Solo: A Star Wars Story

Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)

Starring Alden Ehrenreich, Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke, Donald Glover, Joonas Suotamo, Thandie Newton, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Jon Favreau, and Paul Bettany

Directed by Ron Howard

Written by Jonathan Kasdan and Lawrence Kasdan

Summary (in 500 words or less):  The back story of how Han Solo became Han Solo is essentially a heist movie about how our title character (Alden Ehrenreich) teams up with a group of mercenaries to complete a mission to snag some specialty fuel.

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating: C

Movie Review - Rules Don't Apply

Rules Don't Apply (2016)

Starring Alden Ehrenreich, Lily Collins, Warren Beatty, Matthew Broderick, Annette Bening, and a slew of other people in cameo-length roles

Directed by Warren Beatty

***This film is currently available via HBO Now/GO***

Howard Hughes was a bit of an eccentric loon who, thanks to his significant entrepreneurial endeavors, was able to have his hands in a multitude of business ventures ranging from creating aircraft to producing motion pictures.  Rules Don't Apply focuses on the latter aspect as an aging Hughes (played by Warren Beatty who also wrote and directed the film) shifts his romantic focus to a young aspiring actress from Virginia named Marla (Lily Collins) who recently moved to Hollywood at the request of Hughes.  Upon her arrival, Marla begins to fall for her driver Frank (Alden Ehrenreich), a Howard Hughes employee, who himself is engaged to be married but also finds himself enraptured by Marla.  This romantic love triangle starts the film off in an engagingly old school 1960s-esque cinematic fashion, but the film quickly starts to fall apart after it introduces its key players.

Filled with a multitude of well-known actors in cameo-style roles, Rules Don't Apply is well-acted by Lily Collins and Alden Ehrenreich, but their "will they or won't they" romantic story isn't enough of a story to sustain the film's long nearly 150-minute runtime.  Writer/director Warren Beatty seems to recognize this hence the introduction of his Howard Hughes character about thirty minutes into the film, but he fails at making Hughes' storylines captivating.  When Hughes comes into the picture, Rules Don't Apply can't seem to tell who its central character is - Hughes or Marla or Frank - and this leads to oddly edited sequences that create one the most boringly manic all-over-the-place films I've seen in a long time.  A passion project for Beatty who spent a long time getting it to the screen post-production, Rules Don't Apply has some great production values and does feel fittingly 1960s in tone and style, but it ultimately fails in the story and directing department.

The RyMickey Rating:  C-

Movie Review - Hail, Caesar!

Hail, Caesar! (2016)

Starring Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Alden Ehrenreich, Ralph Fiennes, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, and Channing Tatum

Directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen

I am not the most erudite guy, but I generally like to think of myself as somewhat intelligent.  When it comes to movies, while I'm sometimes up for a mindless comedic jaunt, I also appreciate more nuanced approaches to humor.  With that in mind, I tried to understand what the Coen Brothers were trying to do with Hail, Caesar!, but I must admit that I found myself lost in the scattered, disjointed, and utterly dull satire that lingered on the screen.  Considering the overwhelmingly positive reviews (85% positive on Rotten Tomatoes), I'm obviously in the minority here, however, this flick never once seems to come together as a cohesive whole.

Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) is the head of film production at Capitol Pictures in the early 1950s, but he spends most of his time working as a fixer, trying to keep his top-of-the-line stars from ending up in the gossip pages of well-known columnists like twin sisters Thora and Thessaly Thacker (Tilda Swinton).  It isn't easy and it gets progressively harder when one of the studio's biggest names -- Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) -- gets kidnapped from the set of the studio's big extravaganza Hail, Caeasar by a group of Communist screenwriters.

Were this the only plot of the Coens' Hail, Caesar, it may have been successful, but the duo pepper in a variety of other characters who serve little to no purpose in the film's overarching storyline.  Sure these characters help to create an atmosphere which is admittedly successfully portrayed, but their side stories are so superfluous and unengaged with the main plot line that I felt as if the movie would've worked better as a ten episode-long tv series rather than a self-contained 100-minute movie.  Scarlett Johansson is humorous as a brash, pregnant, unmarried Esther Williams-type synchronized swimming star.  Channing Tatum is fine as a Gene Kelly-esque singer/dancer.  Alden Ehrenreich steals the show as an "aw shucks" Roy Rogers-esque western star/singer.  Still, while these three actors have crafted believable characters, they're not all that integral to the overarching plot.  Unfortunately, that overarching plot is bland and boring and we find ourselves wanting to spend more time with Ehrenreich and Johansson despite the fact that they do little to forward the film.

The flick admittedly looks lush in its period setting and the acting is solid across the board (Ehrenreich is definitely the star of the bunch).  However, production and costume design can only get you so far.  In this so-called comedy, I can count on one hand the amount of times I laughed...and that's a bit of a problem.  The Coen Brothers are admittedly a directorial and writing team who don't always succeed for me, particularly in the comedy world.  Hail, Caesar! is one of those failures.

The RyMickey Rating:  D