Baby Driver - Movie Review

Starring Ansel Elgort, Kevin Spacey, Lily James, Jamie Foxx, Jon Hamm, Jon Bernthal, Eiza Gonzalez, Flea and Lanny Joon.
Written & Directed by Edgar Wright.

★★★½

Edgar Wright has directed Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, The World's End, and now this. He's 5 for 5 in my book.

Ansel Elgort (The Fault in Our Stars) plays Baby, a guy who's one of the best drivers on Earth. He's deeply indebted to a criminal kingpin named Doc (Kevin Spacey), so to pay off what he owes, he drives getaway for different groups that Doc hires. Mostly bank robberies. Baby has tinnitis and listens to music at all times to drown out the ringing, but the music is the soundtrack for his life. Everything that happens in the movie is done to the beat of whatever Baby's listening to. It's a cinematic trick that works.

Wright's talent is to take familiar genres and add thrilling new twists to them, and he does for car chase heist movies here what he did for zombies in Shaun, for buddy-cops in Fuzz, teen romance in Scott Pilgrim, and alien invasions in World's End. I really enjoyed what he did with Foxx and Hamm as two smooth yet dangerous bankrobbers. Baby's deep down a good guy who shouldn't be among these criminals, but he has no choice.

I had a blast watching it.

Hidden Figures stays #1

For the weekend of January 13-15, 2017, the holdovers hung on despite a slew of new competition, and some of these titles would probably like the Academy Award nominations to be announced sooner than January 24th.

Hidden Figures easily held on to the #1 spot. Sometimes marketing is about timing, and by expanding a week earlier, Figures was poised to stay strong for the MLK weekend. La La Land added a few screens and won the #2 spot with the best per-screen average of the top 10.

Sing actually passed Moana in domestic gross. Never would have guessed that three months ago.

Rogue One is finally ready to drop, but it'll hit the $500 million domestic mark tomorrow, and it'll cross the $1 billion mark worldwide sometime this week.

So of the seven titles new or opening wide, the most successful one was the PG-13 thriller The Bye Bye Man. STX had delayed this from November and it looks like that was a good call. It opened a little bit better than The Forest did this time last year.

Monster Trucks had a $100 million production budget, so Paramount's known for six months they were going to lose a lot of money on it.

Sleepless is the lowest opener for a Jamie Foxx movie since 2004's Breakin' All the Rules. It's also his worst-reviewed movie since 2005's Stealth.

The Oscar-qualifying expanders all have to be disappointed. A few weeks ago, it looked like Patriots Day would be a $20 million opener, but the buzz around other movies drowned it out. Live By Night was supposed to be Ben Affleck's next award-worthy movie, but the director of Gone Baby Gone, Argo, and The Town has his first critical and commercial flop. (As a director, I said!)

Martin Scorsese's Silence is another movie that really needed award-buzz to help it out, and while it probably will get some peripheral nominations, it won't be enough to buoy it. Moonlight re-expanded to squeeze out another $1 million, but I see it leaving towns soon and then maybe doing one more burst after the Oscars.

Next week I see being a race between Split and the third xXx movie for #1.

Opens January 20
XXX: THE RETURN OF XANDER CAGE with Vin Diesel, Samuel L. Jackson and Donnie Yen.
SPLIT with James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy, Haley Lu Richardson and Betty Buckley.
THE FOUNDER with Michael Keaton, Laura Dern, Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch.
THE RESURRECTION OF GAVIN STONE with Brett Dalton and Shawn Michaels.

White House Down - Movie Review

Starring Channing Tatum, Jamie Foxx, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jason Clarke, James Woods, Richard Jenkins, Joey King, Nicolas Wright, Jimmi Simpson, Michael Murphy, Rachelle Lefevre, Lance Reddick, Matt Craven and Jake Weber.
Directed by Roland Emmerich.

★★½

Emmerich movies always have the tongue implanted in cheek, and this movie's no exception. Think of the big-budget disaster flicks like 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow or the more action-oriented flicks like The Patriot or Independence Day.  Now comes a ridiculous buddy-action-comedy between a Secret Service wannabe and POTUS fleeing terrorists in Die Hard in the White House.

Jamie Foxx is the Obama-esque President, and I'm not saying that because he's black.  He even adopts the way Obama speaks, at least in the beginning of the movie. His character's name however is President Sawyer.  Sawyer has announced he's withdrawing all US troops from the Middle East, which makes some never-seen CEOs of defense-contractor companies upset.  Needless to say, eventually some mercenary types start blowing stuff up around the White House. I wonder who could be backing them...

Tatum's character is John Cale.  Not quite John McClane, but come on, he even winds up wearing just the wife-beater by the end of the movie.  It's never bold enough to have him declare "Yippy-ki-yay!"  That'd just be too much.

The movie's fun the whole time.  Even when it gets stupid, and it does, it never forgets it's just a moooovie.  Tons of explosions, gunfire, but with the cameras angled just right to help keep that PG-13.

Tatum and Foxx have infectious chemistry.  Joey King (Beezus & Ramona) has her own moments as Cale's daughter.  MVP is Nicolas Wright as the tour guide. It seems like a throwaway part that just keeps getting better.  Anyone left of center should love that all the bad guys' motives hit on every Evil Republican cliche. Some are in for white supremacy, some are in it for money, some are in it to create more war, etc. We just needed one terrorist to say he's pro-life.

It's not the best movie of the summer, but it's worth seeing if you take it on its own level.

Django Unchained - Movie Review

Starring Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L. Jackson, Kerry Washington, Walton Goggins, Dennis Christopher, James Remar, Don Johnson, James Russo, Tom Wopat, M.C. Gainey, Dana Gourrier, Laura Cayouette, Franco Nero and Jonah Hill.
Directed by Quentin Tarantino.

★★★½

QT does for slaves here what he did for Jews in Inglourious Basterds - gives them a violent reimagining of history, boiling it down to a revenge flick.  Which is all fine and good.  When Tarantino puts history through his 1970's blaxploitation spaghetti-western worldview, he uses staples from his favorite B-flick genres, and by scrambling events through his prism, we get another ironic staple.  Cinematically alive and consistently engrossing, this Django doesn't disappoint.  It's not his best, but it's another impressive addition to his filmography.

When we first meet Django (Foxx), he is a slave being moved with a chain-gang across various terrains.  That gang is stopped by Dr. King Schultz (Waltz), a dentist turned bounty hunter who needs Django to help him identify some men he's hunting down.  Waltz gets to demonstrate all the charisma he had for Hans Landa, but for a slightly more moral man.  The Schultz-Django dynamic is like a fun buddy-cop period piece.

Schultz trains Django in the art of gunfire, and as they collect bounties and make money, Schultz makes a deal with Django. He hates slavery and feels bad he's benefiting from its trappings by owning Django, so after they've made some money, he agrees to set Django free and help him find his wife Broomhilda (Washington).  They learn she was sold to Calvin Candie (DiCaprio), owner of one of the largest plantations in Mississippi.

The second half of the movie takes on a more heart-of-darkness feel.  Our heroes enter deep into the property of Candieland, and we hope they're going to somehow pull off their con and get out alive.

Candie's side business is "mandingo fighting", having slaves fight no-holds-barred to the death, and placing bets.  Schultz poses as an interested investor, and Django is his expert on black stock.  They intend to buy one of Candie's best fighters, then casually buy Broomhilda on the side.

One wrench in the plans comes from Stephen (Jackson), Candie's right-hand house slave whose subservient dicrepitude hides a steel mind and loyal soul to Candie.  Stephen plays his Uncle Tom role well, but behind closed doors, there's clearly more respect and trust than outsiders can see.  Stephen is unlike anything Samuel L. Jackson's played before, and while Waltz and DiCaprio were both nominated for Best Supporting Actor for the Golden Globes, I hope come Oscar time one of those slots goes to Jackson.  The Django-Schultz relationship paralleled with the Stephen-Candie one is just another sign there's a method to QT's madness.

There's been controversy due to the movie's frequent use of the n-word. QT's dialogue is always so quotable, but this is one where white people won't be able to casually quote some of his best lines because that word's in there.  Well, historically it seems to fit right in. It's as though QT's rubbing our face in the history of race relations, that unpleasant bit of business our great-great-great grandparents went through.

The violence, especially the last half-hour, explodes like a comic opera.  Each bullet explodes its target like a Ziploc baggie full of Karo syrup.  People who've found previous Tarantino flicks distasteful should not hope he's calmed down for this one.

Kurt Russell, Don Johnson join Django Unchained

After some largely ignored supporting roles (Machete, Bucky Larson), Don Johnson has joined the cast of Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained. This pits the original Miami Vice's Crockett in a movie with the new Tubbs (Jamie Foxx) in a movie. Johnson will play an evil plantation owner. It also stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Christoph Waltz, and Samuel L. Jackson. Kurt Russell recently replaced Kevin Costner in the role of DiCaprio's malevolent right-hand man, and Dennis Christopher (Breaking Away, It) has also signed on.

Kevin Costner drops Django Unchained

Kevin Costner has dropped out of Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained. He was to play Ace Woody, right-hand man to evil plantation owner Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio). The movie stars Jamie Foxx as freed slave Django, with the help of a German bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz), seting out to free his wife from Candie. Samuel L. Jackson also has a role.

I was looking forward to seeing Costner unleash in QT's world, so who should replace him? I would enjoy seeing QT alum Kurt Russell (Death Proof) or Michael Keaton (Jackie Brown) come back. Maybe Woody Harrelson, who did Natural Born Killers which was written by but not directed by QT. Who's someone who would not be an obvious choice but might be able to let loose in QT's world? Anthony Edwards? Anthony LaPaglia? Ed Harris? Colin Farrell? Brian Van Holt? Bryan Cranston? Andrew McCarthy? Powers Boothe?

Horrible Bosses - Movie Review

lll

Starring Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis, Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston, Colin Farrell, Jamie Foxx, Donald Sutherland, Julie Bowen, Wendell Peirce and Iaon Gruffudd.
Directed by Seth Gordon.

If The Hangover was Zack Galifianakis's introduction to the mainstream, then this movie will serve as Charlie Day's. He's primarily known as the guy from FX's It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I've never watched that show, but this makes me want to put Season 1 in my Netflix queue. I mainly know him as the guy from Going the Distance. He and Jason Sudeikis served as the two best friends to Justin Long, which was fine and dandy but to not much effect. Here the two have more to work with and make the most of it, but I focus on Day because he gets the biggest laughs in the movie.

He plays Dale, a dental assistant with a nympho boss (Jennifer Aniston) who likes to do all sorts of wrong things over the bodies of her drugged-unconscious patients. Dale's happily engaged and doesn't want to endanger that, but his boss doesn't care; she likes sexually harrassing him on a daily basis.

Then there's Nick (Jason Bateman), who's the first to arrive and the last to leave his job, under the thumb of the company's menacing president, but he takes it all because he's been led to believe he's up for a promotion. When the promotion doesn't happen and threatens to quit, his boss (Kevin Spacey, most horrible of the bosses, and I mean that in a good way) lets him know he'll trash his reputation to ensure he'll never work in this town again.

Lastly there's Kurt (Sudeikis) who loves his job at a chemical company until his boos dies. The boss's cokehead son (Colin Farrell) becomes the new president and starts using company funds as his own piggy-bank.

None of the three feel they can quit, but eventually they come up with a plan thanks to "murder consultant" Dean 'M.F.' Jones (Jamie Foxx, in an effectively funny supporting role) - they decide they will kill each other's bosses. Naturally they suck at it.

The chemistry between the three leads is great, and there are several chuckles throughout the movie. It never broke into that magical realm where comedies become classics. It's funny enough that it's worth seeing. ("How's that for a pull quote, Abbott?")

Random Entertainment News - 6/22/11

- While Tarsem's Snow White movie (with Julia Roberts) has cast actual little-people actors like Danny Woodburn as the seven dwarfs, Snow White & the Huntsman sounds like it's going the Lord of the Rings route, as Ian McShane has been cast as the leader of the seven dwarfs in that film. Snow White & the Huntsman also stars Kristen Stewart, Chris Hemsworth, Charlize Theron and Sam Claflin.

- Woody Allen's next movie, The Bop Decameron, will film in Italy. Allen will appear in this film alongside Jesse Eisenberg, Ellen Page, Penelope Cruz, Alec Baldwin, Roberto Benigni, Judy Davis, Greta Gerwig and Judy Davis. It will open in 2012.

- Jamie Foxx is officially the lead in Quentin Tarantino's spaghetti-southern Django Unchained, about a freed slave who seeks to free his wife from an evil plantation owner, to be played by Leonardo DiCaprio. Christoph Waltz and Samuel L. Jackson co-star.

- Terry O'Quinn will join his former Lost co-star Daniel Dae Kim on several episodes of CBS's Hawaii Five-0 next season.