All the Money in the World (2017): adapted by David Scarpa from the book by John Pearson; directed by Ridley Scott; starring Michelle Williams (Gail Harris), Christopher Plummer (J. Paul Getty), Mark Wahlberg (Fletcher Chase), Romain Duris (Cinquanta), and Charlie Plummer (John Paul Getty III):
Once upon a time, American oil tycoon J. Paul Getty was the richest man in the world. And once upon a time, Kevin Spacey played him in this film!
Ridley Scott replaced Spacey after allegations of Spacey's sexual improprieties hit the press, resulting in a re-shoot with Plummer subbing for Spacey.
Plummer is excellent, all rotted and wormy noblesse oblige as the eccentric billionaire. When his namesake grandson gets kidnapped in Italy, Getty is less than helpful to the boy's desperate mother, divorced from Getty's addiction-addled son.
It's not a great film, but it certainly holds one's interest. Michelle Williams is terrific as the mother. Near the end, one realizes that one of the reasons Scott did the project was so that he could do an extended homage to Citizen Kane. There are certainly worse reasons to make a movie. Recommended.
Baby Driver (2017): written and directed by Edgar Wright; starring Ansel Elgort (Baby), Jon Hamm (Buddy), Eliza Gonzalez (Darling), Lily James (Debora), Kevin Spacey (Doc), CJ Jones (Joseph), Jamie Foxx (Bats), and Paul Williams (The Butcher): It's my least favourite of the movies Edgar Wright (Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World) has directed. That still makes it pretty good. Baby Driver, named for a Paul Simon song, is slathered in songs. Our hero, 20ish guy 'Baby,' drives the getaway cars for a heist operation run by Kevin Spacey. He doesn't want to, but he's stuck. When 15, Baby stole a car loaded with stolen property from Spacey. He's been paying it off ever since.
How are the car-chase scenes? Very good. Anedgar wrightd the conceit that Baby listens to music constantly to drown out the tinnitus suffered in the car accident that killed his parents means, well, a nearly constant, eclectic flow of pop music. Wright gives Baby a couple of interesting quirks -- most notably a deaf African-American foster father whose existence, and Baby's mastery of American Sign Language, tells us that Baby is All Right. Lily James plays Baby's cute-as-a-button diner-waitress love interest, labouring away in the world's (or at least Atlanta's) largest yet most empty diner ever.
The improbably named Ansel Elgort seems to have been intentionally selected for his sweet, occasionally blank niceness. I don't know that it entirely works. He's often overpowered by the other actors, most notably the acerbic Spacey, a mercurial Jamie Foxx, and Jon Hamm as The Terminator. Wright nods to one classic 'Driver' film, The Driver (1978), directed by Walter Hill, by casting Hill in a cameo. One is also reminded of the more recent, excellent Drive with Ryan Gosling as a preternaturally cool heist driver. In all, Baby Driver is an enjoyable entertainment, the sort of summer movie that used to be more common before the Rise of the Tentpoles. Recommended.
Scrooged (1988): written by Michael O'Donoghue and Mitch Glazer; directed by Richard Donner; starring Bill Murray (Frank Cross), Karen Allen (Claire Phillips), Bobcat Goldthwait (Eliot Loudermilk), David Johansen (Ghost of Christmas Past), Carol Kane (Ghost of Christmas Present), and Alfre Woodard (Grace Cooley): Bill Murray is on record as being displeased with the choice and work of Director Richard Donner. And he's right. Donner wasn't a comic director. How did he get this assignment?
The best parts of Scrooged lie in the performances and a sharp script by Michael O'Donoghue and Mitch Glazer, the former a legendarily bleak original member of the Saturday Night Live writing team. But Murray's criticism -- that all Donner knew how to do in comedies was get everyone to 'go' louder and louder -- is valid. Putting the twitchy, adenoidal Bobcat Goldthwait in a role that called for finesse and an ability to generate sympathy really didn't help either. Karen Allen is welcome as always as the lost love of Murray's Scrooge-like TV executive, and Carol Kane also does some violently funny slapstick. Lightly recommended, for it could have been so much better with a lighter, funnier hand on the helm.
Elvis & Nixon (2016): written by Joey Sagal, Hanala Sagal, and Cary Elwes; directed by Liza Johnson; starring Michael Shannon (Elvis), Kevin Spacey (Nixon), Alex Pettyfer (Jerry Schilling), and Colin Hanks (Krogh): Fizzy, funny imagining of just what went on in December 1970 when Elvis met Nixon. Michael Shannon and Kevin Spacey nail the voices and mannerisms of Presley and Tricky Dick, respectively, despite not particularly resembling them physically. It's funny stuff, with maybe a bit too much sentimentality attached to the friendship of Elvis and Jerry Schilling, the latter being what we in the business would once have called The Narrative Focalizer (TM). But when Elvis and Nixon are in a scene, the scene shines, with Colin Hanks offering capable back-up work as one of Nixon's staff. Recommended.
Arrival (2016): adapted from Ted Chiang's "Story of Your Life" by Eric Heisserer; directed by Denis Villeneuve; starring Amy Adams (Louise Banks), Jeremy Renner (Ian Donnelly), Forest Whitaker (Colonel Weber), Michael Stuhlbarg (Agent Halpern), and Tzi Ma (General Shang): The first half-hour could have used some strenuous advising from someone in the military so as to lose all the military-movie cliches and counter-factual errors that arise. Once we're inside the alien ship, however, things start to sing in this tale of First Contact.
It's really Amy Adams' show as an actor -- she's great, conveying both intelligence and heartache as the linguist drafted by the U.S. military to figure out the language of the aliens that just parked their giant contact lens in Montana. More scenes with the aliens would have been appreciated. Canadian director Denis Villeneuve does some nice work with visuals and sound design here, though once again he's made a movie that seems just about 10 minutes longer than it ideally should be. And the sound design occasionally buries the dialogue, suggesting that Villeneuve may be attempting to emulate the sonic garble of Christopher Nolan. Recommended.
