Review: "All the Money in the World"

In 1987, during post-production on his drama September, Woody Allen made the unprecedented decision to all but start from scratch on the picture, replacing stars Sam Shepard, Maureen O'Sullivan and Charles Durning with Sam Waterston, Elaine Stritch and Jack Warden, respectively. The result, while not a commercial success, marked one of Allen's most absorbing and richly performed dramas, with Stritch especially riveting in the role of family matriarch.

Fast-forward three decades and, amid sexual assault allegations toward All the Money in the World star Kevin Spacey, it was Ridley Scott in this precarious position of going back to do extensive reshoots, albeit not quite to the extent Allen did in '87. Spacey's scenes as oil tycoon J. Paul Getty were booted from the film as that old pro Christopher Plummer waltzed in to save the day and shoot the role over a mere nine days.

Plummer, I'm pleased to report, is in marvelous form as Getty, a feat made all the more remarkable by the time crunch to have this thing ready for a Christmas theatrical release. To boot, this role is no cameo - he graces the screen for well more than half an hour, instilling much-needed vitality into the proceedings, and clearly had a blast with the role.

Alas, when Plummer isn't front and center, All the Money in the World is an overwhelmingly ho-hum endeavor and certainly no September.

The picture opens on young John Paul Getty III (Charlie Plummer) being kidnapped by an organized crime regime in Rome. His mother Gail (Michelle Williams) reaches out to Getty Sr. to pay the ransom, which he promptly refuses to do, claiming it would only encourage his other grandchildren to be captured in exchange for Getty money. With her son's captors growing more savage over time, Gail works alongside Fletcher Chase (Mark Wahlberg), a former CIA operative and Getty Sr.'s business manager, to devise a way of saving the young man without the assistance of his crusty grandfather.

A key and nearly fatal flaw of All the Money in the World is the young Getty is so thinly drawn by Scott, (Charlie) Plummer and screenwriter David Scarpa that it's tough to get all that emotionally invested in the proceedings. Williams is able to breathe a bit more life into her role, even with Scarpa's script doing her few favors. Wahlberg, on the other hand, is supreme dead weight, evidently having graduated from the Bruce Willis in The Bonfire of the Vanities School of Acting - "maybe I'll win an Oscar if I do nothing but simply throw on a pair of glasses!"

Ultimately, the sole reason to sit through this lengthy and often middling exercise is Plummer, who at least has some blood flowing through his veins and is able to wholly transcend Scott's unfocused direction and Scarpa's lame script. Spacey, I suspect, may have played Getty as camp, rendering the proceedings all but unwatchable. Plummer, on the other hand, is stunningly convincing. It's a tour de force turn that provides a hefty lift to this troubled production.

If only Scott had pulled an Allen, scrapped the entire picture and started over with a Getty biopic!

B-

Review: "Star Wars: The Last Jedi"

More porgs, please!

Those adorable porgs - the pint-sized sea birds who inhabit the planet on which an exiled Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) resides in Star Wars: The Last Jedi - sure are irresistible and there's a lot to like in filmmaker Rian Johnson's contribution to the franchise, even if it rarely reaches the heights of the legendary first three films.

While, in many respects, this is a bolder, more ambitious effort than the series' last entry, J.J. Abrams' fine but workmanlike The Force Awakens, it is also structurally haphazard, often bouncing among its subplots in frantic manner that renders the proceedings somewhat uninvolving.

The Last Jedi opens on the Resistance, led by General Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher, in her final film appearance), evacuating their base upon the arrival of a First Order fleet. Leia's son, the painfully conflicted Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), has the opportunity to blow the Resistance ship to bits but hesitates, deep down harboring feelings for his mother. Nonetheless, the First Order pursues them via a tracking device, which Resistance fighters Poe (Oscar Isaac) and Finn (John Boyega) are determined to disable.

Meanwhile, Rey (Daisy Ridley), alongside Chewbecca and R2-D2, has interrupted Luke's isolated existence, determined to recruit him back to the Resistance. Luke initially resists, viewing the Jedi as plagued with failure, but eventually relents, willing to educate Rey in the ways of the force. Matters get messy, however, when Rey and Kylo begin telepathically communicating and Kylo, who had been trained by Luke, paints his former master in a not-so-flattering light.

With Hamill in career-best form and Ridley a sterling screen presence, their scenes are among The Last Jedi's best and most absorbing - and just wait 'til a franchise favorite shows up for marvelous surprise cameo alongside Luke. It's the rest of the picture that's rather erratic.

The cast isn't to blame. Fisher (who has more to do here than in The Force Awakens), Driver, Boyega and Isaac are all terrific, as is Kelly Marie Tran as Rose, a mechanic along for the fight. (Laura Dern, sadly, doesn't have much meat to chew on.) The thing is, for every sequence that crackles, like Finn and Rose's journey to an elaborate casino city, there are one or two that either don't quite pay off or just fall completely flat. Also, at more than two and a half hours, the proceedings left me awfully restless...with about half an hour still go.

As admittedly not the most ardent of Star Wars fans - oddly enough, my favorite in the series is Return of the Jedi...and that's mostly because I'm that one person who loves Ewoks - I'm hardly dumbfounded that The Last Jedi didn't leave me head over heels. Still, I can recognize that vitality and movie magic in the original trilogy of Star Wars pictures and it's pleasure that's only intermittently present in this film and The Force Awakens.

That said...I'm totally down for some more porgs.

B

Review: "Darkest Hour"

It was hardly hyperbole when, in the late 1980s, film critic Roger Ebert labeled Gary Oldman "the best young British actor around." Oldman may not have graced the Hollywood A-list at this time but he was nonetheless killing it with dazzling turns in the likes of Sid and Nancy, Prick Up Your Ears and Rosencranz & Guildenstern Are Dead. Oldman would, over the years to come, instill vitality in safer fare like Air Force One, The Contender and Hannibal, plus Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, which perhaps introduced a whole new generation of film buffs to the veteran actor.

Rarely, however, has Oldman been handed a role with this much meat to chew on. His turn as newly appointed British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour, a performance talked up for months as a shoo-in for the Best Actor Oscar, is a legit tour de force, a master class in acting that is equal parts convincing and entertaining. It's just too bad the picture around him isn't operating at that same sky-high level.

Directed by Joe Wright, a master of the workmanlike British drama, Darkest Hour follows Churchill during the early days of World War II. Nazi forces are steamrolling across Western Europe and the threat of invasion to Great Britain is imminent. Where his predecessor Neville Chamberlain (Ronald Pickup) was known for his appeasement foreign policy, Churchill fiercely opposes Hitler and loathes the idea, still advocated by the Chamberlain wing, of negotiating with him. Ultimately, despite his political opponents' best efforts to influence him, Churchill rallies the nation behind the war effort and the rest is history.

Darkest Hour often has the feel of a one-man show. This is in part due to the riveting, larger-than-life nature of Oldman's performance, a turn that graces the screen in nearly every frame. It is also, however, the result of screenwriter Anthony McCarten's decision not to much flesh out a single other figure in the picture. We learn virtually nothing about wife Clementine (Kristin Scott Thomas) or King George VI (Ben Mendelsohn) and while Pickup is quite terrific as Chamberlain, he too is mostly treated like a mannequin.

This isn't to put the film down too much. Beyond Oldman, there's a lot to like on the technical end, with a marvelous Dario Marianelli score and lush cinematography by Bruno Delbonnel. A handful of scenes, perhaps most notably Churchill's bolting from his car to join his fellow citizens for a trip on the subway, are also very nicely staged by Wright.

Ultimately, though, Oldman upstages everything and everyone around him in Darkest Hour. He chews scenery, sure, but also instills in Churchill a palpable sense of vulnerability. Oldman also disappears into the role in a way I don't think past actors like John Lithgow (The Crown) and Richard Burton (The Gathering Storm) quite pulled off.

Darkest Hour may be a stuffy endeavor in many regards but Oldman more than delivers the goods.

B+

Review: "The Shape of Water"

At last, a film that simultaneously satisfies my appetites for both 1940s movie musicals and 1950s creature features!

Guillermo del Toro's genre-bending The Shape of Water is both one of the year's finest films and the best and most accessible picture in his filmography - more satisfying, I would argue, that his much-celebrated Pan's Labyrinth. It's a poignant, exciting and fanciful picture that sports one hell of an ensemble cast and, no surprise, also happens to look absolutely gorgeous.

The film opens on Elisa (Sally Hawkins, spellbinding as ever), a mute, timorous woman who in Cold War-era Baltimore works as a cleaning lady in a hidden, high-security government research center. Her life isn't much to write home about, that is until an encounter with a mysterious amphibious creature (Doug Jones) who has been brought to the laboratory for a classified experiment by the barbarous, abusive Colonel Strickland (Michael Shannon).

Elisa spends time with the creature, bringing him food and playing records from home, and slowly but surely, a bond blossoms between these two lonely souls. As Strickland becomes more unhinged in the senseless pain he inflicts upon the creature, Elisa mulls a plan to get her new companion out of the lab (and boy does del Toro do a rousing job orchestrating that sequence). Elisa has support from friend and neighbor Giles (Richard Jenkins); scientist Dr. Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg); and co-worker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) but it won't be easy protecting the creature from the exceedingly deranged Strickland.

The Shape of Water offers a little something for everyone.

Like all del Toro pictures, this is a visually remarkable production, with sublime cinematography by Dan Laustsen and production design by Paul D. Austerberry. Vintage horror fans will no doubt devour the film's affection for Universal's 1950s Creature trilogy and movie musical fans - you'll be in heaven during del Toro's tribute to those pictures, set (in gorgeous black and white) to the Oscar-winning Alice Faye tune "You'll Never Know." The action is exhilarating, the romance is sweet and heart-rending and the film isn't without a sense of humor.

Hawkins, in perhaps her most affecting performance to date, never strikes a false note as Elisa and she's matched by Jenkins, Spencer and Stuhlbarg, stellar as always in their respective supporting turns - it's especially welcome to see Jenkins with such a rich role on the big screen, and I sure hope he earns an Oscar nomination. Shannon perhaps offers the fewest surprises among the cast but still instills plenty of vigor into his role, which rings more like a mad scientist than any of the actual scientists in the picture.

The Shape of Water is a phenomenal effort, sure to resonate on at least some level with even moviegoers not terribly fond of del Toro's past productions.

A+

Review: "The Disaster Artist"

James Franco, you have come so very far since the 2010 Oscars.

Franco is a legit tour de force, both in front of and behind the camera, as leading man and director of The Disaster Artist. He has exquisitely approached a role that, in the hands of another, less committed actor, could have easily played as caricature, adding layer upon layer to the irresistibly oddball filmmaker Tommy Wiseau.

Based on the eponymous 2013 book by actor Greg Sestero and Tom Bissell, The Disaster Artist opens on Sestero (Dave Franco) who, toward the end of the 1990s, is an aspiring young actor living in San Francisco with his mom (Megan Mullally). Sestero encounters the peculiar Wiseau at an acting class and is awestruck by the audacious scenery-chewing in his rendition of a scene from A Streetcar Named Desire. Over the months to come, the two form an unusual but solicitous bond and, yearning to make it in Hollywood, eventually make the move to L.A.

On the steep climb to making their dreams come true, Sestero secures an agent (and a girlfriend) but nonetheless finds negligible success, while the industry all-around shuns Wiseau. One day, Sestero casually floats the idea of making his own picture to provide himself with a film role. Wiseau takes this suggestion literally and, over the next three years, pens the screenplay for what will become The Room, now considered one of the worst films ever made and, because of that distinction, an unimpeachable cult classic.

The making of The Room, which fills out most of the back half of The Disaster Artist, is often devastatingly funny and sure to even resonate with viewers not familiar with Wiseau's 2003 film. What I especially adore about this picture, however, is the relationship between Wiseau and Sestero and how their chance meeting saved them from the doldrums of ordinary life and inspired them to pursue seemingly impossible dreams.

Both Francos are in prime form, with James in particular deserving kudos for not approaching Wiseau as some sort of SNL creation. When, toward the beginning of the picture, Wiseau tells Sestero he wishes he could have his own world, a planet where nothing but love exists, he sounds entirely sincere and it's a stunningly moving moment. The supporting cast is, for the most part, comprised of an endless series of celebrity cameos, some inspired (Josh Hutcherson and Jacki Weaver are a hoot as actors in the film) and others perplexing (please stop giving Zac Efron work).

Comparisons have, no surprise, been made between The Disaster Artist and Ed Wood, Tim Burton's picture about another lovably dreadful filmmaker. While this film does not operate on the same sky-high level as Ed Wood, it's still one heck of a great time and a strong contender for the year's funniest film.

A-

Review: "Mudbound"

Dee Rees, I bow down to you.

Rees, the remarkable filmmaker (and, if there's any justice in this world, 2017 Oscar nominee), who previously wowed us with Pariah and Bessie, is operating on a George Stevens/William Wyler-level with her latest effort, a film adaptation of the 2008 Hillary Jordan novel Mudbound. This is a true epic, grand visually and in its storytelling, and perhaps the year's best film.

The picture, an ensemble drama of the highest caliber, follows two Mississippi families, one white and one black, sharing delta farmland during and after World War II.

Laura McAllan (Carey Mulligan) comes from a well-off Tennessee family and isn't entirely at ease on the farmland. She has a halfhearted marriage to Henry (Jason Clarke), whose dreams of running a prosperous farm brought the couple down south, and really has more of a kinship with Henry's dashing brother Jamie (Garrett Hedlund), who is serving overseas as a flight captain. Laura and Henry have two daughters.

Hap Jackson (Rob Morgan) has for years worked the land as a tenant farmer and dreams of someday owning it. The Jacksons and McAllans are drawn together by several events, including Hap's wife Florence (Mary J. Blige) tending to the McAllans' daughters when they become ill and the Jacksons' need for some help when Hap sustains an injury. The Jackson's eldest son Ronsel (Jason Mitchell) is serving abroad as a sergeant.

Upon their returns home, Jamie and Ronsel form an bond that hardly rubs the town racists in the right way. Jamie is anguished by wartime memories, while Ronsel is quickly reminded of the lack of freedoms he has at home, vis a vis Europe. Pappy (Jonathan Banks), the widowed McAllan patriarch and a vicious racist, seems to be looking for any excuse to bring an end to this friendship.

Mudbound is an absorbing piece from start to finish, masterfully written by Rees and Virgil Williams, and sporting some of the finest, most unaffected acting you'll see all year. Mulligan has never been better and Blige, Hedlund, Mitchell and Morgan are revelations in their respective roles - all would be richly deserving of Oscar nominations. Kudos too to Rachel Morrison, whose cinematography here is downright breathtaking.

This is a picture that deserves to be placed among the likes of The Best Years of Our Lives and From Here to Eternity as one of the all-time great World War II dramas.

A+

Review: "Wonder"

If only Jacob Tremblay could narrate every film!

Tremblay, who was inexplicably robbed of an Oscar nomination (I would perhaps even argue the win) for Room two years back, again proves himself one of our finest child actors with his latest effort, director Stephen Chbosky's film adaptation of Wonder.

Based on R.J. Palacio's beloved 2012 novel, Wonder tells the story of August "Auggie" Pullman (Tremblay), a young boy with Treacher Collins syndrome, the genetic disorder characterized by facial deformities. Having to date been homeschooled by his mom (Julia Roberts), Auggie, with some initial anxiety and reluctance, makes the leap into attending an elementary school for the first time.

Auggie encounters no shortage of ignorance and cruelty from some of his classmates - fueled, as we come to find, by some parents who deserve a special place in hell - but, over time, comes across the right friendly faces and teaches even some of the nastier forces that he's really just an ordinary (and awesome) kid.

Auggie's story alone is an absorbing one but Wonder is in fact a great ensemble piece, shining a spotlight on his adoring parents (Owen Wilson portrays the father); the older sister (Izabela Vidovic) who's been there every step of the way through her brother's journeys in and out of hospitals and herself is struggling socially in school; and Auggie's friend Jack Will (Noah Jupe), torn between the new pal he loves and peer pressure to poke fun at him. Even Auggie's sister's estranged friend has her own little sequence!

Wonder isn't quite as ambitious a picture as say, this year's Wonderstruck, but it's still awfully irresistible, with Tremblay charming, funny and also heartbreaking as can be in the lead role. Roberts and Wilson are in warm, wonderful form and Vidovic is an absolute revelation as Auggie's sister, who finds surprising fulfillment through her school's drama group. Watch out for a terrific turn by Mandy Patinkin too, who plays the school principal.

Chbosky's The Perks of a Wallflower left me rather cold a few years back, so, despite my affection for Tremblay, I did not have terribly high expectations for this. Well, those modest expectations were exceeded by leaps and bounds and I would encourage all to check out this marvelous (and surprisingly not manipulative/saccharine) film.

A-

Review: "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri"

Dear Frances McDormand,

I know you're not terribly enamored with the whole awards season game but might be time to start working on that Oscar speech.

McDormand, per usual, is absolutely spectacular in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, the latest effort from that riveting filmmaker and playwright Martin McDonagh. This is hardly a one-woman tour de force, however - McDormand, while incredible, is matched toe-to-toe by a remarkable ensemble cast, with several talents operating at the very tops of their game.

In the film, Woody Harrelson is the genial Police Chief William Willoughby, a figure seemingly adored by just about everyone in town. Well, that is, with the exception of Mildred Hayes (McDormand), whose teenage daughter was violently raped and murdered. Seven months since her death, Hayes is perturbed as ever at Willoughby for his failure to make progress in the investigation. So, she releases her exasperation via three billboards outside of town, targeting the chief for this perceived inaction.

Hayes' actions, no surprise, don't sit terribly well with all town residents, including Willoughby's second-in-command, Officer Jason Dixon (Sam Rockwell), a racist, buffoonish loose cannon who may or may not have some sense of decency tucked away inside. Her son Robbie (Lucas Hedges, in yet another terrific supporting turn) and ex-husband Charlie (John Hawkes), still devastated over their loss, are also none too pleased with the attention.

To delve any further into the plot would, I think, be unfair to my readers and to the picture, which includes some real jaw-droppers, both in dialogue and the events that transpire. I can guarantee, however, you will not be bored.

McDonagh packs a ton into his picture, touching upon issues of police brutality and incompetence, sexual assault, racism and more, while simultaneously operating as a family drama (McDormand even gets a Mary Tyler Moore in Ordinary People-like scene where she reflects on the past from her deceased child's bedroom) and pitch black comedy - and yet, even with all of these moving parts, Three Billboards is a remarkably focused and absorbing endeavor.

McDormand fans are in for a treat with her delicious turn here but Harrelson is also in top form and Rockwell is a legit revelation, adding layers to a character you think you've seen countless times before, until fate turns his Officer Dixon upside down. Peter Dinklage adds additional comic relief as a used car salesman with a crush on Hayes and then there's Sandy Martin, both a hoot and kind of terrifying as Dixon's colorful mama.

Three Billboards meets and perhaps even exceeds the sky-high expectations you'd have for a film with this supreme a cast and filmmaker.

A

Review: "The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)"

If, years ago, you'd suggested to me the likes of Adam Sandler and Ben Stiller could handily outshine Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson in the same picture...well, I would've been far less than convinced.

Alas, that is very much the case in The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), the surprisingly pale latest film from writer/director Noah Baumbach.

In the film, Sandler and Stiller portray siblings Danny and Matthew who, alongside sister Jean (Elizabeth Marvel), are reconnected in advance of their sculptor father Harold (Dustin Hoffman)'s career retrospective on his work. Danny has inherited some of his dad's artistic talent but is poor. Matthew may not have an inventive bone in his body but is a successful and wealthy financial planner. Both are unhappy, as is the timid Jean, and Harold isn't much more jovial, especially after witnessing the grand success of an old friend (Judd Hirsch) who recently had his own art show. No surprise, a tragedy strikes that brings long-isolated forces together.

The Meyerowitz Stories isn't without its pleasures. Both Sandler and Stiller are really quite wonderful, the former in particular shining after all too many years attaching himself to cinematic dreck. Marvel is strong too, even if Jean feels terribly underwritten, and Candice Bergen shows up for a boffo cameo as Harold's third wife (and Matthew's mom) who regrets paying scant attention to Danny and Jean as they grew up.

The picture has been sold as a sort of cross between Woody Allen and Wes Anderson but Baumbach's proceedings hardly match the sharpness of either of those two filmmakers' work, even third-tier Allen or Anderson. The film, despite some great acting, is curiously uninvolving for the most part and I wasn't too fond of Hoffman's dreary, sad sack portrayal of Harold, nor Emma Thompson's turn as the sculptor's latest wife, a one-note hippie caricature that plays more like a SNL character than actual human being.

Fans of Sandler and Stiller ought to check this out but keep those expectations modest.

B-

Review: "Lady Bird"

Saoirse Ronan (who should've won the Oscar for Brooklyn), Laurie Metcalf (one of the most devastatingly talented actors to ever grace the small screen), Tracy Letts (among this century's finest playwrights and a fierce actor to boot), Lucas Hedges (brilliant last year in Manchester By the Sea), Stephen Henderson (superb in last year's Fences), Timothee Chalamet (about to embark on an awards season run with Call Me By Your Name) and Lois Smith (among our most treasured character actors), among other geniuses, in a film directed by that sublime up-and-comer Greta Gerwig?

How could such a production prove anything less than absolute perfection?

Lady Bird does not disappoint. It is among the year's very best and most insightful pictures. Gerwig writes and directs on a sky-high level that is matched in every moment by a game cast ready to bask in the rich material they've been given.

Ronan is the deliciously droll and strong-willed Christine "Lady Bird" McPherson, a teenager itching to graduate from her Catholic high school in Sacramento and ideally settle down somewhere in the northeast. She has a stormy relationship with her mom Marion (Metcalf), a woman just as candid as her daughter and supremely stressed from work - pressure that only gets worse when family patriarch Larry (Letts) loses his job. Marion is not keen at all on the idea of Lady Bird making such a cross country move. Adding additional turbulence to Lady Bird's life are a pair of thorny romantic escapades and a suddenly strained relationship with her best friend (the fabulous Beanie Feldstein).

Lady Bird never strikes a false note, nor does it put any of its richly talented actors to waste. Ronan and Metcalf are in prime form, their relationship the heart and soul of the picture. With the spotlight shone on them, Gerwig ends the film on an immensely moving and perceptive note. But there is so much more to cherish in this picture too, including yet another heartbreaking performance from Hedges, that uproarious scene-stealer Feldstein and also the sweet rapport between Lady Bird and her father.

Members of the Academy, I realize the category of Best Lead Actress is looking to be something of a zoo this awards season. If, however, you opt not to nominate Ronan, one of today's finest young talents, operating at the very top of her game here, I am prepared to throw a hissy fit that you'll be able to hear all the way from Boston. K?

A