Inexplicable Movie Review: The Bronze doesn’t medal, but tries hard

The Bronze is a truly bizarre, sometimes amusing movie, that was ultimately a little too bleak for me to really get into (and that I managed to see thanks to Redbox, and not Target). Melissa Rauch does most of the heavy-lifting in the low budget comedy, but as a result, there aren’t many good scenes left for talented supporting actors like Gary Cole (Bill Lundberg from Office Space, Harvey Birdman, Kent on Veep, and he’s in hundreds of other movies), Cecily Strong (Saturday Night Live) and Thomas Middleditch (the Pied Piper creator in Silicon Valley).

Quick plot summary – Hope Ann Greggory (Rauch) is a bronze medalist in the all-around from the Athens Olympics, in Kerri Strug-like fashion. However, her career is essentially ruined after she tries to rush back from that injury, and she now spends her days stealing birthday money from cards in her dad’s mail truck, and her nights offering guys a doubleteam for drinks.

These parts are bleak, but funny. I figured I was in for a traditional sort of “redemption” story, as Hope’s old coach commits suicide and asks her in the note to continue training the new star pupil, Maggie Townsend (Haley Lu Richardson). It presents a moral dilemma for Hope, as she living on her past reputation as a bronze medalist, and doesn’t want anyone to upstage her.

From there, the movie takes some unconventional twists and turns, but most of them are unfortunately not all that fulfilling. You can’t see several of them coming, but this makes them more frustrating than amusing for a dark indie comedy. The first act of the movie is the best, as it contains Hope at the bottom in an amusing way, but the later acts are just psychologically unpleasant for her, and for us as the audience.

This extends to the supporting cast, and oddly enough, the best member is Richardson, a relative newcomer. She gets the juiciest part though, as the hyperactive and seemingly naïve Maggie. In a movie of moody, melancholy roles, she’s the one character that “pops” off the screen for most of it.

In contrast, Strong and Cole aren’t given much of anything to do. It’s frankly bizarre to see Strong playing Maggie’s single mother, since she’s 32 and Richardson is 21. Richardson looks too old to be Strong’s daughter, and Strong is mostly playing a straight role until the very end of the movie.

Cole is good in almost everything, which is why his IMDB has 155 credits as of October 2016. Seriously, take another look at it – He’s in so much awesome stuff, that he’s also awesome in, that it’s easy to overlook certain roles. He’s Bosco on Bob’s Burgers! He’s been on 44 episodes of Family Guy and he’s on Angie Tribeca! Archer! 30 Rock! Curb!

But, he’s also from the Christopher Walken School of Role Choices, and he probably needs to vet what he’s in a tiny bit more. By that, I mean that he’s not really given much to work with in this flick, and he’s particularly menacing and unappealing in one scene. He’s not bad, but with Cole (and Strong, and Middleditch) you get the feeling that there was more to work with her with some script revisions or more takes.

The movie being low budget clearly shows at times – As I just mentioned, it feels like they could have done more reshoots after realizing how dark some of what happens is. The quality of the film is also bizarre at times, and all of the gymnastics scenes are iffy. Karen watched this with me and was not impressed.

Sony probably picked this movie up because the Olympics were in 2016, but holy hell, it DEFINITELY earns its R-rating. It is a hard R, with swearing throughout, drug usage and a surprising amount of nudity. Don’t watch this if you want to re-experience that Olympics buzz, and definitely don’t watch this anywhere near children. But, if you’re looking for a dark, foul-mouthed comedy, it’s worth the $1.50 Redbox rental.

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Inexplicable Movie Review: Jason Bourne

Note: Spoilers follow for Jason Bourne.

On Twitter, I quipped that the most unrealistic part of the new Jason Bourne movie, Jason Bourne, is that there is a tech-like Comic Con panel, and somehow, Chris Hardwick isn’t hosting it. However, that was more because it struck me as a funny line, whereas the truth was a bit less humorous. “Somehow, an armored police SWAT truck and a Dodge Charger tear through the streets of Vegas, with the armored car plowing through a row of about 20 cars with drivers in them at one point.”

There are some Grand Theft Auto-level traffic hijinks going on in this movie, except that in the video game, cars get destroyed after a couple crashes. In contrast, Jason Bourne has multiple action sequences where cars and motorcycles manage to survive hopping over curves, smashing other cars, and being used as battering rams. The drivers are usually unaffected by these crashes, but they at least have the slight justification of being trained assassins.

Anyway, this is by far the most mindless of the Bourne movies, to its detriment. I liked the original trilogy because they combined the car chases and hand-to-hand fighting of conventional action movies with an existential crisis. There was always a lingering feeling that Bourne was uneasy with his power, and using it reluctantly.

In contrast, Jason Bourne uses flimsy justification to get the “gang” back together. You see, there is a NEW evil, government surveillance program that’s way worse than the one from the original trilogy, and because of that, Julia Stiles needs to get herself a movie paycheck, because rent on a good New York City loft is high.

… Okay, maybe she really liked the script or something. I don’t know why, though. It basically takes some current buzzwords and hot news stories – Facebook! Wikileaks! Surveillance! Greek riots! – and throws them into a blender. The result is something that feels more appropriate for a bad CBS show that your parents watch, not a motion picture I paid $10 for. This film features a lot of dramatic, unrealistic Hacking and Surveillance and Bugging. Yes, it’s the CIA, but they still can’t turn a grainy image into crystal clear by yelling, “Enhance!”

As a result, the only thing really propping the movie up is Bourne, and hey, Matt Damon is Matt Damon. He’s still friggin’ great. As pointed out in a review on RogerEbert.com by Brian Tallerico, Damon probably has 25 lines of dialogue in the entire film. He works though as the quiet, steely type that’s the closest thing to a “realistic” superhero we have in the movies.

Damon gets to do cool Bourne-stuff, like decking guys with one punch in unlicensed bare-knuckles boxing matches, a la Snatch, although Bourne does his work in the desert. (Side note: Remember when Jason Statham was funny?) The only other character that gets to show some “personality” is Vincent Cassel as the unnamed Asset, essentially a predecessor to Bourne. Cassel manages to convey antagonism with his sneers and stares, which is important, since he doesn’t get much screen time because we need 20 scenes about hacking and data gathering.

Speaking of, the rest of the cast feels somewhat wasted. Tommy Lee Jones plays the heavy, CIA director Robert Dewey, but he’s so far to the Evil side of the ledger that you can’t ever really put yourself in his shoes. There is more nuance in the positions of Iron Man and Captain American in Marvel’s Civil War. Alicia Vikander is incredibly easy on the eyes as the CIA counter-intelligence technology something or other, but because the movie is so muddled in its plot, it’s unclear what her motivations are.

Something for the sequel, I suppose. It’s unclear if the movie will get one, but so far, it’s made $246 million against a budget of $120 million, suggesting it’s a modest hit even without being released in China, Mexico or Russia yet. I’d be game for another installment, just because Damon is getting older and that would be an interesting dynamic to play with, plus the biggest hanging curve with the series is, “How does Bourne actually continue with his life?” By the end of Jason Bourne, pretty much every significant person in Bourne’s life is dead, except Pam Landy (not in this movie) and Paz, the assassin from the third movie (also not in this movie). They still have some room to run with the series, but not much.

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Inexplicable Movie Review: Now and Then

Note: Spoilers follow for Now and Then.

Now and Then is a good, but not great, coming-of-age story about young ladies. I don’t know their exact ages, because I’m not knowledgeable about when girls experience puberty, but it’s basically like a female-focused version of The Sandlot, or Stand By Me, or seemingly dozens of other guy movies. Now and Then is different from the stereotypical 1980s teen dramas (mostly starring Molly Ringwald) because there is way more of a focus on the relationships between the friends, as opposed to Much Strife about a boy.

Surprisingly, the movie sits at 19 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, although 82 percent of the people who watched it liked it. Ebert gave the film two stars, praising the work of the young actresses while pretty much savaging everything else.

Reading his review, I’d say it analyzes Now and Then pretty much on the nose. (It’s like he did it for a living, or something.) The storytelling device of the film – that it’s all a big flashback with some narration by grown-up Demi Moore – is kind of hokey. It only seems to exist to allow for four established actresses – Moore, Melanie Griffith, Rosie O’Donnell and Rita Wilson – to be on the movie’s masthead, since their total screen time is about 15 lackluster minutes.

The real stars of the movie are the young versions of the adults – Christina Ricci (Roberta), Thora Birch (Teeny), Gaby Hoffmann (Samantha) and Ashleigh Aston Moore (Chrissy). Hoffmann and Birch are especially strong, which probably isn’t all that surprising to y’all reading this, given that you know how their future movie careers turned out. Moore is the only one who stayed relatively unknown – According to Wikipedia, she stopped acting in 1997, and unfortunately died in 2007 at the age of 26.

Now and Then is at its best when it’s just showing interactions between the young actresses. The inevitable comparison in this regard is Stand By Me, but unfortunately as Ebert’s review highlights, the chats aren’t as effective in this movie because of the heavy-handed narration, the “flashback” method of the film, and some really hokey plot elements. You know, stuff like the gals stealing the guys’ clothing when they skinny-dipped, and a séance gone wrong, and just stealing plot points from Home Alone, of all things.

If you’re looking for a great, female-focused coming of age story, well, this isn’t it. Gilmore Girls is still the end-all, be-all for that sort of media. Still, I found it entertaining enough for its 90-minute run time. Just focus on the youngsters performances, and laugh at the Dark and Edgy Demi Moore. If you’re feeling nostalgic, Huffington Post has a then-and-now slideshow for Now and Then.

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