Her Smell

 Her Smell (2019)

Starring Elisabeth Moss, Amber Heard, Cara Delevingne, Dan Stevens, Agyness Deyn, Gayle Rankin, Ashley Benson, Eric Stoltz, and Virginia Madsen

Directed by Alex Ross Perry

Written by Alex Ross Perry

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating: B+

Better Watch Out

Better Watch Out (2017)

Starring Olivia DeJonge, Levi Miller, Ed Oxenbould, Alexs Mikic, Dacre Montgomery, Patrick Warburton, and Virginia Madsen

Directed by Chris Peckover

Written by Zach Kahn and Chris Peckover

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating: B

Movie Review - Joy

Joy (2015)

Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Edgar Ramírez, Diane Ladd, Virginia Madsen, Isabella Rosselini, Dascha Polanco, Elisabeth Rohn, and Bradley Cooper

Directed by David O. Russell

While I enjoyed The Fighter, David O. Russell's two subsequent well-received films --  Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle -- didn't register as successful to me as they did to others.  Considering the less-than-enthusiastic reviews for the writer-director's latest, Joy, my expectations were quite low.  However, I found myself pleasantly surprised with the tale which isn't without a few faults in its story, but manages to be Russell's most entertaining film to date.

Joy is the semi-biographical story of Joy Mangano (played here by Jennifer Lawrence), a divorced mother of two who invents an ingenious new mop in an effort to better her life.  Obstacles are certainly placed in Joy's way -- her live-in divorced mother (Virginia Madsen) refuses to leave her bedroom where she watches soap operas all day, her father (Robert De Niro) has just moved back in causing trouble, her ex-husband (Edgar Ramírez) lives in her basement -- but she's motivated by her grandmother (Diane Ladd) who has always believed that the high school valedictorian isn't living up to her potential.  With the monetary assistance of her father's new widowed girlfriend (Isabella Rosselini), Joy creates her mop and finds herself shilling the device on the shopping network QVC after convincing an executive (Bradley Cooper) of her wares.  

While I mentioned earlier that Joy is Russell's most entertaining film, that doesn't necessarily make it his best.  There are moments in Russell's story and in his direction of his actors where he loses some focus, opting for quirkiness rather than fluidity.  While this proves to be amusing at first, it does grow a little wearisome when we in the audience want the film to focus on Joy's passion, perseverance, and fortitude as opposed to her odd family.  De Niro, Madsen, and Rossellini are all good, but I sometimes felt they were in a different film as their characters felt more like "Characters" than actual people.  Also, although Jennifer Lawrence is totally engaging as the strong-willed title character, she has an accent problem here in that whatever she was trying to attempt vocally fades in and out throughout the film enough that it proves noticeable.

Russell's an intriguing director to me in that I appreciate his stylization -- his use of music is always unique, even if sometimes a bit pretentious -- but when he lenses his own screenplays, he lacks the focus needed to reel in some of his odd excesses.  His best film -- The Fighter -- wasn't penned by him and I can't help but think that the guy should open up to filming other peoples' stuff again.  Joy gets him headed in the right direction, though, and I hope he'll continue the upward trajectory.

The RyMickey Rating:  B-

Movie Review - Red Riding Hood

Red Riding Hood (2011)

Starring Amanda Seyfried, Gary Oldman, Billy Burke, Virginia Madsen, and Julie Christie

Directed by Catherine Hardwicke

A pale ingenue.  Two brooding teens vying for her romantic attention.  A dark, eerie forest filled with mist.  A werewolf.

While these are certainly adequate descriptors of any of the Twilight flicks, it also fits Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke's newest teenage angst melodrama Red Riding Hood, a re-imagining of the classic Grimm fairy tale.  Here Amanda Seyfried is Valerie, a young gal living in some European town in the wooded mountains in what is likely the 1800s (even though the ladies still wear tons of make-up and apparently have access to flat-irons for their hair).  She's in love with her childhood sweetheart Peter, but she's set to be married to Henry (the names of the two actors are irrelevant...as are their characters).  In the midst of this romantic triangle, there's a werewolf wreaking havoc on the townsfolk.  There's some kind of gobbledy-gook spouted by religious figure Solomon (Gary Oldman) that states that the werewolf comes out once every few years when the moon turns red in order to pass on his werewolf genes to someone else.  Of course, the moon is now red and the werewolf's on a mission to take a bite out of someone.  Now we just have to guess which one of Amanda's fellow townsfolk is half-canine.  (Needless to say, the identity of the monster was guessed by this viewer a mere twenty minutes into the film.)

Red Riding Hood seriously looked just like a spin-off of the Twilight films.  Hardwicke's direction is simply a paint-by-numbers replica of that series.  From the soundtrack to the sets to the camera shots (all of which were actually decent), the film didn't feel "original" in the slightest.  The acting by Amanda Seyfried is just as bland and boring as that of Kristen Stewart.  Even supporting actors like Gary Oldman and Julie Christie find themselves unable to rise out of the muck that is the lousy script.

The RyMickey Rating:  D+

Movie Review - The Haunting in Connecticut (2009)

Starring Virginia Madsen, Elias Koteas, and Kyle Gallner
Written by Adam Simon and Tim Metcalfe
Directed by Peter Cornwell

The Campbell family is facing some tough times. Oldest son Matt (Gallner) is battling cancer and his treatments are expensive and far from home. In order to save on travel, Mom (Madsen) decides to rent a large house without telling her hubby. This just makes the already strained marriage become even more tense. But, let's be honest here, the parents' issues are an unnecessary, pointless subplot. Jumping back to the cancer-stricken son, Matt begins to see visions of horrific ghosts in the old house which, come to find out, used to be a funeral home at which the owner did some awful things to the dead bodies that would come across his path.

Honestly, the story itself was moderately entertaining and very unlike the typical modern "teen" horror flick in that it wasn't incredibly bloody and actually had somewhat of an intriguing premise -- ghost stories always interest me more than slasher flicks, and this was a decent ghost story. The fact that they throw the "based on a true story" into the mix, if anything, makes this more unbelievable than were it just a regular old horror flick. Still, an interesting premise, to be sure.

I just wish they done away with the mom/dad issues and I wish they had cast a better actress than Virginia Madsen in the mom role. I didn't like her in Sideways (for which she was nominated for an Oscar) and I don't think I've liked her in much of anything. She just always strikes me as one-note and whenever she tries to break out of the "one-note-ness," it always seems fake. The guy who played the father wasn't much better either. The kid who plays Matt, Kyle Gallner, fares much better. He hasn't appeared in many movies, but he was actually quite good.

While not perfect, The Haunting in Connecticut was one of the better horror flicks I've seen recently and may be worth your while if you're into this particular genre.

The RyMickey Rating: C