Movie Review: Sorry to Bother You (R – 105 minutes)

Boots Riley has worked in the film world for a while, but mainly doing soundtracks and music.  This is the first movie he has written and directed. I had first heard about the movie very late last year and early this year when it started hitting the festival circuit looking for a distributor. It’s a very unique story, told in a very unique way.  Honestly, I struggle to sum it up, or begin to tell you what genre it is.

The story revolves around Cassius “Cash” Green, who is unemployed in Oakland and living in his uncle’s garage-apartment, fighting to keep the garage door down when his girlfriend Detroit comes over.  Cassius heads to a telemarketing company, RegalView, where his friend Salvador works so that he can get a job.  Swiftly hired, Cassius at first struggles with attempting to sell what I think was encyclopedias over the phone, but then gets some advice from co-worker ‘Langston’.  Langston tells him to use his “white voice”.  The white voice is not just speaking properly, but a voice that conveys the idea of wealth.  Cash starts speaking in a David Cross voice, and immediately becomes hugely successful at selling, finding he has a gift for it.

Meanwhile, Detroit also begins working at the company, and a coworker named Squeeze starts to organize the employees to demanding fair wages and union opportunities.  Before Cash can even get too confused as to where he stands on the issue, he is promoted ‘upstairs’, to be a “power caller”.  He goes upstairs, and is briefly trained by Mr. _______ to make the big calls for RegalView’s parent firm, WorryFree.  During the first half of the movie, WorryFree ads and billboards show up in the background, advertising a life free of bill-paying.  You just have to move into one of their ‘buildings’ that look suspiciously like prisons, eat what and when they tell you, and work as they tell you.  A radical group called “the Left Eye” is opposed to this WorryFree lifestyle, and is fighting against them.  Cash stops wondering how he feels about WorryFree when he gets his first paycheck. 

Cassius proves to be as good a power caller as he was a regular caller, but as the employee riots grow larger outside of RegalView, he is hit in the head with a soda can as he enters the building to work – which gets caught on video and goes viral.  Cash makes it to Detroit’s art show opening with his head bleeding, where she does a piece of performance art. Cash then heads to a WorryFree company party to  meet the owner/CEO, Steve Lift.  Lift lets Cash know he’s been watching him, and wants him to take a special assignment in the company, that sort of involves overseeing a new workforce for the WorryFree endeavors.

From this point on, things get weird.  And, they were weird before this point.  I would attempt to describe the movie as a surrealist comedy, but with layered social overtones about money, wealth, employment, and corporate treatment of black Americans. Riley has done something completely unique, with some genuine laughs as well as some moments that really make you think, and some moments that will make you cringe.  The movie is directed well, it’s a little choppy here and there, but honestly, I think that is a style choice rather than a mistake.  Riley has an incredible eye and the movie is visually very slick. The cast is wonderful, and embraces the absurdity.

• Lakeith Stanfield plays Cassius Green, a guy who just wants to get paid so that he can advance his situation.  Stanfield plays the character just right as Cash is trying not to get overly invested in anything, existing just on the edge of constant frustration and lack of engagement.  Cash is instantly relatable, and the perfect center for this storm of crazy.

• Tessa Thompson plays Detroit, a character that felt very similar to her characters from Dear White People and Creed, but she is good at that particular character.

• Terry Crews plays Sergio, Cash’s uncle, who is trying his best to maintain his house, but with Cash four months behind on the rent, he is starting to consider WorryFree living.

• Jermaine Fowler plays Salvador, who helps Cash get the job.  He’s over the top and hilarious, providing the right counter to Cash’s low-key frustration.

• Steven Yeun plays Squeeze, who is bound and determined to unionize the RegalView employees and has some surprising sign spinning skills – or at least his stunt double does.

• Michael X. Sommers plays Johnny, Cash’s immediate supervisor, he’s creepy, weird, but also seems very supportive of Cash as he progresses.

• Danny Glover plays Langston, and he absolutely says that he’s too old for this sh*t in this movie.

• Kate Berlant plays Diana DeBauchery, a new manager brought in at RegalView to help motivate the employees.
• Omari Hardwick plays Mr. ________, and I am not typing it that way because I forgot his name – his name is never revealed in the movie.  For the majority of the movie, his voice is Patton Oswalt.

• Armie Hammer plays the obnoxious Steve Lift, so again, perfect fit.  He absolutely values profits over ethics and gets to play this character completely ego-maniacal corporate villain!

Overall, the movie is so strange – it is funny, but it can also make you feel really uncomfortable. It’s worth a viewing because it’s completely new and unique, but the back half of the movie almost feels like a different movie than the front half. It's interesting enough to make me look forward to the next thing Boots Riley does. 

6 out of 10: points given for being so interesting, different, and out-of-the-box. Points off for the somewhat shocking appearance of equisapians.  Spoiler alert, there are equisapians in this movie.

Movie Review: Skyscraper (PG13 – 102 minutes)

When watching trailers and commercials for this movie, I realized how much of my trust the Rock has earned.  Had there been any other star in the lead, I probably would not have seen this movie.

I appreciate when a movie is straightforward about what it is.  At no point did this movie attempt to be any more or less that what it is: action movie set in a giant building starring the Rock. Period. Will Sawyer is a former S.W.A.T. team (?) member who lost a leg in an attempt to take down a domestic abuse/hostage taker situation 10 years ago.  The doctor who saves him is Sarah, a naval doctor who eventually becomes his wife.  Together they have two children as he moves into the field of private security.

In present day, Will, Sarah, and the kids are the first to stay in one of the residential apartments in the top half of a new tower in Hong Kong called ‘the Pearl’.  At 3,500 feet and 225 stories tall, it is the new “World’s Tallest Building”.  The owner/designer, Zhao Long Ji, has hired Will to come in and check the security and safety measures before he opens the top residential half of the building (apparently the bottom, all stores and business, has been open for some time).  

As Will heads up to the penthouse to give his final report to the execs, Sarah is taking the kids to see some pandas because they were given special tickets to a ‘night-feeding’ by Will’s buddy Ben.

Will approves the opening of the top floors and is given in return a tablet that controls all the security for the building that only his face can access and is run from an offsite location, which makes little to no sense.  Their son gets sick, so Sarah brings the kids back early, accidentally running into a ‘maintenance’ crew run by Kores Botha.  He’s there to burn the building to get something he needs from Zhao.  Apparently Botha works for several powerful crime organizations, all of which demanded protection money from Zhao when he was building. However, he tracked all the payments on a special drive, and now Botha needs that drive or he will be in big trouble with his employers. So his answer is to burn the building by turning off the safety measures, which he can only do with the tablet cued to Will’s face at the off-site location.  I’m not entirely sure it’s a great plan, but hey – you have to get the story started somehow.  

Since Will was checking in at the off-site location, but Sarah and the kids are back inside, he has to get back into the building. His solution is to climb then jump from a super crane next to the building.  Once inside, some standard action hijinks ensue as Will does some climbing, fighting, searching, duct-taping, and out-smarting to get to Zhao and Botha and save his family.

Writer-director Rawson Marshall Thurber is better known for outlandish comedies (We’re the Millers and Dodgeball), but he also did Central Intelligence with the Rock, and that chemistry translates here. The action is entertaining, and the layout of the building is really fascinating, especially the giant park in the middle and the wind turbines that help it generate its own power. The cast is good, and does enough to fill in the holes between action pieces.

• Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson plays Will Sawyer, and makes him believable as a man who is still coping with the mental aspects of the loss of his leg, and more than a little self-doubt about his private security business finally getting a giant client. He would do anything for his family.

• Neve Campbell plays Sarah, and she was pretty great. She surprises the local law enforcement by being fluent in Mandarin, and due to being a naval doctor, can hold her own against a terrorist or two.  Honestly, I wanted even more of those moments – she was pretty kick-ass, and got some fight scenes, but I wanted her to beat up more bad guys!

• Pablo Schreiber plays Will’s former teammate and current business hookup.  He’s fine, but at no point did I not think he was involved with the plot.  Tickets to a panda “night-feeding”?  Very suspicious!

• Noah Taylor plays the very shady insurance agent Mr. Pierce, who is also at no point trustworthy.  Stop being so obvious about being villains, bad guys!

• Hannah Quinlivan lays Xia, Botha’s number one henchwoman on the ground, who is there to get the tablet unlocked and to the off-site location.

• Roland Moller plays Kores Botha – he’s big and scary, and does a fine job of menacing everything that everyone loves while trying to get what he needs.

• Byron Mann plays Inspector Wu, and I feel like I have complained with several other Rock movies (San Andreas and Rampage) about the underusage of Will Yun Lee – well, here I’m complaining about the underuseage of Byron Mann. He’s wonderful and capable of so much – and unfortunately spends most of this movie staring at computer monitors and TV screens watching whatever Will is up to.  He does listen to Sarah once she’s out of the building, but that takes a while.

• Chin Han continues to perfect playing “smug Asian businessman” in this movie as Zhao.  He really does love his building, and seems to want to get out from underneath the terrorist thumb he accidentally got under, but something about his performance kept making me think he might be in with the bad guys – all the way to the end.

Overall, the movie was plenty entertaining, and the Rock continues to use his charm to elevate otherwise average materials. And as for the Die Hard comparisons – yes, it’s a building that gets overtaken by terrorists, but really the comparisons are unfair.  Die Hard is the best action movie made and excels for many reasons, but primarily because of the out-of-placeness of John McClane. He’s a regular dude in the wrong place at the right time.  Here, Will is a security expert, he knows the building in and out, and is the perfect person to get in get his family. Skyscraper is not nearly as good, and you’re better off going in without attempting to compare it. Don’t expect too much from it, and it won’t let you down.

6 out of 10, a serviceable action flick.

Cast interview;

Movie Review: Ant Man and the Wasp (PG13 – 118 minutes)

We’ve finally arrived at the 20^th MCU movie. After the incredible high of Black Panther this past February, and then the overwhelming events of Infinity War this past May, we come to the perfect next step – Ant Man and the Wasp.

Paul Rudd as Scott Lang had his debut in AntMan in 2015, and then was big part of Captain America Civil War in 2016 (see what I did there?).  Scott was a reformed thief who got sucked into the power struggle of Hank Pym versus his younger and insane protégé, Darren Cross.  Scott became the AntMan to fight Cross’s Yellowjacket, using Pym Particles to shrink to the size of an ant, while also being able to communicate with various ants.  This was much to the chagrin of Hope, Hank’s daughter, who wanted to wear the suit and had been training to do so. 

This sequel picks up with Scott on house arrest after the events of Civil War, trying to rebuild his relationship with his family. Meanwhile, Hank and Hope are on the run, evading the authorities who want to lock them up for being ‘associates’ of Scott. They have become convinced that they can rescue Hank’s wife Janet, who was the original Wasp, and went super teeny tiny sub-atomic to stop a soviet missile attack in 1987.  She has been trapped in the ‘quantum realm’, but since Scott stopped by the quantum realm in his first movie, Hank and Hope are thinking they have a chance to save her.

Meanwhile, a new foe named Ghost (for her ability to phase through things), is also on the hunt for Hank and Hope, planning to steal their tech to prevent her body from being constantly ripped apart. 

Also Meanwhile, Sonny Burch, a black market tech dealer who Hope has been using to get items, has recently discovered her identity and is now obsessed with getting all of Hank’s tech to sell on the black market.

Also, also meanwhile, Scott’s friends Luis, Dave, and Kurt have started their own security company, and are struggling to stay afloat while Scott is on lockdown – but, on the good news side, Scott has made great strides in rebuilding his relationship with his daughter, Cassie, and her mother and step-father.

Director Peyton Reed once again is able to provide a comedy with incredible action sequences in which the stakes are high, but not as life-or-death as they have been in some other movies this year.  This story has a tight, personal arc that really humanizes the characters. Seeing the Wasp on screen is absolutely fantastic, and really, the hand to hand combat scenes in which the Wasp and AntMan go back and forth between regular sized and small are perfected here.  I also really appreciated the effects on the Ghost as she seemed to leave ‘echoes’ of herself when she moved. It was impressive.  But, as with the first movie, the true gem of this movie is the cast.

• Paul Rudd continues to be a national treasure as Scott Lang, the AntMan. He makes Scott incredibly likeable and fun as he is working on finishing out his two hear house-arrest by not getting into any trouble. He’s working on making sure his daughter Cassie is happy, and that the business he and Luis are building will be successful. 

• Evangeline Lilly plays Hope Van Dyne and she steals the movie for me. It was incredible to finally see one of the founding members of the Avengers on screen, and she did a phenomenal job. Hope is no-nonsense, and combat ready. I particularly liked how hurt she was that Scott had run off to help Captain America without telling her, not because he didn’t tell her, but because she knew how prepared she was for that type of combat, and how much she could have helped.

• Michael Douglas gets a little more to do in this one as Hank Pym, again, he gets another digitally de-aged sequence, and really has some fantastic scenes with Pfeiffer.

• Michael Pena again steals all of his scenes as Luis. He does get one incredible story sequence, in which he recaps what happened in the first movie and between that movie and this one.  He just wants to help their business be successful.

• T.I. returns as Dave, who, partnered with David Dastmalchian’s Kurt, are the perfect sidekicks for Luis. They have a fantastic moment near the end of the movie where they help stop Burch’s crew, resulting in increasing business for their security company.

• Judy Greer returns as Maggie, Scott’s ex and Cassie’s mother. Along with Bobby Cannavale as Paxton, her new husband, she’s happy to have Scott around more. They both got to add more fun this time around.

• Randall Park plays FBI Agent Jimmy Woo – a character that was original created in the fifties in the comics where he was a straight-laced S.H.I.E.L.D. agent.  Here, he’s a competent FBI agent, who knows Scott is up to no good, but is unable to prove it.  He was hilarious, and the perfect pairing for Rudd.

• Walton Goggins joins the movie as Sonny Burch – he’s a arms dealer with no secret agenda. He just wants to steal Hank’s tech so that he can sell it to the highest bidder, and that was a bit refreshing. He’s not there to take over the world, or get revenge, just money. I also enjoyed his crew, particularly Divian Ladwa who created what may or may not be a truth serum for them to use in interrogations.

• Hannah John-Kamen joins the story as Ava or Ghost. She was really impressive, and I enjoyed that her motivation again was personal, not world-dominating or evil, she just wanted to stop her own pain and imminent death. The fight scenes with her were fantastic, and (spoiler alert), I love that she was not killed, so that the possibility of her returning in future movies is very much a possibility.

• Laurence Fishburne plays Dr. Bill Foster, a character who in the comics was occasionally known as Black Goliath.  Here, he’s a former scientist partner of Hank’s who worked with him at S.H.I.E.L.D.  Now, he’s trying to help Ava pull herself back together, and end her constant pain, and doesn’t mind if that involves going up against Hank – with whom he’s holding an old grudge.

• Michelle Pfeiffer joins the cast as Janet Van Dyne, the original Wasp.  She gets to have a digitally de-aged scene where she and Hank are going off on a mission in 1987, and then she does (spoiler alert) get rescued from the quantum realm. She’s wonderful, even in these very small doses.

Overall, the movie is just fantastic – it’s so much fun, and just a perfect summer flick.  It felt so comforting and familiar to see the Wasp kicking ass on screen. I’ve seen it in animated shows for so long.  I also really loved that none of the villains ended up getting ‘eliminated’.  With a cinematic universe this large, it’s nice to have some villains that can come back.  I really loved the tight little story, and the character building.  It’s the perfect follow-up for Infinity War.  That movie’s end was so overwhelming and focused just on the heroes, it’s nice to have this movie humanize what happened there a little bit. Yes, it ties in, and yes, you should stay until the very end of the credits. 

10 out of 10 – I started with a 9 out of 10, but then couldn’t figure out what I didn’t like about it.  I loved it – so much fun, so entertaining, and really, some of the best fight sequences.

Cast fun: