Movie Review: Enola Holmes (PG13 – 123 minutes)

 

My local theater has closed back down due to pandemic issues, so I am back to watching movies on various streaming services.  Enola Holmes was originally a Warner Brothers Theatrical release but sold to Netflix thanks to the ‘rona.

At this point, you’re familiar with Sherlock Holmes, master detective.  There have been several incarnations, most recently with Robert Downey Jr. playing him in a series of Guy Ritchie period pieces and Benedict Cumberbatch and Johnny Lee Miller playing various modern-day incarnations. The original Sherlock was a 1887 literary character by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who had various consulting detective adventures over the course of several books. Enola Holmes is Sherlock and his older brother Mycroft’s much younger sister who debuted in a series of young adult books in 2006. 

In this movie, Enola is enjoying her upbringing with her eccentric mother, Eudoria. She is enjoying a very non-traditional Victorian upbringing as Eudoria teachers her everything, chess, jujitsu, drawing, reading, philosophy, etc.  On the morning of her sixteenth birthday, Enola finds her mother has disappeared. After her brothers visit, Mycroft wants to send her to a finishing school and Sherlock refrains from an opinion.  Enola, determined to find her mother, escapes and encounters a young runaway lord. Their two capers become intertwined as Enola searches for answers.

The movie was directed by Harry Bradbeer and is very entertaining.  This is another interesting case where I wonder if I would have loved it as much if I saw it in the theater.  Streaming on Netflix, it was incredibly enjoyable.  The story is interesting as Enola tracks her mother through suffragette movements and policy changes in Victorian London. The action set pieces are fun and intense as she dodges hitmen and school headmistresses.  I also appreciate that Enola remains the lead, with Sherlock and Mycroft being supporting characters. 

Millie Bobby Brown feels incredibly natural as Enola Holmes. Charming and plucky, she is more than capable of carrying the movie without being overwhelmed by larger ‘names’ in supporting roles. I enjoyed that Enola was determined to see her quest through, regardless of those trying to stop her. Also, while I wasn’t sure about the fourth-wall breaking when Enola talks directly to the audience, by the end I found it very fun and engaging – it directly invites the audience into the movie.

Henry Cavill plays Sherlock, and while that is not who I would have cast (seriously, why is this not RDJ? There are too many Sherlocks running around now and due to the period piece setting, I do wish this was in the same realm, just wishful thinking…), he does a good job of seeing the potential in Enola as a detective and keeps his performance subtle and encouraging. Sam Claflin as Mycroft gets to play a little bigger as the overbearing and stodgy brother determined to turn Enola into a ‘proper’ lady. Claflin and Cavill seem to have a good time together and I am a little curious about their outtakes.

Helena Bonham Carter is the perfect choice for Eudoria and almost seems to no be acting, simply existing as a progressive Victorian woman working towards equality. I really appreciated the eventual understanding she and Enola come to when Enola realizes her mother is almost more focused on her cause than on her daughter.

Louis Partridge plays the young lord Tewkesbury who literally bumps into Enola when she is on the run and together they set off to each escape their own personal traps. Burn Gorman is the hitman on the trail of one of them or perhaps both of them.

Susan Wokoma plays Edith, a contact of Eudoria and one of Enola’s former teachers.  Fiona Shaw plays Miss Harrison, the leader of the finishing school.

Overall, the movie is a family-friendly entertaining flick that works for an evening in with your popcorn.

8 out of 10 – I would happily watch another one of these.  Now, can we just get Cavill cast as Bond and get that franchise to move on?

Movie Review: Hooking Up (R – 104 minutes)

 

My theater is open, but there are not any new releases that struck my fancy, so I checked out Hooking Up on Hulu. 

Hooking Up is a dramedy that covers the story of Darla and Bailey.  Darla is a sex addict recently justifiably fired from her job as a sex columnist at a magazine and attending required counseling sessions that are held in a local high school.  Bailey is recovering from testicular cancer and has just been diagnosed with a second round of it while attending cancer support counseling at the same high school. He’s recently separated from his high school sweetheart and handling that very poorly – to the point of stalking her.  Darla gets the idea from her sessions to revisit all the locations that she had sex. She convinces Bailey to go with her, and they set off on a road trip from Atlanta to Dallas, screwing in all her previous screwing locations. Hijinks sort of ensue.

The cast is great and they do a wonderful job with the roles they have. The chemistry between the two leads is wonderful and I would love to see some of the outtakes. The story is one of redemption and how these two characters who are at their respective rock bottoms help each other pull up to find new chances.  In a normal year, I may have had more patience for the movie, but I think I am craving lighter fare lately.  Both characters are so completely screwed up, it’s hard to like them. Yes, once we meet Darla’s mother, we understand where some of her issues come from.  However, she was so horrible in the beginning, for me that wasn’t enough to redeem her.  Once we meet Bailey’s family, we see why he felt so unsupported and was clingy with Liz, his ex. I would have preferred this movie either lean hard into the comedy, or completely commit to the drama. Walking the line between both is very difficult.

As I mentioned, the cast is great.  Brittany Snow plays Darla as unhinged and uncaring in the beginning.  She had convinced herself that her lifestyle was necessary for her job without really noticing the affect it was having on that job and her relationships. Through her adventures with Bailey, she learns to acknowledge and get help for her own issues, leading to the ability to heal.

Sam Richardson is a gem of a performer and gives Bailey such layered depression that the comic moments felt uncomfortable.  Eventually, he learns to stand up for himself, become who he wants to be as opposed to the demands of friends and family, and accepts that he can be more than just his cancer.

The rest of the cast is really just elevated cameos, which is good, because they support the story while letting Snow and Richardson earn the spotlight. Anna Akana as Liz gets the most to do, which is oscillate between angry and supportive-smothering. Amy Pietz plays Darla’s mother Betty, and Jordana Brewster plays her boss Tanya.  Vivica A. Fox pops in as Bailey’s mother.

Overall, the movie is well-executed and the performances are good. Again, the chemistry between Richardson and Snow is fantastic - they truly seem to be having fun. I didn’t care for the story, but if you enjoy a good dramedy with earned redemption from some tough-to-love folks, this will be right up your alley.

5 out of 10

Movie Review: Tenet (PG13 -150 minutes)

 

My local theater has reopened with a whole bunch of extra safety precautions in place and so I saw Tenet on the big screen. As much as I hate to admit it, Christopher Nolan was correct: Tenet should be seen in a theater.  I happened to be alone for my viewing and I found myself wishing the theater was more full.  It would have been interesting to watch this with a crowd – not complaining, that’s still not safe – just observing.

Tenet introduces us to The Protagonist as he works as an international spy. The movie begins with him helping stop a terrorist hostage situation in Moscow. While there, he witnesses something odd when being fired upon by the villains.  He doesn’t quite make it out, and just as he thinks he’s been killed, he’s actually rescued (but not before getting some teeth yanked out) and recruited for another top-secret mission with only the word “tenet” as his way in.  He travels from location to location, eventually learning that Russian Andrei Sator has some terrible plans for the world and a mysterious organization is working to stop those plans. 

Honestly, that’s about all I will say about it.  You definitely should see it.  It feels like a throwback to early Christopher Nolan work, most notably Memento, a movie that managed to run forwards and backwards. I don’t believe I am spoiling anything by mentioning that this movie has some forward and backward in it.  Not necessarily time travel, but time inversion. If you want to travel back 10 days, you need to reverse through 10 days.  Confusing, but also fascinating, and apparently based on some real entropy physics.  Nolan loves a non-linear story, and this one is linear with non-linear bits.  There are very few CGI effects for a movie with inverted time sequences. Nolan had the actors shoot scenes moving backwards to do as much practically as possible and I think it made a difference in the final product.  The action set pieces including a massive car chase and plane crashing into a hanger are all done practically.  The cast includes some Nolan regulars and some new additions.

John David Washington is exceptional as the lead of this movie and I am suddenly ready to hand him his own action franchise. He is calm, cool, collected, and manages to let almost nothing rattle him, even inverted bullets. He is absolutely a leading man and I cannot wait to see what he does next. Also – weird observation, I was really intrigued by his talent to hold an espresso cup and saucer in one hand.

Here’s something I never thought I would say, after watching this, I can understand how Robert Pattinson got the new Batman.  Don’t get me wrong, as much as I love Batman, I think the character deserves a bit of a rest, give us a few years to breathe before forcing another one at us (unless of course you make a Batman Beyond with an old Keaton-Wayne and JGL Mcginnis).  Pattinson is a slick assistant spy named Neil in this piece, seemingly prepared for almost any situation.  He is capable in the action sequences and even more with his partnership with the Protagonist.

Elizabeth Debicki and her incredibly long neck provide the female lead as Kat – a woman trapped in a relationship with Kenneth Branagh’s villainous Sator.  I hated her character at first, because the whole ‘trapped in marriage with this horrible man because they have a son’ is really tired. She manages to make it work and steps into her own by the end. 

I did not know that Aaron Taylor-Johnson was in this and it took me a few minutes to recognize him. He’s pretty great as the standard action guy leading a team that has been recruited by whatever mysterious benefactor and organization has recruited the Protagonist. Dimple Kapadia enters her first Western movie to play a arms-dealer/helpful friend who points our team in the right direction. And yes, since it’s a Nolan movie, Michael Caine pops up briefly.

Honestly, I wasn’t sure what I thought when I left the theater, but the more I think about the movie, the more I like it.  It’s not perfect and certainly uneven, and I figured out the who just before the reveal, which I don’t mind.  But the action is spectacular, the cast is great, and the story interesting.  It may be worth seeing a second time to catch all the little added bits I missed the first time around. For example, the color red indicates regular movement and blue indicates inverted movement.

8 out of 10 – and possible getting higher.

Side note, a Sator Square is a five by five square of different palindromes that when turned various ways, the words still read the same. Each word features in the movie Tenet in different places.  The earliest dated Sator Square was found in the ruins of Pompeii.

Movie Review: Bill & Ted Face the Music (PG13 – 91 minutes)

 

Bill and Ted debuted in 1989 with their Bogus Journey following up in 1991. The story was fairly straightforward: two slackers are visited by a man from the future who tells them they need to pass their history test because in the future their band will write a song that saves the world. If they fail the history test, Ted’s father will send him to military school, breaking up the band, thus depriving the world of the song.  Together, they use a time machine phone booth to travel through time, collecting historical folks to bring them forward to San Dimas, California to participate in their history report.

As insane as that sounds, the movie is plenty of silly fun with some scene-stealing turns from Genghis Khan, Billy the Kid, Socrates, Joan of Arc (who is not Noah’s wife), Sigmund Freud, Beethoven, Abraham Lincoln, and of course, Napoleon. The sequel followed the two as they got killed and had to beat Death at a series of games in order to come back and save their wives and existences. William Sadler’s Death steals every scene he’s in. 

Now, it’s 30 years later, Bill and Ted are middle aged with slacker teenage daughters and have still not written the song.  They are visited again from the future and informed if the song is not written by that evening, space time collapses into itself.  Having spent the last 30 years trying, Bill and Ted instead time hop to the future to check in with their future selves periodically to take the song after they’ve written it. In the meantime, their daughters go back in time to build the ultimate band to perform said song.

The movie is plenty of silly and really is bolstered by the perfect chemistry between Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves. They genuinely love each other, and that certainly comes across. Face the Music is directed by Dean Parisot, who also directed Galaxy Quest and RED 2 along with multiple TV episodes. The writers, Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon came up with this story nearly ten years ago. It has taken this long to get everything aligned perfectly.  It may not work on every level, but if you have a special place in your heart for the first one, this one feels like a warm hug.

Alex and Keanu have remained friends, helping each other out in various projects and in general hanging out.  The idea that Bill and Ted are still together, still struggling as a band, and live next door to one another makes sense – even to the point that they go to couples counseling together with their wives.  They are fun to watch together, and I enjoyed how much fun they are having playing different future versions of themselves.

Samara Weaving and Brigette Lundy-Paine join as Thea and Billie – the daughters of the pair, they essentially do impressions of Bill and Ted from the first movie, which works just fine here. 

William Sadler again steals some scenes as Death and Kristen Schaal plays the daughter of Rufus who provides the guidelines of this adventure to the guys.

Erinn Hayes and Jayma Mays take over playing the princesses in this version, and while still in love with Bill and Ted, they are beginning to grow tired of the general lack of progress they’ve made.

Hal Landon Jr. returns as Chief Logan, Ted’s still angry dad and Amy Stock returns as Missy a character who started as Bill’s step mom, then became Ted’s stepmom and now in this one is marrying Beck Bennett’s Deacon, Ted’s little brother.  Kid Cudi shows up as Kid Cudi, which is very entertaining. 

The standout for me was Anthony Carrigan as Dennis Caleb McCoy.  At first I feared the character would be very irritating, but the more he said, the more I loved him, and he ended up being one of my favorite parts of the flick.

Overall, the movie is not perfect, but it is plenty of silly fun, which honestly – we all need right now.  I do wish there was a little more of the girls pulling famous musicians from history. They only grab a couple and they don’t get a ton to do. To better parallel the original, I do wish those musicians had at least one scene showing them interacting and getting to know one another. As it is, I do enjoy the bits of Jimi Hendrix and Louis Armstrong and Mozart, I just want more.

6 out of 10 – not totally excellent, but certainly not bogus.

Movie Review: Project Power (R – 113 minutes)

 

It will be interesting to see if Netflix maintains the level of new releases it has currently been providing once movie theaters get back to full business.  Project power was a big Netflix release this past weekend but may not have gathered much steam in theaters had it been released there.

Project Power follows the storylines for three separate characters as they converge in New Orleans.  Robin is a young girl struggling through high school with dreams of becoming a rapper – literally.  She has a daydream about rapping her science teacher into his place. Her mother has diabetes and they do not have health insurance. To help make ends meet, she joins her cousin in dealing a new drug that has just hit the streets.  Frank is a New Orleans police officer getting more and more frustrated at the police department’s inability to stop the spread of this new drug. He’s so frustrated that he’s resorted to using the drug to stop those who are dealing it while his captain has to deal with some suspicious government types.  Art is a veteran who has just arrived in New Orleans, following the drug, determined to stop it and find something taken from him.

The drug is called Power – and it gives the user superpowers for 5 minutes. The catch is, you have no idea what power you could get, and there is a chance it simply makes you explode.  It could give you super-strength or bulletproof skin. However, you could get a Morlock-type power and have to move to the sewers for five minutes. The movie half-attempts to explain the science. Essentially the drug is spliced DNA from a lot of different animals, and what we consider ‘powers’ are all features from the animal world. This movie started slow for me, but once it got going, I enjoyed it. I appreciated the three separate characters each with fairly developed stories and the way they came together.  It’s fascinating to judge a movie during a pandemic because I feel like I may not have enjoyed this as much if I saw it in the theater in between standard summer blockbusters. Watching it on Netflix seems a better fit for this tight little action flick.

The movie is directed by the team of Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman who are responsible for Catfish and Paranormal Activities 3 and 4, as well as the thriller Nerve.  The story here is interesting, and the action is good.  It does feel like a small, almost independent action movie, if that makes any sense.

Jamie Foxx is good as Art, attempting to give him layers and hiding his true motive until the middle of the movie.  Foxx is certainly watchable, and while subdued here, a good lead.  He does seem to be taking this a little more seriously than necessary and the movie may have benefitted from taking itself less seriously across the board.

Joseph Gordon Levitt is always interesting, and I still wish he would play Terry McGinnis to a Michael Keaton Bruce Wayne. Here, he’s desperate and determined, but never slides into villain mode.  His is the one character I could have used a little more from. Perhaps Frank and Art are thinking about teaming up for a sequel to continue chasing Power dealers across the country. I’m not sure we need that.

Dominique Fishback plays Robin who begins as irritating as any precocious high schooler in an action movie, but eventually won me over by being more capable and level-headed in almost every situation than her two adult sidekicks. 

Rodrigo Santoro plays a dealer named Biggie who shows up to flood New Orleans with the new drug. He seemed to be having a really good time being over-the-top bad guy. Courtney B. Vance plays JGL’s boss, and Machine Gun Kelly shows up as Robin’s no-good cousin Newt.  I am not familiar with Machine Gun Kelly, and Danny Glover had to help me google him to find out that he’s apparently a rapper.

Overall, I was surprised by how much I ended up enjoying this flick. It could have used a little more fun and less grittiness and while it seems to set itself up for a sequel, I think this would be best served as a one-off: short and interesting, with a well-crafted story and interesting action set pieces.  

6 out of 10.

Also - this movie reminded me of this video...

Movie Review: Palm Springs (R – 90 minutes)

 

This week in lockdown I watched an offering on Hulu.

Palm Springs is a romantic comedy with a twist. It definitely has an independent movie feel, if that makes sense.  It follows the story of Nyles and Sarah who meet at Sarah’s younger sister’s wedding.  Sarah is the maid of honor and Nyles is dating another bridesmaid named Misty.  Over the course of the day of the wedding and reception, and during interactions with an entire host of crazy characters, Nyles and Sarah have a conversation or two that leads to more.

If you have managed to not hear anything else about this movie, that’s fantastic. To say anything else is to get into spoilers that ruin the watching of this movie. I saw Andy Samberg on Seth Myers and he essentially told the whole plot of the movie, which is a shame, because I think I would have enjoyed it a great deal more if I did not know anything about it. 

The movie is directed by Max Barbakow and is charming and sweet alternating with acerbic and zany.  If you are a fan of Samberg, this is in your wheelhouse.  He gives Nyles a fun sensibility despite unusual circumstances. Despite that sense of fun, as the movie goes on, there are layers to Nyles that appear once he realizes how affected he is by Sarah. Milioti manages to do the same to Sarah. She starts out bitter and angry, stays that way for a bit, but then commits herself to the situation and ends up the hero of the piece. 

J.K. Simmons has some fun bits that feel a bit like himself.  Peter Gallagher, Camila Mendes, Tyler Hoechlin, Chris Pang, and Jacqueline Obradors all play wedding party members/attendees to varying levels of crazy. 

June Squibb is in this movie as Sarah’s grandmother and she has one line that left me wishing her character had a larger scene of either explanation or interaction.  Perhaps it is better with the just the one, it gives her quite a bit of mystery.

Overall, the movie is very good and definitely worth the watch. I Hope you get to see it before you hear anything about it.  Also – if you can explain the dinosaurs to me, please do.

6 out of 10. 

Movie Review: The Old Guard (R – 125 minutes)

Still no theater-going here, but luckily The Old Guard went right to Netflix. 

I’m going to say this up front – I loved this movie. Quality action and super fun.  The movie Highlander was released in 1986 with some sequels not really of note and a TV show of note that followed in the 90s.  In case you are not familiar with it, the story follows a man from the highlands of Scotland (hence the name Highlander) who is killed in battle but wakes up shortly thereafter, apparently fine. He gets tutored by an Egyptian masquerading as a Spanish knight who is really just Sean Connery in the ways of Immortals. These immortals cannot be killed except by beheading. They live their very long lives occasionally battling and killing one another for the ‘Quickening’. Basically, if you defeat another, you get their strength and power. The only rule is that they never fight on holy ground.  In the end, there can be only one.  Who knows when the end will be.

The reason I mention that is that this movie feels like it could easily be set in that world.  The Old Guard is based on a 2017 graphic novel. The movie introduces us to Andy, or Andromache of Scythia, who is thousands of years old and straight up tired of it.  She heads a small, tight unit of immortal warriors (Booker, Joe, and Nicky) who travel around taking jobs to do the most good they can. Andy has become jaded, believing that none of the good they are doing is having any effect.

Booker brings them a job from James Copley, a former CIA agent who needs their help for something he cannot accomplish on his own.  The job goes sideways, and the group has to deal with being hunted by Harry Melling, a pharmaceutical CEO who sees dollar signs in immortal DNA.  To complicate things, they also have to pick up and train Nile, a newly risen immortal warrior who is not sure about any of this. 

The movie is directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood who also directed Love & Basketball, the Secret Life of Bees, an episode of Cloak & Dagger (watch that if you haven’t yet), and a movie that really surprised me, Beyond the Lights.  This movie is action packed and the action is exceptional.  But tremendous action when supported by characters that are interesting and engaging can make an almost perfect movie. These characters are fascinating and the portrayals are wonderful.

Charlize Theron is an action star and is just fantastic in this role.  I look forward to the planned sequel already to see what is next for Andy. Her relationship with Kiki Layne’s Nile is equally fantastic.  It is such a joy to watch an action movie with two tremendous female leads.  I can’t wait for Nile’s role to expand in additional features.

Matthias Schoenaerts as Booker, Marwan Kenzari as Joe, and Luca Marinelli as Nicky are also tremendous. I’ve seen them here and there but they really each give their characters levels of depth that is missing from most action movies. The scene where Joe explains his love for Nicky is heartbreaking and beautiful, and then is followed up with some wonderful comedic beats.

Chiwetel Ejiofor gives almost unnecessary amounts of gravitas to Copely, a guy trapped in an impossible situation after mourning the loss of his wife.  Harry Melling as Merrick is one of the most punchable villains I have seen in a while. 

Van Veronica Ngo plays Quynh in flashbacks and hopefully in sequels?

Overall, I loved it – 9 out of 10.  Taking off a point because I wanted more detail on Andy’s special baklava identification powers and I can’t help thinking about Highlander while watching this because of the immortal warrior similarities. I did notice that in the scenes where some are bemoaning their immortality, none of them mentioned beheading, but surely that would work, right? Surely Adrian Paul could pop up in the sequel, just hanging out in Joe’s bar?  In any case, the movie is fantastic, really fun, fast-paced, but with enough quiet moments to let you connect to the squad. I really enjoyed it.