Don't Look Up

Don't Look Up (2021)

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Rob Morgan, Jonah Hill, Mark Rylance, Tyler Perry, Timothée Chalamet, Ron Perlman, Ariana Grande, Melanie Lynsky, Cate Blanchett, and Meryl Streep

Directed by Adam McKay

Written by Adam McKay

Click here for my Letterboxd rating

The RyMickey Rating:  C+

The Star

The Star (2017)

Featuring the vocal talents of Steven Yeun, Zachary Levi, Gina Rodriguez, Keegan-Michael Key, Aidy Bryant, Kelly Clarkson, Patricia Heaton, Anthony Anderson, Kristin Chenoweth, Tracy Morgan, Tyler Perry, Kris Kristofferson, Ving Rhames, Gabriel Iglesias, Christopher Plummer, and Oprah Winfrey

Directed by Timothy Reckart

Written by Carlos Kotkin

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

Summary (in 500 words or less):  An animated retelling of the story of the birth of Jesus Christ told through the eyes of a young donkey traveling to Bethlehem.

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating:  C-

Movie Review - Gone Girl

Gone Girl (2014)

Starring Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Carrie Coon, Kim Dickens, Neil Patrick Harris, Tyler Perry, Missi Pyle, Patrick Fugit, Casey Wilson, David Clennon, Lisa Banes, and Sela Ward

Directed by David Fincher

From a story perspective, Gone Girl is my kind of movie -- a suspense thriller with twists and turns galore that never feel forced or simply added for "Gotcha!" moments.  When his wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) goes missing, Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) finds himself at the center of a controversy with the media (including a pushy Nancy Grace-esque commentator played by Missi Pyle) who presume his guilt and local law enforcement who also find many things about him questionable.  However, as the film unfolds, we realize that things are not always as they seem and believable surprises await around many corners.

It's tough to delve into exactly why I love Gone Girl so much without revealing spoilers, so I'll leave the summary above as the only plot points to be revealed (and spoilers will come with the inevitable Year in Review posts sometime next year).  Needless to say, it is the plot and the script by Gillian Flynn (who also penned the novel upon which the movie is based) that is the star of the show here.  While the acting, directing, and other aspects of the production are all solid, it's the intricate plot and the devious nature of our main characters that really pushes this story over the edge.  Multiple times during the movie, the audience whom I watched the film with let out sounds of audible shock.  Oftentimes in films, these shocking moments don't resonate because we don't find them a natural progression for the characters that inhabit the screen.  However, in Gone Girl these moments are legitimate paths that we believe are set for the characters.  Flynn takes moments that could've absolutely been ridiculously off-the-wall and makes them innately plausible.  It's a task that isn't easy, but rich character development is essential for this to occur and that's certainly achieved here.

Hand-in-hand with that essential character development are actors who can bring to life what Flynn puts on the page and there's not a bad apple in the bunch in Gone Girl.  From headliners Affleck and Pike to the lesser known Carrie Coon and Kim Dickens to the "I can't believe these guys are in this" Neil Patrick Harris (as a former obsessive lover of Amy's) and Tyler Perry (!!) (as Nick's well-to-do intelligent defense attorney), all rise to the occasion.  Essentially playing two different roles thanks to flashbacks, both Affleck and Pike bring to life the joy of the initial pangs of love along with the ennui and frustration that so many marriages suffer after the honeymoon phase has dissipated.  Gone Girl tackles what happens after the facades of first impressions are broken down and the two leads do a fantastic job of bringing this to life.

Nice chemistry is also had between Affleck and both Ms. Coon and Ms. Dickens, though in different ways.  Coon's Margo -- Nick Dunne's twin sister -- is perhaps the character the audience latches onto the most because she is tasked with being the most levelheaded of anyone onscreen.  She tells it like it is to her brother and becomes frustrated with him (much like the audience) when he does stupid things that point towards his guilt in the disappearance of his wife.  The loving repartee between Affleck and Coon makes them completely believable siblings.  Countering that, the contentiousness felt between Affleck and Kim Dickens' detective Rhonda Boney is a nice aspect of the story as well.  Much like several relationships in the film, Nick and Rhonda's attitudes towards one another fluidly shift as the movie progresses, but Dickens brings a tough, though deliberately smart quality to what could've been a rote character in a film like this.

Director David Fincher places the focus of the flick on two things -- how the media shapes the way we act and how the way we act is shaped by how we want to impress others.  These two incredibly similar concepts intertwine to great effect in Gone Girl which I think is a better film overall than his much revered The Social Network a few years ago and may very well be his most entertaining film to date.  Stretching to a nearly two-and-a-half hour length, the epic nature of this one couple's lies, love, and emotional compromises moves along at such a rapid pace that I found myself longing for the film to continue on for another hour, wanting to know how various characters' lives were affected by the film's final outcome.  Fincher pieces Flynn's screenplay together like a puzzle and as the picture becomes clearer we see just how disturbed Amy and Nick's relationship truly is, was, or perhaps will be.

The RyMickey Rating:  A

Movie Review - Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself

Starring Taraji P. Henson, Tyler Perry, Gladys Knight, Mary J. Blige, and Adam Rodriguez
Directed by Tyler Perry

The flick starts off rather promisingly with a hot-looking Taraji P. Henson sporting a nifty afro singing a sultry song in a slightly sleazy bar. Unfortunately, after those initial five minutes, everything just goes downhill.

Henson is April, a nightclub singer struggling to make it by week to week, as evidenced by the fact that we're told that her house is run-down (we, as an audience never really see this...to us, the house looks like it's in moderately good shape). At the same time we're being introduced to April, we also see three kids (who, come to find out are April's niece and nephews) breaking into crazy old Madea's house attempting to steal her VCR. Of course, big sassy Madea will have none of that, but as she begins to beat up the kids, she realizes that these young'ens may be in bad shape. The kids say that their parents have died and that they're living with their grandmother who has gone missing for the past few days. Madea takes the kids to their Aunt April's house, and, you guessed it, after an initial trepidation to take in the kids, April ends up being won over by the concept of family and all is well in the end.

Yep, I ruined the ending for you...but it's not as if you couldn't see it coming from the first seconds of the flick. Tyler Perry writes everything so that it is paint-by-numbers. There's no surprises here in the slightest. It doesn't help that it is poorly directed and shot. There are very few shots that contain two people in them -- it's mostly a shot of one person talking, then another person talking, then back to the other person talking. And then there's shots where the extras literally stand in front of the camera blocking the view of what we're supposed to be seeing. And everything was obviously shot on a soundstage...nothing looks remotely real. Incredibly poorly shot and directed.

Let's not forget the completely unnecessary musical interludes -- there's six of them, I think, and we see whole entire songs sung that really serve no purpose except to get reaction shots of April as she's listening to them. Granted, the songs sounded nice and Gladys Knight and Mary J. Blige have decent voices, but there is no point at all to these songs playing out in their entirety in the movie. Add to that, the character of Madea (the only part of this movie that actually worked...which was different from his last effort for me where the character didn't really work at all) disappears in the final 45-60 minutes, never to return except during the unfunny bloopers in the credits.

And none of the actors do Perry's poor script any favors. Henson, who started out fine in those first five minutes where she was singing, falls apart after that. It's like she went to the Sassy Black Actress School to learn what the stereotype of an angry African-American woman should be. The kids in the flick were just as bad...really, no one here was any good.

The RyMickey Rating: D-

Movie Review - Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail (2009)

Starring Tyler Perry, Derek Luke, Keshia Knight Pulliam, and Viola Davis
Written and Directed by Tyler Perry

I've never seen a Tyler Perry movie before and had I not taken on this "every movie quest," I don't think I ever would. The trailers for his flicks all seem so stereotypical and the humor seems way too over-the-top for me. Well, having seen my first Tyler Perry flick, I can wholeheartedly say that the trailer presents things correctly -- I did find it incredibly stereotypical and filled with over-the-top humor. However, the movie was actually okay, filled with some decent performances, despite the hokey story.

Unfortunately, the flick is two different movies in one. One side is the drama -- Josh (Derek Luke) is a young district attorney who, while in court one day, meets up with Candy (Keshia Knight Pulliam...Rudy from The Cosby Show!) a former childhood friend who is on trial for prostitution. He feels guilt over an incident in the past and takes Candy under his wing. This doesn't make his fiancé too happy and tension ensues.

The other side of the movie is the comedy -- It involves Madea (Tyler Perry in drag) who apparently gets into crazy, law-breaking situations all the time. She has some anger issues, wrecks some lady's car, and heads to jail (hence the title).

Both sides end up combining once Madea gets to jail and meets up with Candy, but for the most part, it really plays like two separate movies. My problem with the storylines is this: Neither is strong enough to be its own movie, but it just seems silly for these two movies to be smashed together into one. In addition to the lackluster stories, the dialogue (particularly on the comedy side) was weak and I rarely laughed. The drama side fares better, although it was holier-than-thou at times, in part because of Viola Davis's preacher character. Davis was quite strong, but she is forced to spout some "better yourself" motivational junk.

In addition to Viola Davis, Derek Luke (who was also fine in Notorious) is pretty good here, too. Little Rudy -- I mean Keshia Knight Pulliam -- gets better as the movie goes on as she's able to move on from the stereotypical prostitute to a changed woman. I'm trying to avoid talking about Tyler Perry as Madea because Madea is the stereotype that brings this movie down to a base level (that and the fact that Perry also paints all non-African Americans in broad brushstrokes as well...Note, Perry's not alone in this depiction -- see Obsessed or Not Easily Broken...better yet, don't see them).

The RyMickey Rating: C-