Thursday, October 4, 2018

Crisp Criticism - "BlacKkKlansman", "The Meg", "Christopher Robin", "The Spy Who Dumped Me", "White Boy Rick", "The Happytime Murders", "Juliet, Naked", "Eighth Grade", "Crazy Rich Asians", "Smallfoot", "A Simple Favor"

by
Julien Faddoul











BlacKkKlansman **


An African-American police officer from Colorado successfully manages to infiltrate the local Ku Klux Klan and become the head of the chapter.
Fascinating mostly for its premise and as a study on society's lack of prescience on modern political problems, with the latter given far more latitude than the former. Lee’s typical shifts in tone and overt visual flourishes don't always work to his thematic advantage, but the humanity is there.


d – Spike Lee
w – Spike Lee, David Rabinowitz, Charlie Wachtel, Kevin Willmott   (Based on the Book by Ron Stallworth)
ph – Chayse Irvin
pd – Curt Beech
m – Terence Blanchard
ed – Barry Alexander Brown
cos – Marci Rodgers


p – Jason Blum, Spike Lee, Raymond Mansfield, Sean McKittrick, Jordan Peele, Shaun Redick


Cast: John David Washington, Adam Driver, Laura Harrier, Topher Grace, Corey Hawkins, Jasper Pääkkönen, Paul Walter Hauser, Ryan Eggold, Ashlie Atkinson, Ken Garito, Robert John Burke, Isiah Whitlock Jr, Frederick Weller, Harry Belafonte, Alec Baldwin



















The Meg


A deep sea submersible pilot revisits his past fears in the Mariana Trench, and accidentally unleashes the seventy foot ancestor of the Great White Shark believed to be extinct.
A creature-feature that inspires awe for everyone in the film but for none of the poor souls who elect to see it. Virtually any level of CG spectacle has now become pedestrian as we near the end of this century’s second decade, and consequently the lack of characterization in films like this must no longer be tolerated.


d – Jon Turteltaub
w – Belle Avery, Erich Hoeber, Jon Hoeber   (Based on the Booky by Steve Alten)
ph – Tom Stern
pd – Grant Major
m – Harry Gregson-Williams
ed – Steven Kemper, Kelly Matsumoto
cos – Amanda Neale


p – Belle Avery, Lorenzo di Bonaventura


Cast: Jason Statham, Li Bingbing, Rainn Wilson, Ruby Rose, Winston Chao, Cliff Curtis, Shuya Sophia Cai, Page Kennedy, Robert Taylor, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, Jessica McNamee, Masi Oka













Christopher Robin *


Working-class family man Christopher Robin encounters his childhood friend Winnie-the-Pooh, who helps him to rediscover the joys of life.
Plodding, occasionally sweet but conspicuously uninsightful and visually ugly interpretation of Milne. That Disney persists in translating seemingly everything they’ve ever done into live-action remains, for me, the most disheartening tactic of any current major film studio.


d – Marc Forster
w – Alex Ross Perry, Thomas McCarthy, Allison Schroeder   (Based on the Characters Created by AA Milne, EH Shepard)
ph – Matthias Koenigswieser
pd – Jennifer Williams
m – Jon Brion
ed – Matt Chesse
cos – Jenny Beaven


p – Kristin Burr, Brigham Taylor


Cast: Ewan McGregor, Hayley Atwell, Jim Cummings, Brad Garrett, Orton O'Brien, Bronte Carmichael, Elsa Minell Solak, Mark Gatiss, Oliver Ford Davies, Ronke Adekoluejo, Adrian Scarborough, Roger Ashton-Griffiths, Ken Nwosu, John Dagleish, Amanda Lawrence, Katy Carmichael, Tristan Sturrock, Paul Chahidi, Matt Berry, Simon Farnaby, Mackenzie Crook, Nick Mohammed, Peter Capaldi, Sophie Okonedo, Sara Sheen, Toby Jones













The Spy Who Dumped Me


Best friends unwittingly become entangled in an international conspiracy when one of the women discovers the boyfriend who dumped her was actually a spy.
Limp, violent and confused comedy that begins with a smart premise and proceeds to consistently refuse to stay the course.


d – Susanna Fogel
w – Susanna Fogel, David Iserson
ph – Barry Peterson
pd – Marc Homes
m – Tyler Bates
ed – Jonathan Schwartz
cos – Alex Bovaird


p – Erica Huggins, Brian Grazer


Cast: Mila Kunis, Kate McKinnon, Justin Theroux, Gillian Anderson, Sam Heughan, Hasan Minhaj, Ivanna Sakhno, Fred Melamed, Jane Curtin, Paul Reiser, James Fleet, Carolyn Pickles













White Boy Rick *


The story of a teenager who became an undercover informant for the police during the 1980s and was ultimately arrested for drug-trafficking and sentenced to life in prison.
Inelegantly plotted retelling of a true story that relies far too heavily on the unconscionable breach of justice that the story itself reiterates, rather than anything particularly dramatic.


d – Yann Demange
w – Andy Weiss, Logan Miller, Noah Miller
ph – Tat Radcliffe
pd – Stefania Cella
m – Max Richter
ed – Chris Wyatt
cos – Amy Westcott


p – Darren Aronofsky, Scott Franklin, John Lesher, Jeffrey Robinov, Julie Yorn


Cast: Richie Merritt, Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Bel Powley, RJ Cyler, Rory Cochrane, Eddie Marsan, Bruce Dern, Piper Laurie, Brian Tyree Henry, Taylour Paige













The Happytime Murders


When the puppet cast of a ’90s children’s TV show begins to get murdered one by one, a disgraced LAPD detective-turned-private eye puppet takes on the case.
Hardly the atrocity that critics have been railing against. Nevertheless, a film this preoccupied with recapitulating the supposedly “hilarious” notion that puppet characters can swear and perform oral sex will only bewitch for so long. The plot is dumb, the world-building is ill-defined and the jokes are insufficient.


d – Brian Henson
w – Todd Berger, Dee Austin Robertson
ph – Mitchell Amundsen
pd – Chris L. Spellman
m – Christopher Lennertz
ed – Brian Olds
cos – Arjun Bhasin


p – Ben Falcone, Jeffrey M. Hayes, Brian Henson, Melissa McCarthy


Cast: Melissa McCarthy, Elizabeth Banks, Maya Rudolph, Joel McHale, Leslie David Baker, Jimmy O. Yang, Cynthy Wu













Juliet, Naked *


A bored housewife becomes romantic penpals with her husband’s favourite hasbeen rockstar.
Contrived, only intermittently appealing romantic drama with far too much screen-time devoted to cinema’s deadliest dramatic extinguisher: characters typing.


d – Jesse Peretz
w – Evgenia Peretz, Jim Taylor, Tamara Jenkins   (Based on the Novel by Nick Hornby)
ph – Remi Adefarasin
pd – Sarah Finlay
m – Nathan Larson
ed – Sabine Hoffman, Robert Nassau
cos – Lindsay Pugh


p – Albert Berger, Ron Yerxa, Barry Mandel


Cast: Rose Byrne, Ethan Hawke, Chris O'Dowd, Megan Dodds, Jimmy O. Yang, Lily Newmark, Azhy Robertson, Ayoola Smart













Eighth Grade **


An introverted teenage girl tries to survive the last week of her disastrous eighth grade year before leaving to start high school.
Poignant, tartly observant account of middle school anxiety of the kind that we’ve seen before but done with a deft directorial hand and a tender managing of its characters (when not teetering on the edge of caricature). It also gains immeasurably from Fisher’s adolescent performance.


wd – Bo Burnham
ph – Andrew Wehde
pd – Sam Lisenco
m – Anna Meredith
ed – Jennifer Lilly
cos – Mitchell Travers


p – Eli Bush, Scott Rudin, Christopher Storer, Lila Yacoub


Cast: Elsie Fisher, Josh Hamilton, Emily Robinson, Jake Ryan, Daniel Zolghadri, Fred Hechinger, Imani Lewis, Luke Prael, Catherine Oliviere, Nora Mullins, Gerald W. Jones













Crazy Rich Asians **


An American-born Chinese economics professor accompanies her boyfriend to Singapore for his best friend’s wedding, only to get thrust into the lives of Asia’s rich and famous.
A peculiar endeavour: Reestablishing the spirit and unabashed lavishness of the romantic comedies of the 1990s with an entirely Asian cast of characters. Despite an irksome evasion of any attempt at subtlety and an ever present coating of unbelievability to the whole thing, it somehow remains charming for most of its runtime. Just don’t expect anything too astute.


d – Jon M. Chu
w – Peter Chiarelli, Adele Lim   (Based on the Novel by Kevin Kwan)
ph – Vanja Cernjul
pd – Nelson Coates
m – Brian Tyler
ed – Myron I. Kerstein
cos – Mary E. Vogt


p – Nina Jacobson, John Penotti, Brad Simpson


Cast: Constance Wu, Henry Golding, Michelle Yeoh, Gemma Chan, Awkwafina, Nico Santos, Lisa Lu, Ken Jeong, Harry Shum Jr, Sonoya Mizuno, Chris Pang, Jimmy O. Yang, Ronny Chieng, Remy Hii, Jing Lusi, Carmen Soo, Constance Lau Pierre Png Fiona Xie Victoria Loke













Smallfoot *


A Yeti is convinced that the elusive human creatures known as “smallfoot” really do exist.
Pleasant, snappy, sometimes quite funny film from Warner Bros Animation that regrettably administers too many idioms of modern-day animated movies to make a strong impression. It is cleverer than most, though.


d – Karey Kirkpatrick
co-d – Jason Reisig
w – Karey Kirkpatrick, Glenn Ficarra, John Requa
ad – Devin Crane
m – Heitor Pereira
ed – Peter Ettinger


p – Bonne Radford, Glenn Ficarra, John Requa


Cast: Channing Tatum, James Corden, Zendaya, Common, LeBron James, Gina Rodriguez, Danny DeVito, Yara Shahidi














A Simple Favor **


A Mommy vlogger joins her best friend's husband to investigate her sudden disappearance from their small Connecticut town.
Weird, unpredictable, ludicrously plotted comedy-thriller that ostensibly serves as Feig’s effort at something Hitchcockian. At this, he fails. But in the attempt, he concocts a modern female kindred to the Ealing Comedies of the 1950s, with a cast more than willing to bathe in cattiness.


d – Paul Feig
w – Jessica Sharzer   (Based on the Novel by Darcey Bell)
ph – John Schwartzman
pd – Jefferson Sage
m – Theodore Shapiro
ed – Brent White
cos – Renee Ehrlich Kalfus


p – Paul Feig, Jessie Henderson


Cast: Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively, Henry Golding, Andrew Rannells, Rupert Friend, Jean Smart, Linda Cardellini, Eric Johnson, Sarah Baker, Ian Ho, Kelly McCormack, Glenda Braganza, Cyndy Day, Kerry-Lee Finkle, Gia Sandhu, Zach Smadu, Joshua Satine




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