Author Archives: jjcwn

Movie Review: The Whale

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The actor Brandon Fraser is one of those actors in Hollywood who show all of us just how difficult it is to reach the highs in the acting profession and stay there for any length of time. You are on top for one year, and then your career can fall off a cliff. With movies like “The Mummy”, “Blast from the Past”, and from the 90’s to “Extraordinary Measures” with Harrison Ford, released in 2010, Fraser had an ongoing and lucrative acting career up until this last movie with Harrison Ford. Then, his career went south. We all forget about all the of actors who just don’t have a career for very long, for reasons that mostly include a movie or two that bombed at the box office. When money is lost on a major movie release, far too often it is the actor who is blamed. Movie audiences are fickle and the sudden availability of a perfect screenplay for the exact right actor or actress is never guaranteed – and is unfortunately, a rare occurrence in the movie industry – with the exception of the very lucky few, including Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep.

Sometimes something rare can occur, like “The Wrestler”, released in 2008 starring Mickey Rourke, who at the time was no longer a bankable star. Since then, Rourke has had some success, but now is acting mostly in B, low-budget movies. This is the reality of the acting profession – one day you are up and the next day you are no longer viable, or you are out of the profession entirely. With the release of “The Whale”, where Brandon Fraser plays a morbidly obese 600-pound man and then received a 6-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival, Fraser demonstrates an acting ability he never has before – only because he never received a miracle role like this one.

For a film like The Whale where the main character is morbidly obese and almost never leaves his couch, this film is probably the first of its kind ever produced. The story of Charlie, played by Fraser is told in an unusual way. Over a period of several days and weeks, Charlie receives visitors and through conversations with them, we find out everything about Charlie’s depressing life, including the reason for his self-destructive constant eating. Charlie makes a meager income by teaching an online writing class – and with every class, he never shows his face to hide the fact that he is so overweight. Brandon Fraser did gain some weight for this role, but most of his appearance was pulled off by some outstanding makeup and an impressive 600-pound fat suit. As with all stories about extremely obese people, it is always hard to understand how many of them can afford the monthly food bills that would be required to maintain so much weight.

The supporting cast in this low-budget movie is mostly unknown actors, including Samantha Morton, Sadie Sink, Sathya Sridharan, Ty Simpkins, Hong Chau and all of them are outstanding in their roles. The only problem with this movie is that the living room and house that is the majority of all the scenes in this movie are as dark and depressing as Charlie’s life. This can be hard to watch for 2 hours but given what this story is all about, what other choice is there? There are millions of people in the world who live lives like Charlie, despite all the human instincts to just look away.

There is little doubt that Brandon Fraser might not only receive an Academy Award nomination for best actor but has the best chance of winning this year. Considering Fraser’s career in Hollywood just a short time ago, winning an Academy Award for this role will be an amazing and unprecedented achievement.

The Rotten Tomatoes are once again way too low 63%, missing the point of this entire story and its uncovering of a harsh reality of life. My rating is a solid 85% for the acting and the way the story is told and a solid recommendation.

Movie Review: Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody

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Starting off with any review of a movie Biopic about Whitney Houston – the choice of the title “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody” is probably the worst decision I have ever seen for a title in the history of movies. What the hell were they all thinking coming up with such a stupid title? Just about any title the producers could have thought of, would be better than this idiotic one for such an important, sad and significant story about arguably the greatest singer of all time.

Some four years ago I reviewed the documentary Whitney a more complete and accurate description of the tragedy of Whitney Houston – mainly because a documentary is a better vehicle for a story about the extreme highs and lows of celebrity than any movie could be.

This movie succeeds in addressing most of the important high and low points of Whitney Houston’s life, although too much of the first half of this film deals with the “more than just a friendship” relationship that Whitney had with Robyn Crawford. Considering all that happened during Whitney’s short life, showing this much of this one relationship misses the most important underlying message of this preventable tragedy: how one person turned a one in a billion talent into a curse that ended her life in a bathtub after drowning because of drug use at only age 48.

So what went wrong? I remember some years ago reading an ESPN report about a high percentage of NBA and NFL retired players who went broke within 5 years of leaving their sport. The reason is that young athletes have no idea how to manage a great deal of money. They spend like there is no tomorrow, like their sports careers will be going on forever. Many of them forget they have to pay taxes – both State and Federal. It was the same problem for Whitney Houston, played very well by actress Naomi Ackie. Whitney spent far too much money, mistakenly allowed her criminal father to manage her career and even steal from her. She paid salaries to too many of her family members. Money was spent to get her husband Bobby Brown out of legal trouble, far too many times. Money was spent on private jets and too many unnecessary extravagances and drug use. Making a great deal of money requires a great deal of responsibility and know-how. Just like so many formerly wealthy athletes, Whitney Houston should have been a client of a very large accounting firm, that managed all of her money, and her career and gave her a monthly allowance. Surprisingly, when you realize the importance of Whitney Houston’s music producer, Clive Davis (played very well by Stanley Tucci), it makes little sense that Clive did not help her with this extremely important aspect of her career – her money.

Sadly, towards the end of Whitney Houston’s life, she was almost completely broke due to decades of financial mismanagement. All of this led to ongoing circles of self-destruction born from too much too young and an innate inability to tolerate all of the horrible things people say and do, that destroyed what should have been an amazing life into a tragic one. This movie forgot to mention that it was Al Sharpton who called for the boycotting of Whitney Houston’s music because he thought it was too white. Big mouth Sharpton forgot that Whitney Houston was a 19 year old child, terrified over having so much fame and fortune at a young age. Sharpton did not care that Whitney was just doing what she was told to do, because she was so young. What Sharpton did care about was stirring up a frenzy at the expense of a young girl – using once again, his huge big mouth.

One highlight of this film was showing Whitney’s two incredible performances on the Merv Griffin show in 1983 and her once in a lifetime performance in the Super Bowl, singing the National Anthem – arguably the greatest musical performance in front of the largest audience in human history. In January 1991 when Whitney Houston hit this incredible high note, there was nowhere else to go – but down. As I wrote 4 years ago when reviewing the documentary “Whitney”, after “The Bodyguard” released in 1992, Whitney Houston had nothing more to prove and should have retired. As the saying goes, hindsight is 20-20.

I can only guess that the very low 48% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes have to do with the too-long running time of 2 hours, 26 minutes, the important parts that were missing from this story, including the jealous relationship that Whitney’s mother Cissy Houston had with her daughter, the tragic end of Whitney Houston’s own daughter and ultimately the completely absurd title. Once again the critics are wrong and I give this film a solid 80% for the acting, the musical performances and the well-told story.

Movie Review: Avatar: The Way of Water

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Before seeing the sequel to “Avatar”, released in 2009 – titled “Avatar: The Way of Water”, I went to Rotten Tomatoes and was stunned to see that the rating for this movie – that cost so much to produce and so many years to make, was only 78%. Then when I sat through a way too long 3 hours and 12 minutes of this movie, the reason for the low rating became obvious.

Unbelievably, this second installment of Avatar has no real story. What this film does have is about 20 different small vignettes all strung together with only some of the smaller parts contributing to any coherent sequence of thought. Asking anyone to try and explain what this movie is about is a telltale sign of no coherent screenplay. This movie is just a series of events that justify amazing special effects. Considering that director James Cameron recently said that Avatar: The Way of Water will have to gross 2 billion in ticket sales by March 2023 just to break even, it is impossible to believe that all the thousands of people involved with this movie – just forgot about the script. When you realize how many millions and billions were spent on newly invented movie equipment and new software to create the incredible visual special effects it appears that they all forgot that to obtain the big box office they need to break even – having no story and making a movie 3 hours and 12 minutes long, might just make this latest Avatar a money loser. How many people will look up the running time of this film and say to themselves, “there is no way I can sit through a movie this long”. Considering the myriad of small stories in this too-long film, this movie can easily be cut down to two hours and it will be a much better movie-going experience. Where is it written that very long makes a great movie? This has never been true.

As far as the problem with the lack of a good script, an excerpt of a review on Rotten Tomatoes from writer Udita Jhunjhunwala, says it best: “This is the second of a planned five-installment series, so there are many more worlds and wonders of Cameron’s imagination and capabilities of technology yet to be explored. Perhaps in subsequent films, there might also be greater attention to the script. While the new film is a successful and sometimes wondrous visual experiment, as a story, it treads in shallow waters.”

Due to the extreme cost of the new technology and software that had to be developed to produce this movie (the special effects are even more amazing in 3D), there will be 3 more Avatar films, released in 2024, 2026, and 2028. Now the hope must be that the mistake of making this film too long and with no script will not hurt the possible success of the next 3 installments. Word of mouth is a huge part of marketing a great movie – very true of Cameron’s other blockbuster hit Titanic, released in 1997. However, for this movie, word of mouth just might kill the hoped-for box office.

As far as rating this movie, I have to give it 80% just for the incredible science, technology, and hard work involved in making it over the last decade. However, I will add no more points to the rating because they completely forgot about the most important part of any movie – one or more people looking at the empty page on a computer screen, trying to write a great screenplay. I give Avatar the Way of Water a mild recommendation only for the groundbreaking special effects.