Movie Catching Up, Part Two

Welcome back to the return of regular blog posts! Hmmmm...well, that may be asking for a bit much, but at least I'm getting these movies out of the way. After this I have three more that I saw in theaters and two more via On Demand.

So Jason Bourne came out of hiding. Just skipping over whaterver happened in the Matt Damon-less C-less "Bourne Legacy," this sequel finds him in hiding but recovered from his amnesia. What brings him back this time? He's contacted by the former CIA operative (Julia Stiles) who helped him in the past and is now also on the run. Through computer hacking she's discovered files about how Bourne became part of the program that turned him into a killing machine -- and it involves his father. Soon they're both being hunted by CIA assassins. The action sequences are what you'd expect, but the film gets bogged down a bit by a subplot involving privacy rights and a secret deal in which the CIA is funding a social media venture to use it to spy on everyone. My grade: B.

Suicide Squad is one DC comic book that I've never been interested in, and in the wake of the film that hasn't changed. The premise: government operative Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) assembles a team of imprisoned villains, either wiith special skills (Deadshot, Will Smith), metahuman powers (El Diablo, Jay Herndandez), or just plain psycho (Harley Quinn, Margot Robbie), who are coerced to participate The team's job is to do whatever it takes should someone like, say, Superman (currently still dead in the movies) decided to destroy the planet. Soon there is such a threat and the "team" is sent into action. But secrets and lies threaten everything.

Having Harley Quinn in the mix led to adding the Joker, and there are a couple of cameos by Ben Affleck's Batman. (Meaning all of this takes in the DC movieverse DC Extended Universe alongside Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, etc.) And Jared Leto's Joker is awful, annoying in every scene in which he appears. Oh, Heath Ledger, why did you have to die?

And too many of the Squad members leave no impression as characters. They're just along for the ride or to serve to move the plot a bit. Fortunately, Robbie's Harley Quinn is a live wire, and Amanda Waller proves to be a total badass -- a term that fits Viola Davis as well. And a scene inserted into the credits makes me glad she's part of the DC movieverse DC Extended Universe. My grade: C.

P.S. I suddenly want to go see it again.

Yet Another Delayed Movie Post

Maybe I need to hire someone to write blog posts for me so there aren't these gaps between posts. Anyone want the job? Keep in mind that I can't afford to offer you actual compensation so you'd be, in effect, an unpaid intern. The good news is that some of these are Oscar nominees so if I work really hard this will be posted before the awards are given out.

Three late-year releases took on serious events in different ways. The Big Short tried to inject humor into the story of the 2007-2008 financial meltdown caused by Wall Street shenanigans and the federal government's failure to regulate the financial industry, with wry narration and interludes where celebrities explain financial concepts. The most-discussed of the latter is actress Margot Robbie in a bubble bath (playfully sexy if you're into women in bubble baths). Amusing, but ultimately what happened is still too confusing, and it fails to enlighten or enrage viewers into pressuring politicians to prevent another fiscal disaster. My grade: B-minus.

Concussion is much more earnest. The National Football League would have you believe this movie is a menace to the sport's existence. The real menace: the fact that as more and more players are discovered after their deaths to have suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), parents may not allow their kids to play the sport, meaning the pool of talented athletes dries up. The NFL need not worry. The movie didn't have much impact. It's a good movie, but gets a demerit for depicting an incident involving ex-Eagle Andre Waters -- who killed himself and whose autopsy found he had CTE -- that didn't occur in reality. Despite Roger Goodell's awful record as commissioner, players beating women and children, killing dogs (and people, for that matter), fighting in bars, etc., and all the concussion worries, TV ratings and revenues continue to rise. The money will ensure the kids keep playing football. Unlike some of the financial institutions bailed out in the aftermath of the events in "The Big Short," the NFL may actually BE "too big to fail." My grade: B.

By far the best of these three is Spotlight, about the Boston Globe's 2001-2002 investigation into the cover-up by the Boston Archdiocese of sexual abuse by its priests. The film focuses not on the crimes themselves, but all the work the editors and reporters do to get the story published, even as their work on the project was temporarily derailed by the September 11th attacks. The film is superbly acted all around, and the story is so compelling. Yet it also makes me a little sad. Good investigative journalism requires dedication, passion, a desire to fight to find the truth -- and resources. Sadly, the state of the newspaper industry is such that we're going to see fewer and fewer reports such as this, unless the NFL wants to finance it. My grade: A-plus.

As for the rest...

Sisters was a little disappointing at first, even though Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are a winning duo, playing sisters throwing one last party before the house they grew up in is sold. It took quite a while into the film before I started seeing the humor in it. My grade: C-plus.

Joy is carried by the wonderful Jennifer Lawrence in the title role, telling the story (with some embellishments, naturally) of the woman who invented the Miracle Mop, among other items, becoming a QVC mainstay and a wealthy woman in the process. The film is really uneven, though. My grade: B-minus.

The first film I saw that was released in 2016 is Hail, Caesar!, a comedy with an mostly all-star cast from the Coen brothers set in the 1950s, when the Hollywood studio system still ruled, where "fixers" (in this film, Eddie Mannix, played by Josh Brolin) keep scandals such as pregnant, unwed starlets and homosexual actors under wraps. (Oh, the 50s! The era the GOP nuts want to take us back to!) It drags a bit at times but is mostly entertaining, especially the film-within-the-film segments. Do not miss the song-and-dance number starring Channing Tatum and a bunch of guys in sailor suits for a film called "No Dames!" My grade: B-plus.

Next time I do a film post: Deadpool!