Horrible Bosses

Saturday is traditionally "Take Out the Trash" Day. Written at the time of the film's release.

"That 'Strangers on a Train' Shit"
or
"It's Like a Douchebag Museum...!"

Office politics can get mean. Office politics can make you crazy. Office politics can get very, very messy (now, we have a movie that has all three!) However, I don't know many offices (outside the Post Office) where the politics can make you homicidal. Not even Congress.

But that's the situation in Horrible Bosses, which given the tough economic times, the high unemployment rates, and the relative lack of power suffered by your disappearing middle class, almost seems plausible. Documentarian/director Seth Gordon (The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters) has made a film that follows three rather hapless worker-buddies (who seem competent at their jobs, the events of the movie notwithstanding), as their job situations drive them to considering murdering their higher-ups. All three are unmarried (although Charlie Day's dental technician is engaged), so we're talking some arrested development here, especially considering Jason Bateman is one of the three and SNL's Jason Sudeikis is the third).

Bateman's Nick is up for a promotion, so he's been tolerating some abusive grooming tactics by his boss Dave Harken (Kevin Spacey, recycling his role in Swimming with Sharks), but doesn't get it when Harken takes the position himself.

Sudeikis' Kurt is also expecting advancement as an account manager at the chemical factory run by Donald Sutherland, when Sutherland's character dies, and the company is taken over by his "Dipshit Cokehead Son", played by Colin Farrell (in a nicely over-the-top skeezeball performance, which seems to have been cut a bit—he's not in it much.

And Day's Dale is a tech for an extremely aggressive cougar of a dentist (Jennifer Aniston, bless her) who is determined to seduce him (for some reason), and is incapable of anything more complicated than single entendres. 

They decide that, rather than "Best Practices," going to "H.R.," or finding another situation, they'll merely cut through the red tape and go straight to the yellow—they're going to kill their bosses. So much for negotiating skills and being a "people person." This is what commiserating in a bar can lead to. The next bar leads them to Dean Jones (Jamie Foxx—playing it straight and dead-pan), an ex-con who goes by a common vulgarism, because "Dean Jones" reminds too many people of The Love Bug.  No wonder they want this guy to plan the executions.  Jones' suggestion is that each of the guys does the murder of someone else's boss (and dutifully, Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train is mentioned, as is Throw Momma From the Train, which is the red-headed step-child of the Hitchcock film...which reminds me that today is recycling day).

This cannot go well, and despite some laugh-out-loud moments, it does not, succumbing to "easy answers," and a "Deus ex machina." God's gotta be watching these guys, because they're so incompetent, they can't do anything right*...which leads us back to the recycling bin. Rummaging through, it is not too hard to see that this is The Hangover which itself is a new version of a Three Stooges movie, especially in the psychology of the three leads. Bateman plays Moe the strong one, Day is Larry the weak whiner, and Sudeikis is so meat-headed he can only be Curly. And while no eye-poking or face-slapping occurs, you just know that the insults and slow burns between the three are the passive-aggressive equivalent. And a lot less fun.

There are good moments—Aniston and Farrell are clearly having fun playing broad—and one of my favorite actor-characters shows up at the end (a little too briefly), but all in all, the face I wanted to slap was my own.

* This shoots down the premise of the movie: if these guys are so ham-fisted doing...everything...maybe they don't deserve the promotions they think they've been cheated out of. 

The Soloist

Struggling with writing a review of Cyrano, the latest from director Joe Wright. So, in the meantime, here are a couple reviews from his past work that I haven't put up yet.

 

The Soloist (Joe Wright, 2009) The Los Angeles of Joe Wright's The Soloist is an alien landscape of clover-leaved asphalt, caves of concrete, and dwellings like jail-cells, overlain with a constant muffled roar, punctuated with neon- and police-bar-lit nights through which the homeless meander in surrealist tableaux that would give Federico Fellini pause.

In this environment, while recovering from a nasty bicycle accident Los Angeles Times feature reporter Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jr.) is contemplating another failed idea for a column, when he hears, echoing, a high sonority piercing the white noise. It emanates from Nathaniel Anthony Ayers (Jamie Foxx)—homeless, schizophrenic, sawing out pure tones from a violin with only two strings, the sounds of the others only imagined in Ayers' head. It's the stuff human interest columns are made of: a Julliard drop-out, cast adrift amidst the flotsam and jetsam on economic beachrocks, whose music cuts through the din.  Soon, Lopez's column puts a face on the L.A. homeless community (numbering 90,000) and the public responds, including the donation of a no-longer-used bass-cello, Ayers' original instrument, and Ayers' simple existence gets complicated.

Joe Wright has made two rarefied films set in the English gentry (Pride & Prejudice, Atonement), but this urban tale of harmony amidst grinding chaos, propels his gifts into a new arena. No longer able to settle on the classical symmetry of English estates, this film is jagged, off-kilter, and sonically and visually complex, both in exterior spaces and in the echoing interiors of Ayers' mind. Music soon supplants the chattering roar of the film, softening and simplifying it, finally allowing it to soar, sometimes literally, evoking the peace that soothes Ayers' mind. But those moments are all-too brief, as the two men are both impacted by each other's demons.  

That jagged, off-kilter quality is also necessitated by the editing rhythms Wright is forced into by his principal stars, two of the better "riffers" of the current crop of young actors. Downey, Jr. and Foxx intersect each other, the latter, in a constant stream of focused non-sequiturs, while the former interjects whenever he can, like Ayers' music trying to find structure in the jumble of words and thoughts.  The editing of their scenes together is tight and, frankly, a little daunting to consider how difficult it must have been. Like the rest of the film, it succeeds if, in not bringing order to chaos, it offers a respite from disorder.

Mr. Ayers

Valentine's Day

So, Saturday...Valentine's Day on Monday. 

 

Do I write up Al Capone or Valentine's Day?  I'll embrace the "better angels."

 

Written at the time of the film's release

 

"Love, American Style: The Movie"

A movie top-heavy with stars given a limited time-frame in a limited locale (Los Angeles) where lives intersect and the sub-strata of conflicts are put to the test through the separation of instincts and rational thought.

No, that was Crash. But the set-up is the same with less fighting and more clinches. Call it "Squish."

 

Or better yet, "Smoosh.

 

This is Valentine's Day directed by Garry Marshall, whose television career took him from "Love, American Style" through the "Happy Days" Dynasty (or as it's referred, "ABC-TV during the '80's") and into motion pictures, which were usually light comedies. This is a light comedy, too, but with several intersecting stories cross-populated by the stars guesting in other people's stories other than their own, with interstitial vignettes of a comical nature inserted at various places, especially if the ad-libbing gets a little dicey for the editor's sake.

 

By God, it is "Love, American Style."

The cast is...amazing, frankly. So much so that a superb actor like Joe Mantegna has a mere cameo of a few seconds (as does the director). Probably just as well, this isn't Mamet material. But there's Alba and Garner and Hathaway and Biel and Roberts and Latifah for the guys. For the girls, there's Dempsey and Dane and Cooper and Foxx and Grace and Kutcher (if L,AS had lasted four more seasons all of these kids would have been on it!).

For the oldsters there's George Lopez and Hector Elizondo (he's a requirement of all Garry Marshall movies) and Shirley MacLaine—the one moment I couldn't resist was MacLaine playing a love scene in front of her own projected image (The movie is 1958's Hot Spell). For the kids, there's Taylors Swift and Lautner, who are both charming and she has a fine comedienne's willingness to make herself look foolish.

It's as frothy as a watered down meringue, but with the occasional sour lemon bite that keeps it from getting too sticky and could lead to puckering...the good kind. Suffice it to say that everything ties up nicely, with a couple of mild surprises along the way. It is supposed to be cute, and all the actors have the presence to dance around the material with their own peculiar rhythms to make it seem fresher than it is, if not better than it is.

White House Down

White House Down (Roland Emmerich, 2013) "It will start like any other day" said the tagline.

  

The second movie of 2013 where the White House comes under attack while a special agent tries to save a kid inside, this one was Roland Emmerich's continuation of his Edifice Complex, where he made movies just to see famous things blow up. Now, it should be noted that we are talking about White House Down and not Olympus Has Fallen—in which Gerard Butler plays the "die-hard" agent trying to stop an attack by North Korean terrorists. In THIS one, Channing Tatum plays a "die hard" agent trying to stop an attack by home-grown terrorists who are whiter than white.

 

Which one seems more likely? Well, neither of them. But since 2001 the terrorist attacks on the country has mostly been by white guys...as they were before 9/11. As they were on January 6, 2021

Oh, yes, and in both films, an African-American male is the president for a brief time. That's because, at the time, an African-American male was president full time.

The reason for attacking the White House doesn't have anything to do with the sitting President being an African-American—ostensibly it's to gain access to the nuclear codes to launch an attack on Iran for the deaths of relations and comrades of the attackers—but one can't help but wonder why the movie (and in fact, both movies) were timed to be at a time when an African-American was president. Did they think they could take advantage of bookings at White Supremacist Film Festivals?

Whatever the motives, the film looks at a day in the life of Capitol Police officer John Cale (Tatum), who's looking to move up from his job protecting Speaker of the House Eli Raphelson (Richard Jenkins) to a job with the Secret Service protecting the President, who happens to be James Sawyer (Jamie Foxx). His application does not go well, being rejected Deputy Special Agent Carol Finnerty (Maggie Gyllenhaal). Perhaps it has something to do with their past history. Perhaps it has something to do with his being a divorced parent to his daughter Emily (Joey King). If it has anything to do with work experience, he's going to get plenty of that.

The plan for the terrorists (and one can not call them anything but that) is to blow up the Capitol (sounds familiar...) and in the resulting confusion, the Speaker of the House—Raphelson—gets sequestered because he's No 3 in the presidential chain of command. He's put in an underground bunker under the Pentagon. The Vice-President (played by Michael Murphy) is evacuated by Air Force One (because Air Force Two—the Veep's plane—supposedly isn't good enough). At that point, an assault team, led by some whacko former Delta Forcers storms the White House with the intention of taking the President hostage. 

The Secret Service—supposedly the best and the brightest—is easily overrun and the President (Foxx) is taken by his retiring head of protection Martin Walker (James Woods) to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center under the White House. Except for one thing: it's Walker who has planned the assault (which is why the Secret Service was taken out so easily). So, now, the President is held hostage, and Walker is free to use a hacker to get into the PEOC's command center and try to get the codes for a nuclear strike on Iran.

Cale, however, takes down a couple of the terrorists, and using their communications and weapons is able to rescue the President from the PEOC. They are presumed killed trying to get out of the White House, and aboard Air Force One, the Vice President is sworn in. He orders the White House be attacked by air to try and take out the terrorists, which fails when all the attack helicopters are shot down. Walker has his hacker launch missiles from NORAD and Air Force One is blown out of the sky, thus making the Speaker of the House President.

Watching this from a hotel room while doing some government work, I couldn't help giggling at the outlandishness of the whole thing (although kudos for having the President using a missile launcher from a moving vehicle). It is so over-the-top, so hysterically hyperventilating that I couldn't help seeing the whole thing as just a silly exercise in taking Die Hard to the federal government, every Yippee-ki-yay intact (I think Tatum was even wearing Willis' old wife-beater, too). The movie was already out of my mind when, that evening, I watched news coverage of Biden being declared the winner of the 2020 election.

So imagine my surprise when on January 6th, 2021, the U.S. Capitol was overrun by a bunch of wacko's (including a "voice-over actor" dressed in a Buffalo headdress) storm the Capitol and gum up the gears of government with their own poo-flinging. This seemed over the top, as well, but I didn't giggle. Lives were lost. A coup had been attempted, and it, too, was an "inside job"—the National Guard had conveniently not been deployed that day. The President was apparently having too good a time watching it on TV.

Our country is a fragile thing, expected to run on automatic pilot with the least amount of effort and the inevitable failings falling through the cracks when such an attitude is taken. That's how we do things in the U.S., in business and government. Do as little as possible. Hope for the best. And, as viscerally feverish as White House Down is, it still seemed more concerned with getting the most amount of property damage, than with the damage done to institutions that are expected to be just "there" for us when things are in crisis. I'll bet a lot of the terrorists on January 6th still expected their Social Security checks the next month.

And I'm left with one little evil thought—the most satisfying moment of the movie for me, actually—that I mutter every time I see one of these jacko's complain about their harsh treatment being charged, or some mis-begotten throwback of a senator or representative talk about it being BLM behind it all—all those white people...really?—or that it was just "a normal tourist visit."

It's become my mantra straight from the bile duct and it's from the scene below and I say it through clenched teeth and with quite a bit of dudgeon. I find it satisfying and I'll probably be saying it for quite awhile: "No jail for you, ya little bitch!"

Spider-Man: No Way Home

If You Break the Universe, You Have to Buy It

or

"It Looks Like We Have Some Competition" (Pete, Re-Pete and Amazing Re-Pete)

I've seen every Spider-Man movie—the 3 Tobey Maguires and the 2 Andrew Garfields and the 2 Tom Hollands (and that helps if you're going to enjoy Spider-Man: No Way Home and appreciate its cleverness). A couple of them have been good. My personal favorites were 2004's Spider-Man 2—the one with Dr. Octopus (Alfred Molina) and the best of them, the animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse.

 

So, even though I thought the first Spider-Man movie was only sub-par, the third a mess, and the Andrew Garfield ones slight improvements, and the Tom Holland ones enjoyable, No Way Home is aimed right at my tingling spider-sense. It plays deep into my nostalgia for what was good about the various series and manages to improve on what I thought were their deficiencies. It's enough to make me think that No Way Home is a fun, great movie.

 

I'm not so sure that anyone without my slavish history (despite reservations) will come away with so unequivocal an evaluation. Without the back-story (or stories) a lot of things are going to fall a little flat—will anyone but a Marvel reader "get" what's going on with Peter's lawyer (for instance)?**

Fortunately, there's not a lot of catching up to do since Spider-Man: Far From Home: The Daily Bugle vlogger J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons...again) had just revealed the taped message left by Mysterio exposing Peter Parker (Tom Holland) as Spider-Man and labeling him as "Public Enemy #1". This makes things uncomfortable in Parker's life, including girlfriend Michelle "MJ" Jones-Watson (Zendaya), pal Ned (Jacob Batalon), and his Aunt May (Marisa Tomei). Soon, news helicopters are hovering outside their windows and the Department of Damage Control has everybody hauled in for questioning. Stark Industries' Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) moves then to an ultra-secure Stark property to escape the scrutiny. Things finally become intolerable when Peter, MJ, and Ned all are not accepted to MIT because of the "recent controversy."

Peter seeks the help of fellow Avenger Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) to cast some spell that will make people forget that Peter Parker is Spider-Man. "Can do," says the magician and starts casting—except Peter has some hedges because Aunt May needs to know, and MJ and Ned...and ultimately it gets changed six times, which makes for a messy spell, which isn't very stable and might have some consequences. "The problem isn't Mysterio," says a piqued Strange. "It's you living two lives." Off into the messy Universe, Peter goes to try to convince an MIT official to reconsider, but he's stopped by Dr. Otto Octavius (Alfred Molina, again) who stops Peter only to discover...it's not a Peter Parker he recognizes. Spidey is able to defeat Doc Ock using nano-technology in his suit, when suddenly they're transported back to Strange's Sanctum Santorum. The mage tells him that the forget-me spell has caused a rift in the multi-verse and is letting in anybody who might know that Peter is Spider-Man. Octavius and the Lizard (Rhys Ifans from Amazing Spider-Man 1) are imprisoned, but there are others out there, including Electro (Jamie Foxx from Amazing Spiderman 2), The Sandman (Thomas Haden Church from Spider-Man 3) and Norman Osborn (Willem Dafoe from Spider-Man 1 and 3). They set about capturing the villains from other worlds and finding a way to send them back. The moral quandary is that all these villains died fighting Spider-Man (in their movies); if they send them back, they'll be sending them back to their doom.

Okay. Enough with the story-line. Just the number of links in that much description tells you that things are getting complicated—they'll get even more complicated. It also tells you that all these villains were in past Spider-Man movies and they're being played by the original actors (Makes you think). The surprise is they're all doing a better job of it, especially Dafoe...or they're being written better. Whichever solution, it works. As over-stuffing the movies with villains was a problem with the past series, that's rather interesting, plus they're squeezing Dr. Strange into the scenario, so it's even more crowded. It's no wonder the movie is 2 hours 28 minutes.

But, it never feels like it. Director Jon Watts (and the series writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommars) keep the film fast and loose, constantly moving and the characters perpetually speaking in Marvel-snark. There are 3½ action set-pieces (the ½ being that fight on the bridge). There's another trippy one with Strange and Spidey fighting over a doo-hickey in Strange's "Mirror Universe," a fight between Spidey and the villains in that security building—it doesn't stay secure for long—and the big final brouhaha with the kids fighting the villains with an assist by Strange and a couple of guest heroes. I'll say nothing else except that it's the best part of the movie. 

There are two guys missing in this shot...*

 

It's just plain fun. And satisfying. And as "gee-whizzy" as reading a good comic book as a teen-ager. The title of the movie is No Way Home and, as they say, you can't go home again. But, this feels close to it, and, against all sense, it might just leave your spidey-sense tingling.

Soul

Pixar When It's Jazzing

or

"I am the coming together of all quantized fields of the universe. Appearing in a form your feeble human brain can comprehend. You can call me Jerry."

I freely admit that I should have seen Soul in a theater—I've seen every other Pixar movie on the big screen and I freely admit that the presentation-medium usually informs the reviews of those films. There's something about the detail work of Pixar's movies that pop more on a big screen. I had to watch this at home, though. Disney took the choice away from me, and I will admit it made me a little bitter. I say this because not seeing it all big-and-large, a couple millimeters to a pixel, might prejudice my review a bit.

But just a bit.

Soul did not move me to tears as other Pixar films have in the past. Its suppositions on the inner life of humans skews a bit in the same territory as Inside Out. Its designs seem to spend a great deal of time in the easily-rendered nebulous, and its points of view on "purpose" and "spark" may be too subtle for some who have not reached a certain age—you know, actually lived a life of varying degrees of success and/or satisfaction. All of this is in comparison of Soul to the rich history of Pixar and its output, which is without a doubt the most artistically and financially successful production studio out there. Most souls would shrivel up and die held against such a standard.

But, seen on its own, without (or even because of) that rich legacy, Soul is still a remarkable film of humorous dexterity and sophisticated conceptualization. And humor...plenty of that. And their continuing forays into multi-culturalism (necessitated once they run out of subjects that hid the limitations of digital animation in its early days-and they decided to combat the "uncanny valley" by leaping over it in artistic bounds) has not only made their films richer—well, naturally—but also counter-intuitively more universal.

It's also left it open to sniping from critics of certain sensitivities (and prejudices) who can't see the forest for the trees—attacking some aspect while ignoring the bigger themes of the picture. It's a bit like attacking Finding Nemo because "fish don't act like that" when the story is about "letting go." How did they survive watching Ratatouille when rats were cooking in a restaurant? 

It is the best day in the life of Joe Gardner (voiced by Jamie Foxx), a band-teacher suffering through a class with limitless room for advancement.* There's one promising saxophonist, but that's it. The next quarter is going to be an endless stream of clams and sharps and lagging. So, it seems like too much of a good thing when he's told he's been hired to teach band full-time, complete with insurance package. But, it's clear that his heart is in playing jazz professionally. That's why he jumps at the chance (provided by a former student) to audition for the Dorothea Williams Quartet (she's voiced by Angela Bassett). He sails through the audition and is told to get a "good" suit and be back at the club at 6:30.

Joe's heart is soaring. Which is probably why he falls through an open man-hole and dies. Well, not quite. But, when his awareness kicks in he's on the fabled staircase, if not to Heaven then to "The Light." This is one escalator he wants to jump off, and in so doing, finds himself somewhere not-so-fabled. It's not "the Great Beyond" he's informed, but "The Great Before," where souls go to be indoctrinated into their apparent personalities, and become mentored so they can achieve the little merit badges needed to go to Earth.

Joe, however, is not where he's supposed to be. He's not on his way to the After-life, he's in the Before-Life, which makes the After-Life hell for a counter named Terry (Rachel House, deliriously idiosyncratic, as always), who finds the count is off. Rather than write it off as "shrinkage" Terry begins an investigation, while "Before" counselors (all named "Jerry" and voiced by Alice Braga, Richard Ayoada, Fortune Feimster, Zenobia Shroff, and Wes Studi) cover his tracks by giving him a job as a "last-ditch" mentor to a troublesome soul.

How many souls have there been? Trillions? Well, this one's a problem and has been a long time. This soul's name is "22" (voiced by Tina Fey—"How come you sound like a middle-aged white lady?" Joe asks it. "I just use this voice because it annoys people," it replies) and she has had the Best and the Brightest of mentors throughout history.** All failed—even Mother Theresa ("I have compassion for every soul...Except you. I don't like you.") and 22 just does not want to take the next step to live, despite Joe's best efforts. That next step—it's more like a prat-fall—is when the two souls accidentally fall to Earth, while viewing Joe in the hospital, and get into the adventure trope of "switching psyche's"—walking in someone else's shoes.

If the "Great Before" were a TV show, we've already seen that...countless times. But, Soul makes it fresh, fast, funny, and the most entertaining part of the film. There is a lot of "concepting" going on, with talk of "The Great Before" and "The Zone" and "Lost Souls" and philosophical/psychological concepts dealt with in cartoon-graphic terms—"this whole place is a hypothetical..." 22 finally just admits—and sometimes, the grasping at ideas is a little thin. But, once it starts getting down to Earth, the film is much more on solid ground, comedically and spiritually.

And it's beautiful, especially when it's out of the pastel, cotton-candy landscapes of the "hypothetical," and back in Pixar's "Real World" (I've included a bunch of screen caps below ***) that take your breath away. Pixar's renderers always seem to advance the bar with every new film and here, the results are astounding; the film is full of pieces of art that you just want to frame, made even more incredible for the realism in their movement. 

One wants to say that it's a step-back. But it isn't. It's another well of imagination the overflows and inspires. 

Joe "in the zone"

* The very first joke of the movie is a terrible, amateurish version of "When You Wish Upon a Star" over the opening Disney logo. It's hilarious, off-putting (because you don't know what or why), and wonderfully tweaks their corporate overlords. I love Pixar...

** 

22's wall of past mentors--a couple of them are Pixar creators who have passed, and Jack Kirby's in there, too!

***