RIAN JOHNSON DIRECTS THE ENSEMBLE MYSTERY 'KNIVES OUT'

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrYHbcACOouiO9Yj5Po1m5SAznZQVSfCoTNicwQOs8PeufrsJc9F3hDVSe24c6iyA_-ddFr83q2CJNiGHn74KTvI3HUA-LfvMFd8eXDWy0tkL8d-qLg7Er_5uou4FB20md48Xs6gSFGk7S/s1600/knives_out_ver5_xlg.jpeg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="678" data-original-width="1006" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrYHbcACOouiO9Yj5Po1m5SAznZQVSfCoTNicwQOs8PeufrsJc9F3hDVSe24c6iyA_-ddFr83q2CJNiGHn74KTvI3HUA-LfvMFd8eXDWy0tkL8d-qLg7Er_5uou4FB20md48Xs6gSFGk7S/s400/knives_out_ver5_xlg.jpeg" width="400"></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>Lakeith Stanfield solo poster for KNIVES OUT Year: 2019</u></td></tr> </tbody></table> Rian Johnson must be seething that he didn't make the singular Spanish "Help" a Black woman given that, a year after KNIVES OUT hit theaters, we'd have a pandemic (closing all theaters) followed by a political uprising of African Americans, making the whole "Undocumented Worker" issue — which owns 51% of the story-line here — as dated as the Sony Walkman, Legwarmers and Bellbottoms...<br> <br> And Johnson <i>has</i> successfully resurrected the <i>Ensemble Cast Whodunnit</i>, featuring Jamie Lee Curtis, Don Johnson (no relation), Toni Collette and Michael Shannon. But in the past they'd be playing rich, white, crooked culprits who are also eclectic, darkly-humorous, interesting and intriguing enough to create an entire story around. But as noted in, ironically, another review involving Michael Shannon (THE SHAPE OF WATER): <i>Antagonists are no longer people who do bad things, but simply, bad people...</i><br>

2019, anna de armas, christopher plummer, daniel craig, don johnson, ensemble, jamie lee curtis, lakeith stanfield, michael shannon, mystery, new, politics, thriller

RIAN JOHNSON DIRECTS THE ENSEMBLE MYSTERY 'KNIVES OUT'

Lakeith Stanfield solo poster for KNIVES OUT Year: 2019 Rian Johnson must be seething that he didn't make the singular Spanish ...

MAKING A 'SPLASH' OUT OF 'THE SHAPE OF WATER'

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRmlH9Pz-W0EKHXQOQuJ-HA186UOVqX4-_iEOYumPBRXsTIo4vQ_iOiS0L_G5bXiWHU0ErwdcySeidlbyzDKauw7vRjGFF_NMgyNgQqBhyI5e6tTxVEHHOm6cV6FJwDXQTFBcTWxtwzD5D/s1600/Screen-Shot-2017-10-19-at-4.46.14-PM.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="367" data-original-width="692" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRmlH9Pz-W0EKHXQOQuJ-HA186UOVqX4-_iEOYumPBRXsTIo4vQ_iOiS0L_G5bXiWHU0ErwdcySeidlbyzDKauw7vRjGFF_NMgyNgQqBhyI5e6tTxVEHHOm6cV6FJwDXQTFBcTWxtwzD5D/s400/Screen-Shot-2017-10-19-at-4.46.14-PM.jpg" width="400"></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>Year of Release: 2017 Wide Release/Reviewed: 2018</u></td></tr> </tbody></table> There's a burden lifted after searching Google following THE SHAPE OF WATER and typing in the film's title followed by 'is like SPLASH'... Right off the bat, an article's subject compares the similar aquatic-based fables of each film —  only with the genders switched... <br> <br> WATER starts out in a dark, icky-green-lit military compound where an aquatic humanoid creature is trapped and tormented — and then befriends a young girl/employee, and that's exactly the kind of place SPLASH winds up... and ends pretty quickly thereafter while WATER remains stagnant until she's... or rather...<i> he</i> is rescued by, like SPLASH, an odd, flawed yet lovable group of endearing underdogs, who outsmart the tight-security military bad guys... or in this case... bad guy, singular...<br>

2018, michael shannon, new, richard jenkins, romance, sally hawkins, science-fiction, thriller

MAKING A 'SPLASH' OUT OF 'THE SHAPE OF WATER'

Year of Release: 2017 Wide Release/Reviewed: 2018 There's a burden lifted after searching Google following THE SHAPE OF WATER and ty...

SHANNON & SPACEY IN ELVIS & NIXON

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieyhHpXm9DWZ3zm7DGL0hAwG32FfFs_mLmm7_r5UhkSfcv6huJOz1itfGw6rXP-GjouYmUEBrBsyiR0kpP8At13o792gOkXmDjRT93DrmaP4yXvnNPDH7wVx8zRzvFTK2xpIOi7mQxFb4/s1600/1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieyhHpXm9DWZ3zm7DGL0hAwG32FfFs_mLmm7_r5UhkSfcv6huJOz1itfGw6rXP-GjouYmUEBrBsyiR0kpP8At13o792gOkXmDjRT93DrmaP4yXvnNPDH7wVx8zRzvFTK2xpIOi7mQxFb4/s320/1.jpg" width="187"></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>Year: 2016</u></td></tr> </tbody></table> Oh how much hope so many folks probably had for the potential of a political comedy/true life satire of epic proportions, but somehow, somewhere along the way, in a movie about a has-been legendary rocker, wanting to battle drug-taking hippies, planning and then having a secret meeting with one of the most hated Presidents ever, especially unforgotten in Hollywood, both Elvis Presley and Richard M. Nixon wind up looking... pretty damn cool, somehow...<br> <br> Perhaps it's for the opposite reason that Eric Stoltz was fired from BACK TO THE FUTURE and replaced by Michael J. Fox...<br> <br> The FUTURE makers needed a comic actor who could hit the right comic "marks." A mark is something not every actor can do in a comedic sense, and Michael Shannon, while speaking to Nixon about how the youths are really underground Communists; how television and drugs have made them hate the American flag; how he could actually disguise himself, like he did in a decade worth of films, to actually infiltrate the backstage touring with The Beatles, Rolling Stones and Grateful Dead and bust them right on the spot; and how he can use Kung Fu on lethal drug dealers...<br>

biopic, dark comedy, kevin spacey, michael shannon

SHANNON & SPACEY IN ELVIS & NIXON

Year: 2016 Oh how much hope so many folks probably had for the potential of a political comedy/true life satire of epic proportions, but...

MICHAEL SHANNON IS THE ICEMAN

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsFH2vjsnkSP1u-pM3itdCgCGPAtWOYG2-wVDdNxeZ5DYoD-5qBPnyQa99j4C5K_kzEEcr-bn4NmWGFEGizYrnI9mwYWZ9bQrAQwg_o4B__02TTOluFAN3rpt3PESZiVO36_kICFfHUdg/s1600/icceman.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="342" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsFH2vjsnkSP1u-pM3itdCgCGPAtWOYG2-wVDdNxeZ5DYoD-5qBPnyQa99j4C5K_kzEEcr-bn4NmWGFEGizYrnI9mwYWZ9bQrAQwg_o4B__02TTOluFAN3rpt3PESZiVO36_kICFfHUdg/s1600/icceman.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">year: 2013 cast: Michael Shannon, Chris Evans, Ray Liotta, Wionna Ryder rating: **</td></tr> </tbody></table> This true life crime melodrama is a very… mellow… drama about a hit man known as The Iceman played by Michael Shannon who, looking a cross between Jack Lord and Richard Kiel had they both morphed into Frankenstein’s monster, was a real tough cookie: Beginning as a sound editor in the pornography business, and then working for temperamental mob boss Roy Demeo, our central character Richard Kuklinski never had a prayer to do anything else for a living. Immensely cold and stealthily calculating, he has what it takes to be a hit man, something Demeo (Ray Liotta) sees in him right away. The first couple hits are pretty intense but not very suspenseful. With somber music orchestrating each scene – the mechanics of a lost soul given its own melancholy dirge – and sporadic ultra violent montages, we never get too up close and personal into the bloody reality of Kuklinski’s profession, at least not right away.<br /> <br /> The twist here is that Kuklinski has a family while working as a hit man. Enter Wionna Ryder as his soft-spoken passive wife, Deborah, supposedly oblivious to her husband's occupation. With two beautiful daughters, the Kuklinski clan seems like a Norman Rockwell painting. But the family scenes spend too much time wallowing in a contrived sense of irony, never standing out on their own merit. Until the mobsters hit too close to home, and Kuklinski begins showing his dark side in front of the wife and kids, allowing Michael Shannon to emote past an otherwise limited steely countenance. One particular scene, after Kuklinski lets a seventeen-year-old girl witness go unharmed, and then attempts to protect her from a fellow hit man named Mr. Freezy (played by Chris Evans, who would introduce him to the art of freezing victims to thwart the cop’s timetable), shows us a vulnerable side missing in the segments with family and friends. This also provides a Film Noir aspect of a killer with a kind heart beating, somewhere. But like some of the duller Noirs, there’s more style than substance going on.<br /> <br /> Kuklinski’s gig wasn’t a short one. The searing biopic zooms from the sixties to the eighties through music and distinguishing hairstyles and mustaches all sizes, yet there’s never a sense of importance in any decade. That is, we never stick in one place long enough for anything to really matter.

2013, biopic, chris evans, crime, michael shannon, neo noir, ray liotta, wionna ryder

MICHAEL SHANNON IS THE ICEMAN

year: 2013 cast: Michael Shannon, Chris Evans, Ray Liotta, Wionna Ryder rating: ** This true life crime melodrama is a very… mellow… dra...