LOGLINE: A look into the sleazy world of 1985 Los Angeles after dark, the new DePalma-esque film “Maxxxine” stars Mia Goth as the title character, a porn star who gets a big mainstream break just as her sinister past comes back to haunt her. She may have left her past behind, but her past is not done with her.
CAST: Mia Goth, Elizabeth Debicki, Moses Sumney, Michelle Monaghan, Bobby Cannavale, Halsey, Lily Collins, Giancarlo Esposito, Kevin Bacon. Directed by Ti West.
REVIEW: Over three movies, “X,” the prequel “Pearl” and now “Maxxxine,” writer/director Ti West has constructed a weird and wild look at the movie business and the ruthless ambition it takes to become famous in that industry. From the beginning years of film, straight through to the excess of the mid-eighties, West’s films center on Maxine Minx and Pearl, both played by Mia Goth, who share dreams of stardom and a willingness to spill blood—other people’s blood—to become famous.
Each film is distinct in style and feel—there’s “Pearl’s” Technicolor splendor, the 70s slasher feel of “X” and “Maxxxine’s” giallo grit—and yet they hang together as a whole because of Goth. The characters Maxine and Pearl provide the throughline that binds the films together, despite whatever flight of fancy West places them in.
Goth does fearless work, her trademark toothy grin an uncomfortable beacon of menace amid the film’s scenes of brutal, grindhouse violence. It’s a wonderfully strange performance, a unique take on an anti-hero who is simultaneously alluring and repulsive in her burning desires. It is Goth’s committed performance in “Maxxxine” that ushers the franchise along to the kind of garish finale fans expect from West.
A star-studded list of supporting actors—Elizabeth Debicki, Michelle Monaghan, Bobby Cannavale, Halsey, Lily Collins, Giancarlo Esposito—add color to the story, but it’s Kevin Bacon, as a smarmy Louisiana private investigator who steals every scene he appears in.
“Maxxxine” is likely the end of Goth and West’s edgy movie trilogy, and it goes out with a bang. In crafting a character who is both victim and a villain, a woman shaped by her upbringing and unbridled ambition, West and Goth have created a “final girl” horror icon who gets her due, and much more, in the trilogy’s final film.
Chances are, if you came of age in the 1970s, you helped make Casablanca Records the most successful independent record label of all time. With artists like Donna Summer, Parliament, Gladys Knight, the Isley Brothers, the Village People, Bill Withers and KISS on the roster, founder Neil Bogart sold millions of records and helped define the sound of the 1970s.
“Spinning Gold,” a new biopic now playing in theatres, written, produced and directed by Bogart’s eldest son Tim, is the story of how it happened. Kind of.
“If what you’re after is the truth,” Bogart says, “and not just what happened, but how it happened, then you are just going to have to believe all of it, because every single bit of it is true. Even the parts that weren’t.”
The story of Casablanca Records begins in Los Angeles, 1974. In the late 1960s the former singer and one-hit-wonder Bogart was a successful music executive. His ear for talent accelerated the rise of bubblegum pop, but it was a shock rock band from New York City, with face paint and futuristic stage outfits, that inspired Bogart to start his own label.
Refusing to ever take no for an answer, even after a disastrous label launch featuring KISS, whose pyrotechnics set off the sprinklers, leaving all the music biz big shots in attendance soaked and unimpressed, Bogart took risks no other executive could. Or would.
Flashbacks to his youth detail how the son of a poor Brooklyn postman rose to become a record industry mover-and-shaker. A charming combo of talent and nerve, with a healthy (and occasionally unhealthy) disregard for money, he cut a path through popular culture, following his personal motto: “Why head for the mountaintop when you’re reaching for the sky?”
A kind of “What Makes Sammy Run” set in the music business, “Spinning Gold” is a fast-paced portrait of an old-school show business mogul, a high school drop-out who gambled as big as he dreamed. It is the stuff of dreams and, as such, plays like a kind of fantasy, with Bogart cast as a rock ‘n roll fairy godfather. As played with great energy by Broadway star Jeremy Jordan, he grants people’s wishes and his belief in his own ability to cast a spell over artists and executives alike, is almost supernatural. “We were in the business of making dreams come true,” he says.
It all feels heightened, like a look at the era through a telescope, enlarged to the point where the image is so big it doesn’t feel real anymore. But, unlike other music biopics—think “Bohemian Rhapsody” for instance—“Spinning Gold” has a meta self-awareness, and even breaks the fourth wall to acknowledge, “This never happened!” It’s a fun stylistic choice, but later, the fictional hagiographic elements are tempered by the drugs, money issues and organized crime that enter the story midway through and give the movie a slightly grittier feel.
“Spinning Gold” relies too heavily on voice over—sometimes it feels like there’s more VO than actual dialogue—but, like the man and the music it is based on, the movie is unapologetically large ‘n loud in its need to entertain the audience and it mostly works with an appealing combo of performances and lots of ear-wormy music.
Most of all, as a portrait of a more free-wheeling time—”I’m not saying it wasn’t sex, drugs and rock and roll, because it was, “Bogart says. “But it was sex before it was deadly.”—“Spinning Gold” succeeds not because it gets the details exactly right but because it captures the spirit of a time in the music industry when it was run by dreamers who had passion for the music, not MBA diplomas hanging on the wall.
Writing a review for “Mission Impossible – Fallout” gave my thesaurus a workout. The film, the sixth instalment in the Tom Cruise franchise, is jammed to the gills with next-level stunts that require an expanded vocabulary to describe. Words like ‘extreme’ or ‘exciting’ or even ‘epic’ (and those are only the ‘e’ words) don’t come close to describing the behemothic action sequences contained within.
Cruise returns as the seemingly invincible action man and IMF (Impossible Mission Force) agent Ethan Hunt. Hunt and his crew, tech wiz Benji (Simon Pegg) and agent Luther (Ving Rhames), are charged with finding and capturing anarchist Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), a baddie who was the leader of the Syndicate during the last film, “Rogue Nation.” “Whatever you heard about Lane,” explains Hunt, “if it makes your skin crawl it’s probably true.” Lane is working with the mysterious and murderous John Lark, a man with some extreme ideas about squashing the world order.
As Lark and Lane collect the necessary plutonium to fulfil their plan the CIA begins to have doubts about Hunt’s loyalty. Add to that the return of former MI6 agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), and some newbies, CIA assassin August Walker (Henry Cavill) and black market arms dealer and lady of mystery White Widow (Vanessa Kirby) and you have lots of characters to fill the space between the stunts. Complicating matters is the fallout from some of Hunt’s previous, well-intentioned missions.
There are a lot of very good-looking people in “Mission Impossible – Fallout.” Handsome fellas and femme fatale‘s, they are all woven into a stylish story of international intrigue and plutonium. Like the others “MI” movies it’s packed with exotic locations—only James Bond has more air travel points than Ethan Hunt—doublespeak and double crosses but the narrative doesn’t matter that much, it’s all in service of the Bunyanesque action.
Choreographed to an inch of Hunts life—Cruise really puts himself out there for this one—the realism of the stunts gives the movie a sense of danger and the Green Screen Department the day off. Monumental, vertigo inducing single sequences take place on land, wheels, water and air. Only the screeching of tires score one eye-peeling chase scene between a motorcycle and a car. Visually it is so visceral director Christopher McQuarrie wisely avoided cluttering the scene with frenetic music. It doesn’t need it.
Of course those looking for a finely crafted John le Carré style story of espionage in “Mission Impossible – Fallout” will be bitterly disappointed. While it does contain huggerymuggery it frequently falls just this side of making sense. That’s not to say it isn’t entertaining. Even when Hunt isn’t in action the movie is in perpetual motion, but Frederick Forsyth this ain’t. Instead it is an elephantine (although no actual elephants appear) action epic that breaks the blockbuster norm of cutting away to an action sequence every ten minutes or so. It’s made up of three Brobdingnagian set pieces stitched together by words that mostly make sense.
His trademarked approach involves beginning his films with long slice-of-life scenes.
There’s no story really, just people doing everyday things—playing with their kids, buying muffins for their wives—before being exposed to unspeakable tragedy. His last two films, “Deepwater Horizon” and “Lone Survivor” were built around that template, one he revisits in the real life drama “Patriots Day.”
In this case the movie begins on April 15, 2013 in Boston. Mark Wahlberg (Berg’s go to heroic everyman) is Sgt. Tommy Saunders, a cop with a bad knee and a caring wife (Michelle Monaghan), assigned to traffic duty at the Boston Marathon finish line. As he takes his place across town two brothers, Dzhokhar (Alex Wolff ) and Tamerlan (Themo Melikidze) Tsarnaev, prepare homemade double boiler bombs and a plan to spread terror at the all American event.
With the character introductions out of the way the race begins with hundreds of people running through the streets, careening toward the finish line and devastation.
Berg, like Hitchcock, knows that showing the bomb but not saying when it will go off is almost unbearably tense. You know it’s there, you know what will happen, but the waiting is the thing that builds suspense.
When the two bombs do explode, maiming and killing dozens of people as the brothers slip off into the crowd, Berg recreates the mayhem, splicing together hundreds of shots, many only four or five seconds long. It’s hellish collage that places the viewer amid the action.
The remainder of the running time is spent making sense of the situation and tracking the terrorist brothers.
Berg fills the time with several very tautly staged scenes—a carjacking is memorable for its quiet menace—but the violence, especially an extended shootout on a residential street is not glamorized. It’s raw and tremendously tense.
Wahlberg is the film’s conscience—he says things like “We can’t go back to all these families with nothing. We owe them better.”—but the movie’s beating heart is Berg’s celebration of the indomitable spirit of victims and law enforcement alike. He is an unapologetic champion of everyday heroes, people who don’t flinch in the face of adversity. His heroes are the real greatest generation types who live next door and always do the right thing.
In Berg’s last film, “Deepwater Horizon,” the explosions were the stars. In “Patriots Day” the action and the fireworks propel the story, showcasing instead of overwhelming the heroics.
From a career point of view, Pixels may be the most important movie of Adam Sandler’s career. The big-budget action comedy sees the comedian help save the world from aliens who attack using classic video arcade games like PAC-MAN, Donkey Kong and Centipede as models for their assaults.
In real life, it’s not Donkey Kong Sandler needs to battle, but audience apathy. A string of box office flops, controversies and terrible reviews — critic Liam Maguren was so horrified by Sandler’s 2011 “comedy” Jack and Jill he wrote, “Burn this. This cannot be seen. By anyone” — have threatened to torpedo his career.
Even his own studio seemed to have turned against him. In last year’s Sony email hack, one employee complained, “we continue to be saddled with the mundane, formulaic Adam Sandler films.”
Movies like Billy Madison, Happy Gilmour and Big Daddy were hits that established his persona as the angry but sweet everyman, a misfit character he trotted out for two decades. Occasionally he’d get serious in pictures like Punch-Drunk Love or Reign Over Me and soak up some good reviews, but by and large, the Sandleronian oeuvre has been ripe with anger management issues and jokes of … how to put this delicately: a gastrointestinal nature.
Not highbrow, but that’s OK — not everything has to be Noel Coward — as long as audiences care.
But at some point, it seemed they stopped caring.
Perhaps it was the inconsistent nature of his movies. Just when you think he’s turned a corner with the excellent Reign Over Me into interesting adult roles he slaps you in the face with the zero-star rated follow-up I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.
Or maybe it’s quality control issues. Last year Kevin Nealon told me about being offered a role in the Sandler-produced Grandma’s Boy.
“It was so lowball and crass,” said Nealon. “I thought it might be a little embarrassing to be in that one. So I told Sandler I’d probably pass on it and he called me and said, ‘I really hope you do this because if you don’t do it and it’s a big hit I’ll feel bad, but if you do it and it’s not a big hit, no one is going to see it anyway.’”
That attitude may be realistic but it doesn’t exactly speak to high standards. More than that, however, is the static nature of Sandler’s comedy. His everyman character hasn’t changed much throughout the years. Usually these days he lives in nicer houses or has more money but it’s the same old shtick.
The old saying, “He got bigger, but didn’t grow up,” perfectly applies to Sandler.
He may have matured (chronologically at least) but the urination gags and rageaholic jokes that characterize his comedy haven’t.
We don’t need to feel sorry for Adam Sandler. He has movies in the pipeline and a new deal with Netflix, but Pixels is still an important moment for him. Rolling Stone called his last film, The Cobbler, “beyond awful and beyond repair,” and it went on to become his biggest flop to date.
If Pixels is a hit, and it may be, the trailer generated 34.3 million views worldwide in its first 24 hours online, he will be redeemed — at least until his next movie’s new round of toilet humour and cleavage shots.
Imagine Donkey Kong meets “War of the Worlds” and you’ll get the idea behind the new Adam Sandler comedy. Question is, Will it be the end of the world or the end of Sandler’s career?
The “Billy Madison” star plays Sam, a Nerd Brigade television installer who, as a teen was part of a gang of video game obsessed kids, Will (Kevin James), Ludlow (Josh Gad). While Sam’s dreams of becoming an international gaming star were crushed when he lost the 1982 worldwide arcade game championships to Eddie “The Fire Blaster” Plant (Peter Dinklage), his best friend Will went on to become the President of the United States. “I’m just a loser who’s good at old videogames,” he says.
Now it looks like all those hours spent saving the world from Galaga and Centipede may finally have some real life application. An alien race has misinterpreted old arcade video game signals for a declaration of war from earth. In retaliation they have created an army of invaders based on1980s style characters like PAC-MAN, Donkey Kong and, of course, Space Invaders. Sam’s plans for world domination in his “sport” may have been pushed aside, but when he gets a call from the President, he and his friends use their skills to save the world from the pixelated predators.
There might be some 1980s “Pac Man Fever” nostalgia for those who came of age during the Reagan years but as good-natured as the movie is, there’s not much here to recommend it as a comedy. There are Donkey Kong games with more laughs than “Pixels.” Sandler’s man-child with a heart of gold character is now as creaky as an arcade game joystick after a Battlezone binge.
There is an interesting story in how pop culture can have a massive impact on people’s lives, but the movie is content to stick to the Sandler template, using the inventive premise as a frame for another of the comedian’s tired romantic hook-ups. Predictable and not nearly heart warming enough to make you care about the characters, “Pixels” feels lazy, as though it was too much work to make the video game warrior aspect anything more than a sentimental gimmick. It’s Game Over for “Pixels.”
Remember My Best Friend’s Wedding? Julia Roberts played Julianne, a woman who realizes she is deeply in love with her best friend Michael (Dermot Mulroney) after he announces that he is to be married to another woman. Play switcheroo with the gender, update the wardrobe, add in the Highland Games and you have Made of Honor, the latest film from Grey’s Anatomy actor Patrick Dempsey.
Made of Honor may not have originality on its side but it does provide a few laughs and some beautiful scenery.
In this topsy-turvy reexamination of My Best Friend’s Wedding Dempsey is Tom, the kind of rich playboy who only exists in rom coms. He’s a unrepentant womanizer, wealthy beyond belief and always seems to be able to find a parking spot on the busiest of Manhattan streets. His best friend is Hannah (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang’s Michelle Monaghan) is the Ginger to his Fred, the AC to his DC. They’re able to stay friends because they have no romantic bond.
That is until Hannah travels to Scotland on a six week business trip. Absence makes Tom’s heart grow fonder, and he decides to ask her to marry him as soon as she hits the tarmac back in the States. There’s only one problem, she returns from her trip with a fiancée in tow and plans to move to Scotland with her newly found and wealthy mate. Fearing he is about to lose the love of his life, Tom, who has accepted Hannah’s invitation to be her maid of honor, tries to derail the wedding and win Hannah’s hand.
Made of Honor has all the usual romantic comedy ingredients—the prerequisite New York setting, madcap misunderstandings, the big moment of realization that person A can’t possibly live without person B and some beautiful exotic scenery. We’ve seen it all before in countless other movies, but Made of Honor pulls it all together in, not exactly a memorable way, but at least in a frothy enough way to make the audience I saw it with ooh and ah and make the appropriate romantic comedy cooing sounds during the screening.
Much of the success of the film has to do with Patrick Dempsey who seems born to star in these kinds of confections. He’s good looking, has a way with comedy and doesn’t mind doing a pratfall or two. Co-star Monaghan isn’t given much to do other than to react to Dempsey’s antics, but she is a presence and the camera loves her.
Made of Honor is an amiable, but ultimately forgettable rom com that relies just a bit too heavily on the conventions of the genre.
