Cyrano

Cyrano (2021) 

Starring Peter Dinklage, Haley Bennett, Kelvin Harrison, Jr., and Ben Mendelsohn

Directed by Joe Wright

Written by Erica Schmidt

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating: B-

The Land of Steady Habits

The Land of Steady Habits (2018)

Starring Ben Mendelsohn, Edie Falco, Thomas Mann, Bill Camp, Elizabeth Marvel, Charlie Tahan, Michael Gaston, Josh Pais, and Connie Britton

Directed by Nicole Holofcener

Written by Nicole Holofcener

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating: C+

Captain Marvel

Captain Marvel (2019)

Starring Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Djimon Hounsou, Lee Pace, Lashana Lynch, Gemma Chan, Clark Gregg, Annette Bening, and Jude Law

Directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck

Written by Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck, and Geneva Robertson-Dworet

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating:  C

Ready Player One

Ready Player One (2018)

Starring Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, Lena Waithe, T.J. Miller, Simon Pegg, and Mark Rylance

Directed by Steven Spielberg

Written by Zak Penn and Ernest Cline

Click here for my Letterbox review

The RyMickey Rating: D+

Una

Una (2017)

Starring Rooney Mara, Ben Mendelsohn, Riz Ahmed, Ruby Stokes, and Tara Fitzgerald

Directed by Benedict Andrews

Written by

***This film is currently streaming via Netflix***

Summary (in 500 words or less):  A young woman named Una (Rooney Mara) arrives unannounced at the office of Ray (Ben Mendelsohn), an older man.  As the evening progresses, secrets are revealed and their ugly past is revisited.

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating: B-

Darkest Hour

Darkest Hour (2017)

Starring Gary Oldman, Kristin Scott Thomas, Ben Mendelsohn, and Lily James

Directed by Joe Wright

Written by Anthony McCarten

Summary (in 500 words or less): British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (Gary Oldman) accepts the job and is immediately thrust into how to tackle the Axis forces as they invade Dunkirk in France. With tens of thousands of British soldiers in harm's way, Churchill faces the difficult decision of bargaining with Hitler or saving his men utilizing a very unique method of recruiting civilians with boats to head into war territory to carry of British troops.

• There's nothing particularly wrong with Darkest Hour, but in the end, it lacks uniqueness, playing a bit too much like typical formulaic historical biopics.  
• I did appreciate that writer Anthony McCarten focuses on only a short span of Churchill's job as PM (maybe a little over a month is all we're looking at here), rather than an entire biography of Churchill's life.  Having the Dunkirk invasion as the primary focus is a smart decision in that it (a) is a pivotal moment in WWII, and (b) shows us how Churchill handled a stressful and unique situation right off the bat upon starting his job.
• Gary Oldman is good as Churchill and creates a commanding presence, but I'm not quite sure he wowed me beyond delivering a solid performance.
• I did find some historical elements interesting -- it's amazing how close the Brits were to caving in to Hitler and his demands -- and this film does a better job than Dunkirk at conveying the extent of the amount of soldiers on the ground in Dunkirk that needed rescuing.
• Joe Wright is a consistently solid director whose visual aesthetic breathes a bit of fresh life into what could typically be stolid pieces of cinema.  He works his magic here as well to an admittedly lesser effect in part because much of the scenes feel purposely cloistered (particularly in the British War Rooms) as we see the weight of the situation caving in on Churchill.

The RyMickey Rating:  B-

Movie Review - Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

Starring Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Alan Tudyk, Donnie Yen, Wen Jiang, Ben Mendelsohn, Forest Whitaker, Riz Ahmed, and Mads Mikkelsen

Directed by Gareth Edwards

As some may recall, I had not seen a single Star Wars film until last year.  I had gone more than three decades without fully learning about the travails of Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Princess Leia.  That all changed, however, as I watched Episodes IV through VII within the span of 48 hours with the last edition -- The Force Awakens -- landing on my Top Ten films of 2015.  With that newfound appreciation of the massively popular series, I will admit that I actually wanted to see Rogue One: A Star Wars Story...but it was a huge letdown for this "newcomer" to the Star Wars pantheon.

A prequel of sorts to Episode IV, Rogue One tells us the tale of how the Rebel forces got hold of the plans for the Imperial's Death Star and were able to destroy it at the end of the 1977 film.  Here, a young girl named Jyn is sent into hiding by her research scientist father Galen (Mads Mikkelsen) right before he is captured by the Imperial forces to help with the plans for the planet-destroying Death Star.  Now grown up, Jyn (Felicity Jones) finds herself on the wrong side of the law and imprisoned, but is broken free by the Rebels when it's discovered that her father is trying to send them messages to help them defeat the Imperial armies.  Jyn leads a group of men to retrieve the blueprints to the Death Star which - surprise, surprise - is ultimately successful.

Part of the issue with Rogue One is that we already know the premise of the ending before the film even begins.  This group of ragtag folks - Jones along with Diego Luna, Alan Tudyk (as a smart-aleck robot), Donnie Yen, Wen Jiang, and Riz Ahmed - succeeds or else Episode IV would've never happened.  The overarching dramatic tension simply isn't there.  Sure, there are individual moments in Rogue One that may excite, but the overall outcome is already known from the start.  Coming off of The Force Awakens which had quite a few surprises, this film felt like a huge letdown.

Ultimately, Rogue One is just a huge bore.  There are hardly any moments of lightheartedness (like in the form of Han Solo's wisecracks or Ewoks or R2D2) and attempts at laughs via Tudyk's K-2SO fall flat.  With the exception of Forest Whitaker (who is overacting to the nth degree), the cast is fine, but their characters are one-note and utterly bland, giving the audience no one to really latch onto in terms of a character to really relate.  In fact, the only bright spots in the film occur when Ben Mendelsohn takes the screen as the villainous Orson Krennic, the overseer of the Death Star project for the Imperial military.  He revels in his devious role and livens things up whenever he's onscreen which is more than I can say for anyone else.

I have been severely disappointed by director Gareth Edwards previous two efforts -- Monsters and Godzilla -- and Rogue One continues the trend of me not caring for his work.  Much like those other two films, he fails to create a momentum that's sorely needed in an action-centric story.  His key action-oriented scenes do little to enhance the story and are filmed in a bland, almost nonchalant fashion.  Edwards isn't helped by the screenplay which fails to flesh out the characters beyond a most basic set of descriptors, but he doesn't help himself either when it comes to creating a film that builds excitement and tension.  With the exception of the film's final ten minutes which admittedly (finally) holds one's interest, the preceding two hours could've been condensed into a crawl at the beginning of a Star Wars film -- oh wait...it was.

The RyMickey Rating:  C-

Movie Review - Black Sea

Black Sea (2015)

Starring Jude Law, Scoot McNairy, Ben Mendelsohn, and Bobby Schofield 

Directed by Kevin Macdonald

Maybe I've just hit the wall with submarine movies.  In the past year, I've watched Pioneer and Pressure, and perhaps unfortunately Black Sea is hitting many of the same notes as those previous flicks.  In fact, and I'm spoiling the lede here, Black Sea ends up getting the same grade as those prior pics -- it's perfectly average.

Much like those other flicks, we get a group of men who head down in a submarine (or some submersible) -- here, the group headed by recently unemployed Robinson (Jude Law) are searching for a German U-boat that sank decades ago and is rumored to be filled with gold.  Robinson's crew is a joint venture between some Russians and some Brits and the tension between the two groups comes to a head once Robinson announces that the gold will be split evenly amongst the crew once they surface.  The theory arises, though, if there are less people alive when they surface that means more gold per individual and this notion leads to some deviance.

Black Sea is probably the best acted of the trio of submarine flicks with Jude Law giving a well-balanced performance, but the film itself feels slowly paced and oddly unexciting considering the premise of men starting to turn on one another.  Kevin Macdonald does a nice job of making the film feel as unclaustrophobic as possible, but by the time the film finally starts rolling about an hour in, I was in the process of checking out.  Fortunately, Law's performance and the story kick up a few notches and the flick becomes more captivating, but it's a shame it's not a fully well-rounded film.

The RyMickey Rating:  C

Movie Review - Starred Up

Starred Up (2014)

Starring Jack O'Connell, Ben Mendelsohn, and Rupert Friend

Directed by David Mackenzie

***This film is currently streaming on Amazon Prime***

Gritty and seemingly realistic (although I admittedly am fortunately unfamiliar with the setting), Starred Up is a solid prison tale that adds an interesting twist to the genre as father and son inmates try to reign supreme despite their decidedly hot tempers which wreak a bit of havoc amongst those on their cell block.  Jack O'Connell is the young Eric Love who is transferred to an adult British prison (a practice known as being "starred up") and immediately decides to puff his chest and show his strength by trying to harm a prison guard.  While this would typically place an inmate into solitary confinement, Eric lucks out as his father Neville (Ben Mendelsohn) just so happens to be in the same prison and just so happens to be well-liked by the officers and guards.  Neville is able to work out a deal that places his son into a rehabilitation program where he meets with Oliver Baumer (Rupert Friend) several times a week with a few other prisoners in a group therapy-type setting in hopes that the nineteen year-old Eric can become less angry and more "functioning" as he spends nearly a decade in prison.

As mentioned, director David Mackenzie and screenwriter Jonathan Asser have crafted a gritty flick here with a character in Eric that is disarmingly unpleasant.  Jack O'Connell does a great job of showcasing the youth's visceral dislike for authority and violent tendencies towards everyone.  Ben Mendelsohn is also eerily unsavory as Eric's father -- how does he get what he wants?  Why does he have pull in the prison?  The answers aren't necessarily appealing.

Admittedly, I found the accents in this one a bit harsh to this American's ear and I did find that I had to watch the flick with subtitles in order to fully grasp what was going on.  However, Starred Up is a solid piece of filmmaking with an impressively scarily realistic turn from Jack O'Connell who's certainly seeing his star rise in recent months.

The RyMickey Rating:  B

Movie Review - Adore

Adore (2013)

Starring Naomi Watts, Robin Wright, Xavier Samuel, James Frecheville, Sophie Lowe, Jessica Tovey, and Ben Mendelsohn

Directed by Anne Fontaine

***This film is currently streaming on Netflix***

There's an uncomfortable feeling that permeates throughout Adore that I can't imagine anyone really finding kosher.  The story of two grown women -- Lil (Naomi Watts) and Roz (Robin Wright) -- going through a mid-life crisis is at its core.  Lil is a widow left with a son Ian (Xavier Samuel) after her husband dies who, despite nearly a decade without her significant other, hasn't quite moved on with her life.  Roz is Lil's best friend, has been married to Harold (Ben Mendelsohn) for two decades, and has a son named Tom (James Frecheville).  The two families have had their lives intertwined for years, but one night when Harold is away, that "intertwining" takes on new meaning as Ian and Roz have a passionate night of lovemaking only to be seen by Roz's son Ian.  Upset, Ian run to Lil...who ends up comforting him by sleeping with him as well.

Feeling a little skeezed out yet?  You should be.  The two women and their two sons decide that these relationships while admittedly a little odd are exactly what the doctor ordered -- they make the women feel young and also feel natural since they've all known each other for years.  That'd be one crazy doctor, however, to give the okay to the obviously psychologically damaging set-up that's going on here.

Oddly enough, however, I was actually moderately impressed at how the film takes its time exploring the two incredibly inappropriate relationships.  While the concept seems odd, the film makes the couplings feel like a natural progression (although, admittedly, director Anne Fontaine sets things up way too obviously in the film's opening act with sensual looks and simple caresses blatantly foreshadowing what is to come).  All of the actors sell the concept with Watts and Wright doing their best to try and make the audience feel less uncomfortable than the set-up inevitably warrants -- they don't necessarily succeed, but they come close.

Still, in the end, it all just feels rather silly.  There is an attempt at trying to get serious in the film's final act, but after two-thirds of frivolity and sexual shenanigans, I didn't buy into that aspect.  Adore was pretty roundly trashed by the critics upon its release and while I don't think it's deserving of a complete dismissal, it's just a tiny bit too icky to fully embrace.

The RyMickey Rating:  C

Movie Review - The Place Beyond the Pines

The Place Beyond the Pines (2013)

Starring Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes, Dane DeHaan, Emory Cohen, Rose Byrne, Mahershala Ali, Bruce Greenwood, Harris Yulin, Ben Mendelsohn, and Ray Liotta

Directed by Derek Cianfrance

There's a grandness to the scale of The Place Beyond the Pines that isn't often seen in cinema.  Director and co-writer Derek Cianfrance takes his time building his characters and their arcs.  Some might even say he spends a bit too much time as the three intertwining stories he weaves here slowly unfold in their layers of connection to one another.  While the film isn't perfect, to me The Place Beyond the Pines features storytelling that you typically only get from a great novel and it's a welcome change of pace.

Now, this may seem like a cop out (and it sort of is as I'm trying to get this review done quickly), but I'm not really going to divulge much of the plot here.  If you're not aware of what the film is attempting to do, it's better that you stay in the dark and let things unfold scene by scene.  This isn't to say that The Place Beyond the Pines is particularly surprising or holds twists and turns, but it is told in a unique fashion that may be best kept secret if you're unfamiliar with the director's overall concept.

I will, however, simply state that the film tells the tale of two men -- Luke (Ryan Gosling), a stunt motorcyclist who discovers that he has a young son with Romina (Eva Mendes), a girl he had a fling with over a year ago; and Avery (Bradley Cooper), a first-year cop who also has a young son the same age as Luke's.  Luke and Avery's lives will become interwoven as will the lives of their sons as they grow older (played by Dane DeHaan and Emory Cohen as teens).

I mentioned a "grand scale" in my opening sentence of this review and you shouldn't misinterpret that as being a multi-million dollar Ben Hur-esque special effects-driven type of scope.  Instead, the grandeur comes from the fact that we follow Luke, Avery, and their families over the course of two decades, seeing how their lives change, and how even a spur of the moment decision can affect those around them years down the line.  It's this concept of following multiple characters across generations -- a la Steinbeck's East of Eden -- that makes this movie unique and stand out from the crowd.

With a nice performance from Bradley Cooper anchoring the film [and kudos to Cooper for changing my opinion on him within this past year...he's becoming quite the actor], The Place Beyond the Pines is absolutely worth watching assuming you're ready for a slow-burning type of film.  Then again, Derek Cianfrance's Blue Valentine could've been described in a similar fashion.  While Pines can't hold a candle to the masterpiece that is Blue Valentine (my number one film of 2010...which is also streaming on Netflix, FYI, so watch it immediately), it's still a fine piece of cinema that admittedly sinks into a bit of hokeyness at times (to the detriment of the rawness it's trying to convey), but is still worthy of a watch.

The RyMickey Rating:  B