Quick Flick Review: De Palma

Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow's new documentary De Palma is a fascinating, career-spanning look at a man born to tell stories visually.

All of virtuoso filmmaker Brian De Palma's classics are touched upon - Sisters, Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, Scarface, The Untouchables, Carlito's Way - each providing an insightful, often humor-filled glimpse into the process of one of cinema's most engaging-yet-polarizing technicians.

Briskly paced and full of wonderful big-screen memories tailor-made for a darkened theater, De Palma is simply a film geek's dream and easily one of the best films of the year. Grade: A

Remembering Prince

Like most, I'm still processing the sudden passing of Prince yesterday at 57. As with the loss of David Bowie earlier this year, the news hits straight to the gut and takes a few hours, if not days, to fully absorb that someone so dynamic, vibrant and full of life is actually gone.

I grew up in the '80s as part of the MTV Generation, discovering artists and their songs mainly through the advent of music videos rather than traditional radio airplay. Oh, I was a slave to Top 40 radio, too, religiously taping songs off Casey Kasem's Sunday-morning AT40 shows from age 12-15, but I mainly found and soaked up said artists and their songs through highly stylized three-minute films beaming from my television every afternoon after school.

One of the first videos I can remember seeing was for Prince's "Little Red Corvette" in 1983. A great song wrapped in a pretty low-key performance video (they were all like that in the early days): just a microphone stand, back-up band and a man in a shimmering purple suit. Pretty simple. Except that the man was Prince. He may just have been standing there for three minutes, but he oozed such charisma and style you couldn't take your eyes off of him.

The next year brought the soundtrack to the film Purple Rain. The first single was "When Doves Cry" and both the song and the video just blew my then-13-year-old mind (I still consider it one of the top ten songs of the entire decade). From there came "Let's Go Crazy." I can remember buying that one as a 45 and playing it and the b-side "Erotic City" over and over on my little Emerson turntable with my bedroom door closed so my mom couldn't hear certain lyrics. Ah, good times.

By 1987, I had transitioned from Top 40 to alternative and I can't say I bought any Prince tunes after
that (well, maybe the Batman soundtrack in 1989). But I was always interested in what he was doing. You couldn't be a fan of music and not be interested in what Prince was doing next.

Prince was in a league of his own. A pure genius and a talent unlike any we'll ever see again. I cut my teeth on the music of the '80s. It'll always be a reminder of my youth and basically encapsulates a 30-plus-year passion for sonic creativity. Prince's music will always be a big part of that. Thank you, my friend.

Quick Flick Review: Midnight Special

Jeff Nichols' Midnight Special is a well-acted, compelling sci-fi thriller, one of those come-out-of-nowhere surprises that actually renews your faith in the power of original cinema.

The film opens on a local news broadcast playing on the television inside a Texas roadside motel room. From it we glean an Amber Alert has been issued for eight-year-old Alton Meyer and that his alleged abductor is one Roy Tomlin (Michael Shannon).

As the camera pulls back inside the room, we spy Roy loading a shotgun into a bag and another man (Joel Edgerton) securing cardboard over the window and peephole. Sitting in the center of the room, reading a comic by flashlight under a bed sheet, is Alton (Jaeden Lieberher), goggles over his eyes, construction-grade headphones over his ears. Roy tells him it's time and soon the three are hitting the road under the cover of darkness.

We soon learn Roy is Alton's father and the two have fled a religious cult that had been exploiting the boy as a pseudo-messiah. You see Alton is special, prone to speaking in odd tounges and light bursts shooting from his eyes. With the help of childhood friend Lucas (Edgerton), Roy is determined to get Alton to a secret location where something remarkable may or may not happen.

It isn't long before cult members and the government (led by Star Wars: The Force Awakens' Adam Driver) are pursuing the trio across the highways and in the shadows of the American South.

Midnight Special definitely has a Close Encounters/E.T. vibe about it, albeit a little more intense and enigmatic. But it's those qualities that provide an engaging, contemporary freshness to the tale and set Nichols' film on its own path away from those Spielberg classics.

Shannon, Edgerton and Driver all give solid, memorable performances and Kirsten Dunst provides a nice, quiet turn as Alton's excommunicated mother.

The only complaint is that Alton's powers are really never explained, other than they mirror beings who inhabit a world "on top" of our world. And when that world is eventually revealed, it resembles a utopia straight out of last year's ill-fated Disney debacle Tomorrowland.

Those quibbles aside, Midnight Special is a satisfying, deeply layered and highly effective piece of cinema, one that makes you look forward to what Jeff Nichols does next. Grade: B+

Quick Flick Review: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

Zack Snyder's long-awaited Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is a big, loud, overloaded, beat-you-over-the-head endeavor that never seems to find that one crucial component necessary for a worthy superhero film: heart.

Set 18 months after the city-leveling battle over Metropolis between Superman (Henry Cavill) and General Zod depicted in 2013's equally mind-numbing Man of Steel, the world is still trying to come to terms with an all-mighty alien living amongst them. Is he a savior or a an unchecked global theat? One who believes the latter is Gotham City's Bruce Wayne/Batman (Ben Affleck), who witnessed first hand the kind of destruction the "man" in the red boots is capable of.

Another "non-fan" is Metropolis' Zuckerberg-like billionaire Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) who has successfully petitioned the government for access to Zod's corpse and quarantined ship in an attempt to forge a Krytonite-based weapon as a "deterrent" against any future aggression by Superman. Yeah, sure.

It doesn't take long for Batman to learn of Luthor's plot and decide that it should be he who creates and controls that kind of weapon. Of course this was Luthor's plan all along and after some cleverly devised goading on his part, gets the Caped Crusader to call out the Man of Steel for a winner-take-all showdown.

What follows is a lot of merciless pummeling until the real threat rears its ugly head: a Luthor-created Kryptonian monster hell bent on destroying both our heroes.

And since the film carries the Dawn of Justice subtitle, it isn't long before another iconic warrior reveals herself and kicks the fight into overdrive.

Cavill is serviceable as Superman, no Christopher Reeve by any means, but far better than Brandon Routh ever was. Affleck is supposed to project an older, wiser Bruce Wayne/Batman, but I can't say it's a performance that leaves an impression, other than he strangely resembles the Michelin Man every time he appears in the bat suit.

And who was the genius that thought Jesse Eisenberg would make a good Lex Luthor?

In all, Batman v Superman just feels soulless and kind of hollow, concocted solely to launch a Justice League franchise. It's too long, too contrived and ultimately too bleak to make once really care about these characters going forward. Grade: C -

Disney Announces Fifth Indiana Jones Installment

Disney announced today it will release a fifth Indiana Jones film in 2019 with Steven Spielberg once again sitting in the director's chair, and if you can believe it, 73-year-old Harrison Ford returning as the intrepid archeologist.

A follow-up to 2008's hugely successful Indiana Jones and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull seemed inevitable after Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm in 2012, but talk the last few years had producers bringing in a new, younger actor to reboot and extend the 35-year-old adventure franchise.

No offense to Harrison, who was great in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and will always be my Indy body and soul, but this was the perfect time to let a younger actor take over the character and shed some light on Jones' earlier, pre-Raiders adventures. The wedding of Marion and Indy at the end of Crystal Skull felt like an appropriate, just goodbye for these beloved characters. Do we really want or need to see geriatric Indy juggling married life with his duties as associate chancellor of the university? Not really.

Other than the prodigious box office and fitting send-off, Crystal Skull was universally considered the worst film of the franchise. The flying fridge and Shia swinging on vines played a big part, but for me, seeing an old Indiana Jones just wasn't appealing. I'd rather choose to remember him battling the likes of Belloq and Mola Ram than Irina Spalko and giant killer ants.

Ford is hot again after Star Wars so I'm sure that made the decision to stick with him as Indy an easy one. The film will undoubtedly make money and extend the wallets of all involved. But will it really service the character and capture the spirit and adventure of the first three classic films? Probably not. That really won't be possible until Disney, Spielberg and Ford realize it's time to let a new face return Indy to his glory days so he can dazzle us once again.

Oscar: The Morning After

Just a quick post to congratulate Spotlight's surprise Best Picture win, Mad Max's six statues and both Leo and Ennio Morricone for finally taking home Oscar gold.

And while it would have been nice to see sentimental favorite Sylvester Stallone win for Best Supporting Actor, Mark Rylance did an incredible job in Bridge of Spies and more than deserves the honor bestowed on him.

Let's hope next year's show is a little less contentious and a lot more positive. At the end of the day we're all there to celebrate one thing: the art of cinema.

Oscar Predictions

My picks in the major categories for Sunday's Academy Awards. Enjoy the show.


Picture: The Revenant
Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu The Revenant
Actor: Leonardo DiCaprio The Revenant
Actress: Brie Larson Room
Supporting Actor: Sylvester Stallone Creed
Supporting Actress: Alicia Vikander The Danish Girl
Original Screenplay: Josh Singer & Tom McCarthy Spotlight
Adapted Screenplay: Charles Randolph and Adam McKay The Big Short