Monthly Archives: August 2022

Uncharted

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Release: Friday, February 18, 2022

👀 Netflix

Written by: Rafe Judkins; Art Marcum; Matt Holloway

Directed by: Ruben Fleischer

Starring: Tom Holland; Mark Wahlberg; Antonio Banderas; Sophia Ali; Tati Gabrielle; Rudy Pankow

Distributor: Sony Pictures

 

 

**/*****

For the uninitiated, Uncharted is a popular series of video games that debuted on Playstation 3 in 2007. Hate to say it, but the 2022 movie adaptation starring Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg will not be considered the standard-setter its source has become heralded as. Hardly anything in the movie qualifies as bad, but just as much is actually worth remembering in the end.

Relying on good, old-fashioned movie star power to provide some sense of personality, Uncharted follows adventure-seeker Nathan Drake (Holland) on a quest to find out what happened to his older brother Sam (Rudy Pankow) who disappeared from his life when circumstances forced him to leave the Boston orphanage they grew up in. Whip ahead 15 years and Nate, now a bartender in New York who pickpockets patrons for minor thrills, is given an opportunity to put his specific skillset to better use.

A sleepwalking Mark Wahlberg plays fortune hunter Vincent ‘Sully’ Sullivan. More loyal to money than to people, Sully is as basic a character as they come and the portrayal does not exactly go above and beyond. He is after a massive treasure chest stashed away by famed explorer Ferdinand Magellan. He thinks he knows its general location but needs Nate’s help in pinpointing it. More valuable to Nate however is what Sully may know about his brother’s fate.

So they reluctantly team up, a career opportunist and a naive newbie working together about as well as oil and water as they assemble various valuable pieces (a key, a diary, a map) in an increasingly complex puzzle. However some of the pieces require further assistance to access, and so an already awkward partnership is further destabilized when they rendezvous with Sully’s contact Chloe Frazer (Sophia Ali) in Barcelona. Mysterious and shifty, she’s a veteran of Sully’s game of deception and will do whatever it takes to ensure history will not repeat itself. 

In the villainous camp we have Santiago Moncado (Antonio Banderas) who, as the last living descendant, is desperate to restore the Moncado name in view of the historical embarrassment of his ancestors having lost the treasure. Banderas brings some menace but ultimately he’s outshined by the striking-looking Tati Gabrielle, who dials up the intensity as Jo Braddock, a ruthless mercenary who has her own designs on Moncado’s long lost loot.

All these competing interests theoretically make the movie more involving, especially when you have a dysfunctional group of good guys to keep an eye on as well. Because everything is so safe and routine the competition is not as exciting as it should be. However Uncharted comes more to life in the stunt work, which is kinetic, often inventive and infused with a decent amount of comedy. Peter Parker’s Cirque du Soleil moment at an art auction and the grand finale where everything is literally up in the air are memorable passages in a voyage that’s content to skim the surface of its themes and ride almost entirely on the likability factor of its in-demand leading man.

There’s no ‘I’ in TEAM. But there is a ‘ME’ if you move the letters around

Moral of the Story: Uncharted is an undemanding escape in which the compass always points to the wreckage of superior adventure films. The title is a misnomer for a film that is the very definition of average, one that shows the challenges of translating active participation of gameplay into the passive entertainment of movie watching. It’s entirely inoffensive and easy to get along with but if you’re looking for a more robust adventure, check out a younger, pre-Spidey Tom Holland in 2016’s underrated gem The Lost City of Z. 

Rated: PG-13

Running Time: 116 mins.

Quoted: “Nuns. Why is it always nuns?” 

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited.

Photo credits: http://www.impawards.com; http://www.imdb.com

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn

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Release: Friday, November 19, 2021 (limited)

👀 Hulu

Written by: Radu Jude

Directed by: Radu Jude

Starring: Katia Pascariu; Olimpia Malai; Claudia Ieremia; Nicodim Ungureanu; Andi Vasluianu

 

 

 

****/*****

If you are someone trying hard to block out the noise of the last few years of heightened enmity, this confrontational tragicomedy out of Romania is not going to be your friend. I’m not sure it’s anyone’s friend; it’s more like a troll in movie form, designed to trigger and infuriate. Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn is not always an easy watch but in getting under your skin, it’s one you are going to struggle to forget.

Yes, it’s a silly title — there’s some nuance lost in the translation from the original Romanian title into English — but the subject matter is serious and the atmosphere tense and uncomfortable. Set in the nation’s capital of Bucharest and filmed during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the award-winning Bad Luck Banging holds up a mirror to our current times. It harnesses all the emotions and energy that have been bottled up inside and directs almost all of it toward a lone woman, a history teacher named Emi (Katia Pascariu), whose sex tape that she makes with her husband ends up circulating around the internet and causes an uproar at the well-to-do secondary school where she works.

It isn’t just the subject matter that makes this a challenging and sometimes maddening experience. Writer/director Radu Jude plays with form in a way that’s both fascinating and frustrating. He deploys a familiar three-act structure but really this is a self-contained, day-in-the-life style narrative interrupted by an interminable middle section. Here, the filmmaker free-associates every single pertinent concept and symbol in a montage that distills humanity down to its base functions. Though not without purpose, the second act is so cynical it eventually becomes off-putting. There’s a lot of national identity and rage tied up in this sequence but the criticism of society is so encompassing it feels like an unfocused rant.

However what lies on either side of this creative intermission is a modern social satire with serious teeth. Marius Panduru’s camerawork plays a large part in shaping what and how much you feel as the story evolves. What begins as objective, an observation of a woman going about her day doing errands and trying to figure out how to get the video removed from a place it was never supposed to be in the first place, steadily grows more opinionated, more vicious, more ridiculous.

In the first segment Panduru follows the actor from a distance as Emi makes her way through the busy city toward the parent-teacher conference that will soon determine her fate. Moving like a tourist, or perhaps a child trying to make sense of the circus around them, the camera occasionally, and suggestively, comes to rest on the immovable and inescapable objects of a world where sex sells everything from books to Barbie dolls. 

Eventually though, and like her fellow educators who purport to be morally and intellectually upstanding (despite their liberal use of offensive epithets, particularly to women and ethnic Romani), the camera too turns on her and settles in with the hecklers. The climactic confrontation is a spectacle worth the wait. Indeed, it won’t be the eyebrow-raising opening scene that will have people talking — cleverly-placed graphics serve as a running gag throughout, the more racy content suited and tied under the guise of decency. Rather, it will be the combustible third act which chains Emi to the whipping pillar as the accusations and insults fly.

As humiliating as the scene is, it’s also galvanizing and weirdly thrilling. Without divulging all the gory details, there are yet more surprises in store in terms of the way Jude experiments with traditional narrative delivery and subverts your expectation of where things go from here. It’s not that any of the hateful rhetoric being thrown around is funny but as the animosity intensifies it becomes almost impossible not to let something slip out; a nervous chuckle does the same job as the Xanax Emi is denied in a drugstore. You need some relief from the stress.

Bad Luck Banging embraces taboo in a way that will draw only passionate responses, not just from those who endured it but from those who have only heard things about it and want to dismiss it out of hand. That’s understandable, but the movie doesn’t end up as exploitative as the title sounds. Some of the artistic choices annoyingly delay what could be a more streamlined narrative, but as the tension builds in the final stretch there appears to be a method to Jude’s class(-less) madness.

Yummy.

Moral of the Story: Not for the faint of heart, Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn is caustic, bizarre and features elements so heavy you kind of wonder whether this even qualifies as comedy. This is my first experience watching a film from Romania (I think) and while it’s not one I will necessarily return to, it is a breath of fresh air away from Hollywood, a bold film barely able to contain its righteous anger. (Dialogue is in Romanian with English subtitles and captions.)

Rated: NR

Running Time: 106 mins.

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited.

Photo credits: http://www.impawards.com; http://www.imdb.com 

Hustle

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Release: Wednesday, June 8, 2022 (Netflix)

👀 Netflix

Written by: Taylor Materne; Will Fetters

Directed by: Jeremiah Zagar

Starring: Adam Sandler; Juancho Hernangómez; Ben Foster; Robert Duvall; Queen Latifah; half the NBA

 

 

 

****/*****

When you’re passionate about something it tends to show, and that’s what happens with Adam Sandler’s latest Netflix movie Hustle. The actor’s well-documented enthusiasm for the game of basketball bleeds over into his work here, which turns out to be some of the best of his career. Bobby Boucher and Happy Gilmore may have given us some good laughs, but Sandler is more compelling when he isn’t playing a cartoon.

In Hustle he shows that passion by bringing attention to the sidelines rather than center court. The behind-the-scenes role of the NBA scout is highlighted in a way that evokes the esoteric space of Steven Soderbergh’s High Flying Bird (2019), which told the story of a sports agent navigating an NBA lockout. The emotional beats however hew closer to the traditional underdog narrative of perennial hardwood classic Hoosiers (1986). Sandler is a recognizable face but here he effortlessly blends into the crowd as a family man, a hard-working Philadelphian who loves this town, this game and being this close to it. His authentic portrayal is largely why something so familiar works so well.

A bloodshot-eyed, fast-food-slurping Sandler plays Stanley Sugerman, a top scout for the Philadelphia 76ers who has devoted years to traveling the world over in search of the next big talent. More familiar with airport terminals than the hallways of his own home, he’s looking for a promotion that will further challenge him and also keep him closer to his wife, Teresa (Queen Latifah) and aspiring filmmaker daughter Alex (Jordan Hull). Luckily his dedication and eye for detail have built a lot of credit with team owner Rex Merrick (Robert Duvall), who finally gives him a more active team role.

But then Rex unexpectedly passes away and, in a baffling development — one of a few head-scratching moments in Taylor Materne and Will Fetters’ screenplay, another being the weird decision to prop up the NBA Combine as if it has playoff implications — ownership is transferred not to his competent daughter Kat (Heidi Gardner) but rather to his inexperienced and vindictive son Vince (Ben Foster), who promptly 180s on his father’s decision and banishes Stanley back to the road. In Spain, he comes across a streetball game being dominated by a young phenom named Bo Cruz (NBA reserve Juancho Hernangómez) and immediately identifies him as a potential franchise-changer.

It’s already an uphill battle convincing the higher-ups to take an unknown as the #1 overall pick in the upcoming draft. It certainly doesn’t help when an emotional outburst during an exhibition game exposes Bo as a potential liability and triggers an unfortunate narrative in the media, one that Stanley has trouble getting in front of considering the omnipresence of Vince and his natural disdain for everything he does. The crux of the drama finds Stanley in damage control mode, trying to save his reputation while proving to his young prospect he actually cares about his future.

Hustle may shortchange the talented Ben Foster with a one-note corporate bozo role, but it’s the two leads whom we are here to see and they form a really likable team. Though each are impelled by love of family to compete at a high level, they couldn’t be more different in background and upbringing. The story doesn’t exactly shy away from sports drama tropes. Cue the obligatory training montage, where comparisons to Rocky are inescapable and feel almost intentional, and the evolution of a partnership into genuine friendship.

What helps offset the film’s many cliches is director Jeremiah Zagar’s commitment to world-building. Hustle has production design so authentic you might actually think Zagar snuck inside the Wells Fargo Center and filmed guerilla-style. Fans of the game will have a field day spotting all the names that come through the scene, with former and current players, coaches and front office staff all getting some camera time (while sneakily supplying the production with its quota of product placement). Yet it’s Anthony Edwards (of the Minnesota Timberwolves) who gets to actually leave an impression, stealing the show for a moment as a trash-talking hotshot who’s also a top candidate for the team. 

In the end, Hustle (and by extension, Sandler) isn’t trying to dazzle you with how much it knows about the X’s and O’s. It’s all about the game within the game, the psychological aspects that make pro sport so challenging. Don’t call it a classic, but the fourth quarter rally is very fun to watch. Because the performances are so earnest and believable, what’s routine ends up feeling rewarding.

“Look, I had this Rocky montage set up especially for you. Don’t blow it, kid.”

Moral of the Story: Perhaps more for NBA fans than casual viewers, Hustle is a modern-feeling sports drama that is also worth watching for another outstanding turn from the erstwhile King of Bad Comedy. (Do we start petitioning for Sandler to star in more basketball related movies? He seems to do those pretty well.) 

Rated: R

Running Time: 117 mins.

Quoted: “Guys in their 50’s don’t have dreams, they have nightmares . . . and eczema.”

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited. 

Photo credits: http://www.impawards.com; http://www.imdb.com 

The Gray Man

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Release: Friday, July 15, 2022 (limited) 

👀 Netflix

Written by: Joe Russo; Christopher Markus; Stephen McFeely

Directed by: Anthony Russo; Joe Russo

Starring: Ryan Gosling; Chris Evans; Ana de Armas; Regé-Jean Page; Julia Butters; Billy Bob Thornton; Alfre Woodard; Jessica Henwick

 

 

***/*****

Thinking is a hazard to your health in the modern action movie. The good news is when something moves as stylishly and as quickly as The Gray Man you don’t have a lot of time to do that. Distractions are in abundance in the Russo brothers’ star-studded and action-packed extravaganza based on the 2009 novel of the same name by Mark Greaney.

Featuring the ensemble cast of an Ocean’s Eleven and the globetrotting scale of a James Bond installment, The Gray Man is one of Netflix’s most expensive and ambitious undertakings to date, costing the streamer a whopping $200 million — and that’s just for this first episode, with plans for a sequel and a spin-off announced immediately. Sadly the foundation (the first movie, that is) isn’t very strong to begin with, so it’s anyone’s guess as to what quality franchise we’ll get out of translating more of the thriller novelist’s work.

In the meantime, what will likely be most remembered from this near-breathless first installment is Chris Evans hamming it up big-time as the main antagonist, the sadistic Lloyd Hansen. I’m prioritizing the villain because the pleasure he takes in making others uncomfortable is something that makes him stand out in a movie that doesn’t have much to offer personality-wise. It’s a showy if overcompensating depiction of sociopathy that suggests Evans wants to be as far removed from Cap’s shield as Daniel Radcliffe wants to be from Hogwarts. If there’s something The Gray Man does well, it’s providing a bad guy you can’t wait to see brought to his knees.

Ironically the “good” guy is less compelling, even if he is played by the enigmatic Ryan Gosling. In 2003 Court Gentry, a convicted killer, is visited in prison by a CIA official named Donald Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton) who tells him his sentence will be commuted in exchange for his cooperation with the agency in bringing down a national security threat. Court is to join the CIA’s clandestine Sierra program, where he will assume the code name ‘Six,’ because “007 was taken.” Years later, after a botched mission in Bangkok, Six comes into possession of a thumb drive which contains some secrets the CIA, namely the ambitious Denny Carmichael (Regé-Jean Page), would rather not let loose. So he goes rogue, sending the file to Prague where a trusted source (Alfre Woodard) will be able to decrypt it, while coming into the crosshairs of a rampaging Lloyd Hansen who will do anything to get a job done.

This includes kidnapping Fitzroy’s teenage daughter Claire (Julia Butters) for leverage in forcing her father to give the go-ahead to eliminate Six, leading to one of The Gray Man‘s stand-out action scenes aboard a cargo plane. Though fully aware of his disposability, he discovers that maybe not everyone is out to get him when he crosses paths with Dani Miranda (Ana de Armas), a CIA agent who, along with Carmichael’s underling Suzanna Brewer (Jessica Henwick), is scrambling to salvage her career thanks to the trail of destruction that has followed Hansen and his willfully unethical methods.

Piling up casualties as quickly as Thanos can snap his fingers, The Gray Man is hardly ever dull. The plot is simple and the direction propulsive but because we don’t really get to know the characters beyond their skill sets and job titles it is also a fairly impersonal affair, feeling more like a series of things that happen rather than things you care about. Attempts to humanize Gosling’s emotionally frigid Court come in the form of perfunctory flashbacks to a bad childhood and an underdeveloped dynamic with Claire, to whom he is entrusted to protect. On that note, Butters is even less fortunate, her character bearing few attributes beyond the heart condition that makes her vulnerable and serves as a plot device.

If the action genre is defined now by cold indifference, The Gray Man should be viewed as a success. The Russos have put together an adrenaline-pumping ride that doesn’t demand anything from the viewer other than a Netflix subscription and a family-sized bucket of popcorn. It may not feature any extraterrestrial threat or super-powered beings, but this is a spectacle involving some balloons, a lot of bullets, and colored smoke for some reason. The Gray Man looks every bit the money that was spent on it, but huge sums of cash don’t directly translate into strong characters and intriguing moral situations. I’m probably thinking too much about it, but this cat-and-mouse game could have — should have — been better.

For the second review in a row, we have strong Mustache representation.

Moral of the Story: I’m giving this otherwise pretty bland action thriller a 3 instead of a 2 out of 5 stars simply because Chris Evans chews the scenery so much he enlivens the entire thing. Gosling is okay; he’s not doing anything radically different, and even though there is a lot of action — the Russos definitely deliver quantity — I’m not sure if any of the big set pieces have staying power. Honestly, it’s just another Saturday night action escape. 

Rated: PG-13

Running Time: 114 mins.

Quoted: “Normally at this point in the night, I wouldn’t be sticking around. With the house lights about to come on, I’d find a desperate, ugly chick to lick my wounds and split. But you have been a pebble in my shoe since the very beginning, and now I just don’t think I can walk away. Guess what I’m thinking right now . . .”

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited.

Photo credits: http://www.impawards.com; http://www.imdb.com