Knives Out

First Hit: An enjoyable investigative romp with a group of very capable actors in an old fashion story.

This film reminded me of an old fashion crime drama, sort of like a “Clue” game. What makes this movie work is the way these capable actors tell this tale of crime and deceit in both a comedic and dramatic way.

Marta Cabrera (Ana de Armas) is an in-home nurse who has also befriended her only client, Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer). Harlan is very wealthy from writing eighty successful mystery novels. His health is failing, hence the need for Marta. Marta has become his only true confidant because the rest of the family, except his daughter Linda Drysdale (Jamie Lee Curtis), totally lives off his generosity.

Linda and her husband Richard (Don Johnson) live in Harlan’s home and don’t fully escape from Harlan’s largeness because he funded Linda’s successful real estate business. They have a son Hugh Ransom Drysdale (Chris Evans), who is arrogant, flippant, and smart while living off an allowance from Harlan.

Harlan’s home is large and his mother, Great Nana (K Callan) lives with him. She doesn’t talk and sits in a wheelchair throughout the film but plays an important role in the story. Other family members who are living off Harlan’s wealth and success include; Walt Thrombey (Michael Shannon), his wife Donna (Riki Lindhome) who run Harlan’s publishing company. Joni Thrombey (Toni Collette) who is Harlan’s deceased son Neil’s wife, and their daughter Meg (Katherine Langford), who receive an allowance from Harlan for Meg’s schooling. Each of them are taking advantage of Harlan and during the film’s story, each of these ways are explored more fully.

The family has gathered to celebrate Harlan’s 85th birthday. During this party, most of the family, we learn, have discussions with Harlan about his largeness towards them.

The next morning, after the party, the housekeeper Fran (Edi Patterson) finds Harlan dead in his study with his throat slit, it appears to be a suicide.

However, someone has anonymously hired Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) a famous southern investigator to find out if it was murder or suicide. Blanc, working with the police, begin to unravel the mystery as to why Blanc was hired to be involved.

The police are convinced it was suicide, but the extraordinary questioning skills of Blanc and his inquisitive mind of solving puzzles begins to shed a different light on Harlan’s death. Slowly, and methodically, his interviews begin to piece a different story together.

One of the funnier parts of the interviewing process by Blanc, we learn that Marta cannot lie. If she lies, she throws up. There are a couple hilarious, slightly gross, scenes of this.

When the lawyer comes and the Will is read, everyone gathers to find out that Harlan has left everything, I mean everything, to Marta. The family doesn’t know what to do, or how they will survive, or do they?

Craig is hilariously fantastic as the investigator Benoit Blanc. His slow southern drawl and idiosyncrasies, during the interviews using the piano, are spot on funny and pointed. Evans is perfect as the conniving Ransom. His ability to be both charming and evil are perfect. Armas is sublime as Marta. Her expressions of the fear of doing something wrong, her caution because having a mother who is illegally in the country, and also wanting to do the right thing for Harlan are excellent. Curtis is outstanding as the daughter who wants more. Shannon is terrific as the son who thinks he’s in charge of Harlan’s business but really is just a pawn. Collette is perfectly flighty and conniving as the social influencer and thief in the name of her daughter Meg. The rest of the cast is equally good in making this a wonderful romp. Rian Johnson wrote and directed this fun filled mystery and got the best out of everyone for their roles.

Overall: This was a perfect, fun filled, and enjoyable movie to sit through.

Dolemite Is My Name

First Hit: At times, hilarious, but also a surprising true and touching story about the birth of rap by a man who just kept trying to be famous.

More than anything, Rudy Ray Moore (Eddie Murphy) wanted to be famous. He would like to stand on a stage, be admired, be seen, and create laughter.

An opening scene shows him being allowed a few minutes on a small local club stage, introducing other acts. He tries to be engaging and funny, but the audience ignores him.

We learn that he’s already tried his luck at singing and even got his aunt to finance the production of a record that didn’t sell.

There’s a delightful scene with Rudy trying to convince a DJ Roj (Snoop Dogg) into playing cuts from his record, and all Snoop keeps saying is that “this old shit ain’t any good and I ain’t playin it because it ain’t hip, man.”

Then he gets an idea after listening to a homeless man speak about a comedic character called Dolemite, who tells rude rhyming jokes. He works on developing this character named Dolemite, and watching him grow the role, we begin to see the comedic genius of Murphy and this character, Dolemite. I really enjoyed these scenes.

Thinking he’s got it down, he convinces the small night club owner he MC’s for to let him do five minutes of his new Dolemite act, and to everyone’s amazement, he’s funny as hell. Dolemite is a hit.

Scraping together some cash, he makes a comedy record in his home with friends as his audience. Selling the record from the trunk of his car, he makes a good number of sales, and soon the album is selling everywhere.

A record company picks it up, and now Rudy begins promoting the record in the Deep South, where Dolemite and this record is a hit. In one club, he comes across Lady Reed (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) whom Rudy Ray thinks is funny. Inviting her to join him on stage and on his tour, together, they are amazing and also develop a great friendship and trust for each other.

At one of the stops, they watch a film called “The Front Page” and his mind starts working again. If he could be filmed, he could really spread the Dolemite character to lots of people everywhere. Taking this idea to a film company, they decline, thinking that creating a Dolemite film will be a bad investment. Not to be deterred, he mortgages his future record earnings, and he gets a crew together to write and make a Dolemite film.

The film he makes is one of the first kung-fu-themed Blaxploitation movies ever made. Watching them make the flick is hilarious as they really do some silly things. The director is disgusted by the way the film is being made. The lack of good acting and the scenes are absurd. At the end of filming, the director walks out and states that this film will never show anywhere.

But the irrepressible Rudy Ray (AKA Dolemite) finds a way to get the film shown at a high risk to his financial wherewithal.

Murphy was solid as Dolemite. It’s been a while since I’ve seen an Eddie Murphy film, and this story fits his engaging enthusiastic personality. Dogg was slick as Roj, the DJ. Randolph was outstanding as Lady Reed, a woman who just needed to be seen and supported. Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski wrote a hilarious script and also had depth. Craig Brewer did an excellent job of directing this story into a cohesive story about a true legend of today’s rap scene and Blaxploitation films.

Overall: I relaxed and had fun watching this film.

Last Christmas

First Hit: It started off on the silly side, and by the end, I was very touched by this heartfelt story.

I’d seen the previews for this story and thought, oh, this could be a silly sort of way to spend an hour and a half. However, I’m glad I didn’t judge the movie by the preview. It has a beautiful and deeply touching message.

The story begins with watching a young Kate (Madison Ingoldsby as young Kate) being the lead singer in a Yugoslavian church choir. Her mother, Petra (Emma Thompson), Ivan her father (Boris Isakovic), and her sister Marta (young Marta played by Lucy Miller) are in the audience watching. There is a moment in this scene that plays out later with the sister Marta looking at another person in the choir.

Roll into the future, and the twenty-something years old Kate (Emilia Clarke) is living in London as is her whole family. Kate is working at a Christmas store that’s open year-round, owned by “Santa” (Michelle Yeoh), who loves Christmas and the magic it brings. Kate is her employee and dresses like an elf. We get that Kate isn’t a perfect employee but that Santa likes her for some reason.

Kate rushes out of the store to make singing and acting auditions but is usually late, rarely prepared, and seems to have lost her ability to sing as well. We soon get that Kate’s in a rut, which is compounded by her almost always homelessness. She’s often shown dragging around her roller suitcase. At times, when she needs a place to sleep, she picks up guys in bars, sleeps with them, but something invariably happens, and she’s back on the streets.

Her friends, like Jenna and Rufus (Ritu Arya and Ansu Kabia respectively), give her a room, but within two days, she’s messed this up, and they ask her to leave. She tries to reconcile with her family, but her mom is tough, and her father hides from her mom as much as possible. She and her sister Marta (Lydia Leonard) seem to be at each other’s throats, and there appears to be no love lost anywhere. The family dynamics are really screwed up.

All during these scenes, we are under the impression that Kate has no common sense, is flighty, and very ungrounded. Some would say unlucky. There is some hint that something happened to Kate about a year ago, but at this stage in the film, we are not privy to that part of the story. Did this event cause this ungrounded flighty nature?

One day Tom (Henry Golding) pops into her life one day and impresses upon her to take a walk with him. She declines, but on the second random meeting, they walk, and you can see his caring and compassion for others, including Kate. The chemistry is strong between them, and he just seems like a wonderfully lovely person who’s taken an interest in Kate. She wants to see him again and asks for his mobile number, but he says he doesn’t use it, and it’s kept in a kitchen cupboard at home, so giving Kate his name would be useless.

On one of the walks, Tom takes her to a homeless shelter. Thinking he’s trying to get her to stay there, she discovers differently; he volunteers his time at the shelter and says she could help as well. But as Tom is prone to do, Tom disappears for days at a time. No one seems to know where he is.

 Kate begins to sing outside the shelter, collecting money, hoping that Tom will pop-up again. Alas, he doesn’t, but just as she becomes even more despondent Tom shows up again.

One evening she tells him what happen to her a year ago and why she doesn’t feel like a whole person anymore. It is genuinely a sweet scene. He tells her that she can change her life by being open to others and by making kinder decisions. She’s not a victim and can change her life.

Tom’s influence has a positive effect on Kate. She starts to make amends with “Santa,” her mom, dad, and sister. She volunteers more at the homeless shelter and is more thoughtful. An example of this is early in the film we see her getting picked up at a bar from some guy using a standard line. Now, we see her in a bar, she gets the same pickup line from another bloke, and she makes a better decision.

A fun secondary story is about “Santa” trying to find companionship dates for herself. One day “Santa” meets “boy” (Peter Mygind), and how they engage with each other is so sweet and funny.  

I cannot delve into what happens to Kate that made her feel the way she does, nor how Tom is there to help her see the light, but the story is sweet, and the ending was fun and touching.

Clarke is a hoot and actually inspirational as the film moved along. She did a great job of making this character work. Golding was beautiful as the man who pops into Kate’s life to provide hope and inspiration. Yeoh is hilarious as the Christmas store owner who can see Kate’s sweet side. Mygind was excellent as “boy,” the man who brought joy to “Santa’s” life. Arya and Kabia are fantastic as Kate’s friends, who keep supporting and allowing her to get better. Thompson was oddly funny and entertaining in her role as Kate’s mother. Isakovic was terrific as the browbeaten husband of Petra and Kate’s father. Leonard was harsh in her role as Kate’s sister, with whom there were a lot of animosities. I didn’t think this part of the film was developed enough, and their conversations felt too jarring at times. Thompson and Bryony Kimmings wrote this screenplay in such a way that it didn’t telegraph the ending, and that was a good thing. Paul Feig got the feel of this story right.

Overall: After the end credits, I was surprised by how much I ended up liking this film.

The Laundromat

First Hit: Confusing in presentation and often meandering away from the point, this movie fails in presenting how shell companies work to launder money and how this wrongdoing is hidden from governments.

This film attempts to teach and engage the audience about the art of laundering money through a story of tragedy, charts and graphs, and humorous vignettes. It fails on all three fronts.

Jurgen Mossack (Gary Oldman) and Ramon Fonseca (Antonio Banderas) are two flamboyant law partners based in Panama City who run a set of bogus insurance and reinsurance companies. These insurance companies scam others by taking their money, hide it, change documentation, and then legally never payout against the claims. They also have set up schemes of shell companies where money is hidden and moved around so that taxes are never paid on the money.

The human life stories they use include Ellen and Joe Martin (Meryl Streep and James Cromwell, respectively) who are in retirement and decide to go on a lake tour boat. The boat capsizes because of a rogue wave, and Joe dies along with several others. Ellen, as one of the survivors, expects a class action financial settlement from the tour boat company’s insurance company.

However, Ellen’s lawyer (Larry Clarke) discovers that the insurance company used by the boat tour company had sold the policy to someone else and that the timing issue means the boat company wasn’t insured.

The film spends a little time with the boat owner, Captain Paris (Robert Patrick), as he discovers from his employee Matthew Quirk (David Schwimmer) that he’d gotten a deal on the insurance, and that’s why he selected this company. The payments were going to a shell company (postal box) on Nevis Island in the Caribbean that is run by Malchus Irvin Boncamper (Jeffrey Wright).

Ellen, who is mad as hell, traces the payment scheme and goes to Nevis, hoping to recover a settlement and discovers that the address is only a postal box.

The film stupidly adds in stuff about how Boncamper has two families, one on Nevis and one in Miami. And he gets caught in this charade while being arrested in Miami by the federal government.

The story also adds in other drama about a wealthy man, from Africa, living in the US having an affair with his daughter’s college friend. Getting caught by the daughter, he bribes her to not tell her mother by giving her a company that’s supposedly is worth $20M. Because of a previous indiscretion that his wife knew about, this man had also given his wife a company. Angry at the bribe and tired of his shenanigans, the wife and daughter head to Panama City to visit Mossack and Fonseca and cash in their stock.

Of course, they discover that their companies are fake shell organizations, and the stock is worth nothing because the husband has transferred all the funds to his own companies.

There are ill-timed and confusing graphics thrown into the mix, and there are additional maudlin scenes of Ellen with her daughter and grandchildren in Las Vegas where Ellen and Joe had met. The whole Las Vegas segue could have been left out as it added little to the story.

This film suffers significantly from the beginning moments with Mossack and Fonseca in contrived scenes with them talking to the camera and attempting to explain financial schemes in horrible accents that make it even more muddled.

Streep is wasted and horribly underused in this story. Oldman is horrible. I’ve no idea of what he was attempting to represent because one moment he’s sitting in a beach chair and the next he’s pretending to be a lawyer using a perverse accent. Banderas was slightly better than Oldman, but not much. Wright was okay as the elusive representative of a fake insurance company. Schwimmer was OK as the relative and employee of the tour boat company that had looked to save them money on insurance premiums. There are nearly forty other actors playing roles in this story, but because the story is confusingly contrived, no one character is developed. Scott Z. Burns wrote a disastrous screenplay. Steven directed this, and it would have been interesting to better understand what was in his head. I was thrown from one ill-conceived scene to another while being interrupted with graphic explanations with poorly articulated voiceovers.

Overall: I learned little to nothing about shell companies and tax avoidance because the stories thrown up on the screen were poorly conceived.

Zombieland: Double Tap

First Hit: There are some wonderfully funny moments in this zombie spoof.

Ten years after the original Zombieland, the same characters are back, older, wiser, and ready to take on the ever-evolving zombies. To this end, the team talks about the three different types of zombies, but then they learn about the high powered zombies.

Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), Columbus (Jessie Eisenberg), Wichita (Emma Stone), and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) are still roaming the eastern part of the United States, taking what they want, living where they want, and killing all the Zombies that come their way.

The women are struggling with the men. Little Rock is feeling out of sorts because she’s running around with adults, and she would like to find people her own age. Wichita is feeling pressured by Columbus to get married. Adding to the women’s misery, Tallahassee thinks he’s the boss of this motley crew and spends most of his time tinkering with The Beast, the Gatling gun protected car.

Deciding to take residence in the White House, things come to a head. Little Rock and Wichita steal The Beast and leave a cryptic note for the men saying “so long.”

Wichita and Little Rock run into a young hippy they call Berkeley (Avan Jogia), who is a pacifist guitar-playing guy looking for Babylon. A place he says, where no guns allowed, and the compound is walled off to protect the residents from the zombies.

Columbus runs into Madison (Zoey Deutch) at a mall that he and Tallahassee are pilfering. She’s a dumb blonde who has been living in a freezer that keeps her safe from the zombies. She goes back to the White House with him and seduces him.

Little Rock leaves her sister Wichita to run off with Berkeley in search of Graceland and then maybe Babylon. Alone, Wichita comes back to the White House to ask Tallahassee and Columbus to help her find her younger sister. But as soon as she gets there, she confronts Columbus for sleeping with Madison so quickly after she had left.

Deciding to stay together, they head out to find Little Rock, fearing she’s making a mistake. The journey has them killing lots of zombies on their way to Graceland, thinking that is where Little Rock was headed. After seeing Graceland empty, they find the church of Elvis and find Nevada (Rosario Dawson) running the joint, alone. Ready to rest before heading out again, The Beast is run over and crushed by a monster truck driven by Albuquerque (Luke Wilson) and Flagstaff (Thomas Middleditch).

With Albuquerque and Flagstaff acting just like Tallahassee and Columbus, respectively, there are moments of great full-throated laughs through the one-ups-man-ship of these four guys. The back and forth is priceless.

The theme of this film is outrageous fun through gags and props. Some of the accessories are; The Beast, the suburban van, the motorhome, Babylon (pronounced by Madison as “Baby lon”), and who killed Bill Murray. Murray is shown in the opening minutes of the ending credits, stay for this. Even Elvis gets his due in this film.

Harrelson is hilarious. He uses sincere looks while going through his mood swings. But the underlying smirk of amusement and self-deprecating humor makes his performance thoroughly enjoyable. Eisenberg was excellent as the semi-cautious list-making member of this crew. Stone is terrific as Eisenberg’s love interest and older sister to Little Rock. Breslin has physically changed more than anyone of the other actors in this crew because she was very young in the original film. She carried her scenes with strength. Deutch was so much fun as the dumb blonde. She made this role work exceptionally well, and I enjoyed her as an addition to this team. Dawson was beautiful as the proprietor of the church of Elvis. Wilson and Middleditch were great as memes of Harrelson and Eisenberg respectively. The swagger of Wilson and the nerdiness of Middleditch were correctly done. Jogla, as Berkeley, the hippie, was OK. I just didn’t think he brought the same level of humor and fun to his role. Murray, in the credits, was excellent. Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, and Dave Callahan wrote a fun script. They didn’t try to make it too close to the first film and just let the fun be expressed in this one. Ruben Fleischer did an excellent job of directing this film with a loose fun-filled feel while keeping the story logical and moving.

Overall: This film was a great follow-up to the original.