Ticket to Paradise (2022)

Score: 3.5 / 5

Paradise, indeed! This blast from the past is the best kind of feel-good romantic comedy for the nostalgic viewer. That soft, golden shimmer to each shot makes it feel like a living, breathing fantasy. Its magnificent stars are churning out their most tried-and-true techniques, reliably winsome and effortlessly rousing. Scarcely a beat of this film is unexpected or surprising. We know every moment before it happens, and then seeing it results in joy after exquisitely satisfying joy. It's also, I reiterate, a fantasy, one that is nearly as problematic in terms of its privilege as it is rapturous in terms of the lovely dream it realizes.

David (George Clooney) and Georgia (Julia Roberts) ended their marriage twenty years ago and still actively hate each other. Despite their mutual regret over having had a relationship at all, they love their daughter Lily (Kaitlyn Dever), who just graduated law school. On her post-graduation trip in Bali, she meets a seaweed farmer named Gede and falls in love; after a little more than a month, they announce their engagement and her intention to live in Bali and forsake her expected legal career. David and Georgia temporarily shake hands to put a new plan into action: hurry to Bali and convince Lily that she is rushing into dangerous decisions and making similar mistakes to their own.

Of course, everyone is wealthy enough to do all the things just described, including dropping everything to fly to Bali for an apparently unplanned amount of time, to say nothing of their careers or alma maters. Their stability allows them the luxury of bitterness, specifically the parents, who lob zingers at each other as often as possible. Given that they are Clooney and Roberts, it's not so much that we care exactly what they're saying so much as that they're the ones saying it. Their charisma and charm carry the film even when the screenplay isn't quite savvy enough to know what to do with them; the camera, makeup and costume artists, and director certainly do!

The secondary plot -- that of Lily and her blossoming romance -- is completely unbelievable, the kind of screwball-comedy plot that made rom-coms famous guilty pleasures in decades past. While Dever herself isn't terrible (no performances are incompetent here, thankfully), her one-note part is sorely underwritten. She's rounded out a bit by her companion Wren (a delightful Billie Lourd) and her paramour Gede (Maxime Bouttier), but the romance isn't explored or explained or even featured in any way that allows for much dramatic heft. It's in fact such a lazy element to the proceedings, one wonders what might have happened if this entire plot had been cut. Couldn't Lily and Wren have gone on vacation and the parents have tagged along to celebrate, or spy on them or each other? That change would have cut a significant amount of worldbuilding and the shy introduction of Gede's enormous family and the lack of character development or even significance. 

But that wouldn't really be the style of director Ol Parker, who also wrote The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and its sequel (which really deserves more sequels). His genius includes a consideration of Other cultures than white bourgeois Westerners. Is it orientalism? Maybe, but in the Hotel franchise it's also deeply sincere and sensitive. Here, it's less of those and a bit more escapist and tourist in its attention to the Balinese seaweed farmers depicted, but I don't think that makes it a bad thing either. The white characters come in like "stupid rich" archetypes and are forced to confront serious emotional issues with each other; the setting is less about itself and more about getting the main characters out of their own comfort zones. Albeit in a place that is repeatedly referred to as paradise. And that's really what we're here for too; not the drama or realism or profundity or insight, just the beauty and joy and love.

The Midnight Sky (2020)

Score: 1.5 / 5

I'm so glad to say George Clooney is back to acting after four years, but I wish it wasn't in this movie. Playing a post-apocalyptic scientist named -- I can't believe I'm typing this -- Augustine Lofthouse, Clooney has elected to remain on a dying Earth after some unidentified crisis in 2049. Yes, the date is a bit too soon, and yes, it brings to mind Blade Runner 2049 along with scores of other ambitious science fiction movies. He discovers that a space station called Aether is on its way back to Earth from scouting out a new planet for humans to inhabit. Determined to stop them and send them back to the new Earth, Augustine can't get his radio signal to work properly, so he is forced to find a better means of communication. Despite Augustine trekking across the Arctic with only a little girl for company -- little Iris, bless her, is mute and just not the best conversationalist -- the movie never really feels very urgent on this front. Sometimes technically impressive, and with the bones of a decent survival thriller, but bloodless and trite in practice.

Thankfully, there's a parallel story happening on board the Aether. Led by a pregnant Felicity Jones (I think they all had character names, but I didn't catch or retain any) and her partner David Oyelowo, the team including Tiffany Boone, Demian Bichir, and Kyle Chandler have to navigate their way home despite several obstacles that, oddly, mirror the threats faced by Augustine. The hint of horror, though, apart from drifting away into space or getting smashed by asteroids, is that they do not yet know that Earth is now uninhabitable. Oddly enough, the scenes in space held my interest better than Clooney in the snow, mostly due to the camaraderie of the crew and some excellent cinematography by Martin Ruhe (Hulu's Catch-22 and The American).

Realistic complications of both dire situations are almost nonexistent in this movie, and the new threats often feel as irrelevant as the unnecessary exposition, presented to us in unwelcome and sloppily interspersed flashbacks dripping with sickly sentiment. It's not even really character-driven, making these scenes feel spliced in from another movie altogether. At least, that is, until the climax, when a bizarre twist is revealed in soapy, melodramatic fashion that made me feel irredeemably cheated. I don't know how or why Clooney attached himself as director to this project, but he usually works harder to tell worthwhile stories.

Even the scenes that generated in me the most interest and excitement feel copied from other, better science fiction features, especially in a scene when the astronauts are working outside the Aether and run into an asteroid field. It's got Gravity written all over it, even is Alexandre Desplat's uncommonly overwrought score makes it feel a bit different. Ultimately, I can't help but feel that the film was, at best, a couple interesting ideas that the screenwriting committee decided to string together with facile plot threads. Characters are dull, the action isn't novel, and whatever control over narrative Clooney has is wasted across various focal points that can't integrate. If a movie like this makes you want to watch Interstellar or The Martian or even Titan A.E. instead of considering it on its own, it's not worth a watch. No matter how great the cast list may be.

Suburbicon (2017)

Score: 4 / 5

Don't pay attention to the critics on this one. It's an absolute delight of a flick for pre-Oscar season nuts like us.

Suburbicon takes two stories and meshes them into one, though the synthesis isn't quite inspired. Think Stepford Wives meets mob-affiliated home-invasion thriller. The bare bones story is that of the Myers (?) family, consisting of a black man and woman and their young son; their presence serves little narrative purpose other than to demonstrate the horrors of Suburbicon, the all-white paradise of Trump's America. Oops, I'm sorry, I meant 1959 America, when America was "great" to begin with. There's a difference, right? Only the day after the Myers move to town, the mailman starts spreading the word, and neighbors begin picketing their property. The neighborhood decrees privacy fences will be installed around their yard. Groups of chanting malcontents gather on the street, shouting insults and appropriating spirituals to taunt the family. Ultimately, the rioters, despite halfhearted attempts by police to restrain them, attack the house, burn the car, and terrorize the family.

But their son makes tentative friends with another young boy, the white boy whose backyard mirrors their own. That boy, young Nicky, has family problems of his own, and though his skin grants him salvation from community bigotry, he goes through another kind of hell, and it is this that the film centers on.

Matt Damon, the patriarch of this family, plays a weak and desperate sort of suburban white-collar worker. He spends his days in an office pumping away on stress-relief squeezers, and it seems he has gotten terribly involved with "the mob" from another city. He lives with his infirm wife (Julianne Moore) and her sister (also Julianne Moore, praise be to Jesus), and their relationship is only barely introduced before their home is victimized one night. Two thieves appear and molest the family, tying them to kitchen chairs and chloroforming them before supposedly robbing them; they end up murdering the wife/mother Julianne Moore in front of little distressed Nicky.

I don't want to spoil anything, because half the joy of the film is its ability to story-tell. Nicky is the only sympathetic character -- apart from the Myers family -- and his ability to observe the corrupt dealings of adults informs our understanding of the evil at work in white suburbia. The white people are all variously destroyed by an effort to perfect their lives: through order and sense, through money, through status. Well, not "all", because of course the general population lives on to spin their own story. The final shot is of media interviewing "bystanders" who are declaring the Myers family responsible for the violence in their midst. Survivors and victors get to determine history.

Director George Clooney isn't making a treatise here on racial dynamics or white morality. He isn't making a statement on feminist culture or domestic patriarchy. These elements are present, of course, and arguably make up the meat of the movie. But he stays somewhat aloof, allowing the elements to blend and conflict at their own volition, and forcing the viewer to think. If nothing else, that's a damn valuable thing these days. And as a white lower-middle-class American, this movie made me even angrier at white middle-class America. The Coen brothers with Clooney have crafted a script that doesn't pursue the directions it could have taken -- intensely subversive domestic horror, hilariously scathing satire of white hegemony -- but certainly suggests all of the above and more. I laughed out loud more than once, and covered my eyes at least twice. (Seriously, why the hell wasn't that fire truck sounding its siren?!)

It's not a great mystery. It's a mediocre thriller, and a not-very dramatic drama. But as a quirky sort of crime flick, it works really well. Its well-rounded cast (including Glenn Fleshler and a scene-stealing Oscar Isaac who will make you feel all sorts of spectacular things in his brief onscreen appearance) provide a fabulous hour-and-three-quarters of entertainment. Workable if uninspired vision from the usually exceptional cinematographer Robert Elswit and typically mesmerizing music from Alexandre Desplat provide enchanting visuals and aurals to soak in, even when the plot isn't as daring as we might want. And, if murder and sexism and money and racism and child endangerment and classism weren't enough, there's always a crazy Julianne Moore, a sweet and terrifying Matt Damon, and a sexy and suave Oscar Isaac to soothe your soul.

Check into Suburbicon. You won't be sorry.

IMDb: Suburbicon

Hail, Caesar! (2016)

Score: 4 / 5

Hail, Caesar! takes us back to a golden era of moviemaking, when Hollywood was an empire in its own right, and the people who ran it, eccentric as they were, grappled with scandal, fame, and fortune on a daily basis. We follow Ed Mannix (Josh Brolin), head producer at Capitol Pictures, in his exhaustive efforts to save his stars from their own scandalous behaviors, knowing full well that as the 1951 studios begin to break up, the future of moviemaking, his company, and his livelihood hang in the balance. As he maneuvers between oddballs and screwballs and criminals, he is forced to examine his own economics, values, relationships, and ultimately theology. It's a moving movie about making movies, and one that stole its way into my heart.

What's that you say? That doesn't sound like the movie Hail, Caesar! to you? Why do you say that?

What we have here is a problem with marketing. I thought -- along with several other people I've heard from -- that this movie was going to be a raucous, irreverent, madcap comedy bubbling over with slapstick and irony and all the things listed so perfectly in its trailers. Guess what? It's not.

Sure, it has a few of these elements. The casting is brilliant, the script is fierce, and the production design is simply perfect. The film makes reference after reference so quickly that it took me hours afterward to remember some; each reference is so cheeky that I often laughed aloud and missed the rapid-fire dialogue. We see everything from Ben-Hur to Gene Kelly, and from Esther Williams to Carmen Miranda. It's a glorious celebration of the industry.

But it's not a madcap caper film about a bunch of zany moviemakers banding together to save their iconic leading man (obviously played by George Clooney, because who else?) from his untimely abduction. I was expecting the enormous cast of stars to share a lot of screen time and a lot of laughs as they fashioned a comedic heist, like a silly, campy version of Argo. And it just doesn't happen. Ever.

Sure, the performances are great, but they are relegated to brief scenes. Each character, besides Brolin and Clooney, gets only two or three scenes each, and these are usually one-on-one with either Brolin or Clooney. Those scenes are jam-packed with a showcase of the actor's talents, but we never really get much else, let alone interaction between them. And as for all of them banding together to save the star, it's almost laughable: I think only about three characters besides Brolin even know that Clooney has been abducted, much less offer aid.

I may feel a little bitter about the more or less "epic" comedy that doesn't exist here, but there are a lot of great things to be said for the movie that we got instead. It's a glorious testament, riddled with nostalgia and wit and charm, and showcasing some of our brightest modern stars in period performances. Channing Tatum steals the movie away with his song and dance as Burt Gurney, a Gene Kelly homage. Tilda Swinton would have stolen the movie had the film given her more screen time as twin sister, rival gossip columnists Thora and Thessaly Thacker. The effects are all old-school, with long takes to show off dancing and comedic skills and the use of miniatures and backlot sets where we might otherwise have wasteful CGI (I'm thinking of the anti-climactic scene with the submarine). And, finally, there's the script that, typical of the Coens, is about far more than it initially suggests. It's about religion and economics and history and politics and all sorts of complicated things that it never really resolves but Brolin's character manages to work out for himself. I think his priest would be proud of him.

IMDb: Hail, Caesar!