Tag: Jamie Foxx

Soul: Pixar’s Most Existential Movie – Disney+ Review

Pixar continues to show that they can make a great movie.

SUMMARY (Spoiler-Free)

Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx) is a middle school music teacher who has long dreamed of being a Jazz musician. He gets a call from a former student, Curly (Questlove), who informs him of an opening in the band of Jazz legend Dorothea Williams (Angela Bassett). Joe manages to nail the audition and gets a chance to play piano with her, only to immediately walk into an open manhole cover. Joe finds himself in the “Great Beyond,” but tries to escape so that he can play the show. He accidentally ends up in the “Great Before,” where souls are prepared to be sent to Earth. Joe poses as an instructor to fool the soul counselors (Richard Ayoade, Alice Braga, Wes Studi, Fortune Feimster and Zenobia Shroff) and gets assigned to help “22,” (Tina Fey) a soul that has remained in the Great Before for a long time due to her cynicism. Joe realizes that if he can convince 22 to go to Earth, he can potentially use that as a way back to his body and make it to the show. They are helped by the spiritualist Moonwind (Graham Norton) and opposed by Terry (Rachel House), the soul counter.

Apparently you still need glasses in the before-life.

END SUMMARY

I’ll admit that when Disney announced they were going to put this on Disney+ for free on Christmas, my first thought was that it must not be very good. After all, I think that putting it on streaming at the same time as theaters makes it ineligible for an Oscar, something Pixar collects almost every year they’re eligible. Hell, the category of “Best Animated Film” was arguably created because of Pixar and Dreamworks putting out films too good for the Academy to ignore. While it’s possible that they changed the eligibility rules or that Disney did something to circumvent them here, it still led me to think that the film was a dud. I was completely and utterly wrong.

In my defense, I didn’t know Angela Bassett was in it.

I don’t think that this is Pixar’s best movie, but I would not fight someone who said it was. This film is ambitious beyond almost anything the company has tried before. While all of the good Pixar films have some message behind it, this one probably hits people on the deepest level. I honestly don’t want to spoil it at all because it comes together so well that it really is more of an experience than a moral. It almost feels like a surprise until you realize the whole movie has been set up perfectly so that it comes to this point naturally. It really is the message we need in 2020, too. Just see it for yourself.

Also, if you have a deep passion, you’ll find some moments of this film amazing.

The other thing that surprised me is how many of the jokes in this film are just a step above what I usually expect from Pixar. Not that there movies don’t have good laughs, but they’re usually kid-friendly jokes or something that is just mildly amusing. Sure, sometimes you have some jokes like the Gum Jingle from Inside Out which is just a perfect encapsulation of something funny and frustrating about human existence, but usually it’s just that the Piggy Bank doesn’t know who Picasso is. This movie, though, had a number of gags that just made me laugh out loud. I had to pause the movie because of a well-timed line about Tina Fey messing with the Knicks. The fact that the film is talking about a mature topic seemed to allow for some more mature jokes and I appreciate that. There are still jokes for the kids, obviously. 

It’s not that I have anything against the Knicks, but it’s funny to watch them fail.

The voice acting and the animation are as good as you would expect. The style of the afterlife, or the beforelife as it were, is very creative and done in such a way that you likely won’t be offended no matter what your religious beliefs are. They also do a great job of intertwining the mind and spirituality, particularly in the concept of “the zone,” the place that you can reach that feels beyond yourself when you are focused on something you are passionate about.

These designs are just awesome.

Overall, this is a movie that deserves an audience. It’s a great work by a great team. 

If you want to check out some more by the Joker on the Sofa, check out the 100 Greatest TV Episodes of All Time, Collection of TV Episodes, Collection of Movie Reviews, or the Joker on the Sofa Reviews.

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Project Power: A Man’s Reach Should Exceed His Grasp, Or What’s a Superpower For? – Netflix Review

Jamie Foxx and Joseph Gordon-Levitt star in a new-ish take on Superpowers.

SUMMARY

In the near future, next Sunday A.D., a new drug has hit the streets of New Orleans: Power. As the name itself implies, whoever takes the drugs is given a random superpower for five minutes. Some people can become invisible, some become bulletproof, some can only see in the dark, and some blow up. Frank Shaver (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), an officer in the New Orleans Police Department, has been investigating the drug, and using it in the process. His dealer is a young girl named Robin (Dominique Fishback), who gets the drug from her cousin, Newt (Colson Baker). At the same time, another man, called “The Major” (Jamie Foxx) has been in town tracking down the source of the drug. After Newt gets killed in a fight with The Major, The Major abducts Robin to use as an informant. It’s revealed that the Major is a former soldier named Art who was used as a guinea pig by a private defense firm to manufacture superpowers, and the firm kidnapped his daughter, Tracy (Kyanna Simone Simpson). Eventually, Art and Frank have to work together to stop this super plague upon the streets.

Yes, the hero is literally wearing a Saints outfit.

END SUMMARY

This movie attempts to make a grittier and more grounded style of superhero film in the vein of Code 8 or Upgrade, but doesn’t quite push the envelope as much as you would hope. It does contain some original uses of superpowers and some fun imagery and fight sequences, as well as some realistic side effects of using such powers, but the film feels to me like it lacked some depth. Maybe it’s because Netflix required it to be a little more palatable to everyone, or maybe I was just reading into it too much. All of the pieces are there for a solid superhero film, although the dialogue can be a little slow in any scene that doesn’t have Jamie Foxx. That man can make almost anything sound interesting.  The problem is that I felt like they seeded a bunch of themes, but ultimately only touched upon them lightly.

This scene was pretty damned awesome.

The power sets in the film range from the standard (Bulletproof, invisibility) to the weird (bone weapons, hyper jointedness), which keeps the fights interesting. The five minute time limit is basically a way to force fast action set pieces, because if you waste another second before you lose your invulnerability or superspeed, the game is over. Everyone gets their own power, the same one they will get every time they take the drug, which means that you can have people who have thought about the limits of their abilities and worked around them. One of the fight scenes uses creative powers and some clever camera work to particularly great effect. 

And sometimes they are just plain cool looking.

The characters in the film are very generic. You have the cop who plays by his own rules in order to get the job done and the dad who is willing to go to almost any length in order to get his child back as the leads. If they weren’t played by actors who can maneuver a line as well as Foxx and Gordon-Levitt, the characters would be mostly forgettable, but sometimes that’s enough. Robin, played extremely well by Dominique Fishback, is probably the most interesting character, because she doesn’t fall into any narrow trope. She’s a drug dealing kid, but it’s because her mom is sick. She’s an aspiring rapper and has pride in her skills, but has stage fright. Her moments bonding with the two leads are some of the better non-action scenes in the film. 

Yes, the sidekick is named Robin. Fortunately, she’s still awesome.

My biggest problem is that the movie is about a company with government ties conducting what are essentially unsanctioned clinical trials on an unsuspecting population of mostly impoverished and minority people, but nothing more is said of that. That’s a thing that has happened, multiple times, throughout the history of the US in various capacities. The government and private companies have used the poor as guinea pigs without their knowledge on multiple occasions, ranging from the Tuskegee Experiments to paying doctors in poor areas to distribute oxycodone, and I think the film should have drawn these comparisons a little more directly. I know that’s a nitpick, but it was right there. 

Seriously, they were so close to hitting it at a few points.

Overall, still a pretty solid movie. Yeah, it’s not going to blow any minds, but it was fun.

If you want to check out some more by the Joker on the Sofa, check out the 100 Greatest TV Episodes of All Time, Collection of TV Episodes, Collection of Movie Reviews, or the Joker on the Sofa Reviews.

If you enjoy these, please, like, share, tell your friends, like the Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/JokerOnTheSofa/), follow on Twitter @JokerOnTheSofa, and just generally give me a little bump. I’m not getting paid, but I like to get feedback.

Amazon Review – Just Mercy: The Title Says It All

Jamie Foxx and Michael B. Jordan star in this true story about a wrongful conviction.

SUMMARY (Spoilers, but not really, cuz true)

In 1989, Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan), a Harvard lawyer, travels to Alabama to head up the Southern Center for Human Rights, an organization dedicated to defend Death-Penalty cases and appeals.  This later became the non-profit Equal Justice Initiative (after Congress decided to cut funding for Death-Penalty resources). Together with Eva Ansley (Brie Larson), Bryan takes up a number of cases, including that of Walter “Johnny D.” McMillian (Jamie Foxx). Stevenson quickly begins to believe that McMillian, who was convicted of the murder of a white woman named Ronda Morrison, was innocent of the charges and had been used as a scapegoat by local law enforcement. Despite having a number of witnesses that McMillian was present at a public event at the time of the murder, the new prosecutor Tommy Chapman (Rafe Spall) refuses to look into the case and the court refuses to grant a new trial even after Stevenson gets the State’s primary witness, Ralph Myers (Tim Blake Nelson), to recant. It takes many years and multiple appeals, but eventually Stevenson is able to free McMillian. 

Just Mercy' moving and inspiring, even as it follows a formula ...
There are some rough times in the process.

END SUMMARY

In response to the recent (as of this writing) protests arising from the death of George Floyd, Amazon has removed the rental cost on a number of films, including this one. I recommend taking advantage of this, because the movies on the list are great. I selected this one, however, because I’m an attorney in the South. I’ve never witnessed any civil rights violation as bad as the ones alleged in this film (or in the events which form its basis), but I still have been around long enough to know that there are gross inequalities between states, counties, or even different judges, and that race, gender, or sexuality can massively amplify those inequalities. As events in the past… well, history of America, but also the last few weeks, have reminded us, racism is still an issue in this country. In fact, I had a disturbing realization during this movie that all of the events depicted are within my lifetime, including the revelation that another wrongful conviction took 28 years to reverse. 

Just Mercy': Michael B. Jordan on that harrowing execution scene
They also show one person that was guilty, but probably shouldn’t have been executed.

The strength of this movie, naturally, is in its performances. The leads are all unbelievably charismatic and believable, from Michael B. Jordan’s optimistic but not really naive portrayal of Stevenson to Foxx’s portrayal of a disillusioned and broken man to Tim Blake Nelson as a career criminal trying to do just one good thing. 

Who Is Eva Ansley, Brie Larson's Character In 'Just Mercy?' | True ...
They underused Brie Larson, though.

The plot of the movie is pretty standard for how courtroom dramas like these always play out. If you’ve seen Gideon’s Trumpet or The Hurricane, then you have seen this film before. In any story that’s based on a real life case, you can probably guess from the beginning that the end of the film is going to have someone getting exonerated. It would probably be a bummer to tell the story of a person who was executed and then later proven innocent (which has definitely happened), so the movie naturally picked a case with a “happy” ending. Unfortunately, that same logic is one of the weaknesses of the film, because it tries to portray most of what happened to McMillian as being a matter of figurative and literal black-and-white. 

Just Mercy accuracy: Fact vs. fiction in the Michael B. Jordan ...
Tim Blake Nelson absolutely nailed the real guy.

That’s not to say that there weren’t a number of extra culpable people in his case, there absolutely were, but the film only touches on the fact that almost all of the people responsible were not only elected, but continued to be elected after the charges against McMillian were dropped. While Jordan does deliver a short monologue on how a rural Southern jury might perceive McMillian (even in 1989), the fact is that any number of people might have wanted to speak out against this, but the entire community would have been at their throats for doing so. Hell, the prosecutor and Sheriff were both basically threatened by the voters if they didn’t have someone convicted for the murder. Racism isn’t just ten bad people in power, it’s the hundred bad people who want those ten people in power, but aren’t willing to do the dirty deeds themselves. The movie also shies away from emphasizing the fact that the media had long condemned McMillian from the moment he got arrested, a reminder that journalists can often contribute to injustice as much as they can fight against it. However, the movie DID go further into it than many other films, so I will still give it credit.

From the 60 Minutes archives: The true story behind “Just Mercy ...
Instead, they just say 60 Minutes freed him.

Honestly, this is still a really well-done film, even if it’s pretty formulaic by necessity. I think it also goes into some issues with the legal system that people should be aware are not just remnants of the 50s or 60s, but are still problems in the modern day. Hell, the Alabama rule that allowed a judge to overrule a jury and impose a one-sided Death Penalty, as happened in this case with Judge Robert E. Lee Key, Jr. (yes, that name is real), was only eliminated in 2017. This kind of regional or local inequality still exists. There’s a county line near me where on one side, possession of marijuana resulted in a dropped case for some community service, on the other side, possession was ten days jail (until Florida accidentally made it impossible to prosecute cannabis cases last year). 

County Line Movie | Official Site
Yes, I said cannabis is accidentally “legal” in Florida. Kinda.

I try not to get too political on this blog, but right now is a great time to watch a film based on real, and recent, events and get a picture of how our country has been in recent years and to realize that some problems are not just coming out of nowhere. There aren’t going to be a lot of easy solutions, and anything is going to take time, but the first step is to acknowledge there’s a problem. If you watch this movie, or read up on the case that it’s focused on, then it becomes really hard to claim that there aren’t issues in the country. Please, do yourself a favor, check it out.

If you want to check out some more by the Joker on the Sofa, check out the 100 Greatest TV Episodes of All Time, Collection of TV Episodes, Collection of Movie Reviews, or the Joker on the Sofa Reviews.

If you enjoy these, please, like, share, tell your friends, like the Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/JokerOnTheSofa/), follow on Twitter @JokerOnTheSofa, and just generally give me a little bump. I’m not getting paid, but I like to get feedback.