MEAN GIRLS Review

Like so many movies these days, 2024's Mean Girls first had to prove its reasons for existing were valid. And like so many movies these days, I tend to appreciate them for where they succeed rather than condemning them for where they don't. In the broad scheme of things this new Mean Girls movie is perfectly fine, but when remaining within the stratosphere of this movie adaptation of a stage musical that itself was adapted from a twenty year-old feature film based on a 2002 non-fiction bestseller titled "Queen Bees & Wannabes" it becomes something bigger, something more; an investment in the material, the thought behind it, and how as much earned it the place it holds in our culture. 

"Like all history, this is emotionally layered and culturally dense." I was seventeen in 2004 when the original Tina Fey adaptation was released, I remember writing about it for my school newspaper, and realizing Fey had officially made the leap while simultaneously cementing Lindsay Lohan as a figurehead of my generation. Mean Girls never didn't feel like a big deal and so it wasn't surprising so many of the jokes and bits from that original film endured, but because of the endurance factor I couldn't help but wonder what the translation to the modern high school experience might have to say about our less PC and, as a result, more merciless environment. Additionally, I’d never seen the stage play and was thus unfamiliar with the production and music (written by Fey's husband, Jeff Richmond with lyrics by Nell Benjamin). While Mean Girls '24 then had to really justify itself what was maybe most surprising about the addition of the not exactly memorable music was how quickly it helped move me past the nostalgia factor and into appreciating what this retelling had to offer.

THE 15:17 TO PARIS Review

The 15:17 to Paris is not a good movie and likely never should have been a movie in the first place. Prior to Gone Girl coming out in 2014 there was an interview with director David Fincher where he stated in regards to the adaptation process that, "The book is many things. You have to choose which aspect you want to make a movie from." This is likely what writer Dorothy Blyskal should have done were she to stand the chance of making a compelling picture out of the lives of the three young men that saved a passenger train full of people from being killed by a terrorist in 2015. There is no disputing what these guys did was heroic and that, if their story was going to be turned into a feature film, that it deserved to be a compelling one, but The 15:17 to Paris is not that movie. No, The 15:17 to Paris isn't really much of a movie at all despite the fact it could be looked at as one of great risk and ambition. Directed by Clint Eastwood, Blyskal's script decides to tell the broad story of the friendship between our three protagonists whom Eastwood decided to cast with the real heroes themselves rather than having actors portray them. Unfortunately, Blyskal not choosing an aspect of these guy's lives to zero in on and make a movie out of essentially separates the picture into two distinct halves: one being the military recruitment ad the first half functions as while the second forty-five minutes may as well be a European travelogue with the event we're all in the theater to see being tacked on in the last twenty or so minutes. This final sequence is the only part of the film that holds any real tension, any real drama, or hint of any real style that resembles that of a film produced by a major studio and made by an Academy Award winning director and actor. Of course, just as The 15:17 to Paris probably never should have been a feature film it was never going to be a feature film in the traditional fashion, but more one that solidified Eastwood is now making statements with his efforts rather than simply pondering and contemplating with his art. For Eastwood, The 15:17 to Paris is the definition of heroism; no qualms, no frills, no debate about it. That's fine and I can appreciate the choice, but defining a certain quality doesn't automatically make that representation of the same quality. Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler, and Alek Skarlatos are heroes, no doubt, but their movie is (unfortunately) pretty terrible.    

First Trailer for Clint Eastwood's THE 15:17 TO PARIS

The first trailer for director Clint Eastwood's latest, The 15:17 to Paris (what an awkward title), has landed online via Warner Bros. and to call this an experiment of sorts in skirting the lines between fiction and non-fiction storytelling feels like something of an understatement. Most of the time, while films "inspired by" or "based on" true stories are considered to be works of non-fiction there is this understanding that the film and what happens in it is "still a painting and not a photograph" as writer/director Aaron Sorkin explains it. You use the parts you need to tell a story and you don't use the parts you don't need. Life doesn't play itself out in a series of scenes that form a perfect narrative and people don't speak in dialogue-these are movie things-Sorkin continues and he's right. There is not way to capture all of the factors that contribute even to a single instance of our existence to where an audience watching it on screen would understand or experience this moment in the same way the actual person who experienced it in real time. That said, Eastwood's latest is based on the story of real heroes Anthony Sadler, Oregon National Guardsman Alek Skarlatos, and U.S. Air Force Airman First Class Spencer Stone, who stopped a terrorist attack on a train on August 21, 2015. Sounds about right you say? Sounds right up Eastwood's alley you think? Especially considering his last movie extended the crashing of a plane on the Hudson river into an hour and a half drama that exposed some of the not so public aspects of Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger's heroism. Well, I hope you're right as The 15:17 to Paris will seemingly cover the full life stories of the heroes and the events that led up to the attack. All of that taken into consideration, this initial trailer is certainly intriguing and I'm anxious to see how these non-actors, but real-life heroes adapt to re-enacting this definitive moment in their lives as well as how Eastwood intercuts the flashback moments that have real and experienced actors working in them. Hopefully, the juxtaposition won't be too jarring. The 15:17 to Paris also stars Jenna Fischer, Judy Greer, Ray Corasani, PJ Byrne, Tony Hale, Thomas Lennon, and opens on February 9, 2018.

BRAD'S STATUS Review

Writer/director Mike White (Chuck & Buck, School of Rock) has made a movie meant for the purposes of entertaining about a man who seethes with jealousy from the first frame and who reminds us and, more specifically, men of a certain age that time has or is running out. This isn't exactly the best way to get an audience who likely paid to see your movie on your side, but with the endearing presence of Ben Stiller serving as the conduit for White's exploration of middle age the well-regarded writer, who is only directing his second feature film with Brad's Status, is able to perform such explorations with such balance and well-defined introspection that the film mostly transcends its rather grim implications and is able to become one easily appreciated for its reassurance. Leave it to White, who has always excelled at crafting these kinds of human, but uncomfortably so, stories to make this reassurance not in the form of our titular protagonist finding and/or achieving what he so greatly craves for the majority of the runtime, but for discovering and realizing things he may not have considered prior. It's all about perspective and White chronicles these ideas and themes through Stiller's main character by giving him an abundance of internal monologue, but does it more convincingly by having Brad take part in actions that provoke the progression of these thoughts. Never does Stiller's Brad feel like little more than a man complaining for the sake of complaining, but rather Brad is a guy who is having a real crisis of identity. It would be easy to dismiss Brad's Status as another of those middle-aged white guys having an existential crisis movies and that's because it is, but there is something to Brad's Status that helps it rise above those kinds of dismissive criticisms by being the movie that acknowledges it's about white people problems and owns up to it. Everyone has problems, some obviously vary in degree of severity and repercussion size, but everyone has problems and issues they have to deal with and to each and every person each of their individual problems are as real as anything else. Brad takes real issue with the fact he feels he's cut himself short in this single shot at life he's been given and while White is keen to writhe just about every perspective out of this base of an idea he can what Brad's Status ultimately does is provide a way to navigate feelings of inadequacy and jealousy while coming to the realization that because everyone has their own problems that those who make Brad feel inadequate or jealous likely aren't aware of as much because they have their own things they're dealing with that their social media doesn't show.