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The Big Sick revives the Rom-Com genre

A movie reworking an ethnic stand-up comic’s routines isn’t new. Neither is a film about an ill girlfriend in a critical care ward. However, in The Big Sick, with a script by Kumail Nanjani and his real-life sick girlfriend, Emily V. Gordon, the onscreen charisma of Nanjani and his “playing Emily” costar Zoe Kazan, and crisp direction by Michael Showalter, everything clicks. The story is about a Pakistani-born comic who meets the aforementioned girlfriend at one of his Chicago gigs, falls for her hook, line and sinker, but can’t muster the courage to tell his traditional matchmaking parents about Emily. She gets mad and leaves, and then ends up hooked to the machines in intensive care that go PING. Both sets of parents have aspirations for their grown-up kids, and Anapum Kher and Zenobia Shroff and Ray Romano and Holly Hunter play these parents to perfection. Laid out in linear fashion, the plot doesn’t seem to have many places for laughs, but in the hands of these masters, it’s a rom-com filled with humor, laughter (and a few tears), and well worth your time and money.

By | July 7th, 2017|0 Comments

In 1921, the boundaries of the country that became Iraq were drawn by a British explorer, writer, spy and archaeologist named Gertrude Bell. Known to many at the time as “Gertrude of Arabia,” this real-life Wonder Woman was overshadowed by the exploits of a certain T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia). In Zeva Oelbaum's and Sabine Kreyenbuhl's documentary, Letters From Baghdad, an historic photo shows Bell perched on a camel with Egypt’s Sphinx and Pyramids in the background. On the camel to her right, is an uncomfortable-looking Winston Churchill. To her left, in business suit and tie, is the unflappable T. E. Lawrence. Bell created over a thousand letters (read aloud by Tilda Swinton) and panoramic photographs that documented her work, and captured the way things really were in the Arabian Peninsula after WWI. These artifacts tell a tantalizingly fantastic tale of real Arabian Nights (and days) and are the best part of this movie. In contrast, the ill-considered, sepia-toned talking-head scenes of actors “recreating” historic figures only detracts from the endeavor and make it like a History Channel show.

By | June 30th, 2017|0 Comments

Catch Baby Driver, Beatriz at Dinner, and The Hero but skip Transformers: the Last Knight

Baby is a guy who was born to drive. He can shift gears, flip donuts, and slide through gauntlets, with nary a scratch. Which is why a meticulous bank robber picks Baby to be his get-away driver for the latest heist. Baby only has a couple of faults. Because he was “dropped on my head as a child,” he has a constant buzzing sound in his brain which he masks by wearing earbuds playing the movie’s soundtrack. His other weakness is a short-skirted waitress with a Southern drawl who dreams of “hitting the road.” Director Edgar Wright brings the slightly-off-kilter quirkiness he used so well in Shawn of the Dead and Hot Fuzz to create a car-chase movie thats far, far better than anything fast and furious.

By | June 23rd, 2017|0 Comments

Cars 3 is the best thing this week, and it only gets 2 and 1/2 pieces of toast

Its been eleven years since Lightning McQueen was the fastest race car on four wheels but that’s like 100 years in the high-stakes world of auto racing. Just like the venerable Hudson Hornet was labelled a “classic” (AKA Old Fashioned) in the first film, Lightning is past retirement age. Except (there’s got to be an except here or there wouldn’t be a movie), that he won’t retire gracefully. Cue the homily-spouting old-timers and the whiz-bang, “we can mold you into shape” newcomers vying for Lightning’s attention. Underlying everything is the savvy marketing genius of Disney/Pixar who understands how much a baton-passing theme makes demographic sense. Face it, some of the kids who went to the movie in 2006 already have kids themselves. On the plus side, Cars 3 has a welcome moral-to-it-all: that even an egocentric car like Lightning can have a breakthrough moment and realize that he can become mentor to a (gasp of disbelief) Latina hotshot.

By | June 16th, 2017|0 Comments

The 1951 Daphne de Maurier novel, Cousin Rachel, was made into a movie a year later starring Olivia de Haviland and Richard Burton. Through 21st Century eyes, the story of a young woman whose husband dies in mysterious circumstances and the cousin who suspects his widow, is obviously, a morality tale about the challenges facing an intelligent, single woman in a decidedly male-dominated, patriarchal world. Using the “Dogma” directing style that uses only natural settings and available light, infuses the film with a reality that is in stark contrast to the well-lighted and decorated sets in the Victorian soap-operas we watch on PBS. And the acting... Weisz plays the heroine in classic de Maurier style as secretive and reserved yet oozing with carefully controlled passion, and Claflin is excellent as a man fueled by the conflicting feelings of vengeful anger and unrequited lust.

By | June 9th, 2017|0 Comments

Wonder Woman is wondrous!

An Amazon princess lives on an island inhabited only by female warriors (where, contrary to mythology, even the archers have both breasts). Rescuing a British pilot/spy from a crash landing, she discovers (no, not the obvious anatomical differences) that the “War to end all wars” is raging. To our surprise, we discover something as well—Wonder Woman’s real super powers are ensuring that morality and goodness and positivity prevail. Thank screenwriter/director Patty Jenkins and Gal Godot’s miraculous acting ability for elevating a character who was played by other actresses as camp and cliched into an intelligent, and completely capable being willing to literally “man the trenches” amidst the idiocy of “a mortal’s war”.

By | June 2nd, 2017|0 Comments

Baywatch is not intended to be taken seriously

The original Baywatch TV show was reportedly seen in 142 countries by over a billion people every week! In addition to the skimpy swimsuits, part of the show’s “charm” was the less-than-stellar acting by performers stuck in Scooby-Doo style plots. The reboot for the BIG SCREEN keeps alive the same campy stylings of the original, but with currently hip “BIG NAME STARS” wearing the latest cheeky swimsuit designs and making insider jokes about how what they do everyday would make a really great TV show. Then there’s the slapstick humor, and slo-mo running sequences, and jokes about how the character played by Zach Efron looks amazingly like Zach Efron. Lets admit it. Shakespeare it ain’t, but everyone seems to be having a good time.

By | May 26th, 2017|0 Comments

Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant delivers

In Ridley Scott's Alien: Covenant movie, the Covenant is a deep-space colony-ship whose passengers are all couples of childbearing age. They are headed for an Earth-type planet on the far side of the Galaxy where everything looks bucolic and friendly including the cultivated field of Terran wheat they discover. But there is something not quite right about this place. As one colonist asks “You hear that? Nothing. No birds, no animals. Nothing.” Well, she’s wrong, of course. There is something out there. Gigantic, slimy, ravenous creatures that will populate our nightmares for decades

By | May 19th, 2017|0 Comments

Spanish Film Truman Is Astoundingly Profound

Friendship is the center of this loving movie about death with dignity. Tomas boards a plane in Canada and travels to Spain to spend some quality time with his long-time actor friend Julian. The impetus is that Julian’s rapidly spreading cancer dictates he has only a few days left to live. Tomas is surprised to discover that much of their time together is spent making arrangements for how and where Julian’s elderly dog Truman will live out his life. Sparkling with insightful bits of humor, Cesc Gay’s Truman is astoundingly simple yet profoundly acted and well made.

By | May 12th, 2017|0 Comments

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 is fun

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 is the follow up to James Gunn’s 2014 antihero hit, and allows plenty of screen time for the two breakout stars Groot, the tree sapling and Rocket the racoon. The basic plot is revealed by the muscular saxaphonist, Drax the Destroyer, who explains: “There are two types in the universe—those who dance and those who do not.” This Yoda/Zenness allows for action scenes to blur into the background while the Guardians do their dances. Closely aligning itself to Joseph Campbell-style archetypes, the multi-species who guard the galaxy form a “family” for the now orphaned Quill—albeit a bickering, wise-cracking, decidedly alternative family. Interspersed with all the 70’s pop songs, and zinging one-liners, are encounters with a golden empress, a kidnapping pirate, and a couple new characters—a father-figure named Ego whose female sidekick, Mantis, is an empath.

By | May 5th, 2017|0 Comments