Mare of Easttown

 Mare of Easttown (2021)

Starring Kate Winslet, Julianne Nicholson, Jean Smart, Angourie Rice, David Denman, Guy Pearce, and Evan Peters

Directed by Craig Zobel

Written by Brad Ingelsby

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating:  A

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-

Movie Review - Elvis & Nixon

Elvis & Nixon (2016)

Starring Michael Shannon, Kevin Spacey, Alex Pettyfer, Johnny Knoxville, Colin Hanks, Evan Peters, Sky Ferreira, Tracy Letts, Tate Donovan, and Ashley Benson

Directed by Liza Johnson

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

Unbeknown to me, there is apparently some famous picture of Elvis Presley and Richard Nixon shaking hands in the Oval Office.  Elvis & Nixon is a cleverly retro-stylized film by Liza Johnson that depicts the late December 1970 day when the King (Michael Shannon) demanded a meeting with the President (Kevin Spacey) in order to detail his concerns with the rising drug and hippie culture in the United States.  The stodgy President wants nothing to do with the hip-shaking singer, but he eventually obliges in part due to the urging of his aides (Colin Hanks and Evan Peters) and he ends up discovering that he may have an affinity for the pop star.

The briskly paced flick humorously depicts the obviously quirky "Odd Couple" dichotomy between Presley and Nixon with director Liza Johnson keenly mining the absurdity of the situation for all its worth.  Yet, at the same time, Johnson respects the positions of both famous men, never playing them for fools or suckers, mining laughs from the situation as opposed to at their expense.  Michael Shannon's Elvis gets the majority of the focus and he does a nice job of creating a well-rounded character as opposed to simply an impression of the famous singer.  While Spacey's Nixon is perhaps the opposite -- more of an impression than a fully-realized character -- I found his Nixon spot-on and amusingly engaging.  

I will admit that I wasn't particularly expecting much from Elvis & Nixon and perhaps that's why I enjoyed it so much.  While the trailers certainly depicted humor, I was expecting this to be some sort of history lesson (albeit an odd one) and it's nothing like that at all.  Instead, it's a pleasantly eccentric light-hearted flick that is worthy of a watch.

The RyMickey Rating:  B+

Movie Review - The Lazarus Effect

The Lazarus Effect (2015)

Starring Mark Duplass, Olivia Wilde, Donald Glover, Evan Peters, and Sarah Bolger

Directed by David Gelb

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

If you've seen the Scarlett Johansson flick Lucy, there's certainly no reason to watch The Lazarus Effect which is essentially a horror version of that film.  If you haven't seen Lucy (and really you're missing nothing if you haven't), there's still no reason to watch The Lazarus Effect because besides an ending that perks up the thrill quotient after a decidedly bland and surprisingly boring first hour, the conclusion fails to really make a whole lot of sense and ends things hugely disappointingly.

Here, a group of scientists headed by engaged couple Frank and Zoe (Mark Duplass and Olivia Wilde) create a manipulated serum of cells that through injection and electrical stimulation have the effect of being able to bring the dead back to life.  After years of unsuccessful attempts, the team succeeds in bringing back to life a dog, but they discover that the newly resuscitated canine is utilizing huge portions of his brain, making him overly aggressive and violent as he's unable to control his emotions.  Needless to say, following an unfortunate accident, the team doesn't just stop the experiment with the dog and instead find themselves using it for more a more advanced carbon-based life form which may yield some truly frightening results.

The overarching question of this film (and Lucy for that matter) is what happens when humans -- who typically use only 10% of their brain capacity -- are given the opportunity to utilize much more than that.  Whereas Lucy somewhat succeeds in answering this question through the format of an action film, The Lazarus Effect as a horror movie isn't nearly as successful.  The biggest reason for this is that it's utterly boring for the film's first sixty minutes.  Part of the reason I was intrigued with the flick was the cast who I thought may elevate this beyond your typical cliché-ridden genre pic, but the quintet listed up above just sputters out scientific mumbo-jumbo for the film's first twenty minutes and then spends the rest of the first hour debating whether to continue with their now successful experiment.  In a better film, the tension between the scientists may have been intriguing, but here it amounts to nothing but absolute boredom.

Unfortunately, when the film delves into horror during its final twenty minutes (although its eighty minute runtime should seem short, it feels interminable), it's more laughable than anything else and that's never a good thing.  There are no scares whatsoever with the film throwing out one horror cliché after another trying to get something to land successfully.  Nothing does.

The RyMickey Rating:  D-

Movie Review - X-Men: Days of Future Past

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

Starring Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Halle Berry, Nicholas Hoult, Ellen Page, Peter Dinklage, Shawn Ashmore, Omar Sy, Evan Peters, Ian McKellan, and Patrick Stewart

Directed by Bryan Singer

While perhaps an unpopular opinion, I think that X-Men: First Class is one of the best superhero movies of all time.  Upon a second watch right before viewing its sequel, I once again was captivated by the flick's stories, direction, 1960s setting, and acting.  So, X-Men: Days of Future Past admittedly had a tough act to follow and while it doesn't quite live up to the high water mark of its predecessor, the film's attempt to bridge both the current generation of 2010's X-Men franchise with the 2000s X-Men franchise is solid.

Sometime in the future, robots known as Sentinels are killing all of the mutants and Professor X and Magneto (Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan) have devised a plan using Kitty Pryde's (Ellen Page) powers to send Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) back in time in order to try and change their present.  It's determined that post-Vietnam War, Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) was captured by the US government and her DNA was studied by military scientist Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage) in order to create the shape-shifting beings known as the Sentinals.  By sending Wolverine back to right before Mystique is caught, Professor X and Magneto are hoping that they can change the course of history and prevent the Sentinels from even existing.

Fortunately, the dank, dark, overly computerized world of the future takes a backseat to Wolverine's trip down the 1970s memory lane and the large majority of Days of Future Past takes place in the past with James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender reprising their roles as the younger versions of Charles Xavier and Eric Lehnsherr (Professor X and Magneto, respectively).  Once again, director Bryan Singer does a really great job creating a believable 1970s world for the X-Men to inhabit and it creates a landscape we don't often see in superhero movies that are so often told in the present day.  This retro feel continues to work to this X-Men iteration's advantage.

For the most part, the acting ensemble works well together, although I found the focus on Jennifer Lawrence's Mystique to leave a little to be desired.  Behind all that make-up and computer-generated blueness for her character, Lawrence's emoting stays a bit hidden which is a bit of a shame.  Additionally, the actors that make up the "future" segment of the film aren't given a whole lot to do and what they are tasked with gets repetitive pretty darn quickly.

While X-Men: Days of Future Past isn't as interesting or compelling as First Class, I give the film credit for refusing to back down from its conceit of pitting the X-Men against one another as they struggle to figure out whether the US government wants to help or hurt them.  This creates a constant feeling of uncertainty amongst the characters that gives them all much more depth than we have come to expect in superhero movies and it's one of the biggest reasons I think this X-Men series has been so successful.

The RyMickey Rating:  B