Gideon58's Reviews

Foxes
Two time Oscar winner Jodie Foster works very hard at keeping an overripe coming of age nelodrama called Foxes watchable and she almost succeeds.

Foster plays one of a quartet of high school girlfriends who are trying to grow up too fast, thanks to neglectful parents and peer pressure. The story, such as it is, finds the girls waking up in the same bed every morning after an evening of drinking, drugs, and unprotected sex, swearing they'e never going to do it again and going right back out there the next night.

Writer Gerald Ayers (The Last Detail) and director Adrian Lyne (Fatal Attraction) seem to work very hard at making the way these girls live look glamorous and sexy, but, in an almost mechanical fashion, we watch most of the girls suffer pretty serious consequences for their behavior and Jeannie, Foster's character, has appoionted herself the leader of the group and takes it upon herself to try and get her girlfriends out of trouble, but never does anything to get the girls to stop their behavior.

One girl, Deirdre, meets a bag boy at a grocery store and is all over him at a concert a few hours later, while the virginal Madge, is later on in the story revealed to be involved with a man (Randy Quaid) old enough to be her father. As for Jeannie, her rock star father is divorced from her neurotic mother and she still has some deep-rooted fantasies about them reconcilng when it's obviouos this is never going to happen, thouogh Jeannie seems to think she has all the answers for her BFFs problems. Of course as the film progresses, so do the severity of their circumstances and though there are meant to shock the viewer, they never really do.

Despite overheated direction from Lyne, Foster is completely winning in the starring role and Sally Kellerman's flashy performance as her mother is also a lot of fun. Foster is also reunited with her Bugsy Malone co-star Scott Baio as a horny teen who is dying to lose his virginity with one of these girls and doesn't seem to care which one. Foster, Kellerman, and Baio seemed to keep their careers going after this, but the three actresses who played Jeannie's girlfriends disappeared from Hollywood after this film. And if you don't blink, you will notice the third film appearance of future Oscar winner Laura Dern, but this film is strictly for Jodie Foster fans.

Goodrich
Despite the accustomed splendid performance from Michael Keaton in the starring role, a 2024 character study called Goodrich never quite works as it should due to a confusing screenplay that offers backstory but doesn't really explain a lot of what's going on in this guy's present.

Keaton plays Andy Goodrich, a gallery owner who gets a call from his wife, Naomi in the middle of the night stating that she has checked into rehab and is leaving him. Naomi begs Andy to take care of their kids, Billie and Moze, and finds himself leaning a lot on Grace (Mila Kunis), his grown, pregnant daughter from his first marriage,

The creative force behind this film is a relative inexperienced director and writer named Hallie Meyers-Sheyer, who has provided us with a really likable central character involved in some squirm-worthy situations and making some squirm-worthy decisions. Even though I understand the impulse, I was troubled with Andy lying to his twins regarding their mother being in rehab, the way they found out was a little hard to swallow. He also keeps expecting Grace to drop whatever she's doing tp help him with Billie and Moze. We're not surprised when it's revealed that Grace is harboring resentment with her father because she never saw him as a kid. I love the scene where she is babysitting Billie and Moze and she doesn't have a clue what to say to them, but works very hard not to let her resentment toward her father to spill over to her step siblings.

The first half of the film is spent thoroughly establishing the fact that Andy doesn't have a clue what's going on with his children because he's always at the gallery. It's assumed that his business must be going gangbusters, but it's not. He has accrued some major debt and employees are quitting on him right and left. That's what was confusing about this movie. We understand that he was a neglectful dad, so why didn't all that neglect manifest an amazing career? His attempts to mend fences with Grace and his accidental friendship with a gay single dad were pretty much a waste of screentime.

Michael Keaton is always watchable and this movie is no exception and really liked the way he worked with Mila Kunis. Kevin Pollak and Michael Urie also make the most of their screentime as a co-worker of Andy's and the gay single dad he meets at Billie and Moze's school. There's also a lovely cameo by Andie McDowell as Grace's mother. McDowell reunites with Keaton for the first time since Multiplicity. If you're a Keaton fan, it's definitely worth checking out.

Barefoot in the Park (1981)
For those whose only exposure to the piece was the 1967 film version, you might want to check out HBO's 1981 production of one of Neil Simon's most famous plays, Barefoot in the Park.

For the uninitiated, this is the story of newlyweds Paul and Corrie Bratter, who have just moved into a fifth-floor walk-up in Greenwich Village after a memorable six- day honeymoon at the Plaza Hotel. As we watch Paul and Corrie deal with their furniture arriving late, Corrie' ditzy mother and their eccentric upstairs neighbor, Victor Velasco, we watch Paul and Corrie
decide that they are two very different kind of people who should never have gotten married.

Filmed live at the Moore Theater in Seattle, Richard Thomas and Bess Armstrong are absolutely enchanting taking over the roles originated by Robert Redford and Elizabeth Ashley on Broadway and then by Redford and Jane Fonda in the 1967 film version. The 1967 film version was always on my list of films that I felt should never be remade, but technically this isn't a remake, it is a filmed production of the original play in front of a live audience and what we get here is Neil Simon's original play the way it was intended...as a live theater experience that still provides consist laugh out loud for three acts. The production runs a hair over two hours, but I didn't feel the length a bit.

Director Harvey Medlinsky, whose experience has been primarily in television, shows a real flair for stage directing, providing colorful and entertaining version of this story that stands up proudly to the 967 fiim. Richard Thomas plays it a little broader than Redford did, but he still erases all memories of John Boy Walton with his take on stuffed shirt Paul and Bess Armstrong is enchanting as the free-spirited Corrie, bringing her own warmth and sexy to the role of Corrie. Jamie Cromwell is very funny as phone installer Harry Pepper and though he might be a little old for the role, Hans Conried is an acceptable Victor Velasco, but if the truth be told, the fabulous Barbara Barrie steals the show as Corrie's mother, Ethel Banks. A wonderful evening of theater reduced beautifully for the small screen.

I've seen this version of "Barefoot in the Park" several times, and it's a pretty good version, but there's one line in it that I hate the way it's said.

When Corrie says "Six days does not a week make", I hate the way Paul replies "What does that mean?". Not the actual words, but the way he says it.

Other than that, I enjoyed this version.

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The Substance
A practically unknown filmmaker named Coralie Fargeat is the director and writer of what just might be the most talked about film of 2024, an edgy, repellant, and logic-defying blend of psychological thriller and black comedy called The Substance that borrows from other films and leaves dangling plot points and unanswered questions, but had me riveted to the screen and just might earn its star her very first Oscar nomination.

The film stars Demi Moore as Elisabeth Sparkler, a celebrity whose career is circling the drain. In a desperate attempt to save her job on the exercise show that she hosts, she decides to order an elaborate black market drug that she has to pick up at a secret location and is delivered refills of the elaborate concoction every couple of weeks. It's not long before this complex medication seems too make Elisabeth pass out in her bathroom and we see a younger version of herself come out of her back, stitch Elisabeth's back together and take over her life under the identity of Sue, going back every other week to replenish herself with the substance, which she can only retrieve through the use of Elisabeth' body.

There's no denying that Fargeat's story found a whole bunch of movies flashing through my head like Death Becomes Her, Looker, The Skin I Live In and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, but the elements from these and other films definitely blend into something unique, even if it's not an always credible story, it's never a boring one.

Fargeat's screenplay seems to waffle regarding committing to the theory that Elisabeth and Sue are the same person, even if they have to depend on each other to replenish and continue, even though Elisabeth's attempts to regain control of her life become more futile as the story progresses. And despite what is happening to her, Elisabeth is given the option of bringing what is happening to her to a halt and she doesn't want to do that, she just wants Sue reined in a bit and we're not sure why. The expected battle between Elisabeth and Sue does fuel a bloody finale, which defies logic but never fails to keep the viewer completely engrossed, even though it does go on longer than it should.

Moore turns in a spectacular performance that has been generating Oscar buzz for a genre that rarely gets recognition from the Academy, but the fact that Moore has never received a nomination could work in her favor and I wouldn't be shocked if she got a nomination. Margaret Qualley as Sue is a lot better than she was in when she played Ann Reinking in the FX miniseries Fosse/Verdon. Dennis Quaid is fun as Elisabeth's boss and the film features first rate film editing, sound, and sound editing. We haven't seen anything like this, even if it takes a little too long to get where it goes.

The Preacher's Wife
1996's The Preacher's Wife is a syrupy and overly sentimental Christmas melodrama with music that suffers from a cliched and over stuffed screenplay (from another source) and lifeless direction, despite chemistry between the stars.

This remake of the 1947 film The Bishop's Wife stars Courtney B Vance as Rev. Henry Biggs, the minister at a financially strapped black church that has him so busy that he has been seriously neglecting his beautiful wife, Julia (the late Whitney Houston) and their young son. The water heater in the church is about to blow up and a wealthy real estate mogul (the late Gregory Hines) wants to buy the church so he can tear it down and rebuild. One night at the end of his rope, Henry looks up to God and asks for help, and, seconds later, an angel named Dudley (Denzel Washington) literally drops out of the sky and lands in a snowbank next to Henry's son. He tells Henry that he has been sent there to help him, but, of course, Dudley finds himself more than distracted by his immediate attraction to Julia.

First of all I have never seen The Bishop's Wife, which starred Cary Grant as the Angel, David Niven as the Preacher, and Loretta Young as the wife, but I have a feeling that the story worked better then because of its suspected simplicity. This story suffers almost immediately because Dudley the Angel informs Rev Henry that he is there to help him save his church, but he forgets all about that once he meets Julia and starts sending her all kind of mixed messages because he has now decided he is going to save the Biggs marriage. There are also a couple of silly subplots like Rev Henry trying to help a troubled teen on his way to jail, the Biggs' son upset because his friend Hakeem can't live with him anymore and Dudley playing the Ghost of Christmas Present to Hines' Ebeneezer Scrooge.

Of course, with Whitney Huston playing Julia, we expect some glorious musical moments, but don't get as many as we expect, though her rendition of "I Believe in You and Me" had my eyes filled with water. The scene where she performs this song also features Lionel Ritchie, in a thankless role as an old friend of Julia's and he doesn't get to sing either. The film seems to be leading somewhere that it never really gets.

Penny Marshall's static direction doesn't hep, but the chemistry between Denzel and Whitney is solid and Courtney B Vance makes the most of his role as Rev Biggs. Jenifer Lewis also plays a variation on at least half a dozen other characters she has played as Whitney's mother. Considering the talent involved in front f behind the camera, a bit of a disappointment.

Saturday Night (2024)
With the 50th season of Saturday Night Live underway, it was no surprise that we would get some sort of big screen salute to the iconic television show; unfortunately, director and screenwriter Jason Reitman (Up in the Air)) only has partial success with 2024's Saturday Night, which starts off promisingly but eventually dissolves into a disturbing mish mash of SNL history and an endless parade of celebrity impressions, not all of which work.

The films opens about 90 minutes before the premiere episode of SNL on October 11, 1975, where we see producer Lorne Michaels running around like a chicken with his head cut off trying to put out the expected multiple fires that were probably going on a the time, like incomplete sets, an unhappy cast member who refuses to sign his contract, standards and practices wanting to rewrite the whole, and Michaels' inability to explain to NBC hotshots exactly what this show was supposed to be.

Reitman has the same problem with this film that Aaron Sorkin had with Being The Ricardos a few years ago. That film was supposed to be a look at the filming of season 2, ep 4 of I Love Lucy, but it ended up being about Lucy's romance with Desi and her entire B movie career. Here, this film was supposed to be an up close and personal look at the premiere episode of SNL, but what we get is bits and pieces of SNL's long and dirty history wrapped up in this look at the show's premiere and anyone old enough to do the math, can figure out pretty quickly what's going on here. In the first fifteen minutes of the film, we Dan Aykroyd introduce himself to a girl on the set as Fred Garvin, Male Prostitute, a character who would not appear on the show for another four years. We also see prop people trying to figure how to make Aykroyd bleed for the skit where he played Julia Child, which was not part of the premiere episode either.

Not only is history just thrown into a big pot and stirred around, there are characters and events that happen in this movie that I'm not sure ever existed or occurred. According to Reitman and Gil Kenan's screenplay, Michaels had overbooked the show and promised standup bits to Billy Crystal and Valeri Bromfield, that were cut the last minute.

As for the performances, loved Gabriel LaBelle (The Fablemans) as Lorne Michaels and Cooper Hoffman (Licorice Pizza) as Dick Ebersol, who took over the show when Michaels quit the first time, but, according to this film, was at Michaels' side on opening night. Loved Corey Michael Smith as Chevy Chase and was very impressed by Nicholas Braun, who played Greg on HBO's Succession, very impressive in two different roles, Andy Kaufman and Jim Henson. Reitman definitely gets an A for effort, but this one should have just concentrated on October 11, 1975 and not try to give us the entire history of SNL.

Wicked
The long awaited screen version of the Broadway musical, 2024's Wicked is a technically dazzling, if slightly overlong look at the relationship between The Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good Witch of the North, before The Wizard of Oz took place, features a somewhat confusing story, but the superb musical numbers and some terrific performances distract effectively. It should be noted that this review is coming from someone who never saw the Broadway musical. It should also be mentioned that I saw ths in an actual theater.

The film opens with a formal declaration of the death of the wicked witch (cause of death is reported as being doused by a bucket of water by a little girl). Glinda is quickly dispatched to Munckinland to make the formal announcement of the witch's death, but during her announcement, a Munchkin wants her to confirm or deny a rumor that she and the wicked witch were once friends. Glinda decides to be honest and the story of how Glinda and the wicked with (whose real name is Elphaba) met, through elaborate flashback.

The Broadway musical upon which this movie is based opened on October 30, 2003 and is still running on Broadway today, having done over 8000 performances (though there was a break during the pandemic), so a movie version was just a matter of time,. As much as I enjoyed this film, the basic concept of the story is just a little muddled to me. Exploring whether Elepheba was born evil or whether evil was thrust upon her is never really answered here. As a matter of fact. I didn't see Elpheba make an evil move throughout this story. Her fish out of water story is very easy to empathize with because she had always been treated like an outsider because she has green skin, something for which no explanation was offered but it made her childhood a living hell, even worse than her wheelchair-bound sister, Nessarose.

Elpheba accompanies Nessarose to Shizz College where she first meets the pampered Princess Glinda, who treats her dirt until Elpheba somehow begins charming everyone at the school, especially Madame Morrible (Oscar winner Michele Yeoh) nd suddenly, Glinda finds herself having to work for what she wants, and somehow their initial antagonism does blossom into friendship.

As we watch the story progress, Elpheba is clearly the story's heroine, which seems to basically re-write the history of The Wizard of Oz, because we don't see anything evil about Elpheba and even though she and Glinda go their separate ways at the end, they part as friends. Though director Jon M Chu (In the Heights) never lets us forget the source of the story either. There's a lovely moment near the beginning of the film where the camera is towering over the yellow brick road and in the corner of the screen, we see a tiny image of Dorothy and her friends on the road. If you blink, you'll miss it.

The problems with the story are effectively camouflaged by some dazzling musical numbers and some superb performances, I was particularly blown away by the opening number "No One Mourns the Wicked", Glinda's "Popular", Elpheba's "Defying Grafity" (the best female driven musical finale since Streisand belted out "My Man in Funny Gir) nd my personal favorite "What is this Feeling?". Cynthia Erivo delivers a beautifully modulated performance as Elpheba that works in tandem with her monster pipes and Ariana Grande is richly funny and entertaining as Glinda. Shout-outs as well to Jeff Goldblum as the Wizard, SNL's Bowen Yang in a thankless role as a college student, and Peter Dinklage as the voice of the horse Professor Dillamond. This movie runs almost three hours I can't imagine what's left for part two, but part one was pretty damn strong.

Memories of Me
Despite the presence of Billy Crystal and the late Alan King in the starring roles, the 1988 comedy-drama Memories of Me suffers from cliched writing and lethargic direction that makes the film seem four hours long.

Crystal plays Abbie, a workaholic surgeon who actually has a heart attack in the middle of performing surgery on someone else. The incident frightens him more than he will admit, but with a little nudging from his girlfriend (JoBeth Williams)), decides to fly to LA in an attempt to patch things up with his estranged father (King), a failed actor who is still working in Hollywood as an extra.

Crystal's screenplay with Eric Roth (Forrest Gump) seems to be the primary problem here. First of all, because the basic story is about an estranged father and son, which had to be foreign territory for Crystal who, if anyone who saw Crystal's comedy concert 700 Sundays know, had an amazing relationship with his father and was devastated by his death. Number two, King's character is a show business veteran who tells a lot of stories about old Hollywood and makes references to a lot of Hollywood stars that the 1988 movie demographic never heard of and could not relate to.
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The story also features all those cliched scenes that you expect in such a film like Abbie's initial denial about what happens to himself and then having to admit his feelings to his girlfriend. The scene where father and son finally reunite starts off promisingly and then predictably morphs into a fight that has everyone in the restaurant turning their heads. There's even a beyond ridiculous scene where father and son are driving through an LA tunnel, pull the car over, and decide they are going to have a fist fight. We also get a bucket list scene that is also kind silly and pointless.

Henry Winkler made a less than impressive feature length film debut as a director here. The film's lack of pacing can only be blamed on him and probably had a lot to do with the film feeling four hours long. Crystal, King, and Williams work very hard to keep their roles viable and there is a cameo by Sean Connery, who was working on a neighboring set doing The Presidio during production of this film. For hardcore Crystal fans only, who would bounce back very nicely the next year with a little something called When Harry Met Sally.

Juror No.2
Despite some absolutely superb performances, Clint Eastwood's latest film Juror No 2 is an overheated courtroom melodrama that suffers from some cliched writing and a lot of hard to ignore questionable handling of courtroom and law procedures that distracted me from the primary story.

The 2024 film stars Nicholas Hoult (The Favourite; The Gentleman; The Menu) as Justin Kemp, a recovering alcoholic with a pregnant wife, finds himself selected as a juror for a high profile murder trial, even though he tried to get out of it. As the trial begins and witnesses begin taking the stand, we see Justin having flashbacks that reveal he was at the bar where the murder victim was seen having an explosive argument with her abusive boyfriend and was dead hours later. Justin then flashes back to driving home and hitting what he thought was a deer. When Justin was unable to find the deer, it occurs to him that he might have run over this girl and not the abusive boyfriend who is facing life in prison for the crime.

OK, I don't even know where to start with all the ridiculous places the screenplay by Jonathan A. Abrams takes us. First, the case is being prosecuted by a tough as nails prosecutor (Toni Collette) who is running for DA and has based her case om the fact that the defendant has an extensive criminal record and that the autopsy report concluded that the victim was struck by a blunt object. Now let's talk about that autopsy report...wouldn't a competently done autopsy report be able to be a little more specific than a blunt object? Are we supposed to believe that a thorough medical exam of a corpse couldn't determine whether or not this girl was hit on the head with a shovel or was run over by a car?

Then there's the jury room. Of course we get the expected Twelve Angry Men opening where most of the jurors have already convicted this man without even a discussion. Then one of the jurors (Oscar winner JK Simmons), who is a former cop, has a gut feeling that the guy is innocent and decides to conduct his own investigation, outside of the courtroom, with Justin's help, that reveals that the girl was a hit by a car and Justin's car is determined to be the possible vehicle. But when the judge (Amy Aquino) finds out about this independent investigation, he kicks the former cop off the jury and keeps Justin? Seriously?

The screenplay offered so little respect for actual law and courtroom procedures that I actually found myself laughing out loud in places, but I have to hand it to Eastwood for the performances he gets out of his cast, who somehow manage to get through this with straight faces. Hoult adds another impressive performance to his resume and Collette is always worth watching as are Chris Messina as the defense attorney, Cedric Yarbrough as a very angry juror and a thankless cameo by Keifer Sutherland as Justin's AA sponsor, who also happens to be a lawyer. Eastwood's work here is sincere, but you can drive a truck through the plot holes here.