Review: Bill And Ted Face The Music

Image courtesy of Orion Pictures.

Arriving 29 years after the second film in the series, "Bill and Ted Face the Music" might not be excellent, but it's far from bogus - in fact, it's likely the most enjoyable all around among the three films. The first "Bill and Ted" was a silly, but charmingly amusing, film about two dopey, but good natured, metal heads from California who learned a history by time traveling. It's peculiar sequel found the boys confronting Death, who makes an appearance in this latest film

Set in the present, Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves) are still married to the princesses they met in the previous film - Elizabeth (Erinn Hayes) and Joanna (Jayma Mays) - but their relationships are a bit rocky. At the film's beginning, they are all in couples therapy... together. And Bill and Ted don't seem to appreciate the fact that their wives are bothered when either of the men discuss their relationships with their psychiatrist (Jillian Bell), and always refer to "we" - meaning, Bill, Ted and their two wives - rather than referring to a married pair.

The two men are also fathers to two girls - Billie (Brigette Lundy-Paine) and Thea (Samara Weaving) - who also happen to be music-heads. They obviously look up to their fathers. Career-wise, Bill and Ted's lives appear to be going nowhere, although they naturally still own the type of homes that people whose lives are going nowhere can afford to own in movies. 

The boys are still members of the Wyld Stallyns, although their musical career has gone from being successful to playing dive bars with just a few attendees. One of the film's funnier jokes involves them discussing their fans, who Ted is able to refer to by name in just a few seconds. However, the film quickly provides a silly plot device - an emissary from the future (Kristen Schaal), daughter of Rufus (the late George Carlin, who appears in a hologram) - in which the two men must save the universe from disappearing by coming up with a song to unite all humanity.

The conundrum involves people from different points in time disappearing and appearing in other points in time - in other words, the universe is out of whack, and the only thing that can save it is a song. Billie and Thea take up the mission to find a backup band to help Bill and Ted by traveling through time - where they meet everyone from Jimi Hendrix and Louis Armstrong to Mozart. Bill and Ted, on the other hand, come up with a plan to find their future selves, and steal the song from them.

Their future selves are deadbeats, convicts and, during one of the film's better scenes, elderly men in a nursing home, where Bill and Ted have frank conversations with their senior citizen versions about whether they have let each other down. If that sounds a little meta - and nutty - it is, but it manages to work.

Yes, the film is pretty silly, much like the previous Bill and Ted movies, although the use of Death as a character works a little better this time around than in the previous picture. There's also something to be said for the fact that the universe hangs in the balance in the picture, and the elements used to save it are decency, camaraderie, creativity and loyalty, all things that seem quaint during our current moment when the world hangs in the balance. It also has an interesting take on the concept that what one thinks one's destiny is and what it actually turns out to be can be illuminating.

"Bill and Ted Face the Music" occasionally stumbles when the film's ridiculous plot veers all over the place, and not all of the jokes land - the marital issues take up a bit too much time - but this is a good natured follow up that gets by on the chemistry between its two charming leads. It's a sequel that actually has purpose, other than to make money off nostalgia, and you might be surprised where it all ends up. 

Review: Chemical Hearts

Image courtesy of Amazon Prime.

Based on Krystal Sutherland's young adult novel "Our Chemical Hearts," the new Amazon Prime movie "Chemical Hearts" is a likable enough teen drama, albeit one that relies heavily on familiar tropes and doesn't go anywhere we're not expecting it to. It does a decent enough job of capturing the melodrama of teen romance - but like too many of its ilk, it feels the need to add an extra element (often, an incurable disease, but in this case, a recent trauma) to make it even more dramatic.

Had the story simply focused on the relationship between Henry Page (Austin Abrams), a shy high school student who has achieved his goal to be the editor of the school newspaper, and Grace Town (Lili Reinhart), a new transfer to the school who's also a writer but is somewhat detached, the film might have been a little better off. Instead, it introduces a plot element involving Grace's recent past that presents all sorts of challenges to their relationship, simply for the sake of creating drama, rather than focusing on the already existing challenges of being a young person.

In fact, that very concept is addressed by Grace when the school newspaper's supervisor tells the students working on the paper that they must come up with a concept for the year's final edition. Grace suggests the concept of the challenges of being a teenager, and the students approach the concept with interest. This might have made for some compelling viewing - but instead much of the film is spent on a tragedy of which Grace was a part, and Henry's attempts to navigate around it and try to have a relationship with the mysterious young woman.

Another issue in the film is that Grace's portrayal - despite the melodramatic flourishes - is a more compelling character than Henry, who is meant to be the shy, reserved "nice guy" and has a difficult time expressing himself in conversation - he's much better with the written word. The problem isn't that Grace is more interesting - it's that Henry is supposed to be the lead. In a strange attempt to compensate, the character has an interest in an ancient form of Japanese vase making. Don't ask.

And yet, despite these problems, "Chemical Hearts" is often charming enough. There's a nice sibling relationship involving Henry and his older sister, who's had her share of romantic difficulties, and some of Henry's sidekicks are given more personality than you'd expect in this type of film - although the burgeoning romance between a young Black woman and a Latina, both of whom are on the school newspaper with Henry, seems to exist simply to provide background intrigue, but isn't developed beyond the superficial.

Rather than portraying the two leads as your typical lovestruck American teens, these two actually have things to discuss - she likes the work of Pablo Neruda, and she has some in-depth thoughts on a class syllabus that includes "The Sorrows of Young Werther" and, not surprisingly, "The Catcher in the Rye." Henry is also a deeper thinker than your typical teenage boy - at least the versions portrayed in movies.

Reinhart's performance is also pretty impressive - despite the melodramatic aspect of her character, she pulls it off pretty well. All in all, "Chemical Hearts" isn't a bad movie at all - it has two likable enough leads and takes its teenage characters seriously, a trait that has thankfully been more noticeable in these types of movies in recent years - remember how teens used to only exist to get killed in the movies by horror villains or be in gross-out sex comedies? 

So, yes, "Chemical Hearts" has a fair amount on its mind - it's just that it doesn't always explore its concept in the most successful manner. Had it focused instead on the real-life challenges everyday teens face - rather than become the latest drama about a youth caught up in a tragic situation - it might have been even better. That being said, it's enjoyable enough.

Review: Sputnik

Image courtesy of IFC Midnight.

The Russian film "Sputnik," which was obviously inspired by "Alien" and dozens of other extraterrestrials-among-us thrillers, is amusing enough for a movie that wears its influences so blatantly on its sleeve, and it's the type of picture in which the outcome seems pretty obvious from the outset. But what often elevates it is the fact that it's character driven, rather than focusing solely on special effects, although there are some gory examples of those too.

Set in 1983, the film opens with two Russian cosmonauts in space who believe they hear a strange sound outside of their ship. Shortly thereafter, they land back on Earth - one of them is dead and the other, Konstantin (Pyotr Fyodorov), is being kept in isolation. A doctor named Tatiana (Oksana Akinshina) is brought in to survey the cosmonaut after going through a hearing in which she is criticized for saving a young boy by somewhat dangerous methods. The creepy colonel in charge of her new gig - Semiradov (Fedor Bondarchuk) - is impressed with the fact that she saved the boy, regardless of the circumstances.

Tatiana senses that something is off with Konstantin - and the nature of his quarantine - but little does she know. She soon finds out that his body has been inhabited by an alien creature that crawls out through his mouth at night and feeds on the convicts that Tatiana is shocked to discover are being fed to the creature by Semiradov. Tatiana tries to weigh whether she should get involved in the project - on the one hand, she is outraged to find out that men are being sacrificed, while on the other she doesn't want to leave Konstantin - who might have a secret or two of his own - in Semiradov's hands.

When the film is focusing on the characters - as it does for a decent amount of its running time - it makes for pretty interesting viewing. Most sci-fi horror movies of this type are satisfied with introducing a few archetypal characters and then watching them get bumped off by the creature. In this case, Tatiana and Konstantin's debates over the ethics involved in handling the scenario are the film's most compelling sequences, whereas the gory special effects scenes near the film's end are merely the cherry on top.

That being said, "Sputnik" doesn't venture anywhere you wouldn't expect it to in terms of storytelling. It's a pretty standard "Alien" knockoff, albeit one that's set primarily on Earth. It's never hard to guess where the film is going, and the few plot twists it provides don't move the story forward in a manner that necessarily make it any more compelling.

In other words, it's not bad - but not great. Akinshina provides a solid performance as the conflicted scientist, and the film's gloomy, overcast visuals do a nice job of setting the mood and tone. But "Sputnik" ultimately culminates as a gory showdown between some government heavies and the insect-looking alien that pops out of Konstantin's mouth now and then. The film is decent enough for a genre picture of this type, but it's nowhere near as good as the iconic film - "Alien" - that it emulates.

Review: I Used To Go Here

Image courtesy of Gravitas Ventures. 

It's been said that you can't go home - and while that's not technically true, it's arguable that you can't go back to the home you once knew. There have been plenty of stories told - both in prose and onscreen - in which people return to the place in which they once resided, only to find they don't recognize it anymore.

In Kris Rey's mostly charming low budget comedy "I Used to Go Here," Kate (Gillian Jacobs), a novelist whose first work has been published to little fanfare, finds that things look mostly the same when she returns to the small Illinois college town where she once attended school. But rather than being the confident young woman she once was in college, she has now become weighted down by neuroses.

One can't really blame her. The sales of her first novel - a romance, of sorts that follows a series of much better received personal essays she wrote - are lackluster, the only review she has read is unkind and her book tour has been canceled by her publisher. On top of that, she has broken up with her fiance, and notices on Facebook that he's seemingly dating again. Early in the film, she attends a baby shower for three different friends - all sporting baby bumps - and all she has to display is her mostly ignored debut novel.

She travels to her old college town at the bequest of an old professor, David (Jemaine Clement), who was her inspiration for getting into writing. He has invited Kate to speak to a bunch of his students at the college and read passages from her book. Upon arriving, she checks into a bed-and-breakfast run by a surly woman and realizes the B&B is across the street from the former house where she lived as a student and spent some of her formative years.

David is excited to see her, but Kate is quick to spot that her old professor - who is seemingly unhappily married - eyes his female students, especially one named April (Hannah Marks), who gives an evocative reading in class. David tells Kate he thinks she should consider a teaching gig he's trying to fill at the university, and she appears to consider the offer.

Meanwhile, Kate wanders over to the house where she lived while in college and meets its new denizens - a group of young men who could be considered to make up a somewhat dorky frat. She gets invited to a party at the house that night, and finds herself getting embroiled in the group's intrigues - which include one student's romantic involvement with April, and his belief that she's cheating on him. Wanna guess with whom she's sneaking around?

All the while, the theme that you can't quite go home again remain prominent - Kate realizes David isn't so much a booster of creativity than he is a cad, while another old male friend she runs into invites her for coffee, only to end up in an awkward makeout session involving the friend and another woman he's invited. 

The film's centerpiece is a sequence during which Kate gets roped into tagging along with the frat house guys to another house where they believe April is having a late night booty call. It's the sort of awkward sequence you might expect in a film about a person in their mid-30s realizing they haven't grown up as much as they'd have liked and are unsure where their path next leads. It's a pretty funny scene, even if it goes exactly where you'd expect.

"I Used to Go Here" is often warm and funny, which is due to the casting. Jacobs does a fine job as Kate, a hot mess in search of a purpose, and the group of students all have their distinct personalities - especially Brandon Daley as Tall Brandon, a lanky giant whose well-meaning attitude leads him to get involved one of the film's kookier subplots.

The film doesn't say anything we don't already know about its aforementioned theme, but it's a good-hearted story about finding the courage to rise up again after failure and starting anew by simply being yourself. At a brisk 85 minutes, it's also an enjoyably breezy little comedy about how nostalgia can be a dangerous thing when trying to inhabit a world you've since passed by. It's worth a watch.

Review: Summerland

Image courtesy of IFC Films.

The British film "Summerland" is the quintessential example of what one might call a "nice little film." Set against the backdrop of World War II, the film tells the type of quaint type of tale that only the British could provide. In other words, I liked it - despite it being a film in which some relatively high stakes are considered with a lighter touch.

In the film, self-exiled recluse Alice (Gemma Arterton) is the local fuss budget - the picture opens with a scene in 1975 during which she's feverishly typing away at her typewriter and working on academic theses, only to be interrupted by some local children, and then flashes back to the WW II era, during which she's doing basically the same thing, only to be interrupted by a local woman with a young boy named Frank (Lucas Bond) in tow whom Alice is told has come from London - his father is a pilot in the war, and his mother has remained behind in London - to escape the bombing and be safe in the countryside.

Alice denies knowing anything about it, but finds a piece of unopened mail notifying her about the boy's pending arrival. There's a plot thread left unanswered regarding this later in the film that doesn't exactly make sense once we realize who exactly the kid is, but never mind. The film becomes one of those stories you've seen 100 times - grouchy adult resists, but eventually becomes enamored by plucky kid and changes ways, etc.

So, it took me a while - much like Alice herself toward Frank - to warm to the film because, well, I felt I'd seen it too many times before. But the camaraderie between Arterton and Bond is pretty solid, plus there's a back story involving Alice and her secret relationship in the past with a woman named Vera (Gugu Mbatha Raw) that provides some intrigue. There's also a bratty little girl named Edie (Dixie Egerickx) with whom Frank becomes friends.

About halfway through the film, news reaches Alice that Frank's father has been killed in the war, and there's a significant amount of time spent on Alice trying but failing to break the terrible news to the boy. Again, this seems like a familiar trope, but in this case it helps to soften us toward Alice, whose brusk attitude - there's a funny scene early on when a young girl thinks Alice is going to buy her a candy bar, only to realize Alice has bought it for herself - might make her somewhat unlikable at first.

There's a plot twist late in the film that deserves some credit - often, such twists can be seen far in advance, but I had no idea this one was coming. That's also likely because it's somewhat preposterous, that is, until you realize it's not one of chance, but design. Regardless, it leads to an ending that turns out to be surprisingly moving.

"Summerland" is, as I'd mentioned, a nice little British picture - quirky, warm hearted, occasionally funny and, ultimately, a little safe. On the other side of the spectrum of UK cinema is Ken Loach's emotionally brutal "Sorry We Missed You" - which I watched last week and can attest is quite good. Both deal with somewhat serious scenarios, but in completely different ways. And that's OK. "Summerland" doesn't aim to be a heavy hitter - it's pleased with being an enjoyable diversion and, as such, it works just fine.

Review: The Rental

Image courtesy of IFC Films.

Dave Franco's directorial debut, "The Rental," proves that the actor has some talent behind the camera, especially when it comes to creating mood and building suspense. On the other hand, the screenplay by Franco and Mumblecore auteur Joe Swanberg leaves a fair amount to be desired. Typically, a film's ending isn't a make or break deal for me - and in this case, the film had already run out of gas by the time it reaches its final 20 minutes - but "The Rental" has one of the most dissatisfying finales in recent memory.

The setup is simple - perhaps, too simple, one might argue considering the frequency with which such scenarios are made into movies. Two couples - successful Charlie (Dan Stevens) and his girlfriend, Michelle (Alison Brie), and Charlie's less successful brother and former jailbird Josh (Jeremy Allen White) and his girlfriend, Mina (Sheila Vand), who's also Charlie's business partner - take a getaway weekend trip to a secluded and expensive looking home in Oregon.

From the start, there's seemingly some tension - both from the fact that Charlie is a success, while Josh is not, but also because there's some obvious sexual tension between Mina and Charlie. Add to the mix the creepy - and possibly racist - owner of the B&B where the couples are staying who seems to have a problem with Mina being of Middle Eastern descent - plus the fact that he wouldn't rent the place to her in advance, telling her it was booked, but then renting it to Charlie when he called afterward. Also, a secret involving Charlie's dating past comes up, making things more awkward.

All of these elements combine to make a fairly tense mood, coupled with the creepy fog of which Franco and cinematographer Christian Sprenger make great use. The film takes a turn toward being a thriller/horror film shortly after two of the characters do something they shouldn't and then discover hidden cameras in the rental home.

While one might be led to believe these various moving parts will come together in the final act in a manner that provides a few scares and some resolution to the various issues between the characters, one would be incorrect. The final 20 minutes of the movie are among the most dissatisfying I've seen in a while. The film moves into slasher territory - albeit relatively low on gore - and the ending will likely leave some scratching their heads. For the sake of full disclosure, it wasn't until I read another review that I fully understood who the mysterious figure is who torments the group during the final scenes. Once I figured that out, the ending struck me as even more ineffective.

Franco's brother, James, has made numerous forays into directing, and Dave Franco has some obvious talent as a filmmaker - he does a good job of setting the scene for this story and keeping a tense mood throughout, that is, up until it unravels. But "The Rental" didn't work for me overall. Instead of utilizing the drama between its characters to build to something interesting - or even use the tension between the characters at the service of a good horror story - the picture merely falls apart when it falls back on familiar genre tropes.

Review: First Cow

Image courtesy of A24.

Similar to Kelly Reichardt's other films, "First Cow" is what one might call a slow burn because it leisurely introduces its characters and story and takes its time getting to its destination. Some might call the filmmaker's works slow, but I'd say they're measured and patient.

"First Cow" is a gentle tale of two men who struggle to make it during some very tough times - in the wilds of Oregon in the 1820s. The film - which is based on Jonathan Raymond's novel "The Half Life" - starts with a mystery, of sorts: a young woman and her dog are walking along a secluded trail, when the pup starts digging in the ground. The woman finds two skeletons laying side by side under the earth.

At this point, the story picks up its 19th century tale by introducing Cookie Figowitz (John Magaro), a cook traveling with a group of surly trappers who bully him when he has difficulty finding edibles in the woods. While out searching for food one night, he stumbles upon a shirtless Asian man named King-Lu (Orion Lee), who has fled a group of Russians. King-Lu tells Cookie that the Russians killed one of his friends and, in self defense, he in turn killed one of them.

Due to his generous nature, Cookie helps King-Lu hide out, keeping him out of sight of the trappers with whom he's traveling. Once they arrive at a fort, he parts ways with the group. Shortly thereafter, he runs into King-Lu again. The two men overhear a conversation taking place about the local governor's purchase of the territory's first cow - the cow's mate and calf died on the trip from San Francisco.

Cookie and King-Lu sneak over to the governor's property at night and steal some of the cow's milk. The next morning, Cookie has fried up some biscuits mixed with various ingredients he picked up during his apprenticeship days in Boston. King-Lu is astounded at how tasty the biscuit is, and he comes up with a plan - the two men will sell the items in the local market square.

Their plan results in a success - after a few days, men start lining up for, and even squabbling over, the biscuits, which are limited in amount due to the amount of milk they are able to pilfer each evening. Cookie has dreams of opening a hotel in San Francisco, and King-Lu wants to find success in the country in which he has made a new home.

Then, one day, their delicacy is noticed by the governor himself - played with snotty aplomb by Toby Jones - who wants to try the biscuits. We know this might spell trouble for the duo. Sure enough, the governor is so impressed that he invites the two men to come to his house to serve food at a gathering he is hosting. Their appearance sets off a chain of events that lead to the film's dramatic climax.

"First Cow," which was released for just a few days in theaters before COVID-19 shut down movie theaters and is now available for streaming, is a movie that takes its time getting to where it's going. In fact, the actual plot doesn't even kick in until at least a quarter of the film's running time has passed. But this is the type of film in which story plays second fiddle - the focus instead is on the hypnotic visuals in which the camera holds on scenes of nature and early 19th century life as well as the camaraderie between the two leads.

"First Cow" is about finding friendship - and in this case, brotherhood - in the places you might not expect. The picture slowly but surely builds from that opening scene of a discovery to a lovely - and somewhat devastating - final shot in which Reichardt allows us to use our imagination to figure out how one led to the other.

Magaro and Lee are both very good in understated performances, and the narrative slowly sneaks up on you and builds to something both moving and enlightening. Like Cookie's biscuits, Reichardt provides viewers with some simple ingredients, and manages to make something magical out of them.