Photo caption: Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie in BARBIE. Courtesy of Warner Brothers.
Thanks to a brilliant screenplay by Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, Barbie is a spectacular marriage of the intelligent and the silly, and manages to celebrate a commercial brand amid pointed social satire. It’s delightfully funny throughout, and the third act is a crescendo of hilarity.
Gerwig and Baumbach have imagined a world in which the various versions of Barbie dolls, including Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie), live in Barbie land, a female-centered but naïve, utopia. Developments force Barbie to leave Barbie Land on a mission to the human-populated Real World, and Ken (Ryan Gosling) stows away on her quest; because they live in a fantasy world, the two are unprepared for the harshness and ambiguity of the Real World, and their return to Barbie Land sparks disharmony. Will Barbie and Ken figure out their respective places in the universe?
Gerwig and Baumbach have somehow crafted a film that will satisfy those who treasure their Barbie doll, memories, those who are disturbed by Barbie’s impact on women’s body images and sexual objectification, and those who just dismiss the Barbie silliness. (I came to Barbie with one indelibly painful Barbie memory – from my bare feet stepping on Barbie shoes.) The biggest laughs come from Barbie’s relentless skewering of toxic masculinity.
America Ferrera in BARBIE. Courtesy of Warner Brothers.
Robbie and Gosling are both excellent, and there’s a huge cast of familiar stars playing various Barbies and Kens. I think that the real star of Barbie is America Ferrera, who plays Gloria, an actual human woman who befriends Barbie in the Real World. Gloria is a workaday Every Woman struggling to navigate life under the withering scorn of her teenage daughter Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt). Both Ferrera and Greenblatt deliver superlative performances, and Ferrara gets to deliver the pivotal monologue in the film.
Because much of the humor derives from surprising the audience, I am being very careful to avoid spoilers, but I can say that Barbie’s many highlights include:
an inspired use of the Indigo Girls’ song Closer to Fine; it’s very funny to hear Barbie characters singing it, and it has the lyrics of existential inquiry, which is what Barbie is engaged in, as silly as that sounds.
the performance of Kate McKinnon, perfectly cast as Weird Barbie.
a hilarious turn by Michael Cera as Ken’s Friend Allen;
a breaking-the-fourth-wall aside by narrator Helen Mirren that brings down the house.
one of the funniest final lines of any movie comedy.
closing credits with real Barbie toys, including the discontinued ones: Growing Up Skipper, pregnant Midge, etc.
It’s been a while since a movie made me laugh until I cried, but that happened when i watched the campfire guitar serenades and the “battle of the Kens”.
I rarely complement capitalists, but I am grateful to Warner Brothers for assigning a project that could have been simplistic, exploitative schlock to an artist like director Greta Gerwig. And Mattel is a very good corporate sport to have have its corporate culture, its CEO (Will Ferrell) and even its headquarters building thoroughly mocked.
At a minimum, Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach certainly deserve Oscar nominations for Original Screenplay and America Ferrara should get an Oscar nod for Supporting Actress. Barbie is one seriously funny movie.
Photo caption: Margot Robbie and Diego Calva in BABYLON. Courtesy of Paramount Pictures.
Babylon is a whole lot of movie. More movie than you’re expecting. And maybe more movie than you want.
Writer-director Damien Chazelle (La La Land, Whiplash) has delivered a kinetic and kaleidoscopic showbiz epic of over three hours, which is visually stunning, ever entertaining and sometimes shocking. Now, is it a good movie?
Set beginning in 1926, Babylon traces Hollywood’s transition from silent film to the talkies by tracing the stories of a mega-movie star Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt), the ambitious starlet Nelly LaRoy (Margot Robbie), the African-American trumpet prodigy Stanley Palmer (Jovan Adebo) and the sultry Chinese entertainer-by-night Lady Fay Zhu (Li Jun Li). The audience largely experiences Babylon from the point of view of Manny Torres (Diego Calva), a Mexican household gofer whose abilities as a fixer propel him up the movie studio ladder. Chazelle’s view of Hollywood is as a human-crunching pool of toxicity, that a person must leave to survive with any decency or happiness.
This is also a Hollywood of unsurpassed debauchery and hedonism, which we taste right away in a movie mogul’s house party with lots of bare-breasted women and naked people engaging in sex, kinky sex, and perverted sex. The scene is clearly inspired by Ceil B. DeMille’s orgy scene in the silent The Ten Commandments, which seems quaint in comparison. This scene could have been imagined by Federico Fellini on speed and Hugh Hefner on acid.
Margot Robbie (center) and a cast of thousands in BABYLON. Courtesy of Paramount Pictures.
“Wanton excess” is inadequate to describe this party scene and much of Babylon. Like the guitarist in This Is Spinal Tap, Chazelle has set his amp to eleven. There’s so much eye candy here that Babylon will cause Baz Luhrman to feel bad about himself.
This is also the most scatological mainstream movie that I’ve seen. There’s projectile diarrhea (from an elephant), projectile vomit (from a person on a person) and urination (both from a woman onto a titillated man and from a man onto himself).
Back to the story. Chazelle shows us the Silent Era Hollywood studios with wall-to-wall outdoor movie sets, simultaneously grinding out comedies, romances and westerns. We see a cast of thousands in a medieval battle epic, and the transition to sound during the period when the technical challenges were so excruciatingly unforgiving that the sound men briefly usurped the control from the directors. Babylon’s characters are thinly-disguised recreations of John Gilbert, Clara Bow, Fatty Arbuckle, Anna May Wong, Erich von Stroheim and Louella Parsons, with some real life figures like Irving Thalberg.
Brad Pitt and Diego Calva in BABYLON. Courtesy of Paramount Pictures.
If you’re going to cast an actor to play a movie star from the classic era, you’re not going to cast Johnny Depp, Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise, Robert Downey Jr. or Bradley Cooper. Just cast Brad Pitt and you’re most of way there in your storytelling – Pitt’s handsome looks are just weathered enough, and he exudes physicality, confidence and insouciance. If you want a Douglas Fairbanks or Clark Gable type – he’s your guy. And, yes, he is perfect in this film.
Likewise, Jean Smart is your gal for a cleareyed, devastating truthteller. Her character’s matter-of-fact Bad News Good News assessment of Jack Conrad’s career may be the distillation of Chazelle’s core message, if there is one. It’s the most compelling speech in Babylon.
I’ve seen actors throw themselves into Wild Child performances, but none with as much abandon as Margot Robbie. It’s a fearless, over-the-top and singular performance. Unfortunately, Chazelle’s Nelly is two-dimensional. There’s not much there except her insatiable grasping for fame and drugs, but Robbie does wring out every ounce of humanity.
This a well-acted film. Other notable pedal-to-the-metal performances:
Li Jun Li soars with sexy charisma in an underwritten part. I want to see more of her.
Eric Roberts sparkles as Nelly LaRoy’s venal and opportunistic father, who has reappeared once she is a money machine of a movie star.
Tobey Maguire’s performance was perfectly described by David Rooney in The Hollywood Reporter as seeking to “out-weird Dean Stockwell in Blue Velvet and Joaquin Phoenix in Joker combined.”
Sydney Palmer’s trumpet work is downright exciting, I assume that someone other than Jovan Adepo is actually playing the instrument, but I couldn’t determine who from the credits. In any case, Adepo gets props for credible fingering, which is no small thing.
The fine cast also includes Lukas Hass, Patrick Fugit, Samara Weaving, Katharine Waterston, Jeff Garlin, Spike Jonze and, very briefly, Olivia Wilde.
Elements of Babylon are indisputably superb and Oscar-worthy, especially the cinematography by Linus Sangren (Oscar winner for La La Land), the production design by Florencia Martin and the costumes by Mary Zophres (Oscar nominated for True Grit, La La Land and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs).
Is this a good movie? There is an unusually wide range of critical assessments, which average into a a middling 59 score on Metacritic. It’s a gorgeous thrill ride, for sure, but we just don’t care about most of the characters. Some viewers will be just too distracted and exhausted by the freneticism. I think it falls short of being a great movie, but it’s so outrageous and fun to watch that it’s a must see.
Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio in ONCE UPON A TIME…IN HOLLYWOOD
In Quentin Tarantino’s spectacularly successful Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, two fictional characters, Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) and the actress Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) navigate a changing Hollywood in 1969. The next evolution of Hollywood is filled only with promise for Sharon, but presents an unseen threat to Rick and Cliff.
Rick is an actor, a former star of TV Westerns who has aged into guest appearances on the shows of a new crop of TV stars. Cliff is Rick’s longtime stuntman, who now works as Rick’s driver, gofer and drinking buddy. Cliff lives in a San Fernando Valley trailer; Rick lives on exclusive Cielo Drive, next door to Sharon and her husband Roman Polanski, but he’s slipped too far down the showbiz ladder to know them.
Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood is about a lot of things, expertly braided together. It’s about a specific time and place. It’s about a woman, filled with innocence and zest, who is justifiably hopeful. It’s about two guys – one tortured and the other decidedly not – facing age and irrelevance. It’s about the guys’ relationship, at once interdependent and asymmetric. And it’s a love letter to vintage Hollywood, the Hollywood that six-year-old Quentin Tarantino lived near to, but was not a part of.
The story follows the three characters through a series of vignettes, right up to the most startling ending in recent cinema. This is a Quentin Tarantino masterpiece, right up there with his best, Jackie Brown and Pulp Fiction.
The movie’s title begins with “Once Upon a Time…“, so you are on notice that this isn’t actual history.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt in ONCE UPON A TIME…IN HOLLYWOOD
Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood is set in the locations most evocative of the 1969 Hollywood: movie studio sets, legendary showbiz hangout Musso & Frank, the Playboy Mansion, the ill-fated Cielo Drive and Spahn Ranch – famous for both its use as a movie set and as the home base of the Manson Family.
There’s a dazzling montage of neon signs being lit up at sunset. Not many contemporary directors still know how to film galloping horse riders, but Tarantino brings us some great shots from Spahn Ranch, where so many Westerns were shot.
Of course, Tarantino’s soundtrack takes us right into 1969 with superbly curated period radio hits like the Deep Purple version of Hush and the Jose Feliciano cover of California Dreamin’. A February scene is perfectly set to Neil Diamond’s Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show, with its hot August nights lyrics presaging the Manson murders to come in LA’s stifling August 1969. (Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show got me wondering how Tarantino restrained himself from using it in some – or all – of his previous films; it’s every bit as Tarantinoesque as Misirlou or Stuck in the Middle with You.) A snippet of a full-bearded Robert Goulet singing MacArthur Park even turns up on somebody’s TV.
In 1969, American culture and the nation itself were in turbulence. Hollywood showbiz was also being rocked – major movie studios were slipping both financially and creatively, floundering to react to the primacy of television and the public’s changing taste (and growing disinterest in Westerns). The studios were about to reach out in desperation to auteur directors like Polanski. Rick and Cliff are behind the curve – but they haven’t noticed that their world is dying.
As hedonists, Rick and Cliff have embraced the drugs and free sex of the counterculture. But they still drive gas guzzlers – a luxury sedan for Rick and a muscle car for Cliff – and refer to “dirty hippies”.
How does the Manson Family play into all this? There was a time when people actually believed that drug-infused peace and love would cure all that ailed us as a society. By 1969, the Summer of Love had already turned dark in San Francisco; but the Manson killings made the unmistakable point that the counterculture, for all its promise, didn’t have an answer to murderous psychopaths any more than did the mainstream.
We very briefly glimpse Manson himself (in an encounter that is pretty close to historically accurate). Tarantino knows that the best way to depict Manson’s evil is to reflect it in the cult he created.
DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton, drinking way, way too much, is still treated like a star around town, and he’s grown complacent – until the truth about his career staleness finally hits home. DiCaprio shines in the scene where Rick, cast as a one-dimensional villain in a disposable TV Western, shows his acting chops with an explosive performance; Rick, having internalized that his career may be over, lets it all go in the scene. The character of Rick has the movie’s greatest arc, but he’s less interesting overall than Cliff or Sharon.
Margot Robbie in ONCE UPON TIME…IN HOLLYWOOD,
Sharon Tate is the soul of Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. Robbie is absolutely transcendent,. She doesn’t need a lot of lines to make her character unforgettable. Sharon gets a ticket to watch herself in a Dean Martin movie, and it’s impossible to imagine a moment with more goofy innocence.
Cliff Booth is one of Tarantino’s greatest characters. Cliff is secure in his abilities, without any need for recognition or self-promotion. Unambitious, he is absolutely content to be Rick’s second banana. That being said, he’s not going to take any shit from anyone.
Brad Pitt in ONCE UPON A TIME…IN HOLLYWOOD
In Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, Brad Pitt shows us what a movie star is and why he is one. I haven’t been a Pitt enthusiast, although I’ve liked him in Fight Club, The Assassination of Jesse James, Moneyball and Inglorious Basterds. Pitts’ Cliff Booth is off the charts, and it’s tough to imagine any other actor in the role. Other male stars can match the physicality, but not the unique combination of confidence and humility.
Right up there with Pitt and Robbie is Margaret Qualley, who plays a fictional Manson girl named Pussycat. She is kooky in the cute way and kooky in the scary way. Qualley fills her with manic energy, brimming with wit and sensuality.
Julia Butters plays a precocious child actor in the pilot Rick is shooting; she’s the best possible counterpoint to Rick’s flabby professional complacency. Michael Moh is very funny in a send-up of Bruce Lee. Damien Lewis has a priceless moment as Steve McQueen.
For his supporting players, Tarantino pulls out an abundant cornucopia of acting talent and Tarantino sentimental favorites: Al Pacino, Dakota Fanning, Kurt Russell, Emile Hirsch, Brenda Vaccaro, Clu Gulager, Bruce Dern, Michael Madsen, Luke Perry, Timothy Olyphant, Zoë Bell, Clifton Collins Jr. (Perry Smith in Capote), Lena Durham and Scoot McNairy.
Tarantino’s exquisite filmmaking skills blend together the verisimilitude of time and place, the vivid performances and a rock ’em, sock ’em story to make Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood an instant classic.
Note: Deep into the closing credits, there’s an Easter egg.
The riotously funny docucomedy I, Tonya relives the tawdry story of figure skating star Tonya Harding, brought to disgrace when her supporters injured her competitor Nancy Kerrigan. Margot Robbie (significantly glammed down) is exceptional as Tonya Harding.
Harding, of course, came from scruffy working class roots in Portland. With disadvantages of class and poor education, Tonya was unequipped to navigate a world dominated by middle and upper classes. In I, Tonya, she refers to herself as a redneck and acts like trailer trash – really unapologetic trailer trash.
But I, Tonya adds another level to Tonya’s story. In I, Tonya, Tonya’s mother LaVona (Allison Janney) is more than a driven, severe stage mother – she’s unrelentingly abusive, both emotionally and physically. To make matters worse, Tonya escapes LaVona’s perpetual nastiness by running away into the arms of Jeff (Sebastian Stan) and his chronic domestic violence. At one point, Tonya reflects, “All I knew was violence“.
The beauty and effectiveness of Steven Rogers’ screenplay is that we can laugh at misadventures of these folks while deeply sympathizing with Tonya – scarred and shaped by abusive experiences. The characters all break the fourth wall and speak directly to the audience – very effective here. Rogers and director Craig Gillespie maintain a perfect balance between the laughs and the abuse – sometimes at the same time. This is the Aussie Gillespie’s best work.
Alison Janney in I, TONYA
LaVona’s spiteful bile is so extreme that it’s darkly funny. Allison Janney, who is superb as this poisonous woman, is probably America’s least vain actor. And nobody has ever had a better sense of comic timing. She made me laugh out loud the first time I saw her, in 1998’s Primary Colors, and she keeps the audience guffawing in I, Tonya.
Jeff’s friend Shawn (a brilliant Paul Walter Hauser), who “masterminds” the attack on Kerrigan, is so catastrophically stupid that he is unable to comprehend the profundity of his own stupidity. In the closing credits, we get to glimpse the real LaVona and the real Shawn.
Julianne Nicholson is excellent as Tonya’s hyper-polite coach. In a very brief role, Ricky Russert brilliantly brings out the glorious combination of panic and idiocy of “hit” man Shane Stant.
Once Tonya has been hounded by the media and suffered complete public humiliation, she faces the camera and says to the audience, “you have been my abusers“. It’s not preachy or overdone, and this brief moment is crisp and unforgettable. We have been laughing at her, but who are we to judge this survivor of family violence?
I, Tonya is captivating combination of sympathy and hilarity – and one of the year;s best films.
What do you get when testosterone-fueled and morally challenged stock salesmen discover how to make piles of easy money by defrauding investors? Well, when Martin Scorsese tells the tale, we get three hours of full throttle, hilariously bad behavior. The Wolf of Wall Street is the story of a (real life) guy who found out how to make a fortune scamming middle class investors – and then a bigger fortune scamming rich investors – on penny stocks and shady IPOs. It’s a wild ride that is destined to end in a perp walk, propelled by enormous amounts of recreational drug use. In fact, the movie is really about excess – the sales meetings here make the toga party in Animal House look like an Amish barn-raising.
This is not economic story-telling. Scorsese indulgently lets his scenes run on and on – not so we lose interest, but just so he can milk out every drop of spectacle. Although he could have told the story in two hours instead of three, he just couldn’t resist supplying three hours of exhilaration. Fine by me.
I had never thought of Leonardo DiCaprio as a comic actor, but he does a fine job in the lead role – driving what is essentially a comedy. Speaking of comic actors, this may be Jonah Hill’s finest performance – he plays the top henchman, a character who wears horn-rimmed glasses (without corrective lenses) just to look more WASPish; no one can play schlubby desperation or drug-impaired overreaching better than Hill. There is a huge cast, and some of the year’s best acting gems include:
Kyle Chandler (Friday Night Lights and so brilliant in The Spectacular Now) as the FBI agent targeting DiCaprio. In particular, Chandler performs an exceptional scene on a yacht, where the agent lets the con artist (and the audience) think that his con is working – for just a bit. Top notch stuff.
Matthew McConaughey, at the height of his new-found acting powers, as our hero’s first mentor in amorality;
Rob Reiner (!) as the hero’s emotionally explosive but common sensical dad;
the stunning blonde Australian actress Margot Robbie as the Brooklyn-bred trophy wife; and
Joanna Lumley (a top model in London’s 60s Mod scene and popularizer of the Purdey bob hairstyle) as the trophy wife’s conveniently European aunt.
I’m certainly going to add this to my Best Drug Movies. Multiple scenes make this the best Quaalude movie ever, and one extended ‘lude scene with DiCaprio and Hill had the audience howling for several minutes.
Is this one of Scorsese’s best films? No – but it is one of the most entertaining and certainly the funniest. The Wolf of Wall Street is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.
