Still Mad for The Muppets -- and That's a Good Thing, Right?

Early on in the 2011 movie The Muppets, a network executive (played by Rashida Jones of Parks & Recreation fame) gave an audiovisual presentation that portrayed the Muppets as being shamelessly unfashionable. So it became fairly obvious at that point that the movie was taking place in an alternative universe.

But seriously, folks.

Apart from being a trifle unbelievable -- after all, Hollywood is full of celebrities whose careers have come and gone within all the years that the Muppets have existed -- the scene in question also defines the major challenge facing The Muppets: the idea that American culture is no longer capable of accepting of accepting the gentle, humanistic humor of the original Muppets.

Of course, I would like to believe that idea is wrong. After all, as I've noted, this franchise has outlasted quite a few rivals -- so much so that I find it a bit disconcerting to realize that this movie has fans whose parents were not even born when the Muppets were first introduced to American TV viewers. And quite frankly, I find it hard to believe that everyone is necessarily into the hard, cynical humor that is usually promoted as an alternative to the Muppets.

Plus, as much as I hate to admit it, this movie is my favorite movie of all the Muppet movies I have seen -- including the first one.

Granted, there are some parts I could have done without -- the farting shoes jokes, for example. And I must admit that I found it hard not to roll my eyes when the writers chose to have a wealthy character blow up his own workplace rather than help solve a problem that could have been fixed by the simple writing of a check. And what was so bad about the characters played by Amy Adams and Jason Segel that so many critics refused to give them their due?

Oh, well. At least the movie got made. And better yet, it produced a sequel.

But will we see yet another Muppet movie after the most recent one? That, alas, is a question that has yet to be answered.

All That Glitters in Snatched Is Goldie

If nothing else, the 2017 movie Snatched proved that Goldie Hawn still has it. She possessed enough comic timing in this flick to win over even my grumpy middle brother. Her co-star Amy Schumer, however... not so much.

It didn't help that most of Ms. Schumer's material just wasn't funny. Perhaps a better comic actress could have made the scene in which she inadvertently kills a person funny. Then again maybe it was just Amy.

As it were, Snatched turned out to be a dreary collection of South American stereotypes salvaged only by the performance of Goldie Hawn, who managed to do a surprisingly good job with the thankless role of the stereotypical single mom who was on the verge into turning into a cat lady. And even at that, her performance was not good enough to save this movie. Oh, well.

At least it's nice to see Ms. Hawn is still working.

But Differ Greatly in the Sequel: Machete Kills

Apparently Machete does vex. At least that is what he did in the 2013 movie Machete Kills, a sequel to the 2010 movie Machete.

I wanted to like this film a lot than I did but I could not help hating the way Robert Rodriguez liked to constantly repeat his jokes. And what he did to Michelle Rodriguez's character was just pathetic. He wasn't content to present her as a badass rebel wounded in battle; he had to make her a pathetic damsel in distress as well. She deserved a way better ending than that.

Ironically, Hollywood outcasts Mel Gibson and Charlie Sheen came across a lot better even though their scenes were basically one-joke roles. And please don't get me started on how much more popular this movie seemed to be with liberal non-Hispanic critics than myself...

Of course, by now we should have seen the sequel to this movie and I suspect that if it hasn't been made by now, then it's never going to be made. Given director Rodriguez's everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach to this series, I suspect that even he lacked faith that Hollywood would give him enough funds to create Machete III. Of course, given his approach to the Michelle Rodriguez character, I'm not convinced that that's a bad thing but still...

Tomorrow Never Knows and Yesterday Isn't Much Brighter

There was a pretty good story to be mined from the premise of the 2019 movie Yesterday but unfortunately, screenwriter Richard Curtis didn't feel like digging it up. Instead he used the intriguing premise of his movie -- suppose a person found himself or herself in a world where the Beatles never existed -- as the basis of a rather lame romcom that used almost every cinematic cliché in the book.

It says something about the subtlety of the movie that by the time Kate McKinnon's character showed up to offer the protagonist a life of worldly success, it seemed a wonder that she did not appear and depart in a cloud of sulfur. Indeed, it seemed like the only subtle touch in the movie was how it downplayed the fact that the Anglo-Indian protagonist was in love with a white English woman -- a fact that once would have been considered very controversial but now seemed worthy of little more than a shrug.

Curtis does deserve credit for inserting a scene into the movie that so smacks of chutzpah that one marvels that he had the gall to write it. Then again, I'm not sure "credit" is really the right word I should be using in regard to a scene like that.

Not Quite Caught Up in Traffic

I knew this movie was in trouble when the director seemed to want the audience to be more shocked at the sight of a white girl sleeping with a black drug dealer than at the sight of a Mexican policeman being murdered by Mexican drug dealers. It didn't help that he had one character give an impromptu -- and totally unmotivated -- sermon about the influence of white drug buyers on black neighborhoods -- a sermon I would ordinarily applaud if it did not seem so out of place in the movie. (And having it delivered by a person who was a white drug buyer himself did not improve it.)

I would like to think that the makers of this flick meant well but just the same I'm not exactly in a big hurry to see this movie again.

Remembering My Last Ride on Gran Torino

It would be nice to say that the 2008 movie Gran Torino was the last good Clint Eastwood movie that I remember seeing but as much as I would like to say so, I don't feel comfortable actually saying that. Let's just say I didn't hate it as much as I thought I would...

Anyway, wasn't this movie just a race swap re-make of The Karate Kid?

Yes, in a way, it was. It also seems like a reversal of all those old 1960s and 1970s stories in which the young Caucasian guy (or girl, in the case of the '60s comic book version of Wonder Woman) learned all about self-defense from an elderly Asian man. (Call it the Remo Williams syndrome, if you prefer.)

One of the movie's main subplots had an elderly man (played, of course, by Clint Eastwood) teaching a young Asian boy the fundamentals of American manhood. Eventually the movie had Clint's character trying to protect the young boy's family from a local gang of Asian youths, eventually leading to an unexpected gesture on Clint's character's part that seemed more like a triumph of hope over experience than anything else.

That said, it was not surprising that this movie was more popular with conservative-leaning people like my mother - -who is incidentally a Polish-American who grew up in the type of blue-collar neighborhood that this movie was set in -- than with the more liberal people who have written about this movie online. The movie was a bit on the simplistic side and it was tempting to see this flick as the conservative answer to Crash. (After all, Crash -- save for a few scenes -- tended to take the same shamelessly obvious approach to its issues as well.)

I'm not going to pretend that I liked this movie as much as Unforgiven or The Outlaw Josey Wales -- indeed, I would be very surprised if I still remember this movie a decade from now.

Plus there were quite a few scenes in the movie that I didn't really care for. (For example, it wasn't enough that one character got attacked and beat up, she also had to get raped? Granted, gang members aren't known for their chivalry but still...) Nor does it help that this same plot would have seemed a bit more daring forty or fifty years ago. (Indeed, it makes a sad comment on American society that in the first decade of the twenty-first century, there is still a market for movies about how violent things can get when "outsiders" move into the neighborhood.)

And yet I was surprised enough by certain plot turns that I found it hard to hate it as much as other critics did. Add to that the fact that my Polish-American mother had no problems with this movie despite the number of times its script used the word "polack" -- a word she has heard directed at herself in anger more than a few times in her life -- and I must conclude that the movie had something going for it. Even if it wasn't as much as Eastwood intended.

The Clint Eastwood Vanity Project: The Mule

Remember when Clint Eastwood actually made good movies? Yes, I have a hard time remembering those days too.

It would be nice to pretend that the 2018 movie The Mule is the big exception to that rule. But it isn't. Eastwood wants so hard to have it both ways -- on one hand, presenting his character as a lovable geezer whom everyone -- even Mexican drug smugglers -- likes while on the other, reminding us through his interactions with his family that he is not all that likable -- but this approach never really works.

Part of the problem is that Eastwood already adequately capped off his film career in two previous movies: Unforgiven and In the Line of Fire. Since then, it's been kinda hard to not get the impression that Eastwood has been spinning his artistic wheels, so to speak.

It would be nice to pretend that Eastwood is so good that even the worst Eastwood movie is more watchable than most other films -- but I find it harder and harder to believe that. And The Mule doesn't offer me much proof that I'm wrong.

All the same, I'm glad to see Eastwood is still managing to find work at his age. I just wish it was in a decent movie.

Detroit Is Other People

Where's Jean-Paul Sartre when you need him? There's something very No Exit-ish about the way people keep implying that the premise of the 2017 movie Detroit is okay with them while in the same breath arguing that it's better suited for other people. It makes me kinda surprised that the studio didn't simply rename this movie Detroit, c'est los autres (Detroit is other people) or better yet, Detroit est pour les autres (Detroit is for other people).

In an odd way, that makes me kinda proud to be a native-born Detroiter.

Of course, when you grow up hearing your Mexican-born father tell stories about having to sit in jail and listen to the sound of his friends getting beat up by various members of the Detroit police, it's hard not to consider a lot of the stuff in Detroit to be old news. Yet I would like to think I learned something from this movie anyway.

My City May Be Screaming But It's Not Saying Anything

You know a movie is in trouble when the first five minutes of the flick are an action sequence and you find yourself trying your best not to be bored to tears.

You know a movie is really in trouble when those first five minutes seem like the high point of the movie.

The sad thing is that the 2008 movie The Spirit had enough talented people in its cast that it should have been a lot more memorable than it was. Then again, I always preferred the Capra-ish spirit of some of the original Will Eisner stories that allegedly inspired this flick than the "look, Ma, it's another Sin City remake" approach that dominated this flick. And even if you like the idea of another Sin City remake, I suspect that you're bound to find The Spirit a bit disappointing.

Please Don't Play with Liz, 'Cause You're Playing with Fire: Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy

Yes, the title character of Guillermo del Toro's 2004 version of Hellboy is awesome, but it's Selma Blair's portrayal of everyone's favorite pyrokinetic Liz Sherman that really brings me back to this movie time after time. Granted, the name of the movie is Hellboy, not Hellgirl, but it's hard for me to imagine this movie having the same impact on me if it did not have the Liz Sherman character. Indeed, the one thing that turned me against the second Hellboy movie -- Hellboy II: The Golden Army -- was the way the filmmakers of that movie totally mangled the Liz Sherman character. It is almost as if once the filmmakers finally got Liz Sherman involved in a romantic relationship with the title character, they had no idea what to do with her. Which was a darn shame given that her character was one of the most interesting characters in the first movie.

Oh, well. The first movie still holds up and the scene in which Liz Sherman went all Carrie White on some evil demons is still a classic. Indeed, though Guillermo del Toro has noted many times in interviews that he is not exactly a devout Catholic, there nevertheless seemed to be a certain Catholic subtext to the scene in which Liz Sherman finally gave in to the temptation to use her power without restraint. Indeed, during that scene, Liz held herself in a certain posture that reminded me of a medieval saint -- almost as if submitting to her power to produce fire was the equivalent of submitting to some divine act.

To be fair, there were other interesting characters in the movie as well. Ron Perlman was a gem as the title character, John Hurt did an admirable job as Professor Bruttenholm aka Professor Broom and David Hyde-Pierce did an excellent -- if uncredited -- job as the voice of humanoid fish-person Abe Sapien. Rupert Evans also had a memorable role as the young FBI agent John Myers who played a key role in the climax of the movie.

Of all the Guillermo del Toro movies that I have seen thus far, Hellboy is no doubt my favorite. I'm just sorry that del Toro never had the chance to produce a memorable sequel. Oh, well. At least we got one classic movie out of this character.

Tape Noir: Baby Driver

The 2017 movie Baby Driver was like English director Edgar Wright's version of a Quentin Tarantino movie. Only good.Or at least not as pretentious as one might expect.

Yes, I know that not every critic was fond of this movie and posters on one film review site even hinted that it was undeserving of the few good reviews that it did receive. But it worked for me. And after seeing all too many movies that were literally painful to watch -- as well as movies that I often found less than thrilling after the first ten minutes -- Baby Driver was a nice surprise.

And no, I am not blind to its flaws. Like many modern action movies, it leaned very heavily on various cliches -- the black thug, the hot-tempered Latina, the inevitable crook with a heart of gold, etc. While it was not the first movie to have a character that wanted to get emotionally involved with a girl just like the one that married dear old Dad, this was the first one I've seen in a long while that emphasized that trope to the point where it seemed a wonder that the filmmakers did not name the protagonist's love interest Jocasta.

And yet for some odd reason, it worked. Maybe it was because it reminded of the days when I would play around with tape recorders and recorded various types of music off the radio. Or maybe it was because I liked actress Eiza González as the badass Latina character Monica Costello. (Wait a minute! A Latina named Costello? Surely you jest.) Kevin Spacey as a surprisingly kind-hearted mob boss was a nice surprise though I suspect many critics were surprised by the fact that his role wasn't exactly Keyser Söze II. I also liked Jon Hamm's performance as Buddy.

Personally I found it hard to believe that the title character managed to know so much about music -- yet never heard about singer Carla Thomas but that's the way the cookie crumbles sometimes. And yes, the movie leaned very hard upon its music soundtrack and part of me knows that I probably should be upset about that. Then again the movie soundtrack featured a lot of songs that I don't usually hear in the movies so part of me doesn't really care.

As for the movie's critical reception, well, this was definitely a YMMV type of movie. Either you liked it or you didn't. Personally, I liked it. I didn't think it was perfect but most of the films I like most rarely are. And I can't help suspecting that the late film critic Pauline Kael could come back from the grave and give this film two thumbs up and some people would still hate it. But then you could say that about almost any movie.

Thoughts on Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

I should be embarrassed to admit this but I found this flick to be one of the most emotionally satisfying superhero movies that I have seen in a while. I found it even more satisfying than Avengers: Infinity War -- though considering my mixed reaction to that flick, that probably isn't saying much.

I was a bit surprised to see actress Lake Bell playing such a small part. (She played Vanessa Fisk, late wife of the movie's villain, Wilson Fisk aka the Kingpin.) For that matter, I was a bit surprised to hear actor Liev Schreiber's take on Wilson Fisk. (For some reason, I expected his character to have a deeper, more booming voice that had less of a New York accent.)

I did like the title character of Miles Morales, the first Afro-Latino version of Spider-Man to appear in the movies. For that matter, I also liked Spider-Gwen, whose popularity in fanboy circles does tend to undercut the notion that movie-goers just won't buy the idea of a superheroine who isn't either Supergirl, Wonder Woman or else a member of a group like the X-Men.

I suspect we'll see a sequel to this flick sooner or later but in the meantime, it's good to see proof that it is possible to make a good Spider-Man movie without Sam Raimi.

Spacetime for Hitler

Heh. There is something so weird about seeing a sci-fi movie set in 2018 -- especially one that had as weird a premise as this one had.
(After all, it is not like we see movies about Nazis on the moon all the time.) Granted, Iron Sky was first released in 2012 but still when it is seen from the viewpoint of 2019, it seems even weirder than it was originally intended to be.

That said, this was one of those movies that -- surprise, surprise -- was not as good as the trailer. Granted, it was supposed to be a comedy and no doubt the rather obvious Sarah Palin jokes were meant to be quite daring back in the day. However, that part of the movie had not aged well and while the movie was not really painful to watch, much of it seemed surprisingly meh considering its premise.

Plus the makers of this movie chose to include that old movie cliché from the 1960s -- the Nazi with a heart of gold -- only this time the Nazi in question was a woman. That cliché had not aged well either though it did make for one of the more surreal moments in the movie.

And yes, as one trailer for this flick hinted, it did contain a variation of an old Harold Saxon quote. But for some reason, it did not come across as strongly in the movie as it did in the trailer.

A Spoiler-Free Review of A Simple Favor

It's tempting to call the 2018 movie A Simple Favor a Hallmark Mystery Movie for people who don't like Hallmark Mystery Movies, but that would imply that there's something wrong with Hallmark Mystery Movies and since my mother is a big fan of such movies, I'm obviously not inclined to agree with that type of implication.

That said, half the fun of watching A Simple Favor lies in trying to anticipate the plot so perhaps the best thing for me to say is that if you like mysteries and Anna Kendrick, you should go see it. It is already one of my favorite movies of last year and I can readily understand why the DVD copies of the movie that are located at my local library are always on a hold list. I hope you all get a chance to catch up with it if you haven't already seen it.

High Toon: Rango

Mariachi owls are cool. I don't care what anyone says: the mariachi owls in the 2011 movie Rango were far cooler than the usual token hip-hop singer in an otherwise all-white cartoon which we so often get as some wise guy's nod to diversity. At the very least, they were different.

I actually liked the movie Rango a lot better than I did Paul and the last two entries in director Gore Verbinski's original Pirates trilogy. Yes, it could have stretched things out further but I thought it did a good thing stretching things out as long as it did. It is not every Western that can successfully combine magic realism, surrealism, the Man with No Name movies and Chinatown and not look stupid. Besides, it's not like they tied things up with a corny line like "Relax, Jake. It's Chameleontown."

I Don't Care How Awesome Her Rainbow Shades Are! Stay Away from Arizona!

There is undoubtedly a very good dark comedy that can be made about the recent subprime mortgage crisis but the 2018 movie Arizona is not it.

The movie started off very promisingly by introducing us to divorced single mom and real estate agent Cassie Fowler (played by Rosemarie DeWitt) whose attempt to sell a house was interrupted by a tragic incident. But then after the first ten minutes and a brief rendition of an old Mark Lindsay song that played over the opening credits, we were introduced to Sonny, an angry client (played by Danny McBride) who kidnapped Ms. Fowler to keep her from reporting his murder of Ms. Fowler's boss. A little Sonny went a long way yet Danny McBride was an executive producer so we the audience ended up getting a whole lot of Sonny. A lot more than this particular audience member cared for.

Anyway, once Sonny kidnapped Ms. Fowler, the whole movie turned into a wacky hostage movie in which we the audience were supposed to root for Ms. Fowler to get away while at the same time putting up with Sonny's bad jokes. If you had ever seen the 1987 thriller The Stepfather, you could probably predict most of the events of the last half of the movie in which one possible source of rescue after another was eliminated until Ms. Fowler had no choice left except to become a final girl. She even started to lose bits of her clothing as if she were auditioning for a Reagan-era slasher movie. Fortunately, she managed to escape without finding herself in a state of total nudity -- which was a good thing because as much as I liked Ms. DeWitt's performance, I could not help wishing her character had had a less misogynistic story arc. On the plus side, though, it didn't seem likely that the bad guy will return for a sequel. So thank Heaven for that!

My Nanny, My Self: Tully

Tully is a night nanny who arrives at Marlo's house after dark -- like a vampire. Okay, not like a vampire. Like a brownie. Or an elf. Which might explain why Marlo (played by Charlize Theron) never seems to worry too much about shoes.

Tully was played by actress Mackenzie Davis who played the role so well that it seemed a cheat to realize that the real problem with Tully was that -- ah, but that would be telling.

Needless to say, Tully was hardly the first movie I ever saw that argued that motherhood sucked. Indeed, movies and TV shows have been poking fun at the tendency to glamorize motherhood since the days of Lucy Ricardo. But it was the most imaginative such movie that I've seen in quite a while. And it seemed even more amazing when I considered the fact that it was created by writer/director Diablo Cody, a woman I still think of as the author of Candy Girl.

I must confess that I was a bit reluctant to watch this movie. Diablo Cody does not have the best of records when it comes to movies and God knows she has received her share of bad reviews in the past. Moreover, I could not help but wonder prior to watching this movie how many single moms Ms. Cody might have come to know while researching her first book Candy Girl -- moms who undoubtedly had even worse problems than poor Marlo and yet were still considered unworthy of a screenplay.

And yet Tully won me over despite all my misgivings. Granted, I was a bit surprised that the movie's big plot twist wasn't a bit more controversial. And I can't help but wonder whether the movie would have ever been made if it were not for that particular twist. For that matter, how seriously should we take Cody's attempt at a happy ending? Er, that ending was happy, wasn't it?

Perhaps I should just shut up and concentrate on that nice mermaid scene toward the end. After all, mermaids are pretty. Mermaids are nice. Diablo Cody should include more of them in her future projects. But then this movie wasn't really about mermaids. Or was it?

The Involuntary Parent Trap: Transamerica

A transgender patient is basically punished for being transgender. What fun.

Okay, there is obviously more to the 2005 movie Transamerica than that. Like the way that the movie's transsexual protagonist was relentlessly humiliated for trying to do the right thing by a teenaged son that he or she never asked for.

But in the end, it all amounted to the same thing: a transsexual patient was being punished for circumstances beyond his or her control and we the audience were expected to find that entertaining. Surely one does not have to be politically correct to find something seriously warped about that.

Wollstonecraft in Love: Mary Shelley

I am not sure how much of the 2017 movie Mary Shelley was historically accurate and I am not sure that I really care. I do know that when I first started watching it, I found myself fearing that the whole movie would turn out to be one long exercise in tiresome Oscar bait specifically made to appease the Merchant and Ivory set. But to my surprise, I found myself caught up in it.

There were times that it seemed a bit soap opera-ish. Indeed, it would have been a bit hard to tell Mary Shelley's real-life story without getting a bit soap opera-ish.

Then again I was a bit surprised to see the affair between Ms. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin -- aka the future Mary Shelley -- and the poet Percy Shelley depicted not so much as a grand romantic tragedy but more as a tragically romantic mistake. Indeed, Percy Shelley came across in the movie as so much of a schmuck that it seemed a wonder that Ms. Wollstonecraft Godwin would end up staying with him. To the movie's credit, it also tried to give equal time to Mary's literary efforts though I suspect that the romance between her and her future husband was the real point of interest for most other audience members.

If I had to pick the movie's biggest flaw, it was that it left so many questions unanswered, the most obvious being the fate of Shelley's daughter from his first marriage -- the one in which he was involved prior to meeting Ms. Wollstonecraft Godwin. The movie had a touching scene midway through the film in which the future Ms. Shelley saw her future husband's current spouse Harriet out walking with the daughter that was conceived in that marriage and thus saw a glimpse of her own future. But alas, Mary did not heed the obvious warning that someday her lover might display the same attitude toward her and her future child that he was currently displaying to Harriet and her child.

For that matter, there was yet another scene in which an old friend of Shelley's decided to make a pass at Mary -- and when Mary told Percy about it, he seemed so fine with it that it seemed a wonder that he did not go on from there to pimp her out.

In the end, Ms. Wollstone Godwin got more sympathy than her future husband and it was hard for me to pretend she did not deserve it. But the lion's share of my sympathy still stayed with Percy's first wife and her daughter -- neither of whom were ever likely to ever become the subject of a Hollywood movie. Oh, well. At least the movie did not pretend that the two of them never existed.