Tiger King - Netflix Review

Starring Joe Exotic, Carole Baskin, Doc Antle, Jeff Lowe, Howard Baskin, John Finlay, and Rick Kirkham.

Directed by Eric Goode & Rebecca Chaikin.

Netflix has put out this seven-episode series, and it is the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen. The most bizarre true-story crime docudrama ever made. This is DYING to be made into a Danny McBride movie. 

It's about Joe Exotic, owner of a big-cat zoo in Oklahoma. His biggest rival is Carole Baskin, owner of Big Cat Rescue, and she's dedicated her life to shut down zoos like Joe's. And she's rich, so she has unlimited resources to go against Joe. You see Joe get crazier and crazier in his rivalry with her, and things escalate.

Some questions raised.

Spoilers......

Did Carole Baskin murder her first husband? The editing would certainly seem that way. Millionaire who wants to leave his way suddenly disappears and is never seen again? Hmmm…

Did Joe Exotic really order a hitman to kill Carole? Sounded like they had all the evidence. The final episode was the spottiest. I thought we’d get more time dedicated to the trial, but there was hardly any. The timeline of events needed to be studied a little more closely. 

Thing is, by the time you get to the trial, you just know Joe needs to be in jail for something. Screwing over his business partner and his own mother with fraud. Highly likely he blew up his own studio to hide evidence and screw over the documentarian who’d been at the zoo for years. Supplying meth to his straight husbands.

I got to the end of S1 of Making A Murder positive that there’d been a miscarriage of justice. I got to the end of this and thought, I should read up on what the facts actually were, because everyone in here is an unlikeable, unreliable narrator.

The Hunt - Movie Review

Starring Hilary Swank, Betty Gilpin, Emma Roberts, Ike Barinholtz, Ethan Suplee, Wayne Duvall, Amy Madigan, Glenn Howerton and Reed Birney.

Written by Nick Cuse & Damon Lindenof.

Directed by Craig Zobel.

★★½

This movie was supposed to come out in September 2019. After a mass shooting, it was delayed. It finally opened in March, and then the coronavirus outbreak meant it was crushed before enough people could see it. Should people see it?

Yeah, why not?

A group of stranger wake up in a field. They find an arsenal of weapons in the middle of said field. Feels very Hunger Games-ish, right? It turns out a group of rich weirdos are hunting “regular people” for sport. Or revenge? Who knows. The plot eventually reveals itself, and it doesn’t take too much time to do so. It’s a lean, mean 95 minutes of killing and mayhem.

The casting is clever. Let’s just say some characters I thought would be around a while are killed off pretty quickly. We don’t know who’s going to survive for the final showdown, or who exactly the main hero and main villain are until said showdown. I wish it had been a little more clever with its basic message, and yet I don’t want to give away spoilers on what its main message is. I will say that it has this red-state vs. blue-state mentality which I found gleefully subversive.

Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey - Movie Review

Also known by its original title:

BIRDS OF PREY (AND THE FANTABULOUS EMANCIPATION OF ONE HARLEY QUINN)

Starring Margot Robbie, Ewan McGregor, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Rosie Perez, Chris Messina, Ella Jay Basco and Ali Wong.

Written by Christina Hodson.

Directed by Cathy Yan.

★★★

First, the business. Much has been made that of this being the lowest opening for a DC comic movie in over a decade. To that, I’d say considering that the production budget was only $84 million, that’s okay. I’d also say the marketing for this was poor. The trailers didn’t look good. As I watched the actual movie, I sympathized with the marketing department a little more. It’s a good movie but how can one cut a trailer for it? Anyway, it did $200 million worldwide and probably would have squeaked out more if it wasn’t for the coronavirus killing all box office.

So, let’s get to the actual movie. It’s fun! They took the best character from the choppy, underwhelming Suicide Squad and gave her her own movie. It’s not groundbreaking or anything, but Harley Quinn seems to be DC’s answer to Deadpool.

Margot Robbie owns this from beginning to end. Robbie’s shown great range over the years, from The Wolf of Wall Street to Once Upon A Time in Hollywood to Bombshell, but THIS is her signature character. And she’s great. The surprise for me was how enjoyable Ewan McGregor was as the villain. Black Mask is dramatic one moment, neurotic the next, light-hearted the next. He really embraces his chance to be a comic-book villain here.

So now that we’re all quarantined, is this movie worth seeking out on streaming? Worth the $3.99 digital rental? Yes it is.

My Top Ten Films of 2019

I’ve seen 73 movies from 2019.

Honorable mentions (My 11-20 alphabetically):

APOLLO 11 - A you-are-there documentary that really makes you feel like you’re watching the moon landing as it happens. Brilliant blending of old footage.

EL CAMINO - A Breaking Bad epilogue. Better Call Saul is still in prequel territory, but here we get closure to Jesse’s story. After Walt dies, Jesse has to figure out how to survive. It’s the usual brilliance from Vince Gilligan, and while it’s nice to see Aaron Paul shine again, it’s another chance for Jesse Plemons to return as the polite sociopath Todd.

HONEYLAND - A documentary from Macedonia so good it was nominated for Best Documentary and Best Foreign Film. I was pulling for it to win Best Documentary. It’s the story of an extremely poor beekeeper whose life gets upended by a family who moves in next door and keeps bees of their own.

THE IRISHMAN - Leisurely paced, which is fine with me, as this’ll probably the last Martin Scorsese movie that’ll be like this. Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci are all in top form, and the de-aging CGI is done better here than any previous attempt I’ve seen. Nice to also see Scorsese alum like Harvey Keitel and Bobby Cannavale stop by.

MARRIAGE STORY - A very well done but bruuuuutal drama about a couple getting divorced. Should come with a warning label for anyone who’s in an insecure relationship or is a child of divorce. But the acting is terrific, and it effectively packs its emotional wallop with some unexpected humor. I also would have preferred Scarlett Johansson beating Renee Zellweger for Best Actress for this.

MIDSOMMAR - The slow build is very effective. And while most horror movies take advantage of night and shadow, this is almost all in the bright sunny day in a happy, ominous commune where things start to go bad pretty quickly once our heroes arrive.

PAIN & GLORY - Colorful semi-autobiographical tale from Pedro Almodovar, about an aging director (Antonio Banderas) reconciling with his past while having several flashbacks to his childhood with his determined mother (Penelope Cruz).

TOY STORY 4 - Pixar sequels are hit-and-miss, but not the Toy Story sequels. Woody and co. return for another adventure we didn’t know we wanted. It caps off the series beautifully.

THE TWO POPES - The set design alone is amazing, but this generous story of two men (Jonathan Pryce, Anthony Hopkins) who both happen to occupy the most powerful religious position in the world is great acting and great character work.

YESTERDAY - A high-concept “what if” comedy where a global blackout causes everyone on Earth - except one struggling musician - to forget all about the Beatles. He releases their songs as his own and becomes a global sensation.

I also really liked Alita: Battle Angel, For Sama, Good Boys, Harriet, Hustlers, Jumanji: The Next Level, Little Women, Shazam!, and Us.

I haven’t seen The Lighthouse, The Farewell, Waves, The Peanut Butter Falcon, Richard Jewell, Uncut Gems, and some of these other movies making top-ten lists everywhere, 

but of what I saw, 

... these were my top ten.

10. AVENGERS: ENDGAME - The season finale to the past ten years of Marvel movies. Everything comes together in the grandest possible way, and most of the core Avengers are at the center. Several surprise appearances from characters we didn’t think we’d see again, and the time-travel aspect allows for some inserting into previous scenes from different angles. (Captain America facing his old self is particularly fun.)

9. ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD - Liked it better the second time. The assuredness, the tension at the ranch, the amazing suspense of the final ten minutes. Plus the balancing act of Leonardo DiCaprio’s insecure Nick Dalton bouncing off of Brad Pitt’s cool-as-ice Cliff Booth.

8. FORD V. FERRARI - Name a better car-racing movie. I don’t think there is one.

7. 1917 - It’s a simple story, shot as if in one take, but more importantly it’s a remarkable technical achievement where we’re treated to two hours of cinematographer Roger Deakins being on top of his game.

6. ROCKETMAN - Dexter Fletcher, who cleaned up Bohemian Rhapsody after its director Bryan Singer was dropped before post-production, gets to direct this Elton John musical biopic from the beginning, and it’s great. Taron Egerton (Kingman: The Secret Service) has never been better.

5. KNIVES OUT - Rian Johnson’s gigantically clever murder mystery is brimming with sparkling characters, and actors who seem delighted to embody them. I loved Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc, and I hope he become the new Hercule Poirot, but this movie belonged to Ana de Arnas, the maid to this eccentric, rich family where everyone else is a suspect.

4. BOOKSMART - Smart, funny teen comedy about two brainiac girls who decide they want to party on their last night in high school. John Hughes would be proud of what Olivia Wilde’s done here.

3. JOJO RABBIT - Hilarious, yet poignant satire of Hitler’s youth, through the eyes of a naive German boy named Jojo in 1945 who discovers his mother’s been hiding a Jewish girl in their house. Writer/director Taika Waititi also co-stars as Jojo’s imaginary friend Adolf Hitler, and he walks the tightrope just right.

2. JOKER - If Martin Scorsese directed a comic book movie, it wouldn’t be much different than this, and to hit the point how much this story owes to Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, Robert DeNiro himself co-stars. Meanwhile, Joaquin Phoenix owns this character with every inch of his body. Truly exceptional work.

1. PARASITE - Bong Joon Ho’s made his masterpiece, a comedy-drama about the class divide in South Korea, where a poor family ingratiates itself into a rich family’s home. There are unexpected twists and major tonal shifts, and it all works.