Why Did Mary Poppins Bother Return? or, the things we do for Love

[This is the third in a series this week covering movies seen in the last month during the holiday. Enjoy!]

 As even the most incidental Reader of this blog will know,  it would not be my preference to go see Mary Poppins Returns. However, as the subtitle indicates, we do things for love that we wouldn’t do otherwise. My wife was a fan, okay a big fan, of the 1964 Julie Andrews Mary Poppins and when the previews started leaking out– It seems 18 months ago–for this version she was all about it.:-(

So we went. Me under duress.

I dozed through some of it.:-)

Remember the context here: I’m coming off a TBI. One of the things to be careful about in my situation is ”too much input”. Mary Poppins Returns was just too much input.:-(

It’s very colorful. It has lots of music. It is either a wonderful eyeful, or, if you have a brain injury, a pain.

I’m not a fan of the form –my father asked of it ”where in the world people stop in the middle of their day and start singing?”–so it is hard for me to evaluate its elements.

But let me start with this: none of the actors in this version can saying like Julie Andrews. This may not be a real damning statement, but it lets you know that the singing isn’t really the thing here. Probably the worst of the lot is Ben Whishaw, who talks through his songs more than sings. Maybe thankfully.

Lin Manuel Miranda comes up short too; although he’s known for his work in Hamilton. My daughter says he is the weakest voice on the original cast record and he doesn’t change that reputation here.

Next, I did not think any of the songs were memorable. No “Let’s go fly a kite ,” no “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” no “Let’s have a wonderful time with Mary” – just a bunch of innocuous tunes moving us from scene to scene.

If you didn’t get this the movie is visually rather stunning. It uses a lot of primary colors, including with the balloons in the final silly scene, and the costumes are well done in an over-the-top kind of way for the 1930s in London and quite colorful.

Should you go see it? If the original meant a lot to you, or you just like musicals, sure. If you’re a curmudgeon like me, shoot yourself first.

One final note, and I know this is overdoing it, but in the last two decades+ I have spent a lot of time in London– sometimes a month at a time. So I think I know my way around the city. I don’t think anybody involved with the movie does: Time and again I think I know approximately where they are in the city and they jump on a bike or trot by foot and end up in the part of the city they couldn’t have done to that way from there. I know this is pedantic, but WTF?! They can’t get THAT right?!

On that curmudgeonly note, I sign off until there’s another movie, or another game or postseason to comment upon.

*The Favourite* is my Favorite

[This is the second in a series of three movie reviews to catch up on those that I saw over Christmas break while on the IR are due to my brain injury. Hope to have the third in the series out as soon as tomorrow, maybe?–this one (gag)on Mary Poppins Returns]

Since I’m told context is important, it is worth telling, I guess, that to see The Favourite we had to go a little more than an hour away to a theater that shows ”art house films.” This theater not only shows art house films but it has those big comfy chairs like barcalounger’sJ. However, given my physical status, I was unable to drive either way and even have to sleep on the way home -- as I indicated I found that movie viewing & going Is hard work.):

But it was worth it. I can’t actually catalog everything I saw this year, but I’m not sure if The Favourite isn’t my favorite movie of the year (and yes I agree with the critic I saw on TV who said that may be part of it -- getting to say The Favourite was my favorite J)

We like period movies here and this one is in excellent example of the form. Based loosely on the biography of Lady Marlborough (Sarah Churchill), The Favourite does an excellent job with costumes and cinematography to make you think that it’s really the early 18^th century.

On top of that, three main actors are all excellent. It’s hard to distinguish who you would single out– Rachel Weisz is great as Sarah, Emma Stone is a devilish Abigail and Olivia Colman has a great time being the Queen.

 If you haven’t gotten the gist of the story from the TV ads, Colman plays Queen Anne (1702-14) and Weisz and Stone compete to be her favorite. It is both historical and comical with some bits of it that are hard to believe given the time period (I’ll leave the details as if spoilers).  In all the manipulation among the courtiers, it is not clear whether Weisz’s Sarah or Stone’s Abigail are manipulating Colman’s queen or Colman is using them to get what she wants and needs. This is both the fun and the intellectual challenge that director Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster) presents for us.

To finish – very highly recommended.

Review of Widows, or Why Do That and HT & NDR

[Note: I have not posted a movie review since November 18, even though it is the middle of Oscar-bait season. This is because over Thanksgiving weekend I slipped on ice and hit my head, causing a “mild TBI.” BTW the doctor once told me that when medical personnel say mild they mean it happened to someone other than them.:-) since then I have been unable to write reviews or much of anything else of any length, but now am feeling well enough to write “short ones in” for the three movies I’ve seen since the accident. BTW #2 going to the movies is harder on the brain than one might think.:-)]

In our household, we have a movie rule call the Hyser theory, named after an old friend who first postulated it. This rule says there is a negative correlation between the number of ads seen for a movie and the quality of the movie.

The Hyser theory went into effect for Widows.

We went to see it just two weeks after my accident and it was the struggle for me. Some of it even have to do with the accident. J

 I actually heard someone say in reviewing the Oscar-bait movies that this was the one movie they wanted to see. I hope that person wasn’t disappointed.

Because see Widows is a high-concept movie. If you haven’t seen it advertised, it’s about a group of widows who decide to take over their dead spouses’ job which just so happens to be robbery.

Okay, so, let’s get this straight: you act like you don’t know what your spouse does for a living, they die, you find their plans to their next job, call a meeting of the other spouses who died with them, and decide that because you need the money you’re going to play NFL football and and win. WTF thinks this is a good idea?

Okay, they do this. The problem is the whole thing is formulaic: I actually leaned over and said it to my wife more than once ”who saw that coming?”

And then there’s what I’m about to call the “Not-Dbrolaw Rule (NDR).”  Someone in the movie has to be likable. The only person who comes close in this movie is the number 4 woman in the gang, played by Patrese McClain. I’m going to ignore the fact that she handles a gun and robs and maybe shoots people because we like her story and ‘tude.

We really don’t like Violet Davis’s character, who becomes a nasty-ass criminal, which may be the female empowerment equivalent because her husband, played by Liam Neeson, is a nasty-ass criminal. Don’t mind seeing him dead. Colin Ferrell’s character is  supposed to garner some sympathy, but no he’s a nasty-ass politician, though he seems to not like doing what he’s doing.

 In the end, the movie is not as good as the sum of its parts. With Steve McQueen at the helm and Davis in the lead, you would expect to have a better movie than this.   This will go down as the shining glory neither one of them.

Not really recommended (I’m going to start doing this)

NB in the next few days I will be posting reviews for The Favourite and Mary Poppins Return, which I’ve seen over the Christmas holiday.  Keep an eye out, k?

Beasts Aren't Fantastic, but Newt Is

Let me start with this weekend's choices: it was Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Johnny Depp or Widows, aka Ocean's 8 with guns and violence.

We chose the Beasts.

Several things caused this: we had seen the first movie (you don't need to have seen it to make no sense of this one), I think we rather like Eddie Redmayne, and we had seen the previews and ads so often for Widows that we were tired of it and its premise without seeing it.  And there's this: Viola Davis is a good, maybe great, actress, but she really doesn't inspire "I gotta see her" like say last month someone said "I gotta see Bradley Cooper."  And, no, that wasn't me. :)

The Beasts got a 37% of something like it from Rotten Tomatoes from the critics.  We knew this and went anyway.  But any review of the movie has to tell you that figuring out what goes on is a thing here -- we spent several minutes on the road home from the cinema wondering if one main character lived, died, or went to the dark side.  We're still not wholly sure.  It goes like that.

But Redmayne is winning as the shy and animalphile Newt Scamander (who makes these names up?  Oh, you do know that this is a Harry Potter send-off, written by JK Rowlings, right?) who is good with the eyes down, under the terrible side-bangs hairdo, thing and good with the CGI animals, with his winning smile.  You believe Newt is better with monstrous beasts -- a line used a couple times in the movie -- than with people.

The CGI is great, too.  I don't know what many of the things in the movie are supposed to be (I neither read the book the first movie was based on or remember much of the last movie), but they are fantastic onscreen.  It's hard not to like the recreation of Groot the Younger, the something-like-a-playtpus thing or the much, much larger tiger-dragon thing.  Fun stuff.

And then there's Depp.  As the bad guy, Grimelwald, he's okay.   Like his other campy creation, Captain Jack Sparrow, this one seems the right amount of over-the-top for what now seems to be his wheelhouse.  Spiky blonde hair, one fake eye, ghoulish coloring... Subtlety, if ever his thing, is now not his thing.

One of Grimelwald's crimes seems to be that he stares longingly into Jude Law's eyes...or Jude Law's younger self's eyes.  Yes, there's a moment that has homosexual elements that has the twitterverse twittering.  BFD.  (Law is underused here as Albus Dumbledore, the grandfatherly hero of the Potter saga, as his younger self.  It is 1927.)

Probably a couple people in secondary roles deserve mentioning -- Dan Fogler as Jacob brings a light-hearted charm as Newt's muggle sidekick, and Katherine Waterston as Tina, one of the good guys, and Newt's love interest (well, one of them, we are thinking it is also Lita, but...the plot twists) is the right kind of not comic.  And flourishes a wand with esprit.

In all, it's fun.  It's not Oscar bait.  But it was #1 this weekend at the box office, by A LOT, so it's that kind of light-hearted entertainment -- as long as you don't ponder the darkness of the ending.  Captain Jack, errr, Grimenwald, has a whole troop of supporters who were junior Hitler costumes (this is 1927) and, having said that joining him (he IS the bad guy) will prevent WWII, well, things end. 

But we're ignoring that, you should see it.  It'd be a good Thanksgiving weekend's light entertainment.  To go with the turkey and Oscar bait.

Caught in the Spider's Web

This week's installment of our fall movie reviews is the newest installment of Stieg Larsson's Millenium series, The Girl in the Spider's Web.

But first, a word on previews: why do theatres think we should get half a dozen, or more, previews?  Twenty plus minutes of something that's not the movie you came to see.  And, in the case of Spider's Web, not much that snared you in.  It was an odd mix of previews -- some action, some tending towards art films (I'm still trying to figure out where Widows falls, after seeing the preview quadzillion times).

Maybe the most interesting part of Spider's Web is the casting of Claire Foy, most famous as Queen Elizabeth in The Crown, as Lisbeth Salander. 

Foy is good in the role; the Swedish accent she uses works well enough.

Interviews have made much of this movie and its being shot during the beginnings of the #MeToo movement.  But this isn't that movie -- although it opens with Lisbeth avenging a husband who has clearly beaten his wife, that's all of it.  None of the rest of the plot deals with this -- a bit of a red herring.

As with all Larsson vehicles, you have to pay attention to the plot.  It is a bit convoluted, somehow working a sister into the plot, after all the other manipulations with computer files and hacking -- standard Lisbeth stuff.

It's entertaining enough.  And, as usual in the series, a bit masochistic. 

It's also, again typically, a bit far-fetched: we get where we believe in action thrillers that the bad guy can't hit the hero from six feet away with an automatic pistol.  Lisbeth survives with just a large graze, somehow.

And somehow survives falling from a second story; a car crash; a gas attack; being sucked tightly into a plastic skin. 

Routine stuff.

In the end, it's a pleasant enough movie.  If it's to be someone's Oscar bait, I'm not sure whose: maybe the stunt people, though it doesn't begin to compare with Mission: Impossible last summer.

Go see it.