Bad Times at the El Royale (2018)

Film: Bad Times at the El Royale (2018)
Stars: Jeff Bridges, Cynthia Erivo, Dakota Johnson, Jon Hamm, Cailee Spaeny, Lewis Pullman, Chris Hemsworth
Director: Drew Goddard
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

It's been six years since Drew Goddard's last film, The Cabin in the Woods, came along and sort of knocked the horror genre for a loop.  Twisty and smart, Goddard, one of the more innovative screenwriters currently working in Hollywood (he was nominated for an Oscar for The Martian, and was arguably the most consistent screenwriter on Lost, crafting episodes like "The Shape of Things to Come" and "Flashes Before Your Eyes"), is great with dense plots, smart ideas, and creating vivid human beings out of what could have been stock characters.  I didn't realize until after Bad Times at the El Royale was done that Goddard was the man behind it, but I knew something was up because I was struck throughout the entire film by how good it was.  Despite the occasional plot hole (we'll get there in the spoiler section), Bad Times at El Royale is surely the film this year that I disagree in the opposite direction of the critics the most, thinking it's terrific while they find it middling.  I don't see how they aren't catching that this is smart, spry, filled with rich performances, clever visuals, and Goddard's increasingly signature look at subverting expectations while rarely sacrificing his story to create a twist.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film takes place at a hotel outside of the normal world, literally on the edge of Nevada and California (a key plot point as the hotel is able to have different laws because it's in two different states).  In an opening that feels reminiscent of Clue, the movie introduces us to the tenants of the evening: Father Flynn (Bridges as a kindly priest), Laramie Sullivan (Hamm as a bombastic, racist vacuum salesman), Darlene Sweet (Erivo as a quiet, aspiring singer), Emily Summerspring (Johnson as a woman who signs "fuck you" in the ledger rather than give her real name), and Miles Miller (Pullman, as the clearly disturbed bellhop).  The movie then starts breaking out the film into chapters, borrowing from Quentin Tarantino (I called it Clue meets Tarantino in a text while driving home from the theater, and I've seen multiple other reviewers now make the same comparison), and we learn that all of these people aren't quite what they seem.  As the night wears on, we are introduced to the final two of our main players: Emily's warped sister Rose (Spaeny) and her gorgeous, sociopathic cult leader Billy Lee (Hemsworth), who comes in to cause mass chaos in the picture's final third.

The movie is rich in plot, which is a challenge for a lot of pictures.  The film opens with Nick Offerman getting shot by an unarmed assailant, and we actually never figure out why this happens.  This is perhaps the film's only significant plot hole, though, which is saying something as it unfolds so swiftly but in such a clear path that you almost feel like the answer to who the killer is is baked into the picture (my date and I kept thinking it was Miles, and that would be revealed as the film goes as there was a "kid" with them on the robbery, and considering Goddard's stint on Lost, perhaps there's some subtle clues reminding us of this if we rewatch the film).  The movie runs the fine line well between giving us genuine surprises (particularly the shock deaths of Hamm and Johnson so early in the movie when less famous actors were available for the filmic chopping block) while only that one time leaving us with a shock-for-the-sake-of-it.  Goddard's crown as one of the better screenwriters currently working in Hollywood remains secure after El Royale.

While Goddard himself is the star, his casting agent deserves a crown of her own (Carmen Cuba, well done) as no one is giving a false note in this lineup.  Erivo, getting her first major role in the movie, regularly sings to heighten the mood of the film.  There's a wonderful scene where she and Bridges, now teamed up after she took a bottle to his head in an previous scene, are being watched by a gun-wielding Johnson through a two-way mirror.  While Johnson is the one peering in through the mirror, it's actually Erivo & Bridges who know they're being watched, and Erivo is singing to mask Bridges taking apart the floorboards.  It's a riveting, spellbinding scene, one that showcases her vocals and acting ability, and combined with Widows, this should be a one-two punch to prove she should be cast in everything now.  Johnson and Bridges are so consistently awesome that it should be no surprise they land their characters well here: Johnson's dangerous, unknowable woman plays best in hindsight, when you realize that's the way she'll stay so only the slightest hints at who she is are ever given to the audience, while Bridges nails his role as a conman whom you're constantly deciphering what is the truth and what is a fiction to improve his situation.  Hemsworth has never been better than his nasty, Manson-esque Billy Lee, intensely sexy (Hemsworth spends the entire film in a state-of-undress) but also deeply violent (he murders Johnson's Emily in cold blood).  Hemsworth is entering that portion of his career where he'll need to start evolving from his matinee idol good looks to perhaps more challenging acting roles than Thor, and if this is any indication, the other Chris's should be quaking in their boots.

There's so much more to discuss here (Miles' left field "I've killed 123 people" had my jaw drop to the floor, and was one of the few times Goddard wasn't borrowing from Tarantino as Quentin would have surely had our shaking bellhop be a serial killer to go with the 60's motif, rather than a shell-shocked Vietnam veteran...plus who is the man on that tape-MLK or one of the Kennedys?), but I'm going to end it with a discussion of my rating.  The film probably deserves a four-star ranking, and if I did a half system, it wouldn't land five.  The Offerman plot hole and the picture's last ten minutes (a bit too sentimental, and a bit too easy compared to the creative places we've been otherwise), but the rest of the movie is so damn good that I'm pulling the trigger and giving out my second five-star of the year.  Like Killing Them Softly before it, El Royale is the rare film that I say the critics got wrong, and will likely save years from now when they realize that it's an ace movie with a structure that young film fans will salivate over for years.  See it on the big screen to enjoy Seamus McGarvey's rich cinematography and Goddard's great plotting, and join me in the comments if you want to discuss the film's many twists.

A Bigger Splash (2016)

Film: A Bigger Splash (2016)
Stars: Tilda Swinton, Ralph Fiennes, Matthias Schoenaerts, Dakota Johnson
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

As I mentioned yesterday, I recently decided to have a cheeky bit of fun and see both Hockney and A Bigger Splash back-to-back.  Hockney, of course, being a documentary about one man wasn't really the type of film to really bring out the intellectual heft-it was pleasant in the sort of way that we expect early summer documentaries to be.  Occasionally brash, interesting, but never really heart-wrenching or a call-to-arms or anything of that nature.  Luca Guadagnino's latest, however, is hoping to grab your attention for the entirety of the picture and not let go.  The man who made I Am Love (which won our OVP for Best Costume design, for the curious) makes a concerted push for intellectual heft in A Bigger Splash, his much-delayed followup, and has the cast (but not always the editing skills) to make it work.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film's plot is not really integral to the story, as so much of it is reliant upon mood and feeling and conversations (whether verbal or otherwise) that explaining what is happening is not completely necessary, but I'll give it a shot.  The movie follows Marianne Lane (Swinton), a David Bowie-like rock goddess who is living with her cool younger boyfriend Paul (Schoenaerts) in Pantelleria when an ex-flame of hers, a record producer named Harry (Fiennes) arrives with his beautiful but enigmatic daughter Penelope (Johnson).  The film unfolds with them at first disrupting the glamorous celebrity couple, who are hiding low as Marianne recovers from vocal surgery, but soon old secrets start to spill out and rivalries begin to form in a sexually-intense story.

The film is not shy about sex, and the way that it drives the id's of all four of the main characters.  We learn as the film goes forward that Harry essentially traded in Marianne, obviously the love of his life but he was too bored at the time to realize it, over to Paul, whom he assumed would be a rebound but ended up being a deep connection with Marianne and they never broke up.  Hating Paul but also knowing that it's his fault that Marianne is not part of his life, he haunts the villa even if he's constantly, maniacally active.  Fiennes, who is such a spectacular actor almost all of the time, finds a grounded nature to his character that few others would have discovered-most people would have played Harry just for comedy, struggling with his demons and making them seem tragic, but Fiennes knows that they are less tragic than just some other veneer to put forward in order to grab sympathy and what he wants.  This is, after all, a man who actively pimps out a woman who may or may not be his daughter in order to get his old girlfriend back, despite her potentially being his own flesh-and-blood.

Fiennes isn't the only one who is bringing their A-game to this cast, however.  Swinton is mesmerizing, particularly when deprived of her vocal powers and quite frankly it's just a joy to see two actors so completely at the top of their respective games together in the same movie.  I love that we've now entered the phase of her career where Swinton can be celebrated as a beautiful, alien goddess and not have to dour her down in something like We Need to Talk About Kevin.  Swinton here is earthy, magnetic, and impossible to resist, which is why it's so odd when Penelope doesn't like her.  As the film progresses, you half expect Penelope to come out and be the child Marianne gave up for adoption or acknowledge the bitter hatred that she has for the world stemmed from something Marianne did, because Marianne is really awesome and awesome is kind of hard to do in an art house film, but Swinton nails it.  She's aided by Schoenaerts who is unabashedly sexy as the manic pixie dream guy with a solid amount of orgasm-inducing skill.  I love that so many of his roles, despite him being a man, are really about using his desire and power as an actor to intoxicate the audience-rarely do you find a male actor who does that so consistently.  And yes, despite her idiotically gaining a Razzy Award (she was actually pretty damn good in Fifty Shades of Grey, I'm sorry to say to the haters), Johnson is clearly a Kristen Stewart in waiting if she plays her cards right-she's stuck in a pointless franchise now, but give it time-an actress who can pull off this character's many tricky turns is doing something right.

So why the lower score?  Because the film falls apart in the third act.  I actually, after seeing this film, investigated a couple of opinion pieces regarding the movie and almost every one of them said the same thing-that the movie didn't end when it clearly was meant to end.  There is a scene late in the film (I told you there were going to be spoilers) where Paul kills Harry in what might be an accident, might be on-purpose, fight in the pool.  The film recedes up from the pool in a huge shot, and nearly goes to black.  If the film had ended there, it would have been surprisingly short, but it would have been a great look at how Harry always played to win-he ended up destroying Paul for Marianne by making him a murderer, and we would be left with Dakota Johnson playing the ultimate femme fatale, someone who lured away the loyal boyfriend to kill her father, all as part of his plan.  It's a great ending, and would have made for a superb movie, one of the best of the year.  However, the film drags on, trying to understand Penelope (seriously-Dakota Johnson's character is totally obsession worthy here), and then giving us a moment of reconciliation between Marianne and Paul, when not knowing probably would have been better.  There's nothing saving the last thirty minutes or so-it feels so tagged on that it nearly ruins a truly interesting and provocative film, one too good to put 2-stars by even if the ending drags it there.

Those were my thoughts, at least, on this very discussable movie.  If you've seen it, let's give that a shot, shall we?  What did you think of A Bigger Splash-were you hoping that it would end at the death scene as well, or did you want it to continue on forever?  When do you think Dakota Johnson will finally start getting her respect as an actor (you just know a Supporting Actress nod is going to land at some point in the near future)?  And can we have another Tilda/Ralph movie again soon please, as his history of repeating costars could pay huge dividends here?

Black Mass (2015)

Film: Black Mass (2015)
Stars: Johnny Depp, Joel Edgerton, Benedict Cumberbatch, Kevin Bacon, Jesse Plemons, Corey Stoll, Peter Sarsgaard, Dakota Johnson, Julianne Nicholson
Director: Scott Cooper
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

I remember a time, not that long ago but longer than you'd think, when I would genuinely get excited whenever a new Johnny Depp movie would come out.  In the mid-Aughts, Depp's films were major events, a huge deal where his longtime edgy aura met commercial appeal and suddenly he was both a major Box Office star and the Sexiest Man Alive.  During this time he garnered three Oscar nominations, a huge following, and a fortune that would make Robert Downey Jr. jealous.  However, in the past seven years or so (ever since he put down his barber razors) he's been pretty much anathema onscreen, taking on cartoonish non-human roles (admittedly in a wildly successful turn financially in Alice in Wonderland, less so with things like Mortedecai) and watching his Q-score plummet as no one really wanted to see a new Johnny Depp movie.  In fact, when I heard that Black Mass was garnering strong reviews and Oscar buzz, my first reaction wasn't excitement but instead a gigantic groan that I would have to see a Depp film, an unthinkable reaction ten years ago.  But see the film I did, and let's investigate where my Depp love stands now, shall we?

(Spoilers Ahead) The film follows the rise and fall of Whitey Bulger (Depp), one of the most notorious mob bosses of the past half-century, who ran South Boston with an iron fist and frequently was prone to fits of violence, killing a number of people he suspected of being "rats" and he himself working with the FBI as an informant all-the-while bribing his friend John Connolly (Edgerton) to keep the heat off of Bulger as he ran the city.  The film follows a lot of the traditional mob movie cliches, except here we have the advantage of knowing that a lot of what is happening, particularly the ending (where we find out men who clearly murdered numerous people ended up not serving life sentences) ends up being true and we watch a bit of an indictment of justice as people who probably should have received life without parole ended up being on the streets once again.

The film features a lot of actors of very strong background, as we get not only Depp but recent Oscar nominee Benedict Cumberbatch, rising stars Corey Stoll and Dakota Johnson, and dependable character actors like Kevin Bacon, Julianne Nicholson, and Peter Sarsgaard in key roles.  The cast list, however, is a mixed bag in my opinion.  The reviews are correct to say that Depp is back and this is his best role in years, though is that saying really anything?  Depp's performance is strong, and I love the moments where his penchant for crazy melds with the realistic human being on the screen (this is what made, say, Jack Sparrow so damn appealing-he was a cartoon, but a cartoon that resembled a human being).  Still, though, there's hardly any emoting going on here-we know so little about Bulger's motives, what drives his need for this kind of success?  The script seems to hint at it (perhaps feeling overshadowed by his more professionally successful brother, his lack of success in his personal life), but there's nothing there in Depp's performance.  We never get a sense as to why he's more attuned to the needs of a son he barely sees than his girlfriend, or what makes him become so outrageously violent, and this is a large flaw in the script.  The rest of the cast is also pretty disappointing, to be honest.  Some of the actors are good but have nothing to do (Stoll, Bacon, and Johnson in particular), while others are left with over-the-top work that you kind of just roll your eyes at while watching (Sarsgaard, in his scenery-chewing mode, and Edgerton).  Edgerton in particular has scenes where he's so obviously trying to look guilty while not looking guilty you wonder why the seemingly smart men around him don't clearly know what he's up to; he practically says "who me?" while twirling his hair like an old Looney Tunes episode.  I will admit that after The Gift (which has aged horribly in my mind), Edgerton is becoming one of those actors I realize I don't really like in anything.  About the only actors who get both a meaty role and sink their baskets are Cumberbatch (whom I am usually hot-and-cold with, but who lands his loyal but pragmatic state senator with regal aplomb, even if he occasionally indulges in a bit of scenery-chewing as well) and Nicholson (who nails her neglected wife role and whom I truly wish the film had been about-can someone give this woman more to do in her next movie, as she's more than earned it?).

The script itself unfolds rather interestingly at the beginning, with us starting in the middle of the story.  There's no Whitey Bulger origin scenes-he's already an established family man with a major crime syndicate and we don't get flashes to his childhood, which is refreshing.  However, the script then keeps a walnut shell over him.  We get little indication as to how he was able to demand such loyalty and respect, and why his associates (whom he frequently kills off or destroys their loved ones, particularly in a haunting scene with the air-headed mistress of one of his top assassins) stay with him.  We've become so accustomed to this sort of, well, "mob mentality" but the reality is that Don Corleone or the likes at least demand respect because he provides protection or cash.  Whitey Bulger is portrayed as simply a thug, and while the technical aspects of the film are impressive and occasionally the performances are good, the overacting from key players like Edgerton alongside the unknowable nature of Bulger and his organization cause the film to fail.  This may be the best thing Depp has done in years, but that's only because he's been drowning himself in Razzy Awards.  By any stretch of the imagination this is handsome but listless.

Those are my thoughts on Black Mass-tell me yours?  Do you consider this a return-to-form for Depp?  And what are his Oscar chances?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

OVP: Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)

Film: Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)
Stars: Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Eloise Mumford, Jennifer Ehle, Marcia Gay Harden
Director: Sam Taylor-Johnson
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Song-"Earned It")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Oh yes, I saw it, so you don't have to, though I'm going to be honest here-you probably should.  It's rare that a film, particularly in February, manages to capture the zeitgeist in such a ferocious way (and it seems odder that American Sniper has been doing something similar for the last month), and despite its extremely questionable quality, the film is not without its charms and occasionally brings up some fascinating questions about sexuality and our attitudes toward it, even if that comes out more in a film critique sort of way rather than in the actual content of the movie.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson, with a moniker straight out of a soap opera), a young college graduate who reads Thomas Hardy by day and by night, well, Anastasia is a bit of a blank slate in terms of what she does by night as we learn very little about her personal life throughout the film.  This is the first of several pretty underwritten aspects of the movie, but if I feel a little bit forgiving of them, it's partially because every aspect of the film, but particularly Anastasia, is a complete upgrade from the book.  For those who haven't read the book (or those who are pretending they haven't read the book), you'll know that the source material is absolutely terribly written.  It's been said by virtually everyone out there, to the point where it seems to be more a slam on the content than the actual novel, but the book is SO awfully edited that someone at Random House owes EL James a sincere apology note for letting her grammar appear so terrible.  An editor isn't responsible, however, for the way that Anastasia is insanely annoying as our insight into the novel and characters, and one of several improvements that Sam Taylor-Johnson makes on the film is to have no first-person narrator throughout the movie, giving us less of Anastasia's Christian drool.

The film follows Anastasia as she enters the world of ridiculously sexy and enigmatic Christian Grey, a young billionaire playboy whose wealth comes from, I want to say telecommunications, but honestly does it remotely matter?  It seems like all he does is randomly show up in helicopters and wear the entire J Crew catalog.  Christian, it should be said, doesn't improve much from the book, except in that we have a real-life model to drool over rather than whatever handsome guy from the gym we pictured while pawing through James' novel.  The film continues with Christian of course introducing Anastasia, a virgin, to the world of BDSM, or at least Christian's interpretation of it, and we get lots of long stares, constant denials of Christian's romantic intentions for Anastasia (even though he clearly has romantic feelings for her), and eventually a showdown that involves some spanking with a flail of some sort.  Anastasia realizes that Christian isn't for her, and she leaves in a pensive Empire Strikes Back-style ending (in that you know a sequel is coming).

There's so much to tackle here, so I'm going to start with the controversies first.  Obviously the film has some troublesome depictions of relationships, but I'm going to stop you there.  First off, this is a solo film, and what happens in later films is not really pertinent quite yet, and quite frankly, aside from Anastasia clearly having self-esteem issues, I didn't get too much of a date rape vibe that some have complained about and which I felt the book toed the line toward far more frequently.  Despite Christian being the "dominant" Anastasia is clearly the one calling all of the shots in the film.  She's the one who is being pursued, she's the one who won't sign the contract and dictates all of the arrangement.  Literally she's the one who is in control the entire movie except for the climactic flail scene, after which she quickly dumps Christian.  I'm not saying that she's a good role model or that this is a great depiction of feminism or anything, but at least in the film I just saw, she's only a wallflower in the sense that she's constantly fretting about a boy-she's largely the one in control here, and Christian is the one who is at her beck-and-call.  What is in store with the inevitable sequels I'll get to when those films come out.

I also think that the fact that the film isn't politically correct in terms of the way it features the BDSM community is unfortunate but not really the film's responsibility.  Every time a film comes out, particularly one that's geared toward female audiences, critics lampoon it if it they can't seem to relate or think that it doesn't reflect their viewpoint, which isn't really the point of a film-as long as the narrative makes sense within the confines of the celluloid (which it most definitely does-the plot is repetitive but logical) then making it completely representative of everyone's point of view isn't really a necessity.

I will say that one of the decisions of the film that I found really poor that probably contributed to it being a massive blockbuster was the concessions it made to get an R-rating.  For a film that is literally all about sex, it becomes comical, and not in a good way, that we never see either character nude from the front.  For a film that is literally about trying to let go of your sexual inhibitions, the camerawork by Seamus McGarvey (and my god there are a lot of Oscar nominees attached to this movie, with Anna Behlmer, Marcia Gay Harden, Danny Elfman, and Anne V. Coates, the editor of Lawrence of Arabia!!!, all amongst the credits) is handsome but ridiculous in the way that it avoids in particular showing Jamie Dornan's penis.  For a film that is apparently shaking the rafters of American sexuality, it seems a bit silly that we still can't see fully naked people in an R-rated movie.

Now we'll get to the actual quality of the film, but one quick note before we get there-when I was reading this book, I didn't pick up on the Twilight allusions nearly as heavily, but watching the film in front of me, it was hard not to catch every Twilight comparison.  The film may even end up out-earning some of the mammoth vampire movies, but between the piano, the enigmatically handsome leading man, the lip-biting heroine, the absent mother, hell even the Washington-location, there's really no denying the film owes a HUGE debt to Stephanie Meyer (and I'm hoping she's smart enough to be getting a cut).  With that said, I really liked the Twilight movies, especially some of the earlier ones, and I cannot defend it other than occasionally we have our guilty pleasures and I apparently was a sucker for a cheesy romance on occasion.

The moments that are the cheesiest in the film clearly work the best.  Hate-watching is not what I'd consider doing on a regular basis, but it's hard not to laugh at some of the intentional humor in the movie (like how she is drowning in rain after her first meeting with Christian Grey) and unintentional humor (the way that Christian constantly seems to be contradicting himself with heavy, "I don't want to talk about it but I can't stop talking about it" style monologues).  The best scene in the film by a country mile is the one where Anastasia and Christian are debating the terms of the contract, and we get the immortal giggle-line "what's a butt plug?" amongst multiple bon mots.  It's one of the few times that Jamie Dornan actually seems to be in on the joke.  His stoic Christian is not as much fun as it could have been, and while he looks the part, I would have liked to have seen Charlie Hunnam, an actor who can, you know, actually act, in the role as I think he would have gotten the joke a bit more.  Dakota Johnson is considerably better, though I hated the "she's a plain Jane" trope at the beginning of the film as she clearly isn't going to be with her parents, and her mother's demeanor in particular is echoed in the coyer and more playful scenes of the film (her parents are Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith for those of you who are living under a rock that doesn't have TMZ).

All-in-all, it's a cheesy schlockfest that's based on a terrible book and has no business being seen when you haven't caught Boyhood or Birdman or Selma yet.  But if you have, this might not be the worst $9 investment you ever made.  I don't know-I give it three stars.  Take that for what it is.