The Art of the Wager

Every December as the Oscar season approaches, I look forward to the handful of artsy indie films that somehow emerge among all the big studio releases with much larger marketing budgets (like ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,’ ‘Frozen 2’ and ‘Jumanji: The Next Level’) and generate buzz among film critics.  What stood out this year for me is ‘Uncut Gems,’ the Safdie Brothers’ fascinating, genre-defying portrait of a sports gambling junkie played to manic perfection by SNL-alum Adam Sandler.

 

In what had to be his best performance to date (though admittedly that’s not too difficult considering his body of work), Sandler is perfectly cast as Howard Ratner, a Jewish jewelry store merchant in NYC who, despite his station and relative wealth, racked up such a large gambling debt that his own loan shark brother-in-law had to sic goons to intimidate him.  Instead of paying off his debt, Howard is ever looking for the next big payoff, which usually involves betting on Kevin Garnett in risky all‑or‑nothing parlays during the 2012 NBA playoffs between the Celtics and Sixers.  Will Howard win the bet of his life by turning his wager of $155,000 to over $1.2 million in an unlikely three-way parlay, or will he be just another cautionary tale of how gambling has ruined “many a poor boy”?

 

If ‘Good Time’ didn’t place the Safdie Brothers as avant-garde auteurs of singular talent on your radar, ‘Uncut Gems’ certainly should.  In Howard, Sandler had outdone himself inhabiting the role of an obsessive‑compulsive sports gambler, husband, father and philandering mistress-keeping sleazebag despite the fact that his wife is played by none other than the lovely and opera-voiced Idina Menzel.  Yet for all his flaws – like an uncut gem – we can’t help but trail him as closely as the Safdie Brothers’ camerawork in this movie appears to because this fast-talker radiates as much manic energy and desperate intensity as a star about to go supernova.  And semi-consciously and half willingly we may even find ourselves somehow pulling for the schmuck.  Go figure.

 

Grade: A
 

Return of the Living Sith

The Star Wars sequels trilogy which began in 2015 with 'The Force Awakens' (TFA) and continued in 2017’s 'The Last Jedi'  (TLJ) concludes with a whimper in the final chapter, ‘The Rise of Skywalker’ (TROS), as J.J. Abrams retook the reins of the beloved franchise from Rian Johnson (or rather Colin Trevorrow) in the wake of the latter's highly controversial and deeply divisive middle installment.  Just as the conflict between the light (Jedi) and dark (Sith) sides of The Force is an eternal one, the tug-of-war between those among the SW fandom who want to see it go in exciting new directions and others who prefer to wrap themselves in the warm blanket of familiarity and nostalgia will likely rage on.

 

In the aftermath of Johnson’s presumptuousness by taking SW in a direction some fans did not like, the pendulum swung back entirely the other way as Abrams (and Disney by extension) waved the white flag of capitulation and gave the rabid fandom exactly what they wanted.  TLJ was “retconned” as the long believed-to-be-dead Sith Lord Emperor Palpatine aka Darth Sidious was miraculously resurrected with little exposition in a direct sequel to ‘Return of the Jedi’ (ROTJ).  While TFA opened the door to bold new possibilities and TLJ took the ball and ran with it, TROS brought everything to a screeching halt and rolled them back in a classic case of “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

TROS is a mess of a SW movie with only fan service as its raison d'être.  Other than Darth Sidious’ return, which pretty much invalidated the redemptive sacrifice of Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader in ROTJ by the way, the rollicking space adventure we've taken for granted in SW is lacking.  Chewbacca didn't die because, God forbid, fans would be upset.  There is an utterly preposterous scene in which a rebel cavalry charge took place in the vacuum of space on top of a Star Destroyer that would make Leia’s much ridiculed ejection into space in TLJ pale by comparison.  I can hardly fault Abrams and Disney for their lack of a backbone in groveling to the fanboys who buy the tickets to see TROS, but it came at a steep price by stunting the evolution and growth of the SW movie franchise.  In undoing Johnson’s work, SW is back where it started at the end of Episode VI.  There is little room for growth and for SW to breathe because some of the most vocal and toxic fandom just simply couldn't, in the words of Kylo Ren, "let the past die."  Que Lastima.

 

Grade: C

 

Trial by Presumption

89-year old actor and director Clint Eastwood’s latest film based on real life events is ‘Richard Jewell,’ named after the chubby security guard who, after being initially hailed a hero for discovering a backpack full of pipe bombs at Centennial Park during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, became the FBI’s prime suspect for the domestic terrorist act in what had to be his worst nightmare come to life.

You probably know the gist of the story.  After being slapped on the back for preventing the bombing from inflicting more casualties than it actually did, Jewell became a convenient suspect of the FBI agents investigating the incident because he fits their profile to a T based on a combination of precedence and his own somewhat checkered background as a cop and security guard.  And also probably because they had no other likely suspects.  So when SAIC Tom Shaw (Jon Hamm) leaked the identity of their chief suspect to overzealous Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Kathy Scruggs (Olivia Wilde) because she needed her “scoop of the century” and may have provided Shaw with a quid pro quo "favor" (which caused quite a controversy for the movie with the AJ-C for slandering their late ace reporter), Jewell’s life became a living hell from the resulting media circus and “court of public opinion” fall-out even as he was never formally charged.

 

RJ is a tale told with humanity and compassion about how a grave injustice was done to an innocent man, but it’s also an interesting primer on how to fight back when, in the words of his lawyer Watson Bryant (Sam Rockwell), two of the most powerful forces in the world (the government and the press) are arrayed against you.  This movie should also serve to remind us (not just the FBI and the media) not to be too quick in jumping to conclusions.  I know I was among those who believed he was the perp when the news broke.  Sorry Richard, RIP.

Grade: B+

 

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A Not Very Merry Xmas Movie

Christmas, that most joyous holiday of giving and good will toward all, and horror should be like oil and water, but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy a bloody good scare during this  “most wonderful time of the year.”  Since the dawn of slasher flicks in the early 1970’s, films like ‘Silent Night, Bloody Night’ (1972) and ‘Black Christmas’ (1974 original) have shown that Christmas is as good a time as any to get a slay ride, I mean, die in gruesome fashion.

 

So when the second remake/reboot of the sorority house slasher ‘Black Christmas’ was released last weekend (the first was in 2006) appropriately on Friday the 13th, I thought “why not?”  BC2019 - like the first remake - stays true to the setting of the original, in which a close-knit group of sorority sisters at a fictitious college campus (Hawthorne College in this case, as if it matters) is terrorized and murdered one-by-one.  However, director Sophia Takal’s ambitions are much higher than simply making another disposable and mindless slasher movie, oh no.  So she also made it the latest “I am woman, hear me roar” declaration of female empowerment in our “Me Too” era.  Unfortunately, it doesn't work and seems out of place in a genre viewers never took seriously.

 

While I found the movie’s misandrist tone and political/social agenda off-putting, BC2019 also had little merit as a popcorn slasher movie relying on cheap thrills.  It’s neither scary nor offered any fresh twist to the two films before it, I was able to deduce the movie’s main villain roughly 30 minutes into the film, and the protagonists are so unrelatable, unsympathetic and unlikeable that it’s difficult for me to root for their survival.  Does that make me a bad person?

 

Grade: D

 

Muddied Waters

Legal dramas, like doctor and cop shows, provide great fodder for television and movies.  Vying for our attention (and maybe the Academy voters’ as well) as 2019 draws to a close are two “compelling” based-on-true-story legal dramas, the upcoming save-an-innocent-man-from-death-row movie ‘Just Mercy’ featuring Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx, and the civil litigation sue-DuPont sleeper ‘Dark Waters’ starring Mark Ruffalo.

 

‘Dark Waters’ is based on a NYT Magazine article published back in 2016 called “The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare,” which (though I haven’t read it myself) detailed the PFOA (“forever chemical”) scandal and how a tenacious “legal eagle” torts lawyer named Robert Bilott (played by Ruffalo) took on the chemical giant DuPont in a high profile civil case over the dangers of Teflon spanning some two decades and won.  Yes, you read that right.  Two decades and it’s still ongoing today.
 

In its teaser trailer, DW would have us believe that it’s a paranoia-filled suspense thriller with the scene of Ruffalo hesitating when he was about to start his car (is it going to blow up?) in an empty building parking lot.  While part of me understands why the marketers of the film felt they had to mislead us like that, I still can’t forgive them for it because DW is exactly the opposite, a two hour and six minute bore of a movie that almost put me to sleep.  DW is a perfect example that civil cases dragging on for years and years are simply not very exciting or nearly as compelling as its more glamorous “criminal” cousin.  You won’t find indignant self-righteous Marine colonels bellowing in defiance at his good-looking young JAG prosecutors (played by Tom Cruise and Demi Moore circa 1992) that they “can’t handle the truth!” here.  What we get instead are half-chastened stiff DuPont executives playing a long game of give-and-take.  Yawn.

Grade: C

 

Murder, He Wrote

Rian Johnson, the most maligned director of a Star Wars movie for the “travesty” that was ‘The Last Jedi,’ ditches Padawans and Stormtroopers for the Whodunit in his latest project, ‘Knives Out,’ a deliciously devilish but immensely fun reinvention of the murder mystery genre beloved by casual ‘Clue’ players and hard-core murder mystery party aficionados alike.  If you’ve seen the teaser trailer, no doubt you are as intrigued as I by its Agatha Christie-esque premise of a family patriarch’s death and the suspected foul play surrounding his untimely demise with all the attending family members as potential suspects with motives (and presumably also means and opportunity).

 

With a talented all-star ensemble cast including Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Jamie Lee Curtis, Don Johnson, Toni Collette, Michael Shannon and Christopher Plummer, ‘Knives Out’ is the tale of a typical dysfunctional rich family bickering, I mean celebrating the 85th birthday of famous and wealthy mystery fiction author Harlan Thombey (Plummer) at his mansion, which unexpectedly turned out to be his last.  In comes Benoit Blanc (Craig), an accomplished and highly respected private detective who appears to be an amalgamation of Hercule Poirot and Jacques Clouseau in equal parts with a sprinkling of Sherlock Holmes, whose name unlike the others doesn’t sound French at all.  Unsurprisingly, Blanc solves Harlan’s murder in the end, but not in the way you might think.

 

On a certain level, ‘Knives Out’ is Rian Johnson’s love letter to the classic whodunits of Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie.  It is also (did I mention?) a fun, inventive and refreshing take on the genre filled with dark humor and wry wit, with enough twists and red herrings throughout to satisfy even the most jaded whodunit aficionados among us.  The title of the film may be a playful metaphor for the dysfunctional and entitled rich family it portrays and the family members’ willingness to backstab one another but, more literally, there is a “web of knives” in the film’s mansion setting that provides the perfect ending to the story.

 

Grade: A