Review: Mid90s

Image courtesy of A24.

Jonah Hill's directorial debut, "Mid90s," does a decent job of capturing a specific time and place. From the first scenes, in which we see the bedroom of young Stevie (Sunny Suljic), the film's protagonist, we can get a sense of the picture's milieu and the era in which it is set, if the title didn't give the game away already. Stevie's room is adorned with a large Mobb Deep poster and classic hip hop CDs - from Gang Starr to Del the Funky Homosapien - can be spotted on the shelves on his wall. One of his pals wears a Wu-Tang Clan T-shirt and Stevie's mother at one point watches "Goodfellas" on TV.

The picture is shot in a style that might bring to mind Larry Clark controversial "Kids," although "Mid90s," while filled with colorful language and drug use, is milder and slightly more naive than that 1990s movie. Stevie lives with his mother (Katherine Waterston) and often abusive brother (Lucas Hedges). One day, he stumbles onto a group of young skaters and instantly takes a shine to them. Attempting to skate himself - and resulting in numerous crashes and uncomfortable landings on pavement - Stevie endears himself to the skaters, especially its leader, a young black teenager named Ray (Na-kel Smith), who also happens to be the group's champion skater.

Much of what is onscreen during the film's brief running time has been seen before - youthful recklessness, drugs and alcohol, a first-time sex scene, a naive young man growing up (well, sort of), troubled home-fronts, etc. Although overly familiar, Hill does a good job of creating a sense of who this group of kids is, even if the picture doesn't really show us anything new.

There's another element of the film that was a bit troubling, despite its likely accurate portrayal. The boys - as young dumb boys might do - often refer to the film's female characters as "bitches" and see them as conquests. Meanwhile, they throw around the word "fag" and other homophobic slurs with consistency. As a youth, I can attest to having been witness to this type of behavior, well, unfortunately more than one might expect. So, yes, the portrayal of these kids during this era rings true. But the boys are obviously the characters with whom the audience is supposed to relate, and this makes it difficult to do so.

On the other hand, the film's view of masculinity is a probing one, and the picture is clearly set at a moment when this group of kids is at a turning point, one after which they may very well part ways. This is exemplified by the growing rift between Ray, who takes his skating seriously, and FuckShit (Olan Prenatt), who prefers to get drunk, as well as the tension between Stevie and Ruben (Gio Galicia), who first initiates him into the group, but then becomes jealous when the others prefer Stevie to him.

Some of the other characters are underdeveloped, such as Stevie's mom, whose character merely reacts to what is going on with Stevie, and somewhat unevenly - at times, she is concerned, while at others rarely present. Also, Ian (Hedges) is a vicious bully, but we know little else about what makes him tick. On the whole, "Mid90s" does a nice job of capturing the essence of this group of kids, but the film is otherwise a fairly routine picture about the woes and joys of youth's folly.

Review: Halloween

Image courtesy of Universal Pictures.

David Gordon Green's direct sequel to John Carpenter's 1978 masterpiece is the 10th film in the series since the original - and the good news is that it's the best since the first film, which didn't quite give birth to the slasher genre, but certainly gave it the boost it needed. The director and co-screenwriter Danny McBride have used this sequel to Carpenter's classic to make a tense thriller with a timely female empowerment theme that makes the film well worth a watch.

That being said, this film - much like all of the other "Halloween" sequels and countless other movies about masked men stalking teenagers - doesn't hold a candle to the 1978 film, which was terrifying due to the inscrutability of its villain, a murderer with seemingly no purpose other than "pure evil." Carpenter's landmark horror movie was taut, tight and relentlessly frightening. It also featured an unsettling mood that few horror movies have been unable to replicate.

Gordon Green's sequel - which includes some in-jokes regarding the numerous sequels between 1978 and the present, such as a refutation to a previous sequel's revelation that Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) was Michael's sister - suggests that Strode and Myers' relationship is a symbiotic one - he is the predator who needs to fulfill his goal of killing Strode, while she spends her life planning for him to be released, so that she may kill him.

Laurie's relationship with her adult daughter, Karen (Judy Greer), is strained. Karen was taken from Laurie by child protective services at a young age after her mother attempted to raise her in a survivalist-style upbringing. Now, Laurie has limited access to her teenage granddaughter, Allyson (Andi Matichak), who brings her new boyfriend to meet the family at the film's beginning and has an evening of festivities planned for Halloween with her babysitting pals - one of whom, I must note, is stuck babysitting a particularly funny kid whose few scenes steal the show.

Meanwhile, a pair of British journalists have come to the maximum security facility where Myers is being kept to make a documentary about him and Laurie. Neither subject has much to say. We also meet Sartain (Haluk Bilginer), Michael's doctor, who is a far cry from Donald Pleasance's Dr. Loomis. One of the film's flimsier aspects involves the details of Michael's escape during a routine transfer to another facility. And a silly plot thread involving Sartain's intentions regarding Michael nearly derails the proceedings, but it is thankfully wrapped up quickly.

As Michael goes on a killing spree - and a much more brutal one than in Carpenter's original - the story ultimately becomes a horror movie for the #MeToo moment as three generations of women team up to fight the male predator who has, in one form or another, victimized them for much of their lives. The final confrontation between Michael and the three women takes place in Laurie's locked-down home - which the filmmakers make a point of juxtaposing with the maximum security prison where Michael is kept early in the film to show how both characters have been captives for decades - is a high point for the picture.

Curtis' early work was primarily horror movies - from "Halloween" and "Terror Train" to "Prom Night" - and, as a result, she earned the title of "scream queen." In the years since, she became associated more with films in which her sense of comic timing was well utilized, from the fabulous "A Fish Called Wanda" to "True Lies." But in her return to the screen as Laurie Strode, Curtis gives a powerful and intense performance that delves deeper than your typical portrayal in a mainstream horror movie. In other words, she still has the goods. And Michael Myers' - long known to horror fans as The Shape - still retains the capacity to terrify audiences, even during an age that is pretty terrifying itself.

Review: Bad Times At The El Royale

Image courtesy of 20th Century Fox.

Channeling Quentin Tarantino and utilizing such 1960s touchstones as the Manson Family murders and Vietnam War, Drew Goddard's "Bad Times at the El Royale" is a fun blast of bloody pulp fiction that features a game cast of supporting characters and makes good use of plot twists during its near two-and-a-half hour running time.

The picture is broken down into chapters that convey just enough information to keep you guessing at its characters' true intentions. Each room in the titular hotel - which is situated on the border of California and Nevada to the extent that the building is located in both states - lodges one guest (or pair, in one case) and each chapter focuses on the backstory for the mysterious individuals who spend a fateful and rainy night within its walls.

The film opens with a scene of a man burying money underneath the floorboards of one of the hotel's rooms in the late 1950s. He is soon killed by another unknown man and the story jumps ahead 10 years to 1969. The hotel, we are told by a young concierge named Miles (Lewis Pullman) with a few secrets of his own, was once a popular spot for movie stars and politicians, but has since fallen on harder times due to stricter gambling laws.

Among the hotel's guests is the wonderfully named Laramie Seymour Sullivan (Jon Hamm), who portrays himself as a Southern vacuum salesman, although we quickly find out that he is not quite who he says he is. Sullivan discovers a passageway behind the mirror in his hotel room that allows him to wander hidden hallways, where he can spy on other guests in their respective rooms. All of the characters' secrets are spilled fairly early in the film, however, we later learn that there is more to each individual's story.

The great Jeff Bridges shows up at Father Daniel Flynn, a man who is losing his memory and has returned to the hotel for mysterious reasons, while scene stealer Cynthia Erivo plays backup singer Darlene Sweet, who is passing through on her way to a gig in Reno. Dakota Johnson is the most curious guest as Emily Summerspring, whose car screeches into the hotel's driveway. Rather than signing the hotel's guest book, Emily simply writes, "fuck you." We later find out that she has another young woman in tow, whom Laramie spots tied up in a chair in Emily's room. While she originally comes across as a femme fatale, we learn several backstories later that Emily is the less dangerous of the pair.

Halfway through the picture, another character named Billy Lee (Chris Hemsworth, clearly having a great time hamming it up and dancing to Deep Purple's "Hush"), is introduced in a brief interlude. He later pops up for the film's finale, when all hell breaks loose at the El Royale. There's an unnerving and slightly hypnotic scene in which Billy Lee's history with Emily and the other young woman in the hotel room is unveiled and, needless to say, obvious inspiration from a particularly notorious late-1960s serial killer will come to mind.

With just two films - this one and the wildly amusing "Cabin in the Woods" - Goddard has proven he's an ace at pulp stories that end in bloody mayhem. "Bad Times at the El Royale" is long for a film of this type, but its pretty fun throughout. The picture is often several movies taking place at once and it goes heavy on the Tarantino influence - but in terms of knockoffs of that great director, of which there have been many, this is among the better ones. Its cast appears to be having a great time and you likely will as well.

Review: First Man

Image courtesy of Universal Pictures.

Less a character study of Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the moon, Damien Chazelle's film "First Man" is more of a first-person perspective of what it must be like to ride a rocket into orbit and hurtle through outer space. Chazelle's film - which follows his trio of music-related films, including the Oscar-winning "La La Land" - is a technical triumph, featuring intense and realistic depictions of space travel, all the while keeping the film's emotional elements more subtle.

As the picture opens, Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) loses his young daughter, an incident that reverberates throughout the rest of the years in which he works with NASA to help launch the first trip to the moon. There's even a touching coda involving this storyline when Armstrong actually lands on the moon. In the film, Gosling plays Armstrong as emotionally reserved, but it's in the moments involving the astronaut's daughter that his performance pays off most.

"First Man" is a film that concerns itself with technical detail and a large number of its scenes are trial and error runs in which Armstrong and his fellow astronauts - including Patrick Fugit, Jason Clarke and Corey Stoll as Buzz Aldrin - attempt not to pass out in simulation machines and shoot themselves out into space and try to safely navigate home. Tragedy strikes more than once and viewers might be surprised to learn that more than a few participants in the early days of the space program lost their lives during trial runs.

Neil's wife, Janet (Claire Foy), displays more emotion than her tight-lipped husband. Strolling feverishly throughout her home or the halls of NASA, Janet appears constantly worried and frustrated about Neil's safety and, during a peak moment of frustration, tells him that he must notify their two young boys that he might not return home from the moon. "You're just boys," she tells Kyle Chandler's Deke Slayton, who supervised the men involved in the launch, after he attempts to assure her that NASA has things "under control."

Although the film relies heavily on the technical aspects of the mission, Chazelle and company allow some interesting period details to creep in - especially during a scene in which Neil and his fellow astronauts' preparations are intercut with scenes of regular folks complaining about the cost of the space program, all while a young African American man leads a song about racial inequality on the ground as white men view their opportunities in the stars.

"First Man" may be light on emotional resonance - although the final moon landing and Neil's iconic words regarding a "giant leap for mankind" are certainly stirring - but it is strong in portraying the technical wonders involved in launching a men into space and landing on the moon. Chazelle's previous films were all about the emotion involved in the creation or performance of music, but his latest is one that admires craft. It's a solid entry into films about the American space program and it's often visually spectacular.

Review: A Star Is Born

Image courtesy of Warner Bros.

A character in "A Star is Born" notes that there are 12 notes in music and that every song is some combination of those notes. In other words, there are only so many subjects you can cover in a song or, in the case of films, stories you can tell. A piece of art is judged by how it uses the available tools. Bradley Cooper's version of "A Star is Born" - the fourth over a period of 81 years - is an example of those tools being well utilized.

Anyone familiar with film history knows this story already. A male celebrity discovers a talented ingenue whose abilities have gone recognized, helps her get a shot at stardom and then begins his own eventual decline. The 1937 version of the film remains the best, but Cooper's is - for my money - the second best. It's slightly better than the good, but overly long, 1954 version with Judy Garland and towers over the financially successful but critically lambasted 1976 version with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson.

This version stars Cooper - who also co-wrote the film and some of its songs - as Jackson Maine, an alt-country rocker in the vein of Ryan Adams who is aging not so gracefully. He spends much of his post-performance hours drinking away the time or taking drugs. As the film opens, he tells his driver to drop him at a dive, which turns out to be a drag bar, because it's the first place he spots that serves alcohol. Once inside, he becomes enamored with Ally (Lady Gaga), a chanteuse singing "La Vie en Rose" after putting in her shift at the restaurant where she works.

Ally is shocked to be approached by the rock star, and the two spend an evening hanging out and co-writing a song. Maine sees something in Ally that others do not. She knows that she is talented as a singer-songwriter, but notes that industry professionals have told her that her personal appearance would prevent her from being a success in the music industry. Maine pursues Ally, convinces her to attend one of his concerts and then surprises her by bringing her onstage to perform the song they co-wrote.

Similar to the previous versions of "A Star is Born," the two get married and Ally's star rises, while Jackson's begins to decline due to his drinking and drug habits. There's also an interesting side story involving Jackson's relationship with his older brother (played by the great Sam Elliott), and how the more famous brother clearly looks up to his sibling, who grudgingly attempts to keep him out of trouble. Andrew Dice Clay also pops up in a surprisingly effective supporting role as Ally's father. Ally's success also begins to nag at Jackson, especially as she is groomed to become a pop star with backup dancers and radio-friendly sounds that pale in comparison to the tunes she writes with Jackson.

So, while "A Star is Born" doesn't drift far narratively from its previous iterations, the performances and songs by Cooper and Lady Gaga result in this version being one of the better ones. Cooper proves to be a strong presence behind the camera and the film feels personal.

There's a powerful moment when Jackson instructs Ally to look at a billboard with her face on it outside of their house. She's awed by her sudden fame, but Jackson tells her that her capacity to remain a household name in the music industry is to always tell the truth to her listeners. This is a film that believes that a great piece of art - a song, for example - can change a life. "A Star is Born" might not change your life, but it's a very good cover version of a familiar song. It uses the notes that are available to tell its story well.