Hell's Kitchen, New York, 1978*1. The put-upon wives of three mobsters (Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish, Elisabeth Moss) find themselves struggling when their husbands are jailed following a failed store robbery. At first they decide to take up the reins of the business themselves, then the idea occurs that the ladies could be players in their own right. As their operation grows, they find themselves rubbing up other underworld figures the wrong way, and eventually decisions have to be made about how far each is prepared to go to assure their success...
POINT Now. I've heard a few folks comment that the premise of this movie is a blatant rip-off of 2018's Widows, and I feel the need to point out that this is definitely not the case. The Kitchen is in fact based on the 2015 comic from DC/Vertigo, and that was a rip-off of 1983's Widows. Come on people, really. Flippancy aside though, this is closer in tone and structure to a sort of Grand Theft Auto '78, since they're not pulling off One Big Job but building a sprawling criminal empire.
And although the levels of intensity feel right, the setup for the central premise itself feels a little linear. "Hey, y'know we could do The Crime, right?" - "Shall we do The Crime?" - "Yeah, let's do The Crime!!". Structurally this isn't a million miles away from Hustlers, except here it's a fight for identity and survival, rather than entitlement (obviously there is a bit of entitlement). Also, the vintage soundtrack is better in this movie, even if the best tunes have appeared in numerous other soundtracks over the years).
PRISON The central cast all do well with roles which don't tonally overlap too much, joined by Margo Martindale in full, glorious gangster-pantomime mode. Each of trio are individually flawed outside of their base criminal aspirations, with their own hurdles to clear before the credits roll. Two of our gang take to the life of crime like ducks to water, while the third still gives it one hell of a crack before becoming uncomfortable with the consequences of her new responsibilities. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Melissa McCarthy is far better at drama than she is comedy, even if she plays both almost identically*2. And it turns out that the same appears to be true of Tiffany Haddish. Elisabeth Moss is great as always.
As well as the strong - borderline caricature - 1978 production design*3, we're treated to some fantastic establishing scenery shots courtesy of cinematographer Maryse Alberti and the effects team who brought them to digitally enhanced life. At times this feels a bit like an early Guy Ritchie flick (no bad thing) in that the police are mentioned, but fire a handgun a few times in broad daylight and they're nowhere to be seen. This isn't their manor, and the players in this tale don't take them seriously anyway.
BIG The film drags a bit in its third act, and the whole thing ends up feeling like it could easily lose around twenty minutes. When the final plot tie-up arrives, it feels like something which has been dropped in because it's expected for the format, rather than the thing which has been driving the story all along. As escalating crime-sprees go, The Kitchen is a relatively nuts-and-bolts rendition, but one made with conviction and no small amount of style...
Buy it, but maybe wait for the price to come down first.
Not particularly, but there are strong and surprisingly nuanced performances all round.
Unlikely, since while The Kitchen won't be for everyone, it'll be a difficult to movie to actively take against.
No.
Level 1: General Hux is in this (and whose deadpan comic timing is superb, by the way)
*1 While obviously I'm aware that the title is location-specific, I can't help but feel that putting three women in a movie called "The Kitchen" in 2019 is playing into the wrong hands, somewhat. [ BACK ]
*2 I'll be honest, a small part of me was hoping Melissa McCarthy would be dreadful in this so that I could say "If you can't stand The Heat... stay out of The Kitchen!!1!". Alas, that cheap pun doesn't apply because her turn here is absolutely solid. We can only play the cards we're dealt, right? [ BACK ]
*3 Mate, it's 1978 and no one mentions Star Wars? At all? It'd only been out for six months and was still massive. You have a scene in a street full of movie theatres and the most recognisable name you've got splashed on the hoardings is Grease? ...what do you mean 'this isn't a documentary'? [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Imagine being a set-hand on Brian Henson's The Happytime Murders. You're pretty low down the ladder but it's your first job on an actual movie and you're just excited to be there. This is where the magic happens. It's Tuesday and a scene is being filmed where two Muppets™-style puppets are noisily having sex in an office with a frosted-glass door and windows. The police are talking to a secretary (played by Maya Rudolph) outside the office, who's acting as if everything's normal. The male puppet 'pulls out' and, while the audience don't see his penis, he proceeds to ejaculate all over the office. This takes the form of silly-string, which is effectively a visual punchline to the joke. It's funny because they're puppets.
But this is a gross-out comedy from (among others) H.Brothers, starring Melissa McCarthy, and the audience have expectations. So the ejaculation continues. The people working on the set (yourself included) can imagine the tears of hilarity running down the faces of the audience as they watch this. But that's not enough. Director Brian Henson wants his cast to ad-lib their lines, looking for that elusive off-the-cuff comedy gold which often can't be captured in the writers-room. As set-hand, it's your job to clean the office-interior set so the crew can run again. And so they do. Noisy sex noises and silly-string resume. This means that in the new take, the distinct pattern sprayed on the door and windows will be noticeably different when edited into the original shot as one continuous sequence, but the director is sure this won't be noticed by the crowd having a good time on a Friday night. It's all good.
Then Brian wants to go again. To get more quality improvisation. Clean the windows, clean the door, sit back down. Action. Screaming, ejaculation, a different array of puppet jizz. That wasn't enough. Let's do one more take. Wiping, action, screaming, jizz. No, again. Wipe. Action. Scream. Jizz. Again. Again? Surely the comedy-well has to be dry by now? Surely these shots can't be intercut with the broken continuity of the silly-string jizz? Yes they can. Again. Wipe. Action. Scream. Jizz. Wipe. Action. Scream. Jizz. Everyone on-set is finding this hilarious. You see, it's funny because they're puppets. That may look like silly-string, but in the final movie it'll be jizz. Jizz is funny. Puppet-jizz is hilarious. Brian isn't quite happy with that last take. He thinks we could get more. You reach for your cloth.
You're just glad to be working in the film industry.
Your family are so proud your dream's come true.
You'll screenshot your name in the credits to go on Facebook.
Anyway, I went to watch The Happytime Murders, the comedically tone-deaf movie that can't tell the difference between a punchline and a profanity! The film which takes an interesting concept then grinds it straight down to the lowest common denominator of dick-jokes and witless improv. The USP - of humans and puppets interacting in a straight plot-driven story, with the difference between them noted and worked into the script as social segregation - is largely abandoned after ten minutes when everyone realises it's just easier to hope for a laugh by swearing. The first punchline of the movie is "well fuck you". Melissa McCarthy's first line contains the word "fuck", her last contains "asshole". The film's not a particularly great pastiche on either the buddy-cop nor film noir-genres, and has nothing else to say in the meanwhile*1.
Credit where it's due though - the puppeteering itself is pretty great. From the very first scene, I had no trouble at all in buying the felt denizens as their own separate characters. They're just characters who are as annoying as the ones played by humans.
Still, it's always nice to see Melissa McCarthy outmatched in terms of comic timing by a puppet.
Imagine putting the "asshole says what" joke into your 15-rated movie, in 2018. Imagine putting the "asshole says what" joke into your movie twice, because you want the second one to act as a callback, like you invented it. Then imagine having one of your characters stopping to explain the "asshole says what" joke.
Imagine looking in the mirror every day and seeing Brian Henson.
*1 Typical scene-ending punchlines include: "Fuck you" (yes, again), "You bit my dick" and "First time I've knocked a guy out with his balls". I don't want to come off as a prude, here. I'm not. My own language is generally quite horrific in relaxed company, as is my sense of humour. But swearing isn't the same as wit. The general level here is just bad writing and/or bad improv. Still, the crowds like it, I suppose? Well, not the crowd in my Friday screening, there were five of us. But it's been out since Monday so I imagine it was packed until Thursday. [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Without a strong cast to share the comedic spotlight, or a 15 certificate to gamely soak up her trademark punctuative profanity masquerading as witty improvisation, all that's left in Life Of The Party is for Melissa McCarthy to repeat any scene's 'keyword' four times or do the 'fat person falls over' schtick. Four times.
Less enjoyable than I Feel Pretty, even though that film has far more pressing problems.
The worst part is the feeling that schedulers and distributors assume that if you're not into superhero movies, this is what you'll want instead.
Level 2: Gillian Jacobs is in this, and she was in that Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World with Keira 'Sabé' Knightley.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Ghostbusters (2016 / second-pass / 3D / SPOILERS)
Cert: 12A / 116 mins / Dir. Paul Feig / Trailer
Okay, after watching the 2016 iteration of Ghostbusters again, I find I don't have that much to add to my first review. It's certainly not that I enjoyed the movie any less the second time around but for obvious reasons, familiarity with the story and the script takes the shine off the majority of one-liners and witticisms which made the film so pleasantly surprising on the opening night.
And if I'm being honest, re-watching the film only serves to underline a couple of gripes. While I'd remarked that the screenplay takes a while to click into gear, it turns out that precise moment is when Patty officially joins 'the gang' and the four characters start working seamlessly together, instead of slightly-unconvincingly edging around each other. The film instantly goes from not bad to great at that point, and with performers this comfortable in each other's space, that's got to come down to the writing.
And the film's bad guy, Rowan. Has he really been able to manufacture a bunch of psychic-amplifier bombs to tear a hole in reality after reading a single textbook on the paranormal (which, given its age in the movie, won't have anywhere near the level of technical or theoretical detail that the actual Ghostbusters are later using) and still harbouring an unresolved complex over being bullied when he was younger? Because that'd be bland as a plot-device alone, never mind the entire setup for the film's antagonist. Almost as insulting as the climax of the movie being resolved by the portable nuclear-reactor, Ecto-1, being driven into a dimensional-portal in order to seal it, but by Slimer, rather than any of the actual heroes, and accidentally as the heroes didn't really engineer it. Still, at least the subsequentally-destroyed Times Square is magically restored to its former state for reasons which aren't even hinted at, never mind exposited.
Seriously though, never mind all that. The film's great.
Oh, and how come Abby and Erin's hair turns white, but their eyebrows don't?
I'm just going to come out and say it: Men in Black and RIPD.
Neither are particularly great movies, but if you enjoyed them, you'll loveGhostbusters.
You should.
It does. Not always as effortlessly as it'd like, but it does.
Quite possibly
Probably not.
Didn't hear one, no.
Level 2: Well, Ed Begley Jr's in this movie, and he appeared in a couple of episodes of the TV series Outlaw along with Jimmy 'Bail Organa' Smits.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Well, thanks to the sterling work of Sony's marketing department, the opening-night showing of the first new Ghostbusters cinematic content in twenty seven years (for which the tickets went on sale about a month ago) was less than half full. The audience in attendance didn't seem too phased by this, but the awkward shuffling of the three fully-suited cosplayers invited by the cinema to meet-and-greet at the front of the auditorium during the pre-trailer ads spoke volumes.
Yes, we finally get to see Paul Feig's XX-chromosomed interpretation of Ghostbusters; 60% reboot, 40% flat-remake. Leaving aside the aforementioned lacklustre publicity and the ferocious number of online misogynists entitled fanboys it's attracted, the film has its work cut out long before the BBFC card. Because if you can't top everybody's favourite movie, should you even try?
Well, Ghostbusters takes about half an hour before it feels comfortable doing its own thing, and even after that it's constantly referencing beats and tropes from the 1984 original. The plot-mechanics around the increased paranormal occurrences and the central villain are sketchy at best, feeble at worst; Cameos from the legacy-cast are shoehorned in to the point where they're practically spot-lit; the pop-soundtrack is intrusive and repetitive in the number of cover-versions and remixes of the song we all know; there's a McCarthy-sized gap between some of the scripted dialogue and the improvised lines; the sequel-alarm goes off far earlier than it should, and there's a point shortly before the climax where writers Paul Feig and Katie Dippold clearly didn't know how to wrap up the neon carnage they'd created in Times Square...
Also, the film's magnificent. Quite, quite magnificent. Because everything listed above doesn't matter when you're having this much fun. Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones gel perfectly, and while the screenplay is anxious to get things moving at a brisk pace, they each have a lot to bring to the party (McKinnon and Jones pretty much steal the show, in fact. As they're relatively unknown to UK audiences, it's easier to buy into their characters*1). Chris Hemsworth's good fun as the dumb-blonde receptionist, but just as it feels like that joke's wearing thin, Feig finds a way to develop his character, too (well, a little).
Even in 2D the film is visually intense and it's deafening as soon as the action starts. As noted, there's very little in the way of downtime, but the pacing is fairly constant for all that. Is it a vehicle for SNL performers to riff off each other and indulge in puerile slapstick? Absolutely, as was the 1984 flick. While the methodology is suitably different, Feig captures the tone of the first movie and builds on it with the best of his own style.
And be warned: it's a 12A in the UK so if your kids are under ten, they may get a little freaked out. Although not as freaked out as I was by the library-ghost back in the day.
That's good though, right?
Will Ghostbusters 2016 be as iconic as its 1984 counterpart? No.
Does Ghostbusters 2016need to be as iconic? Not at all.
The lightning-in-a-bottle of the original couldn't be recaptured by the same writers, director and cast five years later, so why would anyone expect a completely new gang to pull off the impossible more than quarter of a century after that?
But I'm happy to say that the new Ghostbusters is funny, exciting, gloriously self-indulgent and had everyone leaving the cinema grinning. And when it comes to a Summer-movie, I can't ask for more than that...
Depends on how/why, but I'll be happy to discuss it at length with you over a pint.
Didn't hear one, but most of the action sequences are pretty much white-noise, to be fair.
Level 2: There could well be some direct links with voice-work in various SW projects (and there are certainly a few in behind the scenes departments), but let's go for Leslie Jones who plays Patty in this, and also appeared in 1998's Wrongfully Accused, as did Michael 'Nuvo Vindi' York.
Yes, I just reminded you that Nuvo Vindi is canon, didn't I?
#NotEvenSorry
#YeaYeaYeaYeaYEAYEAYEAYEAH!
*1 Wiig and McCarthy pretty much play the versions of themselves you've seen before, and while it works for this film, you also can't help but remember all the other times they've done that.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
