Movie Reviews

Jojo Rabbit

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  • Title: Jojo Rabbit
  • IMDb: link

Jojo Rabbit movie reviewAn irreverent comedy centered around a Nazi 10 year-old (Roman Griffin Davis) whose imaginary friend is Adolf Hitler isn’t going to appeal to everyone. Writer/director Taika Waititi (who also stars as the Fuhrer) crafts an odd little film about a devout, although not very good, Nazi who completely believes in the propaganda he’s been fed since birth about Jews and the military dominance of the father land despite those around him seeing the writing on the wall that the end of the war is vast approaching.

Waititi, who adapted the story from Christine Leunens’ novel Caging Skies, gets the most out of his young star while surrounding him with an impressive supporting cast who understand the vibe the director is going for in the film. Scarlett Johansson is terrific as JoJo’s mother who is hiding more than a few secrets from her young Nazi son. Sam Rockwell, as a demoted Nazi officer now forced to work with children, sets the tone of the film early on in his presentation to a Hitler Youth training camp. Jojo’s misadventures at the camp do nothing to make him question his belief in the Nazi Party but meeting a girl named Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie) leads to several questions.

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Harriet

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  • Title: Harriet
  • IMDb: link

Harriet movie reviewWhile watching director Kasi Lemmons‘ take on the story of Harriet Tubman (played by Cynthia Erivo) I was constantly reminded of Walt Disney’s old tall tale cartoons exploring characters such as Paul Bunyan. While Erivo is terrific in the leading role, Harriet‘s main struggle is the director and screenwriters (Gregory Allen Howard and Kasi Lemmons) stalwart refusal to simply tell the fascinating life of a slave turned abolitionist in favor of building up Tubman’s legacy to mythic proportions by spending so much time focusing on her visions from God and refusing to acknowledge (even after showing on-screen) those who helped Harriet escape the South be immediately rewriting events in favor of a single-handed narrative.

Lemmons’ style of filmmaking also adds very little to the film’s production leading to a rather bland cinematic experience any moment where the camera isn’t on Erivo. The choice of visually representing Harriet’s “spells” comes off rather amateurish as well. Because the legend of Harriet Tumban smothers every frame of film, it leaves little air for any of the actors who come across mostly as cliched slave owners or unremarkable side notes to history.

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The Lighthouse

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  • Title: The Lighthouse
  • IMDb: link

The Lighthouse movie reviewThe was a moment a little more than halfway through The Lighthouse where I was forced to look at the movie from an entirely different perspective and reconsider what I was watching. More than anything else, the nebulous nature of the proceedings provide the greatest strength of the latest film from writer/director Robert Eggers.

The script, penned by Robert Eggers and Max Eggers offers a simple premise of two strangers assigned to a lighthouse for a period of weeks. Cut-off from the world, the grizzly veteran (Willem Dafoe) and newbie (Robert Pattinson) struggle with the solitude of the remote outpost far from any other living souls.

The Lighthouse is a tense psychological drama presented mostly from the view of Pattinson’s character as we see one, or possibly both, men descend into madness. Set in the late 19th Century, there’s no outside communication of any kind as the pair are completely isolated. As odd things begin to happen, who do we believe? Are any of the bizarre hallucinatory sequences real? Or is it nothing more than fevered madness?

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The Current War

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  • Title: The Current War
  • IMDb: link

The Current War movie reviewThe Current War is a neutered look at the race for control of electricity between Thomas Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his Direct Current model and Alternating Current favored by both George Westinghouse (Michael Shannon) and Nikola Tesla (Nicholas Hoult). Refusing to pick a horse in the race, but definitely setting aside more screentime for Edison, the film sands off the rough edges of all three men in an attempt to make all likable. The result is a mostly harmless, but ultimately not very informative, film that sat on the shelf for two full years before its release.

Of the main characters, Edison obviously captured screenwriter Michael Mitnick‘s attention. While the film shows off the less than pleasant side of the inventor at times, including his vanity and harsh business practices, it goes out of its way to excuse and explain away those behaviors and turn Edison into a cliched misunderstood genius and family man. Westinghouse and his wife (Katherine Waterston) are allowed to steal more scenes in the second-half of the film, although they are really not much more than supporting players to Edison’s story. Meanwhile, far less time is devoted to Tesla (whose inclusion feels like an afterthought).

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Lucy in the Sky (Without Diamonds)

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  • Title: Lucy in the Sky
  • IMDb: link

Lucy in the Sky movie reviewLucy in the Sky offers little for audiences while struggling mightily to bring the life of astronaut Lisa Nowak to the big screen. Director Noah Hawley‘s film offers a plum role for Natalie Portman and some interesting visuals but lacks a clear purpose. I was also perplexed by a constantly changing camera frame. At first, I thought it was Hawley’s attempt to differentiate the parts of Lisa’s life that worked at NASA versus those she struggled with at home. However, it soon became apparent that there was no rhyme or reason other than, I suspect, to try and keep the audience’s interest through a tedious series of events.

The project has a star, intriguing subject matter in the astronaut’s deteriorating mental state after her return to Earth and failure to earn another trip to space, a supporting cast including Jon Hamm, and plenty of budget (the scenes of NASA training being the best of the film). So what went wrong? For starters, the script by Brian C. Brown and Elliott DiGuiseppi is mind-numbing slog that turns on a dime just in time for a bizarre final act featuring Portman’s character running far off the rails (and keeps on running) in a series of events that aren’t earned or properly established.

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