grieving son Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich) and foot soldier Daveed (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) to locate the missing drugs. The Wire’s Isiah Whitlock Jr. (sheeeeeeit) plays a lawman, while Margo Martindale slums it as a local park ranger who spends most of her screentime limping about after having a sizable bite taken out of her hindquarters. It’s a strange, eclectic cast (Matthew Rhys has an early cameo, just to round out the pseudo-Americans reunion), and even stranger is the fact that the film was directed by Elizabeth Banks, of all people. Banks, having previously helmed Pitch Perfect 2 and Charlie’s Angels, shows no particular instinct for this sort of gonzo material, and yet - in a weird way - her slightly uncertain grasp almost works in the movie’s favor. It lends it a sort of rickety, off-balance rhythm. The movie’s at its best when it fully indulges its retro 80s flavor - such as a lunatic chase in which the bear hurtles maniacally after an ambulance to Depeche Mode’s Just Can’t Get Enough. But pace and tone are lurchingly uneven. A sequence in which Whitlock and Jackson are caught in a gazebo standoff and the bear shows up only to pass out on top of Ehrenreich has great potential, but the comedic timing is slack. The scene craft has no real texture to it. The real problem though is that Cocaine Bear is a film largely without purpose. There’s no particular integrity to its creativity - it’s been conceived for self-aware mockery and little else. Its mere existence is the joke. That was enough to make it a box office hit (Snakes on a Plane walked, apparently, so that it could run) and there’s no reason the movie can’t be enjoyed on its own fitfully amusing terms (horror junkies will appreciate that it doesn’t skimp on the graphic gore, which is pushed to absurdist extremes). But much like the nose candy that sets the plot in motion, it’s an ephemeral high; the diversion it offers is superficial at best, unlikely to last beyond the duration of its closing credits. For some, that’ll still represent money well-spent… but any sort of cult legacy the film aspires to is unlikely to prove forthcoming. |
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