Category Archives: Reviews

Who’s a Good Boy?

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You don’t have to be a dog nut to enjoy Netflix’s new series It’s Bruno! But it sure doesn’t hurt.

Otherwise, how else could we feel the offense taken by series creator Solvan “Slick” Naim when he sees dog owners who don’t curb their pooches? Or people who don’t restrain yapping pets? Or, worst of all to Naim, listen to people call his beloved puggle by another name? It’s Bruno!

Part whimsical comedy cross-pollinated with part street-savvy drama, Bruno! may be Netflix’s strangest series to date. Episodes typically range from 11-15 minutes. There is no real character arc (from human or canine actors). Some scenes are dog-food-commercial cute, only to be peppered with scenes of adult-only viewing, including sex, raw language and drug abuse. There’s no graphic violence, but think Benji Meets The Wire.Image result for the wire

To appreciate It’s Bruno!, it helps to know a little bit about why rapper Slick Naim is making the show; he wrote, produced and directed it. According to press reports, Naim got Bruno from a rescue shelter five years ago, and he thinks the dog is so awesome that, in 2015 he made a 10-minute short film that had Naim and Bruno trying to go to a supermarket. Netflix was so impressed, they produced the show (which continues the pair’s efforts to get into the store).

But it’s exactly the small scale of the stories that gives the show its charm. Lives aren’t at stake here, just contented pets, and what a nice change of stakes. Naim plays Malcolm, who gives Bruno the best food — premium turkey meat — and lets him eat at the table. When he walks Bruno around his block in Bushwick, Brooklyn, he’s very sensitive to slights. When a woman pets Bruno without asking, Malcolm reaches out and pets her granddaughter, asking her why the dog shouldn’t feel any less annoyed by that behavior.

When he gets to a corner, he regularly meets his “nemesis” Harvey (Rob Morgan) and his dog Angie. They get into an impromptu obedience competition, which Bruno loses when Malcolm can’t get him to respond to “down.” They vie for dog walking customers. They compete for local dog ads.

In one episode, Malcolm tries to track down the hipster who is not picking up after his dog. In another, he intervenes when he meets a crack addict trying to sell a stolen husky from his shopping cart, claiming it is a “Dire Woof from Games of Thrones!”Image result for dire wolfPerhaps the most entertaining character is a hyper chihuahua that yaps its head off every time he sees Bruno. Naim cleverly translates the barks in closed captioning and man, is that dog vulgar.

But that’s the point of Bruno! In a sea of true-crime stories and police dramas, what a binge-able, pleasurable change of pace for a series. Make Bruno a police dog and you’d probably have a great buddy cop series.

 

Til’ Part Do Us Death

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Dead to Me is something of  bait-and-switch, though a clever and enjoyable one. The trailer for the new Netflix series suggests that it’s a black comedy, a Desperate Housewives meets Six Feet Under with a touch of suburban angst mixed to keep things light. Instead, Dead becomes a sometimes-profound look at the stages of grief — and the extremes we’ll go to avoid them. As much a murder mystery as a darkly comic whodunnit, Dead produces a performance that’s Emmy-worthy, if not the show itself.

Starring Christina Applegate in the role of her career, Dead follow a widow trying to rebuild her life after her husband is killed by a hit-and-run driver. While the show spends 10 twist-full episodes  trying to be a madcap mystery about suburban SoCal secrets and lies, it becomes a layered look at friendships forged in misery.

Dead to Me begins with high-end realtor and mother of two Jen (Applegate) slamming the door on yet another neighborly well-wisher bearing a casserole. Three months after her husband’s death, Jen’s primary emotion besides grief is anger. She’s mad at the person who ran her husband over. She’s mad at the cops who haven’t found the driver. And she’s generally mad at the world for handing her such a raw deal.Image result for dead to me

But Jen’s life begins to improve when she meets Judy (Linda Cardellini), a flighty and free-spirited woman who’s also dealing with her own loss. Their chance meeting at a grief support group isn’t actually by chance — the final shot of episode one portends many surprise endings — unusual for a comedy series. Jen and Judy form a real friendship, commiserating over insomnia-fueled phone calls and late-night Facts of Life reruns. Pretty soon the lonely Jen invites Judy to live in her unoccupied guest house.

Turns out, Jen and Judy make fast friends over common sadness: Jen’s marriage was fraying long before it was cut short by the accident, while Judy can’t leave her on-and-off fiancé Steve (James Marsden). He’s a slick finance type whose good looks and charm mask a dismissive attitude toward the soft-hearted Judy.Image result for dead to me ed asner

And yet it’s the show pacing that undermines these characters. Dead is less interested in Jen and Judy’s connection than it is in the Big Secret that could destroy it. Episodes are peppered with near-misses and convenient coincidences that lead Jen to the brink of discovery, only to veer away from the truth with a rush of near-miss adrenaline. It’s a fine format for, say, Breaking Bad. But it’s too dramatic a pace for a comedy series.

Instead, the show is at its best when Jen and Judy are just hanging out, talking about things that aren’t veiled secrets, like motherhood, re-entering the dating world, and whether they’re a Blair or a Jo. Applegate, returning to series TV for the first time in seven years, brings an astonishing depth to  Jen. Her tears and rage are palpable. Though Cardellini is saddled with primarily goofy sidekick duties, her character brings genuine warmth and humanity to Dead. And Ed Asner, who plays as a cranky old charmer at the nursing home where Judy works, is as good here since The Mary Tyler Moore Show. As a murder mystery, Dead to Me isn’t much of a discovery. But as an examination of human frailty, Dead brings its characters springing to life.

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John Wick’s Excellent Adventure

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Here’s looking at you, Wick. Part grisly Casablanca, part bloody Blade Runner and part macabre Matrix, the elements combine to make John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum an epic of choreographed mayhem and the best action film of the year. Endgame schmendgame.

Directed by Keanu Reeves’ Matrix stunt double-turned-action auteur Chad Stahelski, Parabellum mixes terrific CGI with even more impressive stunt work to become that rarity in an the action genre: a live-action cartoon that doesn’t look cartoonish. Yes, the violence is over-the-top and Parabellum is by far the most brutal film of the sleeper franchise. But as body counts go, this is bloodshed as high art.

The opening of Parabellum picks up just minutes after the end of its 2017 predecessor, with Keanu Reeves’ wronged, out-of-retirement super-assassin on the run through nighttime Manhattan. Wick, as you may recall from part 2, committed the cardinal sin of killing a made member of the shadowy assassins’ guild known as The High Table. Now, he’s been declared “excommunicado”, which in layman terms means that it’s open season on Wick, who has a $14 million bounty on his head.

Out of loyalty, colleague Ian McShane’s gave Wick a one-hour head start to get out of Dodge before word attracts the enumerable professional hit men (and women) who come after him for the reward. As played by Reeves (who, at 54, can still remarkably dish out and take a nasty beating), Wick is the ultimate tragic loner – haunted and hunted. The role fits the soulfully unknowable star like the custom, slim black suit he wears on the job.

The first brawl in John Wick 3 sets an ultraviolent tone that never relents as Wick does with a library book what he famously did with a pencil in the first film, and it just gets nastier from there. What makes that brawl — and the dozens subsequently – so effective  isn’t just the lightning-quick fighting or the cameo appearances of Asian cinema martial-arts heavies that are easter eggs for the action savants;  it’s the way the audience feels each blow in the fights. As in The Raid films, the punches are insanely inventive, but they also hurt. And they also sound especially crunchy. Whoever was John Wick 3’s Foley Artist deserves a raise.

It also doesn’t hurt that cinematographer Dan Laustsen creates a world that would make Ridley Scott envious. From the sands of Casablanca to the rain-slicked streets of Manhattan, the worlds of Wick never lack for flair or twists. There’s a horse raise in Wick 3 — on city streets instead of Moroccan sand — and it looks somehow natural in the Wickian universe. Image result for john wick 3 horse

One of the new characters introduced in John Wick 3 is Asia Kate Dillon’s “Adjudicator,” who spells out the fine print rules of the High Table. It’s a nice countermeasure to the chaotic violence that immerses us for nearly 2 1/2 hours.

As a man without a country in John Wick 3, Reeves’ bruised and battered hero is forced to call in the only two favors he has left to his credit. The first is with an underworld Russian mother figure who’s played by Anjelica Huston and who helps him flee to Casablanca. The second is with an equally badass assassin played by Halle Berry (whose pair of attack dogs steal the middle-third of the movie). Neither one steal Wick’s thunder, but they do add some emotional weight to the film.

If Wick 3 has any weaknesses, it’s that the fights can feel a little long and so quickly edited you can miss the nifty, fatal moves. And while Parebellum clearly sees itself as a franchise film, it sets up another sequel a little too blatantly.

Still, with his dog and muscle car already avenged in the first two movies, John Wick 3 really leaves viewers with one question, one never answered in the movie: Who or what is a ‘Parabellum?’ For the non-scholars of dead languages, an internet search  reveals that it comes from the Latin phrase: Si vis pacem, para bellum. Which translates as, “If you want peace, prepare for war.” And  no one prepares for war like John Wick does.