2019 Recent Films

SPOILER ALERT! The plots will be discussed.

I thought I would change things up a bit and provide some brief comments on films that have come out in recent months.

Late Night

This movie is written by and stars Mindy Kaling, who has a personality that is almost impossible not to like, unless you are just into dark, depressing movies, which, I know, have their apocalyptic appeal. Her character gets a job as a comedy writer on Katherine Newbury’s (Emma Thompson) long-running late night talk show, basically as a “diversity hire.” Katherine has no female writers on her staff despite her supposed feminist ways. It’s a bit hard to accept that Molly, whose only comedy background is cracking jokes while working at a chemical plant, gets the job. She is a young fan of Katherine’s but the show does not appear relevant anymore. Katherine has a biting wit and can be difficult to work with. Some of her soft side comes through when dealing with her husband, played by John Lithgow, who has Parkinson’s disease. But, our sympathy for her is undercut since Katherine had an affair with the writing staff’s womanizer (High Dancy), who tries to put the moves on Molly, too. Katherine is reluctant to do topical humor, first appearing ready to use Molly’s abortion joke, but then deciding to skip over it at the last moment.

Katherine’s emotional side comes across when she witnesses Molly’s humor during a stand-up routine at a charity event. Katherine proceeds to go onstage and is genuine in her feelings about the possibility of her show being cancelled and is more vulnerable in her humor. Katherine starts to use some of Molly’s jokes and interacts more with the audience. The network still tries to replace her with a sleazy comic. Katherine fires Molly for telling her she’s wrong not to fight back, but eventually does stand up for herself, and rehires Molly. Time passes, and there is more diversity at the show and it is a success again.

Despite Kaling’s appeal, and Thompson’s talent, the film just doesn’t gel. The plot is not believable, and the jokes fall flat. The characters have no real depth to them. There is one hilarious scene, though, that satirizes the absurdity of untalented people who become “stars” on the internet. Katherine has a YouTube celebrity on her show whose claim to fame is her sniffing her dog’s butt and then fainting. The film argues that just because something is odd doesn’t make it worthwhile, and the proliferation of these type of mindless diversions contributes to the dumbing down of our culture.

Yesterday

Oscar winning director Danny Boyle’s comedy-drama presents a speculative story about what the world would be like if the music of the Beatles did not exist. It starts out with its focus on a somewhat talented singer-songwriter, Jack Malick (Himest Patel), living in Suffolk, England, who gets small gigs booked by his childhood friend, Ellie Appleton (Lily James, the “Apple” part of her character’s name suggestive of what is to come?). He is playing at a sparsely attended tent at a festival when there is a world-wide power outage. Jack, on his bicycle, gets knocked out after a bus hits him. Later, Ellie gets him a new guitar and he starts to play “Yesterday.” His friends think it’s wonderful and believe Jack wrote it. After realizing they are not kidding, he can’t find any evidence of the Beatles or their songs (or Coca Cola, cigarettes, and Harry Potter for that matter, suggesting the world would be quite a different place for the better and the worst if some things never came into existence).

He strains his memory to recall as much of the songs’ music and lyrics since there is no reference material. He sees this opportunity as a way for him to finally realize his dream of becoming successful. It’s great to hear the songs, but we realize that at this point Jack’s quest is self-serving. Despite the quality of the work, it still takes some time for a producer to want to record the songs, but Jack gets a boost from pop star Ed Sheeran playing himself. Jack eventually becomes hugely popular, but there is a bit of humor on how Jack’s rendition of “Back in the U.S.S.R.” is out of date given the fall of the Soviet Union. Some songs are of their time. In addition, the record company wants to change the name of the “White Album” to “The One and Only,” an ironically erroneous title since the songs belong to others, not to Jack. Sheeran also retitles “Hey Jude” to “Hey Dude,” illustrating how in the wrong hands a song can be greatly diminished.

As the story continues we learn that there are two other people who remember the Beatles music, and there is the suggestion that Jack will be revealed as a fraud. But, the movie takes an unexpected, and gratifying turn, in that the two show up at a major concert and are thrilled that Jack has brought the Beatles’ music back to life. Jack acknowledges to the world that the songs are not his, but were created by John, Paul, George and Ringo. He wants the music available for free. There is a shift away from Jack’s personal drive for fame to his understanding of the importance to ensure the world is enriched by the songs.

Another marvelous twist in the story is that Jack tracks down the still living John Lennon (Robert Carlyle, who, through digital enhancement and make-up, looks and sounds exactly like an elderly Lennon). Since Lennon didn’t become famous in this dimension, he was not assassinated, and is currently seventy-eight, and has had a wonderful life with his wife and children. The film poses the question as to which life was better for Lennon, one of fame and fortune cut down at an early age, or one of longevity and happiness? The movie leaves us to ponder the question, and the different ways that life can play out depending on the circumstances.

The long-simmering love between Jack and Ellie is consummated, they are married, and we hear him and school children happily singing the delightful, “Ob-La-Di, Ob La Da,” showing us that Jack can also be successful without fame.

Crawl

Okay, this movie probably swam past a lot of people this summer because there have been scary films about alligators before, and they have fallen into the B-Movie category, or even B-minus. Yes, this story is unbelievable in how the main characters can survive the onslaught of these nasty amphibians. But, the film works in many ways.

The main character is Haley (Kaya Scodelario), and we first see her competing in a University of Florida swim relay race. There are flashbacks of her as a child with her father, Dave (Barry Pepper), who was her gung-ho coach, calling her a “predator,” to encourage her when she lost a contest. This opening shows how she wants to live up to her father’s expectations, and how she is as much of a beast as the gators she will be confronting.

To add to the great atmospheric tension of the movie, there is a category 5 hurricane bearing down on the state, and Haley gets a call from her sister telling her that their father isn’t answering her calls. Their parents are divorced, and we later find that Dave was selling the family house. Haley avoids the police roadblock and makes it to the house where she finds her dad in the basement where an alligator bit him and he broke his leg. She eventually fights off two alligators, blinding one, but she also suffers a bite. She eventually shoots one of the critters while the gator has the hand holding the gun in its mouth. Anyway, there are other people who show up and many more alligators. There are several casualties along the way until daughter and father, though chewed on, beat off the predators and are eventually saved.

The special weather effects are convincing, the alligators are scary, and there is a Jaws-like suspense to the film. The amusing closing song is “See you later, alligator.” (On a personal note, when I first went to the theater to see this movie, it was a hundred degree day, with the air conditioning working overtime to fight the heat. Besides myself, there was a young couple in the theater. After about a half-hour, we heard a loud dripping sound, followed by the ceiling coming down in front of us. The other fellow went to get an employee who gave us passes, and I eventually saw the rest of the film - at another theater. I told the couple I like special effects, but bringing the hurricane into the theater was taking it a bit too far, and I was waiting for an alligator to slither out of the ceiling tiles.)

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

This latest Quentin Tarantino film is supposedly his next to last movie. It is a good thing that this isn’t his final work, because, for me, it was a disappointment. In prior films, Tarantino has taken real historical events, such as the war with the Nazis in Inglourious Basterds, and slavery, in Django Unchained, and then rewrote the past through the art of movie magic by killing off Hitler and the slave owners in those motion pictures, giving audiences satisfactory justice and revenge, imaginative thought it may be. He does the same thing here, erasing the Manson Family murders, by having his stars, Leonardo DiCaprio, as former TV lead Rick Dalton, and Brad Pitt, as his stunt double Cliff Booth, killing off the bad guys and saving Roman Polanski’s actress/wife, Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie). (Referencing his own Inglourious Basterds, Rick was in a film where he incinerated Nazis, as Pitt’s character did in Basterds, and uses the retained working flamethrower to cremate one of the Manson clan).

The movie shows Hollywood at a time when TV was the inferior version of motion pictures, and television actors were considered second-class entertainment citizens. Rick goes the way of Clint Eastwood, graduating from playing TV cowboys to acting in Spaghetti Westerns. Cliff hangs onto a living as long as Rick is earning, and we see that he lives marginally in a trailer with his dog. He even has to be the alcoholic Rick’s chauffeur. The whole Manson element shows the perversion of the hippie movement of the time, and the fear experienced by some of Hollywood’s elite that they might be targets of anti-establishment forces. Cliff seems like a working-class hero who has the courage to enter the Manson compound to check on an old Hollywood friend whose land the Manson group is inhabiting. And it is funny to see him hold his own in an impromptu fighting match with the bragging Bruce Lee. But he has a dark past where he may have killed his wife, but was not convicted. (A reference to the Natalie Wood death?). After Rick helps save Tate, the doors to her mansion open up, and Rick is invited in, as if the gods of Hollywood may deem to raise him to movie star status.

Unlike other Tarantino films that thrive on witty, quirky dialogue delivered by odd but fascinating characters, this movie is not very funny, the characters not terribly interesting, and the plot drags in many spots. Quentin, let’s hope you’re saving your best for last.

The next film is The Road.