The Nun

The Nun (2018)

Starring Demián Bichir, Taissa Farmiga, and Jonas Bloquet

Directed by Corin Hardy

Written by Gary Dauberman

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating: D-

Movie Review - The Hateful Eight

The Hateful Eight (2015)

Starring Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Goggins, Demian Bichir, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern, and Channing Tatum

Directed by Quentin Tarantino

Quentin Tarantino movies piss me off...and I mean that in the nicest way possible.

As I sit and watch them (with the exception of Kill Bill which I admittedly haven't watched in a while), I often find myself cursing the writer-director for being so loquacious, adding scenes that seemingly do little to advance the plot except to showcase his (only sometimes) brilliant ear for dialog.  But by the time most of the conclusions to his films roll around, I end up giving him a pass on the preceding verboseness because he manages to tie things up on such a clever note.  Such is the case with The Hateful Eight - a nearly three-hour epic that features an awful lot of talking, very minimal sets, and a group of essentially eight actors who carry the film very adequately on their shoulders doing Tarantino's Western-Agatha Christie And Then There Were None mash-up justice.

In his eighth film as a director, The Hateful Eight unfolds across six chapters detailing how a group of people end up seeking refuge at Minnie's Haberdashery in Wyoming during a horrible blizzard in the time shortly after the Civil War concludes.  Arriving just before the snowstorm really hits is John Ruth (Kurt Russell), a bounty hunter, who has the elusive Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) in tow ready to reap his reward upon delivering her to the authorities in Red Rock.  Ruth arrives at Minnie's with Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) - a Union major in the Civil War - and Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins) - the newly appointed sheriff of Red Rock.  Pent up at Minnie's already are four men whom are immediately distrusted -- Bob (Demian Bichir), a Mexican who claims he's working for Minnie who has left to see her sister several miles away; Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), an Englishman who is also a hangman; Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), a cowboy just passing through; and Sanford Smithers (Bruce Dern), a Confederate general.  With a large bounty on the head of Daisy, John Ruth questions his safety and perhaps he is justified.  As the night unfurls, secrets and motivations are revealed as one by one people begin to bite the dust.

There's no doubting that The Hateful Eight moves at a slow pace -- many of the reviews and personal comments I heard from people stated that "nothing happens" until the last hour.  While it's certainly true in that there's not much plot per se in the film's first half, there is a sense of character building that I must admit is Tarantino's forte.  We get a real sense of who these characters are by the dialog they speak and their interactions with others.  Yes, it's true that the characters present are racist misogynists (of which there was much hoopla upon the film's release), but that's Tarantino's modus operandi across his last three films (for better or worse).  And, admittedly, that's part of the reason for my first sentence of this review in that I can't help but think that Tarantino sticks too closely to what has worked for him in the past -- films broken up into chapters; films told out of order or with massive flashbacks; brash language; insanely rough violence; characters all cut from the same cloth in terms of personality -- rather than branching off in unexpected directions.  Kudos to him for finding a niche that works and sticking to it, but I do long for something new and fresh from the guy.  However, The Hateful Eight works so maybe I should just let him do what he does.

As far as the small cast, most successful at settling into their characters are Jennifer Jason Leigh (Oscar-nominated for her role) and Kurt Russell taking center stage in a film for the first time in a long time which this reviewer found to be a bit of a pleasure.  Leigh and Russell have a lot of interactions with one another and right off the bat the two click with Leigh portraying the tough as nails criminal and Russell playing the tough as nails bounty hunter, neither liking each other, but quite literally linked together by chains.  Samuel L. Jackson is certainly entertaining and a captivating entity, but he's the only one of the group that feels as if he was transplanted from a more modern time into the past.  He doesn't necessarily take us out of the era, but his character never quite clicks realistically.

The Hateful Eight will never be a film for everyone -- it's undoubtedly a Tarantino film and if they're not your cup of tea, this will not be for you either.  Yes, it's too long and that harms it, but it's definitely on par with the director's efforts as of late which have all been quality flicks that would all fare a little better if an editor tried to trim things a little more.

The RyMickey Rating:  B

Movie Review - Dom Hemingway

Dom Hemingway (2014)

Starring Jude Law, Richard E. Grant, Demian Bichir, and Emilia Clarke

Directed by Richard Shepard

Filled with cleverly snappy dialog, an oddly retro aesthetic, and a titular protagonist who's a bitterly nasty guy whom we can't help but think a bit fondly of despite his many deviant issues, director and screenwriter Richard Shepard's Dom Hemingway is a film that works about half the time, but unfortunately falters a bit when it attempts to give its otherwise crude lead character a bit of a heart of gold as the film progresses.

From the opening scene, we glimpse what kind of film we're getting into and while I don't want to spoil the hilarity of the sheer audacity of the moment, we really do immediately key in to the movie's pulpy usage of dialog and visuals to evoke humor.  In that scene (and the ones immediately following it), we discover that Dom Hemingway has been in jail for twelve years after having committed a crime and refusing to name the crime boss who tasked him with the job.  Upon his release, he meets up with his best friend (Richard E. Grant) to head to France to meet up with Ivan Fontaine (Demian Bichir), the man employing Dom when he was captured.  The ballsy, hold-no-punches guy that he is, the recently freed Dom demands that Ivan -- an incredibly wealthy, smooth-talking mafioso type -- give him a substantial payday.

Rather than spoil things, I'll leave the summary at that except to say that at about halfway through the film, Dom Hemingway begins to disappoint a bit.  Rather than continue on the comedically vulgar track, the second half of the flick attempts to reform Dom as he tries to reconcile with his adult daughter (Emilia Clarke) and her grandson.  I can understand how some films feel the need to make their nasty protagonist seem at least a bit rehabilitated as they progress and "grow," but Shepard did such a good job of creating a sleazy guy the audience can root for in Dom that this amelioration of his character is unnecessary and actually harms the film more than it does it good.  Granted, Dom never completely glistens with an angelic glow, but the whole last half struck me as a bit disingenuous for the character we had seen come before.

2014 was a surprisingly fantastic year for actors (as my RyMickey Awards will show) and in a lesser year, Jude Law would undoubtedly rank in my Top Five Actors for his brash, ballsy, and positively delightful portrayal as the title character.  While I'm not quite sure he'll make it there this year, his performance alone makes Dom Hemingway worth watching even if the film itself is hampered by a misguided attempt at creating a tiny bit of morality in the end.

The RyMickey Rating: B-

Movie Review - The Heat

The Heat (2013)

Starring Sandra Bullock, Melissa McCarthy, Demian Bichir, Marlon Wayans, Michael Rappaport, Jane Curtin, Spoken Reasons, Dan Bakkedahl, Michael McDonald, and Taran Killam

Directed by Paul Feig

I think I may be the one critic that thinks The Heat is worse than Identity Thief.  I compare the two simply because they were both released in 2013 and have Melissa McCarthy playing similarly tough broads.  Then again, does McCarthy ever play any other movie characters other than a tough broad?  The shtick is getting old and I'm not buying into it anymore.  Her characters from This Is 40, Identity Thief, and now The Heat are really indistinguishable and, quite frankly, she's ruined any good will she earned from the film that put her on the map -- Bridesmaids.  (I will note, however, that her Identity Thief character at least was given an opportunity to have a bit of an emotional heart at its core...if only that could continue carrying over...)

Here, McCarthy's Bridesmaids director Paul Feig returns to direct his newfound star who plays a Boston cop named Mullins who is forced to partner up with a more polished and well-mannered FBI agent named Ashburn (played by Sandra Bullock) in order to hunt down a drug kingpin.  With not much of a story stretched out to nearly two hours, The Heat wears out its welcome pretty quickly with seemingly every other joke gleaning its laughs from a curse word -- there's really only so many times the F-word can be used as a punchline before it becomes irritating.  There's also a tendency by McCarthy here to repeat something over and over again in order to emphasis to the audience that "This is supposed to be funny, so you better all be laughing!  Oh, you're not?  Let me say it again and maybe you will this time.  Still not?  Let's give it one more try!"  Ugh.

Honestly, it pained me to sit through this one and it pains me even more to try and come to grips with how this was a success.  Personally, I'm saying it was because of Sandra Bullock's charms because beyond her presence, there's nothing positive to say about this one.

The RyMickey Rating:  D