Movie Review: Love The Coopers (2015)

Also Known As: Christmas With The Coopers  

Genre: Dramedy  

Director: Jessie Nelson  

Starring: Diane Keaton, John Goodman, Marisa Tomei, Alan Arkin, Amanda Seyfried, Timothée Chalamet, Ed Helms, Jake Lacy, Anthony Mackie, June Squibb, Olivia Wilde  

Running Time: 107 minutes  

Synopsis: Christmas Eve is approaching, and four generations of the imperfect Cooper family are gathering for dinner. Sam and Charlotte (John Goodman and Diane Keaton) are hosting but also hiding their disintegrating marriage. Their black sheep daughter Eleanor (Olivia Wilde) meets a soldier (Jake Lacy) at the airport. The Cooper's divorced son (Ed Helms) is struggling with unemployment, while his teenaged son (Timothée Chalamet) is pursuing his first crush at the mall. Charlotte's sister (Marisa Tomei) is arrested for shoplifting and has an encounter with a police officer (Anthony Mackie), while Charlotte's father Bucky (Alan Arkin) has an argument with his regular diner server (Amanda Seyfried). 

What Works Well: With notable determination, this Christmas movie seeks a contrarian stance, avoiding feel-good vibes and zooming in on all that is wrong with the lives of the Coopers. Charlotte is doing her best to pretend and get on with the Christmas spirit, but all the family members are flailing as their character faults and life failures are revealed. The simple message of celebrating normal imperfection is straightforward and well-intentioned, and the opening two thirds offer the added enjoyment of guessing all the family connections. The quality cast and numerous mini-plots ensure the movie never dawdles in any one place for too long.

What Does Not Work As Well: After a lot of hard work to represent flawed characters, the resolutions run away from difficult outcomes and just surrender to traditional endings. With so many stories to tell, some of the more interesting secondary characters, notably Amanda Seyfried's diner server and Anthony Mackie's police officer, are shortchanged.

Key Quote:

Bucky: That feeling like you've landed in the wrong life. Everybody feels that way.

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Movie Review: Punchline (1988)

Genre: Drama  

Director: David Seltzer  

Starring: Sally Field, Tom Hanks, John Goodman  

Running Time: 122 minutes  

Synopsis: In New York City, Lilah Krystick (Sally Field) is a housewife and amateur stand-up comic. Although she is awkward on stage and rarely delivers laughs, she still performs regularly at the Gas Station club. Financially struggling fellow comic Steven Gold (Tom Hanks) is the club's rising star, but under family pressure to pursue a medical career. Lilah's husband John (John Goodman) wants her to focus on being a wife and mother, but she is determined to pursue comedy and strikes up a friendship with Steven.

What Works Well: Director and writer David Seltzer demonstrates courage to craft a serious drama within the world of comedy. While the better stand-up routines contain laughs, the focus is on pathos, hustle, and the specter of failure. Under the stewardship of proprietor Romeo (Mark Rydell), the Gas Station club roster of comedians consists of mostly awful performers eking out a heckled living. Even for a talented comic like Steven Gold, the pathway to discovery is far from certain, and the resultant emotional strain provides Tom Hanks with a latitude of desperation. Refreshingly, the unbalanced would-be romance between Steven and Lilah sprouts in the shadow of thorns.

What Does Not Work As Well: By definition the tone suffers from gyrations between awkwardness, laughter, and trepidation, while Seltzer indulges most scenes for longer than necessary.

Conclusion: The struggles and sadness residing within laughter.



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Movie Review: You Don't Know Jack (2010)

The factual story of the doctor who forced a discussion on medically-assisted death, You Don't Know Jack portrays a maverick shaking up the world of medicine.

In Detroit of the early 1990s, semi-retired Dr. Jack Kevorkian (Al Pacino) starts to act on his conviction that doctors should be allowed to help their patients die. With support from his sister Margo (Brenda Vaccaro) and friend Neal Nicol (John Goodman), a medical technician, Kevorkian develops the rudimentary "Mercitron" machine, allowing patients to self administer a cocktail of lethal chemicals. He is careful to videotape interviews with each of his patients as they convey their wish to die, and also records their final moments.

As news spreads of his activities, more patients suffering from debilitating conditions seek his services. Kevorkian triggers a national controversy and debate about the right-to-die, and becomes known as Dr. Death. Michigan's state prosecutors haul him into court on several occasions, but his lawyer Geoffrey Fieger (Danny Huston) is victorious every time, because there is no law against assisting suicide. By the late 1990s, Kevorkian becomes eager to enshrine the right to die into law.

Dr. Kevorkian created his legacy in the moral morass where medicine, religion, and the law intersect. This HBO production tells his story in a rather grey semi-documentary style, the controversial material sidelining any attempts at artistry. Director Barry Levinson and writer Adam Mazer focus on the actions and motivations of a unique historical character, tracing factual events and leaning on Al Pacino to embody the doctor's headstrong idiosyncrasies.

Mazer is sympathetic to Kevorkian's convictions that the medical profession needs to re-assess how patients who want to die are treated. His actions stem from a desire to end suffering and respecting patients' wishes. His opponents in the form of street protesters and state prosecutors are driven by religion and dogma, pushing court cases based on no viable laws. Kevorkian and his lawyer Fieger are able to swat away the court challenges, emboldening the doctor. He then pushes further and starts to challenge new limits with the intent of seeking an audience with the land's highest court.

As a single man with no family commitments and near the end of his career, Kevorkian is presented as having nothing to lose as he challenges the status-quo. His motivations stem from personal experiences, and are gradually revealed through Pacino's soulful performance. Levinson rounds out his protagonist with character quirks including frumpy clothing, picky dietary habits, willingness to go on hunger strikes, and, ironically, a steadfast determination to never lend a helping hand when it comes to carrying physical objects. 

As portrayed by an animated Danny Huston, lawyer Geoffrey Fieger radiates swagger pushing into arrogance. In comparison, the other characters surrounding Kevorkian are short-changed. Sister Margo and medical technician Neal barely progress beyond props, and advocate-turned-friend Janet Good (Susan Sarandon) is lost in the shuffle.

It may lack panache and cinematic creativity, but You Don't Know Jack does set the record straight in revealing the human behind the moniker.



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Movie Review: Patriots Day (2016)

A crime drama recreating the 2013 Boston Marathon terrorist bombings, Patriots Day is a taut and precisely crafted fact-based thriller.

It's April 2013 in Boston, and Sergeant Tommy Saunders (Mark Wahlberg) is working his way out of the police doghouse for kicking a fellow officer. Police Commissioner Ed Davis (John Goodman) assigns Saunders to menial crowd control duties at the marathon finish line, where terrorist brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev detonate two pressure cooker bombs. The bombings narrowly miss Tommy's wife Carol (Michelle Monaghan), but three innocent people are killed and hundreds injured, many suffering lower body injuries and amputations.

The FBI's Richard DesLauriers (Kevin Bacon) takes charge of the investigation, and through a review of CCTV and cell phone video the Tsarnaevs are flagged as primary suspects. The brothers attempt to flee by car to New York, victimizing MIT security guard Sean Collier and carjacking college student Dun Meng. Enforcement authorities catch up with them in the suburb of Walkerton, where Sergeant Jeffrey Pugliese (J.K. Simmons) leads a small police detachment.

Although Tommy and Carol Saunders are fictional, most of the rest of the characters populating Patriots Day are real. Director and co-writer Peter Berg, again teaming with regular collaborator Wahlberg, effectively wraps his film around the terrorism attack and the tense days that followed. Given the time and geographic sprawl of events, the film is surprisingly spry, Berg displaying a welcome nimbleness to capture diverse perspectives and a drama unfolding in discrete but connected chapters.

While one objective is to celebrate the Boston Strong spirit that emerged after the attack, Patriots Day does not sterilize the often imperfect actions of investigators and enforcement agencies. The FBI's DesLauriers and Boston Police's Davis lock horns in a debate around whether to publicly release the photos of the presumed suspects, as hours pass by and their identities remain a mystery. Later, police actions are often chaotic and uncoordinated as multiple agencies run into each other, poor discipline and miscommunication allowing the bombers to remain on the loose longer than necessary.

A decision to essentially lock down the city and ask residents to shelter in place while SWAT teams conduct door to door searches is portrayed as an adhoc martial law declaration, and interrogators are also challenged in attempting to crack the silence of Tamerlan's arrested devout wife Katherine Russell (Melissa Benoist, in a small but chilling role).

With plenty of ground to cover Berg avoids dawdling in one place for too long, and mastefully introduces enough background to provide depth to most of the key characters. The bombing scene is haunting in its random cruelty, and the Watertown shootout is recreated as a study of violent chaos, unsuspecting police officers tangling with determined terrorists at close quarters.

Wahlberg cruises through the surreal events in the role of guide and representative of Boston as a proud if temperamental society, tough and caring in equal measures. Trent Reznor contributes a suitably eerie music score, often stripped down to a forceful continuous sound effect conveying exasperated tension as a community holds its breath in the grip of unknown assailants.

The worst atrocities spawn remarkable resiliency, and Patriots Day captures both extremes of an exceptional chapter in the life of a city.

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Movie Review: Sea Of Love (1989)

A crime mystery and romance, Sea Of Love is a polished thriller with an engaging premise and good cast, but the film also chases many threads and loses some in the process.

In New York City, police detective Frank Keller (Al Pacino) has reached 20 years of service with no plans to retire. Still not recovered from the breakup of his marriage and drinking heavily, he starts to investigate the murder of a man found naked on his bed and shot through the back of the head, with Phil Phillips' Sea of Love left playing continuously on the turntable. A similar murder in Queens results in detective Sherman Touhey (John Goodman) joining forces with Frank, with clues in both cases pointing to the killer being a woman.

Concluding that the victims were likely killed by a date arranged through magazine personal ads, Frank and Sherman create a sting operation by placing their own ad and going on a series of dates to collect women's fingerprints. One of Frank's dates is Helen Cruger (Ellen Barkin), a spirited single mother and shoe store manager. They start a steamy relationship, with Frank falling in love and convincing himself she is not the killer, but their affair is both passionate and dangerous.

Marking Al Pacino's return to the big screen after a four year hiatus, Sea Of Love offers a bit of everything. A murder mystery with an unknown killer, a detective story featuring a budding friendship and camaraderie between two investigators, a central protagonist in Frank going through a serious mid-life crisis and an inability to cope with a marriage break-up, and Helen as a love interest trying to construct a romantic life as a single mom with a full-time job.

Add in some steamy sex, close-up violence and layers of real and possible lies, and it's remarkable the Richard Price script holds together as well as it does. Director Harold Becker does his best to steer the film is several directions at once, but can only do so much. Once the passion erupts between Frank and Helen the murder investigation aspects are shoved to the background. Frank may be convinced Helen is not the killer, but appears to lose interest altogether in finding the real murderer.

The film's discontinuous attention spans are made tolerable by Pacino and Barkin. He remains well within himself in a relatively calm performance, allowing Frank's slow descent into career and personal depression to gradually wash over him. Barkin is even more subtle, the is-she or isn't-she puzzle demanding a performance that works both ways, and she delivers with an edgy combination of determination, doubt and sensuality.

But a murderer still has to be unmasked, and in the final act Price resorts to borderline cheating and reliance on some sloppy police work to get back to the business of crime solving. Sea Of Love rolls onto a decent shoreline, a bit wet but still serviceable.

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Movie Review: 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)

A confinement thriller, 10 Cloverfield Lane builds up a fair amount of tension in a story of uncertain threat levels inside and outside a survival bunker.

In New Orleans, Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) breaks up with her boyfriend and drives off. During the night and on an isolated rural stretch of highway, she crashes. When she wakes up, Michelle finds herself imprisoned in the well-equipped underground bunker of survivalist Howard (John Goodman). He claims to have rescued her from the crash scene, saving her life in the process as he insists humanity has effectively been annihilated due to an alien invasion and the air outside is irradiated.

The only other bunker occupant is Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.), who helped Howard build the place. After overcoming initial tensions the trio settle down to a semblance of domesticity, passing the time playing board games and watching movies. But Howard is at least marginally unhinged and keeps bringing up his missing daughter. Michelle and Emmett have to decide whether staying inside the bunker is better than taking their chances on the outside.

A distant spiritual successor to Cloverfield and again produced by J.J. Abrams, 10 Cloverfield Lane is a more traditional thriller with some mild science fiction and horror moments. Directed by Dan Trachtenberg, the film generates a steady current of suspense, with a stream of revelations maintaining an edge to Michelle's predicament. Every time Michelle resolves one problem another lies in wait, forcing her to adapt and re-adjust to changing realities.

The narrative draws most of its thrust from the two opposing forces of uncertainty. Life in the bunker with Howard carries an unnerving amount of danger, his behaviour erratic, sometimes threatening and his daughter references disconcerting. Whatever evil lives outside the bunker offers the prospect of a terrible outcome. One danger is known but maybe not an immediate source of harm, the other is unknown and potentially quickly lethal. 10 Cloverfield Lane keeps the dilemma in the balance, Michelle forced to continuously assess the stay or flee tradeoffs.

Unfortunately the ending is weak and tonally inconsistent with the rest of the film, Trachtenberg seemingly cutting to a whole different movie and abandoning all the carefully assembled psychological tautness.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead is admirable in the central role, providing Michelle with a credible range of emotions from panic at her captivity to a stoic determination to take control of her fate.

10 Cloverfield Lane offers shelter to an engaging heroine, but with some unwelcome creature features.

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Movie Review: Evan Almighty (2007)

A family-oriented comedy, Evan Almighty scores some laughs but spends too much time in a CGI-generated animal kingdom.

News anchor Evan Baxter (Steve Carell) from Buffalo, New York, is elected to Congress on a campaign promise to "Change the World". Along with his wife Joan (Lauren Graham) and their three boys, he relocates to a massive house in a new Washington DC suburban subdivision. Baxter is quickly wooed by veteran Congressman Chuck Long (John Goodman), who is sponsoring a bill that would endanger parkland.

After mysterious crates of building equipment start appearing at his doorstep, Evan is visited by God (Morgan Freeman), who instructs him to build an Ark in preparation for an impending flood. Evan does his best to ignore God's command, but is soon trailed by a huge number of animals, all in pairs. With his political career already endangered and his family believing he is going through a severe midlife crisis, Evan faces a major dilemma.

A sequel to Bruce Almighty and again directed by Tom Shadyac, Evan Almighty takes a firm turn towards fluffy family values territory and leaves behind the edgier material probed in the original. Compared to the frantic Jim Carrey, Steve Carell's more subdued brand of comedy is put to good use, although the bland build-an-Ark plot gets quickly tiresome.

The film places plenty of trust in the special effects team, and they do deliver an eye-popping number of critters on the loose in Washington DC and the Virginia suburb where the Baxters take up residence. The climax is another special effects extravaganza featuring a flood of sorts. And throughout, Evan is subjected to a humorous and uncontrollable physical transformation into a Noah-type avatar, complete with beard and robes.

The green screen emphasis means the plot did not receive too much attention, Shadyac and his screenwriter Steve Oedekerk probably hoping nobody would notice the almost utter irrelevance of the whole animal subplot when everything was said and done. The villainous plot of Congressman Long on which the entire movie rests is barely explained.

Evan Almighty delivers a regular stream of chuckles, but mostly of the superficially cuddly and forgettable variety.

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Movie Review: Gigantic (2008)

An independent romantic comedy, Gigantic is subdued to the point of disappearing within itself.

Brian (Paul Dano) is a quiet mattress salesperson, and in his personal life waiting for approval to adopt a baby from China. After selling an expensive mattress to loudmouth businessman Al (John Goodman), Brian meets Al's daughter Harriett (Zooey Deschanel), who goes by the nickname Happy.

They start a relationship, but while he is quick to fall in love, she is unsure what she wants in life, leading to conflict. His parents (Jane Alexander and Edward Asner) try to be supportive. Meanwhile, a homeless man (Zach Galifianakis) regularly stalks and attacks Brian for no reason.

An independent production directed and co-written by Matt Aselton, Gigantic has the singular objective to portray a timid romance between a quirky couple. From the awkward pauses to the just-slightly-off dialogue and halting interactions, everything Brian and Happy do fits into the category of a nerdy, unsure and definitely-not-hip couple.

And that's about it. The 98 minutes contain precious little of note, Aselton padding the movie with multiple episodes featuring a rampaging homeless man who must signify something important in Brian's psyche. The few moments of good humour (usually courtesy of John Goodman) are more than counterbalanced by some out-of-place vulgarity (also usually courtesy of Goodman).

As for Brian and Happy, they go through the standard rom-com ups and downs, the adopt-a-Chinese-baby side quest rarely anything more than a slightly puzzling distraction. And the romance unfolds at an attitude mellow enough to easily induce a long sleep on one of Brian's mattresses (which many characters go ahead and do anyway).

Paul Dano and Zooey Deschanel are the perfect representatives for the we-are-so-not cool-that-we-are-cool set and take the material as far as it goes, which it turns out is not very far. But they will travel the short distance, you know, hesitantly.

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Movie Review: Kong: Skull Island (2017)

A monster adventure movie, Kong: Skull Island provides rollicking action without ever rising to any new heights.

In a prologue set in 1944, an aerial dogfight over the Pacific results in American pilot Hank Marlow and a Japanese pilot crash-landing onto a mysterious island. As they try to kill each other, they are interrupted by a massive ape.

In 1973, monster researcher Randa (John Goodman) and geologist Brooks (Corey Hawkins) secure funding from Senator Willis (Richard Jenkins) to explore a recently discovered island. They recruit adventurer Conrad (Tom Hiddleston) to lead the team, while anti-war photojournalist Weaver (Brie Larson) talks her way onto the expedition. Lieutenant Colonel Packard (Samuel L. Jackson), fresh from the disappointment of the Vietnam War, is tasked with providing protection.

Packard's helicopters penetrate the storm clouds surrounding the island, and Brooks drops seismic charges to explore the subsurface geology. The explosions irritate Kong, a massive ape and de facto ruler of the island, and he proceeds to decimate the invading helicopters. The survivors have to navigate their way to an extraction point, but Packard insists on re-engaging with Kong to avenge his losses. Conrad, Weaver and others stumble upon more monstrous creatures, as well as the elderly Marlow (John C. Reilly), who has survived since World War 2 and is living with local tribespeople.

Yet another Hollywood retelling of the Kong story, this version is not half-bad. Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts conjures up more-than-decent monster special effects, and the many battles with and amongst assorted oversized creatures provide frequent highlights. As per the title the film remains confined on the island once the expedition lands on Kong's turf, and with no final chapter featuring capture, relocation and urban chaos, Kong: Skull Island settles down as a solid if routine metaphor for the Vietnam War, fully immersed in the jungle environment.

Kong is the local dealing with internal threats, Packard is the helicopter-powered invader arriving uninvited and all guns blazing, Weaver represents the anti-war disengagement movement as well as the press recording proceedings, and the rest of the film is sweaty jungle warfare with multiple-fronts, internal divisions and some unexpected alliances.

Vogt-Roberts shrewdly steers well clear of interspecies lust, romance and infatuation, the bond here between Kong and Weaver limited to gestures of mutual respect, empathy and understanding of interdependence. Packard slips into the villain role, the warmonger intent on violence as the solution before understanding what the problem is. Kong also has his hands full with suitably ugly Skullcrawlers, ugly beings who emerge out of their subterranean habitats to take on all comers.

With stock character definitions and no narrative surprises, Kong: Skull Island stays faithful to its mission: oversized high energy entertainment, unprovocative but polished.

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Movie Review: Trumbo (2015)

A biographical drama, Trumbo is a sharply written story of career survival set during the post-World War Two Red Scare.

It's the late 1940s, and Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) is one of Hollywood's leading screenwriters. He is also a proud member of the Communist party, along with several other prominent film industry figures, including fellow writer Arlen Hird (Louis C.K.). Dalton is happily married to Cleo (Diane Lane) and his children include the precocious Nikola (Elle Fanning). With the Cold War taking hold, a wave of anti-communist sentiment sweeps from Washington DC to Hollywood, fanned by gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren).

As a matter of principle Dalton and his fellow communists refuse to cooperate with the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC). Convicted for contempt of Congress, Dalton serves time in prison, and is placed on the notorious "Hollywood 10" blacklist, barred from working for any studio. Meanwhile, other communist sympathisers including Edward G. Robinson (Michael Stuhlbarg) do testify to save their careers. Once released Dalton has to find a way to make a living, and Frank King (John Goodman), head of low-budget King Brothers Productions, offers a lifeline of endless uncredited work.

Directed by Jay Roach and written by John McNamara, Trumbo is fascinating, witty and often quite funny. Both a character study and a cautionary tale about social paranoia, the film sparkles with the cantankerous yet phenomenally smart and articulate personality of Trumbo, and the remarkable post-war U-turn when communism was transformed in the public consciousness from great ally capable of defeating fascism to a feared existential menace.

The film does not shy away from presenting Trumbo as a man full of faults and contradictions. He enjoys his success, living on a large farm with all the luxuries afforded to the fortunate by capitalism. And when the strain of making a living through round-the-clock writing becomes nearly unbearable, Trumbo lashes out at his family members, hurting those he is trying to support.

And yet intellectually he never betrays his beliefs, and finds the unlikely path to expose the witch hunt by undermining it from within. Uneducated and fear-mongering campaigns devoid of evidence wilt when exposed to the light, and Trumbo's work ethic eventually forces the hypocrisy into the open

Trumbo boasts a remarkably talented cast in top form. Bryan Cranston delivers a career-defining performance, embracing the writer's flawed humanity and happily occupying the inconsistency of a proud communist enjoying all the riches that a life of celebrity has to offer. The character of Arlen Hird is an amalgam of other communist writers, and Louis C.K. portrays the more idealistic stream of left wing thinking, more willing to resist the system rather than work within it.

Helen Mirren makes the smug Hedda Hopper an obnoxious and hate-worthy gossip, a representation of self-appointed thought police, pouring gasoline on the flames of public fear and wielding disproportionate power. John Goodman as Frank King introduces bombastic levity, and his scenes add a whole new dimension to Trumbo, providing insight into the wondrous world of successful low-budget studios. Diane Lane, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Elle Fanning all make notable contributions.

Trumbo succeeds as a portrait of a remarkable man and even more so as a critical commentary on the lunacy of fear-driven social agendas.

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Movie Review: Atomic Blonde (2017)

A cold war spy actionfest, Atomic Blonde kicks butt until there are no more butts to kick.

The year is 1989, just as the Berlin Wall is tumbling down. The story is told in flashback, with MI6 field agent Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron) being debriefed at the end of a raucous assignment, the CIA's Emmett Kurzfeld (John Goodman) among her interviewers. Lorraine was inserted into Berlin after the killing of agent James Gascoigne by the KGB's Yuri Bakhtin. She connect with station chief David Percival (James McAvoy), and they attempt to track down Stasi defector Spyglass (Eddie Marsan), who provided Gascoigne with a highly sensitive file revealing the names of all cold war spies, including the identity of a mysterious double agent known as Satchel.

Now Bakhtin has the file and is willing to sell it to the highest bidder. Lorraine finds Percival's methods eccentric, and also tangles with the KGB's Aleksander Bremovych and undercover French agent Delphine Lasalle (Sofia Boutella). With hordes of rival goons and bloodthirsty spies all seeking the same prize, Loraine has to find Spyglass and keep him safe while fending off hordes of professional assassins at every turn.

Directed by David Leitch and adapted from a graphic novel, Atomic Blonde may be an attempt to kick-off a franchise revolving around super spy Lorraine Broughton. Stuck somewhere between celebrating and exploiting female empowerment, the film dissolves into endless repetition of violent episodes, whereby Lorraine tangles with and proceeds to eliminate several baddies in bone crunching close combat confrontations.

Once is fun, twice is ok, but by the time Leitch orchestrates the umpteenth one-against-many battles with pre-ordained outcomes (she survives to fight another day; the bad guys don't) in yet another empty building, any sense of tension, drama and build-up is comprehensively lost.

Clearly narrative momentum was an afterthought behind action and visual style. In amongst all the flying limbs and bullets finding their close-range targets, the plot struggles to emerge from hiding, perhaps worried about receiving a lethal kick to the side of the head. The "list of spies" that everyone is searching for is the most tired of McGuffins, and Leitch has little control over the crosses, double-crosses and triple-crosses fueling all the combat.

Atomic Blonde is bathed in cool blue and silver colours, the music is loud and filled with 1980s era pop and rock tracks as the film energetically hops between action set-pieces on either side of the crumbling wall. As an exercise in brain disengagement there is some enjoyment to be had, until duplication triumphs under the flag of exhaustion.

Theron does not so much act as glide through the film exuding cool with a singular expression of grim determination. She executes most of her stunts and looks great dishing out mayhem. James McAvoy as spy-gone-native Percival is more complex and potentially much more interesting, but Atomic Blonde has no time for character development. This spy world is an arcade game of kill or be killed every few minutes, and everything else is roadkill.

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Movie Review: O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)

A satirical comedy inspired by Homer's The Odyssey, O Brother, Where Art Thou? features some enjoyable episodes but is a mostly fragmented exercise of scattered ideas looking for a purpose.

The setting is Mississippi during the 1930s with the Great Depression still lingering. Three convicts escape from a chain gang and set out across the countryside. The wordy and cerebral Ulysses Everett McGill (George Clooney) claims to have buried stolen treasure before being incarcerated. His fellow escapees are the tightly wound Pete Hogwallop (John Turturro) and the rather dim Delmar O'Donnell (Tim Blake Nelson).

As they barely stay one step ahead of the chasing posse, the trio encounter various obstacles and characters, including Pete's cousin "Wash" Hogwallop (Frank Collison), crazed bank robber Baby Face Nelson (Michael Badalucco), three distracting singing sirens, guitarist Tommy Johnson (Chris Thomas King) who claims to have sold his soul to the devil, incumbent Governor Menelaus "Pappy" O'Daniel (Charles Durning), and dangerous Bible salesman Daniel "Big Dan" Teague (John Goodman). The Ku Klux Klan also make an appearance before Ulysses catches up with his wife Penny (Holly Hunter), who is just about ready to abandon him.

Written and directed by the Coen brothers Joel and Ethan, O Brother, Where Art Thou? transposes the ancient Greek poem to the American rural south, suffering under the strain of an economic depression and the sweltering heat. It's all played for laughs, the actors over-emoting at will and most of the dialogue exchanges featuring Ulysses Everett McGill's over-elaborate prose and the stupefied reactions of his chainmates.

The film's pacing cannot be faulted, as each episode lasts about 10 minutes before the next, generally unrelated adventure kicks off. Whether hit or miss, nothing lingers for too long. The better sub-plots feature the trio of prisoners recording an impromptu hit song at an early-era radio station, and an enchanted encounter with the seductive sirens in the forest. Less successful is the run-in with Bible salesman Big Dan, while the chapters featuring Governor O'Daniel seem to rotate in a singular circle.

Wide open landscapes, appealing cinematography and an interesting colour palette that often evokes the photographs of the era maintain interest, while the period-specific folk music often moves to the foreground to provide a soulful kick.

Towards the end the film threatens to completely unravel, a case of too many marginal ideas thrown at the screen and sliding to the bottom due to a lack of cohesion. O Brother, Where Art Thou? is inspired by great literature, but achieves only modest success.

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Movie Review: Always (1989)

A bland fantasy romance, Always has the wrong cast embarrassingly over-emoting their way through a banal story.

Pete Sandich (Richard Dreyfuss) and his pal Al Yackey (John Goodman) are aerial firefighters, experts in dropping retardant on raging forest fires from converted World War Two era bombers. A risk-taking daredevil in the sky, Pete has a long-term relationship with Dorinda Durston (Holly Hunter), a fellow pilot who works mostly as a dispatcher. She loves him and wants him to stop flying, but he cannot bring himself to express his love and insists that flying is his life.

Pete dies in an aerial mishap after saving Al's life, and the angel Hap (Audrey Hepburn, as elegant as ever in her final screen role) guides his spirit back to earth. His spectral mission is to be the inspiration for handsome pilot Ted Baker (Brad Johnson), who wants to earn his aerial firefighting wings to win Dorinda's love. Pete finds himself torn between helping his protege and still pining for the love of his life.

A remake of 1943's A Guy Named Joe and one of director Steven Spielberg's rare but comprehensive misfires, Always lands with a dull thud. Nothing works: the jokes are juvenile, the romance is not even close to being convincing, the casting is atrocious, and almost every scene is extended well past its usefulness as the movie lumbers its way to a completely unnecessary running length of over two hours.

Spielberg falls into the trap of wanting every little event to be grand and goes looking for Meaningful Moments at every turn, the John Williams score inflating the emotions to laughable levels. The drama and tension, whether in the sky or back on earth, are contrived and appear targeted towards a child audience.

Resetting the story from the original existential World War Two conflict to the much more mundane territory of fire fighting in the middle of nowhere severely undermines the drama and the characters, with the actors comprehensively defeated by the material and ham-fisted tone. Richard Dreyfus and Holly Hunter are lost for purpose and share no chemistry. Dreyfus turns on full braggart mode, making Pete singularly boring and unattractive. Hunter, a most down-to-earth actress, struggles to play an ethereal inspiration. John Goodman essentially plays a caricature, and Brad Johnson has the screen presence of a white wall.

Always aims for a flighty fantasy, but stalls on the taxiway, belching putrid smoke.

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Movie Review: Barton Fink (1991)

A dramatic comedy about writer's block, Barton Fink successfully gets into the head of a fledgling writer but stretches the concept to incredulous extremes.

In New York City of 1941, writer Barton Fink (John Turturro) achieves success with a new Broadway play and is celebrated as a rising star of the literary world. Despite espousing idealistic views of writing for the masses, Fink accepts a high-paying assignment to write screenplays in Hollywood and relocates to Los Angeles. His new employer is Jack Lipnick (Michael Lerner), boss of Capitol Pictures, who pretends to adore writers before assigning Fink to write a script for a lowbrow wrestling drama starring Wallace Beery.

Fink takes up residence in a derelict room at the cavernous but sparsely populated Hotel Earle, and struggles mightily with writer's block. The distractions include noise from adjoining rooms, peeling wallpaper, a singular picture of a girl on the beach, and talkative insurance salesman Charlie Meadows (John Goodman), who occupies the room next door. Extremely lonely and desperate to converse with another writer, Fink connects with W. P. Mayhew (John Mahoney), a legendary author now reduced to a state of perpetual drunkenness. Mayhew's secretary Audrey Taylor (Judy Davis) proves to be a better companion. With a deadline for delivering the script looming, there is a new major shock ahead for the hopelessly blocked Fink.

Written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, Barton Fink is an odd exercise, apparently a diversionary exercise the Coens used as break from the intensity of Miller's Crossing. Filled with salutes to written and cinematic landmarks, the film contains plenty to admire both aesthetically and intellectually, and hits at dead centre the intended target topic of writer's block. But only so much can be built around a white empty page that stares back. Desperate for variety the film veers towards a madcap tone, and a final third that is more amusing than effective.

The best moments are by far set at the Hotel Earle, an eerily empty place forgotten by time and carrying echoes of that most famous writer's block hangout, The Overlook Hotel from The Shining. But Barton's journey is not one of madness, rather just a banana skin where his idealistic spoutings slip on an inability to listen to the common man and a quick soul sell. The peeling wall paper, the pesky mosquito, the noisy neighbours, the incessant heat, and that darned too perfect picture on the wall do nothing except conspire to prevent Barton from writing.

John Turturro does what is necessary in the grey title role, the screen portrayal of an introverted writer struggling to find words by definition a rather thankless task.

Less interesting are the surrounding characters. W.P. Mayhew is not so much the inspiration Barton hoped to find but rather the ultimate victim of writer's block, a man with a destiny to meet his fate at the bottom of the bottle every single day. John Goodman is excellent as Charlie Meadows, a salesman who starts out as an irritant, evolves into a friend and companion, and then transforms into something else entirely as the script slips out of control.

Judy Davis as Audrey Taylor does not get a chance to register as much of anything, her obvious role as writer's muse truncated to serve a needless detour towards mystical mystery territory. Steve Buscemi as the hotel clerk and Tony Shalhoub as a movie producer get small supporting roles.

Undoubtedly thought provoking, Barton Fink offers plenty of talking points but is an ultimately less than cohesive experience.

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Movie Review: Raising Arizona (1987)

A madcap comedy, Raising Arizona aims for a loony vibe and often achieves it. The parenting misadventures of a petty thief and his ex-cop wife are wildly unpredictable and sometimes quite hilarious.

Herbert "Hi" McDunnough (Nicolas Cage) can't drive past a convenience store without thinking of holding it up. Since he never uses live ammunition, he receives a succession of short prison sentences. Every time he is arrested he catches sight of booking officer Edwina, known simply as Ed (Holly Hunter). He finally times it right, proposes and marries her on one of his stints outside the jail cell. Hi and Ed settle down to a life of crime-free domesticity, but soon find out that she cannot conceive, and Ed slumps into an aggravated state of depression.

When the media announce that discount furniture king Nathan Arizona (Trey Wilson) and his wife Florence have given birth to quintuplets, Hi and Ed decide that the Arizonas have more children than they can handle, and they go ahead and steal one of the infants. They try to create a true family unit, but uncouth prison escapees and brothers Gale and Evelle Snoats (John Goodman and William Forsythe) invite themselves and disrupt the peace. Soon Hi's boss Glen (Sam McMurray), his wife Dot (Frances McDormand) and their brood of unruly children add to the chaos, while heavily armed demon Leonard Smalls (Randall "Tex" Cobb), also known as the lone biker of the apocalypse, starts to track down the missing baby to claim the reward money.

The second film directed by Joel and Ethan Coen after 1984's Blood Simple, Raising Arizona is a dramatic change of gears. The Coens demonstrate versatility by switching from film noir crime to loopy screwball comedy. Set in an unnamed small town near the desert with Hi and Ed aiming to live the idyllic trailer park lifestyle, Raising Arizona is about chasing the American Dream, but in all the wrong directions. The film is fast, funny and features some blistering set-pieces.

Halfway through, the Coen's conjure up a 10 minute sequence of pure farce that deserves a pedestal in the comedy hall of fame. Hi cannot fight the urge to rob a late-night market, but now something of a dad, his target is a free bag of Huggies diapers. What follows is a nutty chase involving a police squad car, gun-toting store clerks, a pack of excited dogs, a simpleton of a pick-up driver, with a furious Ed and her infant in the car burning rubber and wondering whether Hi deserves to be abandoned or rescued.

Other highlights include Glen and Dot's children running riot, while every scene that features motorcyclist Leonard Smalls exudes hysterically mythical evil on two wheels, one step away from dishing out destruction to any living thing.

Raising Arizona's comedy style is in-your-face, emphasized by a whole lot of screaming. This is not sophisticated humour, and while most of it works, it also gets overwhelming. Quite a few scenes involve characters with their mouths open wide and just hollering at maximum lung power. With plenty of people around him given free reign to go over-the-top, Nicolas Cage pulls back and often allows Hi to relax as the most laid back person in the room. Holly Hunter is a bundle of nerves, Ed wondering where the pathway to fulfillment resides, but certain that it involves having a child.

Beneath all the madness is a tale of unlikely love, Hi and Ed acting on an undeniable attraction and desperate to settle down to a simple life and just build a family. Through thick and thin they stand by each other, sort of, and baby Arizona gives them a new purpose and an opportunity to view each other through a fresh lens. Even the ammunition-free robber and the nerdy small town ex-cop deserve their opportunity to pursue happiness.

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Movie Review: Coyote Ugly (2000)

A trite romantic drama set in the world of bar top dancing, Coyote Ugly lines up and kicks out tired clichés to fill the time between the many scenes of hot women cavorting on the bar to loud music.

Violet Sanford (Piper Perabo) leaves her New Jersey home and overweight toll booth operator dad Bill (John Goodman) to seek a career as a songwriter in New York City. Violet suffers from stage fright, a condition that also afflicted her late mother, and her inability to perform in front of a crowd hampers opportunities to get her material heard. Meanwhile she can't break through the front door of any of the record companies or talent agencies, and her apartment is robbed to compound her misery. Violet does meet handsome Australian burger flipper Kevin O'Donnell (Adam Garcia), and they start a relationship.

Desperate to find some employment, Violet stumbles onto work at Coyote Ugly, a rough and tumble bar owned by Lil Lovell (Maria Bello, portraying the real-life bar owner), where attractive waitresses including Cammie (Izabella Miko) and Rachel (Bridget Moynahan) rev up customers with seductive bar top dances. The timid Violet can't join the dancing but eventually finds the courage to sing along with the jukebox. Kevin insists that she not give up on her dream to be a serious song writer and prods her to overcome her stage fright. Her dad Bill is crushed when he discovers what kind of bar Violet is working at, and Kevin's pushiness threatens to rupture the one remaining good relationship in her life.

Directed by David McNally and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, Coyote Ugly is based on a magazine article by none other than Elizabeth Gilbert, who would go on to write more mawkish material like Eat, Pray, Love. The film is an unapologetic excuse to feature plenty of bar top dancing scenes, micro-edited down to artificially create energy and remove any traces of talent on either side of the camera. With a script apparently penned by an uncoordinated army of eight writers, Coyote Ugly is a standard innocent-girl-in-the-big-bad-city-falls-in-love story, the dancing scenes attempting to chase away the dullness but only adding another layer of asininity.

In this world a hip shake and a shoulder shimmy are inexplicably enough to send bar patrons into a whooping frenzy while the alcohol pumps kick into overdrive. The girls prance up and down the bar, spraying customers with water, juggling bottles and breathing fire, creating a wet dream environment for the young adolescent mind. For everyone else, no amount of gyration can cover up the utter banality of both the story and the action at the bar.

The struggle-to-make-it and romance elements are pulled from the laborious drawer. Every career door slams in Violet's face with a thud, stage fright is a hackneyed emotional hurdle, and lover-to-be Kevin is a remarkably charming and available prince in cook's clothing but of course he hides his own deep dark sob story.

Coyote Ugly is saved from being an utter debacle by Piper Perabo, the relative unknown plucked from obscurity and dropped into the lead role for a big budget production. Perabo is much better than the material deserves, and she somehow rises above the dross to deliver a relatively genuine and empathetic performance. Perabo combines small town smarts with a sharp edge and quick wit, and avoids most of the dopey innocence that typically accompanies the role.

The rest of the cast is more consistent with the sluggish story, with Goodman in particular veering towards obesity in both weight and melodrama. Tyra Banks has a small role as a former bar top dancer and LeAnn Rimes appears briefly as herself.

Coyote Ugly refers to waking up sober after a one night stand, and feeling the urge to gnaw off, coyote style, an arm trapped under a repulsive man. The film is not quite that bad, but does leave behind the sense of time wasted chasing an ill-conceived impulse.

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Movie Review: Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)

A folk music character drama with comic shadings, Inside Llewyn Davis explores the Greenwich Village music scene of the early 1960s through the story of one struggling musician having a really bad week.

It's New York City in 1961. Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) is a marginal folk singer who occasionally performs at the Gaslight club. Llewyn is penniless, homeless, sleeps on friends' couches, and has still not recovered from the trauma of his performing partner's suicide. Llewyn accidentally lets loose the house cat of his friends the Gorfeins, then learns that his recently released solo album is selling poorly or not at all. His week gets much worse when he finds out that his married friend Jean (Carey Mulligan) is pregnant, and the child may or may not be his.

Llewyn gets no help from his agent, but does get a break from Jean's husband Jim (Justin Timberlake), who connects him with singer Al Cody (Adam Driver), and the trio record a novelty space-themed folk song. Desperate for cash upfront, Llewyn forgoes any future royalties. He decides to travel to Chicago to personally meet legendary producer Bud Grossman (F. Murray Abraham). On the way he shares a surreal car trip with overbearing jazz musician Roland Turner (John Goodman) and lyricist/driver Johnny Five (Garrett Hedlund). The meeting with Grossman does not go as planned, and Llewyn starts to question his dedication to a career in music.

Directed by the Coen brothers Joel and Ethan, who also co-wrote the script with Scott Rudin, Inside Llewyn Davis works best as a dark comedy that probes at the heart of dreams of music success. The mood is bleak, the prospects poor, and its quickly apparent that everyone other than Llewyn Davis is already aware that he has a bright future behind him. Still he persists, ignoring with increasing difficulty the signs that it may be time to pack it in.

Despite the preponderance of humour, the film sets an overall sad mood reflective of artists struggling to make ends meet. Washed-out colours dominate, both mimicking and mocking Llewyn's life of couch surfing in nondescript apartments while scratching out a living by borrowing money and bumming cigarettes from any available source. The film also resonates with the messiness of real life by keeping several threads loose. The novelty song royalties are a tantalizing decision point, a side-story of a former girlfriend, now in Akron, is left dangling on an exit ramp, and Jean's pregnancy presents another imperfect puzzle to grapple with.

While the film runs an efficient 105 minutes, the plot is quite slight and the Coens at times do struggle to find something else to go wrong for their unfortunate protagonist. The return trip from Chicago includes an unnecessary midnight shock on an isolated snowy stretch of road, there is an obvious side-trip to visit an invalid father, and the film is littered with a few too many complete renditions of folk songs that eat up minutes and slow the film right down.

Much better is the segment with John Goodman as the boorish fellow traveller to Chicago Roland Turner, a bellicose know-it-all who can't stop talking, and is both exceedingly annoying and extremely funny. In keeping with the film's disposition, both Turner and his side-kick Johnny Five are unceremoniously ejected from Llewyn's journey.

Oscar Isaac delivers a break-out performance and effortlessly holds the film together. His interpretation of Llewyn captures the uneasy co-existence of determination to persist with gradual realization that maybe he's just not good enough to make it. Isaac unleashes quiet intensity and cynical resignation in equal doses

When everything that can possibly go wrong does so and them some, including that troublesome cat repeatedly escaping and at the most inconvenient times possible, it may be time to take stock. But a week will pass before Llewyn Davis sees the writing on the back alley walls of Greenwich Village.

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