"Top Gun: Maverick" Is Top Of The Year

★★★★

Tom Cruise is the last movie star. You don’t see many movie stars like him anymore. You have well known actors, and some people who approach the full package of movie star like qualities, like Matthew McConaughey, where they have the over the top good looks and charm, but that’s far and inbetween these days. 

“Top Gun: Maverick” is the sequel to “Top Gun”, which came out in 1986, so when I saw the poster for “Top Gun: Maverick”, I thought it was likely going to be another run of the mill reboot. There’s a lot of those these days, but “Top Gun: Maverick” is a surprise. It’s not so much a reboot as a continuation of a story of Tom Cruise’s Maverick character, as well as being its own thing. It can be seen though, without seeing the original, and you won’t be lost. However, the biggest thing about “Top Gun: Maverick” is it feels like a  love letter to pure blockbusters, a bygone era of movies.

Tom Cruise comes back as Maverick, older, but still able to fly those stunt daredevil planes. In the opening, he goes to fly a plane for a group in a control room, who are being told by a rear admiral (Ed Harris), he is planning on shutting down the aircraft flight. Maverick shows up and decides to fly the plane himself to defy the admiral and save the project. As he says to the crew, if he goes down, they all go down together, because the people’s jobs rely on the plane flying right. Even after he crashes, he is assigned by the army to return and command a group of young aviators.

While there, he meets up with an old flame (Jennifer Connelly), a bunch of new cadets, including one (Miles Teller) who he feels guilty over, because his father went down with the plane back in the original film. He also meets with a new captain, the ever strict Beau Simpson (Jon Hamm), who’s keeping an eye on Maverick and the group of young cadets. This leads to Maverick training them for a dangerous mission.

Cruise’s guilt over the young cadet, leads to a good dramatic performance by Cruise. You can see the pain in Maverick, as he tries to deal with his guilt throughout the film. However, this isn’t a depressing film. It’s an uncynical, and straightforwardly told film. No winks to the camera, no commentary on hidden themes, and movie heroism that is pure. The movie obviously loves its characters and the genre of film it is. 

The film even has moments that are touching, like when Maverick goes to visit Tom “Iceman” Kazansky (Val Kilmer). Val Kilmer has throat cancer in real life, as he types out most of his dialogue on a computer, and Maverick gives him a big hug. It’s a heartwarming scene, and a stand out in the film.

This film is such a throwback, in such a good way, and it’s played straight. Hollywood right now is basically going for issue oriented movies, and things Hollywood used to celebrate, are now being replaced by cynicalism. I know I sound like an old conservative saying this, and I’m not. Films with issues attached to them are important, and I’m not dismissing that, but sometimes you just want to cheer for the hero of a film with no strings attached. 

Tom Cruise has made a point of this movie being seen in theaters, and has reportedly turned down millions in right away streaming deals to keep this movie on the big screen, and this is a movie you should definitely see on the big screen.

This also leads to the issue of the Oscars. A lot of critics are already calling for “Top Gun: Maverick” to be nominated for best actor for Cruise and best picture in general. The Oscars has had this habit of nominating nothing but issue oriented pictures recently. There’s nothing wrong with pictures which deal with real life topics, but there needs to be a better balance. People aren’t rushing to see movies like they used to, and it’s not just the pandemic. It’s also the lack of fun at the movies. The other biggest grossing movie of this year was “Sonic the Hedgehog 2”, which was a straight family film, and was simply adorable. “Top Gun: Maverick” is also a film you can see with your family. While I don’t expect “Sonic” to be nominated for Oscars, and I liked that movie, I think it would be rotten to deny “Top Gun: Maverick” its rightful Oscar nods. It’s easily one of the year's best pictures.

"Power Of The Dog" Is A Slow Burn But A Rewarding Watch

 ★★★1/2

Jane Champion’s “Power of the Dog” is a “slow burn”, but a rewarding watch. A film that is a “slow burn”, means not too much happens on screen, but you get the sense it’s leading somewhere that resolves everything, despite the lack of major events. It’s more like a long stretch to an event than a series of them leading to the resolution. I’m reminded of other “slow burn” films like the 1997 Iranian film “Taste of Cherry”, the 2002 Belgian film “The Son” or the 2001 French film “The Piano Teacher”, based on the Nobel Prize winning novel. 

The story in “Power of the Dog” is simply about two brothers who own a ranch in 1925 Montana, Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch) and George (Jesse Plemons). Phil is a bitter man, who just, at this point, is burned out, bitter and just wants the jobs on the ranch done. George is more good natured, who sees his life as more run of the mill. He does his job well, herding cattle, and just living out his life. He’s an everyman for 1925 Montana. While going to a local bar, he meets a woman named Rose (Kirsten Dunst), and her quiet but seemingly kind hearted son named Peter (Kodi Smit-McPee). Before you know it, Rose and George are married, and in a very traditional marriage, except for the fact that everytime Rose sees George’s brother, Phil, things don’t go well.

Everytime Phil sees Rose, he does little things to make her life hell. It’s little things like when she plays the piano, he plays the bango, to show who is in charge in a small way. It’s not so much a power dynamic in this regard, because of a woman's role in this time period, it is partly that. However, Phil would be mean to anyone.

 Ironically, Phil is somewhat nice to Rose’s son, trying to teach him traditional roles of a man on a ranch. Despite that, Rose does not want her son spending time with Phil. George, being a traditional man, wants Phil to be nicer to his wife, but also somewhat more obvious to the depth of their hatred for each other.

Benedict Cumberbatch, best known these days for his role as Doctor Strange in the Marvel movies, gives an amazingly complex performance as Phil, a full and rich character who has multiple layers. Some of his layers are understandable, as to why he is so mean, and some not so much why he has to be so mean. As does Kristen Dunst, who shows her quiet discomfort with Phil, with a simple stare or action, and little dialogue. Jane Champion’s script is very tight, and well written, and the way she shoots the film is lush, as you would imagine Montana in the 1920s to be.

This movie is a slow burn, as I said above, but it all leads to an ending which may or may not shock you, depending on how you follow the film. However, it’s a rewarding watch, and sure to be an Oscar contender. It can also be an unpleasant watch, as it’s a character study of an unpleasant person taking control of what are otherwise two good people. All the movies I mentioned in the first paragraph, are studies of unpleasantness, and this film is as well. It’s worth watching. 

Movies You Should See: The Unapologetic Stupidity of “Caddyshack”

 Movies You Should See is a new weekly series of essays covering movies that aren’t current but everyone should see if they are serious about seeing great films. Some of these films you likely heard of, some may have been before your time but can easily be found on physical media or streaming and some are more obscure than they deserve to be. Either way, these are films I feel you very much should see if you are serious about being a viewer of film as both an artform and an important medium. That doesn’t mean there won’t be films on here that aim to be nothing more than entertainment, but these films in this series aim to be great entertainment, and not just a time killer on a screen. With the COVID situation, my ability to go to the theaters cut short, I will start this series.

The 1980 comedy “Caddyshack” isn’t your usual recommended movie,  and that’s because it’s an unapologetic film for its own stupidity. The making of this film sounds as entertaining and messy as the film itself, but what you get is a movie whose cast is the who’s who of the upcoming decade of comedy all in the same place, that makes the movie worth it. The cast is made up of Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield, Bill Murray, Ted Knight and a young Michael O Keefe. As well as these pros of 80s comedy, there’s also a main cast member who’s a literal puppet, the gopher who Bill Murray’s clueless groundskeeper is trying to kill. One of the co-writers is Bill Murray’s brother, Brian Doyle Murray,  and it’s the first film directed by Harold Ramis, who would go on to be a legendary comedy director. Yet, you can tell, in his first film, he has no idea what he’s doing.

The film doesn’t quite work, yet somehow it still does, because when it does, it’s funny, really, really funny. Half the movie is a unfinished story about a young caddy (Michael O Keffe) who works ther wants to go to college, and the other workers who are as hapless, horny and irresponsible as he is.   The other half of the movie is about Bill Murray as a groundkeeper trying to kill a gopher, Chevy Chase being a new agey golfer, and a rivalry between Rodney Dangerfield and Ted Knight’s characters.

At times, “Caddyshack” seems like two movies at once and neither really quite finish their stories, but it doesn’t really matter. When you finish laughing at the parts that work, you don’t care and it has staying power. There are so many internet memes rooted from this comedy way back in the 1980s, including the gopher dancing to the theme by Kenny Loggins, Rodney Dangerfield dancing to the boombox in his golf bag, Chevy Chase’s new age saying when he hits the ball, Bill Murray trying to put a hose in the ground, Michael O’ Keefe’s young caddy riding his bike to work, and Ted Knight making a face and saying his famous “Well, we are waiting” line. The characters are great, and memorable, and despite the movie being a messy story,  the things that work, work so well, that it trumpets the rest of the film.

“Caddyshack”, in my opinion, is one of the funniest movies ever made, and it’s joyfully stupid and unashamed of it. Sometimes we all need that, and “Caddyshack” does stupid better than many movies that followed, by the likes of Adam Sandler and Jim Carrey, who try to follow that format. I think that’s because “Caddyshack” just goes for it, and doesn’t child it’s audience for enjoying the dumbness of the whole thing. If anything, that’s the strength of the film more than the actual film itself.  

Movies You Should See: Charlie Chaplin Takes On Hitler (and Hollywood) in “The Great Dictator”

Movies You Should See is a new weekly series of essays covering movies that aren’t current but everyone should see if they are serious about seeing great films. Some of these films you likely heard of, some may have been before your time but can easily be found on physical media or streaming and some are more obscure than they deserve to be. Either way, these are films I feel you very much should see if you are serious about being a viewer of film as both an artform and an important medium. That doesn’t mean there won’t be films on here that aim to be nothing more than entertainment, but these films in this series aim to be great entertainment, and not just a time killer on a screen. With the COVID situation, my ability to go to the theaters cut short, I will start this series.

Charlie Chaplin belongs in that league of iconic cinematic geniuses that is a very small club, which includes Walt Disney, Frank Capra, Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen, Buster Keaton and Hayao Miyazaki. Chaplin is credited as directing 70 films, but only 9 of them are full length movies while the rest of them are shorts. It’s hard to pinpoint one Charlie Chaplin film to start, and I will likely return to him in future essays. To start, I like to bring up his 1940 classic “The Great Dictator”.

There is some backstory to Chaplin’s work here, as the film was originally conceived as a comedy about Napoleon, thus the title “The Great Dictator”. However, when Hitler started to come to power, and Chaplin picked up on the fact they had the same little moustache, he rewrote the script complete with using fake German words, to be about Hitler. When the film was brought to United Artists, of which he was a co-founder, they refused to finance it. This was despite Chaplin being the biggest star in the world at the time. They still had films released in Germany, and did not want to hurt their bottom line, so Chaplin ended up financing the entire film out of pocket. Hollywood, for the most part during production, wanted nothing to do with this film, until they saw it at the premiere and gave the film a standing ovation that went on for 10 minutes.

There is so much to admire about “The Great Dictator”. The scene that introduces Chaplin as the unnamed Hitler character is one of my favorite scenes in all of film. When he gets the blown up beach ball which is supposed to represent the world, and he throws it around, laughing and smiling. When it pops , he becomes frustrated. Then we are introduced to an unnamed barber, also played by Charlie Chaplin, and we get another interesting detail. While the name “Hilter” is never said out loud in the film, the barber comes across a fence with the word “JEW” painted on it. This shows he lives in the Jewish ghetto, and is Jewish. It’s unique, and ahead of its time in how multi-layered it is, that the word Jew is allowed to show up in this film, complete with an unsureness that the rest is Hilter and Germany or a fictional spoof of it.

With fascism on the rise today, “The Great Dictator” is an important film to watch. In the final speech, after not speaking for the entire film, and Chaplin’s little barber, being mixed up for the dictator, he gives a speech where he proclaims, with the most iconic lines in film history, “we think too much, and feel too little.” This is one of the gutsiest films ever made, and an unofficial finale to Chaplin’s original run of films, as the Jewish barber is the last time he ever played a character who resembled his famous character of The Little Tramp. This ended one of the most important runs in film history with one of the most socially relevant ones ever made.

Movies You Should See: Michael Moore Turns The American Dream On It's Head With "Roger And Me"

Movies You Should See is a new weekly series of essays covering movies that aren’t current but everyone should see if they are serious about seeing great films. Some of these films you likely heard of, some may have been before your time but can easily be found on physical media or streaming and some are more obscure than they deserve to be. Either way, these are films I feel you very much should see if you are serious about being a viewer of film as both an artform and an important medium. That doesn’t mean there won’t be films on here that aim to be nothing more than entertainment, but these films in this series aim to be great entertainment, and not just a time killer on a screen. With the COVID situation, my ability to go to the theaters cut short, I will start this series.

One of the categories the Oscars messes up every year, with the exception of a year or two, when they get it right, is Best Documentary. They didn’t nominate 1994’s “Hoop Dreams”, which in 2005, was named the greatest documentary ever made by a group of top documentary makers. On that list of 50 greatest documentaries ever made, they also didn’t nominate for an Oscar, #2 and #3. Errol Morris’s 1988 film “The Thin Blue Line” and Michael Moore’s 1989 film “Roger And Me” are those films. Despite coming in at # 3, which is still great out of a list of 50, if we were to make a list of the most influential and watchable of these documentaries,  “Roger and Me” would come in at #1 for simply how ground-breaking it was.

Michael Moore, in his first feature, throws everything against the wall, to tell the story of how GM, the biggest corporation in the world at that time, pulled their manufacturing plant from his hometown of Flint Michigan and the aftermath of that decision. In doing so, he makes a film that is  both entertaining and depressing, and even funny at times, with light moments despite the subject matter. Moore’s film is also enhanced by his narration, which is full of personal asides, quirky observations about his hometown and his dry humor.

The title of the film refers to Roger Smith, at the time, the CEO and president of General Motors, who made the decision to pull the factory out of Flint and move it to Mexico for cheaper labor. There are scenes in this film that are hard to watch, like a man killing himself in a street, a woman skinning a rabbit to sell as meat, and the indifference of rich people who hired the people of Flint to be human statues at their parties as jokes. The scene where Moore drives through a street with a car, filming a tracking shot of abandoned houses in Flint, with “Wouldn’t Be It Nice”, playing over it is one of the most famous and affecting scenes in documentary history. However, there’s also a ton of funny scenes, Bob Eubanks being a celebrity grand marshal at a local parade and making an anti-Semitic joke on camera, Michael Moore bringing a fruit basket to GM headquarters and being thrown out, and Moore getting a perm to help a women who signed up for Amway.

One of the voters of the poll of great documentaries, and the host of the special which aired on the defunt arts cable channel Trio at the time, Morgan Spurlock, himself a documentary maker in the Moore mold, admitted even though “Roger and Me” wasn’t number one, it is the most iconic film on the list and arguably in documentary history. What makes “Roger and Me” a great film too, is it’s revision of the narrative we receive about Ronald Reagan’s America, going so far to show a scene of Reagan literally standing in a pizzeria, campaigning on the idea that if they re-elect him, he’ll bring back the jobs. He never did. Moore’s films following this, follow what “Roger and Me” started, which is the flip side of the American dream, and no living filmmaker has done a better job documenting that.

Movies You Should See: “Sullivans Travels” Makes The Case For Escapism Like No Movie Before Or After

Movies You Should See is a new weekly series of essays covering movies that aren’t current but everyone should see if they are serious about seeing great films. Some of these films you likely heard of, some may have been before your time but can easily be found on physical media or streaming and some are more obscure than they deserve to be. Either way, these are films I feel you very much should see if you are serious about being a viewer of film as both an artform and an important medium. That doesn’t mean there won’t be films on here that aim to be nothing more than entertainment, but these films in this series aim to be great entertainment, and not just a time killer on a screen. With the COVID situation, my ability to go to the theaters cut short, I will start this series.

Despite being credited or uncredited as a writer on 44 movies, Preston Sturges only directed 14 films. In 1941, the Academy Awards introduced a new category, best original screenplay, and Preston Surgeries was the first screenwriter to win this category. He won for his script to “The Great McGinty”, against the scripts for “The Miracles of Morgan’s Creek” and “Hail The Conquering Hero”. The crazy thing is he wrote those scripts too, and directed all 3 films the scripts were made into.

“Sullivans Travels” is a film which poses so many questions, about art, about politics, about poverty, and about America in general. The film is about a filmmaker named John Sullivan (Joel McCrea), who is sick of making comedies, despite them making him a rich and famous director in Hollywood. After his last feature “Ants In Your Pants”,  he basically begs the studio to let him make a serious film adaptation of “O Brother, Where Art Thou”. The studio balks and wants him to continue making his profitable comedies. He refuses, and as he puts it, he wants to “know trouble first hand”. So, he dresses up as a hobo, and sets out on the road. While on the road, he meets a struggling young actress (Victoria Lake), who vouches for him when he is wrongly accused of stealing a car, and to pay her back, asks her to help him with his ruse.

 

This movie gets it’s point across with goofball comedy with a serious undertone and message. He meets poor people, he sees suffering, he gets wrongly arrested and put in a labor camp for criminals. What you also get is one of the greatest montages ever put in film. When you see it, you will know right away what I’m talking about. However, instead of seeing the importance of showing the pain and suffering of the world, John Sullivan starts to learn the importance of his own work, and sees the case for comedy as escapism, and has a new appreciation for his contribution to the world through his movies.

“Sullivans Travels” is one of the great movies about movies, and in a way, it both criticizes movies and shows the importance of escapism of movies. It doesn’t offer easy answers, but it is a great film which will make you think about how much has changed, and how much hasn’t, but makes you thank your lucky stars that film is still a source of escape.

Movies You Should See: The Layer Cake Of Charm That Is "Kiki's Delivery Service"

Movies You Should See is a new weekly series of essays covering movies that aren’t recommended but everyone should see if they are serious about seeing great films. Some of these films you likely heard of, some may have been before your time but can easily be found on physical media or streaming and some are more obscure than they deserve to be. Either way, these are films I feel you very much should see if you are serious about being a viewer of film as both a artform and a important medium. That doesn’t mean there won’t be films on here that aim to be nothing more than entertainment, but the films like that in this series aim to be great entertainment, and not just a time killer on a screen. With the current situation concerning the COVID virus, and my ability to go to the theaters cut short, I will start this series. However, I plan to continue it even after I get vaccinated.

“Kiki’s Delivery Service” is not only the most charming movie Studio Ghibli has ever made, which anyone can tell you is a major accomplishment, considering the charm factory that is Studio Ghibli, but it might be one of the most charming films ever made. I recently rewatched the film, as it was my turn to pick for a movie club I’m in, and the first thing I said after rewatching it was that this movie is something of a layer cake. As in, it’s just layers of charm upon cham upon charm. From the first minute you see 13 year old Kiki laying in a windy field, looking up at the sky, to the last minute you see her writing a letter to her parents about her new home, the charm just piles upon each part more and more. Even telling you that ending, there is no feeling it’s a spoiler warning. This film hardly has a plot, and it somehow works. There’s a few road turns in the film, like her losing her magic at one point, and the ending, where they throw in a big event because writer/director Hayao Miyazaki, considered Japan’s Walt Disney, seemed like he figured out he forgot about the whole plot thing, getting so engrossed in the charming world of this tween witch.

Based on a beloved Japanese children’s novel, “Kiki's Delivery Service” was released in Japan in 1989, and was a success at the box office. The story of a 13 year old witch named Kiki, who decides it’s time, like her mother before her, to go off and start a life on her own. She informs her dad who had packed up for a dad/daughter camping trip and her mom she is ready to go. Already the unusual idea of a 13 year old girl picking when she is going to leave and start on her own path, is well, unusual but it’s just accepted this is the way of the witch. Her father isn’t a wizard, or anything of that sort, but her mother is a witch, and one of the unusual elements of Kiki’s universe is it seems only the female characters can have magical powers.  In “Harry Potter” for example, you have wizards and witches, but in this world, it’s just witches. Also, for the most part, the world of “Kiki’s Delivery Service” is largely mundane. The movie is so slice of life, you can be forgiven if you forget this is a fantasy film. 

Kiki meets a woman who runs a bakery, she gets a job delivering packages on her broom, she has a wisecracking talking cat, she meets a nerdy boy around her age who falls for her right away, she loses her magic, she regains her magic, she saves the boy, she writes a letter home. That’s literally the whole film.

This film is Miyazaki’s fourth film, and his second huge hit, after “My Neighbor Totoro”, and one would be forgiven if they forgot this was a young animator at the time and not an old master of animation. Every single frame of the film is a work of art, which is true of all of Miyazaki’s films. While Miyazaki’s films became cultural icons in Japan, “Kiki's Delivery Services” has a special place for Miyazaki’s films in the United States. After an early dub that was commissioned by an American airline to show kids on flights, which is unfortunately lost media, and impossible to find, with almost no information on a cast who provided the this version’s voices online, Disney picked up the home video rights and gave it a new American dub cast including Kristen Dunst, Jeanne Garfalo, Brad Garrett and Phil Hartman in his final role, and released it on video in 1997. It would go on to sell a million copies and become one of the bestselling videos of the year. This led to Disney picking up the rights to the rest of Studio Ghibli’s work and continuing to release their movies, including in movie theaters.

“Kiki’s Delivery Service” is a movie you should see for a ton of reasons, for both the charm it has, the writing of characters who feel real with it, and as an introduction to the world of Studio Ghibli if you don’t know it already. It’s also a master’s class in simple world building and writing. As with every Studio Ghibli film, it’s also a master’s class in animation, and even though I am suggesting one Studio Ghibli movie in this essay, I would go as far to say you can’t go wrong with any of them. However, if you want pure delight,, I suggest you get on a broom and find a copy of “Kiki’s Delivery Service”.