There are certain movies where the performance of the lead actor/actress is far greater than the film itself.  Many spring to mind immediately including Benedict Cumberbatch in The Imitation Game, Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything, Denzel Washington and Viola Davis in Fences to name just a few.

Well, Denzel Washington has appeared in another movie where his performance is much better than the film itself.

Now, sometimes the great performance elevates the material and you start to see them as one and the same.  My three previous examples all received Oscar nominations for the films though none of them actually were Oscar worthy outside of individual performances.  I do not think that Washington’s new film, Roman J. Israel, Esq. will be nominated like these other films were, but it certainly falls into the same category.

The problem with the film is that there is not much more to it beside a strong and oddball performance from a great actor in Denzel Washington.

Roman J. Israel is a lawyer who has been working in a partnership with another lawyer for years.  Roman was the behind-the-scenes, legal expert and the partner was the “face” of the company.  Roman was an advocate for change within the system, carrying around a briefcase full of case action suit targeting the process of overcharging defendants to get plea bargains.

It was clear that Roman J. Israel had his priorities straight and that, despite being most likely somewhere upon the Autism Spectrum (though technically never stated), never lost track of who he was.  When his friend and partner died, Roman was thrown into situations that he had been shielded from for years and, suddenly, things like money and people’s opinions started to weigh heavy on the lawyer.

Denzel Washington does an amazing job creating this character and showing you how the situations really make him mortgage his personal ideals.  Washington engulfs himself in bad haircuts and misfitting suits, though you always see Denzel when watching.  He does not disappear into the role such as Jake Gyllenhaal’s in Nightcrawler, a film, like this one, also directed by Dan Gilroy.

Unfortunately, the story really wanders around too much, lacking focus for much of the film and eventually devolves into a dramatic thriller that stretches credibility too far.

Colin Farrell plays lawyer George Pierce, who hires Roman after the loss of Roman’s friend and colleague, but, unfortunately, the character of George is all over the place.  He seems to be a douche at first, and then suddenly appreciates Roman’s skills and then becomes angry with him for an error and then wants to be his friend.  I love Colin Farrell and he does a fine job as an actor in this film, but his character needed to be defined better.

Denzel Washington’s performance almost made this movie a movie that I would recommend, but I cannot quite get there.  The plot is just not there enough and the last third of the film becomes nonsensical.  However, it is clear that Denzel Washington is one of the top actors of our generation and his performance nearly pulled this film into respectability.  If you are someone who enjoys an amazing acting accomplishment, you might find Roman J. Israel, Esq. a meaningful watch.

2.9 stars

A Christmas Carol is one of the most famous and beloved pieces of fiction that had ever been written.  Charles Dickens wrote many amazing novels, but this is arguably his finest and greatest work.  The new film The Man Who Invented Christmas explored how a famous author like Charles Dickens creates such a classic work of fiction.

Playing like a biopic, the film adds an element of magic to the manner in which Charles Dickens (Dan Stevens) created the characters of A Christmas Carol and eventually wrote the book.

Dickens had gone through a period of failure, having had three books flop after the massive success of Oliver Twist.  Seeing debt building up, Dickens set out to write a Christmas story with six weeks to go until Christmas.  These are true facts.

The film, however, takes the writing process to a different and remarkably original level.  Dickens would picture a characters, name a character and then they would appear to him.  When Scrooge (Christopher Plummer) showed up, he began to show what a rotten person he was, belittling Dickens as he struggled against the deadline, the writer’s blocks and the seemingly never ending interruptions from his family, staff and friends.

Each of these interruptions were involving some intriguing side characters in Charles Dickens’ life.  His father John (Jonathan Pryce) is a bit of a blowhard and huckster, but he is responsible for some serious baggage for Dickens.  The relationship between Dickens and his father is an important one in the creation of the character of Ebenezer Scrooge.

There is also a great relationship between Dickens and his friend Thackeray (Miles Jupp).  Thackeray was as loyal to Charles as anyone and his friendship and belief in the writer was a solid rock for Dickens.

The movie was remarkably charming. I was fully enthralled in the film as it continues, showing the “real-life’ inspirations Dickens took to create the characters and scenes of A Christmas Carol.  It was fun to hear certain well known lines from the story (ex. “if they are going to die then they should get on with it, and decrease the surplus population”) placed into the script in such a clever way.

Dan Stevens does a great job with his role, showing us a continuously nervous Charles Dickens, whose vivid imagination is amazing, but whose life threatens to drag him down and prevent him from finishing.  The flashbacks used help highlight the horrors of the young Charlie Dickens’ past were effective and brought us back around successfully to what the narrative was wanting us to understand.  Much like Scrooge, the key to Charles Dickens successful future lied in the past and the present and Dan Stevens is so likable that he makes a perfect protagonist here.

There were some secondary characters that are introduced that are not developed very much.  Charles’s wife Kate (Morfydd Clark) has a nice scene near the end of the film, but it seemed to come out of nowhere.  The inclusion of a character named Tara (Anna Murphy) seemed an odd choice and I was not sure why she was meant to be significant but she clearly was.

Overall, I really enjoyed The Man Who Invented Christmas (though that was an odd title, somewhat misleading) and I found it extremely charming.  If you are looking for a good Christmas movie this year, don’t waste your time on Daddy’s Home 2 and instead look this one up.  God bless us.  Everyone.

4 stars

In 1999, the movie Man on the Moon came out and told the story of comic Andy Kaufman, being played by Jim Carrey.  By all appearances, this was your standard biopic that we see all the time.

However, Jim Carrey had taken it to another level.

Famously reported during filming was the fact that Jim Carrey had completely encompassed the role of Andy Kaufman to an extent where he was actively, 24/7 being Andy Kaufman.

Jim Carrey took Method acting to a whole new level.

Now, 18 years later, a new documentary appeared on Netflix featuring behind the scenes footage shot for a documentary at the time showing just how lost Jim Carrey had become inside the role of Andy Kaufman… and the very special contractually obligated mention of Tony Clifton, too.  This footage is reportedly hidden away to protect Jim Carrey from himself.

These images of Jim Carrey as Andy Kaufman were interspersed with a present day interview with a heavily bearded Jim Carrey, providing contradiction to the antics of the sprite that had apparently possessed the actor during the movie’s filming.

It was a tremendous documentary, with an almost unbelievable pretense.  The shocked expressions of cast mates like Danny DeVito and Judd Hirsch down to Andy Kaufman’s real family members told the story of how Jim Carrey was no longer there.  He spoke in third person when referring to Jim Carrey.  He spoke like Andy Kaufman (or Tony Clifton)

Jim Carrey with the beard kept saying that, at the time, he kept asking himself, “how far would Andy go?”

I felt bad for Jerry “The King” Lawler, who seemed to take his share of grief from “Andy” and he reacted,at times, like the professional wrestler that he is.  Lawler spoke of how back when Kaufman and he were doing their wrestling shtick in Memphis how Andy would always be respectful behind the scenes and how they would plan out things together and that aspect seemed to have been pushed aside by Carrey for the sake of realism.  In pro wrestling, it is called kayfabe and Jim Carrey was all about that.

The documentary is well put together and really has a great hook with the missing footage from behind the scenes.  Just looking at the other cast members staring at Jim Carrey in disbelief is worth it, but we get more than just that.  We have a look inside the mind of two of the most fascinating comedic actors/performers of recent memory.

4.5 stars

This is not a film about LBJ’s wife, Lady Bird Johnson.

At first, I thought that this was a biopic, but, after seeing a recent trailer, I realized that I was wrong.  Instead, it is a coming of age story about a young girl and her struggles in school, in family and in life.

The film is very well done.  Honestly, there is not a huge plot involved here.  It is basically the senior year in high school for “Lady Bird” Christine McPherson (Saoirse Ronan) and the family struggles that she faced.  Her mother is played by Laurie Metcalf, who is remarkable here.  Metcalf, whether she is in sitcoms like Roseanne or the Big Bang Theory or movies like Toy Story or Meet the Robinsons, is always fantastic.  Here is just more of the same from her.  Great work.

I also enjoyed the work of the actor playing Lady Bird’s father, Tracy Letts.  I recognized him in the film, but I wasn’t able to place him.  He was very solid as the older man who had to struggle with depression and tried to avoid being overwhelmed by the more dominant Metcalf.  He was softer and quieter and very compelling.

There were plenty of typical scenes you would see in a coming of age story revolving around the final year of high school. Lady Bird wanted to escape from Sacramento to the east coast, but her mother was against that.  In fact, her mother found many passive aggressive ways to get a message across to Lady Bird that had the teen ready to get out of the house.  There was the first sexual encounter with the band member.  There is a school play and musical.  There is the friend who turns out gay.  There is a lot of dealing with the differing class structure of the school, with Lady Bird and her family certainly on the lower level of money.

While many of these topics are dealt with in other coming of age stories, they fit together very nicely with the strong performance of Ronan, which makes these topics fresh.  Ronan and Metcalf are excellent together and you can feel the connection between them.  It’s one of those things that make you think these two women are too much alike to really get along with one another.

There is something in this film that everyone will relate to and that is what makes Lady Bird special.  It has a great relationship, albeit negative many times, between Lady Bird and her mother  and the movie rides that relationship throughout.

3.5 stars

I was able to keep myself from blubbering out loud and the 3D glasses hid the tears fairly well.

Coco is the newest emotional wallop released by Pixar Studios in the same vein as former films Inside Out and Toy Story 3.

In the new movie, we meet 12-year old Miguel (Anthony Gonzalez) as his family prepared for the Mexican holiday Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) by setting up the remembrance photos of family members who had since passed.  The family had been devastated decades ago when Miguel’s great great grandfather left to follow his dream to become a musician, leaving behind his wife and infant daughter.  Because of this betrayal, the family had rejected music in any forms and had become shoemakers.

The problem was that Miguel had music in his soul and would sneak away from his family to play his guitar, and watch movies and tapes of his hero, the late Ernesto de la Cruz (Benjamin Bratt).  When Miguel discovered that his great, great grandfather was actually de la Cruz, he planned on entering a talent show on Día de los Muertos, despite the objects of his family.

When she found this out, Miguel’s grandmother Abuelita (Renée Victor) destroyed his guitar and insisted that Miguel give up his dreams of music and that Miguel help fix the pictures for his great grandmother Mamá Coco (Ana Ofelia Murguia), who had started to lose her memories and was slipping away from life.

Miguel would not give up his dream, reacting impulsively and running away from his family.  Sneaking in to steal the original guitar of the legendary de la Cruz, Miguel found himself magically transported to the Land of the Dead.  There he came across the skeleton corpses of his deceased family members who want to help Miguel cross back over to the land of the living before the sun came up and turned the boy into a skeleton, trapping him in the Land of the Dead forever.

While in the Land of the Dead,Miguel meets a trickster named Hector (Gael García Bernal) who is afraid of being forgotten in the Land of the Living and agrees to help Miguel find his great great grandfather de la Cruz in exchange for Miguel to return to the Land of the Living with a photo of Hector, to keep him from fading away into forgetfulness.

Coco is a beautiful, heart-warming, heart-wrenching story of family and love and what it means to honor those who have died.  It provides us with amazing culture insights into the Mexican culture and creates a spectacular world of color and joy.

The animation is astounding once again.  Pixar has never had issues with the visual imagery of the animation and Coco is no exception.  It is full of colors, breathtakingly gorgeous and as imaginative as any world you could ever think of.

The story of Miguel is wonderful as well, full of emotion and characterization.  I will state that there is a twist in the film that I picked out, but this did not affect my enjoyment of the film.   There was an audible gasp in my theater when it was revealed so it obviously caught some people off guard.

The music was amazing, with the song “Remember Me” probably going to be remembered again during Oscar time.

The character designs of these skeletons were tremendous, taking what could have been a frightening concept and turning it into a funny, warm, almost-magical appearance.

You become so engaged with these characters, especially Miguel and Hector, that the strife affecting them really hits home hard.  The last 25-30 minutes of Coco is about as emotionally powerful as any Pixar movie had ever been.  Richness of story and theme drove home the impactful message of Coco in a sequence that, simply put, reduced me to tears.  Such a lovely and beautiful segment.

The film was emotional, extremely funny, filled with Mexican culture and enthralling music.  As if there were any doubt about Pixar after this summer’s weaker Cars 3, Coco shows the world that the studio is still capable of creating original movies with powerhouse poignant moments for the whole family.  Unlike many animated movies, Coco is for both the children and the parents.  Young and old.  Everyone can enjoy this film.

Coco is a brilliant film and one of the best films of the year.

5 stars

Hm.

Wonder was okay.  I did not love it as much as I thought I would.  I am usually a sucker for stories about kids and their lives.  Wonder just did not connect with me the way I anticipated.

Now, I did enjoy the film.  It is good.  I am going to give it a positive review, but I really expected to come out of the film with more enthusiasm.

After being home schooled by his mom Isabel (Julia Roberts), Auggie (Jacob Tremblay) is set to start 5th grade at a real school.  However, Auggie knew that he would be facing major obstacles since he was born with facial differences that had required multiple plastic surgeries.  Auggie struggled with bullies and other children who could not see past his deformity.

We got several other characters in the film that received some focus along the way.  Auggie’s sister Via (Izabela Vidovic) felt overlooked by her parents constant attention to Auggie, and she, for some unknown reason, had her best friend Miranda (Danielle Rose Russell) stop being her friend after returning from summer camp.  Another fifth grader  Jack Will (Noah Jupe) befriended Auggie only to say something cruel within earshot of his friend.  Another student, adult suck up Julian (Bryce Gheisar) became the bully who targeted Auggie, calling him a freak.

What I liked.  Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson (who played Auggie’s dad, Nate) had a great relationship and were wonderful with their son.  I thought Owen Wilson was awesome here and I found him to the most real of all the characters in the film.  The relationship with Via was not as solid as they seemed to take for granted their daughter.  That story was particularly strong and I appreciated how Via never went full crazed teenager.  She always showed a sweetness to her brother.

There were some very sweet scenes in Wonder.  In fact, some of the scenes may have been too sweet.  I do like how the movie shines a light on a major problem we have at schools today.  The bullying problem is terrible and very few people can be as cruel as kids can be, some times without even meaning to.

I thought Noah Jupe, who had just recently been one few good things in the movie Suburbicon, was very strong as Auggie’s friend with two first names, Jack Will.  Noah carried himself very well and showed quite a range of emotion as he struggled to understand why Auggie had ended their friendship.

I think the problem I had with Wonder was that I just did not buy a lot of what happened.  I work at a school and the thought that the principal Mr. Tushman (Mandy Patinkin) would send a kid like Julian, along with Jack Will and Charlotte (Elle McKinnon with a really odd character), to take Auggie on a tour of the school.  There is no way that someone like Julian, who was so cruel to Auggie, would have fooled everyone as much as he did.  Kids would have ratted this guy out by now.  The whole set up felt forced and manipulated.

There were too many situations like this in Wonder that felt like it was trying to manipulate the emotions of the audience, dealing way too much in melodrama than in real life experiences.

I am also going to say something unpopular here, but I feel as if this was not the greatest of performances from Jacob Tremblay.  I love the young actor and he made me cry with his work in Room and in Book of Henry, but here I found Auggie to be a bit of a screaming brat at times.  I understand why, but I would have liked a little more subtlety in his performance.  Perhaps the prosthetics made it difficult to bring the typically amazing work for the young actor.  I’m sure he did his best, but there was just something that did not work for me.

Yes the movie has a great message of acceptance and kindness in the face of hatred and cruelty, and the film has a definite uplifting feel to it, covered with a gloss of sugar like some kind of breakfast cereal.  I just was waiting for something more impactful than what I got.  I am sure that many people will go to Wonder and enjoy it fully, most likely requiring some tissues (That’s you, Ambarlee).  It is a sweet family film, but you should not expect too much.

3.2 stars

I’ll start with this.  Justice League is good.  Not great, but good.

I certainly enjoyed this more than I did Batman v. Superman or Suicide Squad.  However, this still has some serious problems as a film.  It is a step in the right direction, though.  Should we be using that line?  “A step in the right direction” meaning that it is not as bad as you thought so it is good.  I’m not sure that is fair.

Either way, there are things I liked about Justice League.  In fact, most anything that directly involve the League members is pretty good.  I would go as far as to say that the interactions between the characters is the best part of this movie.

Diana (Gal Gadot) is still one of the best characters here, despite being less than she was in her own movie.  The scene near the beginning of the film where she saves a group of people from terrorists intent on blowing up several blocks of a city was tremendous.  I love seeing super heroes being super heroic and Wonder Woman is a perfect example of that.

Ezra Miller, though I doubted that I would like him, was really good as well.  He was the comic relief and most everything humorous about him worked.  I have heard that Flash is a divisive character- that you either love him or hate him.  Put me in the love him category.  This Flash is different enough from Barry Allen from TV to make it worthwhile.  Ray Fisher  as Victor Stone aka Cyborg was someone I did not think I would like either, but I thought his character was really awesome… maybe even the best of the characters in the film.  I did not like the look of Cyborg at all though.  I though his CGI was terrible on him and did not improve until the very end of the movie.

They had some good secondary characters.  Jeremy Irons as Alfred and JK Simmons as Commissioner Gordon were solid and I enjoyed the use of Lois Lane (Amy Adams) as well.  Diane Lane was back as Martha and she had some nice scenes.

This next section is a spoiler….. so SPOILER

The return of Superman(Henry Cavill) is perhaps my favorite part of the film. I would have liked it if there was more of an arc to the story involving Superman, but this was the Superman that should have been here the whole time.  When the newly alive, but not quite right Superman fights the other Justice League members, I was engaged.  Unfortunately, the movie brushes over Clark’s return and makes his comeback less emotional than it should have been.  However, I was really afraid that we were going to get another “Martha” moment, and the film avoided that, so there is that.  In the end, I really liked the Superman we got here.  END OF SPOILERS.

The film had a more fun feel than the other DC movies of late. You can tell that there was some kind of edict that Warner Brothers had given to make their super heroes less dark and gritty.  I am not saying that it is on the level of tone of Marvel, but it is distinctively different than previous DC movies.  Honestly, if they continue this tone, which still had some darkness to it, they might have more success.

Now, there are still lots of issues here.  The story is very thin, and actually seems very much like The Avengers.  There is a disposable feeling to this film.  It is not an epic film that one would think of when they think of a Justice League film.

One of the biggest problems with the Justice League has to do with Superman.  The film wants you to believe that the world is mourning Superman and that they really miss the beacon of hope that he was. The problem?  We had never seen this Superman in the DC Cinematic Universe.  In Man of Steel and Batman v. Superman, we saw a dower and depressed Superman because the world looked upon him as an alien that was a problem, and a danger.  Not the heroic super hero that inspired a generation.  This, I think , is another example of why they needed a Man of Steel 2 before this film so they could have transitioned Superman from the emo Superman into the person beloved by the world.

I did not like the way the character Aquaman (Jason Momoa) was shown here.  I had some high hopes for Aquaman, but I just did not enjoy his character.  I had little reason to cheer for him. The whole section with Mera (Amber Heard) felt like a scene that was wasted.

I thought they went too far to the other side with the character of Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck).  They tried to make him quippy, but most of his quips did not work.  This was a solid portrayal of Batman, but I did not like his Bruce Wayne.

However, easily the worst part of this film was Steppenwolf (Ciaran Hinds).  I hated every moment that character was on the screen.  He was nothing more than a giant CGI character… and a bad looking CGI character.  It was Green Lantern Paradox bad.  He had no characterization, no motive, no traits.  Anyone complaining about Marvel villains should never make that point gain.  Steppenwolf was one step above the Enchantress from Suicide Squad.  As much as I was enjoying the interaction with the Justice League members, the Steppenwolf moments were as bad as anything that we had seen.

I don’t know why DC movies feel the need to have the “everything is red” background in their final CGI fights.  It looks terrible.  B v S did it.  Suicide Squad did it.  Even a good movie like Wonder Woman did it too.  It is like the world has to be an apocalyptic flavor to it for DC to end a movie.  Admittedly, I liked the final act of this movie, but the look of the film was just so reminiscent to the other films.

The story of Justice League has gone through many twists.  Zack Snyder, who is still listed as the director on this, had to leave the project because of a family tragedy, and Joss Whedon, comes in to finish it.  He oversaw many reshoots and rewrites.  They had to cut a chunk of the movie when WB mandated that the film come in under 2 hours and it was reportedly 2 hours and 45 minutes. Every other day there is a story about Ben Affleck wanting to get out of the Batman role.  For the amount of melodrama involved with this film, it is impressive that there are positives to it at all.

And there are many positives to Justice League.  In fact, it is a fun movie that is mostly entertaining.  The missteps do not ruin the movie and the iconic heroes are well done, if not simplified.

3.65 stars

I finally got around to watching this on Netflix tonight.  The Babysitter has been available on the streaming service since October 13th, and it had been on my queue to watch for several weeks now, but the time just never seemed to work out.  Until now.

And hey… I enjoyed it.

Young Cole (Judah Lewis) is a twelve-year old boy who is apparently afraid of everything.  Bullied and attacked at school, Cole has few people that he cares for.  One of those few people was his babysitter, Bee (Samara Weaving).  Cole’s growing attraction to the beautiful babysitter leads him to wonder what she would do when he went to sleep, so Cole decided to stay up one night to see exactly what happened past hours.  Little did he know about the horrors he was about to discover.

The Babysitter is a horror/dark comedy/coming of age movie mash up, and all three of the genres shine through.  There are some really funny moments mixed in with some very bloody and shocking moments and all the while you are rooting for the young protagonist who finds himself stuck in the middle.

Admittedly, the film never officially gives you any answers about exactly what was going on, but it was clear that Bee and her clan of hench-people were up to no good.  These others with Bee included the more well known actors Bella Thorne and Robbie Amell.  It was fun to see these two running around, trying to take care of the Cole problem the group suddenly encountered.

There was some funny lines.  Robbie Amell’s character was running around without a shirt on for most of the film, and when Cole asked why he did not have a shirt, Bella Thorne’s character made a reference to his physique.  It was like a soap opera, trying to get the shirt off their hot male leads.

There was actually a real relationship between Cole and Bee, and that made her betrayal all the worse.  The film took some time to show this relationship and that helped us develop both of those characters before all hell broke loose.

One of the strengths of the movie is the fact that it really feels as if it knows exactly what it is and that the film itself is on on the joke.  It is certainly campy, and makes one think of some of those cheesy 1980s slasher films, but with more heart.  There was definitely lots of blood splatter around, but it feels so cartoony with its representation of the gore that it would not be a bother to anyone worried about blood.

Judah Lewis carries this film on his youthful shoulders and he just adds to a list of solid performances by child actors this year.  His relationship with Samara Weaving, who also is excellent in her role, is the center of the movie.  The Babysitter was a good time and would make for an enjoyable weekend night at home.

3.7 stars