reviews

Mr. Holmes (2015)

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threehalfstar

Director Bill Condon’s name isn’t one you’re likely to hear often. He’s not a particularly flashy director; his films have a sort of low-key level-headedness to them that feel entirely different from the likes of visually overreaching auteurs like a David Lynch or a Wes Anderson. Very early in his career, however, he did helm two fantastic costume dramas that both packed a surprising punch considering their calmly handsome exteriors: Kinsey and Gods & Monsters. Due mostly to their superbly talented casts, a generally pleasing visual palette, and an unusually frank take on the grey areas of human sexuality, both Kinsey and God’s & Monsters are real emotional powerhouses that subvert the low-key vibes they boast on the surface. Condon has an elegant, adult touch to his costume dramas & biopics that make them alarmingly rewatchable & lingeringly poignant in a way you wouldn’t expect considering the basic confines of their structure.

After a brief foray into the business of Twilight sequels (a venture I can only hope paid nicely), Condon is seemingly getting back to what he does best. His latest film, Mr. Holmes, brings in Ian McKellen & Laura Linney, who were both fantastic in their respective roles in God’s & Monsters and Kinsey, for yet another low-key costume drama that initially seems suspiciously run-of-the-mill, but actually packs an emotional wallop. In Mr. Holmes‘ portrayal of what is probably the world’s most famous detective (and easily the world’s most famous Sherlock) struggling to reconcile his unusually sharp observational skills with the encroaching doom of senility, Condon has found a way to add another unexpected layer of depth to a character that has become perhaps overly-familiar at this point in pop culture. Just like how the costume dramas & biopics of Condon’s past have complicated & subverted their audience’s genre expectations, Mr. Holmes plays with what you would expect out of a Sherlock Holmes movie by slowly removing the elegance & mental facilities you would expect from Holmes himself.

Of course, this is just as much Ian McKellen’s triumph as it is Condon’s. The idea of McKellen playing an aging Sherlock Holmes will obviously be a major selling point for a lot of people tuning in to this humble indie drama & Mr. Holmes does not disappoint on that end. In three separate, but narratively interwoven storylines McKellen plays the infamous gumshoe at varying times of his waning life. In some scenes he’s as keen as ever & in others he struggles to walk the short distance across his study. Unlike with traditional Sherlock narratives, the point of Mr. Holmes is not to solve the mystery of a specific crime, but for the detective to solve both the mystery of human nature & the more haunting mysteries that the daily battles with a fading mind present. As Holmes slips into senility he begins to regret his life-long dedication to facts & logic and forces himself to learn how to connect with people on a more empathetic & emotional level before he loses the ability to connect at all. McKellen can be absolutely heart-breaking in these dual struggles, his piercing blue eyes calling for help from behind an eerily aging face.

This doesn’t mean that the movie can’t be fun as well. When Holmes is having one of his “good days”, McKellen shines as a comic talent. He’s got a bitchy, effete, intellectual air to him that can make you snort with laughter with the mere roll of an eye or an off-hand joke about death. This is especially true in scenes where Holmes is interacting directly with his own celebrity, scoffing at the novelized & feature film versions of his life and poking fun at the costume he’s typically depicted wearing. It’s McKellen’s tender, but catty approach to comedy that lures you into a comfortable lull that suddenly hits you right in the heart once all three of the film’s storylines culminate in a tidy, but satisfying conclusion. Condon & McKellen (along with a top-notch performance from an always-welcome Linney) have together crafted a rare thing: the well-behaved, but emotionally potent indie costume drama with only rare visual showiness (mostly in the occasional period-specific artifact: a worn book or photograph, bee-keeping gear, an ancient glass harmonica, etc.). Mr. Holmes might not be the best or most ambitious work of either Condon or McKellen’s careers, but it is a special treat watch something so simple shine so brightly– even if it is, in Sherlock’s case at least, the last time around.

-Brandon Ledet

Ant-Man (2015)

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fourhalfstar

When I was a kid, I had a deep and abiding fondness for any film or movie property that featured small people finding novel uses for normal-sized implements. I voraciously read The Borrowers and the sequels to it that my local library happened to have, and I have clear memories of the television series The Littles airing in the mornings before kindergarten, although I’m sure it was well into syndication by then. My absolute favorite, however, was always Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, with its theme park-esque magnification of the trials and travails of one’s own backyard (including one particularly nasty scorpion, which I have no doubt instilled a phobia of the arachnid in an entire generation of children, myself included). Ant-Man has many moments that directly reminded me of sequences in Honey. Part of that might be that the Alamo Drafthouses specialize in editing together interesting footage tangentially related to the film being screened, and my nostalgia goggles were primed due to the inclusion of the scene from Honey in which the Szalinski’s daughter first befriends Anty; moreover, Ant-Man takes pleasure in revisiting the magic of the ant’s eye view. Overall, it’s a fun ride.

Comedy staple Paul Rudd stars as Scott Lang, a recently released ex-con who was incarcerated after hacking into a corporation’s computer system in order to refund millions that were acquired through overcharging customers. His primary goal now is to once again become a part of the life of his young daughter Cassie (Abby Ryder Fortson; fellow Young Avengers fans know Cassie as the future Stature). In order to do so, Scott has to convince his ex-wife Maggie (Judy Greer, reduced here to playing “somebody’s mom/ex-wife” as she so undeservedly often is; see also: Jurassic World) that he’s capable of handling that kind of responsibility. Complicating matters is Paxton (Bobby Canavale), a San Francisco detective and Maggie’s new fiancé. At the core, this is a pretty domestic story. You’ve probably seen that movie before; I know I have. That’s where the super-science comes in.

In 1989, Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), creator and original occupant of the Ant-Man suit, walked away from S.H.I.E.L.D. in the hopes of preventing them from weaponizing the technology to create an army of insect-sized soldiers. Now, several years deep into retirement, Pym is back to prevent his unbalanced former protégé (Corey Stoll), who has recreated his technology and foresees its potential use as a weapon both for the military and for suppressing civilian protest and dissent, from auctioning his “Yellowjacket” technology to the highest bidder. While Scott is unable to find gainful employment due to his past conviction, Hank sets a plan in motion to enlist Scott’s burgling skills to infiltrate his old company and destroy the Yellowjacket project before S.H.I.E.L.D.–or HYDRA–can get their hands on it.

There are a lot of pleasant surprises here, but first: the negatives. I still think it’s absurd that we’ve gotten an Ant-Man movie before a Black Widow feature, and it’s telling that the bare-bones recap above doesn’t mention Luis (Michael Peña) or Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), both of whom play ostensibly major roles in the film but who can be excised from a plot summary without losing significant detail. If the final battle between Ant-Man and Yellowjacket seems familiar, that’s probably because it’s incredibly similar to the final battle from the first Iron Man: two men in similarly powered suits fight each other, and the hero defeats the bald, progressively less sane villain using his superior knowledge of the suit’s technology and that technology’s limitations. It’s a bit of a retread of other movies, both within and without the Marvel Universe, right down to the way that Hope eventually falls for Scott—not that I can blame her. I mean, have you ever looked at Paul Rudd’s eyes? He’s a dreamboat.

My initial skepticism about this movie mirrored my early skepticism for Guardians of the Galaxy: “Sure, expand the scope of the franchise–but why this property?” Ant-Man couldn’t possible live up to the standard of a movie that turned schlubby everyman Chris Pratt into a legitimate movie star, but the hype for Rudd’s vehicle doesn’t oversell the inarguably fun, likable, watchable movie that Ant-Man is. As a CGI-heavy flick, it had the potential to look like computer generated garbage (again, see also: Jurassic World), but at no point did the imagery take me out of the moment the way other recent movies have. Although Lilly is underutilized, the groundwork for her larger future involvement in the franchise is laid well (comic book fans will probably guess in what capacity, but I won’t spoil that here), and Peña works well as a character suited both for comic relief and surprising heroism. An extended cameo from the Falcon (Anthony Mackie) seems somewhat tacked on, but does well to remind us that this relatively grounded entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is still part of a larger narrative, and Mackie is always a welcome screen presence. Unlike gloating trillionaire Tony Stark, Scott Lang is a much more identifiable, sympathetic, and likable character, which makes for a more interesting and compelling character. And, as cited above, the sequences that feature tiny Scott navigating the normal world, but magnified, are a treasure—Scott flying around on the back of his flying ant steed, Antony, was a particular highlight.

And, I’ll go out on a limb to hang myself here, Ant-Man was a better movie than Age of Ultron was. The second Avengers movie was never going to be able to recreate the magic of the first, because the novelty of seeing heroes team up had, if not “worn off,” at least dulled. AoU suffered from too many characters and a plot that was more interesting in theory than in practice, and the studio-mandated trimming of certain storylines left the film feeling sloppy and unrefined in many places. Ant-Man, on the other hand, makes for a much more satisfying film by grounding itself with realistic and relatable character arcs for most of the main cast and focusing on one major event, the heist, instead of over-inundating the audience with by attempting to create an endless series of “Wow” moments. It’s not the best of the Marvel franchise, but it is the best of 2015, and I’m more excited to see what lies ahead for Ant-Man than I am for other, more popular MCU characters.

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011)

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threehalfstar

If the third Mission: Impossible movie was an instance of the series suddenly pulling its shit together by making its protagonist Ethan Hunt out to be a real human being, the fourth film takes that cohesion a step further by helping define the team behind Ethan’s success. There have been so many face-removing, duplicitous double crossings in the series’ past that it’s been difficult to trust anyone at all, but Ghost Protocol finally eliminates that sense of distrust by shrinking Ethan’s team into a core group of murderous super spies with hearts of gold. Unfortunately, Ving Rhames is missing from this team almost completely (he at least drops in for a last second cameo), but picking up the wisecracking slack are Simon Pegg & Jeremy Renner, who both deliver some great tension-relieving one-liners, sometimes in unison. Besides these two sarcastic goofs, Cruise’s also backed by Paula Patton, the badass lady antidote to the franchise’s serious damsel-in-distress problem of the past. Once Rhames (hopefully) rejoins this ragtag crew in future installments, the series will almost certainly hit its pinnacle. Honestly, it’s kind of exciting to think that the best is still yet to come.

Besides honing in on the perfect small crew to back up Ethan’s world-saving espionage, Ghost Protocol also tightens up the series’ action. After the grossly excessive shoot-em-ups of the Limp Bizkit-soundtracked second film, the series has been moving more towards the large-scale, remote warfare that makes a lot more sense for international super spies to be wrapped up in. The attacks of violence in Ghost Protocol are unexpected bursts of terror that serve as shocks to the system, with or without Renner & Pegg’s nervous joking to break up the tension. There are some ridiculously over-the-top sequences that feature Cruise running down the side of a skyscraper in Dubai or somehow outrunning a sandstorm or Renner physically hacking into a gigantic supercomputer, but those more fanciful tangents are mixed in the real life dangers like car crashes & embassy bombings.

One element that got way less real (but very much appropriate for a throwback espionage franchise) was the film’s supervillains, which shifted from Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s nightmarish turn in Mission: Impossible 3 to a stunningly beautiful super model assassin & a “nuclear extremist” who wants to achieve peace on Earth by obliterating the human race. These cartoonish elements, along with more overreaching gadgetry (like a real-life invisibility cloak), clash very well with the movie’s more gritty, violent sequences and leave the impression of a well-rounded, but highly ridiculous action flick in their wake.

Cruise continued his hiring of disparate, auteur directors here by giving the project to Brad Bird (who is typically associated with children’s media like Ratatouille, The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, and Tomorrowland). The list of directors who’ve worked on the Mission: Impossible films so far (Bird, Abrams, Woo, De Palma) have all brought unique (and varyingly successful) takes on the series to the table, which is highly unusual for this type of popcorn action flick. It’ll certainly be interesting to see where the director of the fifth installment, Christopher McQuarrie, will take the direction of the franchise when Rogue Nation hits the theaters. McQuarrie is a relatively unknown director, but he has worked with Cruise before on two of his more interesting recent projects – the Werner Herzog as a fingerless villain Jack Reacher & the Groundhog’s Day meets Starship Troopers sci-fi action flick Edge of Tomorrow.

It’ll also be interesting to see what haircut Cruise brings to the next flick (I’m serious!), because it really makes a difference. He did slip back into his awful M:I 2 hair in Ghost Protocol, but since he begins the film in a Serbian prison & Bird did a much better job with the material than Woo (I’m serious!) I’ll let it slide for now. Adjusting some major problems in a relatively short amount of runtime, Mission: Impossible 3 & Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol have together unmistakably set the series up for future success. It has so much potential to reach new heights in the next installment that I’m hoping with the right amount of Ving Rhames, the perfect over-the-top villain, and a tasteful length for Cruise’s hair, Rogue Nation just might be the best in the series so far. We’ll see.

-Brandon Ledet

Mission: Impossible 3 (2006)

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threehalfstar

It’s difficult to imagine a better corrective for the rap rock shit show that was Mission: Impossible 2 than the third installment that followed it a whopping six years later. Mission: Impossible 3 opens with a beyond terrifying Phillip Seymour Hoffman moving Tom Cruise’s super spy hero Ethan Hunt to tears while torturing him for information. This moment of intense vulnerability is a far cry from the second film, which was more or less a chance for Cruise to pose as Limp Bizkit-lovin’, motorbike-ridin’, late 90s badass while some slow motion doves flew around him & everything about him was so X-treme that even his sunglasses exploded. In Mission: Impossible 3, Ethan Hunt becomes a real person for the first time. He’s not Tom Cruise dressed up like a handsome super spy like in the first film or a irredeemable hard rock douchebag like in the second. He’s a vulnerable human being locking horns with a nightmare-inducing Hoffman, who knows how to exploit his weaknesses to get what he wants. Like when the fifth Fast & Furious film discovered its heart in Vin Diesel’s longwinded ramblings about “family”, Mission: Impossible 3 finally pushes the series into a sense of cohesion by reducing its protagonist from an action movie god to a regular dude with a dangerous job.

It’s clear how much Mission: Impossible 3 is trying to return to its roots & find itself as early as the opening credits, which bring back the original arrangement of the movie’s theme (as opposed to the rap rock version from John Woo’s film). M:I 3 even brought back Tom Cruise’s more handsome, less cringe-worthy hair from the first film that was absent in the second, a seemingly shallow detail that I promise makes all the difference. What ups the ante here, though, is a one-for-the-record-books performance from Hoffman that elevates the material just as much as Werner Herzog did for that other super soldier Cruise flick Jack Reacher. Hoffman is pure terror here & the movie knows how to put that element to great use. There’s even a scene where, thanks to face-ripping-offing technology allows for two Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s to engage in a fist fight in a bathroom. Two Hoffmans! I wasn’t even expecting one, so that was a genuine treat.

In addition to the strength of its antagonist & the newfound humanity of its central spy, M:I 3 also intensifies the sheer spectacle of its action sequences. The first film in the series was more or less three great action sequences & some dull filler while the second was a slow build that amounted to one really ludicrous third act. Mission: Impossible 3, on the other hand, features at least seven ludicrous action sequences by my count. There’s some ridiculous use of wind turbines, exploding bridges, and missile-dodging that makes this easily the most over-the-top entry of the series so far in terms of action. These escapist, popcorn movie moments clash very well with the more legitimately thrilling performance from Hoffman & some disturbing imagery like Cruise’s mortified face when his fiancé is in danger or a kinky, horse-shaped leather mask that is used to subdue him.

It’s pretty incredible that Mission: Impossible 3 was so adept at bringing the series back to life, when all signs pointed to it being a doomed project. Released soon after the Scientology-ridicule started troubling Cruise’s career after an especially memorable Oprah appearance, the movie went through two directors (one would’ve been David Fincher, which is almost too good to be true) before landing on JJ Abrams, who had never directed a feature film before. Abrams, perhaps confident due to his extensive work in television, succeeded at the very difficult task of not only pulling this series’ shit together, but also rescuing a troubled project already years in the making. It’s pretty incredible the quality & range of directors Cruise has hired as a producer to helm these films, but it’s even more incredible how much Abrams was able to hold his own in that arena, topping even Brian De Palma’s entry in the franchise by making the best Mission: Impossible film to date.

Side note: In addition to being the best so far, this film also featured the most Ving Rhames content in any Mission: Impossible film to date, which I assure you was not a coincidence.

-Brandon Ledet

The Man Who Laughs (1928)

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threehalfstar

(Viewed 07/14/2015, available on YouTube.)

I have to admit that I had no idea what I was getting into with this film.  A black and white picture of Conrad Veidt with a painfully grotesque smile and desperate eyes was posted online next to an illustration of Batman’s Joker.  “The Man Who Laughs – inspiration for the Joker!”

I’m a sucker for a dramatic photo.  And for Batman.

The Man Who Laughs turns out to be a gorgeous 17th century period piece filmed on the eve of the sound age and the Hays Code, based on Victor Hugo’s 1869 novel.  The Laughing Man himself, Conrad Veidt, is well known for his other roles in movies such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Casablanca, and I’m sure that you’ve all heard of this film already and that I’m behind the curve on this one.  The 1928 Universal Pictures movie is a melodrama, a romance, a comedy, a swashbuckler, and a thriller.  The story follows a man who, kidnapped and mutilated as a child to punish his father, lives as a performer until his lost identity catches up with him and drags him into a world of intrigue.  There is not a speck of realism to be found and it’s completely delightful.

Conrad Veidt’s portrayal of the mutilated clown Gwynplaine is a fantastically overwrought exploration of existential crisis.  Mary Philbin’s portrayal of the literally blindly innocent Dea is one of the most beautiful presentations of spotless femininity that I have ever seen on film (helped no doubt by constantly luminescent lighting).  Olga Molnar presents a contrasting and archetypically vampy performance of the Countess Josiana: beautiful, sexual, powerful, and cruelly self interested.

The Man Who Laughs is a fun watch, and as a (mostly) silent film it will require your actual attention and a modicum of active investment.  I found the pacing quick enough and the story engaging enough to keep me interested without much effort.  The visual lushness of the movie makes it a treat to watch.  I would consider this movie to be a fairly accessible silent film for anyone interested in dipping their toes into the world of pre-sound movies, and should go on your list if you’re interested in pre-Code movies, German Expressionism (even though it’s an American film), or visual inspirations for the Joker.

-Erin Kinchen

Mission: Impossible 2 (2000)

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onehalfstar

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When I began watching the Mission: Impossible movies recently, I expected a similar trajectory for the series that I experienced with The Fast & The Furious. I assumed that the Tom Cruise super spy franchise would start with an ungodly mess of rap rock era machismo, but eventually find its way into something a little more respectable & cohesive. What I found was that the first film was a surprisingly classy action flick from a precious moment in pop culture that came just before America’s rap rock dark times. The first Mission: Impossible film was campy, sure, but it was also excessive & dated in an entirely enjoyable way that I thought wouldn’t come until much later into the series.

It turns out that the rap rock garbage fire I was expecting from the first film was actually well & alive in the the second installment in the series, Mission: Impossible 2. M:I-2 ditches the Brian De Palma sense of 60s chic for a laughably bad excess of X-treme 90s bad taste helmed by John Woo. The drop in quality from the first film to the next was so drastic that it’d almost be more believable if M:I-2 were a spiritual sequel to Woo’s ludicrous Nic Cage trashterpiece Face/Off than it having anything to do with Brian De Palma’s film at all. He even recycled the slow-motion dove flapping from Face/Off, which was released just a few years before this stinker.

Almost everything pleasant about the first Mission:Impossible film is absent in the second. De Palma’s over-the-top abuse of camera trickery is replaced by straight-faced action movie blandness accompanied by non-sarcastic record scratches. Any enjoyment derived from the removal of faces in the first film is ruined here by an unrestrained overuse of the gimmick (this really should’ve been a second Face/Off film). The Danny Elfman score from the first film was supplanted by (I’m not kidding, here) a goddamn Limp Bizkit cover of the film’s original theme. Even Tom Cruise’s hair got douchier. He’s got these awful, long-flowing locks that swing in the breeze as he shows off his leather jacket on his super cool motor bike that he slides around on while shooting his gun with wild abandon. God, I hate this movie. Pretty much the only element of the first film that comes through unscathed is Ving Rhames, who remains a delight in every scene he’s afforded.

Here’s to hoping that the series bounces back from what has got to be its darkest hour. In the year 2000, when this film was released, I was a dumb kid who probably would’ve loved a Limp Bizkit soundtracked love letter to late 90s X-treme marketing & Tom Cruise’s shitty, shitty hair, but fifteen years later I’m desperately missing the campy, but classy 60s super spy homage of the first film. If the series somehow keeps spiraling down in quality this drastically (an Impossible proposition if I’ve ever heard one), I don’t think I’m going to make it to the other side.

-Brandon Ledet

Amy (2015)

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threehalfstar

Earlier this year the Kurt Cobain documentary Montage of Heck struggled to navigate the difficult task of having something new to say about a story that was already familiar to most of its audience. The first half of the film was pretty successful on that end, creating an impressionistic view of Cobain through a highly energetic montage that tried its damnedest to portray him as a regular dude instead of a rock god. The movie fell apart for me in the back half, though, when its preference for raw footage over actual information became much less compelling as Cobain nodded off into a life (and death) of heroin addiction. In my original review I wrote “In a lot of ways this mirrors Cobain’s actual life: a burst of creative energy stopped short & made less special by substance abuse. As an anti-drug PSA, Montage of Heck is pretty damn effective, but as a documentary it’s very thin on the information end, so when it loses its momentum to heroin addiction, there’s not much else to hold onto,” a sentiment I still feel holds true.

The Amy Winehouse documentary had a much less familiar story to work with than Montage of Heck (less familiar to me, at least), so it more or less got away with playing its material straight. All I knew of Winehouse going into the film was the shape of her hair, the single “Rehab”, and her history of substance abuse. It turns out her & Cobain’s lives were remarkably similar in a lot of ways, although her talent was cut short even sooner than his. There’s nothing particularly flashy about the way Amy tells its subject’s life story. With the exception of a couple details that are withheld until late in the film, her story is pretty much laid out here in an exactly linear progression. There’s some context of her upbringing early in the film & then a year by year recap of her too-fast rise to stardom, followed by a deeply sad unraveling & list of what-could’ve-beens. What’s interesting about the film is not exactly how the story is told, but more of what goes unsaid. Much like with Cobain, Winehouse was not built for fame & mass attention emotionally, so it becomes apparent throughout the film that the audience (including those of us at the cinema at that very moment) played just as much of a part in her demise as the three men the movie explicitly points a finger at (her greedy father, her junkie ex-husband, and her shady tour manager).

This lack of stylistic flourish makes Amy an aesthetically ugly film in an (also unspoken) way that draws attention to Winehouse’s relationship to class. Cheap digital photographs & short clips of Winehouse joking with friends & shooting pool are very much uncinematic, especially when they clash with the crisp drone shots that establish setting & act as chapter breaks. Winehouse was a working class girl with a inordinate amount of talent for singing & writing songs. She states plainly through interviews & home video that she does not want mass attention & that if she becomes famous she will likely kill herself. Winehouse’s ideal career was to sing to small crowds in jazz clubs & small-scale festivals, not to drown in a sea of screaming fans that desperately want to hear her every word just as much as they want to pick apart & ridicule her personal life. By the time Winehouse is famous in Amy, it’s disturbing how much the imagery of the film changes. It jumps from humble home photographs, mostly of Winehouse acting camera-shy, to an intense onslaught of high quality paparazzi footage that makes a spectacle out of the simplest of things like a walk down the street & much more personal moments, like the struggle to kick her heroin habit. It’s incredible that Amy didn’t come with an epilepsy warning, considering the strobe effect of the paparazzi cameras, which were disorienting to me even in brief glimpses. I can’t even imagine what it was like for her to deal with that every moment she was outside her house.

Speaking of the paparazzi footage, that was easily the element of the film that I found most haunting. Not only did photographers (as well as comedians & talking heads) make a literal killing off of exploiting Winehouse while she was still alive, but because the footage was valuable to telling her story, those snapshots are still making money today merely by appearing in the documentary. One shot of her estranged best friend weeping at her funeral particularly stuck with me. Someone filmed that intimate moment without permission & sold it to a publisher, who then printed it for a profit and now can sell it a second time for the purposes of a documentary. Again, although the active parties are obviously skeezy for doing this, there’s an unspoken implication that the audience is largely to blame as well. By giving so much attention to a person who obviously did not want it, Winehouse’s unwitting fans made a market out of her gradual death. Again, it’s very similar to what slowly killed Kurt Cobain as well & I’m sure there are to be more examples in the future.

A lot of what makes Amy interesting as a documentary is not necessarily the details of Winehouse’s personal life that it turns into a fairly straight-forward narrative, but rather the way it subtly makes you feel like a murderer for wanting those details in the first place. As I mentioned before, there are several people that the movie scolds for not doing something to save her while they still had a chance, but the audience is far from innocent on that account either. While a real life person was hurting & intentionally destroying herself in the public eye, she was met with jokes at her expense instead of sympathy. She was booed offstage & harassed by the press, despite the blatant signs that something wasn’t right. It’s a disgusting instinct, but it’s also powerful enough to support a market. Even now, years after her death, we’re still giving her more attention than she ever wanted. It’s difficult to shake that feeling while watching her hide her face & drink herself numb in a documentary that continues the very thing it’s condemning.

-Brandon Ledet

Mission: Impossible (1996)

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three star

A few months ago I was so blown away by the ridiculous spectacle of the trailers for Furious 7  that I doubled back & watched all seven Fast & Furious movies for the first time ever just to see what it was all about. What I found was a franchise that I had rightly ignored as a teen for being a mindlessly excessive reflection of what has to be one of the trashiest eras of pop culture to date: that nasty little transition from the late 90s to the early 00s. Over the years, though, I’ve developed an affinity for mindless excess & hopelessly dated trash cinema, so 2015 proved to be the perfect time to watch the Fast & Furious movies from front to end. As expected, they started as a disconnected mess of car porn & Corona soaked machismo, but by the fifth film in the series, something intangible clicked & the movies suddenly pulled their shit together, forming a cohesive action universe built on the tenets of “family”, rapper-of-the-minute cameos, and hot, nasty speed.

I can’t say I was equally blown away by the trailers for the newest Mission: Impossible film, Rogue Nation, as I was by Furious 7‘s more over-the-top flourishes, but there was a similar feeling of being left out there. Rogue Nation will be the fifth installment of a franchise that’s been around for nearly two decades. Despite the ubiquitousness of the image of Tom Cruise suspended from a ceiling in a white room in 1996, I can’t remember ever seeing a single scene from the Mission: Impossible films. The Rogue Nation ads suggested a similar trajectory for the franchise as the Fast & Furious films. It seemed like something along the way had finally clicked for the series, like it now had its own mythology & core philosophy, which is a feeling I’ve never gotten before from the outside looking in. My mission, should I choose to accept it (that’ll be the last time I make that awful joke, I promise) is to come to know & understand the series form the beginning, to figure out exactly what’s going on in its corny super spy mind, the same way I became part of Vin Diesel’s “family”.

What I found at the beginning of the Mission: Impossible saga was unexpectedly classy. This was a retro action movie starring (a pre-Scientology-fueled couch-jumper) Tom Cruise when he still defined what it meant to be Movie Star Handsome. This was 1996, a beautifully naive stretch of the decade before we let rap rock ruin America. This was a unnecessarily intricate mood piece espionage film helmed by (former Movie of the Month) director Brian De Palma, arguably the king of unnecessarily intricate mood pieces. This was a dumb action movie with a classic score by Danny Freakin’ Elfman, for God’s sake. In other words, why did I wait so long to watch this? I wasn’t absolutely floored by what basically amounted to a love letter to the same 60s super spy media that the incredibly funny Spy spoofed earlier this year, but I was at the very least pleasantly surprised by how well-executed it was. These days it’s difficult not to meet news of an old TV show getting a big screen adaptation with a pained groan, but back ,in its day Mission: Impossible was kind to its source material (despite fans of the original series grousing at its initial release), obviously holding immense respect for the era it came from, while still updating it with a certain amount of mid-90s badassery.

A lot, if not all, of the film’s success could be attributed to Brian De Palma. The needlessly complicated camera work he throws into this film elevates the material immeasurably. Within the first major sequence alone the eye is overwhelmed by an onslaught of tracking shots, Dutch angles, first person POV, ridiculous Old Hollywood noir lighting, etc. De Palma is known for his tendency towards excess and Mission: Impossible definitely has him operating at his least inhibited, displaying the same lack of good taste & visual restraint that he brought to the ridiculous Nic Cage thriller Snake Eyes. It’s a genuine treat. There’s some other cool, big ideas at work here, like the way the movie poses espionage as a form of theater (at one point a character lays out a secret plan as “Here’s the plot . . .”), but it’s really De Palma’s overreaching visual style that makes the movie special.

That being said, a 60’s sense of class & an overenthusiastic De Palma can’t save the movie from its own action movie trashiness entirely. Mission: Impossible is essentially a mere three ridiculous action sequences & some much less exciting connective tissue and there’s plenty of camp value to be found at the very least in its super spy gadgetry. For instance, despite the obviously technically proficient world of international super spies detailed here, they’re all fighting over possession of a floppy disk, a very era-specific MacGuffin that really takes me back. Besides this goofery, there’s also a truly ludicrous scene where a helicopter chases a train into a tunnel, there’s a lot of mileage squeezed out of the high tech masks that allow characters to rip off their faces & become other people, and the infamous Tom Cruise hanging from the rafters sequence features a lot more puke than people typically mention. All of this and Ving Rhames. I cannot stress how much Ving Rhames’ mere presence brings to the table, camp wise.

I didn’t know exactly what to expect with Mission: Impossible, but I was pleasantly surprised. I honestly think it’s super cool that a franchise that Tom Cruise pays for & stars in himself has such a classy, but (intentionally) campy beginning. As far as super star vanity projects go, you could do much worse than a cheesy Brian De Palma action flick starring Ving Rhames & an exploding helicopter. It’ll be interesting to see where the series goes from here, but for now I’m really liking what I’m seeing.

-Brandon Ledet

You and the Night (2014)

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I recently praised The Overnight for finding a surprisingly effective homogeneous blend of the black comedy & the light sex romp and now I appreciate it even more after watching the same blend fail so miserably in You and the Night. Where The Overnight utilizes its small cast & budget to enhance its own sense of uncomfortable intimacy, You and the Night points to its own financial shortcomings intentionally as a source of would-be humor. You and the Night is embarrassingly bad in a try-hard, underfunded art-house way that somehow makes an orgy hopelessly boring. At times it feels like a stage play and in other moments it could be mistaken for an oldschool horror anthology (with a lot more prosthetic cocks than usual), but the effect is the same either way. You and the Night tries to point to its own artificiality as a form of campy amusement, but the result is more embarrassing than it is funny.

The few moments that actually succeed happen when the film drops its own bullshit sense of detachment & sincerely tries to create something worth looking at. There’s a nice dream logic to its individual anthology segments that leads to some great shots like a green screen motorcycle ride, an Alice in Wonderland style ballet, and a trip to a phantom movie theater. These scenes feel just as fake as the too-cool-to-be-sincere orgy set-up that binds them, but they actually leave a lasting impression that the rest of the film is unlikely to.

A lot of You and the Night feels like a French comedy spoofing the nature of French comedies. It presents an exaggerated sense of detachment & coquetry that’s difficult to react to in any way outside a scoff. If I had caught this movie on late night cable as a teen I might’ve gotten a little more out of it. The idea of a dark comedy set at a pansexual fuckfest still holds a lot of drawing power for me now, which is how I ended up lazily watching it on Netflix in the first place. It’s unfortunate that You and the Night can’t deliver on the promise of that premise, though, and holds all sincerity & genuine effort at arm’s length. Even a few intense images & an incredible, synth-soaked score from M83 can’t save this film from its own sardonic self-amusement.

-Brandon Ledet

Beyond the Lights (2014)

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A lot was said last year about the state of the romantic comedy, a genre long considered creatively bankrupt. An unexpected crop of mischievous, wild child rom-coms felt like a breath of fresh air for a genre that had become hopelessly stale. It’s a still strange to think that only two rom-coms I saw in the theater last year, Obvious Child & Wetlands, were about an abortion & an anal fissure, respectively. Driving the point home was the ZAZ-style spoof They Came Together that pointed out just how bland & cliché the genre had become by turning each of its recognizable tropes into a throwaway gag.

With all of this focus on retooling the romantic comedy, though, it’s been interesting that the same effort hasn’t been made for the romantic drama. Typical rom-dram genre fare like the bull-riding nonsense The Longest Ride & the ludicrously titled The Time Traveler’s Wife haven’t had their own creative antidote quite the same way the rom-com has. Last year’s rom-dram Beyond The Lights was a good start, though, even if it didn’t re-invent the wheel. Instead of deviously playing with genre expectations the way Wetlands & Obvious Child did with the rom-com, Beyond the Lights reinvigorates the romantic drama while still playing by the rules. It’s an exceptional example of a typically bland genre that somehow manages to excel without challenging rom-dram’s parameters.

The movie’s story is fairly a straightforward. After saving a budding pop star’s life by literally talking her off the ledge, a sweetly sincere police officer suddenly finds himself romantically involved with the floundering starlet. Worlds collide as the hot cop’s challenged by the reality of press & paparazzi coverage and the woman he loves struggles to break free from the overbearing control of her record company & momager. While the protagonist wants to write & sing Nina Simone-type barn burners, her mother fancies her to be more of a hyper-sexualized Rihanna type of pop star and there’s a compelling struggle between those two interests. This plays out simultaneously with the romance plot, the pop singer’s hot cop boyfriend reminding her what “real” life is & how to be true to herself.

Beyond the Lights‘ more creative tangents are confined to its pop music angle, finding an authentic visual palette in its mock music videos, BET Awards appearances, and music festival performances. The movie has a generally handsome look to it otherwise & puts a great soundtrack selection (featuring songs like M83’s “Midnight City” & Beyonce’s “Drunk in Love”) to great aesthetic use. The most impressive thing of all about Beyond the Lights, however, is how effective it is without being showy. Lines like “She needs to be in a hospital, not in front of cameras,” would play for a laugh in a Nicholas Sparks style melodrama, but some how works perfectly well here. Beyond the Lights does little to revolutionize the romantic drama genre, but instead shows you just how effective that formula can be when executed well.

-Brandon Ledet