Movie Nation

Our July big screen vacation, Courtesy of your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.

A winner, or another sequel too many from a summer of too many to count?

“First Impression” is an “online dating” rom-com from back when those were totally a thing. It was on BET back in 2015, and is “new” to Netflix and trending now, so I took a look.

It’s a soggy, sparkle-free/laugh-impaired comedy about the difference between one’s online “dating” identity and reality.

You shave 10 (or say, 23) years off your age, gild the lily of what you do and how rich and/or interesting you are and boom — the person you meet for that first date is just as surprised as you are.

Because they’re lying, too.

Vernon (Lamman Rucker) is newly unemployed, spending all his time tapping out a steamy, sexy crime novel, whose scenes are acted out (rather dully) in his head as he taps the keys.

The time he doesn’t spend dreaming up situations violent or sexual between Tropical Storm and Scorpion Kiss (his characters) he spends on the First Impression dating site.

He ignores his pal Julius (Kendrick Cross, not bad) and his “five phases of poverty” warnings. “Phase three, when you run out of gas all over town.”

“Wait! What was Phase 1?”

“LOSING your JOB.”

Imani (oft-employed character actress Lisa Arendell) is with Atlanta’s only African American publishing house. She, too, is trying out First Impression.

Regis Le’Bron’s script takes its sweet time throwing these two together — a montage of Imani’s disastrous first encounters with dating match-ups, Vernon’s various phases of poverty.

There’s an unnecessary and undeveloped side story about an employee of the publishing house (Tamela J. Mann) trying to get her pastor (David Mann) published as a poet and interested as a suitor.

All of which gets in the way of a perfectly charming accidental meeting between well-heeled Imani and broke-ass Vernon in the jazz club. What they don’t realize is they’ve been flirting up a storm online, already.

I like the broke tricks for how to look like you as if have a drink in a bar when you don’t have money to buy a drink in a bar.

Imani starts by picking up the tab, and is just forward enough in encouraging the guy with the late model Nissan with the racing stripes, who accidentally impresses her by bringing a Moonpie to a romantic picnic (also cheap).

She’s in Alpharetta. He’s in “the hood.” It’ll never work out, right?

The big gag here is that they’re flirting with each other in person, and unknowingly coming on to each other’s online avatars at the same time.

Cheat-flirting is totally a thing.

The locations are modestly budgeted, the gags even cheaper — a fart joke, an overly elaborate African American handshake, a “Boy? Bye!” and zingers — “Man, you sound like Forrest Gump!” — without a punchline.

‘Going ‘dutch’ on a Moonpie?”

Le’Bron seems most interested in keeping all this PG than giving it the sparks that come from having friction, an edge and script-imposed “chemistry.”

Director Arthur Muhammad is quite clumsy in introducing the Vernon’s flashes to his novel-in-progress’s character (Brad James) dealing with the same come-ons from a femme fatale (Laila Odom) Vernon is picking up on from Imani.

The leads are OK, but there’s not a lot of chemistry. The best friends scenes have potential, but are abandoned too quickly.

I’ve seen worse romantic comedies, but you’d think 500 years after Shakespeare the “rom com with mistaken identities” would have finally run its course. “First Impression” certainly makes that case.

MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast: Lisa Arrindell, Lamman Rucker, Elise Neal, Kendrick Cross, Tamala J. Mann

Credits: Directed by Arthur Muhammad, script by Regis Le’Bron.   A BET/Netflix release

Running time: 1:36

Marketing incompetence catches up with Amazon Studios.

That isn’t why they got into business with Woody Allen decades past his peak. Movies like Mike Leigh’s “Peterloo” were worthwhile, but unsellable.

The whole Oscar campaign thing they thought they’d mastered with “Manchester by the Sea” blew up on them with “Beautiful Boy,” although they managed to get “Cold War” into a few categories, if not enough theaters to break even.

They blackball me from their screenings, so how smart is that? Never ever had a studio do that. Idiots.

How are people going to know “Photograph” is even in theaters without good working relationships with critics?

Now they’re trying to figure out what they are doing wrong, flop after flop after flop. Not bad movies, typically. “Late Night” was their latest. Should have made more money than “The Hustle” or “Long Shot.” Didn’t.

Why?

“Idiots in marketing” is a good place to look. Via THR

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/amazon-studios-film-division-tumult-string-box-office-flops-1220968

Oh snap. Sounds a LOT like the Richard Curtis screenplay to the 2019 Danny Boyle movie.

The author has published it online, for free, to let viewers of both make up their own minds, I guess?

From Variety.

“Graphic Novel ‘Yesterday’ From 2011, Similar to Danny Boyle Film, Posted Online for Free https://t.co/GxfsiythaM https://twitter.com/Variety/status/1143865120826830848?s=17

If you’re of a certain age, the first few notes of a particular Beatles song can bring you to tears, summoning up a memory of a love affair, a time in your life, that poignant “last appearance” on “The Ed Sullivan Show” or of crowds gathering in front of New York’s Dakota apartment house.

Generations of music fans can get just as choked up with totally different associations.

Which is a way of assuring you that yes, I wanted to love “Yesterday.” And a way of warning you that I didn’t.

Danny Boyle has made movies spanning many genres over his career, and almost added a James Bond title to his storied resume. Instead, he’s made a Richard Curtis romantic comedy. And although I adore “Four Weddings and a Funeral” and “Notting Hill” as much as any Hallmark Channel subscriber, Curtis is very much a hit or miss screenwriter, always trying for movies that wear their hearts on their sleeves, often let down by his own earnestness, clumsy direction or lack of commitment from his stars.

“Yesterday” is about a young busker/pub singer (Himesh Patel) who wakes up in a world where The Beatles never happened, with only him remembering their songs and thus able to pass them off as his own and thus achieve John/Paul/George/Ringo level stardom in an instant, just relying on his memory of the lyrics. It’s a fascinating concept worth mulling over, but a film that fails in concept, and in execution.

It has a romance (Lily James of “Downton Abbey”) that is that rarest of Richard Curtis rarities — a non-starter. It has lots of jokes, about other foods, cultural phenomena and other bands that disappeared from history the same night The Beatles were erased. But not enough jokes.

Kate McKinnon’s in it, a “Saturday Night Live” legend who is a non-kosher butcher shop in every big screen appearance — all ham, all the time, someone who wears out we welcome by her third scene.

And the very concept’s fatal flaw is obvious several times the talented British TV actor Patel launches into song. He’s a good guitarist and singer, but the script and editing undercuts some “big” moments — never letting him get into “Let It Be,” for instance. And while some songs stand apart and endure his solo guitar treatment — the title tune especially — others land flatter than a Bon Jovi cover. Stripped of George Martin’s production and the charming harmonies and simplicity of those original recordings, “Help” wouldn’t likely create “Beatlemania” all over again.

Or “Malikmania,” even though nobody ever calls it that. Jack Malik (Patel) has just given up on his one-last-shot at breaking out, a festival where he flopped at the end of years of playing to empty street corners and disinterested pub-goers. His pal, fellow teacher and “manager” Ellie (Lily James) may be his biggest booster since childhood, the one who stayed in teaching while encouraging Jack to take his shot.

But that shot has missed the mark, and while we can see the love in Ellie’s eyes suggesting ulterior motives, all Jack sees is failure.

One “magical” global power outage, which causes Jack’s “accident,” one “Give us a song on your new guitar” moment with friends, and Jack figures out what he’s been getting hints of from Ellie and others about.

In this alternate history, the Beatles never happened.

He tries out tunes on Ellie and friends, on his distracted family (Meera Syal of “Doctor Strange,” Sanjeev Bhaskar of the funny Britcom “The Kumars at No. 42”). “Leave it Be,” they think it’s called.

Some listeners swoon, others compare “this new song I’ve just written” to Cold Play. Jack’s tirades, defending the Lennon/McCarthy (and George Harrison) songbook to philistines, are a hoot. But it sounds like he’s comparing himself to Leonardo Da Vinci.

It being 2019, there’s a “viral” element to his sudden exposure, a fantastical courtship by “the ginger geezer,” pop star Ed Sheeran, and everybody predicts instant fame and riches for this singer-songwriter “composing” a decade’s worth of collaborative Beatles classics in mere weeks.

One great running gag is the movie’s “taking the piss out of,” as the Brits say, Sheeran. He knocks off a tune, or floats one of his songs up to compare it to Jack’s, and Ed realizes he’s “number two, now.” False modesty is the funniest.

To be fare, his tunes hold up nicely here. They’re just of their time.

As indeed The Beatles were of theirs. Whether or not “Hey Jude” et al would make the Fab Four fab all over again in 2019 is a fascinating argument to have on the way home from the cinema. I love The Beatles and seriously doubt it.

You’ll recognize goofy, borderline incompetent “roadie” pal Rocky (Joel Fry) as a character we’ve seen in most every Richard Curtis script, most famously played by Rhys Ifans in “Notting Hill” and Bill Nighy in “Love, Actually.”

McKinnon, playing a predatory agent with her usual over-the-top gusto, lands laughs in sizing up, to his face, her new client as “Very…unattractive. Skinny, but somehow round.” She still offers him “the poison chalice of money and fame.”

And as in every movie, she runs out of gags and mugs her way out of the movie. Quickly.

It’s not an awful film, just one that only tugs at the heart a couple of times when plainly the intent was for this to happen, start to finish. It is James’ job to sell this romance, and she doesn’t. Patel handles the one liners, the umbrage Jack takes at all these dolts who can’t remember “the greatest songs/songwriters who ever lived.” But he hasn’t a clue about drumming up romantic longing.

Another trait of Curtis scripts is the way he lets us see “Damn, I cannot for the LIFE of me figure out how to get from here to (his often glorious) the finale.” “Yesterday” founders and wallows, a 95 minute movie trapped in a 116 minute one.

A James Corden cameo just reminds one that he got in a car with Paul McCartney and gave us a better version of Jack’s “discovery” of the Liverpool of The Beatles in just a short, sentimental and warmly touching TV sketch.

As Danny Boyle movies go, I’d still rather see him get his shot at James Bond.

As Beatles tributes go, I have to say I prefer Julie Taymor’s “Across the Universe,” which re-set the songbook in thrilling and inventing ways. “Yesterday” just makes me long for that unjustly maligned flop.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for suggestive content and language

Cast: Himesh Patel, Lily James, Kate McKinnon, Ed Sheeran, Sanjeev Bhaskar, James Corden

Credits: Directed by Danny Boyle, script by Richard Curtis. A Universal release.

Running time: 1:56

The movie is called “The 800,” and is about a legendary battle in which Chinese Nationalists, NOT Mao’s communists, stopped the Japanese.
No matter what the date is elsewhere on planet Earth, in Beijing it’s always 1984. https://t.co/DD1h38a7O3 https://t.co/74FZwj2SjT https://twitter.com/THRGlobal/status/1143755806610878464?s=17

“Paris is Burning” has been re-released. Seems like a natural place to book it.

https://t.co/Bx1dP1DJXC https://t.co/LpuU8XnyQ6 https://twitter.com/THR/status/1143828680155832320?s=17

Yes, this popped up in festivals a couple of years back. It’s a can’t miss project with an all star cast that had to be recut and picked up by a distributor I’ve never heard of for October release.

Still looking forward to it. Tesla, Edison and Westinghouse, AC vs DC.

Early reviews have been mixed for Danny Boyle’s latest.

But as early reviewers are often youngish junket journalists who have little connection to the music of The Beatles, well…

Boyle’s love of other cultures, the “Non Anglo Saxon” of England, is evident in this tale of a busker who wakes up as the only man on Earth who remembers The Beatles songbook.

Would “Help!” be a hit if re-released today? “I Wanna Hold Your Hand?” “Yesterday?”

Curious to see if this concept works.

“Yesterday” opens Friday.

Back in the Golden Age of Sail, the ships were of wood and the men made of iron. In those days, when Britannia Ruled the waves, women on a boat were regarded as bad luck.

It’s a notion that died hardest in yacht racing, especially in “The World’s Longest Race.”

They named the original round the world sailboat race for its original sponsor, Whitbread — a brewery. There’s nothing more butch than that.

But a British sailor, whose chief experience had been as a yacht steward and cook, set out to change that in the 1980s. Tracy Edwards was 24 years old, and she and her crew’s entry in the 1989-90 Whitbread (now called the Volvo) Race is the subject of BAFTA winning British filmmaker’s inspiring documentary, “Maiden.”

Edwards and her crew (Amanda Swan Neal), Mikaela Von Koskull, Claire Warren, Michele Paret, Tanja Visser, Sally Creaser, Dawn Riley, Nancy Hill, Jeni Mundy, Jo Gooding, Sarah Davies , Kristin Harris and Angela Farrell) had to overcome financial obstacles, a boat that required rebuilding, sexism and the formidable Southern Ocean in order to make history.

The Maiden’s crew heard “You’re not strong enough. You’re not skilled enough.” And when you see what sailors must endure on this months-long stage race, crawling out on the boom or bowsprit, hauled up the mast by bosun’s chair on a heaving, rolling and bucking 58 foot boat, you’re going to have your doubts.

And besides, everybody knows it’s bad luck to rename a yacht.

Holmes — he did “Stop at Nothing: The Lance Armstrong Story” and cut his teeth on the British “World in Action” documentary TV series — interviews the crew, other sailors in the race and the journalists covering it, using lots of footage from the race itself to tell teh story of how the Maiden made her way into this ultimate sailing challenge.

Her mother was a rally driver and motorbike and go-cart racer, so there’s a daredevil strain in that gene pool. Edwards lost her father young, left home after her mother remarried and traveled and sailed as a stewardess and then a cook on assorted yachts cruising the Med and the Atlantic.

She didn’t decide to gather a crew, buy a boat and race around the world until she had a hard time signing on to a crew in a previous race.

“They didn’t want a woman on board.

Nobody wanted her, and when they gave in, it was only to hire her as a cook. She wasn’t allowed to do much outside of the galley.

But she was determined to get a boat, find a crew, line up sponsors and raise the £1,000,000 pounds it would take to enter the Whitbread.

A happy coincidence? One person she befriended in her gypsy yacht crewman days was the progressive-minded King Hussein of Jordan. He’d buy provide a big chunk of the backing that it took to buy and refit a ten year-old aluminum sloop and race it around the world.

Holmes’ film recounts how the crew Edwards rounded up did the rebuilding themselves to save money — Duchess Fergie christened it — how they bonded despite personality conflicted and early debacles, and how they faced the ultimate tests, racing through icebergs in the aptly-named aptly-named “Roaring 40s” of The Southern Ocean.

Journalists and sailors betting on how far as they’d get as they left port. One sexist, who owns up to it today, was journalist Bob Fisher, who referred to the aluminum yacht with an all woman crew as “a tin full of tarts.”

Edwards comes off as salty but sentimental, remembering the support she got from the crew and that the crew got from the world’s ports as they dashed from stop to stop — Uruguay, Australia, Auckland and Fort Lauderdale among them.

“Maiden” is a straightforward film in which the subjects look straight at the camera for interviews, where the emphasis is on British pluck and women who would never call themselves feminists — until after they realized they were. No sense spending too much time thinking of the big money it takes to partake in this sport, and the economic backgrounds of everybody on board to even get their feet wet in the sport.

Here’s a hint. Every time I talked to Disney scion and Disney heir Roy Disney over the years, the conversation would eventually turn to his ocean racing team and latest efforts to win the Trans Pac.

Yeah, it’s a rich man’s sport.

But “Maiden” still makes for an inspiring story about beating the odds and surviving an arduous and dangerous race, and a reminder that barriers facing women always seem insurmountable right up to the moment they surmount them.

MPAA Rating: PG for language, thematic elements, some suggestive content and brief smoking images

Cast: Tracy Edwards

Credits: Written and directed by Alex Holmes. A Sony Pictures Classics release.

Running time: 1:37