Skyscraper

Posted on July 12, 2018 at 3:39 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for sequences of gun violence and action, and for brief strong language
Profanity:	A few bad words
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Extended peril and violence with some disturbing images, many characters injured and killed, children in peril, fire, explosions, chases, automatic weapons, guns, knives, fights
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	July 13, 2018
Date Released to DVD:	October 8, 2018

As generic as its title, “Skyscraper” has all the elements of a US/China production, unapologetically a lowest-common-denominator delivery system for stunts.

Dwayne Johnson, who at this writing has a movie premiering on cable (Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle), a movie just released on DVD/Blu-Ray (Rampage), and “Skyscraper” opening in theaters, has turned into something of an assembly line production facility for PG-13 action. This one is the weakest of the three, with strong visuals but a weak script. Johnson’s specialty, going back to his days as a professional wrestler, is his easy charm and sense of humor, but neither gets much display here as verbal, quippy comedy does not translate well. So we get a brisk five minutes of backstory, a brisk ten minutes of “aw, he loves his beautiful family, including the kid with asthma” to set the stakes, and then it’s one daunting shoot-out, escape both into and out of the burning building, someone hanging by one arm, someone hanging by one leg, and fight scene, after another, with several scenes of people watching the action on screens, including Byron Mann of “Altered Carbon” as the local police chief, and just one quip, even that one taken from a TV commercial. Oh, and there’s a hall of mirrors shoot-out to remind us that the original in The Lady from Shanghai, was so much better.

Following in the tradition of trapped in a building classics like Die Hard and Towering Inferno, “Skyscraper” has Will (Johnson), his Navy surgeon wife Sarah (Neve Campbell), and their twins visiting a new super-tall structure in Hong Kong called The Pearl because of the graceful but enormous tennis ball-shaped sphere on top.

Will, in the manner of “who could imagine a chef would be a special forces combat expert?” action movies, is a mild-mannered security expert who has been brought in for an independent review so that the building’s top half can be approved by the insurance company for residential occupation. Will is former military and law enforcement, but lost his leg in an explosion, and now, he tells the former colleague who recommended him for this job, he has not picked up a gun for ten years. “Laid it down and never picked it up.”

We know what that means. He’s about to pick up a gun. And we know when he tells the building’s owner that there’s just one more safety check to complete to declare it “Fort Knox in the sky,” that means that one last safety check is going to be a problem. After all, that’s why we’re here. Sarah and the kids are trapped by a fire in the building while Will (hmm, wonder what inspired that name) is away, so he has to break in to save them and then get them out. The bad guys who set the fire have their own plans. That’s basically it, and many of the best stunts are in the trailer.

Parents should know that this film has a few bad words and non-stop almost-R level peril and violence, some involving children, including fire, automatic weapons and guns, knives, and fistfights, many characters injured and killed.

Family discussion: Why was Will so nervous about the meeting? Why did Will and his friend have different reactions to their bad experience? What do you like to fix with duct tape? If your house was on fire, what would you save?

If you like this, try: “Rampage” and “Jumanji,” also starring Dwayne Johnson, and the action movie in a building classics “Die Hard” and “The Towering Inferno”

Eighth Grade

Posted on July 12, 2018 at 3:02 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language and some sexual material
Profanity:	Strong and crude language
Violence/ Scariness:	Tense emotional situations, sexual predation
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	July 13, 2018
Date Released to DVD:	October 8, 2018

Maybe “Eighth Grade” should come with a trigger warning. It is so viscerally authentic to the experience of being in middle school that for a moment I felt like I was standing in the lunchroom clutching my tray, desperately hoping that I would (a) be invited to sit with anyone and (b) become invisible, swallowed up by the ground, magically either five years older or younger, or all of those at once.

There’s a reason that even people well into their fifth and sixth and seventh decades still wake up at night after an anxiety nightmare about middle school. Those moments of hormonal, emotional, and cognitive upheavals that cruelly hit us just after we master childhood and make us certain that the adults around us are lame, that we are less lame but somehow lamer than we would like people to think of us as — for most of us, there is nothing as humiliating in any aspect of adult life that is as excruciatingly anxious as any given day in middle school.

Bo Burnham, who starting posting funny videos on YouTube when he was a teenager and became a very successful stand-up comic, is still in his 20’s, so his memories of the teen years are very accessible. Furthermore, he has been very frank about his struggles with anxiety including devastating stage fright. So he naturally turned to watching online videos of young teenagers, and realized that they may not be very sophisticated or articulate, but they are aspirational and brave.

And so we meet the movie’s main character, Kayla (Elsie Fisher) as she is recording a very aspirational and very brave video about “being yourself.” She is not exactly herself in this video, but she is both the person she would like to be and the person she would like to listen to for guidance.

It is the last week of eighth grade, and there is agony after agony. She tries to talk to the alpha girls. She tries to talk to the boy she likes. She sits through a hilariously painful video about puberty, with a woman who assures them that this experience “is going to be lit!” She is invited to a pool party the hostess does not want her at by the girl’s mother, and she goes to it. Her loving but hapless single dad impinges on her life just by existing and even worse, he wants to TALK to her! And LOOK at her! And tell her she’s cool!!

Kayla gets a glimpse of her past when the “time capsule” she created on the first day of middle school, addressed confidently “to the coolest girl in the world” contains a video she made with her hopes and predictions for where she’d be at graduation. And she gets a glimpse of her future when she “shadows” Olivia, a friendly high school girl (Emily Robinson). We can see that Olivia is not nearly as confident as she would like to appear, but she makes Kayla feel accepted and as though there is a path for her.

SPOILER ALERT: Normally I would not do this, because I try hard to avoid spoilers, but I feel in this case I can mention that while Kayla teeters on the edge of some very bad decisions, she comes out of this okay.

Parents should know that this movie has very strong and crude language and sexual references and a boy tries to pressure Kayla for sex.

Family discussion: If you made a video message to be opened in four years, what would you say? Has social media made middle school easier or harder?

If you like this, try: Rookie’s “Ask a Grown” series and my interview with Burnham, Robinson, and Fisher. There are actually a couple of real-life movies with kids interviewing their older selves, here and here.

Sorry to Bother You

Posted on July 5, 2018 at 5:28 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for pervasive language, some strong sexual content, graphic nudity, and drug use
Profanity:	Very strong and crude language throughout
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Alcohol, drugs
Violence/ Scariness:	Peril and violence
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	July 6, 2018
Date Released to DVD:	October 22, 2018

The title of “Sorry to Bother You” comes from the fake apology made by telemarketers. That’s the job the movie’s central character applies for in the first scene and finds himself unexpectedly good at, so good he gets a huge promotion as a “power seller.” This first film from musician Boots Riley shows Cash Green (short for Cassius, played by the limitlessly talented Lakieth Stanfield) literally crashing into the lives of the people he calls, showing us right away we are in the hands of a confident, provocative new filmmaker with a singular voice, and preparing us — almost — for a pointed journey into high social satire fueled by a sharp understanding of the politics of our time and the human nature of all times.

Cash and his artist girlfriend Detroit (Tessa Thompson of “Annihilation” and “Thor: Ragnarok”) live in a garage. Cash’s uncle (Terry Crews) owns the house, for the time being at least. Money is tight and he may lose it. Cash applies for a job as a telemarketer, lying about his qualifications. The boss doesn’t mind; in fact, willingness to lie is a better qualification for sitting in a cubicle trying to get people to buy a lot of dumb stuff they don’t need. Cash puts on the headset, and starts crashing into people’s lives.

The guy in the next cubicle (Danny Glover) gives him some important advice: “Use your white voice. I’m not talking about Will Smith white.” He means the kind of white that conveys unquestioned and unquestioning privilege, the ones W.H. Auden described as “the homes I warm to,/though seldom wealthy,/ always convey a feeling of bills being promptly settled/with checks that don’t bounce.”

Cash finds his white voice (nasally supplied by David Cross), and is soon a “power caller,” invited upstairs and even to a debauched party at the home of the CEO, Mr. Lift (Armie Hammer). In the meantime, one of the other telemarketers (Steven Yeun as Squeeze) is organizing the employees into a union to get better working conditions. Cash is conflicted. He sympathizes with the workers, even as he moves up the ladder. But he likes being successful. He likes having better things. He likes the money.

And so he doesn’t look too hard at what is going on around him, particularly the omnipresent ads for something called WorryFree, a company that promised to solve all your problems by giving you a job, a place to live, and food, even your clothes. They hope you don’t notice that it is basically a prison, and that you will owe your soul to the company store.

Lift is still not entirely worry free, though. Those human beings are just so pesky, wanting justice and freedom, and all that. He has a solution and he wants Cash to be a part of it.

Riley’s visual flair and brash and bracing screenplay and superb performances by everyone, especially by Stanfield, Thompson, and Hammer, keep us so engaged that we are deep into the story before we realize how much it dares.

Ever since his extraordinary breakthrough in “Short Term 12,” Stanfield has brought a soulful gravity to a wide range of performances. His posture and eyes are deeply expressive, and he makes Cash the right Candide-like figure to take us through this story, always keeping an essential humanity in the midst of the heightened reality of the storytelling.

Thompson’s graceful Detroit is much more than the usual movie girlfriend. She is observant and thoughtful. She is really the stand-in for Riley because she makes everything around her art with a political message, from her earrings (all music lyrics) to the way she tosses the sign on the street corner for her day job. We see her gallery show, including a performance art piece where she invites people to throw things at her. Her life, art, and politics are all one, yet she loves Cash because he is not a part of the art world, the part that she considers snobbish and commercial. She has views on honor and meaning, however, and there comes a point where she has to leave.

It gets so outrageous you may not realize until later how sneaky it is, delivering a powerful message about power, money, race, art, family, property, and having something that matters in your life. The film itself is its own answer — tell your story, make art, and don’t forget to “Épater la bourgeoisie.”

Parents should know that this film has very strong and crude language, explicit sexual references and situations with male and female nudity, alcohol, drugs, and peril and violence, including body horror.

Family discussion: Why would someone join WorryFree? What companies are most like that? Should Cash have stayed with the workers who were protesting?

If you like this, try: “School Daze” and “Downsizing”

Related Tags:

Comedy Drama DVD/Blu-Ray movie review

Ant-Man and the Wasp

Posted on July 3, 2018 at 4:15 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for some sci-fi action violence
Profanity:	Mild language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Some alcohol
Violence/ Scariness:	Extended comic-book/action peril and violence, characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	July 6, 2018
Date Released to DVD:	October 15, 2018

I like Ant-Man. He’s literally down to earth — after the intergalactic super-villain Thanos plotting the wiping out of half the universe, it’s nice to see our hero up against an ordinary, non-super thug of a bad guy. And it’s also nice to see, 20 movies in, a female superhero in the title of the film. I like the slightly retro, slightly bookish look of the Ant-Man films (outstanding work from production designer Shepherd Frankel). And I like the fun they have with scale. Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) can do more than shrink himself to the size of an ant and call on his ant friends to help him out. He can make himself and objects around him get bigger or smaller almost instantly. And the Wasp (Evangeline Lilly) can do all of that AND fly and use her wrist blasters.

Scott has three more days to go under house arrest, wearing an ankle bracelet, with frequent check-ins by the local authorities, led by Jimmy Woo (Randall Park), who can’t seem to decide whether he wants to lock Scott up or become his BFF. He’s going a little stir-crazy, though he enjoys the elaborate games he creates for his daughter, Cassie (Abby Ryder Fortson). The terms of his parole forbid him from having contact with Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) or his daughter Hope (Lilly), but that has not been a problem. They are not speaking to him after they think he betrayed them by making their technology public in “Captain America: Civil War.”

But something else that happened in “Civil War” is the reason they have to find him again. Pym’s wife and Hope’s mother, the brilliant scientist Janet Pym (Michelle Pfeiffer), became too small and they thought she was lost forever in the “quantum entanglement.” Scott was able to return from the quantum entanglement, though, and they want to find out how and send him back there to see if Janet can be rescued. This is a job for two superheroes, and so it’s time for Hope to suit up.

An all-around crime boss named Sonny Burch (Walt Goggins) wants to stop them from getting the material they need to make that work. A character whose backstory I won’t spoil but who can vibrate through matter also wants it. And the cops are trying to capture the Pyms as well. So, lots of chases, lots of hand-offs and near misses. Director Peyton Reed and his writers (including Rudd) have a lot of fun with scale, sizing the vehicles up and down in an instant and Scott himself getting as big as the Statue of Liberty (which is exhausting for him) and as tiny as an atom. His suit does not always work correctly, though, and his judgment does not always work correctly, either.

The distinctive humor of the first film continues in this one, with Michael Pena returning as Scott’s loquacious fellow ex-con and business partner. His circuitous story-telling was funny in the first film, and it gets funnier here when he is questioned under the effects of what could be a truth serum (whether it is or not is a point of contention). Random topics that also come up for discussion include close-up magic, the Slavic folklore character Baba Yaga, loading the dishwasher, and playing the drums. There are some great action sequences, especially one in a kitchen and the chase scenes, and crisp pacing to balance the more laid-back comedy. Its biggest failing is the dumb nicknames for the daughters of the characters. Really, Peanut? Jellybean? Those girls deserve something as witty and distinctive as the rest of the film.

NOTE: Stay through the credits for a brief update on the “Infinity War” cliffhanger, and then all the way to the end for an even briefer and very silly little second extra that has an important clue.

Parents should know that this film includes extended comic book/action peril and violence, characters injured and killed, some scary images, mild language, and some parent-child issues.

Family discussion: What changes do you think the quantum experience has on people who travel there? How is Ant-Man different from the other Avengers?

If you like this, try: the first “Ant-Man” and the Avengers movies

Uncle Drew

Posted on June 28, 2018 at 5:58 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for suggestive material, language and brief nudity
Profanity:	Some strong and crude language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Alcohol
Violence/ Scariness:	Theme of aging, medical issues
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	June 29, 2018
Date Released to DVD:	September 24, 2018

There are a lot of movies based on books and plays, and many movies based on songs and video games. And now, apparently, we’ve got a movie based on a television commercial. “Uncle Drew” is inspired by a 2012 series of Pepsi ads written and directed by and featuring real-life NBA player and science skeptic Kyrie Irving, disguised as an old man, astonishing some neighborhood hoopsters with his sweet moves. This version expands the story by adding more real-life players and upping the stakes to the $100,000 prize at the real-life Rucker Park competition in Harlem.

Basically, the serviceable script by Jay Longino and spirited direction from Charles Stone III (“Drumline”) follows the classic formula of all underdog sports movies, but it does so with three key assets. First, there’s an awesome dance-off scene, always a good thing, and here it is especially delightful because it turns out that people who are the best in the world at basketball have some sweet moves off the court as well. Second, even for someone who is not a sports fan, the skills they show off here are not just impressive; they are truly aesthetically beautiful. Third is the fun these athletes are clearly having, so palpable it is genuinely infectious. And for those who are sports fans, there are lots of inside jokes including one about too many time outs.

And they have the able support of “Get Short’s” Lil Rel Howery, “Girls Trip’s” Tiffany Haddish, and Nick Kroll, who must be getting a kick out of seeing someone else in old age makeup after wearing it every night in his “Oh, Hello” show on Broadway with John Mulaney.

So, no surprise here, Howery plays Dax, a coach who has put everything into his team in hopes of winning at Rucker Park. When his players and his gold-digging girlfriend (Haddish) are swiped by his rival (Kroll), the same guy whose block in a high school game shamed Dax into deciding never to play again.

Desperate, Dax invites veteran player Uncle Drew (Irving) to put a team together to compete for the prize. This means a road trip to visit each of the former members of what was once the Harlem Buckets. There’s a preacher who holds a baby about to be baptized as though he was a basketball (Chris Webber), a legally blind assisted living resident (Reggie Miller), a silent grandfather in a wheelchair (Nate Robinson), and a martial arts instructor (Shaquille O’Neal). The preacher also has a wife who does not want him to go. She is very tall. She is also played by former WNBA player Lisa Leslie, so don’t be surprised if she gets called in as a replacement at a crucial moment.

It’s very silly, but surprisingly sweet and its unpretentiousness makes this at least a two-pointer.

Parents should know that this film includes crude humor, sexual references, a brief image of a bare butt, and some medical/aging issues.

Family discussion: Why did one bad experience make Dax quit playing basketball? Why was it so hard for Uncle Drew to apologize?

If you like this, try: “Like Mike”