5 Best Movies To Watch After Running Scared (1986)
Wolfs
Some movies are just good enough. And that’s ok. There’s something to be said for a little better than mediocre film animated by star power. Wolfs is such a picture. At the start, the film feels serious. A tough-on-crime District Attorney (Amy Ryan) takes a much younger man (Austin Abrams) upstairs at an expensive hotel for a furtive romantic enough. Unfortunately, secret fun turns to tragedy when the Kid falls off the bed and into a glass bar cart, seemingly dying. In desperation, she reaches out to a cleaner (George Clooney). As he drives to her, writer-director Jon Watts and cinematographer Larkin Seiple give the scene an almost Michael Mann quality. Well, Mann with less interesting lighting and a firmly adult contemporary soundtrack. When Brad Pitt shows up as the hotel’s designated fixer, however, that serious to admittedly self-serious tone goes away. In its place, the film embraces a sort of low-level Odd Couple grumbling comedy. The dueling cleaners try to assert their superiority over each other, all while trying to hide their signs of aging from each other. To Wolfs’ credit, they don’t go to the well of bad backs, eroding vision, and barely contained yawns too often. On the other hand, when they do, the gags land with a smile or, at most, a gentle chuckle. If you were planning to watch the movie for a few hearty guffaws, you’d do well to look elsewhere. Continue Reading →
The Fabulous Four
While the general world of theatrical comedies remains elusive at multiplexes everywhere, one strain of the genre keeps on chugging in theaters. The Last Vegas/Going in Style/Book Club-style comedy is still going strong. Titles focusing on a wacky trio or quartet of famous actors over 60 persist at Cinemarks everywhere. Even Book Club 2: The Next Chapter’s box office failure last year couldn't stop this subgenre. On the surface, The Fabulous Four looks like another breezy summertime entry in this domain. In many ways, including its flat third act, it totally is. Yet, some distinctive and even downright weird touches keep it from being another Wild Hogs pastiche. Back in the day, Marilyn (Bette Midler), surgeon Lou (Susan Sarandon), singer Alice (Megan Mullaly), and botanist Kitty (Sheryl Lee Ralph) were best friends growing up in New York City. After a few decades, though, those friendships have grown complicated. Lou and Marilyn, specifically, are no longer on speaking terms. However, that frayed dynamic is about to get “repaired” now that the latter character is getting married. While preparing for a lavish wedding in Key West, she yearns for her best friends to be her bridesmaids—all three of them. Alice and Kitty tricking Lou into traveling to Key West was only the beginning of their struggles. Once these former pals reunite, tensions clearly haven't frayed between the duo. Unresolved conflict looms over every pre-wedding celebration, even once Lou begins a flirty rapport with local DILF Ted (Bruce Greenwood). Can this quartet reunite and become “the fabulous four” again? Or will yesteryear’s turmoil capsize a once beautiful friend group? Continue Reading →
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F
Early on in the proceedings of the long-gestating Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, an actual Beverly Hills cop, looks over files chronicling Axel Foley’s previous visits to the city of glitz and glamor. The officer remarks, “94–not your finest year,” a clear shot at the dismal Beverly Hills Cop 3. Ironically, as bad as it was, 3 feels like a near-masterpiece compared to Axel F. This installment is a wheezy, depressing collection of franchise tropes that have long exhausted their comedic value. Eddie Murphy delivers one of the more listless performances in a career that has been, to put it politely, uneven. It somehow pulls off the seemingly impossible task of making Bad Boys: Ride or Die seem vital and cutting-edge. This time, our hero continues to cause chaos as a Detroit cop, chasing crooks through the streets in a snowplow in the opener. Almost immediately, he’s once again summoned to Beverly Hills when he learns that his estranged daughter Jane (Taylor Paige) is receiving death threats. As a defense lawyer, her current case, involving an accused cop killer and possible police corruption, has apparently upset some dangerous people. Axel teams up with Jane and her former flame, the honest cop Det. Bobby Abbott (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) to investigate the threats. It isn’t exactly Chinatown in its complexity, though. The bad guy, corrupt top cop Capt. Grant (Kevin Bacon) essentially announces his villainy the minute he appears. Cue the alleged wackiness. Villain or not, Kevin Bacon has that jawline. (Netflix) The original Beverly Hills Cop was not a particularly great film, an often-uneasy fusion of violent cop thriller and comedy. But it did effectively milk its basic fish-out-of-water premise with a just ascending to superstar status Murphy. At this point, however, that premise has long since been milked dry. Former outsider Axel is now such a fixture in these posh surroundings that I suspect there’s a sandwich named after him at Nate’N Al’s. Continue Reading →
Bad Boys: Ride or Die
Two questions face most rational people when confronting the existence of Bad Boys: Ride or Die. To the first, why did the filmmakers give it such an anonymous title? Especially while the previous installment had the seemingly more apt name Bad Boys For Life? For that, there is no answer. To the second? Yes, there is a joke involving Will Smith and someone getting slapped. And, yes, it is just as smug, stupid, and predictable as one would fear. The one compensating factor is one can describe the film as smug, stupid, and predictable too. That leaves hope most viewers will feel too numbed by the cacophony of crap to even register the slap gag. The film begins inauspiciously with an extended and mostly pointless act in which Mike Lowrey (Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) foil a convenience store robbery while on the way to Mike’s wedding to love Christine (Melanie Liburd). Shortly after that, Marcus upstages things by having a massive heart attack and near-death experience at the reception. Those beats out of the way, the cobbled-together plot finally kicks into gear. The local news fills with posthumous accusations that their beloved Capt. Howard (Joe Pantoliano) took bribes from cartels to allow drugs into the country. This cannot stand, of course. But when the two start an investigation to clear his name, everyone with information starts turning up dead. Continue Reading →
The Holdovers
After stumbling with Downsizing, Alexander Payne bounces back with a gentle & witty comedy-drama. The artist Dmitry Samarov one said to me that the ratio of good to bad late periods in an artist's life was depressing to consider. For every Sir Edward William Elgar there was an Eric Clapton (my example, not his), and that it was rare to see someone sharpen as they aged. Now, I like Dmitry and certainly respect his opinion, but I can’t help but feel that when film overtook painting as the dominant artwork that people engage with, the ratio shifted towards bizarre experimentation and welcome self-reflection as much as dull self reflection. Take for instance 62 year old Alexander Payne, who, after the biggest disaster of his career (2017’s confused parable Downsizing), has started his fourth decade as a director by leaning hard back into what he knew (and what the royal “we” enjoyed) and rediscovered himself with The Holdovers, a movie no one can seem to stop comparing to Hal Ashby. No mean feat, of course, but even that sells its virtues short. This is no mere homage, no mere return to form, this is the movie that Payne’s been hoping to make since his 90s heyday, a film that earns both its jaundiced gaze and its catharsis. Continue Reading →