archandbillwiseguys

[archandbillwiseguys]

Last Men in a Movie Theater

April 16 2020

           Bill: Hello from the Delaware beaches, Arch.

           Arch: And hello from somewhere up Connecticut Avenue near D.C. Are you holding up okay?

           Bill: We’re all right. Eating less, walking more.

           Arch: It’s interesting how our wives give definition to our life. When this COVID-19 thing started Gina said, “Okay, look: We’re gonna go on a schedule. We’re gonna walk at least one hour every afternoon. Then we’re gonna take a walk every night after dinner. We’re going to do everything we can to keep our immune system high. We’re not gonna overeat, we’re not gonna over-drink and we’re gonna get as much sleep as we can.

           Bill: That’s funny, because you’ve just outlined my life exactly as it has been established by Carolyn these days. But even with all that, I still spend the first few minutes of each morning trying to remember what day it is.

           Arch: That’s what your smart phone is for!

           Bill: Not me. It’s sort of a brain exercise for me. I refuse to look at my phone until I’ve figured out what day it is. Happily, it doesn’t take me until noon to tweeze it out.

           Arch: Yesterday Gina and I decided to get in the car and drive to downtown Washington, and it was just weird. Spring is the time when everyone comes to D.C. – and the streets were totally empty. We drove around the Tidal Basin, around the monuments, and there was virtually no one. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s like one of those apocalyptic movies where humans have been nearly wiped out but the buildings survive.

           Bill: You were The Omega Man!

           Arch: Charlton Heston!

           Bill: “You maniacs! You blew it all up!”

           Arch: Now you’re confusing The Omega Man with Planet of the Apes.

           Bill: Funny how often Heston was the last man on earth.

           Arch: So, what are you watching?

           Bill: Well, I need to write a movie review every week for SaturdayEveningPost.com, and the pickings are pretty slim. This week I’m reviewing Love Wedding Repeat, on Netflix, which is a fun little rom-com.

           Arch: Is that the one with Olivia Munn?

           Bill: Yes, she plays the woman the hero is infatuated with.

           Arch: She used to be on The Daily show. She’s very funny. I find her very interesting.  

           Bill: That’s an interesting word to use. “Interesting,” I mean.

           Arch: Yeah. She’s really interesting!

           Bill: So, what have you been watching?

           Arch: Not a lot of movies, actually. Mostly, what I’ve been watching are streaming series. I’ve been watching The Plot Against America, which imagines that in 1940 Charles Lindberg runs for President against FDR and wins, so America doesn’t enter the war. And because Lindberg’s anti-Jewish he enlists a rabbi, played by John Turturro, to start down some steps kind of like the Nazis. It’s really compelling, and the performances are just terrific.

           Bill: I think you may have evolved beyond me when it comes to the future of narrative film. I see the value in letting a story unfold over many episodes — you get to know the characters, and the plot can twist in on itself countless times. But I still mostly admire the ability to tell a complete, satisfying story in two hours. I think I’ll always prefer movies to episodic TV.

           Arch: I think there’s room for both. But I also think it’s going to be a very long time before we see people flocking to a movie theater again.

           Bill: I’m afraid you’re right.

           Arch: You know what I miss? I miss walking past a little independent theater on a rainy afternoon and just ducking inside to see what’s showing. And you’d sit there, maybe all by yourself, and you’d get this wonderful sense of discovery, like this is a moment just for you.

           Bill: I know exactly what you mean. When you watch a film on Netflix or Amazon, you know that at any given moment a million people besides you may be tuning in. You have a sense that this is a mass-produced entertainment. But with a movie, in a theater with even a few hundred other people, you get a sense of intimacy you never get in your living room. And that’s ironic, because in your living room you may actually be alone. 

           Arch: Exactly. I’m afraid that’s something that is going to go away.

           Bill: Well, now I’m depressed.

           Arch: Cheer up. At least Lindberg’s not President.

#Arch Campbell #bill newcott #WiseGuys #reviews #plot against america #love wedding repeat #covidー19

[archandbillwiseguys]

Life Without Movie Theaters

 3 20 2020

3 20 2020

Bill: Come in, Arch. Do you read me, Arch? Over.

Arch: It’s a little fuzzy, but I read you. Over.

Bill: I am speaking to you from my secured safe site at the Delaware Shore.

Arch: And I am at an undisclosed location somewhere along Connecticut Avenue near the Nation’s Capital.

Bill: I guess neither one of us has sat in a movie theater recently.

Arch: Not me. And I don’t really see us doing it again any time soon. I get this feeling that everything has changed, and nothing will be the same again.

Bill: All the movie theaters are closed because of the COVID-19 virus, and a lot of them weren’t financially healthy in the first place.

Arch: This is certainly going to accelerate the move to streaming. I’m wondering what is going to be able to come back. AMC, which is one of the largest theater chains, may not be able to come back, because they’re financially strapped. I have a feeling when theaters re-open there’s not going to be as many of them.

Bill: Certainly it’s going to affect the little independent theaters; the mom and pop ones that live hand-to-mouth. They were already locked in a battle with the big theaters. There’s one independent theater near me that has seen the local multiplex pull films out from under them. The stars are already aligned against them and this could be the last straw.

Arch: One week ago AMC announced they were closing the Uptown Theatre here in D.C., which was a 1930s movie palace with a wonderful huge screen and a balcony. And that was before the coronavirus hit. There’s some talk that Netflix might buy it to show their stuff.

Bill: Wouldn’t that be ironic? Netflix was going to kill movie theaters, and now it may save one. In any case, I think all this may hasten what you and I have been fearing for a long time: The theaters will be reserved for big event movies from Disney and Warner Brothers, and the small films will all just go straight to streaming services.

Arch: I’ve counted at least five major releases that have had their opening dates delayed indefinitely: The James Bond movie; Black Widow, the Scarlett Johansson movie that was supposed to be the big one of the summer; A Quiet Place II; Mulan and Fast & Furious 9.

Bill: Fast & Furious 9! It’s amazing they keep coming up with different plots for that franchise.

Arch: No, it’s the same plot

Bill: This is going to cause a real backlog as more movies approach their release dates and get delayed. But even movie production is stopping: I see the new Minions movie is going to be held up because the animation studio in Paris has shut down. They simply can’t finish it.

Arch: All the little Minions will be wearing tiny face masks.

Bill: Turns out the only movie character who can safely go out these days is the guy from Scream.

Arch: Or the Phantom of the Opera. Of course, the short-term solution is to go straight to streaming with new movies, but nearly all of those delayed films are the kind you want to see with a crowd. When you see Fast & Furious or James Bond movies or horror films, those are the kind of movies you want to scream and yell and share with other people. So I think there’s hope. But whenever this virus finally burns itself out or they get a vaccine, when we come back it’s gonna be a completely different world.

Bill: The irony here is that a few decades after the big theaters like The Uptown became nearly extinct, theater owners may not be able to support their multiplexes anymore, with all those smaller auditoriums. If theatrical movies will be all about crowds and spectacle, the business will be all about big theaters with huge screens.

Arch: I think it’s more likely we’ll see a 14-screen multiplex showing just two or three movies — those blockbuster movies that can still draw a crowd.

Bill: I suppose you’re right – no one’s going to want to go through the expense of knocking down the walls of their little theaters to make big ones. All I know is the Spring Breakers will come, no matter what.

Arch: Those kids are so inspiring, frolicking on that beach in Florida, aren’t they?

Bill: Yep. They can bring back t-shirts for their grandparents: “My grandchild went to Florida and all I got was this lousy death sentence.”

Arch: I did notice that several sort-of mid-range theatrical movies are going to drop on Netflix and Amazon Prime. One of them is The Hunt.

Bill: We’ve been hearing about that one for almost a year, haven’t we? It looks sort of like a “Most Dangerous Game” film, with humans being hunted.

Arch: Well, I hear it’s more sly than that. It’s more of a satire, and really not bad. And the big films of the winter are streaming now — all the big Oscar winners. Parasite and Toy Story 4 and the Mr. Rogers movie and Ford vs. Ferrari.

Bill: I wonder if people will watch new theatrical movies on cable TV, or if they’ve sort of decided TV is for binge-worthy series only.

Arch: Those streaming series are just so good. I watched a series on HBO called McMillions, a six-part documentary about a guy who came up with a scheme to game the McDonald’s million-dollar Monopoly game. That was pretty good stuff. And we’re loyally watching Better Call Saul. And you can always start Mad Men all over again, and Breaking Bad.

Bill: I don’t know what it is about me. I’m still not into most of those long-term cable shows. I’m such a throwback — I’m still hooked on network TV. I mean, I’m actually thrilled that The Blacklist is coming back this week. What’s wrong with me?

Arch: I think you’d like The Plot Against America, on HBO. It’s just started. It’s about what would have happened if Charles Lindberg became president and aligned the U.S. with the Nazis.

Bill: That sounds great. Long as it’s not on opposite The Blacklist.

#movies #covidー19 #social distancing #Arch Campbell

[archandbillwiseguys]

Cats and Star Wars: Claws Out

December 19, 2019

Cats

Bill: I looked for you at the Cats screening.

Arch: I wasn’t there, because I’d already written my review. Want to hear it?

Bill: Please.

Arch: “I am never going to see Cats!”

Bill: Well, here’s mine: “I am never going to un-see Cats.”

Arch: I can imagine.

Bill: Imagine Judy Dench as Bert Lahr in The Wizard of Oz, and you’ve got Cats.

Arch: Wow.

Bill: And this: Jennifer Hudson sings “Memory” twice, sobbing all the time, and I barely remember it because I couldn’t get past these disgusting strings of snot dripping from her nose. Why would they do that?

Arch: Was it CGI mucus?

Bill: I would not be surprised, so many bad decisions were made in his movie. They don’t even keep the scale of the cats consistent. Most of the time they’re cat sized, but there’s one scene when they’re walking along some railroad tracks and, judging by the height of the rails, the cats couldn’t be more than three inches high.

Arch: Gee.

Bill: I mean, you’re doing the whole thing on green screen, anyway. Try to be consistent.

Arch: So, you didn’t like Cats.

Bill: It got me to re-thinking the whole notion of no-kill shelters.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

Arch: Did you find the new Star Wars movie to be as convoluted as I did? I mean, they spend so much time going through the family stuff: Who’s the son of who, and I am your father, and she is your mother. Everybody seems to be everybody else’s mother or father, or first cousins. I feel like they should have set the movie in West Virginia.

Bill: Even when they tried to clarify things it didn’t help much. At one point they show us the heroine’s parents in flashback, as if it’s some kind of big reveal, and I don’t remember ever seeing them before.

Arch: By the end I felt like the grandfather in Moonstruck, when everyone’s standing around in the kitchen explaining who’s not getting married to whom, and he just starts sobbing, “I’m so confused!”

Bill: They do try to stuff a lot of exposition in between the battle scenes.

Arch: I think there’s a sense of The Emperor’s New Clothes in that people are predisposed to like this movie because it’s Star Wars and they’re finally ending it after 42 years. But I don’t think they really figured out how to end it.  

Bill: I think I liked it more than you did, and maybe that’s because my expectations were not the same as yours. This movie and the last few installments prove the Star Wars format makes for an entertaining movie, but it also has limited narrative possibilities. We really are seeing the same story over and over again. I don’t think there’s anything that happens in The Rise of Skywalker that we didn’t see happen in an earlier movie. So, nice going, we enjoyed this, but it’s time to stop.

Arch: None of the more recent ones have been quite as good as the original.

Bill: Well, that’s because the stories are derivative by design, like second- and third-generation Xerox copies. But you have to admit this film looks fantastic.

Arch: It certainly looks better than the 1977 original. Back then they looked like they were driving around in Chevy Novas.

Bill: Also, their light sabers were actually humming fluorescent light bulbs.

Arch: I’m sure this movie will be a huge success. It’s fine. The fans will eat it up and they’ll probably shed a tear saying goodbye to these characters.

Bill: You know, I’m married to a woman who has never seen a single Star Wars movie.

Arch: You’re kidding. Is she 16?

Bill: Nope. All week she’s been asking me, “When are you going to see that Star Trek movie?” Because she’s never seen a Star Trek movie, either. Or even a Marvel Universe movie.

Arch: I think the Marvel Universe movies have outpaced Star Wars. They’re better movies and more accessible.

Bill: Yeah, but 30 years from now some film critic will be saying, “When is Spider-Man going to grow up? I mean, he’s been a teenager since the Obama Administration!”

#Cats movie #Cats Review #Star Wars Rise of Skywalker #Review

[archandbillwiseguys]

Bombshell and Marriage Story: Saved By The Stars

December 12, 2019

Bombshell

Bill: This week we’ve got two movies that are, as they used to say, ripped from the headlines.

Arch: Ah, yes! Ripped From The Headlines! Which does not necessarily mean ripping good.

Bill: Both Richard Jewell and Bombshell are getting a lot of attention.

Arch: Well, I’ve got problems with both of them, but I definitely loved the lead performances. Particularly Charlize Theron in Bombshell.

Bill: Yes, I’m seeing her name popping up on nearly all the Best Actress lists.

Arch: She plays the newscaster Megyn Kelly as she gets involved in the attempt take down Fox News President Roger Ailes for sexual harassment. I’ve got to say the entire time I was watching the movie I never gave one thought that I was watching Charlize Theron. The whole time I felt I was watching Megyn Kelly.    

Bill: It’s funny, Theron is such a glamorous, larger-than-life presence in our tabloid culture, it’s easy to forget she’s the type of actress who can disappear into a role, like in Monster and The Road.

Arch: Here she’s just mesmerizing. The film also gives a nuanced picture of Megyn Kelly, of how she at first brushed off a lot of improper stuff from Ailes because she wanted to get ahead.

Bill: What did you think of John Lithgow as Ailes? He’s one of my favorite actors, but he sometimes has a way of going way over the top, and I think that happens here. His Roger Ailes is so dripping with sleaze, he sort of reminds me of Jabba the Hutt in Return of the Jedi.

Arch: Yes! The movie portrays him as sort of a troll living under a bridge. He’s like an evil Smurfs character. And they have him in this horrible padded makeup. They don’t show any shades of gray in his character, and everybody has shades of gray.

Bill:  Did you see the documentary about Ailes last year, Divide and Conquer? It did a nice job of explaining how he got to be the man he was.

Arch: And there was a very good TV movie about him, The Loudest Voice, with Russell Crowe playing Roger Ailes. At least he seemed human.

Bill: I do prefer it when films allow the villain to have some layers. It makes them more  scary — we’re reminded that regular people can easily turn bad.

Arch: Well, the only layers on this Roger Ailes are the layers of bad makeup.

Richard Jewell

Bill: I was blown away by Richard Jewell, Clint Eastwood’s telling of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing investigation.

Arch: I think it is an example of very good filmmaking marred by Eastwood’s disdain for the press.

Bill: I know what you’re talking about: In the film, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reporter who breaks the story — who tells the world that a security man named Richard Jewell was the FBI’s prime suspect in the bombing — is portrayed as trading sexual favors for news tips.

Arch: Right. Whether or not it’s true, Eastwood just focuses in on that element and he uses it to paint the whole news establishment as crooked. Even worse, he uses the real name of the reporter, and she’s dead now so she can’t defend herself. It seems a little cowardly. In fact, I’ve read that the FBI agent who supposedly gave her the inside information is dead now, too, so they’re both defenseless.

Bill: I do understand that criticism. Just like poor Roger Ailes isn’t around to defend himself, either.

Arch: (silence)

Bill: I’m joking, of course.

Arch: Are you, Bill? Really? Anyway, I don’t know why Clint is spending so much energy tearing into newspapers. They’re dying, too.

Bill: I’m pretty sure Clint Eastwood is going to outlive the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

Arch: It sure looks that way.

Bill: But you will agree with me the performances in Richard Jewell are fantastic.

Arch: Absolutely. The guy who plays Jewell, Paul Walter Hauser, really nails it. He really has that gung-ho, Paul Blart: Mall Cop thing down pat, only in a more tragic, sympathetic way. And Kathy Bates is terrific as his mother.

Bill: As always.

Arch: Yeah.

Bill: I hope we’ll see both of them at Oscar time. And despite your reservations, Clint Eastwood, too. He’s such an efficient, effective filmmaker.  

Arch: I think he made a good movie and then he undercut it with a way-too-heavy hand.

Marriage Story

Bill: Everybody loves Marriage Story.

Arch: I HATED Marriage Story!

Bill: Oh! I liked the performances. I did feel it tried to mine the exact same ground as Kramer vs. Kramer did and came away with very little that was original. The arc of the story is unremarkable: A couple falls in love, they have a child, they grow apart, and now they’re in the middle of a split that is difficult, but not unusually so. It’s not like we get to the end with an expectation of them getting back together.

Arch: Right. I really wanted to like Marriage Story because everyone is talking about it.

Bill: I feel like the performances save it. Scarlett Johannson is usually very good, and she is here. I have to confess I seldom really like Adam Driver as an actor, with some notable exceptions like Paterson. But in this film I felt he was extraordinary. It’s a very centered, very focused performance.  

Arch: I did not like the characters. I felt it was the story of two spoiled One Percenters. And as Humphrey Bogart told Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, “The problems of two little One Percenters don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”

#movie reviews #Marriage Story #Richard Jewel #Bombshell

[archandbillwiseguys]

A Boy’s Best Friend: Mister Rogers vs. Hitler

11 21 2019

A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood

           Bill: We’re coming up on Thanksgiving, and it looks like there will be at least one good film to take the family to.

           Arch: No turkeys here!

           Bill: Well, one of us had to say that. Of course, the big film is A Beautiful Day In the Neighborhood, the film that stars Tom Hanks as Mister Rogers.

           Arch: I thought it was delightful. And the big surprise is, everyone is keying in on Tom Hanks, but Matthew Rhys is quite good as the journalist sent to interview him and who becomes a lifelong friend.

           Bill: As good as Hanks is, the reporter is the heart of that movie, and Rhys really nails it. If you don’t buy him, the whole movie would just become Tom Hanks doing a Mister Rogers imitation.

           Arch: The reporter is presented as this hard-hitting guy who writes tough stories. Someone asks him, “What was the toughest story you ever wrote?” And he says, “Eh, you look it up and read it yourself!” He’s a tough guy.

           Bill: Beyond being tough, he’s kind of a punk. It’s very easy not to like him at the start.

           Arch: Beyond the acting, I thought the production of it, with the miniatures of New York City and Pittsburgh that looked like they’re part of the Mister Rogers TV set, was just lovely.

           Bill: Those production details are so central to the effect of the whole movie — it’s about rediscovering the child in us all, and presenting the big city as a child’s world is, I think, ingenious. The whole movie is so lovingly crafted. Clearly everyone involved felt warm about the subject matter.

           Arch: It’s amazing how they manage to get us to care about this guy who had a kids show on public television in the 1970s. Of course, the script is based on an Esquire piece by the reporter Tom Junod. The writers of the film were at the Middleburg Film Festival in Virginia, and they got busted on a few things about their script, like how they made the relationship between the reporter and his father much more difficult than it actually was.

           Bill: Read Junod’s piece in the current Atlantic addressing that issue. He didn’t have approval of the final script, but he says he understands why they made those changes. It’s the main reason the character in the movie has a fictitious name.

           Arch: Anyway, in spite of that I thought it was a delight.

           Bill: Do you think a lot of guys will get red cardigans for Christmas?

           Arch: Oh, I hope not.

                       Jojo Rabbit

           Bill: I saw this film at the Toronto Film Festival, and I must say a lot of people in the audience were confused by it.

           Arch: I can’t understand why. It’s just the nice little story of a young boy living in Nazi Germany and his imaginary friend happens to be Adolf Hitler.

           Bill: Yeah, what’s not to relate to?

           Arch: I liked it lot, and I think I probably liked it more than the rest of the audience liked it.

           Bill: Yeah, for the most part I sensed that while the audience admired the filmmaking, they just didn’t know what to make of it. It was almost like the whole thing was short-circuiting their brains.

           Arch: That’s pretty much what I saw.

           Bill: I just went with it, because I’m usually inclined to let the filmmaker have his way, especially directors like Taika Waititi.

           Arch: Did you just know that guy’s name off the top of your head?

           Bill: I have to confess I’m looking at IMDB right now.

           Arch: Whew.

           Bill: He also made The Hunt for the Wilderpeople and Thor: Ragnarok, which is head and shoulders the best Marvel movie ever.

           Arch: I liked it a lot. I thought it was very creative. It’s very funny, the performances are great — and toward the end it does take a turn and gets very serious. But I think it might be the kind of movie that a critic likes more than an audience member.

           Bill: I’ve had more than one person give me the fish eye after they’ve gone to see a film I recommended.

           Arch: So, this week, A Wonderful Day In The Neighborhood is the one film I wouldn’t have any qualms about recommending.

           Bill: I agree.

           Arch: If you recommend Jojo Rabbit, however, you might get some angry phone calls.

           Bill: This is a surprisingly dangerous line of work.

#movie review #beautiful day in the neighborhood #mister rogers #jojo rabbit #arch campbell #bill newcott

[archandbillwiseguys]

The Irishman: Who’s Lucky Now?

November 15 2019

The Irishman

Arch: Did you see The Irishman yet?

Bill: No — and its sitting right there waiting for me on Netflix!

Arch: Well, I’d tell you go watch it and I’ll wait, but it’s three and a half hours long.

Bill: Wow. Including bathroom breaks?

Arch: I’m telling you the truth: I sat through all three and a half hours and I never even got up to go to the bathroom.

Bill: Wow. The highest compliment any man over 60 can pay to a filmmaker.

Arch: I know, right?

Bill: They should work that into the advertising somehow.

Arch: I loved it. I think it’s the perfect hybrid movie for our time. Because it’s so long, when you watch it at home you can pause it and take a break. And I think it will probably play even better as a Netflix film than a movie theater film.

Bill: Well, I have my now-famous rule of thumb: A filmmaker has to earn every minute he or she goes over two hours, and I start deducting points if they don’t. But you’re saying I may have to recalculate that rule.

Arch: I’m afraid so.

Bill: That’s ironic, because in Goodfellas Ray Liotta specifically says, “You break the rules, you get whacked.”

Arch: Well, the times they are a-changing. The Irishman is just wonderful to watch. It’s Robert De Niro working his way up from truck driver to a mob enforcer because of a friendship with Joe Pesci.

Bill: So, where the heck has Joe Pesci been? He’s one of my favorite actors and he hasn’t made a movie in nearly 10 years.

Arch: I guess he was waiting for Scorsese to make another mobster film. And he’s fantastic here. Pesci introduces De Niro to Al Pacino, who plays Jimmy Hoffa, and De Niro becomes Hoffa’s bodyguard.

Bill: So, does the movie explain what happened to Jimmy Hoffa?

Arch: Yes, and spoiler alert: He doesn’t end up under the end zone of Giants Stadium in New Jersey. For the last 20 percent of the movie, De Niro is an old man thinking back over his life and the choices he made, and either regretting or stonewalling his life. It’s actually lovely. I think it’s probably a little too long, but I loved it anyway.

Bill: I know they used digital technology to erase years from De Niro, so he could play a younger man in the beginning. How convincing was that?

Arch: Actually, I found the old-age makeup they use later in the film less convincing than the digital effects earlier.

Bill: In my days running AARP’s Movies For Grownups I created a negative award category: Worst Old Age Makeup. It wasn’t that Hollywood makeup people couldn’t create convincing old age effects, but it seemed the actors were too vain to let them do a really good job. So the actresses would be the hottest 80-year-olds you ever saw.

Ford v Ferrari

Arch: You told me about this film after you saw it in Toronto, and I was really looking forward to it.

Bill:  Did you like it as much as I did?

Arch: I loved it.

Bill: It’s funny, when I first saw it I came out of the theater saying, “I liked it…nothing special.” But it stuck with me, and I now think it’s even better than I originally thought.

Arch: Matt Damon is a racing car designer, and Christian Bale is his favorite driver, and they’re hired by Henry Ford II, played by Tracy Letts, to create a car that can beat Ferrari at Le Mans. And they’ve got 90 days to do it.

Bill: The performance that impressed me most was by Letts — which is saying something, since he’s up against all that star power.

Arch: I was most taken with Caitriona Balfre, the Irish actress who plays Bale’s wife.

Bill: She’s from Outlander. The women in my neighborhood all get together for secret meetings to watch Outlander. I don’t think men are allowed. But I hear there’s a lot of sex involved.

Arch: To clarify, you mean sex on Outlander.

Bill: I think so.

Arch: Well, she’s terrific. And the relationship between Bale and Damon is lots of fun. There’s an old-school, old-fashioned vibe to it, and I really liked that.

Bill: Sort of reminiscent of Paul Newman and Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and The Sting.

Arch: Yeah. This film is on my 10 Best list.

The Report

Arch: Man, I thought The Report was a complete snoozer.

Bill: I sort of feel like it was a mistake to even try to make this movie. It’s the true story of a government analyst, played by Adam Driver, who uncovers abuse of prisoners by the CIA. But the action, if you could call it that, involves people looking at computer screens, or flipping through thick documents, and saying stuff like, “This changes everything!” and “I can’t believe this!”

Arch: Adam Driver is one of my favorite actors, and I generally like everything he’s in. But I got about 20 minutes into it and I was ZZYCHHHSNORF. I was snoring.

Bill: It wants to be All The President’s Men, but there’s none of the urgency, and instead of Jason Robards as Ben Bradlee you get Annette Bening — for my money the greatest screen actress of our time — as Senator Dianne Feinstein.

Arch: I know! And she just sits there on a couch and says stuff like, “Are you absolutely sure about this??”

Bill: She keeps sinking farther and farther into that couch. I was hoping she’d find some change under the cushions. That would’ve made it more interesting.

[archandbillwiseguys]

Ad Astra and Downton Abbey: Style and Spectacle

September 20, 2019

Ad Astra

Arch: When was the last time you saw 2001: A Space Odyssey?

Bill: I try to watch it at least once a year, why?

Arch: Well, I saw Ad Astra, Brad Pitt’s new sci-fi film, and in many ways it reminded me of 2001.

Bill: In a good way?

Arch: Well, in a good way and a bad way. It also reminded me of Apocalypse Now.

Bill:  Do go on.

Arch: Have you seen it?

Bill: No, I was at the Toronto Film Festival when the previews happened, so I missed it.  

Arch: Well, remember in 2001 when Stanley Kubrick takes us to the space station, and we’re on a Pan Am clipper and there’s a Hilton hotel and a Howard Johnson’s?

Bill: And a Bell Telephone picture phone!

Arch: Right. Well, this time Pitt’s character goes to the moon and there’s a Subway sandwich shop there!

Bill: I would like to have seen a Quiznos.

Arch: Also, there’s a Hudson News and an Applebees.

Bill: That would have to be an extremely expensive Applebees whisky bacon burger. It’s always a little risky when sci-fi filmmakers use product placements like that — there’s the chance the companies won’t survive, and years later they make the future seem weirdly dated. Pan Am isn’t around any more, and Howard Johnson’s is just about extinct. It happened to Ridley Scott in Blade Runner. Remember the huge Atari and Pan Am signs?

Arch: Time will tell, I guess. On the plus side, like 2001, this movie has a real cosmic vision. Visually, it’s probably the most impressive space film since 2001.

Bill: Wow. That’s saying a lot.

Arch: Brad Pitt’s character is an astronaut who is sent on a mission to find his father, who disappeared years earlier doing some top-secret experiments. So he sets out into the depths of space to locate him.

Bill: So, that’s the part that reminds you of Apocalypse Now: it’s like Martin Sheen heading up the river to find Marlon Brando.

Arch: Right! And Ad Astra faces the same problem Apocalypse Now did: Where does the story go when you find him? I’m not sure Ad Astra finds a really satisfactory way to resolve that, but I tell you it’s a hell of a trip.  

Downton Abbey

Arch: I went to a screening of Downton Abbey, and every single guy there had a woman with him. Every single one! Wives, mothers. They were all so excited — and they all walked away with exactly what they’d hoped for. It’s beautifully made and very satisfying, at least for people who watched the show.

Bill: I take it you watched the show.

Arch: My wife and I devoured it.

Bill: We came to it late. I was sent a boxed set of the first few seasons, and we started to watch it one night when nothing else was on. And I’m not sure we slept until we’d gotten through all 30 episodes or so.

Arch: It was addictive. The scripts were clever, the acting was perfect, the setting was lavish.

Bill:  And the movie is pitch perfect. A lot of movies based on TV shows seem obsessed with delivering something more than what they had on the small screen: More lavish locales, bigger casts, more complex storylines. But Downton Abbey is really just a continuation of the TV series, nothing more, and I think that was a really wise decision.

Arch: You do have the King and Queen of England showing up. So that’s kind of special. And that leads up to one of the funniest scenes of the year; a scene that is worth the price of admission alone.

Bill:  But we can’t say what it is.

Arch: No. But it involves the king and Mr. Molesley.

Bill: Yes! Mr. Molesley! As minor a character as you’ll find from the show. But he gets one of the best scenes in the film. And that’s what’s so great about the Downton Abbey movie for people who loved the show: Everyone gets at least one moment in the spotlight, and it never seems forced.

Arch: I pity people who’ll get dragged in to see this who never were fans of the show. I’m sure there’ll be more than a few disgruntled husbands. But this audience was just enraptured.

Bill: They had a sneak preview of Downton Abbey here at the Delaware beaches — strictly word of mouth — and they filled two theaters.

Arch: Same here in DC — two theaters. And that led to a moment of panic: The lights went down and the film started, and Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood started! They’d cued up the wrong movie, probably the one that was originally slated to show in that theater.

Bill: Definitely a different cinematic experience.

Arch: I’ll say. This enormous groan went up. If Maggie Smith had been there she would have come up with a clever zinger about it.

#movie review #downton abbey #ad astra #Brad Pitt

[archandbillwiseguys]

Mike Wallace Is Here: The “Minutes” Man Revealed

August 2, 2019

Mike Wallace Is Here

Arch: Mike Wallace is Here is a fascinating look at not only this guy’s career, but also the early days of television.

Bill: I really enjoyed it. I wasn’t always a huge fan of Wallace – he seemed too anxious for a fight most of the time. But he really is a fascinating character.

Arch: This documentary follows his whole career from local TV to 60 Minutes, and they dig up some really amazing old clips, especially of his 1950s New York interview show, Nightbeat. It’s just him and his guest on this pitch-black set, and he’s smoking a cigarette and there’s a spotlight that makes it look like an interrogation. He was the first guy to understand how to do TV interviews, and he was the first guy to do hard-hitting ones.

Bill: He’s sort of a combination of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Winchell. What I find most fascinating in this film is how he started out as this chirpy, smiling game show host and TV pitchman. He’s there selling pie crusts, for crying out loud.

Arch: It appears that one day he just decided he’d had enough of that, and from now on he was gonna be this Mike Wallace character.

Bill: The film seems to say he made that choice when his grown son died suddenly.

Arch: Yeah, but I don’t really buy that. It seems like a convenient choice the filmmaker made as a turning point. He was a lot more complicated than that. The same thing with the idea that no one thought 60 Minutes would be successful. No one puts a TV show on the air expecting it to flop. They knew they had something, that they were inventing a new kind of TV — and Mike Wallace was the biggest reason it succeeded.

Bill: In your hallowed broadcasting career, did you ever cross paths with Mike Wallace?

Arch: No. When I was just starting out in radio in Austin, Texas in 1966 we used to air a show he did. It was a terrible radio station. They’d run 10 minutes of CBS News and then five minutes of local news, and then on the half-hour a show called CBS Dimension. And then they’d play some music! It was awful, and the people working there weren’t very talented. Mike Wallace did a series called Campaign ’68 that no one heard, but he was compelling to listen to. I’d just stand there in the studio marveling at how great it was. And he was a really tenacious interviewer. There aren’t any like him on TV anymore.

Bill: Well, interestingly, his son Chris Wallace comes close.

Arch: And he’s his own man. Chris Wallace is actually a very nice man. He and I go to the same dentist, and I spent a morning with him at the dentist’s office. He’s very engaged, and he loves to go to movies. He was a delight.

Bill: His son was on my son’s tee ball team in DC. He often sat right in front of me (or I sat behind him). I was jealous of all his hair. But he was an enthusiastic rooter. I liked him.

Arch: Wow, we sure do rub shoulders with the rich and famous, don’t we?

Bill: A couple of real hobnobbers.

Arch: I like Chris Wallace and I like that he pushes back on his bosses at Fox News. But there’s nobody like Mike Wallace. The film also captures what we have lost, and that is the network brass who would defend their talent. CBS stood behind Wallace in the General Westmoreland case, when the general sued CBS and the network endured an expensive trial. Then came the Williamson Tobacco expose, where the new owners of CBS killed a story rather than face a possible lawsuit.  

Bill: It’s a different world now.

Arch: It is a different world and it’s a delight to look back at the previous world.  

Bill:  These kids today…

Arch: Mike Wallace is not here, but he is there, in that documentary.

#mike wallace is here #review #Arch Campbell #Bill Newcott

[archandbillwiseguys]

Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood: Tarantino’s Sweet Side

July 26, 2019

Bill:  I’ve never been the world’s biggest Quentin Tarantino fan, but I’ve gotta say I absolutely loved Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood.

Arch: Me, too. I loved every minute of it.  

Bill: And that’s a lot of minutes to love — two hours and forty minutes.

Arch:  For me, it just flew by.

Bill: The whole film is an extended love letter to the 1960s, to the movies, and to Los Angeles.

Arch: When was the first time you were in LA?

Bill: That would be when I moved there in 1977. Even then, it still felt a lot like the LA we see in this movie.

Arch: My parents took me to California when I was five years old, and it was one of those touchstone experiences of my life. Then as an adult I went for the first time in 1972. In this film, Tarantino really captures that freedom of LA and its automobile culture. Everybody was driving on the freeways and the freeways were moving and everybody’s car was washed.

Bill: I’ve never seen so many car washes as there were in LA in the 1970s.

Arch: LA at the time was still a mix of the 1950s and the 1940s. There were greasy spoon dives and wonderful movie theaters. And you’d drive everywhere, with the wind blowing through your hair.

Bill: I remember wind in my hair. And I also remember hair.

Arch: He captures all that. He shows the hippie girls hitchhiking. He shows a kitschy visit to the Playboy mansion. The characters go to these crowded little Mexican restaurants. The art direction alone is award-worthy. It literally took me back to the first few times I ever went to California.

Bill: The whole film has a sweet quality about it, and it feels weird to attach the word sweet to Tarantino.

Arch: It’s sweet and funny and a marvelous portrait of male friendship

Bill: That really is worth noting. The film is about a fading TV star, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, and his stunt man, played by Brad Pitt. And they are just as close as two guys can be; best friends who stand up for one another and bicker and joke. You feel like they’d do anything for each other.

Arch: The connection between DiCaprio and Pitt is wonderful. I think it’s the best movie bromance since Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Bill: I absolutely agree, and it’s maybe even better, because the one and only thing that bonds these guys together is how much they like each other. I should say they absolutely love each other. It may be the most nuanced male friendship I’ve ever seen in a film, and the two stars do a fantastic job of portraying that.

Arch: So he takes this great screen relationship and an authentic recreation of 1969 LA and places them in an alternate universe where the Manson murders are about to happen. And we can’t say what happens, but Tarantino rewrites history a bit here, just like he did in Inglourious Basterds when he killed Hitler. It seems like only yesterday, but this all happened 50 years ago. If we were sitting here having this conversation in 1969, we’d be talking about something that happened in 1919.

Bill: And Tarantino would have made a movie where the Archduke Ferdinand somehow eludes assassination.

Arch: Yes! He pulls a machine gun out from under the car’s rumble seat and blasts his way out of there.

Bill: And World War I never happens!

Arch: This may be Tarantino’s best film. You’ve got this comic story about a down-on-his-luck actor and his best friend/stuntman trying to extend their careers. And then you’ve got the cultural references, and underlying it all is this menace of Manson, the counter culture, and the specter of violent death. Tarantino’s films always have that violent aspect, of course, but I think this time he finds the perfect balance.

Bill: There are several times in the movie when you think violence is about to erupt, and that he’ll finally go Full Tarantino. But he plays with us — he steps back from the brink as if he’s saying, “No, not yet. Just wait.” Tarantino is really onto something in terms of righting history. In Inglourious Basterds Hitler gets his. In Django Unchained the slave owners finally get what they deserve. And here he turns the tables in a most unexpected way. People want to see the villains of history get their comeuppance, and Tarantino is making that happen.

Arch: It’s also a love letter to the movies, which he may see as a dying art.

Bill: Tarantino’s commenting on the art of film all the way through. He shot the movie on 35 millimeter Kodak stock, and it has that glorious shimmer you can only get with film. And he’s left in occasional edit marks and work print scratches, just to remind you this is a movie, and it was shot on film, just like 1969.

Arch: One thing I love about this movie: It’s about a time when there was no Netflix, when all the most creative energy in Hollywood was still in the movies. And after a movie everyone would go out front to the lobby, or the front of the theater, and talk about what they’d just seen. Well, we saw Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood in a theater, and as the movie let out everyone stood there in the lobby, just talking about it. I think Tarantino has touched on the thing that we all feel is endangered: The love we have for movies and the love we have of talking about them afterward. He’s tapped into the thing that makes movies great.

#Once Upon A Time In Hollywood #Quentin Tarantino #review #Leonardo DiCaprio #Brad Pitt

[archandbillwiseguys]

Yesterday: Absolutely Fab

June 28 2019

Bill: We both loved Yesterday.

Arch: Every bit of it.

Bill: I don’t think you need to love the Beatles to feel that way, but it helps.

Arch: The plot is sort of gimmicky: A struggling singer/songwriter wakes up one day and he’s the only one who remembers the Beatles, so he can go around pretending to have written all their songs. But the music is so great, and the characters are so likable, and Danny Boyle’s direction is so fluid, you just go with it.

Bill: Plus, I think it taps into something that really resonates with people our age: We’re a little afraid people are going to forget the music of our youth.

Arch: That’s right.

Bill: Music now seems to be moving away from what we grew up with. I mean, think about it: Kids being born today are as far removed from the early Beatles as you and I were from early Al Jolsen. And who listens to Al Jolsen anymore?

Arch: My God! We’re old!

Bill: It sure helps that the musical performances in the movie by Himesh Patel, who plays the musician, are very good.

Arch: He does a rendition of “Help!” toward the end, when he’s caught in this lie,  having painted himself into a corner taking credit for somebody else’s work. The performance not only moves the plot along, but it actually gives new meaning to the song. I thought it was one of those “Wow” moments.

Bill: It’s a dynamic performance of “Help!” I think you’d categorize it as a speed metal version, and it really does add a sense of anguish and urgency to the song.

Arch: I also liked Lily James a lot. She plays the hero’s galpal, the manager who wants to be his love interest. She’s sweet and beautiful and everything you’d want in a leading lady.

Bill: The whole cast is wonderful. They’ve put together a group of very appealing actors to play his friends, and you really believe they’ve been pals forever.

Arch: A lot of that has to do with the writing. The script is by Richard Curtis, who also wrote Love, Actually, and in some ways this film copies that work, but I don’t care. I loved it from start to finish and I never looked at my watch.

Bill: It’s nice to see a big summer film that at least keeps the older audience in mind. I don’t think that will be the case in the coming weeks.

Arch: At its heart, Yesterday is a little comedy; a classic romantic comedy, and it’s rare to find them these days. Two comedies that I absolutely loved, Book Smart and Late Night, aren’t finding an audience, and the same is true for a really terrific new movie, The Last Black Man In San Francisco.

Bill: Is there still a theatrical audience for well-made films?

Arch: Well, I don’t think it’s a matter of being well made. I went to see Spider-Man: Far From Home this week, and it’s extremely well made. I mean, I don’t care about the Marvel Universe — not one bit — but I found myself getting drawn in by the filmmaking and the performances. It appears that the future of the movies is these very professional episodes of continuing stories.

Bill: So, it’s as if TV and the movies are switching roles: Long-running episodic stories like the Marvel films are moving to the big screen and one-shot stories like Chernobyl are moving to the home screen.

Arch: Exactly.

Bill: Do you think in a decade or so people who do what we do will mostly stay at home and just venture into theaters for IMAX flicks?

Arch: It could be. I’m glad we’re old enough not to have to worry about where all this is leading. I’m glad I was around when going to the movies was cool, and the movies was where all the cool stuff was happening — especially in the 1970s and early 1980s. It was also a time when you could do stuff in the movies that you couldn’t do on television. That’s no longer the case.

Bill: It’s an anything-goes world, dagnabit.

Arch: These kids today…!

#Yesterday #Review #Danny Boyle #Beatles #Himesh Patel #Lily James

[archandbillwiseguys]

Toy Story 4: Pixar Pulls Strings

June 20, 2019

Toy Story 4 **** Rating: G Run Time: 1 hour 40 minutes Stars: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Annie Potts, Tony Hale Writers: Andrew Stanton and Stephany Folsom Director: Josh Cooley

Bill: My feelings about Toy Story 4 could not be more mixed: It’s extremely well-produced and it’s nice to see these characters again — yet I sort of wish it had never been made.

Arch: I know how you feel. I’m not bowled over by it, and some of it dragged. But I wouldn’t criticize it. I came away feeling the movie is just a solid, safe bet. It’s not very creative. I supposed you could say it advances the story of the first three films, but it’s an easy way for Disney to program what’s in theaters. You can’t argue with Tom Hanks voicing that character Woody, and I suppose it sort of answers the question “What happens to toys when they become antiques?”

Bill: True, but that question was actually answered in Toy Story 2, when a collector wanted to put Woody on display.

Arch: I guess you’re right.

Bill: There’s one stroke of brilliance in Toy Story 4, and that’s the introduction of Forky, a toy made by a little girl out of a spork and pipe cleaners.

Arch: Yes! And he’s voiced by Tony Hale. I’m glad to see him building on that great character he created on Veep.

Bill: Not to mention Buster on Arrested Development.

Arch: I noticed that in Toy Story 4 they play Forky up and play Buzz Lightyear down.

Bill: It’s a testament to how real these characters became in the first three films that I spent much of Toy Story 4 feeling bad for Buzz. He’s really pushed back into a supporting role. We see more of Bo Peep than we do of Buzz, and even the scenes he’s in are for the most part tangential to the plot — or plots, actually, since this film has four or five storylines. It very much plays like it was written by committee — you can almost imagine being in the writers’ room: “Let’s have Woody ride a zip line”…”Yeah, and we’ll have a wild chase through a carnival.” No one is really concerned with a story arc. Which is unfortunate, because the one thing you could always count on in a Pixar film was a nice, clean narrative.  

Arch: Still, there’s continuity. For example, I noticed that they still use the voices of dead people. Don Rickles was in there, and he’s been gone for two years!

Bill: I was surprised to hear Don — and I noticed the film is dedicated to him. There are lots of voice cameos that go by so quickly the only way you’ll know about them is to wait around for the credits. There’s Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner and Betty White and Bill Hader and Carol Burnett. Some of them get just one line. It smacks of a marketing gimmick — they can have all those celebs go on TV and talk about the film.

Arch: I did like Christina Hendricks as Gabby Gabby, a creepy talking doll who has nefarious plans for Woody. And Keanu Reeves is fun as a Canadian stunt driver toy. Plus Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key are delightful as a couple of plush carnival prizes.

Bill: I predict they will be the next spin-off.

Arch: I must say as fantastic as the animation was in the earlier Toy Story films, the computer animation in this one seems even more advanced.

Bill: There’s a scene where the toys are walking behind a display case in an antique store, and there are cobwebs floating around above their heads. It is absolutely haunting.

Arch: The way the characters move and talk is as realistic as can be.

Bill: Well, as real as walking, talking toys can be!

Arch: True.

Bill: Of course, back in 1995 Woody and Buzz were designed for ease of animation — just like Walt Disney made Mickey Mouse all circles, so he’d be easy to draw over and over. Now, in Toy Story 4, some of the newer characters are so meticulously detailed the old guys almost seem like they’re from a different movie.

Arch: There are some real scares in Toy Story 4. Gabby Gabby is already creepy, but then she’s got these henchmen who are hideous ventriloquist dummies.

Bill: They are terrifying! I just might end up with nightmares about those guys. The way they drag their feet and their heads hang off to one side. Argh!

Arch: Old guys like us will notice they look like demented Charlie McCarthies.

Bill: Ventriloquist dummies are always terrifying in the movies. Remember Magic with Anthony Hopkins and the dummy who orders him around? I feel like Gabby Gabby’s name is a throwback to The Great Gabbo, where Erich Von Stroheim plays a mad ventriloquist.

Arch: There’ s also a reference to The Shining thrown in, which is kind of fun. But you know, the toys climbing around and going on adventures dragged a little for me. It was the same old thing.

Bill: What bothers me about Toy Story 4 is what you were getting at earlier: Yes, it advances the story, but I feel like it advances the story the way The Godfather Part III did. The sense seems to be: Let’s take these iconic characters and shoehorn them into a plot. Toy Story 3 was so perfectly constructed there were no loose ends to tie up. The writers had to go all they way back to Toy Story 2 to find an unresolved element: Whatever happened to Bo Peep? Everything about this film is pretty perfect, but it’s sort of like going to a class reunion when you really said all your goodbyes last time.

Arch: Interesting you should say that. I went to my 50th class reunion five years ago, and now they’re having another one. The 55th. But I’m not gonna go. I had my big reunion.

Bill: We should brace ourselves for Toy Story 5, which will be like you having to go to your 60th reunion. 

Arch: What do you think? Will Forky become the new lead in the series? It’ll be interesting to see if Woody returns. Tom Hanks is our Henry Fonda.

Bill: Whatever they do, you know the execution will be first-rate. And I must add that the folks at Pixar do know how to plug into your sentimental side, even when you’re trying to resist it. There was exactly one point in Toy Story 4 when I found myself tearing up — toward the end, when we encounter a little girl who’s lost at a carnival.

Arch: Oh, yes.

Bill: We have never seen her before, and narratively she simply serves as a handy resolution to a problem. But that scene — the lighting, the character design, the sheer emotion of the writing — it’s what stuck with me when the movie was over. It just shows the power of good storytelling, even in its briefest form.

Arch: And it’s significant that it’s the one part of the movie we feel like we’ve never seen before. It was a real child in peril, and they played it just right.

Bill: Despite all my complaints, I’d recommend Toy Story 4 to anyone who loved the first three films. Go ahead, capitulate to your Disney Overlords.

Arch: All Hail Mickey!

#ToyStory4 #Review #ArchCampbell #BillNewcott #Toy Story 4

[archandbillwiseguys]

Sequel Mania: Shaft Gets It Right

June 13, 2019

Bill: Let’s talk about the movies we DON’T want to see. It’s a subject that makes me feel a little bad, because there was a time when I wanted to see everything out there. But now, especially this time of year, I find I just can’t bring myself to sit through an awful lot of movies.

Arch: Absolutely. Did you go see Men In Black International?

Bill:  No.

Arch: Neither did I. I just couldn’t stand the thought of it.

Bill: The trailer itself waved me off. Just looking at it, I could tell this was essentially the same film being sold to me again, only this time with a woman at the center. That’s not enough to make it interesting for me. It’s not Glenda Jackson playing King Lear — it’s Tessa Thompson standing in for Will Smith. Did you see The Secret Life of Pets 2?

Arch: Oh, please. How about Godzilla, King Of The Monsters? I didn’t. Just more of the same, you can tell from the trailer.

Bill: Nope. I also skipped Aladdin.

Arch: I didn’t, but I was sorry I went.

Bill: The trailers reeked of it being just another payday for Disney.

Arch: Exactly. I also went to see the latest X-Men movie, Dark Phoenix, and I’ve been beating myself up for it. It’s just the same old thing. After awhile, you look out there and it’s mostly stuff you’ve already seen.

Bill: Looking ahead, I find I can plan my whole summer around more movies I’m not going to see: 47 Meters Down: Uncaged — more beautiful women terrorized by sharks…Spiderman: Far From Home — I’m tired of all his whining…Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw— more car crashes that defy physics. 

Arch: Are you going to see Frozen II?

Bill: Don’t tell my granddaughters, but I haven’t seen Frozen I yet.

Arch: So, what is it? Are they just not making movies for guys like us anymore?

Bill: They’re making them, but they don’t seem to show anywhere. I always leave film festivals like Toronto and Tribeca excited about what I’ve seen, but literally years go by and many of my favorite festival films never see the light of day.

Arch: They either end up streaming or they don’t get released at all.

Bill: The shift, I think, is that the repetition in sequels is seen as a feature, and not a glitch. It’s a major selling point. Even the trailers make it clear we’re going to hear the same jokes, see the same battle scenes, endure the same conflicts. The studios want to make it absolutely clear you are about to see the same movie you saw last time.

Arch: I did go see the new Shaft, which is of course a sequel, and it sounded like a movie that I would skip. But believe it or not, I found it to be a vulgar, but very sly, urban crossover. It’s an outrageously fun comedy. Jessie Usher is the third-generation Shaft. Samuel L. Jackson is his father and the grandfather, Richard Roundtree from the original film, shows up. It’s just outrageous. The kid is a Millennial who works for the FBI in cyber security, but he’s anti-gun and afraid of violence. You know, he wears these tight little pants, short cuffs — your classic metrosexual. And his father and grandfather have great fun poking fun at him. Story-wise it’s the same old thing — a friend of the kid is murdered, it’s part of a conspiracy, the three of them solve the mystery and have a big shoot-out with the bad guys. But the subtext of what would it be like to be the grandson of the detective we saw in 1971 is priceless.

Bill: Well, I think in this case they’ve approached the idea of a sequel in the correct way: It has the elements of nostalgia that you want, but it also ventures into themes that the earlier films never addressed. That kind of take makes you look at the earlier films in a different way, as well.

Arch: A couple of weeks ago I watched the original Shaft. It is a time capsule of 1971 New York City. It’s just brilliant. The great still photographer Gordon Parks directed it, and he just captures what it was like back then, when you would go to downtown Manhattan and you could tell you just weren’t safe. Everything was seedy and scary. You’d always be glancing around.

Bill: And trying not to make eye contact with anyone. I was a teenager at the time, and I can’t believe my parents used to let me hop on a bus and go to New York. What were they thinking? Another film that captured that seedy New York vibe was The French Connection.

Arch: Yeah! So the new Shaft gave me a very different feeling from the one I had walking out after Dark Phoenix, when I was kind of mad at myself for wasting my time. I’m old — I don’t have a lot of time left!

Bill: That’s how I feel! When you’re a kid going to the movies, you’ll waste your time with just about anything. Now, not only am I never going to get those two hours back, I’m actually going to miss those two hours!

Arch: When was a kid we had the Woodlawn Theater in my neighborhood, and they would show Francis the Talking Mule movies on Saturdays. The place would be jammed with kids and there was a balcony. One kid brought a can of Campbell’s vegetable soup, leaned over the balcony, poured it over the edge and made a loud wretching sound, like he was throwing up!

Bill: And that kid’s name was little Archie Campbell.

Arch: No, it wasn’t me. But I’m thinking about bringing a can to The Angry Birds Movie 2.

#Shaft 2019 #Review #Men In Black International #Sequels #Arch Campbell #Bill Newcott

[archandbillwiseguys]

The Perfection: Chilling Cellists

June 6, 2019

The Perfection **** Bill: Last week you suggested that I see The Perfection, the new horror/thriller on Netflix, and I took your advice.

Arch: Did you like it?

Bill:  I don’t know if “like” is the operative word. I was absolutely riveted to it, and I never knew what was going to happen next. It’s horrific and funny and absolutely outrageous in ways I can’t begin to explain without ruining it for anyone who reads this.

Arch:  Well, it sounds like you liked it.

Bill:  I guess I did. And maybe a lot. So thanks for the recommendation.

Arch: You’re welcome. I think it’s one of the most creative movies I’ve seen this year. What can we say about it without dropping a bunch of spoilers?

Bill:  It’s one of those movies where you actually say out loud, “They’re not going to go there are they? They’re not gonna do that? And then they do, and then they do something even more outrageous that you never even dreamed of! I guess we can say it involves two young women who are world-class cello players. They were both educated at an exclusive New England conservatory that specializes in training female classical musicians.

Arch: And that’s your first red flag there: A big, brick, walled-in compound that accepts only young women.

Bill : Right — already we’re starting to give stuff away. The younger woman is played by Logan Browning, who’s one of the stars of Dear White People on Netflix. And the older one, who’s really the central character, is played by Allison Williams.

Arch: I really like her. She was on Girls, and she was very good on that. She’s also the daughter of Brian Williams, the newscaster.

Bill:  Oh, yeah! I had forgotten. It’s a different world, isn’t it? Can you imagine the daughter of Walter Cronkite or Chet Huntley in a psycho show like this?

Arch: Both young women were under the tutelage of the conservatory’s founder, a really creepy guy played by Steven Weber.

Bill: I want to say more about him, but that would spoil everything.

Arch:  Control yourself. I think the best part of The Perfection is the storytelling. They bring you down one road, then they tilt the axis just enough so you get a different view of what you just saw, and it changes everything. It’s kind of like what Hitchcock did in Vertigo. He’d often let the audience in on what was going on,

Bill:  The director is Richard Shepard, who made the HBO series Girls, but he’s also made some pretty interesting and fun movies, like The Matador, with Pierce Brosnan and Greg Kinnear, and a really neat little film called Dom Hemingway with Jude Law. You should check that one out.

Arch: I also love that The Perfection seems to quote a lot of other horror films. Certainly Get Out, but there’s also an homage to the horrific Freaks, from 1932, that ruined the career of the director Todd Browning.  

Bill: And there’s also a touch of Boxing Helena.

Arch: Right! And a bit of Crash.

Bill: Yep. David Cronenberg’s ode to the joys of body modification. But now we’re telling too much again, I’m afraid.

Arch: I think it’s a new age horror film for the #MeToo generation. It’s significant that when you watch the credits at the end, fully half of the names are of women.

Bill:  True. I feel like The Perfection would be especially terrifying for Harvey Weinstein.

Arch: “We have plans for YOU, Harvey!”

Bill: Yeah. I hope he likes classical music.

#The Perfection #Review #Arch Campbell #Bill Newcott

[archandbillwiseguys]

Rocketman: Elton By Elton

May 30, 2019 

Rocketman *****

Arch: I thought Rocketman was irresistible.

Bill:  I loved it. And you know, as edgy as it sets itself up to be — with the gay sex scene and the drugs and all — it’s really a very old-fashioned musical.

Arch: Yes, it is.

Bill:  I mean, there are echoes of West Side Story and All That Jazz. And you can’t watch the opening number, with Elton as a little boy dancing in the street with his neighbors, and not think of Oliver!

Arch:  That little boy, who appears several times during the movie, is spectacular. What’s his name — Matthew Illesly.

Bill:  He’s fantastic. A good actor and a sweet singing voice. You always wonder when you discover a young performer like that if we’ll see more of them when they grow up.  

Arch: Actually, I thought all the casting was fantastic. I especially liked Taron Egerton as Elton. He did his own singing. They didn’t dub Elton in.

Bill: I was of two minds about that. He’s a very good singer, and I guess Elton couldn’t very well dub his voice in today because it’s become a lot huskier than it was back then. But sometimes I found the different singing voice distracting.

Arch: I just played Elton John on the soundtrack in my brain. I heard Elton, even though it wasn’t Elton.

Bill: That’s interesting. I get that.

Arch:  I also think they really picked up on the 1970s vibe. I guess we both were young men during Elton John’s early years, and the film captures that time just the way I remember it. Especially the LA scenes.

Bill:  There’s a fun shot of downtown Hollywood that includes the marquee of the theater where ABC’s old Hollywood Palace variety show was produced. It’s a nice touch. And I especially liked the performance scene set in the Troubadour.

Arch: I first went to LA as an adult around 1972.  It was a gritty, bizarre place. And they got that.

Bill:  I lived there in the late ‘70s, and at the time when you were in downtown LA you got a strong feeling that the place was not quite finished, like nobody knew what was going to come next. And yes, this film captures that.

Arch:  The plot of Rocketman is, of course, the classic rock star movie cliché: The rock star rises, has some hits, makes a lot of money, almost kills himself with drugs and booze, and then he rehabs and comes back. But the staging of the musical numbers was spectacular. You couldn’t take your eyes off them.

Bill:  It’s one of the things that set Rocketman apart from Bohemian Rhapsody, the Queen/Freddy Mercury film from last year. In Bohemian Rhapsody, the musical numbers were all presented as performances by the band. Here, the characters often stop what they’re doing to break into song — and sometimes into full-blown production numbers.

Arch: It’s all very 1940s.

Bill: Right! Even the film’s gay sex scene, which everyone has been buzzing about, is in a sense a throwback. At the moment things really begin to get hot and heavy, the camera pans upward and focuses on the bedroom drapes.

Arch: Which is right out of the ‘40s.

Bill: The Hays Office would have approved.

Arch: What made the film for me were the musical numbers, and the way the songs were used to show what was going on in the minds of the characters.

Bill:  I probably think about these things too much, but one thing kept nagging at me: Even in the scenes of Elton’s childhood, classic Elton John songs are used to show what he’s thinking, as if these songs arose from these life experiences he’d had. But the lyrics are all by Bernie Taupin, who didn’t even meet Elton until they were in their 20s. So those sentiments are all from the head of Bernie, not Elton. Not one of them was written with Elton’s backstory in mind.

Arch:  You’re right. You’re thinking too much. And anyway, a good song doesn’t just speak to the person who wrote it — a good song has universal meaning. You can always apply it to your own life.

Bill:  You’re right! You’ve saved it for me! There’s an astonishingly moving scene early in the film where Elton, his mother, his father, and his grandmother all sing lyrics from Elton’s song I Want Love— which I think is my favorite Elton John song, because it’s so sad.

Arch:  Bryce Dallas Howard plays Elton’s mother, and she is rapidly becoming Hollywood’s go-to bitch. I mean, she played angry, resentful women in The Help and Jurassic Park. She’s got to play some softer characters, I think. Of course, it appears that Elton John’s mother really was a witch.

Bill:  Well, I hope so, given the way she’s portrayed in the movie. Elton is the film’s executive producer, and I’d hate to think he’s sugar coating his parents here, because each of them is a real piece of work.

Arch:  And what about the character who’s the villain of the film, John Reid? He’s Elton’s personal manager and lover, and he’s portrayed as a manipulative, cheating S.O.B.

Bill:  I guess John Reid’s a real guy, right? I’m looking him up right now. Yep. He’s 69 and lives in Australia, so I’m guessing his friends will all go to see the movie and say, “Wow, John, you’re the worst!” Ordinarily, when a biopic has a character who’s evil like that they give him a fake name and say he’s a composite character. John Reid comes off a lot better in Bohemian Rhapsody — oddly enough, he also represented Queen and another actor plays him in that film. Apparently Elton John holds a grudge.

Arch:  Maybe he’ll sue.

Bill:  I would guess the studio lawyers have already headed off any chance of that.

Arch:  I especially like the film’s framing device; having Elton walk out of a Madison Square Garden Concert and go straight to an AA support group, where he begins to tell his story.

Bill:  And it all leads up to a very surreal ending that involves all the figures from Elton’s life. Did you notice, during that scene, there was almost a deathlike quiet in the theater, like everyone was holding their breath? It was quite remarkable.

Arch:  It’s one of the few films this year I’ve gotten excited about.

Bill: Well, you and I can enjoy it because we’ve never hassled Elton John.  There’s a lesson here: Never double cross someone who’s rich enough to pay someone to play you in a movie.

#elton john #rocketman #movie review #arch campbell #bill newcott

[archandbillwiseguys]

John Wick 3: Bloody Good Fun

May 16, 2019          

          Arch: John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum is two hours of mayhem.

           Bill: Only two hours? These days mayhem movies usually go three hours or more. The mayhem fans will be disappointed.

           Arch: I mean it in the nicest possible way, actually. I love Keanu Reeves, and he’s perfect for these movies.

           Bill: And this is the third one, right?

           Arch: Yes. He’s John Wick, of course, and he’s assassinated a powerful underground figure. Now in chapter three every outrageous killer in New York is out to kill him, so it is one choreographed ballet-like martial arts scene after another. The audience is just…it’s like we’re rabid dogs, everybody’s arrgghhh arrgghh arrgghhh! Just chewing this stuff up!

           Bill: I’m kind of jealous. I was up at the Tribeca Film Festival, sitting through one high-minded documentary after another tackling the environmental and political crises of humankind, and you were down in DC having an Orwellian Two Minute Hate.

           Arch: It’s not hate so much as blood lust.

           Bill: I guess that’s better.

           Arch: Halle Berry shows up in the middl. She’s a former colleague of John Wick and she has two dogs that kill when she tells them to kill. So there’s a martial arts fight featuring John Wick and Halle Berry and these two killer dogs! And the dogs are killing people and biting them in the crotch and jumping up on top of buildings. And every now and then there’ll be a little scene of dialogue.  

           Bill: Wow. I guess I’ll have to catch upon this before the next installment. Or do you think the John Wick series has run its course?

           Arch: Are you kidding? It’s a chapter. They make no bones about it. At the end they leave no doubt that the next chapter is coming. It’s mindless violence, but it’s beautifully choreographed and if you’ve got any kind of blood lust you’ll have a great time. It’s very R-rated and it’s not for the faint of heart.

           Bill: It reminds me of a really good and violent action movie from a few years ago called Shoot ‘Em Up. It starred Clive Owen as some sort of hit man who within the first minute or so of the film kills a guy by shoving a carrot through his eye.  

           Arch: Oh, my. So carrots are NOT good for your eyesight?

           Bill: Not in this case. Anyway, I guess we’re not really the target audience for John Wick 3, but I’m glad you enjoyed it.

           Arch: I’m ashamed to say I sat there, just delighted! I went home and Gina asked what I saw and I said “Oh, the new John Wick movie. It’s two hours of mayhem and violence.” She asked, “You liked that?” And I had to say, “Well, yeah.” She said, “Is it not for everybody?” and I said “No.” She said, “Is it for you?” And I said, “Well, yeah, maybe.” And she just gave me this withering look.

#john wick #review #Arch Campbell #Bill Newcott #keanu reeves #halle berry

[archandbillwiseguys]

Never Look Away: A Good Three Hours

May 19, 2019

Arch:  It’s been, what, a month since we last chatted?

Bill: Yes, it has. You were out of town and then I was at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Arch: So we have a lot of catching up to do.

Bill:  I must say, I’ve heard from many of our dozens of loyal readers and they’ve been missing this column.

Arch:  Well, God bless them all! I’ve got list of movies here that I’d like to get to.

Bill:  So do I, and I have a feeling there’s no overlap on our two lists.

Never Look Away

Arch: I’ve got to tell you about a movie that is really one of my favorite films of the year, and I only saw it because I had nothing better to do one day.

Bill:  Some of my favorite movies I’ve seen by accident.

Arch:  It’s called Never Look Away, and I’m telling everyone about it. I immediately got into it. It’s a kid before World War II, and his aunt is a free spirit who loves art. It starts with them going to the Nazi exhibition of art the party considers degenerate, and she’s telling her nephew how great this stuff is. Then the war starts and the free spirited aunt falls into the hands of the Nazis because she’s not going along with the program. A highly placed German doctor has her institutionalized and later that doctor’s story intertwines with the story of the artist. I sat there just completely mesmerized. I tell people how much I loved it, but then I have to add, “Oh, by the way, it’s three hours long and it’s in German!” And then they turn around and say, “See ya!”

Bill:  And yet those same people will sit for three hours of Avengers: End Game.

Arch:  Exactly! And I spent most of those three hours just confused! And it’s in English!

Bill:  They showed this film at the Toronto Film Festival, and I’m ashamed to say I was one of those people who avoided it because of the length. It’s directed by — and I have to admit I’m looking this up as we speak — Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, who made the fantastic film The Lives of Others.

Arch:  He’s terrific.

Bill:  When I used to head AARP’s Movies For Grownups Awards, we gave him our Best Foreign Film award, and we had to make his name so small on the trophy you almost couldn’t read it.

Arch: Well, this time he made a movie that’s almost as long as his name. I went to see it because it was a chilly day and I had three hours to burn, and I’m so glad I went.

Bill:  Isn’t it fantastic when that happens? It’s the same thing that happened to me with Get Out. It was the only movie for me to review that week, and I had to drag myself to what I thought was going to be another lame horror movie. And it turned out to be one of the most important and entertaining movies of the past five years.

Arch:  Speaking of Avengers: End Game, it’s having such incredible success, making a billion dollars or so, what do you think is going to be the lasting effect of it? Do you think it’s going to be the kind of film everyone is going to make, and it will push the smaller films out of the theaters?

Bill:  I really think there are always going to be smaller theaters that need small films. They just can’t make enough blockbusters to fill all the screens at the multiplex. And as for the three-hour extravaganzas, I feel like that kind of run time is always going to be saved for the finale of a series. Remember the last Lord of the Rings film? It went well over three hours, and most of the last hour or so was spent just saying goodbye to the various characters, one by one.

Arch:  That film had several false endings. I remember I got up, thinking the movie was over, and I had to sit back down again!

Bill: That’s why I always stay in my seat until the end of the credits. I don’t like to be caught by surprise.

Arch:Well, some cold winter night when it’s streaming, you’ve got to sit down with Never Look Away. It’ll be well worth it.

Bill:  Hey, it’s no different from binge watching three episodes of an HBO series.

Arch :Exactly, and it’s better.

Tolkein

Bill:  Speaking of Lord of the Rings, have you seen Tolkien?

Arch:  I have. And as someone who’s never been a fan of the Lord of the Rings books or The Hobbit, I got an appreciation for J.R.R. Tolkien’s inspiration. Unfortunately, it’s got that generic British, brown, Masterpiece Theatre look.

Bill:  It’s hard to make films about writers that are utterly absorbing. I think the best might have been Shadowlands, about Tolkein’s friend C.S. Lewis. It was biographical and artful – and of course it had Anthony Hopkins.

Arch:  Well, I think Nicholas Hoult, who plays Tolkein, is very good.

Bill:  He was the kid in About a Boy. And now he’s all growed up.

Arch:  Right. He’s just fine. The film is a bit generic. The main thing I learned from it is we’ve all be mispronouncing the name. We’ve always said TOL-kin, and he pronounced it Tol-KEEN. I didn’t know that.

Bill:It’s always good to learn something from a movie.

Arch:That was my big take-away.

#never look away #tolkein #nicholas hoult

[archandbillwiseguys]

Shazam!  Long Story

April 4, 2019

Arch: I feel like you and I are not quite in agreement over Shazam! You liked it more than I did.

Bill: There were parts of it I liked very much.

Arch: I think it was about an hour too long.

Bill: Agreed.

Arch: And it’s much too ponderous. I like the idea of a 14-year-old boy who can transform himself into a grown-up superhero simply by saying the word Shazam. Just that word makes me smile. The funny parts of the film were very funny.

Bill: We’re probably more in agreement than you think. I feel like if they had just kept the light-hearted parts and dispensed with the dark, pseudo-mythical parts, you would have had a 90-minute film that zipped along and was a lot of fun.

Arch: It’s too much like every other superhero movie out there. They all end the same way. The bad guy and the good guy fight and fight and fight and then the good guy wins. It made me think of the original Superman movie from 1978, and how much I enjoyed that at the time because it was so groundbreaking.

Bill: That movie set the narrative template for virtually every superhero movie that followed it. You have the origin story, then the hero comes to grips with being superhuman, then here comes your first villain to fight, and then an extended battle that ends with the promise of a sequel. You’d think someone would have come up with a new way to structure these things since then, but they haven’t.

Arch: Yeah. And lots of special effects and scary monsters.

Bill:  So, because the formula is always the same, the one thing that sets one of these movies apart from the others is the unique qualities of the lead character. And in this case it’s a really nice one: a little boy who can become a superhero. There are elements of the Tom Hanks movie Bighere — in fact there’s a nice little homage to that film when the final battle crashes into a toy store, and Shazam and the villain find themselves walking on a giant musical keyboard.

Arch: I did like that. It was one of the parts they’ll be allowed to keep for my 90-minute version.

Bill: I’m probably giving the writers too much credit here, but in Shazamthe good guys face off against the Seven Deadly Sins, which is a surprisingly literate kind of villain. Still, the Sins are depicted as these disgusting, gargoyle-like creatures. I would like to have seen them presented as beautiful and alluring, which is the way sin always looks at the beginning. When you get to our age, you understand that sin can be very appealing at the outset.

Arch: It’s certainly been appealing to me!

Bill:  Absolutely! It would have been okay if they’d turned into those monsters after having lulled the heroes into a false sense of security, but that doesn’t happen.

Arch: I like the line when Shazam says, “Gee, I thought Lust would be a lot hotter!”

Bill: So I think that was a missed opportunity to give the movie something more than the usual superhero take on good versus evil.

Arch:  But that raises the question: Who are these movies made for? Not for us. I guess I need to embrace that I am not the target audience for this movie. Not by a mile. Shazam! was made for 14-year-old boys who would love to be able to say a magic word and become superheroes, and who have not seen the dozens, and perhaps hundreds, of other similar superhero movies that have been made since Superman in 1978. Also, since Shazam is a character from the DC comic book universe, this film shows once again that the folks over at Marvel just make better movies than the people at DC. I thought the special effects looked kind of cheesy, especially in the final battle, which went on too long. And I couldn’t figure out why the bad guy was so mad. What’s his problem, really? He had a chance to be Shazam when he was little, but he blew it. That doesn’t seem like enough.

Bill: Well, he was also bullied by his father and brother when he was a little boy.

Arch: He should just get over it. You know, things are tough all over.

Bill: That reminds me of my all-time favorite line from a classic Disney film. In Sleeping Beauty, the three little old fairy sisters are talking about the evil queen Maleficent, who has just cast a curse upon the baby. One sister asks the others, in effect, “What’s her problem?” And another just sighs and says, “I don’t think she’s very happy.”  

#Shazam #Review #dc universe