The whole crew tackles the 1992 Penny Marshall comedy A League of Their Own. David calls TJ a mule. TJ calls David a nag. Hilarity ensues. Chris also assigns next week’s homework!
Many films have pieces that look great individually without getting the pieces quite right as a whole. Maybe there’s a great performance that outshines the script. Maybe the script is fantastic but the talent just isn’t there to execute the dialogue. Sometimes movies can suffer this fate and still be above average or even great. Comparing what a film is lacking and what it does well is a bit tricky. Is Jackie really that good or is Natalie Portman just stealing the show? How good is Tim Robbins in The Shawshank Redemption and how much of that movie’s success is based on a truly great story? The plot of Tomb Raider is unfortunately not as exciting as one might guess.
Tomb Raider tells the tale of Lara Croft (they didn’t mess that part up) looking for her dad. He has gone missing looking for, you guessed it, a tomb. Lara finds his bat cave and decides, against her father’s wishes (left behind in a video tape), to chase him down.
Oh, I should probably mention Lara is a bike courier and, by the looks of it, a parkour expert. This will come in handy later…
She finds a boat and a captain and convinces him with some currency (?) to go to a place that he says means certain death. A storm happens in the open water, boat parkour ensues.
Here’s where things get really interesting. Her dad is still alive (!) and that tomb he was looking for? It’s trying to be raided by a guy who works for a mysterious person on the other end of a telephone. Lara must stop him or the world will…end…I think.
Okay, that’s all for the bad parts of the movie. All the plot. Now to the good stuff.
Alicia Vikander in Tomb Raider (credit: imdb)
If ever there was an inspired performance in a bad action movie, Alicia Vikander delivers one here. She has almost nothing to work with and is quite charming throughout.
Walton Goggins plays a fun villain, and while they try to leave his true goals up in the air for the first five or so minutes of his screen time, they just don’t have the skills to write for talent like that.
Walton Goggins in Tomb Raider (credit: imdb)
Perhaps the most impressive part of Tomb Raider were the three or four action sequences that were absolutely nailed. Fun effects that don’t look too cheesy mixed with fun nods to the video game franchise do well here to get you through the slog of a story that just doesn’t work.
It’s not the worse thing I’ve ever seen, but it’s not breaking any video game movie curses either.
TJ: The Incredibles (1:50), The Hobbit (8:40), Tag (10:25)
Brent: Baywatch (2017) (12:45), Donnie Darko (14:00), The Truman Show and American Beauty (16:50), Skyrim (21:21)
David: Kid Gorgeous (21:42). Oh Hello! (21:49), Candy Jar (23:31), Friday Night Lights (24:24), Killing Eve (26:09), Starbound (26:32), Cube Escape (27:24)
Chris: Wizards of Legend (29:29), Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon (30:20), Mario Tennis Aces (33:12), Won’t You Be My Neighbor (34:38), Hearts Beat Loud (39:56), Ibiza (42:37), Kodachrome (46:08)
Breezy: (50:53)
Warning: Some mild language. Some language is picante.
Brent and TJ get together and discuss Terrence Malick’s 1973 debut, Badlands. Then they discuss directors, actors, and genres they just can’t quite get into, and why they think that is.
Man, directorial debuts have made their way into tMbU over the past few weeks. Jeff Tomsic is the latest rookie to have a film make its way into my eyeballs. This one is supposed to make you laugh. That really is it’s only job. If you go into a movie like this and are waiting for substance (the movie tries, and fails) or romance (tries again, fails again) that’s on you. If you go in ready to laugh at the absurdity of a 30-year game of tag, well done. You have allowed yourself to have a good time.
Hoagie (Helms), Jerry (Renner), Bob (Hamm), Chilli (Johnson), and Sable (Burress) have been playing the same game of tag since they were kids. The entire thing is done in an effort to keep from going up. But that didn’t stop these kids from becoming ridiculously sucessful (except for Chilli, I mean, his name is Chili, looking at the cast list kind of spoils this character for you). Jerry is like the Lebron James of tag. I mean it’s amazing. He is so good at not being touched you wonder why he doesn’t give up his life as a gym owner (I can only assume crossfit) to play professional football. I mean, he has a 30 year “untouched” streak in a game of tag for Christ’s sake. But you don’t care about that. Jeremy Renner is an absolute delight in the role of a villain (if this movie even has one, I would argue it does not). His charisma is allowed to shine and also not really forced to share screen time. When it’s Renner, it’s only Renner and that’s probably the way it should be.
Jeremy Renner finding his inner parkour super star in Tag (credit: imdb)
Ed Helms plays the straight but not too straight guy well, although he is constantly outperformed by the aforementioned Renner and Isla Fischer, who plays his wife Anna. The deadpan style of Hannibal Burress fits in well with this group, and Jon Hamm is, well, Jon Hamm. 2nd place in this movie, behind Renner, goes to Jake Johnson. Playing the stoner of the group like a pro, this guy provides pretty consistent laughter whenever on screen, and it just doesn’t get old.
The only problem with Tag is that you now know pretty much everything about the movie (besides the poor effort of a twist at the end). But you know what? That’s okay. It’s actually kind of refreshing. Is this movie Shaun of the Dead, Dr. Strangelove, or Groundhog Day? Of course not, but not many movies are. Those are 5-Star films and instant classics. Does that mean Wedding Crashers or Mean Girls suck? Also, of course not, it just means you need to know what you are watching, and with a movie about 5 40-somethings playing tag, you should have known well before you walked into the theater.
Is it Watchlist-Worthy? If you like fun, then definitely add it to the list.
Talkie Talk #103: Watchlist / Back to the Future / Wall-E / New Releases
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Brent and TJ get together and discuss what they’ve watched, including Back to the Future, one of Brent’s automatic inductees into the Talk of Fame! They also talk Breezy on the Street (news) and they tell you what new release you should watch this weekend, as if you had a choice!
Brent: Back to the Future (1:35), Taxi Driver (10:50), Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (15:22), Wall-E (17:35), Friday Night Lights (24:09), Make it Rain! (26:09)
TJ: Dogtooth (29:00), 42nd Street (35:35), Hereditary (38:15)
Warning: Some mild language. Some language is picante.
**************SPOILERS IN REVIEW*******************
There are certain ways that will they/won’t they or did it/didn’t it stories can succeed. Unfortunately I’m not sure what those ways are, but I know it doesn’t have to do with continuity. The Sixth Sense isn’t great because you never see anybody but Haley Joel Osment talking to Bruce Willis. That just makes it neat upon a re-watch. Ari Aster’s debut film doesn’t bother with that “neat” factor, and even when you are told, pretty much point-blank, what is going on, you still question it. That is why Hereditary succeeds.
Hereditary tells the story of a family. A mother (Annie, Toni Collette) who works as an artist building and creating miniatures, a father (Steve, Gabriel Byrne), a teenage stoner son (Peter, Alex Wolff) and a 13-year-old daughter (Charlie, Milly Shapiro). Annie’s mother has recently passed away, the film opens up with an original idea, a text of her obituary. Annie as well as her mother, father, and deceased sibling all suffer from some form of mental illness. There are strong hints that her children suffer this same fate. It’s never explicit what they suffer from, but it’s some form of D.I.D., bipolar disorder, or dementia. So when the sinister story comes into play, you don’t know, for most of the film, weather or not it’s something seen as a viewer or seen through the eyes of one of the characters.
Toni Collette’s wardrobe changes to something from an “insane asylum all-white” collection as the questions regarding mental illness and evil come more into play (credit: imdb)
Things are escalated quickly when Charlie passes away in what is probably the most violent way I’ve seen a 13-year-old die in a movie. Her brother blames himself (and his mother) and both, to some extent, are indeed to blame. Then again, there is an odd symbol seen at the scene of the death (just before Charlie’s passing) that makes you think it’s possible that there are external forces at work.
Ann Dowd plays Joan. If that sentence alone doesn’t freak you out you should watch some more of Ann Dowd’s work. Joan is a really fun character. She meets up with Annie outside of a support group for people who have recently lost loved ones. Things quickly escalate when Joan shows Annie how she can connect with the other side. Her manic attitude toward talking to her deceased grandson is maybe the most uncomfortable I felt during the viewing. It’s during the climax of the film where you see Joan yelling at Peter and realize that you haven’t seen Joan talk to anybody besides Annie this whole time. Casting even more doubt on the evil at play.
The standout of the film is Toni Collette. The character of Annie has to show a range of emotion as wide as I can recall in recent memory, and plays a mentally unstable person as well as Jack Nicholson in pre-axe The Shining.
Toni Collette as Annie in Hereditary (credit: imdb)
First time writer/director Ari Aster impresses with story, plot, and direction skills. The use of light is nothing short of jaw-dropping at times and the games he plays with imagery are really fun. You aren’t sure if you are in the Utah residence (think the Overlook if it only could sleep 5 people) of the family or in a 2 square foot model of a hospital. It’s jarring just to see someone walk into a room at times.
The film ends with evil winning. I’m not going to spoil details. It wouldn’t add to this review and that is a lot of the fun (that feels gross) in Hereditary. But I will say this. You are told, without a doubt, that the super natural evil you have been learning about the entire film is real. And you STILL don’t know it to be true. The film plays with mental illness in a very aggressive and impressing way. And while I’m not sure I would recommend this to anybody, it definitely deserves to be seen by horror fans and art film fams alike.
Is it Watchlist-Worthy? Yes – but don’t yell at me after…
Talkie Talk #102: Following / Directorial Debut Draft / Homework
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A rare semi-disagreement from your Talkie Talkers when we discuss Christopher Nolan’s debut film Following! We segue that conversation into a draft of directorial debuts. Check out the Facebook page soon and decide whose picks you like the best!
BONUS: You may or may not find out the title of Drew Goddard’s next movie…
Talkie Talk #101: Watchlist / Deadpool 2 / Lord of the Rings Trilogy
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Brent, Chris, and TJ sit down to discuss what Brent and Chris watched this week, but only what they watched, because the nefarious TJ watched nothing! We follow it up with Breezy on the Streets and What to Watch.
