Judas and the Black Messiah

 Judas and the Black Messiah (2021 -- Oscars 2020)

Starring LaKeith Stanfield, Daniel Kaluuya, Jesse Plemons, Dominque Fishback, and Martin Sheen

Directed by Shaka King

Written by Will Berson and Shaka King

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating:  D+

The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane

 The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976)

Starring Jodie Foster, Martin Sheen, Alexis Smith, Mort Shuman, and Scott Jacoby

Directed by Nicolas Gessner

Written by Laird Koenig

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating:  C+

Movie Review - Rules Don't Apply

Rules Don't Apply (2016)

Starring Alden Ehrenreich, Lily Collins, Warren Beatty, Matthew Broderick, Annette Bening, and a slew of other people in cameo-length roles

Directed by Warren Beatty

***This film is currently available via HBO Now/GO***

Howard Hughes was a bit of an eccentric loon who, thanks to his significant entrepreneurial endeavors, was able to have his hands in a multitude of business ventures ranging from creating aircraft to producing motion pictures.  Rules Don't Apply focuses on the latter aspect as an aging Hughes (played by Warren Beatty who also wrote and directed the film) shifts his romantic focus to a young aspiring actress from Virginia named Marla (Lily Collins) who recently moved to Hollywood at the request of Hughes.  Upon her arrival, Marla begins to fall for her driver Frank (Alden Ehrenreich), a Howard Hughes employee, who himself is engaged to be married but also finds himself enraptured by Marla.  This romantic love triangle starts the film off in an engagingly old school 1960s-esque cinematic fashion, but the film quickly starts to fall apart after it introduces its key players.

Filled with a multitude of well-known actors in cameo-style roles, Rules Don't Apply is well-acted by Lily Collins and Alden Ehrenreich, but their "will they or won't they" romantic story isn't enough of a story to sustain the film's long nearly 150-minute runtime.  Writer/director Warren Beatty seems to recognize this hence the introduction of his Howard Hughes character about thirty minutes into the film, but he fails at making Hughes' storylines captivating.  When Hughes comes into the picture, Rules Don't Apply can't seem to tell who its central character is - Hughes or Marla or Frank - and this leads to oddly edited sequences that create one the most boringly manic all-over-the-place films I've seen in a long time.  A passion project for Beatty who spent a long time getting it to the screen post-production, Rules Don't Apply has some great production values and does feel fittingly 1960s in tone and style, but it ultimately fails in the story and directing department.

The RyMickey Rating:  C-

Movie Review - Selma

Selma (2014)

Starring David Oyelowo, Carmen Ejogo, Tom Wilkinson, Tim Roth, Common, Renee Toussaint, Wendell Pierce, André Holland, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Colman Domingo, Omar J. Dorsey, Tessa Thompson, Giovanni Ribisi, Jeremy Strong, Henry G. Sanders, Keith Stanfield, Oprah Winfrey, Cuba Gooding, Jr., and Martin Sheen

Directed by Ava DuVernay

For years, I've made note of how much I hate the film genre of the "biopic," but over the past few years, I've grown to appreciate what such flicks bring to the table in terms of opening my eyes to the intricacies of historical events that may have not necessarily flown under my radar, but perhaps been lower key in my mind than they probably should have been.  In 2014 alone, I've been treated to two very good stand-outs in the genre with The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything.  Selma joins that list.

Smartly detailing only a small segment of his life, Selma focuses on Martin Luther King, Jr.'s attempted 1965 fifty-four mile march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in order to raise awareness of that state government's refusal to give black Americans the right to vote.  Rather than introduce us to Mr. King via childhood anecdotes or college shenanigans, director Ava DuVernay and screenwriter Paul Webb sink us right into the action with King (played strongly and confidently by David Oyelowo) trying to persuade President Lyndon Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) to pass a Voter's Rights Act that would allow all Americans to be allowed to register to vote without harassment from government officials.  When Johnson denies that request, King decides that he must continue on his mission of peaceful, nonviolent protest in order to get his point to the American people since his government was not assisting in providing this basic human right.

The film very shrewdly shows that King was cunningly media-savvy, knowing that in order for him to succeed, he needed to have cameras and reporters present.  While he respected the work that some lesser black community organizations were doing to push voting bills into place, King knew that they would fail simply because they were "too small."  This sly intelligence and insight into this brilliant man's mind was interesting to see unfold.  Credit must also be given to the fact that the film doesn't present King as a saint as his well-known infidelities are touched upon more than once.

David Oyelowo takes on the unenviable task of embodying Mr. King -- a man whose recorded and televised speeches are some of the most well-known in American history.  Oyelowo is hugely successful at bringing the civil rights' leader's diction, mannerisms, strength, humility, and intelligence to the screen.  Oyelowo is moving in the film's quiet moments, yet powerfully rousing as the rather ingenious orator that King was.  Oyelowo is buoyed by a strong supporting cast that weave in and out of the tale, including a nice turn from Carmen Ejogo as King's put-upon wife Coretta.  Tom Wilkinson as a headstrong (less-than-eloquent) president provides a nice counterpoint to King's/Oyelowo's passionate fervor.  (Also interesting to note -- Democrats weren't exactly kosher with the African American community getting the right to vote -- yet us Republicans are constantly paraded around as the more "racist" party.)  Particularly moving is an incredibly strong small role by Henry G. Sanders as the grandfather of a young man killed in cold blood by an Alabama police officer.  Sanders has very few scenes, but I found him riveting and emotionally powerful whenever he was onscreen.

On the downside, the film felt a little longer than its two hour running time and I found myself checking the watch a few times.  However, I certainly was never bored.  Perhaps more than any other film I've seen this year, I came away from the theater thinking about how our society needs someone powerful like Martin Luther King, Jr., today.  The Al Sharptons and Jesse Jacksons of the world are only out for themselves despite what they may have you believe.  While I mentioned King's utilization of the media above, Sharpton and Jackson manipulate the media for their own time in the spotlight.  King used the press for the betterment of the people.  

The film certainly comes along at a pivotal time in our culture what with the Ferguson fiasco.  No matter where your opinion may fall on that spectrum, what this film showed me was that our society now doesn't have the voice that Martin Luther King, Jr., provided in the 1960s.  (I always thought Bill Cosby could maybe have been that voice -- but we all know where that ended up now.)  In that way, Selma made me quite sad for our current state of affairs.  King didn't pit society in a black-against-white type way, whereas nowadays that's the way everything is presented whenever "race" is involved.  King knew that a "race war" wouldn't solve any problems -- unity was needed, not race baiting.

Kudos to the relatively new-to-the-scene Ava DuVernay who has crafted a pic that resonates.  She doesn't necessarily pull out any tricks (and when she does, they sometimes fall flat -- like a slow-motion fight scene involving police officers and actress Oprah Winfrey), but she creates a impact showcasing the courage of not only Dr. King, but the many black and white Americans who quite literally joined hands with him to create change.  There's power in these images DuVernay brings to the screen -- the opening shot of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Bombing starts things off with such an impact that I was taken aback (in a good way) by the way Ms. Duvernay decides to present things -- and there's absolutely something to be said for being able to create something that can carry such weight.

The RyMickey Rating:  B+

Movie Review - The Amazing Spider-Man

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

Starring Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Denis Leary, Irrfan Khan, Sally Field, and Martin Sheen

Directed by Marc Webb

Despite better direction of the film's quieter moments and much more talent in the acting department across the board than the 2002 version of nearly the exact same tale, The Amazing Spider-Man is a movie that I watch and can't fathom why it was made.  The Tobey Maguire-Kirsten Dunst origin tale of this masked crusader has not aged well in my book, but we're only a decade removed from the first of that trilogy and only five years from its finale, and this film comes much too soon on those heels to tell this story again. 

You all know the tale -- Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) gets bit by a spider while touring the labs of Curt Conners (Rhys Ifans) and turns into this spider/human melding who decides to fight crime after his uncle (Martin Sheen) is murdered in a horrible random crime.  Sure, in this version, Peter falls for the smart Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) instead of Mary Jane, but that makes little difference in the grand scheme of things.  Granted, that's not the only minor difference -- Curt Connors turns into a giant lizard as opposed to Norman Osborn turning into the Green Goblin, there's no J. Jonah Jameson as the kooky editor of The Daily Bugle -- but we're looking at essentially the same plot.

With the exception of the special effects (which are admittedly important in a film like this and prove to be a bit to fake-looking for my liking), everything about this 2012 version of the Spider-Man origin tale is better than the former...which is why it's even more of a shame that the former exists.  Overall, I think the Spider-Man origin story is too silly to craft a film as dark and intense as the recent Batman trilogy, but at least this movie abandons the almost cartoonish look of the original Sam Raimi-directed films.  However, during the film's special effects-heavy scenes, there are moments that prove to be almost laughable in terms of how poorly they are conceived.  However, I felt very much the same about the effects in the original trilogy so I think it's just impossible to make a man look real as he flies through the New York skyline with the help of spiderwebs.

Still, credit must be given to Andrew Garfield whose Peter Parker is less wide-eyed and dumbfounded than Mr. Maguire upon his discovery of his newfound powers.  Garfield delves a bit emotionally darker which is a welcome addition.  Similarly, Emma Stone isn't given much to do, but provides a more believable love interest than Ms. Dunst despite the infamous upside-down kissing scene in the older trilogy.  Stone is a stronger chick (I don't know if that's due to her different character or if that's just Stone's overall persona) and she also screeches and screams nary a once and, if I remember correctly, there was a lot of whiny eeking by Dunst in her film's finale.  There are also some very nice smaller turns from Martin Sheen, Sally Field, and Denis Leary.

The Amazing Spider-Man would not have been a perfect movie even if the earlier version of Spider-Man hadn't existed.  However, because the story is so darn familiar, the whole thing feels like it's always lagging as the audience longs for something they haven't seen before.  And unfortunately, there's nothing new here.  That being said, if you've never seen the Sam Raimi-directed original films, don't start there.  Go with this new version and you'll likely give it a much higher rating than I did below.

The RyMickey Rating:  C

Movie Review - The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane

The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976)

Starring Jodie Foster, Martin Sheen, Alexis Smith, and Scott Jacoby

Directed by Nicolas Gessner

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

A Jodie Foster horror film?  That notion enticed me enough to watch, but I found The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane just all around odd.  Granted, the weirdness perhaps kept my interest piqued a bit longer than I expected, but the whole thing felt like an (off-) off-Broadway play simply filmed for the screen in terms of set-up, dialog, and directing.

Thirteen year-old Rynn (Jodie Foster) is incredibly (and I mean incredibly) wise for her age.  When we first meet her, she's greeting Frank Hallet (Martin Sheen), the adult son of her landlady, who barges into her home and uncomfortably attempts to entice Rynn into believing she should become his girlfriend.  I'm saying that all too nicely...Frank is an alleged child molester and a known creep around town.  However, the cops have never been able to pin any crimes on him.  Nonetheless, Rynn gets out of that situation by yelling for her father whom she says is in his study.  However, and herein lies the central mystery, Rynn's father has been dead for several months.  He's left her with the necessary things to stay alive, but she must continue to pretend he's still around in order to avoid being taken into foster care.  Needless to say, Rynn finds herself doing what's necessary in order to maintain her current lifestyle...even if that means doing things that would place any "normal" person in jail.

Story-wise, I feel like there could have been something here, but the character of Rynn is just too wise for her age.  The only reason it's even remotely believable is because Foster always has exuded a wise aura, but even she can't fully succeed here.  Maybe if Rynn was a seventeen year-old, I could have stretched my imagination a bit, but at thirteen, I just don't see the realism in this.  And that's ultimately a big problem and the film's downfall.

Foster, as I mentioned, is good in one of her early roles and Martin Sheen is undeniably creepy, but they can't save a story that just doesn't ring true.  It doesn't help that Nicolas Gessner filmed this almost like a stage play with a severe lack of imagination in his camera work.  This by-the-books basic direction reeked of low budget tv movie of the week rather than feature film.

The RyMickey Rating:  C-

Movie Review - The Double

The Double (2011)

Starring Richard Gere, Topher Grace, Odette Yustman, and Martin Sheen

Directed by Michael Brandt

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

Although imdb lists The Double as getting a theatrical release last year, I certainly never heard anything about this until I saw some commercials promoting its appearance on Blu-Ray.  With a promise of political intrigue (and the ease of streaming availability), I figured why not give it a shot.  However, I soon discovered the reason this was buried at the box office is because The Double simply isn't very good.

Richard Gere is Paul Shepherdson, a retired CIA agent who spent much of his life tracking down a group of Russian bad guys led by an ominous assassin named Cassius.  Having seemingly taken down the bad Russians, Paul spends his days (creepily) watching Little League games outside of Washington, D.C.  When a prominent senator gets murdered in the same style as Cassius's killings, CIA director Tom Highland (Martin Sheen) calls Paul back into the game partnering him up with young FBI agent Ben Geary (Topher Grace).  Ben, a young expert on Cassius, soon begins to see that Paul has all the characteristics of the Russian baddie and slowly uncovers that Paul may be hiding a huge secret from the US government.

Sound moderately interesting, right?  It's not.  The "big reveals" aren't that exciting and the multiple twists thrown in at the film's end seem forced rather than natural to the story.  Gere and Grace are fine, but neither are given much to do and they don't provide a whole lot of charisma to liven things up.

The RyMickey Rating:  D+