Review: Yesterday

Image courtesy of Universal Pictures.

Danny Boyle's "Yesterday" is undoubtedly one of the filmmaker's more lightweight efforts, most likely stemming from the fact that his source material this time is Richard Curtis - screenwriter of "Love, Actually" and "Notting Hill" - rather than, say, Irvine Welsh ("Trainspotting") or Vikas Swarup ("Slumdog Millionaire").

The picture asks us to imagine a fantastical scenario - one night, the power across the world goes out and when it comes back on, The Beatles's music has been completely erased from history, and seemingly only one person - a down-on-his-luck songwriter named Jack Malik (Hamesh Patel) who gets into a bicycle crash at the time of the blackout - remembers the Fab Four's songs. Naturally, he decides to pass their tunes off as his own, with a few roadblocks, such as his struggles to nail down the lyrical timeline of "Eleanor Rigby."

It's a cute concept that only maximizes about 50 percent of its possibilities. Other than Oasis not existing and, strangely enough, Coca Cola's disappearance, the lack of Beatlemania has seemingly not resulted in a vastly different world in Boyle's film. There are a few references to other cultural touchstones that have also vanished as a result - and a few, honestly, don't make much sense - but otherwise, modern popular culture comes out looking much the same without John, Paul, George or Ringo.

So, when Jack begins passing off The Beatles's music as his own, those around him are shocked to learn that after years of failing to find success as a musician, he could come up with such miraculously brilliant lyrics and music. There's an amusing scene during which a greedy music producer (Kate McKinnon, pretty funny here), is wowed by The Beatles's music that Jack has co-opted as his own, but dislikes one of his actual songs that he attempts to slip in during a recording session.

An early scene in which Jack, who hasn't yet realized that The Beatles no longer exist, sings "Yesterday" to a group of friends after being gifted a guitar upon his release from the hospital after his bicycle crash is emotionally resonant as his pals are deeply moved by that tune's melancholy. There's also clever use of "Back in the USSR" and the lovely "The Long and Winding Road."

The plot thread that could have undermined the entire effort is one in which singer Ed Sheeran pops up as himself, playing a mentor to Jack, although the latter ends up outshining the pop singer in short order. The only reason this thread - which only resurfaces in spurts - works is that Sheeran's role is self-deprecating, although there's a scene in which he's playing to a massive crowd at Wembley Stadium that veers slightly from self-deprecation into self-promotion.

The storyline in the film that gets the most play - and is slightly under-cooked - is the romance between Jack and Ellie (Lily James), a young woman who has been friends with Jack since childhood and harbored a secret crush on him during all the years that she has acted as his manager and booking agent. There are several scenes in which circumstances, for lack of a better word, keep the pair apart, but these are only there to delay the inevitable.

"Yesterday" is boosted by the fact that both leads - Patel and James - give solid performances and are likable leads, and that Patel can actually sing, quite well in fact. There are two scenes in which Jack meets characters not central to the story - one an iconic figure, the other a pair who are in a similar situation to Jack's - that might have derailed the film, but are handled well enough here. There are some critics who'd disagree with me, but the scenes worked for me.

Boyle is a director who can bounce between various genres and different types of subject matter. His best films - "Trainspotting," "28 Days Later" and "Slumdog Millionaire" - typically are darker or grittier fare. His latest is uncharacteristically sunny. It's also not one of his best, but it's often clever and is filled with fantastic music. Like the recent "Rocketman," it's a good movie that utilizes the music of a great musician. It's light and breezy - and, for the most part, an enjoyable watch.

Review: Toy Story 4

Image courtesy of Walt Disney Pictures.

"Toy Story 4" culminates the beloved animated series, which launched Pixar into the stratosphere, on a surprisingly kooky and not-so-surprisingly moving note. The animation studio continues to pile up the sequels for a number of its most popular titles, but it's the "Toy Story" series that has continuously kept up the quality across its four films.

While some thought that the wonderful "Toy Story 3" would have been a nice way to end the series, this final chapter goes in a few directions one might not expect. For starters, there is a bevy of new characters - some creepy dolls and their leader, Gabby Gabby (Christina Hendricks), a pair of squabbling stuffed animals named Bunny (Jordan Peele) and Ducky (Keegan Michael Key), a Canadian daredevil (Keanu Reeves) and, most notably, Forky (Tony Hale), a spork-turned-toy created by Bonnie (Madeleine McGraw), the young girl who is now the owner of most of the film's toys.

At the picture's beginning, Woody (Tom Hanks) recalls Bo Peep (Annie Potts) being taken away with some other toys with which Bonnie no longer plays. In the present, Woody is feeling left out as Bonnie prefers to play with cowgirl Jessie (Joan Cusack), and Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) is too busy trying to figure out what Woody means when he talks about one's "inner voice" - AKA the conscience.

Bonnie is starting kindergarten and has trouble making friends, so she creates Forky during class, and Woody spends the film's early scenes trying to keep a watchful eye on Forky, whom he recognizes as Bonnie's new best friend. Much of his time is spent trying to prevent Forky from jumping into a garbage can, which appears to be his comfort zone. It's one of several gags in the film that made me laugh heartily - another is a gut-busting sequence during which Bunny and Ducky concoct plans to stall an elderly woman.

But during a family road trip, Forky sees his chance to break free and jumps out of the window of the RV that Bonnie's family is driving. Woody follows suit and they end up in a small town that houses an antique shop, where Gabby Gabby and her creepy doll companions rule the roost, but Woody also has a reunion with Bo Peep.

"Toy Story 4" feels a little more plot driven than some of the previous entries in the series - the film mostly revolves around the toys attempting to stall Bonnie's family from leaving until Woody can get Forky back, Buzz can save Woody, etc. - and there are a number of set pieces, some funny, others more action-oriented. There's also a Randy Newman song - "I Can't Let You Throw Yourself Away" - that seems a little on the nose, albeit humorously, at first, but ends up holding a deeper meaning as time goes on.

Ultimately, the film ends on a note that is emotionally satisfying, as one might expect from this series, which has long found poignancy in unexpected places. Pixar films work best when they combine stunning animation with emotional arcs and unforgettable characters - and "Toy Story 4" has all three going for it. It's a lovely way to end the series, which is one that has appealed to several generations of children and adults alike.

Review: Long Day's Journey Into Night

Image courtesy of Kino Lorber.

Bi Gan's haunting, dreamlike "Long Day's Journey Into Night" - which has nothing to do with the Eugene O'Neill play - is an enigma wrapped in a puzzle, as the saying goes. There's no other film you'll likely see this year that's quite like it.

The film's first half is a visually lush and languid mystery, of sorts, in which a man named Luo Hongwu, (Jue Huang) who describes himself as a detective, searches for a woman he once knew who has apparently gone missing. In its dazzling second half - which was shot in 3D - he descends into a strange underworld that acts as a cinematic representation of a dream. The film has one of the most thought provoking and enticing final shots of recent years.

For those unfamiliar with Gan's previous film, "Kaili Blues," his work tends to involve slow moving, but hypnotic, mysteries - albeit ones of the soul more so than the flesh - that are set in the Chinese Southeast mainland city of Kaili. Both films employ long takes - in his previous picture, there was a lengthy motorcycle ride composed of one shot. In his latest, the film's final hour is one long continuous take that is guaranteed to take one's breath away, especially when considering all of the choreography that went into it.

Near the film's beginning, Luo asks how one can know whether one is in a dream or real life. He notes that his body is made of hydrogen, but his dreams are made of stone, and during the course of the film we see how those memories weigh him down. There are several scenes in movie theaters - most notably, one in which Luo puts on a pair of 3D glasses, transitioning the film to that format in the film's second half and launching into its hour-long dream state - and at one point Luo notes that films are always fake, but memories are a combination of truth and lies, including the ones we tell ourselves.

The film's plot is purposefully murky. It involves Luo attempting to discover who murdered a friend of his named Wildcat, which leads him to meet the mysterious Qiwen Wan (Tang Wei), a beautiful woman with whom he becomes entranced. They share some moments together before she disappears and he doesn't see her again. Nearly 20 years later, he has returned to his hometown for his father's funeral, and takes up the search for Qiwen.

Luo's mother, who owned a restaurant, tells her son to remove a broken clock that has long collected dust on the eatery's walls. Much later in the film, Luo gives a watch that has stopped to a woman whom he believes might be Qiwen. In "Long Day's Journey Into Night," time is an abstract construct and, much like the clock and watch, time has stopped for Luo, who attempts to reclaim a past that may no longer exist.

After the dreamscape kicks in during the film's final hour, Luo meets a number of characters after passing through a portal-like entry to the underworld - including a young boy who challenges him to a game of ping pong before giving him passage, a group of youths at a pool hall, an older couple who are bickering with each other and the woman whom Luo believes might be Qiwen.

The film's hour-long shot is an amazing technical accomplishment. The camera follows Luo as he traverses the underworld, but also stops to speak to various characters, takes a motorcycle ride, gets involved in a pool game, rides a harness down a mountainside and even flies above the city. The camera follows every move in a feat of incredible choreography. Even one minor misstep would likely have forced Gan and company to start the shot all over again.

The picture ends on a beguiling, mysterious image that speaks to the fleeting nature of all of life's beautiful things. In "Long Day's Journey Into Night," all of its characters are searching for one thing - in Luo's case, the girl who got away - that they consider essential, but are missing. This is a visually stunning and hypnotically engrossing movie. Rather than trying to follow the film's opaque narrative, I'd recommend allowing its moody visuals and soundtrack to wash over you and feeling your own way through the story. Everyone experiences a piece of art differently, and I'd imagine that this film will elicit a variety of reactions. My own is that "Long Day's Journey Into Night" is one of the most unique and transfixing movies I've seen this year.

Review: Late Night

Image courtesy of Amazon Studios.

"Late Night" is a funny and sharp comedy that covers everything from the treatment of women in the workplace and diversity to issues of class, gender and age. It's a charming comedy with a fair amount on its mind that takes a familiar story - essentially that of "The Devil Wears Prada" - and gives it an entertaining upgrade.

In the film, Molly (Mindy Kaling, who also wrote the screenplay) is a young Indian woman with comedic chops whose current audience is the workers at the Pennsylvania chemical plant where she works in quality control. She sees an opening for her dream job - a writing gig for a late night show hosted by an iconic comedienne named Katherine Newbury (Emma Thompson), who is the only woman with such a position in the television industry.

However, Katherine has begun to be regarded as a fossil, so her boss (Amy Ryan) has decided to replace her with a sexist frat bro comedian (Ike Barinholtz) whose jokes typically revolve around scat or genitalia. Katherine, who is English to a tee, is noticeably mortified and commands her assistant (Denis O'Hare) to add a woman to her all-male staff of writers, who don't take kindly to Molly's presence.

Molly is shocked when Katherine agrees with her that she's a "diversity hire," but Katherine makes the point that she's also the only one of her kind - a woman in late night talk show TV - and now Molly is the first woman writer on the staff, so she should pave the way and make the best of her newfound power. Molly's male cohorts (Hugh Dancy, Reid Scott, Max Casella, among others) are at first wary of her, noting that she is quick to criticize the show's stale format, but has few solutions. But she eventually captures the respect - if not quite the affection - of Katherine.

One of the most likable aspects of "Late Night" is that, Barinholtz's comedian and his agent notwithstanding, there aren't really any villains here. Katherine's team of male writers are more beneficiaries of a flawed system than jerks who attempt to hold Molly back, while Ryan's boss lady at first comes across as sinister, but we reassess that judgment later in the picture. There's also a touching subplot involving Katherine's ailing husband (John Lithgow), a former musician who has Parkinson's disease, that is effective without dialing up the emotion to a maudlin level.

Thompson is great here as Katherine, a role that proves the actress is an able comedienne, while Kaling is also very good. The focus on the film's relationships is especially smart - including that between Katherine and her husband, Katherine and Molly, Molly and a love interest (Dancy) that goes nowhere and Molly and Tom (Scott), the lead writer who at first dislikes his female counterpart, but realizes that they work better as a team than as adversaries.

"Late Night" doesn't do anything that particularly surprises you - the story goes pretty much exactly where you expect it to - but it goes about it in a witty, thoughtful and buoyant manner.

Review: The Dead Don't Die

Image courtesy of Focus Features.

To get it out of the way right up front: no, "The Dead Don't Die" isn't quite as fun as you might think when hearing the phrase "Jim Jarmusch zombie movie." The picture - which boasts a cast that's simply ridiculous in the amount of talent assembled - is a fairly lightweight affair, although it tackles some weighty and depressing realities, in Jarmusch's oeuvre and it's not one of his best films

That being said, it's still a pretty good time, and in the spirit of George Romero's zombie pictures - to which this movie makes no qualms whatsoever about being indebted - it involves a decent amount of social and political commentary. If the concept of a movie about brain dead zombies consuming everything in their path at a time when Donald Trump is president - the town's token bigot (Steve Buscemi) wears a red hat that says "Keep America White Again" - doesn't click with you thematically, well, I don't know what to tell you.

At the film's beginning, we are told by various talking heads that a phenomenon known as "polar fracking" has led to a realignment of the earth's orbit and, as a result, daylight lasts much longer than usual and, oh yeah, the dead begin to rise from the earth. Among the zombies who rise from the grave are Carol Kane and Iggy Pop, who quickly get to munching on the inhabitants of Centerville, a small upstate New York town where the film is set.

We meet a number of characters - a samurai undertaker (Tilda Swinton), two storeowners (Danny Glover and Caleb Landry Jones), Buscemi's racist farmer, some teens (including Selena Gomez) traveling through from out of town, a motel owner (horror icon Larry Fessenden), a man who lives in the woods (Tom Waits), a UPS deliveryman (RZA), a newscaster (Rosie Perez) and three cops, the laconic Chief Cliff Robertson (Bill Murray), the speculative Ronnie (Adam Driver) and the nervous Mindy (Chloe Sevigny) - who will eventually become snacks to the hordes of living dead who overtake the town.

Although there are some genuinely creepy moments and some gory bloodletting, "The Dead Don't Die" is mostly a comedy. There's a hilarious recurring joke about whether two mutilated bodies in a diner were the result of wild animals, another in which Ronnie's bleak pronouncements begin to drive Cliff crazy and a third so-annoying-it's-funny gag regarding the film's theme song, sung by Sturgill Simpson.

Not all of the jokes land. There's a sequence that adds a science fiction element to the proceedings that literally drops out of nowhere and isn't particularly satisfactory. And at several points, characters reference the script and Jim Jarmusch himself, which is funny at first, but then slightly overdone. I did have a laugh during a reference to another film in Driver's repertoire.

Jarmusch's previous films have led me to believe that he is a sardonic optimist, so it's a little surprising that his latest film is such a bleak affair, despite its pessimism being well earned. As the film's various characters battle off the living dead and eventual extinction, Jarmusch appears to be questioning whether humanity is even worth saving. Generationally, it's interesting to see which characters he allows to survive.

So, while "The Dead Don't Die" certainly qualifies as a minor - and extremely laid back - Jarmusch film, it's still a good time. His previous film, "Paterson," was his best in some time, so it's OK if he wants to kick back with some friends - the film is a who's who of previous collaborators - and have some fun enjoying the end of mankind. I know I did.

Review: Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story

Image courtesy of Netflix.

"Freedom just around the corner for you, but with the truth so far off what good will it do?" Bob Dylan sings in his 1983 song "Jokerman." The legendary troubadour teams up with director Martin Scorsese, who shows a knack for trickster behavior himself in his latest film, for "Rolling Thunder Revue," a kind-of documentary that chronicles a legendary, but low key, tour that Dylan undertook around the time of the nation's 1976 bicentennial, but includes a fair amount of fiction as well - a trait that the picture takes no pains to hide, although you might think it did, considering some of the grousing about it.

Launching shortly after the end of the Vietnam War and the stepping down of another president who broke the law and attempted to weaponize the nation's justice system, the Rolling Thunder Revue was a ragtag group of poets and musicians who traveled from city to city across the east coast, often with no advance warning, and played small venues. The tour was launched shortly before the release of Dylan's marvelous 1976 record "Desire" and, at various points, drew such participants as Joan Baez, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Allen Ginsberg, Joni Mitchell,  Roger McGuinn, of The Byrds, and Mick Ronson, a guitarist for David Bowie. They're all featured in the documentary, and they're occasionally joined by others - Patti Smith and Bette Midler, for example.

The tour - and this documentary - include some of Dylan's finest live performances. He performs several of his iconic songs - "Isis" and "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall," for example - with an intensity you might not expect for a guy who, at that point, hadn't been on tour for eight years. Although Dylan has long attempted to shed the protest image of his early folk years, his work to help free wrongly accused boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter and the subsequent song he wrote about him show the singer at his most focused, while his backup band - including the incredible violin work by Scarlet Rivera - on the tour is among the best he's ever had.

The semi-fuss caused by the film involves a series of sequences that is being referred to as the "four jokers." These are fake interviews - one with Sharon Stone, in which she insinuates that she had some sort of fling with Dylan during the tour; another with a fake music promoter; a third with Jack Tanner (played by Michael Murphy), a politician character from a 1988 Robert Altman film; and a recurring character known as Stefan Van Dorp (portrayed by Martin Von Haselberg, Midler's husband), a European filmmaker who has mostly snarky things to say about the people on the tour, which he claims to have filmed as a documentary.

The only real surprise here is that anyone familiar with Bob Dylan would be taken aback by this. Dylan has long portrayed himself as a trickster figure. He's been the subject of several movies - including the four-hour fever dream "Renaldo and Clara," for which footage was collected during the tour, and the mesmerizing "I'm Not There," during which no less than five actors portrayed Dylan at various stages of his life - and numerous documentaries. And yet, when trying to capture his essence, it's still difficult, considering how often he's been on film.

At one point during the film, he notes that "when somebody is wearing a mask, he's going to tell you the truth; when he's not wearing a mask, it's highly unlikely." That's probably the truest thing that Dylan will tell you about himself in "Rolling Thunder Revue." On the tour, Dylan often performs with Kabuki-style makeup, although he's willing to let audiences believe that he stole the concept from KISS, and hides behind various other costumes. At one point, he even gets Baez in on playing dress up.

"Rolling Thunder Revue" is at once a gripping documentary on the 1975-1976 tour, a series of beautifully captured concert sequences, a humorous prank regarding attempts to understand one of rock's most enigmatic figures and great a time capsule piece. Scorsese has worked with Dylan before, so rather than digging deep to try to explain him - a likely fruitless feat - he gets in the spirit of the thing and provides a carnivalesque-styled film that suits the nature of the Rolling Thunder Revue tour. This is a riveting film.

Review: X-Men: Dark Phoenix

Image courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox.

"Dark Phoenix," which is seemingly the final film in this current crop of "X-Men" films, fades away more than burns out, although there's a little of that too. It's an odd way to end the series - focusing on the arc of one character specifically, bumping off one or two characters rather nonchalantly, insinuating that one of its most iconic characters had villainous qualities and ending with a somewhat generic resolution.

That being said, "Dark Phoenix" isn't as bad as the beating it has taken with critics. It's no worse than any of the series' low points, and there are some solid moments. And from the moment that Michael Fassbender shows up as Magneto, the film takes a turn for the better.

In this picture, the X-Men take part in the rescue mission of a spacecraft and, in the process, Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) takes the brunt of what is believed to be a solar flare. Afterward, she gains an incredible amount of power, and the rest of the film plays out like a season of Festivus - many grievances.

In the film's beginning, we witness Jean accidentally kill her mother during a car crash after she uses her mind to mess with the radio channels. Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) takes her in and tries to help her bury that guilt, showing her how to channel her powers for good.

But after Jean's contact with the alleged solar flare, she begins to take out vengeance on those whom she believed lied to her or altered her history. It also doesn't help that an alien race (led by a frosty, white haired Jessica Chastain) has come to either collect the power Jean has or use her as a weapon to - you'll never guess - dominate the earth.

This leads to all sorts of divisions, especially after a high profile character gets bumped off, courtesy of Jean. Charles Xavier and Cyclops (Tye Sheridan) want to save Jean, while Magneto and Hank/Beast (Nicholas Hoult) want to destroy her. A lot of items being moved with the mind and explosions commence.

While other X-Men movies and comics have been laden with occasionally interesting subtext - everything from being subject to prejudice to the AIDS crisis - there is scant evidence of that here, other than a brief ode to women's competence as superheroes by Raven (Jessica Lawrence) that feels more like a throwaway line, rather than the exploration of a theme.

It must be said that the lack of Wolverine's presence is noticeable as Hugh Jackman always brought a fair amount of depth and showmanship to that role. In "Dark Phoenix," many of the actors appear as if they're just going through the motions. Fassbender and McAvoy rise to the occasion during a few moments, but the film mostly feels like the end result of various people taking care of contractual obligations.