Weekend Screen Scene: Freaky Tales, The Luckiest Man In America

You don't have to be from the Bay Area to appreciate the Oakland-set Freaky Tales, but it probably helps one forgive some of the film's shortcomings. There's so much that will hit different for those from the Bay than for those who aren't, especially those who were here during 1987, the year the movie is set. 

Four interconnecting stories form Freaky Tales, all with some level of supernatural (or alien?) influence in the form of a strange green glow that seems to permeate the Town. The stories include punks vs skinheads at Gilman Street; a rap battle at Sweet Jimmie's between Too $hort (who actually narrates the movie, though he's played by DeMario Symba Driver in the battle) and the female rap duo Danger Zone; a hit-man (Pedro Pascal) on his last job, which starts at a video rental store with a familiar clerk; and a robbery at the home of Sleepy Floyd, the same legendary night he scored 29 points in the fourth quarter of game four of the playoffs against the Lakers. (For all the true details behind these stories, I recommend this piece from KQED.)

Written and directed by the team of Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden, whose most recent film was the considerably bigger-budgeted Captain Marvel, the stories are obviously near and dear to the heart of Fleck, who grew up in Oakland and Berkeley. The era is nicely captured in the low-budget feel of the of the film, where such 80's cult classics as Repo-Man, Scanners, and The Last Dragon. are immediately brought to mind. This is a pulpy movie, with no shortage of gore and outrageous plot developments, perhaps sometimes too outrageous. But again, the love for Oakland that permeates the entire production makes it easy to shrug things like that off.

Freaky Tales would definitely benefit from a theatrical viewing, especially if you live in the Bay Area, so you can all laugh together as you recognize all the numerous cameos and locations, maybe even at the Grand Lake, which has a prominent cameo in two of the tales. Now that's a hella good time.

We're sticking in the 1980s for The Luckiest Man In America, the story of Michael Larson, who won over $100,000 on a single episode of Press Your Luck in 1984. First let me state that I don't think he did anything that should be considered cheating that day. The rest of the choices he made in life are a little sketchier, but winning on Press Your Luck was actually something that took a tremendous amount of skill, and it was impressive.

It's a story begging for a Hollywood telling, but The Luckiest Man In America chooses to fictionalize it in some weird ways that don't always work. Paul Walter Hauser is great as Larson, a stand out in an impressive cast that also includes David Strathairn, Walton Goggins, Pattie Harrison, and Maisie Williams. Johnny Knoxville also has a small role as a talk show host, but it's one of several moments in the movie that feels completely out of place; maybe even inexplicable.

The film works best when it is centered on the game show itself. The studio set is perfection, and brought to mind the equally impeccable retro set designs in the recent films Woman of the Hour and Late Night With the Devil. The game play is also pretty exciting, when the movie allows it to flow, which is not often enough. Watching it I just kept thinking there had to be a better way to open the story up than having the game constantly get interrupted for reasons that made sense (commercial breaks) and reasons that didn't (that aforementioned Johnny Knoxville scene.) Stick through the credits to get a glimpse of the actual Michael Larson on Press Your Luck, and if that and the film drive your curiosity enough, you can see most of the real episode on YouTube.

Weekend Screen Scene: Death of a Unicorn

I was a little apprehensive about seeing a movie called Death of a Unicorn because watching animals suffer on screen, even animals that don't actually exist in the real world (or do they??), is probably my Achilles's heel. I can't deal. And indeed, we do witness the death of a unicorn - several times! - and yes, it's hard to watch. And that definitely helps to turn what is supposed to be a very dark horror comedy into something veering into uncomfortably unfunny.

Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega star as Elliot and Ridley Kinter. They have a tense relationship; Ridley is a sullen teen, and they are both dealing with the death of her mother a year earlier. Hoping to both bond with his daughter and secure a solid financial future for her, Elliot takes her along on a work retreat to the home of his employers, the insanely rich Leopold family, who live a remote Canadian forest. Along the way, they hit a unicorn with their car, but that's not the last they see of it, or that unicorn's family.

The Leopold family are played by Richard E. Grant as the dying patriarch Odell; Téa Leoni as his wife Belinda; and Will Poulter as their asshole son Shepard. They all have their moments, but Poulter as Shephard probably gets the most laughs. He's just so good at playing contemptible characters.

But that's also part of the problem with Death of a Unicorn. All of the characters are some level of horrible, including Paul Rudd, who is not given nearly enough opportunities to be funny. Ortega has to shoulder the likability burden, but the story takes way too long to get to the point where you're really rooting for her, because Ridley is pretty annoying for a lot of it as well. (Anthony Carrigan, in a supporting role as the put-upon butler Griff, however, is hilarious, and the highlight of the movie.)

I'm all for an eat-the-rich story, and we seem to be getting a lot of them these last few years (hmmmm....wonder why?), and Death of a Unicorn does have a few satisfying moments of carnage. But its uneven tone, and a third act that drags ultimately sinks the film. The unicorns may have bite, but this satire does not.

Weekend Screen Scene: Snow White

Snow White, Disney's latest live-action update of a classic animated feature, was barely announced before the controversy surrounding it began. Some of the uproar was garbage, and some probably had some legitimacy. In either case, it resulted in a lot of negative buzz for the movie, ultimately even causing Disney to tone down its Hollywood premiere in an excess of caution.

When I say some of the uproar was garbage, I'm talking mainly about the screams of protest that erupted the second it was announced that Rachel Zegler, a Hispanic woman, was cast as Snow White. No matter that she does look the part, and has the voice needed for the musical role. And after seeing the movie, I can safely say, she's good! The movie's other efforts at inclusion could almost be called aggressive, and to that I also say, good. If this Snow White manages to piss off a bunch of racists, I do not have a single problem with that.

I'm less enthusiastic about the casting of Gal Gadot, and only some of that has to do with her stance on the Israel/Palestine conflict. I'm against her primarily because she cannot sing, and she brings nothing but her beauty to the role of the Wicked Queen, a character that deserves to be played with some level of camp and wicked joie de vivre.

Which brings us to the dwarves of it all. Frankly, I do not know how you can approach a story that features five dwarves who are primarily there for comedic relief and not have it be problematic. Feature them as fully animated characters, and you are depriving real actors from the LP community of acting roles. Cast real actors, and you are limiting their humanity to being the film's comic relief. It's a no win situation that Disney seems to have tried to rectify by casting one real LP to do one of the voices, and another as an entirely new character, who is not one of the dwarves.

To be fair, the word "dwarf" is never mentioned in this new Snow White (hence the truncated title), and since the "dwarves" are fully animated, and do not look much like the real LP who is also in the film, I believe we are to think of them as closer to gnomes, or purely fantastical beings. (They are, after all, said to be almost 250 years old).

The film's biggest sin is not in any of these controversies, but that it is simply not a lot of fun. Of course Snow White as a character had to be expanded, and given more agency. Having a heroine whose main character attributes are cleaning and falling in love with a man she's barely even met just would not fly today. And I can't argue with the film's chosen plotline that focuses on rising up against an evil leader who cares more about themself than those they lead, because, hello. But mixing in rebellion with peppy songs and cute (and I mean really, really cute) animals leaves us with a film that, while beautiful, in a Thomas Kincaide kind of way, is tonally all over the place, and only rarely captures the cinematic magic of the original classic.

Weekend Screen Scene: Mickey 17

Mickey 17 is director Bong Joon-Ho's first film since 2019's Oscar winning Parasite, and it tackles many of the themes found in that, and in his 2017 film Okja, specifically, capitalism, class, and how we humans treat each other, and other living things, all with the dark humor he's best known for.

Robert Pattinson stars as Mickey Barnes, who, like many people on the Earth of 2054, is desperate to leave, although his reasons center more on getting away from loan sharks than trying to escape a planet that's seen better days. That desperation results in him signing up to be an "expendable" on a space mission to colonize a planet, only realizing too late what this means: that he will be a human guinea pig tasked with the most deadly jobs and horrible experiments that will all lead to inevitable death, again and again. And these things will happen again and again because he will be cloned, with all memories intact, again and again. (That the cloning process essentially involves Mickey coming out of a huge 3D printer over and over is the film's funniest running gag.)

The colonizing mission is led by a Kenneth Marshall, a billionaire who, having failed as a politician, decides to just create his own fiefdom, and his wife, Ylfa, who is obsessed with...sauces. They are played, with much cartoonish villainy, by Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette, and it's not too hard to see a lot of this country's present leaders in their characterizations.

Mickey's life lives has one bright spot, and it's a girlfriend named Nasha (Naomi Ackie), who seems to view Mickey's multiple incarnations as a kinky asset and not a fault. But their relationship, and Mickey's future, is put to the test after their ship lands on the new planet, and Mickey breaks the one rule about "expendables"...

Robert Pattinson's performance, or more accurately, performances, as Mickey, complete with a very weird accent reportedly inspired by Steve Buscemi's voice in Fargo, is the highlight of the movie, and definitely keeps it afloat when it could easily sink under some of its clunkier moments. At times, it drags, especially its climax, which involves an extended confrontation with the native inhabitants of the planet. But Pattinson as the Mickeys, the all too familiar political absurdity that surrounds them, and Bong Joon-Ho's patented black humor, is a welcome reprieve from the actual absurdity of today.

Weekend Screen Scene: The Monkey

Osgood Perkins has been churning out atmospheric horror films for a few years now, but his latest, The Monkey, is his first outright horror comedy. Loosely adapted from the Stephen King short story "The Monkey," which was published in his 1985 collection Skeleton Crew, it's centered on an evil toy monkey that causes random deaths whenever the key in its back is turned, and its drumstick hits its drum.

The film follows the structure of many Stephen King properties, beginning with a story about kids, then leading to the story of them as adults. In this case, it's twin brothers Hal and Bill (Christian Convery), who live with their single mother Lois (Tatiana Maslany) after their airline pilot father (Adam Scott) ditches the family, leaving behind all the random junk he'd collected in his world travels, including a pristine, albeit very creepy wind-up toy monkey.

The boys, who hate each other, soon learn that monkey has the power to kill, which leads to a serious of random and very gruesome accidental deaths that the boys are eventually able to put on pause. For a while. Adult Hal and Bill (Theo James) grow up completely estranged, but the Monkey's return finds them both dealing with old grievances and new carnage. 

I've appreciated Oz Perkins' films, but I've never found myself really loving any of them. Too often I come away from them with the nagging feeling that he thinks he's way more clever than he actually is. I like The Monkey more than any of his past works, including last year's Longlegs, and the fact that it is a comedy that does succeed in its humor the majority of the time is probably why. I laughed a lot. But that doesn't mean it is without its flat jokes, and it's the jokes that fall flat that had me once again feeling that the movie is not quite as clever as it thinks it is.

The other film that most easily comes to mind when watching The Monkey is Final Destination. Both deal with the idea of death as inevitable destiny. But Final Destination's humor was built around the suspense of just how its characters would meet their end, which often happened in crazy Rube Goldberg-esque scenarios. In The Monkey, the deaths are just a series of sudden punchlines to the same joke, and not all of those punchlines land. Enough of them do to make the movie a success, but I'm still not completely sold on Osgood Perkins as our new master of horror...