The Morning Show - TV Review

Starring Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, Steve Carell, Billy Crudup, Mark Duplass, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Nestor Carbonell, Karen Pittman, Bel Powley, Desean Terry and Jack Davenport.

An interesting timely approach. In the wake of Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose, this examines what it's like for a Today-like morning program that has to deal with the fallout when their main male anchor (Steve Carell) is fired for sexual misconduct. Jennifer Aniston plays the head female anchor who was barely holding it together when the scandal broke, and Reese Witherspoon is a small-town reporter who has one of her stories go viral and gets an opportunity to join the show. Made me think of what it was like for Savannah Guthrie, Gayle King, Norah O'Donnell, etc. 

Fantastic cast, with Billy Crudup the Emmy-winning stand-out as the network executive who seems to like the chaos and may or may not want Aniston to fail so he can fire her and get a clean slate of leads on the show. 

The genius of casting Carell for this part is that he has this lovable persona and he's famously one of the nicest off-camera guys around. So to see him as this character be accused of these things, it makes the viewers secretly deep down hope some of these accusations are false.

The pace of the season is expert. When I take it as a whole, you can see the creators had a grand idea from beginning to end how this was going to go. Some actors in there seem like they don't have a lot to do and then the episode comes where we see just how important their role is in the grand scheme of things.

I'm very interested to see where Season 2 goes from here. With COVID, production was delayed and the season was rewritten to incorporate that into the show, but it should be out before the end of 2021. It's on AppleTV.

Vice - Movie Review

Starring Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Steve Carell, Sam Rockwell, Tyler Perry, Alison Pill, Lily Rabe, Jesse Plemons, LisaGay Hamilton, Eddie Marsan, Justin Kirk, Shea Whigham, and Bill Camp.
Written & Directed by Adam McKay.

★★½

There's a certain flavor of political movie Hollywood likes to churn out. There's the HBO model, that likes to retell recent history under the prism of "Democrats are the good guys; Republicans are the bad guys." This one escalates it to "Democrats are righteous but naive; Republicans are pure evil."

The angry fervor Adam McKay brought to The Big Short worked well. He wanted to inform and enrage but also entertain. I would argue it worked on a bipartisan level. But that movie was based on a book and he had a co-writer. Here he's doing writing duties by himself with no book blueprint, and he can't help himself. It's an angry, sloppy diatribe that blames everything that's wrong with this world on Dick Cheney (Christian Bale), whom he will have you know is the most evil human being on the planet today. At one point, he puts the creation of ISIS fully on Cheney's shoulders.

Bale thanked Satan for inspiration in how to play Cheney, and he wasn't kidding.

It jumps around on the timeline, but we see how influential Lynne (Amy Adams) is in getting Dick to have some ambition and be a better husband and father than her own father was. We at least see that Dick loves his daughters, but that would be a human thing, so naturally they have to sabotage that by the end.

All the characters in this movie are evil or stupid or Democrats. It's like watching House of Cards where Frank Underwood doesn't say anything to the camera or other people, but we get this narrator (Jesse Plemons) who assures us that Dick is evil and here's what he was probably plotting. (The ultimate reveal as to who the narrator is another cheapening trick.)

Even the most minor of characters like pollster Frank Luntz are blasted as evil. When Luntz figures out that "death tax" works better in focus groups than "estate tax" he practically twirls his mustache and cackles "Mwa ha ha!"

Granted, Cheney did enormous damage to this country and the world with some of his misguided policies and cherry-picking of intelligence. And I was certainly never bored by what was going on. Bale and Adams deserve the nomination buzz they've been getting. Bale transforms himself, and Adams just feels like she's due. Carell's Donald Rumsfeld is an amoral clown, and Sam Rockwell's George W. Bush might as well drool and wear a propeller hat. Tyler Perry captures the indignity of Colin Powell recognizing he's in the minority of an increasingly wrong-headed Cabinet.

Even in the middle of the closing credits we get one final self-congratulatory scene from McKay that undercuts whatever points he thought he was making.

Deep down, what is Cheney's motivation? His personal ethic? His driving force? McKay doesn't know and doesn't care. Cheney's just evil. If these are why events transpired the way they did, yes, it's horrifying. But this makes Michael Moore look like Dinesh D'Souza.

Cafe Society - Movie Review

Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Steve Carell, Blake Lively, Corey Stoll, Parker Posey, Ken Stott and Anna Camp.
Written & Directed by Woody Allen.

★★

Oh look, a movie about a nebbish Jew from New York who's contemplating adultery. Must be a Woody Allen film.

I enjoy the Windsor font of the opening credits playing over an old jazz tune. It tells you right away you're back in that world, no matter what time period. This one takes place in the late 1930's, when Bobby (Jesse Eisenberg) heads to Hollywood to work for his powerful agent uncle Phil (Steve Carell). While there, he falls for Phil's secretary Vonnie (Kristen Stewart). Vonnie has a secret boyfriend, but she enjoys her time with Bobby.

Eventually Bobby moves back to New York to help run a nightclub with his gangster brother Ben (Corey Stoll). Ben has killed many people to get ahead, and that aspect of him is played for droll effect.

There are some other twists and turns, but the plot moves along in haphazard fashion. The tone keeps shifting abruptly, and Allen seems to be aiming for the sweet spot of Crimes & Misdemeanors where he can go back and forth between comedy and drama. I would say Cafe Society was filmed before the script was really ready. There are themes he brings up which he then drops without really exploring them.

As for the cast, the standout was Kristen Stewart. She has a fresh-faced buoyancy to her performance that shows she's really put the Twilight films in her rear-view. With luck, her career will continue this crawl back to credibility.

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone - DVD Review

Starring Steve Carell, Steve Buscemi, Jim Carrey, Olivia Wilde, James Gandolfini, Alan Arkin, Jay Mohr, Brad Garrett, Gillian Jacobs and Zachary Gordon.  Directed by Don Scardino.

★½

Seemed like a clever trick to cast Diary of a Wimpy Kid's Zachary Gordon as a bully right off the bat.

This is a talented cast that should have yielded funnier results. Every few years we get a Death to Smoochy disaster, and this was 2013's.

Steve Carell stars as Burt, a once-popular Vegas magician who refuses to alter his act with his partner Anton Marvelton (Steve Buscemi). He's become jaded, but worse he's a selfish, vain jerk. It seems like they're going for a Ron Burgundy style humor, but Burt is so unlikeable, we're rooting for his downfall.  It eventually comes, as his ego costs him his job, and a new magician Steve Gray (Jim Carrey) is rising in popularity near him. Gray is a Criss Angel-type mentalist, and he's the best part of the movie.

Meanwhile we watch actors like Buscemi, Wilde and Gandolfini go to waste. Director Don Scardino has a lot of experience with TV comedy (30 Rock, 2 Broke Girls), but it just doesn't translate to the big-screen.

Anchorman 2 - Movie Review

Starring Will Ferrell, Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, David Koechner, Christina Applegate, Kristen Wiig, Meagan Good, Dylan Baker, James Marsden, Greg Kinnear, Judah Nelson, Fred Willard and Chris Parnell.
Directed by Adam McKay.

★★1/4

Nine years. Nine years since the legend has graced the big screen.  So when the stars align and he finally re-emerges, we get a cuddly reunion that I just wish had been funnier.

Call it the Austin Powers effect. I though the second movie was the weakest because it felt like it was retreading jokes from the first one.  This one too offers a retread. Some of it is funny, make no mistake, but this also suffers from our ability to see the punchlines coming from farther away, and shouting the punchline does not make it funnier.

We begin with Ron Burgundy and Veronica Corningstone happily married, parents to a cute little moppet, and co-anchoring the weekend edition on a national news network (WBC).  When the main anchor of the network decides to retire, he names Veronica his successor, and he fires Ron, "the worst anchorman I've ever seen."  Ron's fragile pride is wounded, and he tells Veronica that if she loved him, she'd refuse the promotion. So naturally we cut to a few months later where a newly single Ron Burgundy has hit rock-bottom.

But then comes along the opportunity to be a part of GNN, the first 24-hour news network.

The movie has fun with the trope of "getting the band back together."  Steve Carell is a bigger star now so Brick has more to do this time around. But Brick was so dumb in the first one that he's impossible to invest in this time around. Comedy is best when there's a grain of truth to it, but Brick is incomprehensibly stupid. He's dumber than an adult Ralph Wiggum.

There's some inspired humor with the way it skewers cable news. There are also some gags that go on too long and just aren't funny, like Ron's awkward racism trying to relate to black people.

The third act gets so ridiculous that it almost saves it. (Did I mention it has a lot of good surprise cameos?)

Maybe if there'd been more people in my theater, there would have been more laughs, and I would have enjoyed it more.  As is, it's fine, you know. What can I say. It's alright. You could do worse. (Shrugs). I was disappointed.

Random Movie News - 8/15/13

- Warner Bros has ended its deal with Legendary Pictures, and Universal has moved in on a partnership.  This means that Universal is trying to find a new release date for the fantasy adventure Seventh Son, starring Jeff Bridges, and it also means they'll distribution on 300: Rise of an Empire (3/7/14) and Godzilla (5/16/14).

- Foxcatcher will now open in limited release December 20 to make it Academy-Award eligible. It's directed by Bennett Miller (Moneyball) and stars Steve Carell as eccentric millionaire John du Pont, who was convicted of murdering his friend Dave Schultz, to be played by Mark Ruffalo.  Channing Tatum, Sienna Miller, Vanessa Redgrave and Anthony Michael Hall will also star.

- Lionsgate is pushing forward with a sequel to Now You See Me. The surprise summer hit has grossed over $230 million worldwide on a $75 million production budget.  No word yet on how many original cast members will return or if director Louis Letterier will return.

- Ethan Hawke is reuniting with his Hamlet director Michael Almereyda for Cymbeline, based on the Shakespeare play but will be set in 21st century.  Ed Harris and Milla Jovovich will co-star.

- Simon Helberg (The Big Bang Theory) will write, direct and star in We'll Never Have Paris, about a man who screws up on a transcontinental level trying to win back "the one."  Maggie Grace (Lost, Taken) and Jason Ritter (The Event) co-star, and Helberg's wife Jocelyn Towne will co-direct.

- Abigail Breslin (Zombieland, The Call) will star in the zombie thriller Maggie, about a father (Arnold Schwarzenegger) dealing with his daughter who's been infected with a walking-dead virus.

Despicable Me 2 - Movie Review

Starring the voices of Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig, Benjamin Bratt, Miranda Cosgrove, Russell Brand, Steve Coogan, Ken Jeung and Nasim Pedrad.
Directed by Pierre Coffin & Chris Renaud.

★★★

Maybe it's because summer is perfectly programmed to the largest common denominators, focussed-grouped and refined to such a point that we're getting what we're getting.  Maybe it's because studios have faith in what they're putting in the summer to be somewhat good, so they're not jettisoning them to January.  Maybe I appreciate the air conditioning and comfy seats.  I find myself "kinda liking" everything I see in theaters lately.

I liked the first one. It was a pleasant surprise. It was the Dr. Evil movie, but if Dr. Evil suddenly had three cute orphans dropped on his doorstep.  Gru grew in the first movie, so where does he go from here?

Part 2 is about Dr. Evil becoming Austin Powers. Now that Gru has retired from his evil ways, the Anti-Villain League wants to recruit him to work for them.  The cranky Gru thinks about it, looks at his girls, and decides this would be a good thing.

The visual work here is impressive.  The opening sequence is like any great Bond movie, with the camera swooping and racing after the action (in fact I noticed more than one nod to The Incredibles). The Minions get more screen time for the childish jokes, i.e. giggling at the name of the AVL head Silas Ramsbottom.  (They also have a drinking song, which is a highlight.) There's a lot of physical humor here worthy of Chuck Jones, and I can't help but think he was part of the inspiration in the design of a few of these characters.  El Macho has a giant upper body but short and skinny legs reminiscent of Yosemite Sam or Witch Hazel, for instance.

So yes, it's worthy family fare.

Weekend Box Office - 3/17/13

1. Oz the Great & Powerful - $42.22 million ($145.03) - 2 wks (BV) -46.6%
 . . . 3912 screens / $10,793 per screen
2. The Call - $17.1 - 1 wk (TriS)
 . . . 2507 / $6821
3. The Incredible Burt Wonderstone - $10.31 - 1 wk (WB)
 . . . 3160 / $3261
4. Jack the Giant Slayer - $6.22 ($53.91) - 3 wks (WB) -36.8%
 . . . 3357 / $1853
5. Identity Thief - $4.52 ($123.71) - 6 wks (U) -28.7%
 . . . 2842 / $1590
6. Snitch - $3.5 ($37.26) - 4 wks (LG) -31.3%
 . . . 2353 / $1487
7. 21 & Over - $2.62 ($21.87) - 3 wks (Rel) -48.6%
 . . . 2424 / $1080
8. Silver Linings Playbook - $2.59 ($124.61) - 18 wks (Wein) -28.5%
 . . . 1602 / $1615
9. Safe Haven - $2.5 ($66.95) - 5 wks (Rel) -33.5%
 . . . 2206 / $1131
10. Escape from Planet Earth - $2.33 ($52.17) - 5 wks (Wein) -27.7%
 . . . 2211 / $1052

Oz was able to reign for a second week with ease. It's now the highest-grossing movie thus far of 2013.  The Incredible Burt Wonderstone collapsed upon opening. The closer it got, the lower the tracking numbers. This may have benefitted The Call, which was expected to open lower than Burt.

Random Movie Stuff - 4/10/12

- Gary Ross will not be back to direct the Hunger Games sequel Catching Fire. The "tight production schedule" was touted as the reason.

- Colin Farrell will reunite with his Hart's War co-star Terrence Howard in Dead Man Down. Farrell will play right-hand man to Howard's crime boss, who gets seduced and blackmailed by a crime victim (Noomi Rapace), and then things spin out of control.

- Steve Carell is looking into starring in Alexander & the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day, though not as Alexander.

- And in TV news, Fox has officially renewed Glee, New Girl, and Raising Hope for next season.

Random Movie Stuff - 2/12/12

- Whitney Houston (The Bodyguard, Waiting to Exhale) has died at age 48.  Her last movie, Sparkle, is set to open Auguat 10 and co-stars Jordin Sparks, Derek Luke, Mike Epps and Cee-Lo Green.

- Steve Carell and Channing Tatum will star in Foxcatcher, based on the story of John du Pont, a paranoid schizophrenic who killed Olympis wrestler David Schultz.  Bennett Miller (Moneyball) will direct.

- At last, Harry Potter and Dexter unite!  Daniel Radcliffe and Michael C. Hall will star in Kill Your Darlings.  Hall will play a murder victim who inspires the Beat Revolution of 1944.  Radcliffe will play Allen Ginsberg, Ben Foster (Contraband) will play William Burroughs, and Jack Huston (Boardwalk Empire) will play Jack Kerouac.  Elizabeth Olsen, Kyra Sedgwick, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Dane Dehaan co-star.

- At one point there were three dueling Snow White movies.  Two of them open this year (Mirror Mirror with Julia Roberts and Snow White & the Huntsman with Kristen Stewart) but the third was to take place in 19th-century China and star Natalie Portman.  Now it appears Saoirse Ronan (Hanna) will star in what's now titled The Order of the Seven, about seven Shaolin monks who become outlaws, but they come to the rescue of a British expatriate fleeing an evil woman.

- The plug's been pulled on Alex Proyas's Paradise Lost, based on the John Milton classic.  Legendary Pictures decided they couldn't keep the budget under control.  It was to star Bradley Cooper and Casey Affleck.

Has The Office jumped the shark?

I thought the ensemble was strong that it might be able to survive without Michael Scott (Steve Carell), but it occurs to me that it's lost so much more than that. Gone is the byzantine upper management that gave us leaders like Jan and David, gone is the soul-crushing feel of the daily cubicle drudgery. Andy Bernard (Ed Helms) doesn't have the fragile ego that made Michael do impulsive, selfish things. Andy started off as a jerk who had to go to anger management. Now he's a puppy-dog who just wants to please everyone, and all of his co-workers want him to succeed. Where's the comedy in that?
Now with Sabre CEO Robert California (James Spader) I thought we'd get some darkness to rock the boat, but Robert's been hit and miss. This week's episode, where we meet his wife (Maura Tierney) may have been the best use thus far of the potential of this mind-gaming genius. I enjoyed Andy twisting himself into a pretzel trying to do what he thought Robert wanted him to do.

These characters are still fun and funny. Dwight, Jim, Pam, Ryan, Kelly, Toby, Angela, Meredith, Stanley, Creed, Erin, Oscar, Daryl, Phyllis... I just hope the show can find some consistent Michael-free magic. Or maybe they should quit while they're ahead.