Love. Wedding. Repeat.

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Haley and Roberto are getting married. Their perfect Roman wedding has one important variable: the table full of English friends. Among them sit Haley’s brother Jack (Sam Claflin), Jack’s ex-girlfriend Amanda (Freida Pinto), Amanda’s insecure current boyfriend Chaz (Allan Mustafa), “maid” of honour Bryan (Joel Fry), the world’s most boring man Sydney (Tim Key), Dina (Olivia Munn), the journalist with whom Jack had a brief encounter but enduring infatuation several years ago, Rebecca (Aisling Bea), the saucy guest who’ll keep oversharing, and of course Marc, the very much uninvited guest who could derail it all.

The beautiful bride Haley implores darling brother Jack to do her a solid: save her wedding day by dosing coked up ex-boyfriend Marc with just a little bit of sleeping tonic. Harmless. Except that little bit of sleeping drought is in the bottom of a glass on a table where the seating cards have all been mixed up. There’s a 1 in 8 chance any of the above people is about to take a non-consensual nap.

It’s not quite Groundhog Day, but we do get to see several alternatives depending on who gets dosed. Sometimes things go hilariously wrong and sometimes they go sadly wrong and sometimes just resoundingly wrong.

I’ve never been the biggest fan of Sam Claflin but he doesn’t detract much from the movie, so I’ll give him that. I just think if you can get someone with a personality, why hire this cardboard cutout? He’s overpowered by literally every other guest at the wedding and he’s supposed to be our protagonist. Thankfully Key and Bea do a lot of the heavy lifting, lending levity to the film and a much needed spark of life.

Director Dean Craig takes a tired concept (revisited often by Netflix offerings) and has little to contribute. His butt is saved by a couple of stand-out performances in a movie otherwise as bland as the banquet chicken I’m sure they served.

The Gentlemen

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This gangster movie is both splashy and posh. No low-life thugs here, rather the cardigan-wearing upper crust of the criminal underworld. The gentlemen, indeed. With Guy Ritchie in the director’s chair, this translates to bloodshed over very expensive glasses of scotch and some ruined Louboutin heels.

The story is a bit of a tangle, especially since it’s told to us by blackmailer extraordinaire, Fletcher (Hugh Grant), who’s written a screenplay based on the dirty deeds he’s witnessed. He recounts it to Ray (Charlie Hunnam) with a certain amount of glee, Ray being Mickey’s right hand man, and Mickey (Matthew McConaughey) being the undisputed weed king of London. His drug empire is vast and highly profitable but he’s looking to sell and take early retirement, which means several of London’s rival gangs have been sniffing around his business. This includes Matthew (Jeremy Strong), a multi-millionaire looking to diversify, and Dry Eye (Henry Golding),a young mobster trying to make a name for himself.

If you can keep it all straight, the action’s actually quite a lot of fun, particularly with the addition of Coach (Colin Farrell). I was never 100% clear on who he is in the world, but he’s trained up a bunch of young men who choreograph elaborate fight-dances and them put them on Youtube. Except one time they go behind his back and hold up the wrong marijuana farm. Coach is furious, but he’s smart. He goes to Mickey directly to make amends, offering his services, and you bet they’ll be used.

And I haven’t even mentioned the bestiality, the insanely gorgeous wardrobe, the beautiful chrome-shifting car, the steak of questionable provenance, or the scene that makes “projectile vomiting” an extreme understatement.

While this may not be a Great Film, it is an extremely fun one. McConaughey is self-assured, Hunnam is commanding, and Grant all but steals the show. He does a flawless accent and doesn’t at all sound like himself. He’s a skeevy little rat trying to get a bigger piece of the cheese and it’s actually a lot of fun to watch him stroke his whiskers in greedy anticipation.

Despite some flaws, The Gentlemen is flashy and stylish, with director Ritchie flexing some real zeal.

Dolittle

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I suppose it might entertain very young children.

I have meditated on that single sentence above for minutes and even hours, wondering if I should leave it at that. Explaining the why and the how of this movie’s failure is baffling at best yet won’t even make for entertaining reading.

The story is weak yet convoluted. A physician/veterinarian (we have such a combo in our own family: Sean’s sister), Dr. Dolittle (Robert Downey Jr.) has sequestered himself behind the doors of his menagerie, gone full hermit since the death of his beloved wife. Luckily he has the unique ability to speak to animals in their native language, so he isn’t entirely alone, but his existence is notably and emphatically human-free. Until, that is, the day when not one but two children come calling.

The first is a boy who has accidentally shot a squirrel who needs immediate medical attention. The second is a girl sent from Queen Victoria’s palate where the Queen lays gravely ill, also requiring immediate medical attention. Dr. Dolittle, unhappy to be disturbed either way, treats the squirrel but needs convincing to attend to the Queen. In the Queen’s bedchambers he learns that she’s been poisoned and the antidote exists only on a faraway island. Dolittle, the boy Stubbins, and a bunch of animals of varying degrees of helpfulness, set sail on an epic adventure to find said cure.

They’re pursued by a villain with questionable motives, they subject us to a minutes-long fart joke (will small children even understand that Dolittle is rooting through a dragon’s anus with a leek, relieving it of all the undigested armor of the valiant knights she’s eaten for breakfast?).

I think the journey’s purpose is that Dolittle must learn he can grieve his wife without shutting himself off from the rest of humanity. They don’t exactly earn this, nor do they try very hard to express it.

The best and maybe only good part is an anxious ostrich voiced by Kumail Nanjiani. The worst part is, sadly, RDJ himself. He’s doing an indiscernible accent through which most of his dialogue is lost. He goes full nut when perhaps only half nut would have sufficed. His tone rarely matches that of the story. The poor guy has spent too many years acting in front of a green screen. I think for his first post-Ironman role he needed something a little more grounded but instead he went full fanciful and feels lost forever. Who can rescue his career now?

But Robert Downey Jr. wasn’t the only high-profile actor duped into signing on: Jim Broadbent, Michael Sheen, and Antonio Banderas all appear. Plus Emma Thompson, Rami Malek, Tom Holland, John Cena, Octavia Spencer, Craig Robinson, Ralph Fiennes, Marion Cotillard, and Jason Mantzoukas all lend their voice. And yet even standing on all these famous and famously talented shoulders, the film still cannot keep its head above water. Like an ostrich learning the hard way that he can neither fly nor swim, the movie simply adopts a dead man’s float and hopes a film goer or two might take a poke at its bloated corpse.

Vivarium

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Vivarium is the Humpty Dumpty of movies. It sits straddling a wall between sci-fi and horror. Every time Humpty leans toward one side or the other, our breath catches, waiting to see if he’ll finally take a definitive dumpty. But in all honesty, Vivarium also teeters on an even bigger, much more important wall between good movie and bad movie. The direction in which it ultimately falls will be entirely up to you, and you won’t be wrong either way. If you are willing to proceed, suspend your disbelief now and leave it here: ______________________. You won’t be needing it.

Gemma (Imogen Poots) and Tom (Jesse Eisenberg) are a young couple in search of a perfect home. One day they follow a real estate agent out to the suburbs to check out a new development. The house in question, #9, is indistinguishable in a row of identical little boxes made of ticky tacky, little boxes all the same. Welcome to Yonder, the sign beckons. Both the agent and the model home feel a little off; something in the back of your head niggles. Even Gemma and Tom are aware that something’s not quite right, but it’s Gemma’s politeness that have gotten them into this mess, and she’s determined to see it through. Neither are prepared for the agent to suddenly disappear, and both are stressed to previously unimaginable levels when they find that they cannot escape the labyrinth of infinitely repeating suburban homes. No matter how long they drive or how many turns they make, they always wind up back at #9.

Over the next few days, despair and desperation mount as the development proves itself to be a prison. Provisions appear, seemingly out of nowhere, and one day, one of the crates contains a baby, with simple instructions: raise him and you will be released. Within 90 days the baby is a walking, talking boy, but that’s the least alarming thing about him. This kid will shoot automatically to whatever list of top 10 creepiest movie kids you’ve been keeping in your head.

Director Lorcan Finnegan and writer Garret Shanley have cooked up a scathing indictment of the myth of suburbia, indeed the myth of parenthood. There is a not very subtle allegory here indicating that the monotony of suburbia is meant to lull us into placidity so we fail to notice that parenthood is literally sucking the life out of us. Children are a black hole of needs and wants that parents fill, fill, fill and the kid just takes, takes, takes, until there’s nothing left to give and the parent is just an empty shell of its former self.

Vivarium is not scary in the traditional sense of horror. It means to cultivate a current of fear in the circuitry of your own life. Does the pursuit of happiness betray us? Is the American dream a lie? Is domesticity a trap?

Welcome to Yonder.

Dolphin Reef

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Last week we were discussing Elephant, a brand new nature documentary released on Disney+. Disneynature films are perhaps not the most scientific among documentaries but they are beautifully photographed and extremely family-friendly. During these difficult days of self-quarantine, parents struggling to home-school their children or even just provide for some less junky screen time may want to turn to Disney+ for this not inconsiderable benefit. In fact, Disney+ is also home to National Geographic programs as well, perhaps better suited to older students. In any case, you can get a free one month trial from the streaming service and it’s hard to imagine a better time than now to use in.

Dolphin Reef is another incredible offering from Disneynature. This one dives under the waves near the Polynesian Islands in the Pacific Ocean to explore a colourful and diverse environment on the ocean’s floor. Dolphins have long been fascinating to we bipedal, air-breathing, earth-walkers. They are smart and engaging. They communicate and express emotion. They are playful and have close family bonds.

Echo is a young bottlenose dolphin who, at the age of 3, is struggling with the notion of growing up. His mom is devotedly and determinedly trying to teach him the ways of the reef but Echo keeps giving in to his silly side. But despite his playfulness, dolphin society is tricky, and survival depends on skill and preparedness.

As if Echo isn’t enough, we’ll also meet a mother-daughter humpback whale duo and learn some of the parallel trials and tribulations of growing up whale. In fact, there’s an entire ocean filled with orcas, sea turtles, and cuttlefish, and we’ll get the most amazing front row seats to it all.

What distinguishes a Disney nature documentary from others is that they write a narrative to go along with the pictures so kids get to know the animals personally. Each one becomes a character we can not only learn about, but root for. A few liberties are taken but on the whole the story fits accurately within the animal kingdom and the result is an exciting and engaging watch.

For me, even besides the dolphin and whale families we’ll get to know intimately, I just love trolling along the sandy bottom and discovering the bright and beautiful life that lives there. Lots of people look to the stars and imagine what alien life might exist, but I’ve always preferred plunging below the sea and exploring those unfathomable depths. There are creatures living on our own planet that defy our understanding. This documentary explores fairly shallow waters and still encounters fascinating species to capture the imagination.

Narrated by a very excited Natalie Portman, Dolphin Reef is an adventure worth taking.

Queen & Slim

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When I get pulled over by the cops, I don’t ever worry about getting shot. And that’s not because I am polite or non-threatening or have no criminal record. It’s because of the colour of my skin. It is a privileged position to occupy and I didn’t earn it, I just have it.

Queen (Jodie Turner-Smith) and Slim (Daniel Kaluuya) don’t have that same privilege, because their skin is darker than mine. When they get pulled over driving home after their first date, the cop is immediately suspicious, belligerent and demanding. Slim is ordered out of the car, required to pop his trunk, and when he asks the cop to hurry it along, has a gun pulled on him as he is told to get on the ground. Worse, when Queen jumps out of the passenger side and slowly and loudly announces she is going to record this confrontation with her cell phone, the cop shoots her. Slim goes for the gun and in the ensuing struggle, the cop is accidentally killed, instantly turning Queen and Slim into two of America’s most wanted.

Could Queen and Slim have done things differently? Sure they could have. There probably was a scenario where their lives and the cop’s life went on as normal. But this isn’t that story. Queen & Slim is about the repercussions of the traffic stop gone wrong, and its greatest strength is making the chase relatable to someone who wouldn’t necessarily make better choices but by reason of his skin colour would likely face very different consequences for any mistakes he made (and probably no consequences at all).

Screenwriter Lena Waithe delivers a believable situation and sympathetic characters. She also does well to detach the public portrayal of Queen and Slim from their actual personas. They did not ask to be outlaws and they did not choose to become fugitives. Those were the only choices they were left with after a cop accidentally got shot. It helps immensely that we get to know Queen and Slim, ever so briefly, before their fateful confrontation with an overly aggressive cop. We get to see how the chase is framed from the outside while also seeing that there are not two sides to this story, that the lazy media narrative framing these two as cop-killers is more than just wrong, it is dangerous.

Left unsaid, but hanging in the air to digest afterward, is the question of how many more times does this sort of thing have to happen in real life before our society stops arguing over whether there is a problem and starts working together to fix it. The biggest strength of Queen & Slim is that Waithe doesn’t shy away at all from the underlying social issues but manages, above all else, to be a compelling love story about two people who just wanted a chance at a second date.

The Honor List

Elephant

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Elephant is a brand new nature documentary streaming on Disney+; here are 10 reasons you should watch.

10. It’s family friendly viewing.

9. It’s a documentary so it practically counts as home schooling where you don’t have to do any of the work. Don’t worry, teachers do it ALL THE TIME.

8. Disney does a good job of making the story engaging. It’s not just passive viewing. They give us characters to root for and a narrative to follow.

7. The herd of African elephants we follow is led by a matriarch Gaia and her sister Shani, so there are strong female characters aplenty.

6. Shani has a playful young son called Joao, and honestly, he’s exactly the kind of happy, carefree vibes we need right now.

5. The photography is top-notch, the crew follows (in fact, gets ahead of) the herd for an entire year’s journey, and they cover a lot of ground.

4. Though this isn’t exactly full of facts and figures, it does give a great overview of African elephants, as well as a wonderful sense of the environment.

3. It’s wonderful to see elephants in their natural habitat – it’s sometimes perilous of course, but it’s also amazing to see them at work, at play, at rest, and at work.

2. Elephants have a strong family bond that’s inspiring and fascinating to witness.

1. It’s narrated by real-life princess Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex in her first role since marrying into the royal family (and likely the last under this title; she and Harry give them up at the end of this month).

Coffee and Kareem

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Twelve year old Kareem isn’t impressed with his mom’s new boyfriend, police officer James Coffee (Ed Helms) of the Detroit PD. Kareem is a lot of things but passive aggressive isn’t one of them, so his not-so-subtle hint basically involves hiring a criminal to “scare” Coffee dead, or paralyzed from the waist down at least. I know what you’re thinking: sounds like a good plan. And it almost would have been had Kareem not involved an actual criminal, which gets both he and Coffee into some pretty hot trouble.

The worst part is now they’ll have to work together to escape Detroit’s most notorious drug lord, and perhaps scarier still, explain to Kareem’s mom Vanessa (Taraji P. Henson) just where the heck they’ve been.

This is the buddy cop movie 2020’s been asking for: white cop with a molester mustache and a black kid running amok in a city that has more bad neighbourhoods than good. How else are we going to cure racism?

And it’s the movie we’ve all been craving when we’re on week 3 of our quarantine: funny. I know, it’s rare for a comedy lately to score actual laughs, and the humour in this is admittedly pretty crude (especially the stuff coming from the kid’s mouth), so some might be dissuaded and that’s okay. But neither of these guys has ever met a situation they couldn’t accidentally make worse.

This is not a thinking man’s comedy. It isn’t smart or clever, and it falters every time it tries to be. It’s some madcap fun with fairly unlikable characters, and a pretty generous pour of action and adventure. There’s no lack of violence and there’s some pretty fun new takes on car chases that might just win them some points. But mostly it’s just some mindless chicanery with a side of explosive gore, and right now, I’m not asking for much more.

Summer Night

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Mere hours ago I wondered to myself what “the kid” from Boyhood was up to. I vaguely remembered seeing him in one other thing, maybe, and then all of a sudden this movie pops up on my Netflix recommendations, and there he is. Ellar Coltrane. So yes, he has continued to have a career after that one seminal experience. By the looks of him he’s had more movie roles than he’s had hot showers, but who knows, I guess “unkempt” is a look, more or less, and “shampoo” could be an allergy. I suppose.

Anyway, he’s just one of many 20-somethings in this film. Others are played by Lana Condor, Analeigh Tipton, and Victoria Justice. In a 24 hour period, they mostly mope about, wondering what they’ll do with themselves, bemoaning the state of their relationships while also avoiding their relationships, and just generally succumbing to small town ennui. Until night beckons, and they all turn up at a bar which may actually be the bar. As in: one and only, but not particularly happening. The bar’s about one third full, and not only does everyone there know each other, most of them are playing in one of several bands featured on this night, and yes, we’ll hear quite extensively from all of them. Not to worry, this still leaves plenty of room for exes to side-eye each other, and future exes to eye-fuck each other.

This is Generation Z, so they are named Harmony and Corin and Jameson, and nobody ever shortens it or gives him a nickname, it’s just Jameson every time because if his mama went to all that trouble to give him a name that’s as special as he is, his buds are all going to respect it.

They’re young and they think they’re the first people to ever have these problems, and they seem so important when nothing has really ever happened to you yet. I don’t think all young people are vapid and clueless, but they are in this movie, and it was nearly unbearable.

I haven’t been this bored by a movie in a long time. First, there were entirely too many characters, and it’s impossible to keep track of who is who. Don’t even bother trying because their problems are interchangeable and their identities are non-existent. It’s impossible to care for people you know nothing about and it is far too easy to be annoyed by people who wear “don’t care” as a badge of honour.

Between director Joseph Cross and writer Jordan Jolliff, there’s a lot of Richard Linklater wannabe-ism going on but you can’t really call this a coming of age when it’s mostly just a lot of treading water while having remarkable unprofound conversation. This movie has no spark, no joy, no life. Forgettable characters go about their banal little lives and no one gives us a reason to take notice.