American Animals

American Animals (2018)

Starring Evan Peters, Barry Keoghan, Blake Jenner, Jared Abrahamson, and Ann Dowd

Directed by Bart Layton

Written by Bart Layton

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating:  A-

Hereditary

Hereditary (2018)

Starring Toni Collette, Alex Wolff, Milly Shapiro, Ann Dowd, and Gabriel Byrne
Directed by Ari Aster
Written by Ari Aster
***This film is currently streaming via Amazon Prime***

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating:  B

Movie Review - Captain Fantastic

Captain Fantastic (2016)

Starring Viggo Mortenson, George MacKay, Samantha Isler, Annalise Basso, Nicholas Hamilton, Shree Crooks, Charlie Shotwell, Kathryn Hahn, Steve Zahn, Ann Dowd, and Frank Langella

Directed by Matt Ross

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

The inhabitants of Captain Fantastic are people with whom I would never ever want to spend any time in real life.  Self-professed hippie Ben Cash (Viggo Mortensen) has taken his six kids out of the "normalcy" of society to live on their own private family commune in the middle of the Washington wilderness where they kill their own food, learn survival skills, live out of an old school bus, and learn about left-wing philosophies.  Leslie, the matriarch of the Cash family, was recently hospitalized for bipolar disorder and at the end of the film's first act, Ben learns that his wife has committed suicide.  With the kids devastated, Ben decides to put his children on the bus and travel to his wife's parents' home where he will try and convince them to acquiesce to his wife's wishes and cremate her rather than having a church ceremony and subsequent burial.

The bus journey makes up the bulk of Captain Fantastic and while it certainly showcases the bond Ben has with his six children, it does little to make me feel that what Ben is doing is good parenting.  While I recognize that my personal opinion is neither here nor there (Lord knows as a conservative-leaning movie-lover, I'd have to hate half of what Hollywood dishes out), the film wants the audience to believe that what Ben is doing with his wilderness living is the best thing for his kids despite the fact that the film shows us several times that it's not.  The film is inherently set up for us to root for the life of Ben and the kids to remain their current status quo, but we in the audience know that's not what's best for them and by Ben being so stubborn in his ways, I found myself losing interest about halfway through.  Granted, by the conclusion of writer-director Matt Ross's film, Ben eventually realizes that he needs to adjust his kids to some semblance of normalcy in order for them to survive in the real world, but it's a bit too little too late.

Still, despite this, Captain Fantastic is moderately engaging thanks to Viggo Mortensen at its core as the genuinely caring father whose disdain for modern life has transferred fully onto his children.  As for those kids, most of them do nice work helping Mortensen to carry the piece especially young Shree Crooks as the headstrong and inquisitive youngest daughter Zaja.  Obviously your mileage may vary, but something about the motivations of the characters made it difficult for me to buy into this film despite the good performances.

The RyMickey Rating:  C

Movie Review - Our Brand Is Crisis

Our Brand Is Crisis (2015)

Starring Sandra Bullock, Billy Bob Thornton, Anthony Mackie, Joaquim de Almeida, Ann Dowd, Scoot McNairy, and Zoe Kazan

Directed by David Gordon Green

***This movie is currently available on HBO Now***

Savaged by critics and completely ignored by moviegoers, Our Brand Is Crisis was one of the biggest bombs of Sandra Bullock's career when it was released last October.  Quite frankly, I'm a bit surprised because I found the film to be an amusingly lighthearted political comedy with an engaging cast who create an atmosphere that's a lot more fun than I expected.  Bullock is Jane Bodine, an American campaign manager who is hired by an American consulting who in turn was hired by Bolivian politician Pedro Castillo (Joaquim de Almeida) to run his floundering campaign for the presidency.  The film rather simply covers a several-months period in which Jane and her crew (Anthony Mackie, Ann Dowd, Scoot McNairy, and Zoe Kazan) try to create reasons to sway the public vote to Castillo.

The performances really make Our Brand Is Crisis click with Bullock in particular offering up a strong-willed, sarcastically biting role that lifts the piece higher than I'd imagine.  Unfortunately, the film falls apart a bit towards the end with its political election proving to be highly anticlimactic and its subsequent repercussions off-putting and too dramatically out-of-place with the rest of the feature.  Still this film (a fictionalized account of a documentary of the same name) isn't nearly as bad as its lukewarm reception would have you believe.

The RyMickey Rating:  B-

Movie Review - Bachelorette

Bachelorette (2012)

Starring Kirsten Dunst, Isla Fisher, Lizzy Caplan, Rebel Wilson, James Marsden, Kyle Bornheimer, and Adam Scott

Directed by Leslye Headland

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

The comparisons to 2010's hilarious Bridesmaids have to be expected when it comes to a movie like Bachelorette if only because the movie industry doesn't have too many female-centric comedies in the marketplace, and by having both films focus on a wedding further connects the two.  However, Bachelorette skews much darker in its comedy which creates quite a different tint on the whole affair, allowing writer-director Leslye Headland's play-turned-film to not play like a retread of the Oscar-nominated (and RyMickey Award Best Picture Top Ten finisher) Kristen Wiig film.

Whereas the characters in Bridesmaids were in their mid-thirties and genuinely excited about their best friend's wedding, the late twentysomethings in Bachelorette who were friends in high school look at the upcoming nuptials of Becky (Rebel Wilson) with disdain.    Becky was always the fourth wheel in the group known as "The B Faces," and it doesn't sit well that "the fat one" in the quartet is the first one to get married.  Regan (Kirsten Dunst), like Becky, lives in New York City and has kept in touch with the soon-to-be-bride more than the rest of the group, so she gets the role of Maid of Honor.  Outwardly showing enthusiasm, Regan's ice queen, bitchy demeanor comes out right away as she calls her fellow "B Faces" Gena (Lizzy Caplan) and Katie (Isla Fisher) to tell them the news.  As the group convenes for the wedding weekend, they begin to realize that they haven't changed all that much since high school...and maybe that's not such a good thing.  Katie's still a crazy bed-hopping party girl, Gena's cocaine snorting is still a commonplace occurrence, and Regan's bulimic tendencies still rear their ugly head at times.  None of these girls are the epitome of perfection and there are moments where they're all incredibly nasty to one another, but they're still friends despite their sometimes warped view of what being "friends" actually means.  They have a shared history that continues to bring them close together and, as time has passed, they begin to wonder whether it's maybe time that they all begin to grow up a little bit.

This isn't to say that Bachelorette ends on a sensitive up-with-people note.  These characters aren't "changed" in miraculous ways by seeing their child-like mannerisms.  Instead, the movie concludes with them simply glimpsing the fact that it's likely time they try to turn into adults as they head into their third decade and maybe Becky's wedding is the impetus to getting that ball rolling.  Kirsten Dunst and Lizzy Caplan succeed the best at coming to this realization for their characters.  Both Dunst and Caplan are given nice arcs and they surprised me by making me give a damn about their rather loathsome characters by the end of the film.  I don't watch Girls on HBO, but I imagine that the reason it's buzzed about (I refuse to say successful because less than two million people watch it per episode and yet it's praised like it's a huge hit) is that it showcases twentysomething women in a light that typically isn't shone on them.  That's definitely the case here and Dunst and Caplan are able to imbue their characters with enough depth to make the film overall a success.

That isn't to say that Ms. Headland's script gives adequate dimensionality to all characters.  Isla Fisher's Katie is decidedly one-note in her party hard attitude and Rebel Wilson's Becky is simply like every other character Wilson has played before meaning she'll make fun of her weight and then act "funny-cute" followed by being "funny-tough."  (Seriously, I just do not get the fawning over her, although I will say Wilson comes off surprisingly good here, it's just that she isn't adding anything new to her repertoire.)  Each lady also has a guy that she hooks up with the night before the wedding and only Adam Scott's Clyde as Gena's high school boyfriend is given anything to work with, but the story isn't really about the men, so I feel like this isn't as much of a letdown.

Qualms aside, however, Bachelorette is a really good film.  It's surprisingly funny, mining laughs from not only pop culture references that are perfect for my age bracket (ie. the age bracket depicted in the film), but also very naturally from the characters themselves.  Thanks to some nice performances from Kirsten Dunst and Lizzy Caplan and a solid (though not perfect) script, this one is absolutely one of the better comedies to come out of 2012...and it's streaming on Netflix...so watch it.

The RyMickey Rating:  B+

Movie Review - Side Effects

Side Effects (2013)

Starring Jude Law, Rooney Mara, Channing Tatum, and Catherine Zeta-Jones

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

When leaving the theater after watching Side Effects, the first word that I thought of to describe the film was "pulp," but that implies a sense of cheap sensationalism that doesn't befit this taut, effective thriller in the slightest.  Instead, I'll say that Steven Soderbergh's latest and reportedly last film echoes back to the days of classic film noir (a genre which oftentimes had an elevated "pulpy" sensibility) and, dare I say, is quite Hitchcockian in tone and execution.  Soderbergh has created a flick with many more twists and turns than I was expecting, many of which may be jaw-dropping, but all of which prove to be fitting to the overall story.  

As the film opens, twenty-eight year-old Emily (Rooney Mara) is eagerly awaiting the release of her husband Martin (Channing Tatum) from prison.  After serving four years for insider trading, Martin is ready to jump right back into the business end of things, but Emily finds herself quickly slipping into a depression.  After a suicide attempt, Emily begins seeing psychiatrist Dr. Jonathan Banks (Jude Law) who puts Emily on a series of anti-depressant medication.  Seeing little to no improvement and after talking with Emily's former psychiatrist Dr. Victoria Siebert (Catherine Zeta-Jones), Dr. Banks puts Emily on a new drug named Ablixa.  Unfortunately, one of the side effects of Ablixa is blackout-like sleepwalking.  While in one of these blackouts, Emily commits an act that places her into a mental institution and the questions begin to arise as to who exactly is to blame.

The film does take a little bit to find its balance and several of the actors, particularly the overly glum Rooney Mara and the rather one-note Catherine Zeta-Jones (who we know we're supposed to think is sexy because she wears tight skirts and thick-rimmed glasses like a librarian from a young kid's wet dream), are curious enigmas that certainly had me doubting Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Burns' screenplay during the first half.  [It should also be noted that I couldn't buy for a second that Channing Tatum was a smart, Wall Street-type stockbroker.] However, much to my delight, as the film heads into its final hour, puzzle pieces begin to fit together and twists, turns, and double crosses veer the flick on a decidedly different course than one expects at the onset.  It's at this time that the film shifts focus from Emily and towards Dr. Banks who is rather unexpectedly facing the brunt of the blame for his patient's criminal act.  Jude Law very nicely balances his character's need to find out the truth behind the questionable new drug while at the same time hoping that his findings won't prove him criminally culpable.  

No one's going to mistake Side Effects for a cinematic masterpiece, but it's fun, smart, and very nicely places you on the edge of your seat for a good bit of its running time.  Sex, violence, and drugs -- a potent combination, but one that always has the potential of creating a good amount of riveting drama as is the case here.  A very nice start to cinema for me in 2013.

The RyMickey Rating:  B

Movie Review - Compliance

Compliance (2012)

Starring Ann Dowd, Dreama Walker, and Pat Healy

Directed by Craig Zobel

When you were little, everyone was told the line "Just because your friends jumped off the bridge doesn't mean you should, too."  We're told that because we need to be able to understand that we need to think for ourselves and just because someone tells us to do something doesn't mean we should toe that line.  As we get older, maybe we take a psychology class and learn about the Milgram experiment in which a Yale professor set up a test in which an authority figure asked participants to perform an act that went against their personal morals and consciences.  The test involving electric shock had over half of the participants giving the maximum voltage of electricity to test subjects (who were actually actors) despite the fact that many of these participants knew what they were doing was not humane.

It's a Milgram-type experiment at work in Compliance which is based on an amazingly disturbing true story.  I will admit that as Compliance progressed, I couldn't believe what I was seeing actually occurred, but after doing a bit of research, it turns out that all of the disgustingly inhumane stuff enacted onscreen truly happened which makes the film even more disquieting.

Sandra (Ann Dowd) is the forty-something manager of a Chick-Wich fast food restaurant and Becky (Dreama Walker) is a teen who works the register.  On a busy Friday evening, Sandra receives a phone call from an Officer Daniels (Pat Healy) stating that a woman has arrived at the police station claiming that Becky stole money from her purse while at the restaurant.  Daniels asks Sandra to take Becky into an office and begin questioning her about the stolen money which Becky vehemently denies stealing.  As time wears on, Daniels begins to ask Sandra and others to perform increasingly more disturbing acts to Becky.

Rather surprisingly, about halfway through director and screenwriter Craig Zobel shows us in the audience that Officer Daniels is in fact not a police officer at all, but a mild-mannered guy who just happened to stop into the Chick-Wich for an early dinner and decided to play a heinous prank for reasons that are never quite explained.  We in the audience would like to think that we would never succumb to the seemingly ridiculous requests of a man posing as a cop, but this does raise the question of how far would we go if someone in authority asks us to do something that makes us uncomfortable.

Compliance gives us quite an interesting premise that I'm not quite sure can sustain itself over even as short a movie as this (which clocks in at under ninety minutes).  While both Ann Dowd and Dreama Walker give nice performances, they're stuck doing essentially the same things the whole time (albeit in increasingly disturbing circumstances).  Dowd was actually garnering some awards buzz this season and while she was fine, I don't think her performance was as nuanced as everyone building that buzz believed (which was not the fault of Dowd, but of the role itself).  The film is good and worth seeing, but it admittedly wears a little thin.

The RyMickey Rating:  B-

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