Vice [2018]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (L)  RogerEbert.com (1 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (C)  Fr. Dennis (2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
Los Angeles Times (K. Turan) review
RogerEbert.com (B. Tallarico) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky) review


Vice [2018] (written and directed by Adam McKay) a film about the very private / secretive GW Bush-era V.P. Dick Cheney (played in the film by Christian Bale) did not seem to me nearly as coherent in both theme and content as McKay's previous laser-sharp / damning cinematic exposé (on the 2008 Financial Crisis) The Big Short [2015]. 

It seems clear to me that McKay initially intended the film to be an i-s dotted /t-s crossed damning hatchet job against the former V.P.  BUT either he himself flinched as he started to truly understand his subject matter, Cheney, or perhaps he was ordered to stand-down "a bit" by the studios / their lawyers  (I'd go with the former explanation, with McKay realizing that Cheney was far more human / lamentable, less simply "Evil," than he had initially believed). 

In any case, the Cheney here who emerges is something of a human mess, whose decision guiding principles were limited, perhaps quite severely, by his own intellectual and perhaps even physical limitations / short-comings.  So ... in an Administration, GW Bush's, not known for its intellectual prowness, he was one of its brighter lights / beacons, BUT ... that wasn't necessarily saying much, and yet ... could he honestly have done any better?

Let me explain.  We are told that Dick Cheney, growing-up in the cattle-ranching state of Wyoming, began his young adulthood first getting accepted and then quickly flunking-out of the East Coast Ivy League University of Yale.  Why he got there at all was through the help / connections of his future wife Lynne (played in the film by Amy Adams).  Lynne, convinced that as a woman still of her 1960s generation she could not "be somebody" on her own, felt that she needed at least her husband to be "somebody."  At the time Dick looked apparently like a lug, but a BIG (homecoming quarterback-like) LUG, so ... she wasn't necessarily choosing her man in this regard badly.  He just needed to be encouraged, pushed-forward to ... "become the man" that she hoped for.  (This kind of thinking is, perhaps thankfully, becoming "old hat." BUT ... back in the Dick and Lynne Cheney's young adult years, that actually still made a lot of sense.  Women back then did become (or at least hoped to become) "somebodies" through their men).

Through another connection of Lynne and her family, Dick Cheney got an internship in Washington D.C. to work in Congress, and meeting among other people, a young "North shore" Illinois Republican Donald Rumsfeld (played in the film by Steve Carrell) THIS TIME, HE NEVER LOOKED BACK.

But ... Dick, never a particularly sharp tool, came to learn TO PARROT (very well) the ideology and  values of the people around him (in his case ... that of Nixonian republicans).  As a result his values came to be LOYALTY, SMALL GOVERNMENT, and a questionable increasingly dogmatic belief in the UNITARY POWER OF THE EXECUTIVE (basically that the President simply because he was President could do no wrong or at least could not be held to account, except _perhaps_ by the ballot box).   How such a view would work inside a Party "of small government" is remarkable.  However one supposes, going back to essentially A KING _could_ make "government" "smaller" ;-).

And the rest of the story then follows...

Now fascinatingly, those three pillars of Cheney's political ideology, DON'T necessarily point in the same direction all the time.  So there are honestly surprises, moving surprises in this film.  And Cheney was ALSO famously limited by his own health issues.

The result is ... perhaps a film about a "good old boy" who went, WAY, WAY HIGHER than anyone with his capacities / limitations really should have.

So ... what to finally say of the film?  It's something of a mess, but ... it gives Viewers, perhaps, a lot to think about as they go home.  So a decent enough, if not exactly great job.


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The Mule [2018]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (A-III)  RogerEbert.com (2 Stars)  AVClub (C+)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (K. Jensen) review
Los Angeles Times (K. Turan) review
RogerEbert.com (C. Lemire) review
AVClub (J. Hassenger) review


The Mule [2018] (directed by Clint Eastwood, screenplay by Nick Schenk, based on the New York Times Magazine article "The Sinaloa Cartel’s 90-Year-Old Drug Mule" by Sam Dolnick [NYT] [IMDb]) is probably going to be my favorite movie of the year, or maybe it will be this year's A Star Is Born [2018], both incidentally about struggling deeply flawed men and both somewhat surprisingly starring/costarring Bradley Cooper)  IMHO in the current case deserving Eastwood consideration for best actor in a leading role and possibly a nomination for best director.

The story here, inspired by the true case of Leo Sharp, fictionalized here as Earl Stone (played by Clint Eastwood himself) was about an octogenarian, vet, farmer, who had arguably squandered his life maintaining a rock-star celebrity status at quaint (and to most of us utterly irrelevant) "day lily" conventions.  He'd talk up the ladies, buy entire bars full of people rounds of drinks.  Everybody loved him ... there ... at those "day lily" conventions.  Back home?  Not so good.  He missed his own daughter's wedding (Stone's daughter played by Eastwood's own daughter Alison Eastwood).  Why? / How?  He was whooping it up at some random "day lily" convention in some random midwestern town, buying a round of drinks for another, random wedding party of strangers, somewhere else.  What a mess...

Then, technology (the internet) passed him by.  No longer did people need to go to "day lily" conventions to buy "the latest" in "day lily seed" / "technology."  They could just buy these things, sitting at home with the click of a mouse.  So not only did his "celebrity status" collapse but so did his business.  So the guy that "everybody knew" in this sliver thin horticulturist subculture only ten years back faced foreclosure on his farm/business.  What to do?

He gets a tip, that since he used to like to drive to all those conventions (and apparently never ever was even stopped by the police for any traffic violation) that ... "there'd be some people" who'd be "interested in hiring someone like him" to ... (discretely) "drive some merchandise" from Point A to Point B.

With few options and many past bridges burned, he takes the tip and ... soon he's serving as a courier (a mule) for ... El Chapo's Sinaloa's drug cartel.  Does he know?  (probably)  Does he care? (probably not).  A man of many regrets, he takes the job first to survive, and as he starts getting good at it (and the money gets ever better) he starts using that money to do some random / poignant good (even for his estranged family).  But yes, he spends at least some of it on "dancing (at 80+ more like shuffling) the night away" with small-town 40+ year old prostitutes who, well, "enjoy his company" ;-) ... Still "livin' the dream" / "rockstar" ... ;-)

So ... does this (old) man have a conscience?  Robert Redford's recent Old Man and a Gun [2018] treads similar territory -- both Eastwood and Redford know themselves now to be "old men" and seem to be telling us that "narcissism / sociopathy" don't necessarily get cured with old age.

Still, does Eastwood's Earl Stone have / gain a conscience?  I'll let you discern that for yourselves if you see the movie.

I really do think that the movie does an excellent job of portraying someone who was clearly flawed and (perhaps) trying to do better (as perhaps best he can).  One excellent murky mess of a story!


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Mary Poppins Returns [2018]

MPAA (PG)  CNS/USCCB (A-I)  RogerEbert.com (1 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (C+)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
Los Angeles Times (J. Chang) review
RogerEbert.com (M. Castillo) review
AVClub (C. Bramesco) review


Mary Poppins Returns [2018] (directed by Rob Marshall, screenplay by David Magee, screen story by Rob Marshall, David Magee and John DeLuca, based on the childrens' stories [wikip] [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] by P.L. Travers [wikip] [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] [IMDb]) proved MUCH BETTER than I feared and my hat off to Emily Blunt for the courage to play the lead, Mary Poppins, a role that's truly indelibly SEARED into the heads of generations of us as having been played by the great Julie Andrews [wikip] [IMDb]. 

As with last summer's update of another children's classic (in that case of Christopher Robin / Winnie the Poo), the story here takes place after, the children of the original story Michael (played here by Ben Whishaw) and Jane (played here by Emily Mortimer) have all grown-up and Michael, a widower (hence among other things in need of a nanny...) has children of his own: Anabel, John and Georgie (played by Pixie Davies, Nathanael Saleh and Joel Dawson). 

Set during the Great Depression, when money was tight, the family's house is threatened with foreclosure, and as the good souls but not particularly practical Michael and Jane struggle to keep the house, the uber-sensible (but also fun) Mary, not aged ONE BIT since she last flew out of the lives of the Banks family with her umbrella, "pops in" to ... well ... ;-)

Much ensues ...

I had heard from parishioners who saw the movie that I did that the current movie is "simply too much" (that it's just too fast paced).  Given that this has been the legitimate criticism of the Sherlock Holmes [2009] [2011] as well as Star Trek [2009] [2013] [2016] reboots, perhaps even of the most recent The Three Musketeers [2011] adaptation (the last of which, TTM, I LIKED), I went to the current film with some, perhaps even _a lot_ of  "concern."  BUT all things concerned, I thought that the adaptation / updating was quite marvelous -- there's an entire sequence that plays out on the surface of a "chipped bowl" that, except for a little bit of unfortunate old-style English racism (the carriage rider, portrayed AS A DOG was voiced by someone who identified himself as "Irish" ... sigh), was remarkable!

As such, I'd compare the adaptation to The Three Musketeers [2011], The Alice in Wonderland [2010] [2016] and Winnie the Pooh / Christopher Robin [2018] updates, all of which I liked as opposed to the Sherlock Holmes / Star Trek updates that IMHO "haven't worked so well."

I didn't particularly like the unnecessary "anti-Irish" flourish mentioned above, nor the spectacularly _undeveloped_ "bad guy" banker Wilkins / Wolf (played by Colin Firth) who plays the villain in the story.  Aside from being "of course" a banker, there doesn't seem to be a reason why he'd be so evil, or so spectacularly focused on destroying the peace and tranquility of Banks family.

As such, while not perfect, the effects in the film are often truly magical and EMILY BLUNT simply nails it, playing the simultaneously no-nonsense but FUN "Mary Poppins."

Sooo ... generally a pretty good and at times truly excellent job!

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Mary Queen of Scots [2018]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB ()  RogerEbert.com (2 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (C+)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB () review
Los Angeles Times (K. Turan) review
RogerEbert.com (M. Castillo) review
AVClub (J. Hassenger) review


Mary Queen of Scots [2018] (directed by Josie Rourke, screenplay by Beau Willimon based on the book Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] by John Guy [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] [IMDb]) is a reminder to us why monarchy even for the monarchs themselves is really an awful form of government.

Both Mary, Queen of the Scots (played by Saoirse Ronan) and Elizabeth, Queen of England (played by Margot Robbie), cousins, found themselves Queens of their respective Kingdoms by the then roulette of history.  Both had plenty of enemies first because of their religion, Mary was nominally (but proudly) Catholic (by birth), Elizabeth was Protestant (not entirely by choice: by the politics of the time, she was much more likely to survive to live to a ripe old age in the England of the time as a Protestant than as a Catholic...), and then because they were women at a time when a Queen would be the Monarch only because ... there were no legitimate (or simply no clear) male heir to the throne.   YET, as women, they were BOTH expected to fulfill their fundamental role of providing their Kingdoms with heir.  YET to fulfill that fundamental they needed HUSBANDS and (ONE MORE) YET that husband would inevitably start to think (or have people pushing him to think) that HE was supposed to be the MONARCH not the Queen.  Elizabeth famously NEVER GOT MARRIED (she found it impossible to really trust ANYONE).  Mary, did and a good part of the story here is about the intrigues that followed.

The result is a story that would arguably make the characters of Game of Thrones blush.

Well acted, based largely on actual events (as well as some intriguing / fun "reading between the lines...") I honestly don't have much negative to say about the film except that I'M REALLY REALLY HAPPY (1) to be of NOT of "much consequence," and (2) did not live back then.  Good / great job all around!


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Creed 2 [2018]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (A-III)  RogerEbert.com (3 Stars)  AVClub (B)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
Los Angeles Times (K. Turan) review
RogerEbert.com (O. Henderson) review
AVClub (J. Hassenger) review


Creed 2 [2018] (directed by Steven Caple Jr., story by Cheo Hodari Coker and Sascha Penn, screenplay by Sylvester Stallone and Juel Taylor, characters by Ryan Coogler) continues the generally satisfying Rocky franchise:

Adonis Johnson (played by Michael B. Jordon) son of Rocky Balboa's once great rival later fallen friend Apollo Creed first introduced to us in Creed [2015], is challenged by Viktor Drago (played by Florian Munteanu) son of Ivan Drago (played by Dolph Lundgren) the (Russian) fighter who had killed Apollo Creed in a boxing match and was finally bested by Rocky Balboa in Rocky 4 [1985]. 

It's a match made in fictionalized boxing (and actual Hollywood) heaven.  However, as is ever the case in the Rocky franchise (and certainly the franchise's greatest and most redeeming charm) the actual match becomes almost beside the point, as both Adonis and Viktor were fighting other demons far closer to home. 

Adonis, who was after all an illegitimate son of Apollo Creed and who had been portrayed in the previous film as having grown-up in various foster homes / institutions continues a still unfinished struggle, still largely unguided (though an aging Rocky, played still by Silvester Stallone, there in as much as he can to lend a helping hand) to achieve a more "normal," yes respectable life.  He has a girlfriend, a singer named Bianca (played by Tessa Thompson), who's also struggling, among other things with hearing impairment.  He feels he wants to marry her.  She honestly asks the question, why?  Soon a pregnancy, which becomes more complicated than perhaps initially expected, takes things to a new and quite poignant level.

Viktor, for his part, has been dealing with the effects of his father's "loss" to Rocky.  After Ivan lost that fight, Ivan's wife, Viktor's mother (played in the film by Bridgette Nielson), left him (and Victor) as a loser.  So Viktor has spent his entire life trying to redeem his father's (or at least his own) honor. 

Some years ago, I've come to see these "boxing" / "fighting" stories as fundamentally tragic.  So often BOTH of the "fighters" have compelling stories and honestly deserve "to win" and yet ... only one can.

So then this film to, while a fundamentally one (even as it is about a boxing match, it is also a sad one. 

I do wish that both could win.


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Green Book [2018]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (A-III)  RogerEbert.com (3 Stars)  AVClub (C+)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (K. Jensen) review
Los Angeles Times (K. Turan) review
RogerEbert.com (C. Lemire) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review


Green Book [2018] (directed and cowritten by Peter Farrelly, along with Nick Vellelonga and Brian Hayes Currie) tells the sad story of what it was like "back in the day" for African American people in the Jim Crow South -- as special "Green Book" was put out by Exxon to help African Americans who were traveling to know which gas stations, hotels and restaurants would serve them (many indeed _most_ commercial establishments would not, and were legal protected by the Jim Crow (Segregationist) laws of the time from being required to do so.

As we discussed this movie over dinner in my Servite community recently, I confessed that I had a real difficulty watching the film -- it remains simply stunning to me that ANYONE much less someone claiming to be a Christian [Mt 25:40] or for that matter an American -- the "We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" and all from our Declaration of Independence" -- could so blatantly even _gleefully_ mistreat an entire group (in this case, race) of human beings like this "You know, that's 'just' the way we do things here..." WHY???  I'd be either in jail, or would have set myself on fire or hung myself in despair (or so I'd hope...).

So then ... to the movie ...

Dr. Don Shirley [wikip] (played in the movie by Mahershala Ali), Florida born in 1927, Jamaican-American in ancestry, at age 9 he was invited to study music in the Soviet Union at the Leningrad Conservatory, and later having studied at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., he became virtuoso in CLASSICAL PIANO, something that African Americans at the time were not necessarily known for.  SO ... he decided, as part of his personal contribution to the African American Civil Rights struggle of the 1950s-60s, to embark on a tour of various cities in the Deep South to ... give concerts in classical music.  Since traveling in the Deep South as an African American was not necessarily safe at the time, he hired as a driver / bodyguard Tony "Lip" Vallelonga, a bouncer of Italian American ancestry at New York's Copacabana nightclub.   Tony was temporarily out of work because of "remodelling" being done at the club.

To the film's credit, Tony is not portrayed as some sort of a Civil Rights crusader.  He was doing this simply because he needed the work.  Tellingly, in an early scene, when Tony's wife Dolores (played by Linda Cardelini) had given two African American workmen who had come to their apartment for a plumbing job glasses of water, Tony discreetly took their glasses after they had finished AND THREW THEM AWAY (Dolores, seeing what her husband had done, later with similar discretion pulled them out of the trash and washed them).  The scene AS QUIETLY UGLY AS IT IS is in my mind COMPLETELY REALISTIC.  Yes, THAT was the time, my own family would have almost certainly done _no better_.

So ... as the story progressed, Tony learned what it was like to be ... black.  And Don Shirley learned ... IMHO that he had made the right decision to embark on his tour.  How many white Southerners he "converted" to accepting black Civil Rights, one can only guess, but he DID convert Tony.

Great story.



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A Private War [2018]

MPAA (R)  RogerEbert.com (3 1/2 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
Los Angeles Times (K. Turan) review
RogerEbert.com (N. Minow) review


A Private War [2018] (directed by Matthew Heineman, screenplay Arash Amel by based on the Vanity Fair article by Marie Brenner [VF] [IMDb]) tells the story of Marie Colvin [wikip] (played by Rosamund Pike) an (American) journalist who covered some of the most brutal dangerous conflicts / civil wars of our time from the Civil War in Tamil Tiger Civil War in Lanka (where she lost one of her eyes) to the Arab Spring inspired Revolution in Libya that deposed Gaddafi to the subsequent Syrian Civil War where she (not really a spoiler alert) she died during Seige of Homs.

This is a harrowing tale of a driven journalist who repeatedly risked her life to tell the stories of innocent people in war zones who otherwise we'd never know about.  Why did she do it?  That's one of the questions that the movie asks viewers to consider.  Yet, whatever her motive, and it was almost certainly mostly pure, we owe her and other journalists like her an enormous debt.  Justice depends on being able to understand what's going on.  She and other journalists like her help us to understand precisely that -- what's going on.   A deep deep thank you for journalists like her.


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