Weekend Mullings - The Bride | Hoppers

Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Bride! is one of the most disappointing movies I've ever seen, primarily because the concept, a bride of Frankenstein story set in 1930's Chicago, just seems tailor made to my interests. Unfortunately the end result is much more than that, and that's its biggest problem.

To start, Mary Shelley opens the film as a kind of narrator. Shot close up and in black and white, Mary is very angry. She's upset she was never able to write the story she wanted to tell, and sees that now is her chance. It's not entirely clear if the story she's telling is the movie we're watching, or if she's in fact possessing Ida, a gangster's moll in 1936 Chicago. Perhaps it's both, because both Ida and Mary are played by Jessie Buckley.

Ida is murdered and quickly dug up by Frankenstein (Christian Bale) - who identifies as Frankenstein, and not Frankenstein's monster, because, as he tells it, Frankenstein was his father's name. He's been wandering the world for over 100 years, and wants "an intercourse." Luckily local mad scientist Dr. Euphronious (Annette Benning) has the skills and lab necessary to fulfill just such a request.

And thus the "motherfucking Bride of Frankenstein!," to quote the ghost of Mary, is born, with a shock of platinum hair and a permanent black pout that bleeds into a splash across her cheek - the result of vomiting up whatever the concoction it is that has reanimated her.

From there the movie goes in many directions. Too many directions. Ida, who is soon re-christened Penelope, and "Frank," become outlaw lovers on the run, wanted for murder - some of it justified. They are pursued by both the mob, and a pair of detectives played by Peter Sarsgaard and Penelope Cruz. They hide out in more than one movie theater, watching Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal), Frank's favorite matinee idol, sing and dance on screen. They crash a party that turns into an elaborate musical number. They take to the rails. They steal a car. They have the kind of sex you'd expect two reanimated corpses to have. (Scars and fluids - not the usual kind - are involved.)

Granted, all of this sounds like it could be fun. But there is too much of it, and none of it ever meshes together. Scenes are repeated, and then go on too long. Buckley resorts to guttural screaming too often, and Bale, who has never passed up an opportunity to mumble through a role, mumbles like hell through this one. 

But perhaps its biggest sin is just how didactic and heavy handed Gyllenhaal's screenplay is. It's a story about women's autonomy, consent, and sexual violence, and she's going to make damn sure you don't forget it. And sure, perhaps subtlety isn't something you should expect from a movie featuring monsters boning. But there's got to be a more artful way to convey your message than to have the Bride actually scream "Me toooooo!!!!!!!" more than once.

 

Hoppers, Pixar's 30th film, may not hit the emotional punches of some of the studio's earlier classics, but neither have a lot of their recent offerings. It almost feels like with this film, they decided to not even try to wrench those ugly tears, and instead just focused on laughs. In that, they succeed.

Mabel (voiced by Piper Curda) is a 19-year-old college student and impassioned environmentalist and animal lover determined to save her beloved local forest glade from destruction due to the freeway the mayor (Jon Hamm) is intent on building. Canvasing for signatures proves fruitless, so when she discovers her college professor (Kathy Najimy) has developed a technology that allows humans to "hop" into lifelike animal robots, Mabel "hops" into a beaver and ventures into the forest in an attempt to convince the animals to return, en mass, to the glade they've been driven out of.

If Hoppers sounds like Avatar but with animals, you'd be right, and the movie even gets meta with that comparison when Mabel brings it up to the professor, who vehemently denies her experiment is anything like Avatar all. Of course cute talking animals are a staple of animated films, but some of the film's biggest laughs come from the communication gap between the animals and some of the humans they encounter. While Mabel is in robotic form, she can communicate with animals. But neither she, nor the animals, can communicate with humans, and hence you have what may become even more meme-able moments involving iPhones, Siri, and emojis.

Listen, I am a sucker for cute animals of any kind, and slapstick humor always makes me laugh, and Hoppers is filled with both. I still can't get over Meryl Streep's cameo as an insect queen who has one of the most memorable exists every given a character in a Pixar film. That audacious moment alone makes the film worth seeing.

Weekend Mullings - Wuthering Heights | Crime 101 | Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die

I really wish people would just calm down about Emerald Fennell in general and her "Wuthering Heights" film in particular. I am not sure why Fennell seems to raise such ire in some cinephiles (personally, I liked both Promising Young Woman and Saltburn a lot), or why that hatred almost feels personal at times, but from the moment she announced she was adapting Emily Bronte's novel, a lot of people have been in their feelings about it. 

She never claimed she was making a faithful adaptation of the novel, and if that's what you're after, there are plenty of other versions out there that adhere closely to the book. And if those don't satisfy because of their casting, then may I direct you to Andrea Arnold's 2011 version. Emerald Fennell's teenage fever dream of a version won't be for everyone, and that's OK!

This "Wuthering Heights" forgoes large portions of the story, and omits several characters, to better focus on Cathy (Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi), two insanely hot, terrible people who, in all senses of the term, deserve each other. 

The moors in this version are desolate and perpetually foggy. Wuthering Heights is a black, sunless estate situated, essentially, in a cavern. Cathy's father (Martin Clunes) is a drunk gambling addict, and aside from Heathcliff, Cathy's only other friend is her paid companion Nelly (Hong Chau). It's understandable that Cathy would be drawn to the rich Linton family that moves in close by, even if it means forsaking her soul.

But really what sticks in my mind is less about plot, and more about images and feelings. A mansion with shiny red floors, and a fireplace with a mantle of sculpted hands. Walls the color of Cathy's skin, complete with moles and blue veins. A snail crawling up a window. Hands in a fish's mouth, raw eggs, bread dough, and between legs. Anachronistic dresses made from materials that don't even look like they should exist now. A corset tied so so tight it draws blood. And the irrepressible desire for the one person in the world who is the worst person for you.

I cannot fault Emerald Fennell for wanting to make a movie where Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, two of the most beautiful people working in films today, are her own personal Barbie and Ken, acting out her teenage fantasy of Wuthering Heights, because that's something I immediately wanted to see. And I can't wait to see it again.

Crime 101 is an appropriate title because this tale of cops and robbers covers a lot of the same ground crime dramas that came before it have covered; it's definitely a throwback to movies like Heat, to which it owes a lot. 

In this case, Mark Ruffalo is the cop, and Chris Hemsworth is the robber. A series of jewel heists that take place near the 101 freeway in Los Angeles, along with other similar MOs, have the cop convinced they're all the work of the same criminal. But the robber is meticulous in never leaving any prints or DNA at the scene - until one mishap changes that. 

Nick Nolte also makes an appearance as the robber's grizzled old crime boss, Barry Keoghan is his usual weirdo self as the crime boss's twitchy and dangerous new protege, and Halle Berry is an insurance agent who has run ins with several of them. Everyone in the film is excellent, and at times the plot can get exciting, especially when all the characters begin to converge. But too often the story meanders into side plots that halt the momentum, bloating the running time to almost two and half hours it doesn't earn. 

Director Gore Verbinski hasn't made a feature since 2016's A Cure for Wellness, which was his second flop in a row. He's been in proverbial "director's jail" since then, and I am not entirely sure Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die is going to be the movie to set him free.

It starts out great. Sam Rockwell's nameless character enters a Los Angeles diner and announces he's come from the future on a mission to save humanity. Problem is he looks more like an eccentric homeless man than some kind of hero, though he insists his attire is the height of fashion in his timeline ("our homeless look dead!"). As he holds the diners hostage he reveals he has been through this scenario countless times before, failing every time, and keeps coming back to try and assemble the right combination of people to help him save the future.

These first 20 minutes or so are riveting, due in large part to Rockwell's performance. But once his team is assembled, and they leave the diner, the film begins to feel like a season of Black Mirror, as the back stories of his team members (who include Haley Lu Richardson, Juno Temple, Zazie Beetz, and Michael Pena) are revealed. 

Where the story ends up is very chaotic, not entirely understandable (it involves A.I., because of course), and pretty predictable if you've ever seen a movie involving time travel. But the first third or so of the film is so strong I can narrowly recommend it solely on that. Good luck, have fun, tamper your expectations.

Weekend Mullings - Dracula: A Love Tale

You guys, I don't think Luc Besson has actually read Bram Stoker's Dracula. But I am positive he's seen Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula, and I'm pretty sure he thinks that movie was a faithful adaptation of the book, since in more than one interview he insists the original novel is a love story (it's not). Luc Besson's Dracula: A Love Tale  is such a blatant rip-off of Francis Ford Coppola's 1991 film, Besson should just call it a remake before he gets sued. 

Like in Coppola's film, Dracula (Caleb Landry Jones) begins his eternal life as a prince who rejects God after the death of his wife, and then spends hundreds of years looking for her reincarnation; he also has an elaborate white bouffant hairdo and pale, wrinkled skin when he's visited by solicitor Johnathan Harker (Ewens Abid); when he see's that Harker's fiancee, Mina (Zoë Bleu) looks like his long lost love, he ventures to Paris (instead of London), dons a top hat, and seduces her, though this time not via mind control, but instead via some...magic perfume??

This Dracula does have one thing Coppola's doesn't, and that's an army of animated gargoyles that act as Dracula's personal minions. It's also got Christoph Waltz as a vampire-hunting priest, which puts the actor in both a Frankenstein and a Dracula movie within the span of one year. (Sadly, I don't see him in the cast list for the upcoming Mummy movie.)

Being unoriginal is bad enough, but Dracula: A Love Tale is also one of the flattest and ugliest films I've seen in a while. Scenes are too often brightly lit, with deep focus normally seen in movies shot on older video cameras. I will give it this: some of the costumes, of which there are many, are fine. I particularly liked the completely impractical veil Elisabeta wears as she's attempting to flee capture near the beginning of the film. 

Frankly, it's surprising Besson is still allowed to make films, since it seems like he's gotten away with some pretty horrific things. So the fact that he's made a terrible movie that is essentially guilty of the crime of copyright infringement definitely tracks.

Weekend Mullings - Send Help

Sam Raimi hasn't directed a horror movie since 2009's Drag Me to Hell, and while Send Help isn't strictly horror, it definitely dips its toe into the genre more than once. Call it perhaps, Drag Me to Paradise.

Rachel McAdams stars as Linda Liddle, a smart and eager, but also frequently off-putting, analyst at a consulting firm. She's been promised a promotion, but when the head of the company (Bruce Campbell, in a painted portrait cameo) dies, his smarmy and overly confident son Bradley (Dylan O'Brien) takes over, and he does not take to Linda, denying her that promotion. But when they end up the sole survivors of a plane crash, deserted on an island together, roles are reversed, and Linda proves all the studying she's done with hopes of getting cast on a season of Survivor has finally paid off.

Casting McAdams in an "ugly girl" role probably seems like it would require the usual bit of Hollywood disbelief, but I don't think Linda is supposed to be ugly, per se. It's more that she's clueless when it comes to matters of fashion and hygiene, and has a problem with personal space. You can understand why people might find her annoying, but you still sympathize with her because her coworkers and boss are such assholes.

But the tides turn, and that's where I had a bit of a problem. There's no doubt Bradley is a total tool and remains one even when it's obvious he needs Linda to survive. But Linda ends up doing some really terrible things, so it becomes a story about two horrible people battling for survival, and I found it hard to root for anyone.

But I have a feeling that may just be a me problem, and most will be comfortably Team Linda the entire time. And all that aside, I still enjoyed seeing Sam Raimi getting back to some of his fun old tricks, with the kinds of comedic gore and jump scares he's a master of. 

Weekend Mullings - 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

The 28 Years franchise has never been my favorite horror franchise, mainly because zombies - or whatever we want to call the victims of  the "rage" virus here - aren't my favorite kind of monster; they're pretty boring! And gross! So that means zombie movies need to lean heavily on the personalities of those fighting the zombies, a little more so than in other horror genres.

I liked last year's 28 Years Later more than 28 Weeks Later, though probably not as much as 28 Days Later. I just had so many questions! After 28 years, where are all the raging zombies on the quarantined isle of England coming from? Do they age? If they can give birth, do the babies turn into zombies? Why would the rest of the world not provide those survivors on the uninfected islands with more goods and services? Where did the doctor get all that iodine? And how'd he get those bone temples so tall?

I suppose thinking about such things is the definition of overthinking it, but if I found the rest of the movie more engaging I don't think my mind would have wandered so much. So, I wasn't particularly excited to learn a sequel would be coming out - and not even a year later. 

Turns out, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is the best movie in the franchise so far.

Picking up immediately where the 28 Years Later left us, Spike (Alfie Williams) has been captured by Jimmy Savile looking gang of blonde-wigged, tracksuit-wearing hooligans, led by Jimmy Crystal (Jack O'Connell, seen last year as the lead vampire in Sinners). They are looking to include Spike in the gang, if he survives their initiation. Spike soon learns it's not a gang anyone in their sound mind would want to join, as Jimmy Crystal is, in a nutshell, a sadistic Satanist, and his gang is there to carry out his torturous requests.

Meanwhile, Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), continues his solitary existence, building his temple of bones, and reminiscing in his bunker filled with old photos and Duran Duran records. But he is also experimenting on the "alpha" zombie he's dubbed Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry), and he thinks he may have found a cure for the virus, or if not a cure, at least a kind of "treatment," that may calm the rage that drives the afflicted. That Jimmy Crystal and Dr. Kelson will meet is inevitable, and that meeting is a glorious heavy metal fueled spectacle of fire and brimstone.

Director Nia DaCosta has had an eclectic career, split between big budget genre films (Candyman; The Marvels) and low budget dramas (Little Woods; Hedda). The Bone Temple is equal parts horrifying - some of the violence is so brutal, it almost derails the movies - and beautiful. Costa attempts to mimic Danny Boyle's kinetic filmmaking style near the beginning of the film does not work - it was so jerky and ugly that I feared the whole movie may become unwatchable. Thankfully, that doesn't last long, and DaCosta calms down enough to capture some gorgeous imagery. Alex Garland's screenplay ventures into some surprising territory for the franchise, and the ending provides some definite fan service. 

Danny Boyle is set to direct the third entry in this trilogy, but I have to admit, after seeing The Bone Temple, I'd welcome more of Nia DaCosta's vision.