Category Archives: Reviews

Til’ Part Do Us Death

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http://childpsychiatryassociates.com/where-to-start/ 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.

 

Ted, Just Admit It

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The risk of making “based on true events” films is that sometimes the real events are more interesting than the fictional ones — and make for more entertaining moviegoing.

Take Man on Wire, an Oscar-winning documentary about a tight rope walker who crossed New York’s Twin Towers on a cable. The film was naturally followed by a big-budget feature starring Joseph Gordon Levitt. Alas, Levitt and co-stars could not match the mischievous humor of real-life walker Phillippe Petit and his cast of harmless hooligans, and the feature film plummeted to a flop that made only $10 million. Image result for man on wire

Netflix’s new film, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, isn’t an equal disaster, but it comes up similarly short on the heels of the terrific Netflix documentary Conversation with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes. A serviceable-if-unspectacular thriller, Vile captures neither the horror of Bundy’s reign of terror, nor the charm Bundy used to lure victims, which numbered in the dozens.

It’s a strange shortcoming, given that both Bundy films shared the same director, Joe Berlinger (Paradise Lost, Brother’s Keeper). Documentary filmmaking is clearly his forte, and Vile ultimately feels detached enough from its characters to be a non-fiction flick, though there are some nice personal touches from the big-name cast, namely Zac Effron as the killer.

Still, Vile requires that you already know the story of America’s most notorious serial killer, because the movie does little to educate the viewer, let alone bring you into Bundy’s mind. Even the title is a bit misleading: Bundy may have been vile and wicked, but the movie is a largely bloodless examination of his cross-country killing spree, which left at least 30 women dead.

If anything, Vile glosses over the murders so briskly that it’s not until the final minutes of the nearly two-hour film that the savagery of Bundy’s acts become evident. And even then, you’re left with the sense you just watched an apt, if detached, Lifetime movie about a man’s hidden, murderous demons.

Instead, Vile concentrates on Liz Kendall (Lily Collins), Bundy’s ex-girlfriend and single mom who struggles to reconcile the man she knows with the headlines she’s reading. It’s a compelling portrait of falling in love with a monster, but Vile does a lackluster job of portraying just what a monster Bundy was. Despite Bundy strangling and raping his victims (and beheading at least one), Vile jettisons most of the violence for the headlines that followed.Image result for liz kendall lily collins

If you don’t already know Bundy’s story, Berlinger’s carefully paced drama won’t spell it out for you; Bundy’s true nature stays largely below the surface. The deliberate pace of the narrative partly mirrors Liz’s own path from faith in her fiancé to creeping doubt. And Collins walks that line gracefully despite not being given much to work with, considering the movie is based on Kendall’s own memoir.

But it’s Efron’s movie. Alternately charming, belligerent, and incalculably shrewd, he captures both the shark-like charisma of Bundy and the deeply damaged man beneath. Problem is, news clips — some from Beringer’s previous documentary — suggest Bundy was more charming, more media savvy, even more handsome than the man playing him.

Vile‘s real strength is in its examination of a sociopath. Effron’s Bundy is a smooth talker whose lies are so effortless and convincing you think Bundy may believe them himself. And his rapport with  Tallahassee judge Edward Cowart (John Malkovich), who finally renders judgement, is not only engaging, but nearly word-for-word accurate in its re-enactment of the nation’s first televised trial.Image result for judge Edward Cowart (John Malkovich)

“You are skating on thin ice,” he tells Bundy at one point, “and ice does not last long in Florida.” He’s right, of course. But Vile leaves you wondering what made it crack.