Sometimes its the films that you know nothing about that really surprise you, and that’s what I got from What We Do Next. A short movie (one hour 17 minutes) with only 3 actors (though good ones in Karen Pittman, Corey Stoll, and Michelle Veintimilla), it is dialogue-driven drama/thriller that pulls you in with its words alone. It begins with a young up-and-coming politician named Sandy who is comforting a 17-year-old girl named Elsa. Sandy is building a platform on helping minority women in need, and Elsa fits the bill: she’s long been sexually abused by her father. Sandy has come up with $500 for Elsa, hoping it will give her a chance to move out on her own and start a life away from her dad. The film then jumps ahead 16 years, where Elsa is finally getting paroled. She took that $500, bought a gun, and killed her father. Now, with her parole hitting, a news reporter is looking into her old crime, and is asking questions, like where she got the money for the gun. In the intervening years, Sandy has moved up in the political world: she’s a New York City councilwoman, with a bright political future that may include mayorship, senator, or even more. Sandy, not wanting to dim her rising star, goes for help to her old friend and one-time lover, Paul. Paul is the person who came up with the $500 16 years ago. At the time he was a young idealist lawyer, but he too “grew up” and is now in corporate law. Sandy bends Paul to her will, getting him to agree to be named as the person who handed Elsa that money, but if Elsa is going to lie, she wants something in return. She demands a better job than what most convicts are offered, wanting to support her ailing mother. She gets what she wants, but 5 months later, Elsa gets in a bar fight and might see it all fall apart if her parole is revoked. She will not quietly go back to jail, so the threat of blackmail to Sandy and Paul sets off a wild set of events. The finale, an epilogue taking place 5 years further in the future, rocked me. A fantastic picture looking at greed, narcissism, racism, and the lengths people will go to save their own ass. Near perfection. ★★★★½
I’m going from a movie with 3 actors to one with just 2. Biosphere takes place entirely inside a protective dome, keeping its two inhabitants alive. Billy (Mark Duplass) and Ray (Sterling K Brown) are childhood friends, and unfortunately may be the last 2 remaining humans on the planet. We learn before too long that Billy is the former President of the United States and Ray was an advisor, and Billy takes responsibility for something that fried the Earth’s atmosphere. They are now stuck in this dome that Ray had previously built. A lot of things have to keep going right for them to continue to survive, but one of the things is their fish tank, a continual source of food. Unfortunately, the last female fish dies, leaving just 2 males, so Billy and Ray know they now have a finite amount of time left. A miracle comes when one of the male fish starts undergoing sequential hermaphroditism, transitioning from male to female. Ray comments that some animals have been known to do this in nature, when the threat of extinction is very real. And sure enough, it isn’t long before Billy’s testicles starting being absolved into his body, and his “outie starts becoming an innie.” Ray doesn’t know how to feel about that, especially when his childhood friend’s budding breasts brush up against his arm and he is aroused. There’s quite a few good laughs and both actors are entertaining, but the movie as a whole isn’t all that memorable. Good enough for a single watch though. ★★★
No idea why I bothered with Haunted Mansion. The trailers looked dumb enough that I skipped it in theaters (where it bombed) and it got bad reviews. I thought maybe I’d see something that everyone else missed? Sad to say, not the case. In the film, single mother Gabbie and her young son move into a rickety old mansion outside New Orleans. Of course it is haunted, and the ghosts follow you if you try to leave, so they are basically stuck there. They bring in a team of experts to help clear the ghosts out. This includes a local expert in haunted houses, a psychic/medium, a priest, and, the lead of the film, a man who invented a camera that can capture pictures of ghosts. Turns out the ghosts of the house are being haunted themselves. All were lured to the house and killed, and the man behind it has nefarious plans to capture 1000 souls. In order to free all his ghostly victims and shut it all down, the team needs to find out what his motives are and how to stop him. Plenty of great actors including LaKeith Stanfield, Rosario Dawson, Tiffany Haddish, Owen Wilson, Danny DeVito, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Winona Ryder (as well as Jared Leto voicing the big bad guy), but all of that ability means squat when the plot is dull. The movie might play better towards kids (definitely seems to be “light scary” for the younger crowd) but even they might be bored before the end, and the hokey jokes seem from a bygone era. ★
Flora and Son is the newest from director John Carney, who has become known for making movies about musicians down on their luck (Once, Begin Again, Sing Street). I (mostly) enjoyed the first two, but despite critical praise, did not care for Sing Street, thinking Carney’s formula was growing old. It has been awhile since then, and in his newest, he still has a musician who never made it big, but instead of making him the main character, the film focuses on a different person, Flora. A young single mother to a teenager, Max, and living in a bad apartment in Dublin, Flora has had a rough life, and bemoans that it’s never going to get any better. She and her son hate each other, and she’s not exactly mother of the year. She stumbles across a used guitar and gets it fixed up for her son’s birthday, but he rebuffs it in anger. Flora starts learning it herself, taking online lessons from a man on the other side of the world, Los Angeles guitarist Jeff, who never had much success making his own music. Through the power and emotion of music, Flora realizes she has shut herself off from the world, and finally starts to allow herself to open up. She starts mending her relationship with Max, and also begins falling in love with Jeff. There’s a couple very nice moments, like when Flora has that initial “aha moment,” but the film is still far too formulaic. You know exactly how it’s going to end in the first 20 minutes, so you really only stick around to watch it play out. I think this is the last Carney film for me, not sure I can sit through this story again in the future. ★½
You all know I usually stick to either very new or very old movies, but I stumbled upon The Road, a film I missed back in 2009, and it checked a lot of boxes for my tastes (post-apocalyptic, the always-great Viggo Mortensen, etc), so I had to give it a whirl. Based on a book by Cormac McCarthy, it takes place 10-ish after an unknown cataclysmic event has put mankind on the brink. The man (no names are ever given) has raised his son in this “new” world. The boy was born as the world was burning, and he’s never known any different, and the story of what happened to his mom is left until the later stages of the movie. All we know is Dad and Son have been wandering the desolation left of the world, heading south towards the ocean, where the son expects to see blue water. There’s no other hope to be had, with a world where cannibals roam the cities, all plant life is dead and shriveled, no animals have survived, and food is becoming more and more scarce. The man knows there is no hope, but he will do anything to protect his son, even if it means killing the boy if capture by one of the “bad men” becomes assured: the man carries a gun with two remaining bullets, one for each of them, should it come to that. It’s a bleak movie in an uncaring landscape, but there is still love, and fans of the genre will find plenty to like. ★★★★
- TV series recently watched: Ahsoka (season 1), Justified (season 5), Succession (season 1)
- Book currently reading: Lords of the Sith by Paul Kemp
Jons Movie Takes 