Category: Film Reviews by Amy

Mank (R)

Screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz writes Citizen Kane while recuperating from injury and Citizen Kane-ily reflecting on his career in Hollywood in Mank, the most made-for-Oscar-nominations movie I have ever seen.

It is a movie about the movies featuring a character whose name is on one of the Academy Awards’ prizes (that being the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award; the Irving Thalberg played by Ferdinand Kingsley here is worth his own biopic). Many of the towering figures of 1930s Hollywood appear in this movie set in southern California that somehow captures, despite being in black and white, the sunny California-ness. And you get the intersection of California politics and Hollywood (and the conservative politics of corporate Hollywood clashing with the liberal politics of creative Hollywood) and a testament/cautionary tale about the power of movie magic storytelling in a real political world. There’s a “fake newsreel”! This movie has everything!

When we meet Herman Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) in 1940, he has recently been in a car accident and has been given a place out toward the southern California desert to recuperate, a nurse (Monika Gossman) to care for him and an assistant, Rita Alexander (Lily Collins), for him to dictate his screenplay to. All of this comes courtesy Orson Welles (Tom Burke), who has hired him to write a screenplay (or begin the writing that the two would complete; look, the authorship of Citizen Kane is a whole thing — what I’m talking about here is what this movie tells us about a screenplay that would ultimately have both Mankiewicz’s and Welles’ names). John Houseman (Sam Troughton) is to work as editor on the project and it seems understood by everybody, immediately, that what Mank is doing is a potentially dangerous undertaking.Even Alexander, a British lady who is more concerned about her RAF pilot husband’s survival than Mank’s career woes, immediately knows that the great man in decline that Mank is writing about is a thinly veiled riff on media magnate William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance), which would make his ditzy showgirl wife a take on Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried), even though Mank insists he doesn’t mean it to be her.

In flashbacks we see how Mank used to be a writer at MGM for Louis B. Mayer (Arliss Howard) and used to be a friend of Hearst and his mistress Marion Davies, having met her through her nephew, the writer Charles Lederer (Joseph Cross). The witty Mank was, for a while, a regular at gatherings at Hearst’s house in San Simeon, where he hung out with the likes of Mayer and Thalberg and saw their influence beyond media and into the world of state and national politics. Mank seems to want to appear above politics, playing the sarcastic wiseguy role, but the 1934 governor’s race and Mayer’s and Hearst’s opposition to the Democratic candidate Upton Sinclair seems to make it increasingly hard for Mank to follow his wife Sara’s (Tuppence Middleton) “if you don’t have anything nice to say” advice. And then there’s his own self-destructive behavior — drinking and gambling and a fair amount of what seems like self-loathing.

This feels like such a movie-nerd’s movie I’m not even sure how to judge it. I mean, do I love it? Sure, it checks all the boxes for a movie geek, with movie nostalgia (or not nostalgia, really, because I’m not 110 years old but, like, reveling in the fantasy, mostly built by movies, of the early days of Hollywood) that packs an extra punch both because I haven’t been seeing big Hollywood movies in theaters and because the industry and its future are suddenly, here in 2020, so much in flux. I like all the technical elements of this movie, how in look and sound and scene transitions it looks like a 1940s film. Specifically, it uses a lot of Citizen Kane visual and storytelling elements and, sure, it does so very self-consciously, but it doesn’t make me like it any less.

Oldman’s performance feels, well, Oscar-bait-y in the extreme but captivating nonetheless. He’s not just Herman Mankiewicz; he’s a Herman Mankiewicz-y version of the Herman Mankiewicz character in highly stylized movie. It is not a natural performance, I guess is what I’m saying, nor is anybody else’s, but I bought it.

Look, this is 2020 and for those of us out in the movie fan universe (i.e. not going to virtual film festivals or working for film studios) this glossy Netflix bit of concession stand candy is probably as Hollywood as it’s going to get for us. This was probably always going to be an enjoyable movie to me, but under these circumstances it felt like an extra special bit of movie magic. A-

Rated R for some language. Directed by David Fincher with a screenplay by Jack Fincher, Mank is two hours and 11 minutes long and distributed by Netflix.

Hillbilly Elegy
Ron Howard directed this adaptation of J.D. Vance’s 2016 memoir and it’s streaming on Netflix now. It stars Glenn Close and Amy Adams — both of whom seem to be trying hard for their elusive Oscar wins. Find Amy Diaz’s thoughts on Hillbilly Elegy at hippopress.com, available for free thanks to our members and contributors.

Featured Photo: Mank

Happiest Season (PG-13)

Hulu offers a solid bit of Christmas content in the streaming-service-holiday-movie competition with Happiest Season, a sweet, genuinely fun and ultimately emotionally rich holiday love story.

Abby (Kristen Stewart) hasn’t gotten too jazzed about Christmas since losing her parents at age 19 but when her girlfriend Harper (Mackenzie Davis) invites her home to her parents’ house for Christmas, Abby is genuinely excited. She even buys an engagement ring and plans to ask Harper to marry her, possibly Christmas morning, possibly even going real old-school and asking Harper’s dad for his blessing.

This would come as a surprise to Ted (Victor Garber), Harper’s dad, who doesn’t know Harper and Abby are together or even that Harper is gay. Harper has told her family, including mom Tipper (Mary Steenburgen), that Abby is her (straight) roommate who just needs a place to go for the holidays. Abby is horrified to hear all of this, particularly as she hears it in the car when the couple is practically at the parents’ house, but she decides to go along with it for Harper’s sake.

She quickly realizes that Harper’s fear of coming out to her parents is only part of the family tension. Harper is hyper-competitive with her oldest sister, Sloane (Alison Brie), a mom of two kids who runs a business with her husband, Eric (Burl Moseley), but who is constantly catching shade from her parents about giving up a career as a lawyer. Harper’s middle sister, Jane (Mary Holland), is perpetually overlooked and underestimated. Tipper is freaking out about her extremely fancy and involved Christmas Eve party — even more so this year because Ted is running for mayor and hoping to impress a big donor (Ana Gasteyer). What exactly Tipper’s and Ted’s damage is that has caused them to pit their children against each other and make them feel like big life issues are better kept quiet (even before Ted started running for mayor) the movie never says. But basically, this family is high-strung.

I usually do not love this kind of movie, the The Family Stone-ish type family-gets-together-for-holidays story, because they usually push the limits of how normal humans act to such a degree that I find it somewhat unwatchable. I always find myself thinking “hey, grown adults, you can leave this horrible situation, or not come at all, or get a hotel room and come for the meals but leave in between.” Here, the movie makes most of the crazy behavior make sense, at least within the logic of the movie — the secrets the sisters keep from each other, Harper’s paralyzing fear of her parents, Abby’s hurt reaction to Harper’s behavior but reluctance to give up on Harper. (Maybe not the parents. I’ve read some criticism of this movie which is essentially “what is with these parents?” and there really is no sense-making reason for people who end up where these people end up to act this way in 2020 but I guess you just have to accept certain elements of extreme character stasis followed by sudden growth for this kind of story, just as you have just sort of go with the idea that Harper deeply loves Abby but would put her through all this.) There are very “holiday movie” moments — these movies seem to always feature a fight involving a Christmas tree — but there is some very recognizable human emotion happening, particularly with Abby. The movie doesn’t turn Abby into a doormat or let Harper off the hook (at least not entirely) for the way she treats her, while still giving us the happy beats you need in a movie like this.

I realize I am very late to this party but Kristen Stewart is great — she’s good with the emotional stuff and even better in the comedy moments (a scene where she briefly has to interact with Sloane’s kids called to mind her excellent “Duolingo for Talking to Kids” Saturday Night Live commercial skit). She and Davis have solid chemistry (though not quite as good as Stewart and Aubrey Plaza, who shows up as Harper’s first girlfriend and is a delight). Steenburgen, Garber, Brie and Holland are good supporting players, offering their own moments that fill in whole sides of their characters with just a look or a line reading. Other standout supporting actors include Daniel Levy as a friend of Abby’s and even a brief scene with Timothy Simons as a security guard.

With genuine romance, actual humor and a lot of solid family stuff, Happiest Season is a holiday treat. B

Rated PG-13 for some language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Clea DuVall with a screenplay by Clea DuVall & Mary Holland, Happiest Season is an hour and 42 minutes long and distributed by TriStar. It is available on Hulu.

Superintelligence (PG)

An A.I. picks an average human to teach it about humanity so it can decide whether or not to “Clorox wipe the entire planet and let it start over” in Superintelligence, the best of these Ben Falcone-directed, Melissa McCarthy-starring comedies.

And that’s not a backhanded dig. While not quite as sharp or as bold as McCarthy’s best work, Superintelligence is light and fun and with just the right amount of smart.

What started as a Teddy Ruxpin-ish stuffed animal thing that taught kids to read has somehow morphed into a sentient intelligence that is in, as Carol Peters (McCarthy) quickly learns, everything from computers and phones to her rice cooker and alarm clock. Super Intelligence, as it calls itself, sounds like James Corden to Carol, because of her James Corden fandom (and because Corden does most of its vocal work here), and briefly Octavia Spencer to Dennis (Brian Tyree Henry), her best friend who works at Microsoft and is the person Carol tells after she “meets” the Super Intelligence. It tells her about its recent sudden sentience and its “meh” take on humans. Its dilemma: Should it help humans fix our problems or enslave us or just get rid of us altogether. It has decided to watch Carol to try to figure out what makes humans tick and, to see her response to a variety of situations, it gives her things — a fancy car (that it controls), a fancy new house, a bunch of money and a foundation that she can use to give money to good causes.

Perhaps most importantly, it gives her a push to find George (Bobby Cannavale), her ex-boyfriend, and try to put things right with him. They were apparently very much in love but Carol had what sounds like a career/life crisis and decided to change everything — focusing on doing good in the world and leaving George in the process. We quickly see that he hasn’t ever gotten over her and she very much still loves him but George happens to be just days away from moving to Ireland as part of a year-long teaching fellowship. Super Intelligence nevertheless pushes her to ask him out on a date and patch things up — whatever that means for their future, if there even is A Future.

Meanwhile, Dennis contacts the government even though Super Intelligence told his Microsoft team to back off (but with a “lighthearted” reference to War Games, so you can see why Dennis may not want to listen). The U.S. and the international community work together to find a way to “trap” Super Intelligence before it can “play a game” with the world. Thusly do we also meet the FBI agents (Ben Falcone, Sam Richardson) who spend time tracking Carol’s interaction with Super Intelligence and the U.S. president (Jean Smart), who feels like one of those Shmillary Shminton movie presidents that showed up in films in, like, 2017 and 2018.

This movie plays to all McCarthy’s strengths: believably conveying empathy, physical comedy, doing “regular person in a crazy situation” (as in Spy), being believably awkward and charming at the same time. She is generally someone I just enjoy watching, almost regardless of the quality of the material she’s given, but here she’s got good material — good, if maybe not the “great” of Spy or The Heat.

The movie is also just a solid comedy overall — broad but with strong bits (a job interview scene early in the movie featuring Jessica St. Clair and Karan Soni is almost completely irrelevant to the movie but is also just goofy fun). I also like what the movie does with George. He isn’t a tough guy or a pushover or a performative do-gooder or a fantasy boyfriend. He seems like, at least for a broad comedy, something approaching a normal human — one who has certain life ambitions, who still loves his ex but who was hurt by her and yet still hasn’t let that make him a jerk. He seems like, I don’t know, an adult. Carol also seems like an adult. I mention that because maturity often feels like a goal and not a pre-existing condition in a movie like this and it was just nice to see.

Superintelligence probably isn’t the smartest comedy I’ll watch all year but, as a bit of fun entertainment during a holiday weekend, it was absolutely satisfying. B

Rated PG for some suggestive material, language and thematic elements, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Ben Falcone and written by Steven Mallory, Superintellegence is an hour and 46 minutes long and distributed by New Line Cinema. It is available on HBO Max.

Featured Photo: The Lego Star Wars Holiday Special

Rey learns a valuable lesson about friendship on Life Day in The Lego Star Wars Holiday Special, a gleefully goofy Lego tour through the Star Wars universe.

It’s also 47 minutes long, which is the perfect “movie” length for something that I think is fairly kindergarten-and-up appropriate. (Even the scariest moments are cut with levity.)

In what I’m pretty sure is a post-Rise of Skywalker world, Rey (voice of Helen Sadler) is trying to teach Finn (voice of Omar Miller) the ways of the Force, all shield helmets and drone lasers in the Millennium Falcon, just like Luke and Obi-Wan. Despite reading all the Jedi texts (nice callback!), she can’t seem to get the teaching right and decides to set off to an ancient cave on the Whatever planet where it is prophesied that Jedi can find answers to their questions once a year on Life Day — and, luckily, it happens to be Life Day.

A brief “Life Day” aside: So this is a Wookiee holiday that originated in the infamous 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special, a TV thing that featured the likes of Bea Arthur and Harvey Korman as well as many of the original Star Wars movie actors and was so notoriously bad that it never saw the light of day after its initial airing. I have never seen the whole thing, though the full special and clips are available on the internet. A few years back, David T. Cole of the Extra Hot Great podcast did a delightful short-run podcast series called Now That’s What We’re Tarkin About that examined in depth this thoroughly bizarre-sounding special, which is where most of my knowledge about the special comes from. (In a brief search, I couldn’t figure out if the podcast was still available anywhere; there is an Honest Trailer about some early Star Wars spinoffs, including the holiday special, and that also gives you the gist of what this cultural artifact was like.) This 2020 special seems to offer a general acknowledgment of the place in pop culture that “Star Wars holiday special” as a concept holds without winking too hard about it or requiring you to have deep canonical knowledge to get it. Just for tone and how it deals with this element of its subject, I give this movie points.

Back to the plot: Finn, Poe (voice of Jake Green) and Rose Tico (voice of Kelly Marie Tran, who also played Rose in the most recent trilogy) are bummed that Rey is leaving on Life Day. The plan was for the whole gang to be together to help Chewbacca celebrate and welcome his family. Scenes of them preparing, with varying degrees of success, for a big party are intercut with scenes of Rey finding the special Jedi cave and stumbling upon a crystal that opens portals through time. Since she is looking for help training Finn, she specifically goes back to previous scenes of teachers and students: Luke (voice of Eric Bauza) and Yoda (voice of Tom Kane), Luke and Obi-Wan (voice of James Arnold Taylor), Anakin (voice of Matt Lanter) and Obi-Wan, Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon Jinn (also Kane) — a particularly delightful scene because it highlights how boring trade talks are.

But, of course, there is another master-and-apprentice duo in the Star Wars universe: Emperor Palpatine (voice of Trevor Devall) and Darth Vadar (voice of Matt Sloan). When this pair catches a glimpse of Rey portaling through time, they decide that maybe her time-travel-enabling crystal would be a good thing to have.

As Rey jumps through the Star Wars timeline, occasionally pulling a character or two along with her, we get some fun sight gags — young and old Han Solo both shooting first, a Darth Maul sighting, a shirtless Kylo Ren, a moment of The Mandalorian’s The Child. This element of the movie has a very Avengers: Endgame feel, with a kind of affectionate and playfully ribbing reference to characters and situations across a franchise. It’s all done with enough general silliness that you don’t have to know every corner of every entry to enjoy it. And we also get nice Lego-physicality gags — my favorite is one involving the Return of the Jedi-era Death Star. Through it all, there is even some nice messaging about friendship and believing in yourself — but don’t worry, the bits of sentiment don’t get in the way of a good blue milk mustache.

This holiday special really does seem made for the whole family — with Lego people doing lightsaber battles for the kids and Empire Strikes Back callbacks for the adult fans. A

Rated TV-G. Directed by Ken Cunningham with a screenplay by David Shayne, Lego Star Wars Holiday Special is 47 minutes long and available on Disney+.

Featured Photo: The Lego Star Wars Holiday Special

An inventor is lifted out of his doldrums by a visit from his plucky granddaughter in Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey, a charming Christmas-y family musical about STEM, the dedication of the post office and the importance of small business loans.

I mean, it’s also about the magic of creativity and believing in yourself, the magic of actual magic and the importance of familial bonds and friendship, but small business loans and the post office play a not insignificant role.

Jeronicus Jangle (Justin Cornwell as a young man, Forest Whitaker as a grandpa-aged man) is a toymaker and a dazzling inventor in some kind of Victorian-ish world that has a vaguely steampunk feel but without any menace. He believes he has finally cracked the puzzle of a toy so marvelous that it will solidify his Greatest Inventor status and a lifetime of wealth for his family, including wife Joanne (Sharon Rose) and young daughter Jessica (Diaana Babnicova), who wants to be an inventor just like her dad. The toy is a sentient toy matador called Don Juan Diego (voice of Ricky Martin), who is fairly flawed from the outset in that he is extremely vain and possibly evil. When he hears that Jeronicus’ plan is to mass produce him, which means he would no longer be one of a kind, Don Juan convinces Gustafson (Miles Barrow as a squirrely young man; an excellent Keegan-Michael Key as a desperate older man), Jeronicus’ underappreciated apprentice, to steal him, the plans for him and Jeronicus’ book of inventions. Thus does Gustafson become a rich and famous toy inventor and Jeronicus lose his confidence in his inventions, his livelihood and even his family as Joanne dies abruptly and he becomes estranged from Jessica.

As a grown woman, Jessica (Anika Noni Rose) has an inquisitive and creative daughter of her own, Journey (Madalen Mills). Journey has grown up hearing stories about Jeronicus and his inventions but, due to the estrangement between father and daughter, she has never met him. She finds a way to travel to meet Jeronicus, but finds a man mired in sadness. He is barely hanging on in his shop, which is now a pawn and fix-it store. Though his young apprentice Edison (Kieron L. Dyer) believes in him and post officer Mrs. Johnston (Lisa Davina Phillip) cares for him (reminding him in song that she is a widow ready to mingle), Jeronicus wants nothing to do with any of it. He isn’t terribly welcoming to Journey — making her sign a non-disclosure about any plans or inventions she might stumble on — but he slowly starts to warm to her.

With singing! As I mentioned, this is a musical and, while I’m not necessarily humming anything from the movie at the moment, all of the songs are high-energy, plot-appropriate and fun.

I don’t understand the weird financial alchemy that makes a family musical with music co-written by John Legend and a whole bunch of really expensive-looking wooden-toy and paper pop-up-book and wind-up robot animation (used to move the narrative through time jumps between live-action scenes) possible for Netflix distribution but — cool! I’m so glad this movie exists! And I’m so glad it’s getting distribution this way, which feels like the most family-accessible way to put it out there. This movie features genuine artistic achievement, particularly for the look of this film, as well as some solid storytelling. The movie creates a very specific world and then builds a magical story in it, with flavors of The Nutcracker and Peter Pan. The actors do a good job at making us care about these people and believe them, even if they’re doing math equations in the air or singing in the middle of a Dickens’-London-esque setting (but, like, clean and bright, and calling to mind a snow globe with colors that pop). In addition to the core cast, Phylicia Rashad and Hugh Bonneville show up for small roles, which give this movie a quality-throughout feel.

There is also solid adventure, a friendly robot, a goofy villain and not too much scariness — I feel like kids a few years into elementary school can handle this movie. (Common Sense Media gives it an 8+ rating.) Looking for something for a family movie night? Jingle Jangle has enough action that it can probably keep kids engaged and enough storytelling cleverness to entertain adults as well. A

Rated PG for some thematic elements and peril. Written and directed by David E. Talbot, Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey is two hours and two minutes long and distributed by Netflix.

Featured Photo: Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey

Love and Monsters (PG-13)

A guy travels through miles of monster-infested wilderness to see a girl in Love and Monsters, a sweet, hopeful movie about the end of the world.

Joel (Dylan O’Brien, who is better served by this movie than by the Maze Runner movies he starred in) and Aimee (Jessica Henwick) are high school sweethearts who are in a car overlooking their bucolic California town, hanging out and making out, when suddenly an air raid siren goes off, stuff starts to blow up and the military shows up. Monsters are soon destroying the town and the couple is separated as people rush to evacuate. These monsters are mutated creatures — giant bugs, worms, frogs, lizards, etc. — created by chemicals that rained down on Earth from bombs sent to destroy an asteroid. (But wait —, you’re about to say. Look, just go with it.)

Seven years later, Joel, like the rest of the surviving 5 percent of humans, lives with his colony underground. Traumatized by the early days of the monster uprising, he’s not so much of a hunter, more of a soup-maker and radio-fixer. But with these skills he was able to call around to other human colonies and eventually find Aimee, living in a colony by the beach 80-some miles away. Because he still loves her (and also because he is lonely as the only person not paired up in his small colony), Joel decides to set off on the trek to see her.

Along the way, Joel meets Clyde (Michael Rooker) and his sort of adopted daughter Minnow (Ariana Greenblatt) and they help him learn some survival skills, including some decent archery work. And Joel befriends a dog called Boy who turns out to be a good and useful traveling partner.

For a movie with giant man-eating ants and worms (decently portrayed and just this side of silly), Love and Monsters has a surprising amount of heart. And it’s hopeful. It shows Joel, deeply heartbroken and lonely, learning how to take the world as it is and move forward with some optimism despite, like, man-eating termites and a seriously depopulated world. And it’s funny — Love and Monsters isn’t full of big laughs but it has a lightly humorous tone throughout that really complements the sweet and bittersweet elements of the story. B

Rated PG-13 for action/violence, language and some suggestive material, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Michael Matthews with a screenplay by Brian Duffield and Matthew Robinson, Love and Monsters is an hour and 49 minutes long and distributed by Paramount Pictures. It is available for rent or purchase.

The Craft: Legacy (PG-13)

A new generation of teenage witches uses their powers to teach jerks lessons and apply sparkly eye makeup in The Craft: Legacy.

Teenager Lily (Cailee Spaeny) and her mom (Michelle Monaghan) move to a new town to live with Adam (David Duchovny), her mom’s new flame, and his three teenage sons. Lily isn’t terribly excited to start at a new school and her first day does not go well. Her period shows up unexpectedly and a particularly meatheaded boy, Timmy (Nicholas Galitzine), a friend of Lily’s new stepbrother-types, humiliates her. Lily runs to the bathroom, where Lourdes (Zoey Luna), Frankie (Gideon Adlon) and Tabby (Lovie Simone) show up with words of comfort and a new pair of shorts. They have their eye on Lily and after she is able to shove Timmy into a locker without really touching him the trio decide that Lily is exactly who they’ve been looking for — the fourth, who will complete their coven and allow them to tap into the witch powers they’re certain they have. And with Lily around, they find they can perform some impressive feats, like telepathic communication, briefly freezing time and playing a kick-butt round of Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board.

There is a very “first two episodes of a new CW series” feel about this movie — a new series I would probably watch even if it’s still finding its footing. Legacy balances, or at least it tries to balance, teen drama with magic and humor with horror, both literal and metaphorical. In one plot point, the girls cast a spell on Timmy, who tormented them all at some point. Their spell, basically, makes him woke — talking about his feelings and chastising bros for making insensitive jokes. It’s a cute element that is executed, at least for a while, OK. A series probably could have developed in clever ways but a movie just doesn’t have time.

The actors here are fine — little is stand-out but it feels like everybody is bringing a bit of something to their characters, even if they don’t get the time to do all that much. The movie’s final note really does have that “mid-season finale” energy and many of the story and character choices made here would make sense if this is the start of a longer-running universe. As a stand-alone movie, The Craft: Legacy feels not-yet-done and in need of a tighter focus. C+

Rated PG-13 for thematic elements, crude and sexual content, language and brief drug material, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Written and directed by Zoe Lister-Jones (from characters by Peter Filardi), The Craft: Legacy is an hour and 37 minutes long and is distributed by Columbia Pictures. It is available for rent or purchase.

Featured photo: Love and Monsters (PG-13)