All the Money in the World (2017)

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. 

Security Blanket

Ted: written by Seth MacFarlane, Alec Sulkin, and Wellesley Wild; directed by Seth MacFarlane; starring Mark Wahlberg (John Bennett), Mila Kunis (Lori Collins), Seth MacFarlane (Voice of Ted), and Giovanni Ribisi (Donny) (2012): Watching Ted for the second time, this time on TV, it's visual crumminess is less apparent, though still noticeable. I'm sure Seth MacFarlane doesn't care. Either that or he was trying to make Kevin Smith look like Ingmar Bergman. And it does. Ted makes Clerks look like Wild Strawberries.

Nonetheless, it's still a funny movie, with that Airplane vibe of throwing jokes at the screen as fast as possible so as to overcome the failure of any one joke. The Giovanni Ribisi subplot that takes over the final third of the movie is still crap, the movie is still at least 20 minutes too long, and MacFarlane's sudden turn into sentimentality towards the end of the film would get him kicked out of the Airplane/Mel Brooks School of Film Comedy, if such a thing existed.

Maybe the funniest thing about the film isn't in the film. See, Ted focuses on its protagonists' love of the awful 1980 sf/action/comic-strip-movie Flash Gordon, which starred Sam Jones, who would soon never be seen again. Until Ted, in which the characters actually get to meet with (and party with) Jones. But in real life, Jones now runs a high-profile security firm. How could MacFarlane not have made this a plot point? Such a missed opportunity to not have a talking, walking teddy bear and Mark Wahlberg working security for Amanda Bynes or Lindsay Lohan! Alas. Recommended.

Does a Bear Talk Too Much in the Woods?

Ted: written by Seth MacFarlane, Alec Sulkin, and Wellesley Wild; directed by Seth MacFarlane; starring Mark Wahlberg (John Bennett), Mila Kunis (Lori Collins), Seth MacFarlane (Voice of Ted), and Giovanni Ribisi (Donny) (2012): Seth MacFarlane doesn't explore much new territory here, but Ted really is quite funny. As I'm not a Family Guy fan (per the Family Guy calendar in one of the Futurama movies, "12 laughs a year!"), that's high praise.

A child's Christmas wish brings his teddy bear to life (the level of the kid's imagination being indicated by the name 'Ted', I guess -- this is not a film populated with smart people). After a brief spurt of celebrity for the bear, things settle down. And 28 years later, Ted, mostly unchanged (his voice has deepened but he's still anatomically neuter, though not philosophically so), still hangs out with John, played by Mark Wahlberg.

Most of the laughs come from the holy MacFarlane trinity of political uncorrectness, slapstick, and obsessively weird pop-culture riffs. I thought the extended structural reference to the 1980 movie Flash Gordon was pretty funny. You may not. Love him or hate him, MacFarlane just stays in there throwing and throwing and throwing. He doesn't test spaghetti by throwing it at a wall; he MAKES spaghetti by throwing it at a wall.

Ted demonstrates that MacFarlane is somewhat limited as a filmmaker. The film looks awful, as in early Kevin Smith awful. Both the direction and the cinematography wouldn't look good on TV, much less on a big screen. Besides those problems, a keener editor could have worked wonders. A subplot involving Giovanni Ribisi as a Ted-obsessed stalker goes nowhere, and expends about 20 eminently cuttable minutes doing so. The subplot also allows for a plethora of unfunny fat jokes directed at Ribisi's fat, young, obnoxious son. It's bottom-of-the-barrel time at House MacFarlane, and for no good reason -- at 106 minutes, the movie is ridiculously padded as it is.

However, Wahlberg and Kunis are game, though Kunis doesn't get a lot to work with -- she's pretty much stuck as generic unfunny girlfriend for all her aesthetic and thespic charms. Someone should write a romantic comedy just for her. MacFarlane voices Ted as MacFarlane Voice#1 -- basically Family Guy or American Dad with a Boston accent. It's funny stuff, though one wonders what a voice actor with greater range could do with the part. So it goes. Recommended.

Fighting American

The Fighter, written by Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy, Eric Johnson and Keith Dorrington, directed by David O. Russell, starring Mark Wahlberg (Micky Ward), Christian Bale (Dicky Eklund), Amy Adams (Charlene Fleming) and Melissa Leo (Alice Ward) (2010): Micky Ward, a real boxer who fought in the Junior Welterweight and Welterweight categories in the 1980's and 1990's, starts off the movie as a mismanaged stepping-stone for younger up-and-coming boxers.

He's managed by his mother (Best Supporting Actress Oscar winner Melissa Leo) and crack-and-meth-addled older half-brother Dicky (Best Supporting Actor Oscar winner Christian Bale), the latter of which was once a contender but who is now, basically, a bum living off his reputation in Lowell, Massachusetts. Micky chafes at his mismanagement -- as the movie opens, he's about to get pummelled by a boxer 20 pounds heavier than him -- but remains passively bound to his family, despite management offers from high-profile boxing promoters.

Then along comes Charlene Fleming, a bartender who quickly falls for Micky and starts trying to get him to take command of his own life. It takes awhile (actually in real life a lot longer than it seems to in the movie), but Micky finally gets someone else to arrange boxing matches for him, and he starts winning again. But he still loves his incredibly loopy family. When a now-clean Dicky gets out of jail after serving time for assaulting a police officer, Micky seems to be stuck with deciding between girlfriend and family. Or has Dicky changed?

The film remains pretty true to its true-story roots, though it ends at a curious place -- just prior to the three fights with Arturo Gatti that would cement Micky's reputation as one of the toughest boxers to ever fight. Bale and Leo are solid in their award-winning roles, and Wahlberg and Adams are fine, too, in their less showy performances. David O. Russell's direction is also solid, though a framing narrative of characters speaking directly to the camera is underused and, frankly, not necessary. Recommended.