Review: "Crazy Rich Asians"

This past weekend marked the passing of Neil Simon, among the 20th century's most prolific writers of the stage and screen. A master of the romantic comedy, among Simon's best works were the legendary likes of Barefoot in the Park, The Goodbye Girl and Seems Like Old Times. 

Simon's mastery of dialogue and expert feeling for what makes a romcom prosper would have worked wonders for Crazy Rich Asians, a picture which sports an enchanting cast and couldn't be much more visually splendid, yet offers very few surprises along the way. 

The film, based on Kevin Kwan's 2013 novel, opens on Rachel Chu (Constance Wu), an economics professor at NYU who accepts boyfriend Nick Young (Henry Golding)'s invitation to join him in Singapore for his best friend's wedding. Little does Rachel realize Nick's family is, well, crazy rich, and that he is considered one of Singapore's most eligible bachelors. Awaiting Rachel on this journey will be a sea of oddball relatives, self-absorbed socialites and, most daunting of all, Nick's mother Eleanor (Michelle Yeoh), a towering figure who is skeptical of Rachel even prior to her arrival. 

The Rachel-Eleanor dynamic, if familiar, is handily the most compelling part of Crazy Rich Asians, if exclusively on account of Yeoh's commanding performance. Any time she graces the screen, even if she's devoid of dialogue, the proceedings are lifted to something truly riveting. Take, for instance, the scene on the family's grand staircase, in which Eleanor tells Rachel she'll never amount to enough for her son. It's a breathtaking moment in a film with all too few of them. 

When Eleanor isn't in the picture, Crazy Rich Asians is a more scattershot affair, sometimes flourishing (like anytime the marvelous Awkwafina shows up as Rachel's college bestie Peik Lin) and other times flatlining (during a dreary subplot involving Nick's cousin and her cheating husband). Perhaps most frustrating is how little some of the supporting players are showcased. As Peik Lin's mother Neena, for instance, Koh Chieng Mun makes a fabulous, splashy first impression and then all but disappears. There is also Tan Kheng Hua, devastatingly great as Rachel's mom but again, it's practically a cameo. 

Wu and Golding exude no shortage of charisma as Rachel and Nick, though the writing often proves too mawkish for them to completely prevail. Director Jon M. Chu and photographer Vanja Cernjul have as much passion for the Singapore scenery as Woody Allen does New York in his pictures - the setting is especially rich early on, as the couple takes in dinner at a street vendor marketplace. Of course, for the most part, this is no Woody Allen-level comedy.

Crazy Rich Asians is worthwhile for Yeoh's crazy amazing performance alone but hardly ranks among the finest contemporary romcoms. 

B

THE OSCAR 100 - The 100 Greatest Oscar-Nominated Performances

Enjoy! :)

#100-96: Kathleen Turner, Shelley Winters, Rosie Perez, Lesley Ann Warren and Kathy Bates
#95-91: Gary Busey, James Stewart, John Hurt, Glenn Close and Maureen Stapleton
#90-86: Morgan Freeman, Sally Kirkland, Jill Clayburgh, George Sanders and William Holden
#85-81: Robert De Niro, Michael O'Keefe, Judith Anderson, Michael Caine and Jason Miller
#80-76: Dustin Hoffman, Bette Davis, Meryl Streep, Fredric March and Elizabeth Taylor
#75-71: Agnes Moorehead, Piper Laurie, Sissy Spacek, Barbara Stanwyck and Jean Hagen
#70-66: Jane Alexander, Cloris Leachman, Ellen Burstyn, Martin Landau and Natalie Portman
#65-61: Angela Lansbury, Shirley MacLaine, Vivien Leigh, Jane Darwell and Faye Dunaway
#60-56: Brenda Blethyn, Olivia de Havilland, Dorothy Malone, Geraldine Page and Thelma Ritter
#55-51: Kim Stanley, Teri Garr, Susan Tyrrell, Patricia Neal and Meryl Streep
#50-46: Ingrid Bergman, James Coburn, Nick Nolte, Joan Allen and Anthony Hopkins
#45-41: Robert Duvall, William Holden, Marlon Brando, Barbra Streisand and Whoopi Goldberg
#40-36: Ellen Burstyn, Katharine Hepburn, Julianne Moore, Ian McKellen and Roy Scheider
#35-31: Peter O'Toole, Katharine Hepburn, Joanne Woodward, Joan Crawford and Angela Bassett
#30-26: Al Pacino, Edith Evans, Judy Garland, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton
#25-21: Peter Sellers, Orson Welles, Montgomery Clift, Katharine Hepburn and Robert Forster
#20-16: Jodie Foster, Martin Landau, Jessica Lange, Patty Duke and Anne Bancroft
#15-11: Charlie Chaplin, Timothy Hutton, Mary Tyler Moore, Ida Kaminska and Gregory Peck
#10-6: Jack Nicholson, Gloria Swanson, Shirley Booth, Anthony Hopkins and Rod Steiger
#5-1: Henry Fonda, Juanita Moore, Montgomery Clift, Celia Johnson and Gena Rowlands

Over the past couple of months, with the Oscar season drawing to a close, I've been mulling over possible projects to dive into during the post-season. In the past, I've reviewed every year of Best Original Song, plus all acting categories graced by Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson. Those, plus more modest side projects, like Horror at the Oscars. All of these were a blast to work on, so I've of course been eager to approach another 'Oscar Flashback' for this year.

Ideas crossed my mind like reviewing every Bette Davis or Katharine Hepburn category, or even 'The Fondas,' a mix of the Henry, Jane and Peter years. Or perhaps veering from actors to directors, reviewing each category in which say, Steven Spielberg or William Wyler appeared. I've also considered approaching a single category, as I did with Original Song, like Best Costume Design or even Best Animated Short Film (of which the vast majority of past nominees are available for online viewing).

While I won't rule out tackling any or all of those in the future, I don't quite feel the fire in the belly at this moment. Instead, I'm going to try something a little different but probably just as challenging and time-consuming (and, hopefully, rewarding).

There is no shortage of Oscar rankings to be found online, lists composed by fellow awards season aficionados of their favorite Oscar-winning performances or Best Picture winners, ranked from best to worst. Which is fantastic...but what if someone, a film buff who has inexplicably had the time and dedication to see nearly every Oscar-nominated performance, looked back and compiled a list (including commentary) of the 100 greatest acting turns recognized by the Academy?

Yes, over the coming months, I'll be traveling back in awards season history as I reveal my picks for the 100 best performances ever nominated for an Oscar. First, I need to fill in a few gaps - there are a handful of recognized turns I've yet to get around to, plus a few performances I've seen but barely recall and I'm not about to put this thing together without revisiting them. After that, the list shall be compiled and, beginning with #100, I plan to reveal five performances each week, looking back at what made each portrayal so special and what ended up going down in each Oscar race.

I'm fascinated to see what comes of this pet project and hope you'll join me in reminiscing about what will no doubt be 100 truly remarkable performances.

Review: "BlacKkKlansman"

As we approach the 30th anniversary of Spike Lee's masterpiece, Do the Right Thing, it seems a fitting time as ever to reflect on the maddening lack of recognition the filmmaker's pictures have earned at the Oscars over his more than three decades in the industry.

Do the Right Thing should have been a Best Picture contender, not the recipient of a mere pair of nominations in Best Supporting Actor (Danny Aiello) and Best Original Screenplay. Likewise, Lee's extraordinary Malcolm X was a far greater achievement than the tedious likes of A Few Good Men and Scent of a Woman, both Best Picture nominees in 1992. Alas, it too scored just two nominations, for Best Actor (Denzel Washington) and Best Costume Design (Ruth E. Carter, only of only two African Americans to ever grace the category).

His 1997 documentary 4 Little Girls aside, no other Lee pictures have earned recognition on Oscar nominations morning.

Three years since his scoring of an Honorary Oscar, Lee's middling fortunes with members of the Academy seem destined to take another positive turn with this year's release of BlacKkKlansman, a picture that was warmly received at the Cannes Film Festival and stateside has earned Lee some of his best reviews in years.

Should BlacKkKlansman indeed prove the toast of this year's awards season, I will be delighted to see Lee bask in his return to critical and commercial favor...even if I happen to think the film isn't quite among his best work. 

In fact, for my money at least, BlacKkKlansman opens on a stunningly dismal and unfunny note with an introduction from Dr. Kennebrew Beauregard (Alec Baldwin, mercilessly hamming it up), who delivers a rambling presentation on the supposed science behind white superiority. Though this intro is thankfully brief, it hints at the picture's central problem to come - the comedy of BlacKkKlansman is generally broad and distracting. 

Its true story, however, is a fabulous one - of how in the early 1970s, Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) is hired as the first black detective in the Colorado Springs Police Department. Miserable in his first assignment, working in the records room, Stallworth successfully requests a transfer to go undercover and is assigned to infiltrate a local civil rights rally. 

Ultimately, Stallworth is reassigned to the department's intelligence division and it is there that he concocts a wild mission to bring down the Klu Klux Klan. He calls the local chapter, pretending to be a white supremacist keen on joining the ranks, and manages to win them over. Of course, Stallworth cannot attend their shindigs in-person, so he recruits his white, Jewish co-worker Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) to join in the cause.

Stallworth makes so much progress, he ends up having regular phone conversations with none other than David Duke (Topher Grace), the infamous Grand Wizard of the KKK. Members of the local chapter, however, become gradually suspicious of Zimmerman, whose stories don't always match up with Stallworth's from over the phone. Such doubts come amidst the chapter's plans for a violent attack on a civil rights rally, which coincides with a visit by Duke to Colorado Springs.

BlacKkKlansman sports no shortage of profoundly powerful moments, including masterful monologues delivered by Corey Hawkins (as the towering civil rights leader Stokely Carmichael) and the incomparable Harry Belafonte. And if the picture itself is uneven, it at least beautifully serves as a star-making vehicle for Washington, who is flat-out fantastic as Stallworth and nicely matched with Driver, who has never been better. Laura Harrier leaves a nice impression too as Patrice Dumas, the president of the black student union who becomes romantically involved with Stallworth, even if her character feels insufficiently fleshed out.

Yet, all too much of BlacKkKlansman also left me sighing.

The Klansmen, as portrayed by Ryan Eggold, Paul Walter Hauser and Jasper Paakkonen, among others, are less terrifying or menacing (or interesting) than they are Saturday Night Live caricatures of white supremacists, a batch of dopey buffoons who seem liable at any moment to shout, "dey terk er jerbs!" The picture is ultimately a tonally haphazard blend of labored comedy and compelling drama from a filmmaker who's delivered sparkling comedies and sublime dramas but doesn't quite nail a fitting blend here.

Warts and all, BlacKkKlansman is ultimately worthwhile for Washington and Driver and, on occasion, Lee, who isn't at his sharpest here but still packs a punch here and there.

B

Review: "Eighth Grade"

Please, oh please let this extraordinary film emerge an awards season contender.

Bo Burnham's Eighth Grade, the year's best picture thus far, is a remarkable coming-of-age tale, just as sharp and insightful as last year's Lady Bird. It also happens to boast two performances richly deserving of Oscar conversation - leading lady Elsie Fisher and the superb Josh Hamilton, whose turn marks one of the great big screen dads of recent years.

Eighth Grade centers on Kayla Day (Fisher), a 13-year-old navigating her way through the final week of the hellish nightmare that has been eighth grade. Kayla, like the vast majority of her peers, is infatuated with social media and she goes one step further, constantly posting motivational videos on YouTube, aimed at providing fellow eighth graders with the tools necessary for school survival.

Alas, these videos attract close to zero views and Kayla herself is having the most aggravating time getting through middle school. Her dad Mark (Hamilton) adores Kayla but struggles to connect with her as she spends nearly every minute at home with her eyes glued to either her smartphone or laptop.

The final week proves a roller coaster ride of ups and downs. There are suffocating events, like Kayla's invitation to a pool party hosted by icy classmate Kennedy (Catherine Oliviere), and more positive encounters, like when she meets Kennedy's lovably odd cousin Gabe (Jake Ryan) and gets to shadow a cool high school senior (Emily Robinson). For better or worse, Kayla's world is turned upside down over these final days and through it all, keeping a careful eye on her, is Mark, with all of his unconditional love.

Eighth Grade is often spine-tingling in the way it so vividly and perceptively captures this harrowing time in life and, for every moment that'll leave you erupting in laughter (like nearly every moment featuring Aiden, the apple of Kayla's eye), there's another guaranteed to make you cry. Fisher and Hamilton share a devastating scene toward the end of the picture that recalls Timothee Chalamet and Michael Stuhlbarg in last year's Call Me By Your Name - and frankly, might be even better.

Fingers crossed A24, which has been gangbusters in recent years in generating recognition for its pictures, goes all-in on this masterful film.

A

Review: "Mission: Impossible - Fallout"

Who needs the stale 007 franchise when Tom Cruise is right there, still slaying on the silver screen in the remarkably fresh Mission: Impossible series?

I'm hardly a Cruise superfan - in fact, I'm prone to steering clear of most of his pictures - and yet even I cannot resist the sight of him sprinting around, bouncing from building to building with seamless ease and more than keeping up with co-star Henry Cavill, more than 20 years his junior. That this franchise surrounds Cruise with a dynamite supporting cast (including, for the first time, the divine Angela Bassett), makes the proceedings all the more satisfying. 

While the main attractions of Mission: Impossible are the countless set pieces, with Cruise acting like a madman on 24 Hour Energy, there is a plot in the picture, albeit a convoluted one that's increasingly difficult to keep tabs on. 

Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his beloved IMF team (Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames, having a blast, per usual) are racing against time to prevent the terrorist group the Apostles from getting their hands on nuclear weapons that, should they be obtained, will be used for attacks on the Vatican, Jerusalem and Mecca. To Hunt's chagrin, the CIA assassin August Walker (Cavill) has been tasked by CIA Director Erica Sloane (Bassett) with monitoring Hunt and his team during the mission.

To dive further into the proceedings, and the plethora of fights, chases, impersonations and so on that arise, would be to spoil the picture's many stimulating pleasures. Suffice to say, if you've gotten a kick out of prior Mission: Impossible sequels, you are guaranteed to have a ball here, even if, for my money at least, this still doesn't quite reach the sky-high heights of the first, Brian De Palma-directed entry. 

While Cruise overwhelmingly commands the screen with his awe-inspiring stunt work, he leaves room for his co-stars to shine, including the alluring Vanessa Kirby as the White Widow, a black market arms dealer; Rebecca Ferguson, back in action after appearing in Rogue Nation; and Pegg and Rhames, instilling heaps of humor into the proceedings. If there's a weak link among the ensemble, it's Cavill, who, with his matinee idol looks and lifeless acting abilities, most recalls an Abercrombie and Fitch mannequinn. 

Christopher McQuarrie, back after writing and directing the fun, if inferior Rogue Nation, has improved upon his past contributions to the franchise, packing Fallout with one fabulous, action-packed sequence after another and avoiding the lulls that have at times plagued the series (most notably in the disastrous first sequel).

Mission: Impossible - Fallout is a summer blockbuster that more than delivers the promised goods. And, I mean, it has Angela Bassett, so you obviously need to see it.

A-