Turning Red

Turning Red (2022)

Featuring the vocal talents of Rosalie Chiang, Sandra Oh, Ava Morse, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Hyein Park, Orion Lee, and Wai Ching Ho

Directed by Domee Shi

Written by Julia Cho and Domee Shi

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating: B-

The Chair

 The Chair (2021)

Starring Sandra Oh, Jay Duplass, Bob Balaban, Nana Mensah, Everly Carganilla, David Morse, and Holland Taylor

Directed by Daniel Gray Longino

Created by Amanda Peet and Annie Julia Wyman

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating:  C

Movie Review - Catfight

Catfight (2016)
Starring Sandra Oh, Anne Heche, Alicia Silverstone, Amy Hill, Myra Lucretia Taylor, Ariel Kavoussi, and Giullian Yao Gioiello
Directed by Onur Tukel
**This film is currently streaming on Netflix***

Catfight is almost so bad, it's good.  "Almost" being the operative word there, though.  Sandra Oh and Anne Heche at least hold our attention as rival college students who reunite as adults at a ritzy party where Veronica (Oh) brags about her rich husband to Ashley (Heche), a struggling artist acting as a waitress to make ends meet, but the two actresses can't overcome the rather tacky writing and lukewarm direction brought to the screen by Onur Tukel.

At that aforementioned party, Ashley gets so fed up with the haughty Veronica that she initiates a nasty catfight that ends up putting Veronica into a coma for two years.  Upon waking up, Veronica's life has completely turned upside down.  Needless to say, Veronica finds herself questioning her beliefs prior to the coma while also trying to remember exactly what landed her in the hospital in the first place.  Rather than spoil what comes next, let's just say that the rivalry between Veronica and Ashley hasn't come to a conclusion yet and their distaste for one another rears its ugly head for years to come.

Catfight unfortunately is just poorly pieced together and is perhaps trying to be more politically charged than it has any right to be.  Characters are one-note and oftentimes unbelievable -- the less said about poor Alicia Silverstone as Ashely's lesbian lover the better given the fact that her character never once is given any shred of reality in which to inhabit.  The film ends up being very repetitive by the time its conclusion rolls around and although I was moderately engaged that was really only because it was so laughably corny at times.  I've never seen so many poorly filmed punches in my life in a ninety-minute span as I saw in Catfight -- a decent fight coordinator coupled with a director who knew how to shoot fisticuffs would've helped many a scene here.  Once again, this almost reaches levels of absurdist fun, but in the end, it never gets to that point.

The RyMickey Rating:  C 

Movie Review - Tammy

Tammy (2014)

Starring Melissa McCarthy, Susan Sarandon, Kathy Bates, Allison Janney, Dan Aykroyd, Mark Duplass, Gary Cole, Nat Faxon, Toni Collette, Sandra Oh, and Ben Falcone

Directed by Ben Falcone

What an unfunny mess Tammy is.  Melissa McCarthy stars as the title character, a foul-mouthed, bellowing, and brash woman who comes home after being fired from her job at a fast food joint only to find her husband (Nat Faxon) canoodling with the next door neighbor (Toni Collette).  Obviously upset, Tammy leaves and heads two doors down to her mom's house where she demands to take her mom's car and drive far away.  While her mother (Allison Janney) understands her pain, she dismisses Tammy's dreams of starting anew, but her grandmother Pearl (Susan Sarandon) also wants to get out of Dodge and agrees to let Tammy take her car as long as she can tag along.  Tammy agrees and the two set out on a cross-country journey of discovery.

I think I mention this in every review of her films, but my introduction to Melissa McCarthy occurred when I watched the first few seasons of Gilmore Girls on tv.  I'm rewatching the show via Netflix and it makes me appreciate the sweet and charming persona that McCarthy can inhabit should she so choose.  So why does she choose motion picture vehicles in which she plays completely reprehensible, vile, vulgar, unappealing characters?  If she's trying to recapture the Bridesmaids magic that earned her a deserved Academy Award nomination, she's failing miserably.  There's nothing about the character of Tammy that makes you want to watch her.  She's slovenly sloppy, obnoxiously dimwitted, and ignorant to nearly everyone that crosses her path.  Spending ninety minutes with this woman is eighty-nine minutes too much.

McCarthy needs to seriously take a look at her choices and shake things up a bit.  She attempted that with an admirable turn in 2014's St. Vincent, but Tammy is an utter failure.  Written by McCarthy and her husband Ben Falcone, Tammy is one to avoid at all costs.

The RyMickey Rating:  D-

Movie Review - Rabbit Hole

Rabbit Hole (2010)

Starring Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhart, Dianne Weist, Miles Teller, Tammy Blanchard, and Sandra Oh

Directed by John Cameron Mitchell

On the "want to see" list for months now, I was worried that the build-up to Rabbit Hole would lead to disappointment.  Fortunately, that wasn't the case.  Although I expected the film to be a bit more emotionally draining and difficult to watch, this tale of a couple who loses their four year-old son in a tragic accident is quite powerful and bolstered by some great performances all around.

Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart are Becca and Howie who, as the film opens, are still reeling from the death of their young child eight months before.  While there may have been attempts to move on, nothing has really helped their grief and their relationship is suffering at this point.  Howie finds some modicum of solace in group therapy with other parents who have lost their kids, but Becca finds the process unbearable.  Instead, she follows around the eighteen year-old teenager who accidentally hit their son with his car, but even she is unsure what relief that will provide her.  Regardless, neither of the two are emotionally healthy.

The performances of Kidman and Eckhart carry this film and without their strength, Rabbit Hole would not have been as solid as it is.  Suprisingly (to me at least), Kidman's Becca is the more subdued of the two characters.  Not without her emotional moments, Becca is a character who has internalized her pain and grief, only releasing it when pushed to the limit by others.  Instead, it's Aaron Eckhart's Howie who is the more vocal of the couple.  Played rather perfectly, Eckhart's Howie is the character that really hit me.  I don't know if it's just because we're not used to males wearing their emotions on their sleeves, but Eckhart's performance is still marinating in my mind several hours after I watched the film.  I'm quite surprised Mr. Eckhart didn't gain any awards traction this past year with this role.

Admittedly, probably because I was so looking forward to this one, I felt a tiny bit let down.  I was expecting the film, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name (and adapted for the screen by its playwright David Lindsay-Abaire), to be a bit more "loud," but instead was treated to a much more subdued emotional display.  It's a case of wrongly placed expectations.  That being said, I really want to see this story played out on a stage.  Credit goes to screenwriter/playwright Lindsay-Abaire who expanded his five-person stage play into a well-rounded film that never once felt boxed in (of course, credit must also go to director John Cameron Mitchell for making this feel like a movie rather than a filmed play).

Overall, this is a solid film with some great performances (that you'll very likely see pop up in my 2010 RyMickey Awards...whenever I get around to finishing them).

The RyMickey Rating:  B