The Most Depressing Double Feature I Ever Had

OK, the main reason was learning she died.

This happened five minutes after Manchester By The Sea ended at the Century Riverside 12 in Reno. Thanks to some handy discounts I saw this and another movie for less than nine bucks, and basically saw the top contenders for the Oscars in February. I learned about it on my phone, and told a few people who were nearby. I fully expect people to make a return trip to their local theater to see Rogue One just one more time, along with the main Star Wars movies and The Force Awakens. This will be a long week, but this will be the only way such fans, including me, will cope.
To think, I had a chance to go see her when she was at Comic-Con. Then again, I thought she'd last longer than her mom, Debbie Reynolds. At least I have her autograph.

Getting back to Manchester, I wanted to know if Casey Affleck's performance is really a guaranteed award-winner. It''s pretty good, although I also liked Lucas Hedges as the teen who's also a main part of the story.

The movie is about Lee (Affleck), a handyman who maintains several apartments while living in a small basement apartment. He gets news that his brother, Joe (Kyle Chandler), died from heart failure, and that he has to take care of his nephew Patrick, played by Hedges. Lee is very reluctant to do this, mainly because of a shocking tragedy from his past. During the first half, the movie looks at Lee dealing with his brother's death and the new responsibilities while also adding flashbacks to his past, and that tragedy. It's a shocking moment that drives him away from his family and his wife, played by Michelle Williams. Seeing both Lee and Patrick in their younger days, when they were much closer while fishing in Joe's boat, is touching. However, seeing Lee deal with the tragedy is also heart-breaking.
Hedges is also great as a teen who's stressed out by way too many things, from hockey and losing his dad to trying to reconnect with his uncle and how this will affect his life. There's also a scene where he visits his mom (Gretchen Mol) and his new sort-of creepy fiance (Matthew Broderick). Patrick finds his mom via e-mail but another e-mail will upset him. Hedges just might sneak in for Supporting Actor, but may not win.

The story also took Lee and Patrick's relationship to unexpected roads, especially at the end. It's a good decision by writer and director Kenneth Lonergan to have a story where a family tries to recover from tragedies, but also an ending that is honest.

The other movie I saw was the adaptation of August Wilson's classic play, Fences. We can thank Denzel Washington for this, being director and the star. This is basically the same play that wowed Broadway a few years ago, but on a sound stage. It's about a Pittsburgh garbageman in 1956, still bitter over what could have been. He used to be a ball player, but before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier. When we first meet Troy, he's talking to his friend Bono over the fact that all garbage truck drivers are white. Troy breaks that color line, but he's still bitter about other things. He argues with his son over whether he should play football, but has a loving relationship with his wife Rose that crumbles when a big secret is revealed.

Washington is realy good as Troy, while Davis just takes her Tony Award-winning performance to the screen and makes it even better. While she's in the Supporting Actress races, people wonder if she could beat Natalie Portman or Emma Stone in Best Actress. It would have been very possible.

From here, I'll be looking forward to Jackie and Hidden Figures over the next few weeks, and the Oscar nominations in a month.

In the meantime, I'll toast Carrie with the screen test that started it all:


Carrie Fisher by andaluska

Review of Suicide Squad or How To (Almost) Get Away With Bad Filmmaking

When DC comic book fans were disappointed by Batman v. Superman:  Dawn of Justice, they were hoping the next movie, Suicide Squad, would be the one to get the DC-verse back on track and maybe make the MCU look over its shoulder.

That hope continued through Comic-Con and all the promos. If it's gotten to the point that super heroes are battling each other, maybe some villains can be cajoled into helping their fellow man. After all, they can rub it into the faces of the hero that's always bugging them.

Well, it worked as well as B v. S, sadly. Despite really good performances by Will Smith as Deadshot and Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, Suicide Squad fell flat because, like B v. S, it was another prologue to the Justice League movie that's really the beginning of the DC-verse. For one thing, the crew faces a villain worse than Zod and Lex Luthor Being the Riddler, and it was sort of the fault of the person who organized the squad. It also inserts two heroes that are featured in the Justice League trailer.

Anyway, the squad is organized by Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), who thinks that the best way to deal with an evil Superman is recruit the worst villains to fight against this threat. Along with Deadshot and Quinn (who still misses her Mr. J, played by Jared Leto) the crew includes Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), Slipknot (Adam Beach), Diablo (Jay Hernandez), Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje),   Katana (Karen Fukuhara) and anthropologist Dr. June Moone, or rather the monster that possesses her, Enchantress (Cara Delevigne). The guy directing them on the ground is Rick Flagg, played by Joel Kinneman. He only thinks he's in charge.

Here's where Suicide Squad makes its big mistake.  Waller thinks she can control Enchantress by taking its heart, while Rick thinks he can do the same by loving the human side of her. That's how Waller can get Enchantress to take some key intel from Iran faster than Dr, Strange can travel through portals in his movie trailer. However, she double-crosses them both and revives her "brother." They plan to build a machine that would destroy mankind.
Sound familiar? It's the same Big Bad plan that Batman v. Superman had. It's less complex than Lex Luthor combining his DNA with the body of General Zod to create Apocalypse, but it shows a lack of imagination. Besides, her plan is mostly making soldiers easily broken by Harley's sweet swings with her bat, while dancing in one spot to make her machine like a showgirl. This movie didn't need her, or the romantic angle Waller sort of encouraged.

Waller should have been the Big Bad. It was her idea to create the squad, so have her create a problem to justify her idea and make sure no one knows. Then have the Joker make things more complicated by trying to take over the situation. This would have forced Harley to decide whether to stick with the squad, or go over to Joker...or maybe get him to help when things go really wrong. That would have made things better, just enough to give DC fans hope as we wait for Wonder Woman's movie to be shown.
And why shouldn't Waller be the Big Bad? Viola Davis shows she's about as ruthless as anyone, trying to make her own Injustice League. Still, you have to wonder if Annalise Keating could have done better.

Instead, we have the squad squabbling with each other as they get through the disaster Enchantress has started. In fact, we only get to see her destruction sparingly until the final act. There are pretty good moments, like Diablo explaining how his power has cost him too much, and Harley recalling how she jumped into a boiling vat to show her devotion to the Joker. That was a nice callback to the 1989  Batman movie.

The biggest crime is that the Joker doesn't play a major role. We see him be evil and nuts. Leto's performance takes a bit from Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger's interpretations, but it's basically him being creepy. At least with Ledger, he went the extra mile because of the story. You think Leto will really make things interesting once he comes for Harley, but the story has other ideas. It may give Robbie a great opportunity to make Harley special by herself, but it ruined Leto's chance to show how special his Joker can be,

There are good parts in the movie, especially how the squad members are introduced. They also do a lot to show how Deadshot may be a very bad man, but he's also a loving father. It's because Will Smith plays him, and winds up being the most heroic of the bad guys. Maybe the Justice League will give him a call. You have to wonder if Deadshot would be darker if someone else played him.

Overall, DC fumbled again because Suicide Squad tried to be just like BvS only with bad guys and a Big Bad who was just like Apocalypse. Besides, couldn't Enchantress go all over the city to pick up parts for her Darkness Machine instead of having her "brother" do all the heavy lifting? If they took another route, like Waller causing the catastophe to justify the need for a Suicide Squad, it would have been better.

There is a post-credit scene that shows what the movie really is:  another prologue for the real start of the 'verse, the Justice League movie. At least all Marvel movies may be connected, but they are also their own stories. Warner Brothers and DC better figure that out fast, or the Guardians of the Galaxy will lap them twice.

We All Need Some "Help", and Some Trailer Talk

When a movie house does a midnight showing, it's usually on a Friday morning. The film is usually the latest blockbuster, from Harry Potter to Iron Man, and that means a full house.
So how come the Century Downtown 7 decided to be the first to show The Help on a Wednesday morning? That usually happens just before Thanksgiving. I was almost expecting a bunch of women with their own copies of the book, checking to see if the movie followed the book to the letter.

No such luck. About ten people were inside with me, but it was well worth it.
You know the story: a white girl just graduating from Ole Miss decides to risk a lot to write a book about what it's like for Black maids to work in White families in 1962. We get some interesting viewpoints from Skeeter, the author and Aibileen and Minny, two of the maids.
Risks are taken, and there is a fair amount of loss, but there are also rewards in the end.
The movie does start with Skeeter interviewing Aibileen, but it's really the story of people finding their voice, and making sure they are heard...and it's not just the maids. Aibileen may be the narrator, but she is just part of the story.

We start with Skeeter, played by Emma Stone. After being in Zombieland and Easy A, this is her most serious role yet, and she does a great job. After getting a job at the local paper writing a housekeeping column, she befriends Aibileen (Viola Davis). After a while, Skeeter thinks about writing a book about her and the other Black maids. We also meet Minny (Octavia Spencer), a sharp tongued maid who's been fired from every household. Even with all that bravado, though, life away from work is anything from perfect.
We also meet the social queen bee, Hilly Holbrook, played by Bryce Dallas Howard. Now, she may be well-known as a vampire in Twilight: Eclipse, but she is even scarier here. She is the Ultimate Southern Housewife, who believes in good Christian values including building a separate toilet for the Help. She also has a special way of getting rid of maids she doesn't like. Skeeter is expected to fit into this society, but is very reluctant. She even wonders why her family's maid has suddenly left.

So, Skeeter tries to get the maids to hell their story. First Aibileen does, followed by Minny. Soon, others tell their story, too. We see that Aibileen is proud of how she and the other maids take care of the white children in Jackson, and how they grow up to be their new bosses a few years down the line. She is also scared about the emerging civil rights movement, especially the death of Medgar Evers. She knows her place because it's the only place she's allowed to exist. It's that tension, however, that also convinces Minny to help out with the book.

What really caught my attention was the relationship Minny has with Celia Foote, played by Jessica Chastain. The other housewives see Celia as some silly woman who will never be part of their club. Minny soon discovers Celia can't even cook...and a few other things...but they help each other out. You get the feeling that eventually, Celia will soon get more respect than Hilly. This movie isn't about a white person "saving" Blacks. People either save themselves or each other..while others who need help just can't admit it.
Of course, a certain pie is involved in the story, too. Let's say it gives new meaning to the term "just desserts".

You may also spot Sissy Spacek as Hilly's mom, who clearly has more sense than her daughter, Alison Janney as Skeeter's mom who has a big fat regret on her mind, Cicely Tyson as the maid Skeeter misses, and Mary Steenburgen as the New York editor who's intrigued by Skeeter's book.

After weeks of super heroes, robots and super-smart apes, and a few rom-coms, it's nice to have a movie with good performances and a great story. If you want to hide from all the noise of the blockbuster, The Help will be what you need.

They also threw in some trailers, including Breaking Dawn and that overly-sentimental War Horse trailer while I hope reveals a movie that's just as good as the Tony Award-winning play. I'm also interested in Tower Heist, where Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy rob a Bernie Madoff-type of 20 million bucks. It better be good. There was also a trailer for New Year's Eve, sort of a follow up to Valentine's Day. Robert DeNiro's in it, but don't be fooled. There's some guy looking for the girl he thinks is his destiny, and Katherine Heigl's being pointless and annoying...again. There's also Halle Berry, Abigail Breslin, Susan Sarandon and Ryan Seacrest too. I do know Lea Michele is in it as a singer who's not as driven as Rachel Berry, but she might go places.

While I'm on the horn, I must talk about how they're promoting In Time, with Justin Timberlake, Amanda Seyfried, and Vincent Kartheiser as super-creepy Future Pete Campbell. First, you should see this movie when it comes around Halloween because it proves a Logan's Run economy won't improve our global credit rating. Second, the latest movie trailer features Olivia Wilde as Justin's mom too much. I'm guessing the scenes she's in are in the trailer. If you want a better taste of what this movie is really about, try this trailer..



Now THIS will have you counting the days on your wrist.
Until then, we still have a lot of interesting movies like Apollo 18, Attack the Block (please, by Labor Day), Abduction (maybe), Moneyball (a baseball movie with Brad Pitt), Fright Night and Contagion...among others.