June 2018

June was clearly a major movie month for me, as I tried utilize my MoviePass membership as much as possible. The downside to this system is that you tend to see a lot of the same trailers over and over again—I already feel like I’ve seen The Darkest Minds, Crazy Rich Asians and Ant-Man and the Wasp already. But overall, it’s a great deal—the $100 a year membership has already paid for itself!
This month, I had dinner with Choiwan down at the Howard Hughes Dave & Buster’s, where she was revealed to be a “coin pusher” slot-machine junkie. We had fun collecting Star Trek cards, but the place was a little too noisy for me. I got a root canal on tooth #31, as it’s known in dental circles, and July should bring a new crown for that tooth. I flew up to see Jay perform as the villainous Frollo in the musical The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which was very well executed. BOOKS: I listened to the 18-hour audiobook of Stephen King’s new horror novel The Outsider, which was excellent, and am currently about halfway through reading Tomorrow’s Children, a sci-fi short-story anthology edited by Isaac Asimov (a book I admired a lot in my youth but never actually read). Also, I received and devoured the latest Dick Tracy comic-strip anthology. TV: The Affair and Penn and Teller: Fool Us have returned, so I’ve been enjoying those, and am looking forward to Better Call Saul and Orange Is the New Black returning in the coming month or two. MUSIC: I “drilled” the Hunchback soundtrack, enjoyed a new release by Pugwash and listened to a bunch of current radio hits.

Here are the movies I saw in June:

UPGRADE (2018)—This science-fiction actioner was likely pitched as John Wick meets The Six Million Dollar Man. After mechanic Grey (Logan Marshall-Green) and his lovely wife Asha (Melanie Vallejo) are in a devastating car accident, paid assassins leave her dead and him a paraplegic. Enter billionaire biotech scientist Eron Keen (Harrison Gilbertson), who offers to restore Grey’s physical capabilities. The operation is a success, but the miracle chip has a mind of its own, and through a series of mental conversations, starts helping Grey solve the mystery of his wife’s murder. It’s the kind of thing we’ve seen a bunch of times before; it’s plotted so briskly that you tend to overlook a lot of nagging questions, implausibilities and an ending that makes very little sense. It is difficult, however, to overlook the embarrassingly awful performance by Gilbertson as the scientist—it’s total amateur hour whenever he’s onscreen. The movie borrows its storyline from numerous sources, including The Matrix. It’s more like a comic book than a movie, but at least it’s not a boring comic book. (8)

FIRST REFORMED (2018)—Ethan Hawke stars as the pastor of a historical church in upstate New York who suffers a crisis of faith after the violent death of resident in his town. Paul Schrader, the screenwriter of Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and writer/director of many others, gives a slow-moving but chilling story of Hawke’s transformation from a thoughtful religious leader to a potentially dangerous psychopath. Amanda Seyfried co-stars as a pretty member of Hawke’s flock, with whom he forges a strong bond. Watching this movie felt like I was reading a short story—it has a literary feel to it. Hawke is very good at showing numerous layers to his complex character. The movie perfectly illustrates one man’s gradual undoing, and contains several shocking twists. (8)

THE SEAGULL (2018)—Two movies opened last month featuring Brooklyn star Saoirse Ronan: On Chesil Beach and The Seagull. Both films are above average, with Ronan outshining the material in both cases. The Seagull takes place in Russia, with all Russian characters, except for once, nobody speaks English with a Russian accent; they’re all speaking in their natural American drawls. (Well, except Ronan is Irish, so she is doing a fake accent—just not a Russian one.) This is a film version of the famous Anton Chekhov play, in which an aging actress (Annette Bening) is dating a popular writer (Corey Stoll), who in turn flips for Ronan, who is dating Bening’s son (Billy Howle), who is loved by Masha (Elisabeth Moss). So it’s basically a triple love triangle story, and there are a bunch of petty jealousies and suicide attempts. None of it really adds up to a whole hell of a lot, but Bening is terrific. (8)

ADRIFT (2018)—True story of Tami Oldham (here played by Shailene Woodley), who along with her boyfriend Richard Sharp (Sam Clafin) attempt to navigate a friend’s sailboat across the Pacific Ocean—and run straight into a hurricane. Their boat badly damaged, Oldham must move heaven and earth to survive what will prove to be a seemingly endless search for rescue. Woodley does a marvelous job showing us the immense strength and fortitude of this movie’s exceptional heroine, and director Baltasar Kormákur gives us a great deal of intrigue and suspense. I’ve seen other survival dramas like this one (most recently Robert Redford’s All Is Lost), but Adrift is among the best, with incredible special effects and a storyline that is both gripping and romantic. Bring a box of Kleenex for that ending! (10)

HEREDITARY (2018)—In The Sixth Sense, Toni Collette had a son who could see dead people. In the new horror movie Hereditary, her daughter can see dead people (although sooner or later, pretty much all of the characters in the film can see them). Collette has no sooner buried her estranged mother than creepy things start to happen involving her husband, son and daughter. There are three or four excellent scenes when the movie suddenly springs to life, but the rest of it is a confounding, scattershot mess. Much of the time it moves along like molasses, and the rest of the time very little of it makes sense, with very little of it adding up by the time the credits roll. As of this writing, the movie has a very high rating on the Tomatometer (94%), which is arguably scarier than anything in the movie. (5)

WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR? (2018)—A documentary about Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood creator Fred Rogers, who was an ordained minister, television pioneer and savvy child whisperer. I watched his groundbreaking series as a child, and the film perfectly illustrates how this gentle, soft-spoken man was able to connect with kids in ways other TV hosts were simply not interested in doing. Family members, co-stars and colleagues all provide insights into the Rogers psyche, but it’s the words of Rogers himself that best speak for the subject of this thoroughly thought-provoking documentary. (9)

BOUNDARIES (2018)—Irene Tsu invited me to see this comedy-drama screener at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. It’s a road-trip comedy about a daughter (Vera Farmiga) who must take her frequently estranged and aging dad (Christopher Plummer) to her sister’s house to live. Although it is a typical road-trip movie, it’s wittier than most. Director Shana Feste and co-star Peter Fonda were interviewed after the movie. (9)

RIFFTRAX LIVE: SPACE MUTINY (2018)—The comedy team riffs on this execrable Star Wars ripoff from 1988. As usual, a truly ghastly movie makes excellent fodder for Michael J. Nelson and his wisecracking crew. (9)

JURASSIC WORLD FALLEN KINGDOM (2018)—When we first see Bryce Dallas Howard in this dinosaur sequel—the fifth in the series that began in 1993—she’s using a smartphone, and we fans of Black Mirror will be excused for remembering all of the trouble she got into swiping on that app in the episode Nosedive. But there is way, way more in Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom that deliberately reminds us of the four previous movies: all of the old tropes are here (such as the scene where a T-Rex is about to munch on the hero, when all of a sudden, another dinosaur attacks the T-Rex). As dumb as the story is, the movie follows the template of the predecessors, giving us great dinosaur effects, a cute-as-a-button kid, some evil humans and lots of explosions. (The only new element is the lava, because there’s an active volcano.) Silly but enjoyable. (9)

HEARTS BEAT LOUD (2018)—Nick Offerman (Parks and Recreation) is the dad; Kersey Clemons is his beautiful mixed-race lesbian daughter. She’s bound for college to become a doctor, but her dad—understandably proud of her musical gifts—wants her to take a year off and write songs with him. Together they record some admittedly catchy music, but she’s reluctant to pursue his dream. This is the basic premise of the film, and while it’s not much to hang a screenplay on, it works. Key to the movie is the charm of the two leading actors and the music they make. The ending is fairly predictable, but it’s a warm, embraceable movie—a close cousin to 2013’s Begin Again and 2007’s Once, with their shared stories of how two talented people come together to create some extraordinary pop music. Ted Danson, Blythe Danner and Toni Collette are along for the ride. (9)

INCREDIBLES 2 (2018)—Fourteen years after Pixar’s original superhero sendup, writer/director Brad Bird unleashes the sequel, and it’s every bit as fun, lively and funny as the original. Bob, Helen, Dash, Violet and Jack-Jack once again save the world, this time from a villain who isn’t unmasked until late in the film. The voice cast is wonderful, with Catherine Keener and Bob Odenkirk doing great guest-star work. (10)

AMERICAN ANIMALS (2018)—Here’s the first of two heist movies I saw in a row. This one could be dubbed Ocean's 4—it’s the true story of four young male students who plot to rob a Kentucky library of some extraordinarily rare books, including a priceless edition of John James Audubon's The Birds of America. Interviews with the actual four thieves (post-prison) make this kind of a docu-drama, and an informative one at that. Nicely done and well-directed. (8)

OCEAN’S 8 (2018)—Although I haven’t seen the other films in the Ocean’s series, and this spinoff features a few running characters, it can be enjoyed independently of the others. The “eight” refers to a group of women (played by Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway, Mindy Kaling, Sarah Paulson, Rihanna, Helena Bonham Carter and Awkwafina) who plot the heist of a diamond necklace valued at $150 million. It’s a mildly amusing, sometimes suspenseful caper film with a great cast; some of these ladies’ talents are wasted (especially Kaling), but the movie is worth seeing for Helena Bonham Carter’s character. (8)

LEAVE NO TRACE (2018)—A slowly paced but absorbing film directed and co-written by Debra Granik, Leave No Trace tells the story of a former soldier suffering from PTSD and his 13-year-old daughter, both of whom are living completely off the grid in the forest of a public park in Oregon. There they live off the land and seem to quite happy, until they are discovered by the authorities…and the story moves on from there. The film is sensitive, sometimes frustrating and ultimately deeply moving. One of the best films of the year and guaranteed to be an Oscar contender; currently it holds a well-deserved 100% on the Tomatometer. (10)

THE PARTY (2018)—The good news is that I can scratch a 2017 release off my list of “movies I was sorry I missed.” The Party, a short (70 minutes) film shot in gorgeous black and white, is a black comedy about a party celebrating Kristin Scott Thomas’s professional advancement, but the soon-to-be-exposed secrets and escalating emotions bubbling beneath the surface of the other six people attending the shindig (notably husband Timothy Spall and best friend Patricia Clarkson) could mean tragedy before the end of the evening. From what I’ve read, the film is a thinly disguised metaphor for Brexit or some other British current events; in any case, the movie didn’t really work for me, as I found it a bit of a bore. (5)