C'mom C'mon (2021)

Director: Mike Mills. Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Gaby Hoffmann, Woody Norman. 109 min. Drama.

• A movie that is mesmerizing from the get-go, asking kids: How do you see the future?
• The question is asked both in general terms, with Phoenix as a journalist interviewing kids across Detroit, New York and New Orleans, recording their responses; and on a specific basis, with him taking his 9-year-old nephew on the journey, and us watching the response to the question play out in real life. A response that is, to be blunt, quite terrifying - very well enacted in a scene where the nephew goes missing in a store for a few seconds, and the terrified uncle totally freaks out at his absence.
• The film reminded me how advanced kids' thought processes are these days, compared to when I was the same age - when all I cared about was Return of the Jedi's premiere date. The generation gap today is deep and wide, the issues and questions kids ask and are concerned about are mind-boggling, and the manner in which kids confront you occasionally corners you to full surrender.
• This notion is embodied in the unbelievable performance by newcomer Woody Norman - whom I'm not sure out of how many hundreds of auditioned kids he was chosen from. But if there was ever a motion to create an Oscar category for casting director, this movie is a good excuse.
• Another black-and-white movie which suits the atmosphere better than color. Must be a trend this year.

MoGo's rating: 8/10

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Benedetta (2021)

 

Director Paul Verhoeven. Cast: Virginie Efira, Charlotte Rampling, Daphne Patakia, Lambert Wilson. 131 min. Historical/Drama.

• This is the problem I've always had with Paul Verhoeven movies: he thinks he's onto something deep, he actually may be onto something deep ... but then he buries his message under so much eye-popping dazzle, he ends up delivering something superficial. RoboCop and Total Recall nicely predict how corporate America (and not the government) will soon rule America, but then the extreme violence and in-your-face special effects totally distract you. Basic Instinct's perfect ending teaches how you can flip an entire carefully-written movie plot by just one scene and make the opposite plot-line plausible, but then at the end you only remember Sharon Stone's police interrogation scene. Verhoeven is the epitome of talent wasted in a hurricane of Hollywood attractions.
• Benedetta follows the structure of Basic Instinct: a nun in 17th century Italy has religious visions, and that ascends her to higher ranks. So, is she truly a saint, or just a charlatan, acting her way up? The movie presents both versions as possibilities, and leaves the decision up to you. Deep ... right? But then similar to Basic Instinct, the movie is riddled with erotic moments with a hot newcomer actress in charge - an approach which significantly jeopardizes the secondary characters' motivations and development within the story. At the end, this all begs the question: Okay, Paul, what was the real reason you made this movie?
• Nevertheless, it's not a bad movie. Just that I'm waiting to see the day when Paul Verhoeven, with his superb movie ideas, will mature into creating a masterpiece.

MoGo's rating: 6/10

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The Many Saints of Newark (2021)

Director: Alan Taylor. Cast: Alessandro Nivola, Leslie Odom Jr., Jon Bernthal, Vera Farmiga, Corey Stoll, Ray Liotta, Michael Gandolfini. 120 min. Crime/Drama.

• What a disappointment. This reminds me of El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, which was a movie sequel to the fantastic show it followed up on, but which merely acted as just another two-hour episode of the series. The Many Saints of Newark, the prequel to another of my lifetime TV favorites, The Sopranos, painstakingly develops its characters to look and feel like younger versions of the show's main characters (including James Gandolfini's son unbelievably looking like a young Tony Soprano), to deliver ... this? The story is so incomplete, I thought this was the first part of a trilogy, showing Tony Soprano's gradual rise to power (since that's what the movie was advertised to be). But a little research shows this is it - this is all we get: 

"There are no definite plans for a Many Saints of Newark sequel at this time. However, in an interview with Deadline, Chase said he would be interested in writing another prequel film that would follow the events of The Many Saints of Newark, if he were able to write the script with Terry Winter, a former writer and producer on The Sopranos."

    What a waste.

MoGo's rating: 5/10

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Candyman (2021)

Director: Nia DaCosta. Cast: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris. 91 min. Horror.

• Let me just set the standard: I rank the 1992 Candyman as one of the top 10 horror movies of all time. To this day, I still avoid saying "Candyman" 5 times in the mirror. That's how effective the movie was. So this remake/sequel, co-written by Jordan Peele (of Get Out fame) and done for whatever reason twenty years later, had huge shoes to fill.
• To my understanding, the idea behind the concept of Candyman, is that when you exploit a community or minority (in this case, African-Americans by Whites), that minority will respond with extreme violence both to themselves and others - and the urban legend of Candyman is the metaphorical embodiment of that violence. This movie reiterates the concept, and expands upon it by suggesting gentrification of poor housing projects (the birthplace of Candyman) is just a worthless band-aid approach. The movie also pays respect to the original by summarizing its plot through a shadow puppets sequence, and fleeting cameos of the original's main actors. Other than that, the movie does not have much to add.
• There's a school restroom sequence where a few teenagers are slaughtered by Candyman. If you cut that sequence from the movie, nothing will change. And the movie is barely 90 minutes. Like I said, not much to add.

MoGo's rating: 6/10

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The Lost Daughter (2021)

Director: Maggie Gyllenhaal. Cast: Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, Dakota Johnson, Ed Harris, Peter Sarsgaard. 121 min. Drama.

• First and foremost: the presence of Olivia Coleman is good enough to watch a movie. Any movie.
• A middle-aged college professor/translator goes to Greece on holiday, and acts strange during social interactions. The title of the movie suggests she is traumatized from a lost daughter. But I guess Maggie Gyllenhaal (in her directorial debut) is intentionally not playing it that easy. We are shown through flashbacks the professor's life story: what she had lost, and maybe, what is actually lost in the story. The entire plot is kept vague, which brings up the question: is it vague to make it more artistic (and win awards), or is the unpalatable nature of this woman's problem the whole point of the movie? Because while I enjoyed Coleman's performance, I could not relate to her character.   
• Pay attention to the last scene. There's a question of a stabbing - shown to us during the movie's opening sequence. But then again by the end, we're not sure. Could the whole movie have been the hero's imagination? This is a movie everybody should experience on their own. 

MoGo's rating: 7/10

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Last Night in Soho (2021)

Director: Edgar Wright. Cast: Stars Thomasin McKenzie, Anya Taylor-Joy, Matt Smith, Diana Rigg, Terence Stamp. 116 min. Mystery/Horror.

• Edgar Wright can be considered a "fun" director. Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, The World's End, Baby Driver - all movies without much of a deep commentary, but with great technique ... and a helluva lot of fun. Last Night in Soho is no less. 
• The story of a naïve English country-side girl who moves to London to study fashion design but somehow connects with her wannabe persona in the sleazy 60's underworld, contains incredibly entertaining moments of visual narration (especially during an opening act dance scene where she switches bodies with her other self), and ends in blood and horror - all and all a fun movie experience. Even the numerous ghost hauntings (although repetitive) are an element to enjoy.
• Diana Rigg, the Bond Girl mainly famous for her more recent turn as old Lady Tyrell in Game of Thrones, has her final screen presence here.
• Anya Taylor-Joy again demonstrates her unbelievable star power. She's come a long way in a short timespan - her potential predicted 6 years ago here by yours truly, during her very first year in the business. And soon she'll be Furiosa in the Mad Max movies. Can't wait.

MoGo's rating: 7/10

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A Hero (Ghahreman) (2021)

Director Asghar Farhadi. Cast: Amir Jadidi, Mohsen Tanabandeh, Sahar Goldust. 127 min. Drama.

• It's happened to Farhadi too. Similar to Tarantino (with The Hateful Eight) and Christopher Nolan (with Tenet), he's overplaying a winning formula. We have his familiar moral dilemmas and the menace of "unintentional" lying, used again here to tell a story, but used several fold to the point of viewer fatigue. Numerous narrative elements kept adding up during the last half hour to the already convoluted (and somewhat disorganized) screenplay, until I finally threw in the towel. I just didn't care anymore.
• A man in prison for a debt he was unable to pay, discovers on leave that his girlfriend has accidentally found a bag of gold coins. Should he use it to pay off his debt, or find the owner and go back to jail? Or in Farhadi style: What would you do? The man makes a decision, and a social media whirlwind ensues. But we're not sure: is he a Good Samaritan ... or just a petty charlatan? The picture is so vague, I'm not sure even Farhadi knows - which of course to some may be considered the film's strength. But as mentioned, I'm suspicious this is becoming Farhadi's ploy to win awards at international festivals. 
• The film also contains my unforgivable cinema pet peeve: tormenting/traumatizing kids, as a cheap way to pull at the viewers heart strings. That's a no-no in my book.
• Jadidi and Tanabandeh work wonders here. The peak is a mid-movie scene where Tanabandeh lays out reasons why the movie's "hero", is anything but - a scene with fast dialogue Farhadi is a career-proven expert at. But when it comes to casting decisions, the movie goes wrong again by choosing Farhadi's daughter for one of the major supporting roles. She's just horrible in the role. Reminds me how Coppola ruined Godfather III by employing Sofia.

MoGo's rating: 5/10

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Don't Look Up (2021)

Director: Adam McKay. Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, Jonah Hill, Mark Rylance, Tyler Perry, Timothée Chalamet, Ron Perlman, Ariana Grande, Melanie Lynskey, Michael Chiklis. 138 min. Comedy/Sci-fi.

• I'm predicting this movie, a fictional farcical account of today's world response to an impending comet impact, which has been making some noise these past weeks, will soon be forgotten ... because of its shallow approach. 
• During the first half, director Adam McKay treats his viewers like idiots. We have a Trump-like figure, an Ivanka-like figure, a Dr. Fauci, and an Elon Musk, played by Meryl Streep, Jonah Hill, the DiCaprio/Lawrence duo, and Mark Rylance, respectively. The comet is a metaphor for Covid, or climate change. Nothing is subtle or artistic here. Nothing left for the audience to think on their own. Everything is spoon-fed, as though we didn't know and are being taught what kind of insanity we have been and are still living through. The movie treats the disaster as a comedy. Living under Trump was not a comedy. The movie is actually a documentary, and I found the comedic approach annoying.
• The second half gets better. The ending is the correct ending - because there is no other ending for the world at its current state. A Hollywood ending would've been wrong. Wait, did I spoil anything? Naaah, you're living the movie as we speak. There's no creativity going on here.
• Okay, this has DiCaprio's best performance since 2013's The Wolf of Wall Street. I'll give you that.   

MoGo's rating: 6/10

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The Matrix Resurrections (2021)

Director: Lana Wachowski. Cast: Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Neil Patrick Harris, Jada Pinkett Smith, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Christina Ricci, Lambert Wilson. 148 min. Sci-fi/Action.

• Instead of "Resurrections", this should have been titled "Extinctions". It's a horrible movie, which makes you think who in their right mind thought this was a good idea.
• The regurgitation of the prior trilogy's best hits (with desperate inserts from those movies ... a phenomenon not even dared by Star Wars Episode IX!), with a garbled confusing story-line, grotesque characterizations (Agent Smith is now a fun-loving boy, the French noble is now a mad bum) and overlong screen time, nails the coffin on this (dead) 20-year-old franchise.
• We now know that Laurence Fishburne and Hugo Weaving (Morpheus and Agent Smith from the old trilogy) and Lilly Wachowski, are smarter than Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Ann Moss, and Lana Wachowski. There can be many reasons for their absence here, but to me ... they just stayed away.
• Will possibly end up as my worst movie of 2021.

MoGo's rating: 3/10

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Being the Ricardos (2021)

Director: Aaron Sorkin. Cast: Nicole Kidman, Javier Bardem, J.K. Simmons. 131 min. Biography/Drama.

• Every time I sit to watch a movie from a filmmaker I'm interested in, I look to answer the question: Why did he/she make this movie? What was spark that put this into motion? While I respect Aaron Sorkin more as a great writer than a great director, by the end of Being the Ricardos, the story of one tumultuous week in the lives of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz during production of the popular "I Love Lucy" show ... that question went unanswered. By the end I thought: "So what?"  
• Nicole Kidman does not look like Lucille Ball, at all. This is in plain view from the very beginning - significantly questioning the wisdom of casting her in this role. But then there is one mid-movie scene where they're filming the show, and Kidman delivers Lucy's funny wide-eyed charm exactly as it was - and it suddenly hits you: she could've looked like Lucy all along, but intentionally didn't. An actor lives an entirely different life from what we see on screen, and Kidman expresses this concept perfectly. And I'm not saying this because she just won a Golden Globe for her performance last night.
• There's a standing ovation at the end of Sorkin's last film, The Trial of the Chicago 7, and there's a standing ovation at the end of this film. I also remember calls to "All rise!" at the end of A Few Good Men, the masterpiece that first introduced me to Sorkin's masterful writing. The man likes people to stand at the climax. 

MoGo's rating: 6/10

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