Bad Movie Club: Magic Christmas Tree

1964 Christmas nightmare

Bad Movie Rating: 4/5 (Josh: 4/5; J.D.: 4/5)

Rating: 3/20

Plot: After encountering a witch and helping her get her cat out of a tree, a boy is given a magic seed that will grow into the titular Christmas tree, a tree so magical that no father has the ability to chop down. He's granted three wishes, and like all dumb children, he uses them unwisely.

Ripping off The Wizard of Oz's black-and-white bookends, this gives away the big plot twist that the whole thing was only a dream away unless the person watching this has never seen The Wizard of Oz or probably any other movie. This actually starts with Halloween decor, something that helps the suspected witch and haunted house nonsense make sense for a movie called The Magic Christmas Tree. Actually, it starts with three children having an extended conversation about the value of various sandwiches, the kind of dialogue that makes you wonder if the writer of this (Harold Vaughn Taylor, which I would assume is some fancy computer software that enables one to plug in a few key ideas and themes and then watch as it spits out a completed film script if this didn't come out in the mid-60s before that sort of thing existed) peaked way too early and then was just too mentally exhausted to sustain that level of genius.

Right away, you know you're in for a bit of trouble once you realize the bigger kid in the middle is not only likely the protagonist of the movie but a bit of a dick. He's played by Chris Kroesen who IMDb informs me is a Leo because there's really nothing else going on with this guy. This was his only movie, likely because people who make movies would rather not have actors who close their eyes each time they say their lines. He's "husky," at least if you use the word choice the witch uses to describe him, and he's a little too loud. My friend Josh said he was a worse actor than Judy Garland and "half as hot," but that's not the type of thing his wife would want me to put in here for people to read. His friends--a black kid and a white kid, both with sandwiches--are inconsequential, and all I really remember about them is that they can't walk uphill like normal human beings.

The witch is played by Valerie Hobbs, and she might overdo things a little. This was her only role, too. We're twenty minutes into the film by the time the kid has the accident you know he will, and it's still Halloween even though this is a Christmas movie that is only an hour long. Actually, since the whole thing is just one long dream, the entire Christmas movie takes place around Halloween. It's a Halloween and sandwich movie more than it is a Christmas movie, I guess.

Oh, I forgot to mention that this review would contain spoilers.

Bam! Color! And the magic seed is planted, and then the dad, who of course is played by the director Richard "Dick" Parish, does some comical yard work for another fifteen minutes or so. You almost feel like Parish was using this as an audition tape, showing the world his skills in slapstick and shenanigans. Parish didn't get any other movie work either, probably his decision because he was just too tired after trying to chop down a magic Christmas tree for a seemingly endless amount of time. That whole sequence was almost a one-man Shakespearean tragedy mixed with a Stooges gag with 1/3 the Stooges and 1/90 the talent. I felt bad for Parish's father character, and then I felt bad for myself for having to watch this whole thing.

Eventually, we get to the "Monkey's Paw"-esque wishes. Mark's first wish is not, as I would have wished, for a less-oppressive musical score to go along with all this crap. No, Mark demonstrates his complete lack of ambition by wishing for "an hour of power." Imagine that you're a however-year-old kid and you've just been granted an "hour of power." What might you do? Mark, because he's really dumb, spends his hour making a flower and vase disappear, changing it from night to day, making vehicles drive off without their owners, and then making a woman hit a guy in the face with a pie. It all leads to a truly bananas sequence where a guy is chasing his truck, a policeman is chasing his police car, and a firetruck is. . .well, I was never sure what was going on with the firetruck. At the same time, the guy who got hit in the face with the pie is chasing the woman who hit him. It's the stupidest kind of chaos imaginable.

Did I mention that the kid has a turtle for absolutely no reason? There's no reason for me to provide this information here, but I feel it's important to at least mention it.

The kid's second wish is to kidnap Santa Claus because as I mentioned, he's a bit of a dick. So now Santa is sitting powerless in his living room next to the talking Christmas tree. Oh, I didn't mention that the tree talked? It's magical, so of course it talks! That's actually a better explanation than the tree provides, by the way. Mark says something like "Christmas trees can't talk," and the answer the tree gives is "If trees can't talk, how am I answering you? Of course I can talk!"

Anyway, Santa Claus is stuck in a chair because Mark apparently always wanted an overweight bearded man in his living room. And that really goes nowhere. There's a threat that Christmas is going to be perpetually ruined for all boys and girls everywhere, I guess, but it really does seem like Mark and his parents are the only people on earth at this point. It seems as inconsequential as that black kid and what kind of sandwich he brought for his lunch.

Mark's then off in the wilderness with a B.B. gun where he runs into a giant who wants to make him his slave. And yes, that's as messed up as it sounds. The giant is the lone person in this cast who was in other movies is Robert "Big Buck" Maffei . He was a character actor in a 70's Lord of the Rings cartoon and also played Hercules, Mr. Jumbo, Andex the Giant, a Strongman, a giant cyclops, and a creature in a Star Trek TV episode. I'm sure he's proudest of playing "Big Guy in the Door Way" in Nice Dreams, a Cheech and Chong movie where they pretend to be ice cream vendors. That was his last movie, and I'm guessing it's because he lost his life a little like Brandon Lee did when a stoned Cheech or Chong ran over him in an ice cream truck, more than likely while he was standing in a doorway.

Mark makes his third wish--that the movie will end soon--and then that's pretty much it. This probably shouldn't be shown to children even though there's a valuable lesson in there about how you shouldn't be a dick, especially around Christmas.

45 Years

2015 ghost story

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A dead woman fucks up a couple's 45th anniversary party.

How devastating it would be to think you're being haunted--to feel an ominous cool air from the attic, to sense doorways moving on their own behind you, to catch slideshow images changing expressions--and then eventually realize that you've been the ghost the whole time. That's Kate Mercer's epiphany is Andrew Haigh's shattering look at the week leading up to her 45th anniversary party with her husband Geoff. The week opens with a letter with news of a body's icy discovery, and each day unfurls some new discovery that will make a speech, a dance, and a final shot that much more poignant.

Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay are both so good, and there really wasn't a time when it didn't just seem like they were a real couple who had had 45 years to discover each other's secrets, to be there in sickness and in health, and to share toothpaste. The two actors feed off each other, and the glances, the exchanges, and their timing are impeccable. Together, they create the Mercers more than they create their own individual characters. Of course, Rampling's Kate is really our main character as she drives the action, makes discoveries, and gets featured in that aforementioned perfect final shot. And like all great performances, there so much within the pauses, and what is unspoken is just as important as what is spoken.

Roma

2018 movie

Rating: 18/20

Plot: A nanny/housekeeper named Roma (this is wrong information--ignore) has a story that nobody really pays that much attention to.

With symbolic water and airplanes (the latter which I have a great idea that I discovered all by myself which will be shared below) and extreme efforts taken to make the protagonist into a saint, I could understand if this got a little annoying for some people. However, I don't think anybody can criticize the technical aspects of this, a masterpiece of imagery and camerawork and choreography and framing. You might expect that from Alfonso Cuaron based on what he did in things like Children of Men and Gravity, this bravado filmmaking with show-off sequences and effects. Here, nothing stands out immediately as being overly complex or ostentatious until a few seconds pass and you think, "Holy hell! That sure was impressive! How the heck did he even pull that off?"

I'm thinking of tracking shots as characters run along a sidewalk, a barely perceivable forest fire, another natural disaster in an earthquake, a well-choreographed riot, a man trying to park a car, an opening shot that transforms into something that you could almost call magical realism, a climactic action scene that is likely the best thing I've seen all year. There absolutely is a bravado there, shots that make it clear you're watching a real auteur at work, but still, nothing about this seems forced or show-offy. There's so much going on in almost every frame of this movie that I wanted to watch the whole thing again the next day. I was reminded of both Tati and Fellini, but Cuaron really has his own voice with this one.

The black and white was gorgeous, but it also keeps the viewer from being distracted, helping you focus on just what you need to focus on. And "what you need to focus on" is a real key here. There's a family drama that is one narrative arc in this, but once you realize who the protagonist of this movie actually is--and it took me a little while--and then think about the whole thing later, you really figure out what this movie is all about. This is about the narrative arcs of characters who are generally in the background. You ever watch a movie with an interesting auxiliary character and wish that person got his or her own movie? That's kind of what this is. And so it makes sense that in a lot of the shots of this movie, you've got all these things going on in the background, as mundane as an unnamed couple having a small argument in a restaurant or as exciting as a man being shot out of a rocket.

As much as I want to write about what the planes mean and take credit for the theory, I fear a lawsuit from one of my 4 1/2 readers. Josh provided an explanation which really makes complete sense to me. I don't want to spoil anything, but I'll say this: to "get" what the planes are all about, you might not want to see them from our vantage point but instead think of the prospective of the people on the plane.

In a lot of ways, this movie is the perfect movie for 2018 and the #MeToo era. There are a trio of men here who are just terrible, but only one shows off his kung-fu skills and dick simultaneously.

Yalitza Aparicio's performance is nearly perfect, mostly in how she manages to appear as a character in the background of a story that she is the protagonist of. That's not an easy feat to pull off, I imagine. She blends, and when she's allowed some brief smiles or displays of emotions, you really feel that the character earned them. It took me about 20 minutes to figure out that hers was the character I was supposed to be paying attention to, but by the end of the film, I deeply connected with Cleo, and some devastating scenes nearly brought me to tears.

I was lucky enough to be able to see this in the theater, and the surround sound really enhanced the experience, especially during that climactic action sequence I was talking about up there. I still don't know how that thing was filmed. There were a few moments I could have sworn that somebody was having a loud conversation just outside the theater doors or playing with their snacks a little too vigorously behind me. The sound really helped make this a more immersive experience.

I don't have anything else to say about this movie which I assume is going to be my favorite of 2018.

The Kindergarten Teacher

2018 drama

Rating: 13/20

Plot: A kindergarten teacher becomes obsessed with the poetry of her young pupil and crosses a few lines.

"It's very unclear to me what you are doing."

A character says that to Maggie Gyllenhaal's titular kindergarten teacher at one point, and the words matched my sentiments exactly. I know I was supposed to connect Gyllenhaal's relationships with her own children and maybe even her husband to the relationship she wanted with this little kid or look at how her life of unfulfilled dreams or ennui could lead her to want to live vicariously through him, but none of that was developed well enough for me to completely connect. The family stuff actually felt a little unnatural to me, not the same kind of unnatural vibe that existed with her troubling relationship with the kid. The whole thing just felt a little off to me, and I wonder if the 2014 movie from Israel that this is a remake of makes clearer connections.

The kid, played by an actual kid named Parker Sevak, was pretty good even if almost every single line he was given had the exact same tone. He called for help, for example, in the exact same way he read his poetry. I did like his poetry, too, better than most poetry anyway. He was a lot better than the kid they got to play Gyllenhaal's poetry teacher--Gael Garcia Bernal. He wasn't natural at all.

The Favourite

2018 Lanthimos movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A pair of cousins battle for the attention of a cake-and-bunny-loving, gout-ridden queen while war rages with France.

A Yorgos Lanthimos release is an event in my household, at least as long as I'm the only person in the house. This is his first film that he didn't write. Additionally, it's a costume drama, and period pieces usually aren't my bag. This, however, has the bite of Dangerous Liaisons or Ridicule and retains that Lanthimosian humor that makes everybody in my household swoon, at least as long as I'm the only person in the house. And standing.

With duck races, ridiculous wigs, even more ridiculous anachronistic dances, creepy masturbation sequences, an dispassionate hand-job scene that has oddly become a Lanthimos trademark, biting dialogue filled with (as the kids call them) sick burns, a comically violent courting sequence, this really is my type of movie. And you know what? The costumes look great, and this castle or whatever the setting is gives us lots of opportunities to drool over tapestries, rich architecture, and gorgeous ceilings. Lots and lots of gorgeous, semi-oppressive ceilings.

The battles of wits and the political power grabs are a lot of fun in this Lanthimos-tinted 18th Century England, and the three female leads are all just about perfect. Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone get their moments to be really really mean, and the script forces the viewer to change his or her opinions of them more than a few times. Olivia Coleman's performance is a lot easier to notice because she's huge and has a wilder range of emotions. Coleman's having a blast with this character, likely because it's just a lot of fun to shovel chunks of cake into your mouth with your hands.

I'm going to need more time to think about the fish-eye shots that were used in this as I couldn't figure out any meaning behind them. I think I liked them, at least as much as I liked the other more flamboyant camera work in this.

I saw this in a crowded theater and was annoyed at how boisterously some of the other patrons laughed. I swear, the art theater crowd is more interested in making sure everybody around them knows that they get the jokes more than crowds in your typical popcorn comedies.

Happy as Lazzaro

2018 dramedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A farmhand has some experiences.

"Mama, Lazzaro's staring into the void again."
"Go and shake him."

As a human being who frequently stares off into the void, I can easily connect with the titular Gumpian farmhand. I connected with the film as a whole, but I'm the type of guy who enjoys virtually plotless character studies where you really don't learn anything at all about the character. It's a quiet movie where things happen, and it's up to you as the viewer to decide what's significant and what's just happening. An Irving-esque twist midway through baffles and adds a little bit of magic to this story that I didn't even realize was a fairy tale.

I suspect there's some social commentary with Alice Rohrwacher's film, but I don't feel like I have the cultural experience to really latch onto any of that. I didn't need it anyway, probably because I can stare into the void.

This is the second movie in a row that I watched where the main character is seen on the poster staring directly at me. Hey, maybe that means I'm the void. That's not a good feeling at all. This is also the second Netflix-released movie that I've seen this year where wolves are important. This is a lot better than Hold the Dark.

At Eternity's Gate

2018 biopic

Rating: 13/20

Plot: A look at the last weeks of Vincent Van Gogh's life.

Like a good biopic, this at least focuses on a small slice of the subject's life, this one dealing with his final weeks when he was chopping off ears and painting surprisingly prolifically. Dafoe's now played Jesus and Bobby Peru, and Van Gogh at this stage in his life is probably somewhere in between the two of them. He's good, especially in how the artist's inner struggles are made palpable. Dafoe looks like a painter, and he looks like he's being tortured by unseen demons.

Unfortunately, I got a little tired of the avant-garde touches this leans heavily on to try to get the viewer into the artist's noodle. All the wacky camera angles, the blurs, and the out-of-focus shots did a lot of the heavy lifting early, and while it helps the audience see the world as Van Gogh might have seen it, it got a little tiresome. It's sort of Julian Schnabel's thing, I guess, and the visual trickery worked well in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly because there was a consistency. Here, it's less consistent. I thought this movie was really lively when Dafoe's Van Gogh was at peace and working, and it sort of sank when he was not. The stumbling was very likely part of the point.

Things get way too talky once Mads Mikkelsen shows up for a lengthy conversation so that Dafoe can spell out everything that we probably should have gotten from the performance and the visuals anyway. Oscar Isaac is also in this, and he plays friend and fellow artist Paul Gauguin. That relationship intrigued, and it was cool to learn that Van Gogh actually chopped off his ear for a dude instead of a prostitute like I'd always heard.

There really are some lovely shots in this--dead sunflowers are particularly stunning, and I could watch wind-blown grasses like that on the big screen all day.

Free Solo

2018 mountain-climbing documentary

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A guy tries to climb a cliff with nothing but his hands and feet and some chalk.

They say that some members of Buster Keaton's film crew, when he was performing his most famous stunt in Steamboat Bill Jr., walked off the set and refused to film the thing. Others, I imagine, closed their eyes during that stunt. I was reminded of that when watching Alex Honnold climb up that giant rock in this documentary. Some camera operators articulated their mixed emotions prior to his attempts, and there were several shots of one who just couldn't watch.

Luckily, Honnold didn't tumble off the side of El Capitan to his death. I'm not sure if the movie would have been released if he had, and at the very least, it's likely most people going into a screening would already be aware that they're about to watch a documentary about a guy falling to his death while attempting something seemingly impossible. As far as I can tell, the footage of Honnold is presented in chronological order here, so you don't get any interview snippets that show he's alive and well after all this El Capitan business is finished with. However, likely due to the way it was advertised, I was fairly positive that this would not end in disaster.

Still, the climactic climb up El Capitan had my palms sweating and my head shaking and my butt clinching and my knees dancing and my jaw dropping and my mouth gasping. Franchise sequels, despite their effect-enhanced action sequences, sometimes suffer from losing tension because you know that certain characters are obviously going to survive. Even if you know Honnold is going to survive his own suicide attempts here, it's still gripping. What he's doing on the side of this rock just doesn't seem possible, and the shots from the film crew hanging off the side of the mountain or the drones really capture the idea that this is a human being who, if less than perfect on this particular day, is going to die.

It's hard not to admire the precision and hard physical and mental work that goes into an endeavor like this even if you think the guy is bonkers for even thinking about it. One of my favorite sequences has shots of Honnold studying or writing notes with his voiceover going over a sequence of moves. It's a staccato recitation of all these hand grips and swings and foot shifts and leg kicks, but it blends together as one ridiculous dance macabre, each one of those individual movements representing what just might be his very last movement. Unless you count flailing in midair while gravity conspires with the unforgiving ground to end his life as a last movement. Personally, I don't have the strength, the flexibility, the physical endurance, or the intestinal fortitude to even climb a wall with color chunks of plastic at a children's museum. I'm also slightly acrophobic. But I don't have the memory for this either. No matter how much I'd go up the side of El Capitan with ropes, I would still need a cheat sheet to remind me what little speck of rock I'm supposed to put my fingers or what itty-bitty crack I'm supposed to put a toe.

This is largely about Honnold's training and research and attempt to climb El Capitan, but his relationships are also really interesting. Stuff about his upbringing and parents sort of help explain him but are likely unnecessary. We watch a relationship with a girlfriend evolve, from the very beginning when Honnold hints that it might be something that turns into something to when it turns into something enough where the two buy a house together and pick out a refrigerator. The audience isn't in her head as much as Honnold's, but you still get a sense of what being in a relationship with a guy who does something this dangerous is like. Honnold has the type of personality--a little autistic perhaps, definitely on the spectrum--where he seems more out of place buying that refrigerator than climbing the side of a mountain. We also hear from fellow climbers and friends, one who seems to have reservations about helping him train for this whole thing while admitting he'd feel worse about it if he died when he didn't offer help.

I'm happy I saw this in a theater because it's never good to urinate on one's own furniture.

Border

2018 warped fairy tale

Rating: 15/20

Plot: I don't have time for this.

From Ali Abbasi, the writer-director who did not have anything at all with Let the Right One In despite what I thought until about five minutes ago when I looked it up, this is a slow-burn of a warped fairy tale. The director does a great job of creating this world that is very much the one we all inhabit but with all these shades and colorings that convince you it's not quite that world. Abbasi throws us in without much exposition, and it's up to the viewer to figure out the rules of it all.

That's appropriate since I think I've determined that "rules" is a lot of what this movie is about. I'd get into that a bit more, but I really don't have time for this.

The leads are covered in make-up and prosthetics, and it's so well done that I really couldn't tell if there was movie magic going on or if the creators just found a couple of people who really looked like this. Eva Melander also added some weight for this, and she's really good here with her facial twitches and these expressions of discovery. And the guy, played by Eero Milonoff, has this quiet menace that really works, even when you start to connect to the character around the same time Melander's character does.

Between them, there's a squirm-inducing sex scene that I'm really glad I got to watch in a theater with some elderly people, but there are also tons of moments with real warmth and beauty. I'm not sure all the story's twists really work, but the connections and the idea of being between two worlds or groups is real.

Zama

2017 drama

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Not much of one. The titular guy's an officer in South America or somewhere like South America and would rather be somewhere else. A llama is involved .

It's a shame that I identified so much with this pitiful character. No, I've never knocked up a peasant girl or worn a three-cornered hat or had a llama intrude on my conversations, but there's something so identifiable about this guy who doesn't like where he's at, desperately wants out of where he's at, and can't escape where he's at. It's a peaceful-enough hell, maybe as halcyon a hell as you can possible hope for, but it's still a hell for poor Zama because it's not where he feels like being. He's drifting while remaining in one spot for the majority of his story, managing with in that three-cornered hat to look both heroic and pathetic as he strikes a pose on the shore on the poster for the movie. Zama's in nearly every shot, but he has no control over his space and time, and his wig doesn't really seem to fit correctly.

I also identify with the llama as well, popping into somebody else's personal hell and being completely ignored by all there.

Lucrecia Martel is not a director I know, but I liked her both her visual and storytelling styles here, like Herzog tackling Godot or something. And she knows how to direct a llama! There are some really good looking shots throughout this, and I really like what happens in foregrounds and backgrounds here. There's a haunting quality to some of those backgrounds after the Zama character is forced to move. And the final shot is a real stunner!

This moves glacially and never really goes anywhere until Zama, suddenly bearded, decides to go somewhere. This won't appeal to every viewer, and it took me a while to fall into its lazy-river rhythms, but for certain cinephiles, this one will connect.

Also--llamaphiles will dig it.

School Daze

1988 joint

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Tensions run high at an all-black college during homecoming week.

It's unclear to me what this movie is about. Some of the social commentary and the satirical elements are clear, but the overall message is not. It's a movie stuffed with various types of conflicts, but I'm not sure it all congeals. Additionally, there are some questionable decisions made by Spike Lee with this one. At this stage, he's playful and he's learning, and it's a little surprising that a major studio let him get away with some of this in the late-80's.

There's not a single white face in this movie, and that's something.

I think my favorite part might be a pregame speech by Ossie Davis.

Anyway, it's entirely possible that I'm not the audience for this movie. It didn't seem like Fishburne was really yelling at me at the end.

A Fish Called Wanda

1988 comedy

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Double-and-triple-crosses abound as four thieves steal some diamonds and then try to steal them again. Shenanigans!

Love this sharply-edged, darkly-shaded screwballery with virtuoso performances by Kline and Jamie Lee Curtis, both who show this ability to shift in a blink. And Curtis treats us to an obligatory high-waisted underwear shot, and that's always a sight to behold. This is just so buoyant, a movie with these characters who you don't really identify with because life just wasn't this ridiculous, even in 1988. The story sort of flakes away after a while. It's there only as an excuse to get this ensemble together and let them bounce off each other and occasionally rub up against each other. Cleese is also great, and it's loads of fun watching Palin stutter his way through his scenes.

Ralph Breaks the Internet

2018 animated sequel

Rating: 12/20 (Buster: 17/20)

Plot: After Ralph, in an act of friendship, puts in motion a series of events that will break Sarah Silverman's arcade game, the duo venture into the World Wide Web to search for a replacement part. They have a series of adventures.

Before the feature, there was a little introduction with the directors and a producer or somebody where one of them--a director, I believe--says something about how it was really difficult to squeeze everything they loved about the Internet into this movie. That might actually explain one of the main issues with this movie. It's far too busy, and not just visually, although it's just as jumbled and exhausting as Ready Player One because you almost feel like looking for Easter eggs instead of paying attention to the meanderings of the story and its characters. It really does seem like they brainstormed a list of "Things on the Internet" on a whiteboard during writing and then tried to shove every single one of those things into the movie.

But I also want to know just what the writers/directors love about the Internet. You've got Ebay sniping, video game time wasters, references to ultra-violent rated-M games reminiscent of Grand Theft Auto, viruses, the dark web, loads of pop-up advertisements, buffering, the lack of originality of content creators, autofilling search engines, and maybe even stolen identities. I'm actually having trouble recalling a single moment in this that celebrates any of the virtues of the Internet. It does have a lot of advertising, including a lot of Disney stuff. In fact, are they appallingly advertising their own upcoming streaming service or was that just my imagination?

Additionally, the overall theme appears to be that the Internet can ruin friendships. If anything, I'd say this movie is more anti-Internet than a love letter to it.

The world-building for the Internet is often creative and visually wondrous, almost a cross between the colors and detail of something like Coco and the creativity of Riley's imagination in Inside Out. There are lots of clever bits throughout this, and a lot of it is really funny. And I really enjoyed a lot of the visuals. The aforementioned GTA game--called Slaughter Race--gives the animators an excuse to show off some grittier video game animation and a cool car chase. I also really liked the look of the virus although the consequences of that got very silly with a film allusion that's probably a little too tired. The makers of this are good at creating a few moments that will have adults at least nodding in recognition and maybe even chuckling. Kids will enjoy the colors and the shenanigans of the goofy-voiced characters. And people like me--neither adult or child--will appreciate references to the old Tron arcade game and Qbert.

I do mostly like the two central characters and a lot of the auxiliary characters. John C. Reilly is always somebody I like seeing or hearing although his character has moments where I'm not really sure what to think. I really like Sarah Silverman, too. Their characters make for a touching duo here, and when this story focuses on their friendship, this is very likable. Unfortunately, it splinters off in all these different directions and gets a little too nutsy for anybody used to playing their video games with nothing but a joystick and a button.

Green Book

2018 movie inspired by a true story

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A streetwise Italian-American in New York agrees to transport a black virtuoso pianist to his concert dates in the deep South despite being a little racist.

Wait a second. That was Viggo Mortensen?

Mortensen acts less than he just wears this character of Tony Lip. The character is more consistent than it seemed halfway through this, one who's admirable because he's got street smarts and convictions. More than usual with these period New York tough guys, I enjoyed spending this much time with the character.

This movie's got narrative issues, but it's filled with a lot of nice little moments, some a lot more artificially sweetened than others. I laughed a little, was touched a little, and felt a little anxious for these characters during a few scenes. The building friendship between these two men is endearing. The period details are great, even if everything appears a little too glossy.

As an entertainment, it works, but if director Peter Farrelly (Wait a second. This was a Farrelly movie?) wanted to make a statement about racism or Civil Rights or healing or poverty or anything else, it's not really effective. The film's more effective as a story about a white guy being a big hero which I wasn't all that interested in to be honest.

Still, this is a likable enough movie, and that's despite a deflating punchline of an ending.

Overloard

2018 war-hor movie (I'm sorry about this.)

Rating: 9/20 (But is the movie sorry about this?)

Plot: Soldiers parachute into France in order to destroy a tower before the invasion.

I'm no World War II expert or anything, but I'm fairly positive this movie is not historically accurate.

I didn't enjoy this. It takes itself a little too seriously, and all of its parts seemed very familiar, adding up to a whole that wasn't really a unique experience at all. It seemed like a movie made by Call of Duty fans for Call of Duty fans. Loads of anonymous folks die via bullet and explosion, stock characters (the tough professional soldier, the cocky New Yawkuh with a heart of gold, our anxious protagonist), gross make-up and effects that are at least mostly practical special effects, incomprehensible action sequences. I felt like I was in a video game, and if that kind of thing appeals to you, you might appreciate Overlord.