madonna

Silence

Link posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2016)

“I pray but I am lost. Am I just praying to silence?”

—Fr. Rodrigues

Just as main character Fr. Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) is conflicted about his faith, I’m conflicted about Martin Scorsese’s current project, Silence. This film is clearly a labor of love and something extremely personal, both of which I greatly respect. Its genesis dates back nearly 30 years to the controversial The Last Temptation of Christ—can there be a more fitting starting point?—when Scorsese read Shusaku Endo’s novel (the title is the same as the movie) about Jesuit missionaries and Catholicism in Japan in the 17th Century (http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/27/magazine/the-passion-of-martin-scorsese.html?_r=0&referer=https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/12/martin-scorsese-silence-theology-art-jesuits/510827/ ). Having a Jesuit education myself, the nuance of what drives the characters (i.e., the service-oriented “men for others” philosophy of the Society of Jesus and the desire to make the right decisions and find answers) is not lost on me.

Momentary diversion: I was simultaneously amused and wowed by the number of nuns and priests in attendance at the pre-opening screening that I attended. I say “amused” because the audience looked like a Catholic J. Crew catalog; and I say “wowed” because the turnout served as a testament to the weight of this film. I felt it, and it was heavy. Credible. Plus, what does it say that a lapsed Catholic like me shows up for the pre-opening screening of a religious film as if it were a release party for a new Madonna album? More conflict.

But I digress. Silence follows two Portuguese Jesuit priests—the aforementioned Fr. Rodrigues and Fr. Garrpe (Adam Driver)—on their search to find their spiritual teacher and mentor, Fr. Ferreira (Liam Neeson), who has gone missing in Japan. The Japanese state has banned Christianity: those who practice it are hunted down by a committee, tortured, and killed. There’s an easy way out, weird as it is, that involves stepping on Catholic icons. Unsettling rumors have come to light concerning Fr. Ferreira, the most troubling of which is that he renounced Catholicism.

Silence is a gorgeous film—Rodrigo Prieto’s cinematography is breathtaking. I can feel every fly and bead of sweat I see on the screen. The idea of pushing “What Would Jesus Do?” to its mindfucking extreme is absolutely brilliant. The acting is generally flawless, but Issei Ogata easily shines lightyears beyond everyone else as the surprisingly unarresting, pragmatic, and understanding Inquisitor. Scorcese does a beautiful job demonstrating two timely ideas: tolerance is crucial for any civilized society, and doubt is totally normal. Can I get an amen? All that said, however, Silence is gratuitous in length, tedious, and exhausting. Painfully boring at points, even. The narration drove me crazy after awhile, as did the subpar Portugese accents. The ending is emotionally brutal; it’s ultimately satisfying, but you have to look closely and you have to be thinking. Normally, this wouldn’t be something worth mentioning; but at the end of such an energy zapper as Silence, it’s just not what I was prepared to do. I love what Scorcese gets at here; he does it artfully for sure, but I wish he had gone about it in a more direct and interesting way.

Also starring Ciarán Hinds, Shin’ya Tsukamoto, and Yôsuke Kubozuka.

Produced by Sharpsword Films, AI Film, CatchPlay, IM Global, Verdi Productions, YLK Sikella, and Fábrica de Cine

Distributed by Paramount Pictures

161 minutes
Rated R

(AMC River East) C+

http://www.silencemovie.com

The Devil Wears Prada

Link posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2006)

Some movies you watch just because they start and you’re too damned lazy to see what else is on. Such is the case with The Devil Wears Prada, which served as the end of my Christmas night movie binge.

Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) just finished school and moved to New York City to become a journalist. While seeking employment with more weighty publications like The New Yorker, she snags a one-off interview for Runway magazine. Surprise: she gets the job—working as personal assistant to ball busting editor-in-chief, Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep). Andy’s job duties and a chance meeting with handsome magazine writer Simon Baker (Christian Thompson) cause friction in her personal relationships, especially her chef boyfriend, Nate (Adrian Grenier). Is a job worth this much hassle?

Director David Frankel does a competent job with Aline Brosh McKenna’s screen adaptation of Lauren Weisberger’s novel even if the end result is nothing special. The acting is fine, particularly Stanley Tucci as caddy and nelly designer Nigel. It’s nice to hear Madonna’s “Vogue” in one scene outside Andy’s car. The problem I have is the script, which is formulaic and predictable girl movie stuff: awkward girl in the big city reinvents herself and not just survives but excels in the face of adversity. Of course, there’s a happy ending. The Devil Wears Prada is not my cup of tea: it’s cute, but that’s about it.

109 minutes
Rated PG-13

(Bravo) D+

http://www.foxmovies.com/movies/the-devil-wears-prada

Strike a Pose

Video posted on by moviebloke

(Belgium/Netherlands 2016)

It’s no secret that Madonna’s Truth or Dare occupies a special place in my heart (https://moviebloke.wordpress.com/2016/08/26/truth-or-dare-in-bed-with-madonna/ ). As ladies with an attitude or fellas that were in the mood, the dancers are a big reason why; all seven young guys proved to be more than incidental eye candy, each adding considerable spirit not just to the film but to the tour—and arguably Madonna’s persona. Strike a Pose shows where they are now, which isn’t necessarily pretty but certainly isn’t all that bad.

Directors Ester Gould and Reijer Zwaan get into the past and even dig up a little dirt, like the lawsuits some of the dancers filed after Truth or Dare came out. Thankfully, they don’t spend a lot of time on either. Instead, they focus on what exactly working with Madonna during such a pivotal time in her career brought to each of their lives, for better or for worse. What each dancer ultimately ended up doing isn’t as interesting as the subtext, which suggests that it was all an illusion.

As one might expect, some of the dancers at least on the surface have done better than others. Salim “Slam” Gauwloos, Luis Camacho, and Kevin Stea are working choreographers (Stea also got into deejaying and recently even recorded an album). Carlton Wilborn, the only one who toured with Madonna again after Blond Ambition, published a biography and is now a life coach. Jose Gutierez Xtravaganza lives with his mother in her apartment in New York. Oliver Crumes is married and possibly disabled—it’s not entirely clear, but that’s what I deduced. Sadly, Gabriel Trupin died in 1995 (which I already knew). His mother, Sue, has a lot to say about his role in Truth or Dare.

As a huge Madonna fan, Strike a Pose did not reveal much that I didn’t already know. That said, one thing that blew me away was that three of the dancers knew they were HIV-positive during the tour, yet none of them said anything about it. I’m not judging—anyone who made it through the “crisis years” of AIDS understands why. Still, it’s sad that not even someone as big and unfazed as Madonna, who gave a poignant speech about Keith Haring and featured a gay kiss in her tour documentary, was capable of creating a safe space then. Things have changed.

It’s easy to write off Strike a Pose as a lame attempt by minor players to milk their 15 minutes of fame, but I didn’t find them to come off that way. Not at all. Each seems sincerely okay with where he is, which is great. None of them plug any current projects. If anything, the focus is on what one does after the lights dim. Each of them has faced demons—drugs, disease, career obstacles. In fact, Camacho suggests that they are all responsible in one way or another for forcing Madonna to back away from them.

None of the dancers are as fierce as they were 25 years ago; this didn’t bother me because frankly I’m not, either. Watching Strike a Pose feels like meeting up with some friends you haven’t seen in a long time. If there’s one thing I learned from this documentary, it’s that Truth or Dare touched a lot more people than I thought. The one thing that would’ve been nice: Madonna showing up.

Screening followed by a live Q and A with Carlton Wilborn.

83 minutes
Not rated

(AMC River East) B-

Chicago International Film Festival

http://www.strikeaposefilm.com

https://youtu.be/7Hqh7lwaNKw

Medusa: Dare to Be Truthful

Link posted on by moviebloke

(USA 1991)

“Brooke Shields. Dawber, Pam. Personality of Spam. Christie Brinkley. Brosnan, Pierce. Bland and boring, something fierce. Wilson Philips love to sing and wreck the cover of a magazine. Daniel Quayle’s brain is gone. Debbie Gibson gives good yawn.”

—Medusa, “Vague”

 

“You don’t understand. If I use a smaller penis it would be compromising my artistic integrity.”

“Come on, suck my toes in my documentary. Nobody’s done that yet!”

—Medusa

Made for Showtime, Medusa: Dare to Be Truthful is comedian-turned-MTV “personality” (not the late ’80s hipster V.J. with the identical name) Julie Brown’s scathing spoof of Madonna’s Truth or Dare (https://moviebloke.com/2016/08/26/truth-or-dare-in-bed-with-madonna/)—not to mention the icon herself. The whole thing is juvenile, mean, and absolutely hilarious. At just under an hour, it’s over right before the joke is.

Brown is Medusa, a bratty, self-obsessed, controversial, overhyped, oversexed, and very much untalented pop star. She’s making an explosive “no holds barred” documentary of her Blonde Leading the Blonde World Tour, a sordid affair that relies on sleaze and controversy to hide the fact that her work is so…well, vapid. Did I mention the tour takes place over five days?

Lifting sets, costumes—including conebras, that fluffy pink negligee, and the I Dream of Jeannie clipon ponytail—and dance routines right out of Madonna’s Blond Ambition Tour, Brown doesn’t miss a beat; she nails the overdone hamminess Madonna exhibits throughout Truth or Dare. Masturbating on a red velvet bed? Check. Visiting a deceased family member at the cemetery? Check—although here, it’s a pet cemetery where a dog whose name she can’t remember is laid to rest. Totally ragging on a celebrity who compliments her performance after a show? Check—here, it’s Bobcat Goldthwait. Giving head to an inanimate object? Check—here, it’s a watermelon, not a bottle of Evian.

Gay dancers (Sergio Carbajal, Thomas Halstead, Stanley DeSantis) fawn all over her, she screams at her manager (Chris Elliott) and her crew, and ex-husband Shane Pencil (Donal Logue) can’t deal with her antics. Kathy Griffin plays a backup singer. Plus, Brown gives us dead-on song ripoffs like “Expose Yourself,” “Like a Video,” and “Vague.” Fucking brilliant!

According to Wikipedia, Madonna sent Brown a gift after she saw this—a half-finished bottle of warm champagne (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medusa:_Dare_to_Be_Truthful).

51 minutes
Not rated

(YouTube) B+

https://youtu.be/wQB_li4FxnU

Desperately Seeking Susan

Link posted on by moviebloke

(USA 1985)

“Yeah, well, fortunately for everyone, I’m here and I’m thinking.”

—Susan

Promoted as “the Madonna movie” when it came out just before the Virgin Tour kicked off in the spring of 1985, Desperately Seeking Susan is an ’80s time capsule: the story revolves around personal ads, the style is big hair bows and junk jewelry, the score is all synth, and of course there’s that catchy dance track “Into the Groove”—a deliciously raw demo, at that. It might seem unlikely, but this film has held up over time and has turned out to be an interesting little gem.

Desperately Seeking Susan is light and fun, but it’s not a fluff piece. Loaded with mistaken identities, missed connections, double reversals, and loopbacks, the plot is clever and tight even if it isn’t terribly complicated. Roberta Glass (Rosanna Arquette) is a lonely, unfulfilled housewife from Fort Lee, New Jersey. Neglected by her husband, Gary (Mark Blum), a hot tub salesman, she reads the personals for diversion and becomes obsessed with a recurring one between Susan (Madonna) and her boyfriend, Jim (Robert Joy). Roberta steps out to the City to spy on them when Jim summons Susan to Battery Park one afternoon. A series of finely timed events, including the exchange of a jacket with the Eye of Providence on the back of it and a nasty bump on the head, literally pulls Roberta into Susan’s wild life.

Director Susan Seidelman executes the whole thing nicely. The vibe is scrappy and energetic. The story is packed with great characters, and the actors all bring it to make them interesting and believable—even Madonna playing a far less ambitious version of herself. The standouts are Arquette; Laurie Metcalf, who plays Gary’s sister as a neurotic shrew; and Aidan Quinn, who plays projectionist and knight in shining armor Dez with the right amount of gruffness and sexiness. Notable small roles are John Turturro as Ray, the owner of the Magic Club; Steven Wright as Gary’s dentist; and Richard Hell as Bruce, the guy Susan leaves in a hotel room in Atlantic City. The best character, though, is New York City itself; all the exterior shots are fabulous if only for the fact that they capure a city that no longer exists. C’mon, I’m waiting!

104 minutes
Rated PG-13

(Home via iTunes) B

http://www.mgm.com/#/our-titles/524/Desperately-Seeking-Susan

Paris Is Burning

Link posted on by moviebloke

(USA 1991)

“Opulence. O, P, U, L, E, N, C, E, opulence. You own everything. Everything is yours!”

—Junior LaBeija

Before The Crying Game and Transamerica, RuPaul’s Drag Race, Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner, and Scissor Sisters’ “Let’s Have a Kiki,” there was Paris Is Burning. I first saw it at a screening on my college campus, I think, when it was fairly new—I remember a double feature with Madonna’s Truth or Dare, so it had to be summer or fall 1991. I’ve since seen it countless times. It’s one of the films I quote most. I love it, even as it turns 25 years old. It is, in two words, fucking fabulous!

Shot in 1987 with a short check in three years later, Paris Is Burning is ostensibly a documentary about the Harlem nightlife ball culture (pronounced “boo-wall” by most here). The film takes its name from one said ball, a rather clandestine affair held in a shabby party hall somewhere near Lexington/125. A world unto itself, ball culture was loaded with costumes, wild dancing, attitude, hierarchy, and tons of rules. There was blood, sweat, tears, and fighting—but there was also community and (for some) glory. As one subject, Willie Ninja, informs us, the balls may have been long and drawn out, but they were never boring. Amen! This is clear.

Much to her credit, director Jennie Livingston goes—excuse how this sounds—beyond the balls, getting into the daily challenges not only gay men and drag queens faced, but also actual bona fide transgender women. This was probably the first exposure I had to that. I mean, being gay in the Reagan Era was bad enough: if you weren’t destined to live a long and lonely life in the closet, you were going to get AIDS. Either way, the only thing straight about you was your road to hell. Transgender was…something else altogether. America was not ready for it when Paris is Burning came out, which makes it all the more remarkable.

Paris Is Burning is a big middle finger to all that thinking. While not everyone subscribed to that view, Paris Is Burning was the first film to show a lifestyle like this in a positive light. It was effective; it showed how fun and liberating it could be to walk a ball, fake tits or not. Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side. Damned fun! No wonder Madonna co-opted vogueing and snagged two Xtravaganzas for her tour.

Although there are undertones of sadness throughout, every person in this film is a hero. They were courageous simply living their lives how they did, when they did. The key was a mix of self confidence and major guts. Dorian Corey gave me a crash course on reading and shade. Pepper LaBeija showed me that living the good life takes more than money. Venus Xtravaganza showed me that life is a negotiation. Whatever category you choose, you better work it!

Sadly, the era and the players of Paris Is Burning are long gone, but their spirit doesn’t just live on—it thrives. Paris Is Burning and its subjects are legendary.

Side note: everything has its dark side. This is a perfect example: http://dangerousminds.net/comments/dorian_corey_the_drag_queen_had_a_mummy_in_her_closet

In 2016, the United States Library of Congress deemed Paris Is Burning “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.

71 minutes
Rated R

(Home via iTunes) A

http://www.jennielivingston.com/paris-is-burning

Truth or Dare [In Bed with Madonna]

Video posted on by moviebloke

(USA 1991)

“I do not endorse a way of life but describe one, and the audience is left to make its own decisions and judgments.”

“Even when I feel like shit, they still love me.”

“Yeah. It ain’t all fucking hunky-dory.”

“I know I’m not the best singer and I know I’m not the best dancer, but I’m not interested in that. I’m interested in pushing people’s buttons, in being provocative and in being political.”

—Madonna

In Richard Linklater’s Slacker—released the same year—an Austin, Texas, townie (Teresa Taylor) hocks a jar she claims is a “Madonna pap smear,” talking it up as an item “closer to the rock god than just a poster.” Up close and personal, that’s essentially what Truth or Dare is: a Madonna pap smear, figuratively speaking.

Truth or Dare is Madonna showing us all how cool she is. It encapsulates an exceptionally interesting time—the best time for her to do something like this, as proven by her later tour documentary, the painfully dull I’m Going to Tell You a Secret, in 2006. Certainly no run of the mill performer, it’s only fitting that Truth or Dare is no run of the mill concert film. Shot at the zenith of her career during the Blond Ambition Tour in 1990—a banner year for an artist with a long track record of controversy and success—Madonna allows director Alek Keshishian unprecedented (though not complete) access behind the scenes, and he in turn gives viewers a lot of juicy nuggets to feast on. For fans, Keshishian shows that Madonna really is—or was—all that, and more: she’s snappy, saucy, snide, mischievous, rebellious, witty, tough, and through it all ridiculosly entertaining (and I imagine a lot of fun if you’re on her good side).

The live stuff is superb. Keshishian picks all the showstoppers from Madonna’s most iconic tour: “Express Yourself,” “Holiday,” “Vogue,” a what-the-fuck version of “Like a Virgin” inspired by an ancient Egyptian orgy, and my favorite despite its unfortunate truncation, a Bob Fosse meets A Clockwork Orange take on “Keep it Together.” Views from both the floor and onstage present the show in all its over-the-top glory. Using color in an otherwise black and white film makes the live pieces all the more special.

The backstage shots on tour—the nightly prayers, the stress and snafus, the post show parties—are even better. The shade Madonna thows at other celebrities—Oprah Winfrey, Belinda Carlisle, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and of course Kevin Costner—is uncalled for but hilarious, sometimes uncomfortably so. Personal events like her spat with Warren Beatty before the Dick Tracy opening in Orlando (she calls him an “asshole”), a phone call with her father to arrange tickets for a show in Detroit, meeting a childhood friend, even attending Pedro Almodóvar’s party in Madrid all uncover multiple sides of Madonna.

But Keshishian goes deeper (and deeper): for every cringeworthy contrived scene that rings hollow—like visiting the cemetery to see her mother’s grave—is an honest one revealing the flawed and complicated person Madonna is. My favorite moments in Truth or Dare are the small events that show her human side. She’s generous with her dancers and her family—the scene where she sings “Happy Birthday” to her father onstage is precious. Her conversation with Sandra Bernhard where she admits she’s bored is illuminating and oddly relatable. I still find her comment that “everyone talks about how fame changes a person, but they never talk about how fame changes the people around them” her most poignant statement—and Keshishian demonstrates what she means. Often, Madonna doesn’t have it all under control: it rains on the Asian leg of her outdoor tour, her headset keeps shorting out during a concert, the police pop up to arrest her at her show in Toronto, her brother Martin doesn’t show up at her hotel suite when he’s supposed to, her throat gives out, a member of her entourage is drugged and assaulted, a dancer (Oliver Crumes) goes AWOL. These scenes stand out because they reveal a lot about how Madonna handles tough situations—and she’s not always good at it. Moreover, she doesn’t have everything she wants: phone messages, Antonio Banderas, Slam and Gabriel, to name a few.

Madonna has admitted she was shady and a horribe brat in Truth or Dare (http://www.ew.com/article/2015/08/07/madonna-truth-or-dare). What makes it richer and more thorough, though, is that the focus is not solely on her. Madonna’s dancers are given ample space to show who they are and let some of their stories come out. Bringing out their homosexuality, especially during the age of AIDS, is a bold move that points to the topics and issues that clearly color(ed) her work. Truth or Dare got me to see Madonna more as a performance artist than a pop star.

There are loads of truly fun moments here. Plus, we get to see a flash of her boobs. In the end, Madonna shows us a good time but still leaves us asking, who’s that girl? It’s a strategy that’s served her well throughout her career.

120 minutes
Rated R

(Home via iTunes) A-

http://www.miramax.com/movie/madonna-truth-or-dare/

Burn After Reading

Link posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2008)

The Coen Brothers have made a lot of movies—just like Madonna has made a lot of albums. Burn After Reading is a light, wacky espionage spoof that’s fun to watch. It falls somewhere in the lower middle of their oeuvre—about where Hard Candy, another star-studded affair released the same year, falls for Madonna: good but not great, more fluffy than provocative, and interesting enough to pull out every now and then but certainly not the first thing I reach for when I’m in the mood for the artist.

The cast is stellar: Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton, George Clooney, and Brad Pitt. The characters are amusing—everyone is, in a word, stupid. Malkovich as Osborne Cox is easily the standout: he’s an angry, misanthropic, drunk loose cannon. The plot, which involves a total misunderstanding about the contents of a CD left behind at a health club (Hardbodies), is typically intricate and well-executed Coen stuff. McDormand’s character, Linda—who she plays with a winning dippy positivism—has a hilariously brilliant motive: to extort money so she can buy the plastic surgery her insurance company won’t cover. Working Washington bigshots and Russian bad guys into the mix is a very nice touch.

All that said, Burn After Reading has its problems. The characters are cartoonish. The plot drags at points, especially the subplot with Clooney’s character, Harry, and his womanizing. The action chugs along and generates momentum, but somehow we don’t end up anywhere when all is said and done.

Burn After Reading isn’t perfect, but its highs overcome its flaws. It might rate higher in the hands of another team; but being the Coen Brothers, expectations are higher than average. That may not be fair to them, but it’s a fair statement nonetheless.

96 minutes
Rated R

(iTunes) C+

http://www.focusfeatures.com/burn_after_reading

Purple Rain

Video posted on by moviebloke

(USA 1984)

Prince’s out-of-nowhere death in April bummed me out—as it did pretty much all of Western civilization. He was an enigmatic staple and a defining figure of ’80s pop music. He has been around from the dawn of my musical cognizance; the soundtrack for Purple Rain (along with a handful of his other albums, some soundtracks and some not) still gets a lot of play on my iPod. A brilliant original, it’s no surprise that The Purple One’s ultimate film played on TV and showed in theaters nonstop for weeks after his death. As much as I dug him (and still do), I never saw one of his movies. I suppose you can thank Madonna for that: I’ve learned that pop stars with big personalities generally don’t make good actors.

Seeing Purple Rain didn’t change my mind about that. Prince was a musical genius, an amazing entertainer, dramatic and mysterious, and a total narcissist. He was fun to watch. But he was no actor, at least not in 1984. The Kid was not a stretch, and the screenplay—by Albert Magnoli and William Blinn—is typical, nothing-special “boy-meets-girl (Apollonia Kotero), boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl-back” fare set to Prince music. There’s an evil nemesis (Morris Day) out to get The Kid, whose family life offers no respite. The story just doesn’t quite gel in a compelling and engaging way. The dramatic bits are comically overdramatic, ranging from amusing to silly to cringeworthy (seriously, “purify yourself in the waters of Lake Minnetonka”?). Prince’s posing is cute at first but it gets tiresome after awhile.

That said, Purple Rain features all the songs from the album plus a B-side (“God”). It’s a great performance film. The extended version of “Let’s Go Crazy” at the beginning alone makes seeing the film worthwhile. Watching the First Avenue audience react to “Darling Nikki” is amusingly awesome. Numbers by Morris Day and The Time (“Jungle Love” and “The Bird”) and Apollonia (“Sex Shooter”) are fun. Personal bonus: I recognized where they filmed a lot of the scenes thanks to my visit to Minneapolis last year.

Prince was exceptional. The Purple Rain soundtrack remains exceptional after more than 30 years. As a film, though, Purple Rain is not—it’s just okay. I would skip to the songs if I were to watch it again. Sorry, Prince—if U even care.

111 minutes
Rated R

(City Winery) C

 

Everybody Wants Some!!

Video posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2016)

For me, Richard Linklater is hit or miss. Everybody Wants Some!! initially hit me as a miss: taking the same template, it starts out more like a Dazed and Confused knock-off than the “spiritual sequel” it’s billed as. It ultimately delivers—though what it delivers probably isn’t for everyone.

It’s August 1980. Jake (Blake Jenner) arrives at an unnamed Texas university, where he is attending school on a baseball scholarship and living in an off-campus house provided for the team. Predictably, the house and his teammates are a mess. His teammates are a motley crew of personalities that don’t always mix: competitive jocks, competitive weirdos, and competitive clowns. Most of them are on a quest for diversion: getting drunk, getting high, and getting laid. Through this quest, they bond as a team.

The energy and the humor here are definitely male—juvenile, lowbrow male at that. Picking up four years after Dazed and Confused, Jake might as well be Mitch (Wiley Wiggins), who played baseball and would have graduated from high school and started college during the summer of 1980. Regardless, the characters grew on me as I kept watching. So did the story.

Everybody Wants Some!! would be nothing without its excellent ensemble cast, which does an impressive job together. I fully expect to see some of these guys in bigger and better future projects. The chemistry between the team members is palpable and works really well. Glenn Powell—Chad Radwell in Scream Queens—is a natural as mischievous smooth-talker Finn, whose pickup line involves his “average dick.” He shines the brightest. Jenner exudes a boyish charm and confidence, and Tyler Hoechlin as McReynolds does cocky—and deflated—exceedingly well. Wyatt Russell as Willoughby nails “stoner”—anyone who went to school in the Seventies or Eighties will recognize him as someone they knew. Juston Street is awesome as Niles, an angry, angsty psycho who thinks he’s destined for the Majors. Zoey Deutch brings a winsome coquettishness to Beverly, Jake’s love interest.

I forgot about Dazed and Confused as Everybody Wants Some!! rolled on—its own essence and identity slowly but surely emerge. The plot is rambling and aimless—no big shock there—but it’s also fun and entertaining in its ridiculousness. I identify with its ridiculousness, totally. I like that Linklater chose the dawn of the Eighties—before Ronald Reagan, MTV, and Madonna—rather than deep in the throes. Everybody Wants Some!! is a nostalgia kick, and it got me reminiscing about my own college antics. It’s not profound. It’s not a great film, either—not even for Linklater, whose distinct touch is all over it. I still enjoyed it for what it is. A summer release makes a lot more sense than its currently scheduled April Fools Day opening, however fitting that particular day may be.

(Music Box) B-

http://www.everybodywantssomemovie.com