THE GREATEST SHOWMAN (2017) ***

I got a Movie Pass for Christmas.  If you’re unfamiliar with it, it’s basically a pre-paid credit card that let’s you see a movie a day for free.  One of the benefits of having a Movie Pass is that you can take a chance on a movie you might’ve otherwise skipped.  After all, it’s free, so what do you have to lose?

I’m not the biggest fan of musicals, but my daughter wanted to see The Greatest Showman, so I figured I’d tag along with her and check it out.  As it turns out, it’s a solid family-friendly movie that audiences of all ages should enjoy.  I can’t say that the songs are particularly great (they eventually start to sound the same after a while), but they are performed with such warmth and heart by the earnest cast that they are hard to dismiss.  

The film acts as a loose biography of P.T. Barnum (Hugh Jackman) as it follows his meager upbringings as a tailor’s son to circus impresario.  Barnum makes a name for himself when he opens a museum dedicated to human oddities and uses real-life freaks in his show to draw crowds.  He then uses his newfound social standing to rub it in the faces of those who looked down on him all his life.  When he takes a stab at promoting legitimate theater with a beautiful opera singer (Rebecca Ferguson), it drives a wedge between Barnum and his wife (Michelle Williams) and he almost loses his family. 

The Greatest Showman is at its best when it shows the camaraderie between Barnum and the freaks.  Since he is the rare person who makes the effort and tries to get to know them, they agree to join up with his circus.  He gives them a platform to perform and assures them that yes, people will most assuredly laugh at them.  However, people are going to be laughing no matter what, so they might as well get paid for it.  

The family drama with Williams and Jackman’s two daughters is fairly absorbing and the subplot where Zac Efron and Zendaya fall in love is rather charming too.  The only real weakness stems from the rushed pacing as Barnum goes from being down on his luck to high as a kite so much that he often seems bipolar.  You wish that there had been a little room for the character to breathe a little bit in between his losses and triumphs.  Some of that has to do with the way some of the songs are shoehorned into the narrative.  Other than that relatively minor quibble, The Greatest Showman is a lot of fun and is a great vehicle for the charms of Jackman who shows there’s bound to be plenty of life after Wolverine.

RE-KILL (2015) ** ½

Re-Kill is the most popular reality show in the future post-zombie outbreak America.  The show revolves around a camera crew following a SWAT team on patrol as they clear the streets of “Re-An’s”.  So, basically, it’s Cops, but with zombies instead of criminals.  

Just when I thought I didn’t want to see another Found Footage zombie movie, along comes one that manages to breathe a little life into the tired genre.  It’s consistently better than you’d expect (although to be honest, I wasn’t expecting much), and I was surprised by just how clever the film was.  By “clever”, of course, I mean, it more or less rips off Starship Troopers.  Throughout the movie, there are several commercial breaks filled with futuristic ads and overt government propaganda (and like Starship Troopers, there’s even a coed shower scene).  The commercials promoting repopulation (they look like something out of a Skinamax movie) and the cigarette ads are the most amusing.

This is a Found Footage zombie movie after all, so unfortunately, you’re stuck with a lot of irritating shaky-cam camerawork and rapid-fire editing.  It would’ve been headache-inducing had it not been for the commercial breaks, which offer a welcome respite from all the shaky-cam nonsense.  The crappy camerawork and editing also means that the gore scenes are cut to ribbons.  What gore there was looked pretty good, but it’s hard to say for sure when you can barely get a glimpse of it.  

The reality show gimmick doesn’t always work, but it certainly has its moments.  The filmmakers stick pretty close to the Cops formula, which garners a few laughs.  It’s nice to know that in the future, criminals will still have their face blurred out when they’re being arrested on television.

I’m not going to lie, the only reason I watched this was because Scott Adkins was in it.  Sadly, he doesn’t get to show off his impressive martial arts skills.  While I would’ve loved seeing him Kung Fu some zombies, he still manages to show his acting range playing the loudmouth asshole of the team. 

WAR PIGS (2015) ** ½

Mickey Rourke sends Luke Goss and Dolph Lundgren to whip the eponymous army unit into shape and get them ready for battle.  After the grunts gradually earn Goss’ respect, they receive orders to go behind enemy lines and bring back information on a new superweapon the Nazis have been tinkering with.  When two of Goss’ men are captured by the Germans, he rallies the troops together for a rescue mission.

Director Ryan Little makes the most of the film’s slim budget.  Although it’s relatively slow going at the outset, things heat up nicely during the third act.  If you’re patient enough, you’ll be treated to some decent WWII action.

The funniest thing about War Pigs is Rourke’s character.  I guess Little couldn’t talk Rourke into cutting his hair or taking off his white cowboy hat.  I’ve seen some sights in my time, but seeing Mickey Rourke wearing a cowboy hat and long hair trying to pass himself off as a WWII colonel will be hard to forget.

Dolph does a good job as a French foreign legion captain.  He and Goss make for a solid team.  If only Dolph was given more to do than to ask Goss, “Do you think the men are ready?” every ten minutes.  Goss, looking grizzled and miserable, wears his Army fatigues in an authentic manner.  He looks like he just walked out of a Sam Fuller flick.  Contrast his appearance with that of Rourke.  They look like they came out of two different movies. 

I just wish the war pigs themselves were a bit more distinguishable.  They all seem interchangeable and fail to make much of an impression.  At all times they look like a bunch of struggling 21^st century actors trying to pass themselves off as wisecracking Army grunts.  They aren’t great or anything, but they look much more authentic than Rourke.  

AKA:  Saints and Soldiers:  War Pigs.

THE RUNNER (2015) **

After the devastation of the BP oil spill, Congressman Nic Cage makes a passionate speech to Congress that gains nationwide attention.  Using the momentum of the speech, he sets out to make real changes for his Louisiana fishing community.  Soon after, he gets embroiled in a sex scandal and is ultimately forced to resign.  Months later, he comes out of hiding and works as a pro bono lawyer to help fishermen affected by the spill.  He also begins an affair with his married publicist (Sarah Paulson), which could harm his future political chances.

The Runner is well-acted and earnest enough, although it’s hardly what you would call engrossing.  I mean it’s hard to really sympathize with Cage’s character.  It’s almost as if the sole audience for this thing was disgraced, alcoholic, sex-addicted Congressmen with marital problems.  That’s a very narrow market to capture, but I guarantee that if you’re a disgraced, alcoholic, sex-addicted Congressman, this will be right up your alley.  

Fans of Cage’s onscreen high jinx will no doubt be disappointed as he is much too subtle in this to make it memorable.  Even though he’s playing a character struggling with alcoholism, he never once reaches into his grab bag of Cagey tricks and achieves the same level of alcoholic antics of Leaving Las Vegas.  I’m not saying that a full-blown Cage performance could’ve saved this lackluster drama, but it definitely couldn’t have hurt.

The supporting cast is strong though.  Cage’s Ghost Rider co-star Peter Fonda has some good moments as his disgraced former politician father.  Fonda and Cage have enormous chemistry in their scenes together.  When you look at them bantering back and forth, you can almost see the movie The Runner wanted to be.  Connie Nielsen is solid as Cage’s long-suffering wife and Paulson is better than the film deserves as the new object of Cage’s affection.

THE BEGGAR OF NO EQUAL (1980) **

Confession Time:  It was hard to tell what the hell was going on half the time in The Beggar of No Equal because the subtitles were often completely unreadable.  The horribly cropped transfer cut off about half the words on the screen.  If a line of dialogue was more than five words long, I was shit out of luck.  To make matters worse, the subtitles themselves were often blurry and hard to make out.  At least the litany of misspelled words was sometimes good for a laugh. (“Dame you!")

The plot, as much as I could surmise, focused on a shirtless guy whose job was protecting a sacred book of herbs.  Meanwhile, a badass government official goes around kicking the asses of townsfolk who don't cotton to the king’s rules, which admittedly are pretty bullshit and are mostly made up just so this guy can kick their ass.  Anyway, this cute Kung Fu fighter enters the fray and beats the snot out of a lot of people.

It was here where things started getting a little hazy.  The shitty subtitles were mostly to blame, but I admittedly started zoning out halfway through because I started losing track of the plot.  There is a decent plot twist at the end though.  It might have had some impact if I knew what was going on for the half-hour or so before that.

Because of subtitle snafu, the only way to really grade The Beggar of No Equal is on the Kung Fu action.  Sadly, the fight sequences don’t occur often enough to make up for the unintelligible plot.  In general, the fight scenes were okay.  They’re definitely nothing you haven’t seen before.  Then again, the cropping is so bad that you sometimes can’t even see who the hero is fighting.  

POTTERSVILLE (2017) **

I was so enamored by Michael Shannon’s performance in The Shape of Water that I went out looking for another Shannon film in hopes of seeing him once again chew the scenery like a madman.  Now The Shape of Water of course was all about a fish man finding love with a mute woman.  Incredibly enough, the plot to Pottersville is just as weird.

Shannon plays a meek nice guy who owns the general store in his small snowy hometown.  One day, he decides to leave work early and surprise his wife (Christina Hendricks) and is dismayed to find her dressed in a bunny costume and having “furry sex” with Ron Perlman (who likes to dress in a wolf costume).  I try not to be too judgmental when it comes to folks’ sexual eccentricities, but these two make the fish man sex in The Shape of Water look downright conventional by comparison.

Anyway, Shannon does what anyone would do in that situation:  Go out and get drunk on Ian McShane’s moonshine.  Feeling despondent, Shannon dresses up in a gorilla costume in hopes of winning back his wife.  His drunken costumed escapades in the town makes everyone think Bigfoot is on the loose and soon, the place becomes a booming tourist trap.  A reality show host (Thomas Lennon) even shows up with a camera crew looking to capture the beast.  Shannon continues the charade and runs around like Sasquatch to keep the town’s morale up, but predictably everyone turns their back on him when he’s ultimately unmasked.

On the surface, Pottersville looks like your typical Hallmark Hall of Fame Christmas movie, but the slightly warped plot pretty much guarantees little white-haired old ladies will not be amused.  The fact that the plot hinges on kinky animal costume sex (even though no skin is ever shown) is probably enough to make sure it’ll never be shown on the channel.  While it’s just a tad weirder than your average Christmas flick, it’s not nearly weird enough to be consistently entertaining.

Even though I really like the guy, I’ll be the first to admit that Shannon is badly miscast.  They really needed someone bland in the lead.  When he tries to act “normal” and be “nice”, he just comes off looking like a serial killer.  Imagine if Rondo Hatton replaced Jimmy Stewart as the star of It’s a Wonderful Life with a furry sex subplot and that might give you an idea of what we’re talking about here.

Some will want to watch it just for the fact that Hendricks plays a sex-starved woman with a furry fetish.  You’ve got to wonder about her character though.  I mean she leaves Shannon for Perlman.  It’s almost enough to make me think I have a shot with her.

All of this might’ve been worth a damn if it was actually funny.  Although I got a kick out of seeing Ian McShane as a crusty hunter doing a good imitation of Robert Shaw’s big scene in Jaws, for the most part, the gags fall flat.  Even the usually reliable Lennon fails to generate any laughs.

If you’re a Bigfoot fanatic with a furry sex fetish in need of a Christmas movie, look no further.  Pottersville has got you covered.  Everyone else will probably be left scratching their head.  

BATTLE OF THE SEXES (2017) ***

Before Andy Kaufman wrestled women in bouts of intergender wrestling buffoonery, Bobby Riggs challenged women tennis players to show man’s superiority on the tennis court.  Of course, that all backfired on him when Billie Jean King mopped the court with Riggs on national television.  Battle of the Sexes is a dramatized version of the events leading up to that fateful match.

While Riggs (Steve Carell) runs his mouth and puts on a good show for the cameras, King (Emma Stone) tries to keep her head down and train hard for the match.  She’s hoping that all the publicity will allow her to make a stand for equal rights and feminism.  She doesn’t want any needless distractions around.  Naturally, that’s just what she gets in the form of Marilyn (Andrea Riseborough), a hairdresser she becomes romantically entangled with while on tour.  Since this is the ‘70s we’re talking about, King must keep the relationship quiet because if the media found out about her lesbian affair, it would bring an abrupt end to her career.  

Directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (who also collaborated with Carell on Little Miss Sunshine) get a bit heavy-handed while delivering the movie’s messages.  A lot of the on-the-nose dialogue hammers home King’s dilemma with the subtlety of a hundred-mile-an-hour tennis serve.  Once the film switches gears and turns into an honest to God sports movie, it quickly rights itself and becomes a rather irresistible underdog story.  The finale is surprisingly suspenseful too, even if you already know the outcome.

The thing about Riggs is, he’s pretty likeable.  He’s not an out-and-out bad guy.  He just misses the limelight and sees the battle of the sexes matches as get-rich-quick scheme.  He goes so over the top with his whole male chauvinist performance (his insults are kind of funny) that he becomes a caricature of a villain.  I mean he can be only taken about as seriously as your average wrestling heel. 

Even King doesn’t really have a problem with his overboard blustering.  Her real issue is with the sexist men behind the scenes who want hold women back.  While Riggs is using the chauvinist thing as a publicity stunt, these guys actually talk the talk.

The cast is uniformly excellent and help to anchor the movie whenever it threatens to get too preachy.  Carell gives a terrific performance and makes what could’ve been a one-dimensional cretin likeable and well-rounded.  The scene where he goes to Gamblers Anonymous and puts down the people in the group for being bad gamblers is hysterical.  Stone does an equally fine job as King.  Halfway through the movie, you kind of forget it’s her, which is about as good of a compliment as you can give.  The supporting cast is a veritable who’s who featuring everyone from Bill Pullman (sexist asshole) to Elizabeth Shue (Riggs’ long-suffering wife) to Fred Armisen (Riggs’ “vitamin consultant”), all of whom do a great job.  Alan Cumming in particular does wonders, giving a thinly-written role a hefty amount of gravitas.