Tootsie

Tootsie (1982)

Starring Dustin Hoffman, Jessica Lange, Bill Murray, Teri Garr, Dabney Coleman, Sydney Pollack, Doris Belack, George Gaynes, Geena Davis, and Charles Durning

Directed by Sydney Pollack

Written by Larry Gelbart and Murray Schisgal

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating: A-

Dick Tracy

Dick Tracy (1990)

Starring Warren Beatty, Charlie Korsmo, Al Pacino, Madonna, Glenne Headly, Dustin Hoffman, William Forsythe, Mandy Patinkin, Charles Durning, Paul Sorvino, and Dick Van Dyke

Directed by Warren Beatty

Written by Jim Cash and Jack Epps, Jr.

Click here for my Letterboxd review

Click here for my original RyMickey Rambling review

The RyMickey Rating: B+

Ishtar

Ishtar (1987)

Starring Dustin Hoffman, Warren Beatty, Isabelle Adjani, and Charles Grodin

Directed by Elaine May

Written by Elaine May

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating: D

The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)

The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (2017)

Starring Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Dustin Hoffman, Emma Thompson, Elizabeth Marvel, Grace Van Patten, Candice Bergen, Adam Driver, Rebecca Miller, and Judd Hirsch

Directed by Noah Baumbach

Written by

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

Trying something new here...uncovered a new website that's a bit of a film diary.  Contemplating switching over to it completely, but for the moment I'm going to link to things there.  Explore Letterboxd...maybe you'll want to join too and we can comment on movies there!

Click here for a link to my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating:  B-

Movie Review - The Program

The Program (2016)

Starring Ben Foster, Chris O'Dowd, Guillaume Canet, Jesse Plemons, Lee Pace, Denis Menochet, and Dustin Hoffman

Directed by Stephen Frears

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

A biopic of fallen cyclist Lance Armstrong, The Program features a strong performance by Ben Foster at its center, but despite a solid start, the film falters a bit in its second half becoming a tad repetitive and lacking the bite that one would hope as we see Armstrong's career ruined at the hands of illegal doping.  Opening with a 21 year-old Armstrong (Foster) disappointingly losing a cycling race in 1994, Armstrong decides to meet with Dr. Michele Ferrari (Guillaume Canet) secretly known around the racing circuit for providing the doping drug EPO to clients.  Stimulating red blood cells to allow for maximum oxygen usage, EPO is a banned substance in the high-profile races around the world, but Ferrari and Armstrong come up with an elaborate plan -- "the program" -- to "hide" the fact that Armstrong is taking the drugs and they prove to be successful with Armstrong winning a race in 1995 shortly after starting the stimulant.  However, Armstrong's cycling is cut abruptly short when he is diagnosed with testicular cancer, but he jumps back from the disease stronger than ever (in part thanks to Dr. Ferrari's doping help) and wins five back-to-back Tour de France races before he retires in 2005.  Despite his fervent denials of doping allegations, Armstrong's storied career begins to fall apart when one of his teammates Floyd Landis (Jesse Plemons) tests positive for testosterone and tales of Armstrong's intricate doping program come to light.

The Program is a perfectly adequate depiction of Armstrong's rise and fall and it certainly is intriguing to see how quickly the allure of success caused the renowned cyclist to turn to drugs -- I never knew (or perhaps forgot) that Armstrong was using the performance-enhancing drugs during every Tour de France win.  Ben Foster plays Armstrong with a deviant quietness throughout, narcissistic and pathological in his denials of doping.  Egotistical to the hilt, Foster's Armstrong still manages to be someone that the audience doesn't hate which is a credit to the actor.  While we never accept Armstrong's doping, Foster humanizes Armstrong enough that we find ourselves wrapped up in the cyclist's lie.  Foster himself is reason enough to give The Program a shot.

Unfortunately, the flick falters as it progresses mainly because it grows repetitive in its depiction of Armstrong continuing to elude the cycling community of his actions.  Although reporter David Walsh (Chris O'Dowd) had long thought that Armstrong was not winning by sheer athleticism, when the film focuses on Walsh (upon whose book this film was based), it ends up growing a bit tedious mainly because we already know that Armstrong gets his comeuppance.  There's little suspense and we're simply waiting for the inevitable to occur.  The Program is good enough to warrant a watch particularly if this story is even remotely compelling to you, but I wish it carried a little more punch to take it into a better realm.

The RyMickey Rating:  B-

Movie Review - The Cobbler

The Cobbler (2015)

Starring Adam Sandler, Method Man, Ellen Barkin, Melonie Diaz, Dan Stevens, Steve Buscemi, and Dustin Hoffman

Directed by Tom McCarthy 

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

While The Cobbler is one of the better Adam Sandler movies I've ever seen, you must take that news with a grain of salt because the bar isn't set too high.  Written and directed by Tom McCarthy (and released in the same year as his Best Picture-winning Spotlight - which is a crazy juxtaposition of a set of movies), the film attempts a mix of light-hearted comedy with light-hearted drama with light-hearted fantasy aspects, and while segments of each genre work at certain times, the flick doesn't really ever come together as a cohesive whole.

Sandler is Max Simkin, owner of his family's cobbler shop in the Lower East Side of New York City. Passed down for generations, Max took over the shop when his father left Max and his mother abruptly one day.  Run down and not entirely happy with his life, Max is looking for a way out, but continues the day in-day out routine of fixing peoples' shoes.  When a thuggish guy name Leon (Method Man) arrives at Max's shop near closing time and demands that his shoes be ready within a few hours, Max agrees to fix them, but while doing so, his stitching machine breaks.  Remembering an old non-electric machine in his shop's basement, Max fixes the guy's shoes and then waits for him to arrive.  When he doesn't, out of boredom, Max tries the shoes on...and suddenly transforms into Leon.  With the shoes on, he's Leon, yet as soon as he removes them, he's back to Max again.  Curious as to what the heck is going on, Max stitches another set of shoes on the old-school machine and the same thing occurs, inhabiting the persona of the owner of the shoes.

Admittedly, I found this premise surprisingly pleasant and perhaps full of great (unrealized) potential.  There was an innocence in the film's opening forty-five minutes that I bought into with McCarthy nicely honing in on a bedraggled and downtrodden working class man who discovers the pleasures (and disappointments) of life as other people in his neighborhood.  However, the film takes a turn for the worse, becoming a mess in its second half as Max uncovers some of Leon's secrets that hurl him into a world of trouble for which he is completely ill-prepared.  I'm blown away by the fact that the same guy who wrote Spotlight could actually pen this as well because The Cobbler is just a melange of styles and genres that don't coalesce properly.

Sandler is actually surprisingly solid here and helps the film succeed in its first half.  However, most of the rest of cast are playing severely under-conceived caricatures that don't add anything to the plot.  Also, it should be noted that I'm not one to get particularly in a tizzy about such things, but there's a portrayal of a cross-dressing (or perhaps transgender) character here that is so poorly portrayed that I couldn't believe it made it to the screen.  Like I said, I'm not one to usually care about stuff like this (because I'm obviously inherently callous and inconsiderate...ha!), but this struck me as quite disheartening.  Still, while it has its faults for sure, The Cobbler works for half of its runtime...which is more than I can say for most Adam Sandler films.

The RyMickey Rating:  C

Movie Review - Chef

Chef (2014)

Starring Jon Favreau, Sofia Vergara, Emjay Anthony, John Leguizamo, Scarlett Johannson, Dustin Hoffman, Oliver Platt, Bobby Canavale, and Robert Downey, Jr. 

Directed by Jon Favreau

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

Chef certainly isn't aiming to be anything deep, but director and screenwriter Jon Favreau creates a lovely glimpse at a father/son relationship, the simplicity of which we don't often see on screens in this day and age.  Chef details the story of chef Carl Casper (Favreau) who has worked in a moderately ritzy restaurant owned by Riva (Dustin Hoffman) for years, but has really been unable to create unique dishes as Riva wants to maintain the status quo because customers are still pouring in.  When a food blogger/critic (Oliver Platt) comes to the establishment one evening, he writes online that Carl's food is tired, old school, and lacking any modern flair.  Upon receiving the bad review, Carl goes a bit berserk online thanks to a visit from his son Percy (Emjay Anthony) who introduces his father to Twitter.  After Carl inadvertently tweets numerous public jabs at the critic that he thinks were sent privately, Carl becomes a bit of a laughing stock across the country at which point he realizes that he's not happy doing what he does anymore and decides to take a little respite to Miami with Percy and his ex-wife Inez (Sofia Vergara) where he rediscovers his passion for food and his desire to show that to the public.

Chef is a movie broken up into two halves -- the first with Carl at the restaurant and the second with Carl reinventing his food passions by opening up a popular food truck.  While the halves certainly carry a similar tone to them, the film feels almost like two different movies at times.  Fortunately, Carl's relationship with his son is the through line between the two and it's this paternal connection that feels incredibly comforting and realistic.  In fact, what really makes Chef shine is that all of the relationships here -- Carl with his ex-wife, boss, co-workers -- carry a sense of believability and genuineness.  Favreau as a writer seems to have a real grasp of dialog -- his characters' moments with his son are particularly authentic despite the fact that his son seems a bit too tech-savvy for his own good at age ten.

Nonetheless, there's a charm that exudes in Chef thanks to the writing and the cast, all of whom really take Favreau's words and make them come to life.  Sofia Vergara is at her least annoying here, playing a loving mom and ex-wife to Carl -- once again, the ex-wife/husband relationship exudes a credible believability despite being a shockingly pleasant association we don't typically see displayed in films.  John Leguizamo as Carl's friend and co-worker adds some character to the mix and Scarlett Johansson and Dustin Hoffman keep the first half of the film buzzing with some interesting camaraderie with Carl.

In the end, Chef is maybe a bit too simple for its own good -- I compliment the film quite highly above, but I found it a little bland at the start and it took me three sittings to make it past the first hour.  While that sounds a bit damning, I simply don't think I was giving Chef a big enough chance.  Had it dropped an F-bomb or two or a sexual innuendo out of the equation, Chef would've been fit for all ages, exuding a sweetness that I frankly wasn't expecting, but truly enjoyed.

The RyMickey Rating:  B