Sunshine Cleaning

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Rose is a single mother who has a son who’s just a little weird. A complete genius according to grandpa Joe, but his school doesn’t want him back. So Rose (Amy Adams) needs to make some serious cash in a hurry, to pay tuition fees at a private school where weird kids can thrive, and cleaning houses just doesn’t cut it.

So she assembles a crack team consisting of herself and her flaky sister Norah (Emily Blunt) and together they start cleaning crime scenes. Blood and guts equal serious hazard pay. Of course, there are also serious hazards. And I’m not just talking decomposition smells and bodily fluid leaks and brains on the ceiling. I’m talking about emotional hazards, like bereft widows who don’t know how to deal with Film Title: Sunshine Cleaninghusbands of 50 years being reduced to a blood stain in the living room. Not to mention the fact that Rose and Norah’s mother committed suicide when they were young girls. So, you know, this is potentially triggering work, and Rose and Norah aren’t hardened enough yet to have strict professional boundaries.

As the title suggests, director Christine Jeffs puts a sunny spin on a macabre subject. Well, sunny-ish. Overcast anyway,  which is pretty amazing considering the long shadows cast by tragedy. Sunshine Cleaning is a low-key movie. It’s intimate, with a light touch. Amy Adams is the sun at the centre of its universe. Everyone orbits around her, basking in her glow. Although I’m sure her character would not describe herself thusly, Rose is a fighter, a quiet fighter maybe, but she doesn’t give up. She persists. She’s seen hardship but you rarely see the cracks, which she deftly caulks with hard work and optimism. She’s the kind of character you root for even though she doesn’t ask for your sympathy – still, you feel she’s earned a break or two, and you hope to see her get them. Is that how life works? Not really. But it’s nice to dream.

Peel

11 Replies

When Peel is just 5 years old, his father abandons him, taking Peel’s 2 older brothers with him, but leaving Peel alone with his emotionally unstable mother. It is implied that his father just can’t deal with her hippie ways, her alternative views on parenthood (ie, she is still breastfeeding her 5 year old). But in leaving Peel alone with her, he dooms his son to be raised in near-isolation with a loving but overbearing, overburdening mother. And I’m talking real isolation: they have a house in the suburbs, but they don’t even leave it to do groceries. Peel mixes her drinks and lights and her cigarettes and soothes her when she’s coming apart at the seams. And then she dies.

Well, she dies when Peel is 30 and basically still a toddler. He has not been socialized at all. He’s not exactly dumb, but he’s naive as hell, and he’s just been unleashed on a world he hasn’t met. His lawyer is likely crooked; the house is immediately in peril of being lost, so Peel takes on roommates who of course take advantage of him. Just as he’s losing faith in humanity, he gets the bright idea to go in search of the father and brothers who disappeared 25 years ago and haven’t been heard from since.

It’s a delayed coming of age, I suppose. Peel is so without cynicism he just feels so vulnerable out in the big bad world. But I think we should feel more protective of him than we do. There isn’t that much behind his character, in the end. The whole thing just feels too inconsequential, but it’s not as if it doesn’t introduce some heavy topics. It wades into the consequences of broken families but treats the whole thing with such sweetness and sentimentality, it’s actually tough to swallow.

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John & Yoko: Above Us Only Sky

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John Lennon died before I was born, but that hardly means he’s failed to have an impact on my life. He casts such a long cultural shadow, his musical catalogue has such depth, and his ideas and philosophies linger still, in even the simplest line drawing of his face.

John & Yoko: Above Us Only Sky focuses on the 1971 recording of his album, Imagine, at Tittenhurst park, where he and his family had retreated from his swollen, frantic lifestyle as the world’s most recognizable pop star. Imagine stands apart from the work he did with The Beatles, and is in fact very much a collaboration with his wife, Yoko, and the ideas she tested out in her written work – especially 1964’s Grapefruit.

MV5BMzM1OTRhNzctOTRkNC00YjU4LTg1ZTYtOGVhMzZiMDA3Yzk2XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNDYxOTY1Njg@._V1_SY1000_CR0,0,827,1000_AL_The documentary is replete with never before seen footage and home video. It shows John and Yoko in repose, at play, at work, the midst of inspiration. Lots of session musicians and music journalists are interviewed – director Michael Epstein has literally sought out every and any person who was in or around the Tittenhurst recording studio at that time, including Yoko Ono herself, and son Julian.

Imagine surpasses musical status and has become a cultural touchstone. John & Yoko brings the album back to earth, back to its humble beginnings as bits and pieces inside John’s head. We see the songs mature from ideas to sometimes orchestral pieces, the musicians alive with an excited motivation they’ve probably never reproduced. Still, my favourite moments of this documentary are the domestic ones. It’s thinking about little Julian, who gets to crawl around a legendary recording studio but is bored out of his gourd listening to the same song over and over again. To him it’s just dad’s work. I also really loved watching John record a dis track against Paul – with George! Of course we didn’t know to call them dis tracks yet in 1971, but that’s exactly what it was, and it’s a delicious part of history, and John himself addresses the tension between himself and fellow Beatle Paul McCartney. They were brothers to the end, I think, often fighting because they were simply too close.

This documentary has lots of juicy little moments, literally something for every fan. But it’s also a tribute not just to John and Yoko’s love story, but to their partnership, their meeting of the minds. Because it’s clear that John is not just infatuated – he admires and respects her. She clearly influences his thinking, solidifies his philosophies. They’re changing each other at a cellular level and you can almost see it happening. John & Yoko is definitely worth a watch as it breathes new life into an album that’s hard to picture the world without.

The Hustle

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A small-time con-woman named Penny (Rebel Wilson) meets a big-time con-woman named Josephine (Anne Hathaway) and they inevitably tangle antlers. But then they decide to work together – Penny wants to learn from a mentor, and Josephine’s always had a con in mind that needs two people. But of course they’re still also working each other and eventually things get messy. Because while Josephine goes after big fish with an air of sophistication and a veil of class, Penny is loud and brassy and calls an awful lot of attention to herself for someone who probably should want to remain under the radar.

The two agree to settle their differences with one ultimate bet: whoever fails to extract $500K from their mark first has to leave town forever. Their mark is a rich young tech millionaire who seems almost completely guileless – Thomas (Alex Sharp, MV5BNTM1MzI4NjM1M15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMzc2MDE0NzM@._V1_SX1500_CR0,0,1500,999_AL_who clearly answered the casting call for a Mark Zuckerberg type and fits the hoodie perfectly). Penny poses as a blind woman to remind Thomas of his blind grandmother, and Josephine as the German doctor who can possibly treat her (hysterical, don’t ask) blindness. There are a thousand princes in Nigeria who could tell you this scam is unnecessarily convoluted, but where’s the fun in that?

Anne Hathaway has clearly been working on some accents, and here they all are. Rebel Wilson always has a breathless charm about her but I’m sick to death of her having to play roles for women lacking physical self-confidence. We get it: she’s fat. Hollywood continues to go out of its way to reassure us that they know she doesn’t belong. Here’s another character who feels unworthy because of her weight. Um, really? You do know it is entirely possible for someone to be fat AND confident. And more importantly, it’s extremely possible to be fat and still do your job, and do it well, and not make a whole thing about how much you weigh while you’re doing it. Wilson brings so much energy to all of her roles it’s exhausting to watch her, and a little uncomfortable too, because her body is so often the punchline and that’s not a joke I want to be in on.

The script is pretty uninspired, filled with the usual cons you’ve seen dozens of times before: men being duped into proposing with enormous rings, stealing diamond jewels, casino heists, etc. It’s a gender-flipped remake of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels that is simply too lazy to be any good; they don’t bother to update the jokes and there’s a deep chasm where subversive feminist comedy should have gone.. There are isolated laughs but nothing consistent. A training montage that for some reason includes clearing a pommel horse and uncorking a champagne bottle is particularly cringe-worthy. Hathaway and Wilson are fine, but they don’t have particularly good chemistry and it’s frankly upsetting to watch them be wasted on a movie whose only true con is the one that bilked you out of a $12 movie ticket.

 

 

 

What Men Want

6 Replies

Ali is a hard-working sports agent at her firm, where she is overdue to make partner but keeps getting passed over in favour of more bro-ey types. It’s a real boy’s club in there, but she’s motivated to join their ranks.

So that accounts for why she’s a bit down in the dumps at her best friend’s bachelorette party. A fortune teller come to entertain the women “sees” that she’s having trouble connecting with men, and has just the tea for that. And wouldn’t you know it, the next day Ali (Taraji P. Henson) wakes up with the ability to hear men’s inner thoughts, plus or minus a head injury.

Yes, this is a remake of the Mel Gibson vehicle What Women Want, though no one seems to have noted that neither men nor women wanted either of these films. And to be honest, Taraji P. Henson is eminently more watchable than Gibson and Helen Hunt combined (great Darwin’s ghost, what was 2001 thinking?), so the 2019 edition has a MV5BMTIxODZhYmEtYzM4MC00YzE5LWJhMDQtMmQyOTE4MDcwMDU4XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNzEwODIxNzE@._V1_SX1777_CR0,0,1777,999_AL_slight edge. However, women really are a mystery and Mel Gibson really is an idiot, so at least that version made sense. Taraji P. Henson clearly knows how to handle men. Ali is a confidant, competent, sexy woman. So let’s not sit around pretending that she’s the problem in search of a mind-reading solution. What this movie should have been is How Not To Be A Misogynistic Asshole At Work (Or Ever!). And also: How Not To Group All Men Into One Disgusting Category. What’s that you say? Men like sports and cars and not talking about their feelings? How very 1958 of you.I mean, sure, those things describe Sean rather perfectly. But he also farts and eats a lot! I mean, that’s not ALL he’s good for. He also carries heavy bags and holds my credit card and orders for me in restaurants. Wait. What? The onslaught of unadulterated sexism in this movie has jumbled my brain. If only a man was around to write this review for me!

You know what women want? Better roles for Taraji P. Henson. And I bet men want that too.

Pokemon Detective Pikachu

12 Replies

After 17 hours of trailers, the movie started playing. I’d of course forgotten what I was here to see. Ah yes, Detective Whatever. It occurred to me suddenly that it was possible that total ignorance was not the best state in which to be watching this movie. Should I have take some crash course? Too late now. But there’s the naked truth: I don’t know what a Pokemon is or what it does or how it works or if it’s the name of the little guys or just the name of a show. I wasn’t even entirely sure that it was a show. I remembered a very popular app from a few years ago that had otherwise sane grown adults running around cities chasing after imaginary conquests, and that there’d been something back when I was a kid – cards, maybe? A show? Pogs? Definitely something. Which is why this movie is not called Detective Jay or Good Memory Jay or Jay Gives A Shit.

What I’ve surmised is: Pokemon are a kind of cute little…animal? With powers? And Pikachu is a type of Pokemon with a specific set of powers, including a lightning bolt tail. The human component of this movie is a young man called Tim (Justice Smith) who has MV5BMWVkMjIxOWUtYmQzMC00YTRkLWExNDUtNGEzOWY1Mjk0MTczXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNTgwMDI0MDA@._V1_just learned that his father is dead. His father lived in the big city where he worked as a detective. Tim was raised in a small town, by his grandma. He hadn’t seen his father in years. When he lets himself into his dead dad’s apartment he learns two things: 1. His father was working a very big case when he died – and he possibly died in its pursuit, and 2. His father had a partner, and that partner is not dead as previously believed, but alive, and also happens to be a Pokemon named Pikachu (Ryan Reynolds) that can be understood by Tim even though this is apparently unheard of. Oh and a third thing: his father never stopped loving him, guys!

But anyways. Pikachu has suffered amnesia and can’t really help solve the case, but he’s game to give it a go from scratch, which for some reason Tim is eager to do even though he’s an insurance adjuster, not a cop. It involves a purple gas that renders normally docile Pokemon into rabid attackers. Don’t ask me to make sense of this. The thing is, if you’re a Pokemon fan, or even just know the slightest thing about them, then this movie likely has more appeal to you than it does to me. But for me, this movie was really a buddy cop movie, just don’t ask me which one is the Ice Cube. But since I don’t know the pre-established rules of this universe, I don’t get the oddball pairing, I don’t get the humour, if in fact there is any. Ryan Reynolds lends quite a bit of charisma through his voice, but for some reason it keeps reminding me of Deadpool, which is probably the exact opposite of what this cute little pika pika persona is supposed to project. Although he is a hard-boiled cop. In a deerstalker cap. I don’t know, man.

But what I do know is this: the kids in the audience didn’t love it. And before the movie, I thought, dear sweet baby cheesus, we’re in for a ride. Because the pre-movie commercials were KILLING IT with this kid-packed audience. Telus had a commercial where a flamingo was dancing to She’s A Maniac, and I don’t think that Jerry Seinfeld in his entire career racked up half as many laughs as that flamingo did in a 30 second spot. There was a trailer for Abominable that was a laugh riot. So was Secret Life of Pets 2. This was a disturbingly easy audience to pander to. Sean missed a lot of this because he was patiently waiting in the drinks line to quench my ruinous thirst, and I felt the need to warn him when he got back of what was to come. But it never did. There must have been some laughs of course, and it’s possible my brain was so overheated trying to to unravel story lines I missed them. But there wasn’t much. It seemed in my screening that the kids were underwhelmed. I can’t say that I was expecting any kind of whelm myself. I’ve been perplexed and unanticipatory since I first saw the trailer. And I guess that’s what the movie delivered: slight confusion and utter forgettableness.

 

But you know what? My 6 year old nephew Ben is a real Pokemon connoisseur and he has a different take:

Knock Down The House

8 Replies

In 2018, there was a big grassroots push to get some fresh blood into the U.S. Congress, where old, rich, white men have ruled things for far too long. That’s not a partisan problem, that’s across the board.

Knock Down The House is about the non-career-politicans who were brave enough to go MV5BZmY4NTdmZGEtYjkwNC00MTkwLTliNDQtNzBhZTJmZTg2Y2E3XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyOTU5NTk5Mzc@._V1_up against the old guard – women, and people of colour. These are working class people, daughters of coal miners, waitresses, descendants of immigrants and slaves. True Americans who want to see true change. And perhaps most importantly, they are not taking money from lobby groups. They are ordinary people who want to represent ordinary people. But without funds, or name recognition, that’s not just an uphill battle, that’s practically an Everest-sized challenge.

What’s easy to admire about this documentary is that it challenges not a particular party, but the status quo. It confronts voter apathy and cynicism and is a literal breath of fresh air.

In the  spotlight: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cori Bush, Paula Jean Swearengin, Amy Vilela. Not everyone can win, but the truth is, we all win just because they tried. Because hundreds will have to try for a couple to get through. Because even if it doesn’t topple over the kingpins, it makes them scared, and just a little more accountable.

What this documentary is: is inspiring.

Perfect Bid: The Contestant Who Knew Too Much

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Oh man, being sick was great when I was a kid. So great. You got to spend the day at Nanny’s house. Nanny had rich people’s margarine, which tasted 60% like butter and only 40% like chemicals. She was generous with it, which made her baloney sandwiches taste extra good. Of course, the thick-cut baloney didn’t hurt either. Heaven! You mostly got to lounge on the couch, being served, and watching TV. Nanny was devoted to her “stories” (her special nickname for soap operas) but before they started, there was The Price Is Right.

Perfect Bid is about a man who was not content to simply enjoy a game show from his grandmother’s couch on the occasional sick day. Ted watches A LOT. And he starts to MV5BYWUwYzdlOTQtY2YxNS00MWI1LTg5ZTgtN2YyMzNmYmFhZDA2XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNDM1MjU4MA@@._V1_SY1000_CR0,0,666,1000_AL_notice patterns. So he makes elaborate spreadsheets, enumerating prizes, and prices. And now there’s only one thing left to do: obsessively attend tapings until he gets picked. Ted is NOT local, so he spends years taking trips down to L.A. and by the end, people won’t even come with him anymore. It takes 24 shows before he finally gets picked, and up he goes to make his bids, and if memory serves, he’ll get them right. Down to the last dollar. But even the best memory can’t account for the component of the show that’s just plain luck, so Teddy boy doesn’t make it up to the Showcase Showdown. And wouldn’t you know it: The Price Is Right has a pesky rule that says once you’ve been chosen once, you don’t get chosen again.

So what now?

Oh you know I love me some documentaries about life’s weirdos. And the world is so full of weirdos they’re literally falling off. Ted is kind of a weirdo. And the director, C.J. Wallis, plays that to the max, practically casting him as some sort of not-so-evil mastermind.

Meanwhile, there’s a secondary kind of wonderfulness woven through the documentary like a ribbon, and his name is Bob Barker. It some ways, Perfect Bid is a tribute to Barker’s 35 year history with the show, always a perfect gentleman and a flawless host. There may be such a thing as a too-perfect contestant, but as a host, Bob’s perfection knew no bounds.

 

Wine Country

11 Replies

Six women, all former pizza waitresses, super longtime friends, head to wine country to celebrate a birthday: Rebecca is turning 50.

Rebecca (Rachel Dratch) is not so into this 50 thing. She’s a therapist who’s got great “feedback” for everyone else but has neglected the problems in her marriage.

Catherine (Ana Gasteyer) is a successful workaholic who’s having trouble disconnecting…and connecting, for that matter.

Naomi (Maya Rudolph) is a stressed-out mom of 4 who needs this time away so badly she’s bringing a weird intensity to the trip.

Val (Paula Pell) has a brand new set of knees and is hoping to find a new girlfriend to match.

Jenny (Emily Spivey) rarely leaves her house and has a super tepid reaction to literally everything.

Abby (Amy Poehler) has over-scheduled them all to within an inch of their lives. They’re having fun! (it’s on the itinerary in 20 minute increments).

These women are clearly tremendous friends, but their friendship is also so storied and MV5BMTJiMDEyYmMtNzVlOS00NTRhLTllNjEtNjdmZGRjYTQwODI2XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNjg2NjQwMDQ@._V1_SY1000_SX1500_AL_complicated. And a tarot reading only brings up their internal conflicts – then they add all the wine! Oooh, shit’s about to become unglued.

Amy Poehler directs for the first time, and assembles her own Avengers (mostly SNL veterans) and she brings such an amazing energy to the thing. Instead of non-stop laughs, Poehler trusts that we’re in the right company, and enjoying our time with the ladies will be enough. She’s right. It’s like being among your own friends. They randomly burst into pieces of song. They openly roll eyes at over-eager sommeliers. And they’re mostly just supportive of each other, sometimes in abrasive ways that only comes with true intimacy, but it’s nice that it’s so assured. It feels right.

I’ve been to Napa for a birthday too, with my 2 favourite assholes, Matt and Sean. And it seems like we did a lot of the same things: wine tunnels and short buses and organic wineries. These ladies probably went  home with the exact same high-end olive oil as souvenirs. So there’s room in this script for you to project your own shit, which I always think is nice.

 

Despite Everything

3 Replies

Four very different sisters reunite in Madrid for the first time in years upon their mother’s death. A series of profusely weeping men make displays of themselves at her funeral. The next day, at the reading of the will, the four sisters learn that the man who raised them is not their biological father, and that their fathers may be four different men, any or none of the weeping funeral goers. In order to obtain their inheritance, they have to go on a wild goose chase to find their parentage.

The premise is wacky but they play is straight. Or, as straight as possible when the characters are all ridiculous caricatures. Well, the lucky ones anyway. Some of them don’t even get drawn with wild but general cliches. There’s the French artist, the blind priest, and perhaps worst of all, the man with dementia.

The sisters, meanwhile, get an even worse treatment. Claudia (Belen Cuesta) is uptight, MV5BNDdlZDIzZTctZmIwZS00MTljLTg5Y2UtYjc1ODliYWExNDM2XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTM2Mzg4MA@@._V1_and her marriage is failing. Sara (Blanca Suarez) is an important New York City businesswoman who left behind her true love, Sofia (Amaia Salamanca) is a lesbian with commitment issues, Lucia (Macarena García) is the baby.

So it’s like Mama Mia, except it’s a funeral, not a wedding, and there’s no singing or dancing or Meryl Streep or reasons to watch. Did I enjoy this movie? Evidently not. I veered from bored to skeptical to mildly offended. Plus there’s the issue of dubbing, which unfortunately is always an issue, one I should probably stop complaining about since it saves me reading subtitles. I don’t mind a subtitled movie at the theatre, in fact my ADD probably embraces it, but at home I’m never just watching a movie – I’m watching a movie and and and and. Which keeps my energy in check and my mind focused enough to absorb things and not get bored. Subtitles make it hard to multi-task. But dubbing makes it hard to take a movie seriously. The lips don’t match! They never match! Still, I can’t help but admire the people who work on these translations – you have not to just turn Spanish into English, but distill the essence of what’s being said into the same amount of syllables, which many languages would make very challenging. Of course it’s a bad sign for a movie when I’m mostly just thinking about how hard it would be to fit all those words and meanings into a set cadence. And from what I’ve seen, Netflix is springing for real professionals, not those TV movie of the week people who keep speaking long after lips stop moving. But back to the movie: should you watch it? No. There are roughly 5500 titles on Netflix – Canada’s Netflix catalogue is third largest in the world, behind Japan and America. So there’s really no excuse. You’re not that desperate.