WHITE BOY RICK (2018)

Rated: R

STARS: Matthew McConaughey,  Richie Merritt, Jennifer Jason Leigh,  Bel Powle
DIRECTOR: Yann Demange
GENRE: Drama

If you like drugs and drug dealers (in the movies, I mean)...junkies, crooked cops and dedicated cops, and a little shoot-'em-up--all played out against the bleak backdrop of the seedier side of Detroit, amidst the height of the hysterical drug war in the mid eighties...then White Boy Rick is for you!

Based upon the true--and truly sad and appalling story of Rick Wershe Jr. (Richie Merritt), the film comes about its title due to the fact that Wershe was the youngest undercover FBI informant ever--at age 14--who hung around exclusively with black folk (at least in the movie) because all the dope dealers in this film are black (does that make this a racist film?), and thus he came to be affectionately known as "White Boy Rick."

Rick's dad, Rick Wershe Sr. (Matthew McConaughey), is an unscrupulous firearms dealer who sells AK-47s to the drug dealers through his son. The FBI gets wind of Junior's extra-curricular activities and recruits him to become a dope dealer himself in order to infiltrate the big boys of the trade, rat on them and take them down. 

As good as McConaughey and newcomer Merritt are in this film, the Kickass Performance Award goes to two supporting cast members: Jennifer Jason Leigh as a totally jaded and weary FBI  agent...and young British thespian Bel Powle, who plays Rick's junkie sister. Powle is perfectly cast in this role; her eyes are so naturally haunted it's scary (and Halloween is coming up!)

Also notable is Bruce Dern as Grandpa, but only because he's been reduced to bit parts as a curmudgeonly old bastard--popping up higgledy-pigleddy, just enough to make you say: hey, that's Bruce Dern...what the hell's HE doing in this film???

Like most movies based on true events, White Boy Rick proceeds at breakneck speed, leaving you at a loss to keep up at times, with a hip-hop soundtrack that could have been better if any of the songs were recognizable. But on the strength of the gritty performances, I'm giving it a decent rating. You may or may not agree, depending upon how chemically altered your brain is at the time. 

Grade:  B

JILL'S TAKE

I'm thinking maybe Tim's recent hiatus from movie reviewing has made him go soft. (oh oh)  Sad as the story of White Boy Rick is, I'm getting fed up with the idea that just because something is based on a 'true story'  makes it cinematic gold. Wrong!

If you're looking to spend one hour and fifty-one minutes being depressed, feeling a sense of unrelenting hopelessness, then this is the movie for you. I have to hand it to cinematographer Tat Radcliffe whose visions of Detroit in the 1980s are enough to make any young man sell drugs just to get out of there!

I suppose, if I had to pin-point the problem with White Boy Rick (a grabber title, by the way), it would be that it's riddled with nothing but losers, including the FBI agents. I'm not suggesting that some Hollywood knight come charging in on a white horse to rescue everybody.  But a film with nothing but bad guys in it risks being too much of a downer. At least it was for me.

Maybe my negative reaction had more to do with the toothache I was experiencing at the time.  I think not...

Grade:  C -

FREE STATE OF JONES (2016)

Rated: R

STARS: Matthew McConaughey, Gugu Mbatha-Raw,
Keri Russell, Mahershala Ali
DIRECTOR: Gary Ross
GENRE: Action-adventure, Drama, Biopic

Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969) is the first film I remember seeing where the bloody special effects were so real, I thought...well, we've entered a new era. Then Tarantino came along, and now it seems it's just standard practice to go for the most grisly, visceral realism in any action flick worthy of the designation.

But there's a tipping point, I think, where you ask yourself: Was this really necessary? Could the story have been told just as effectively if all the gore and the gross-out had been toned down a bit? My answer to the question, as regards the Civil War drama, Free State of Jones, is that yes, I think it could have been told effectively minus some of the close-ups of heads being blown off,  a dog roasting on a spit, a black man hanged with blood dripping down from his crotch...need I go on?

That aside, Free State of Jones scores major points for the acting--Matthew McConaughey is at his smoldering best here in the lead role as Newt Knight, a deserter from the Confederate army who was plum fed up with "fighting for cotton"--the poor man fighting a rich man's war, which casts a not so subtle and obviously intended reflection upon all the conflicts Uncle Sam has been embroiled in since Vietnam to the present day. (Nobody--with the exception of Antonio Banderas--does the slow smolder the way McConaughey can.) 

Major points also for the authenticity of the milieu. I totally bought into the sense of time and place, thanks to the appearance and demeanor of a fine supporting cast, and the costumes...man, I felt like THIS is the way it surely was! (Maybe it also had something to do with the soldiers having really dirty hair.)

Knight begins with a ragtag group of farmers and escaped slaves, and grows it into a formidable force that occupies Jones County, Mississippi--rebelling against the punitive actions of the men in grey (rebels rebelling against rebels) who dealt harshly with any dissension among their ranks, and callously confiscated livestock and crops from the local farmers, making it difficult for them to survive the winter.

Free State of Jones is really two movies, with very different tones. The first is set during the fighting of the war--lots of action and dramatic tension--the second takes place during the aftermath and is a more cerebral and thought provoking tale that carries well into the reconstruction period. The second section has an anticlimactic feel to it, but director Gary Ross wanted to tell the WHOLE story of Newt Knight, and in doing so he has you glancing at your watch once you get past the two hour mark, wondering whether you can hang in there and delay that trip to the restroom until the closing credits roll by.

A dedicated critic will always take the risk of  such possible embarrassment for the sake of his art.

Grade: B -

JILL'S TAKE

Free State of Jones is a definite epic that covers years and years of southern strife, racism, brutality and that elusive quest for 'freedom.' I was riveted by the film's authenticity and who wouldn't root for Matthew McConaughey as rebel-with-a-cause. But I was also seriously put off by the flash-forwards (did I just coin a new cinematic term?). That's the problem with telling two stories in the same movie, i.e. one story usually overrides the other one. For me, that was definitely the case with the 85-years-later courtroom scenes.

That being said, I felt Free State of Jones was right up there with Roots, The Color Purple and 12 Years A Slave. Let's hope its summer release doesn't prevent it from garnering some Oscar nods.

Because the opening logo was unfamiliar to me, with its Chinese or Japanese lettering (I'm no expert), and the end producers' credits featured a lot of gentlemen named Wang, I decided to look up who produced this puppy. Take a guess how many producers, co-producers, executive producers and assistant producers were listed: 27! That must be some sort of record. I'm pretty sure their investments will pay off although there weren't many people in the audience the day I saw it.

The cast was stellar. But I want to single out one actress with a name that by all accounts should have hampered her acting career by a country mile. Gugu Mbatha-Raw plays Rachel, the love interest and later wife of our hero Newt Knight. Some of her lines in this film—and the way she delivers them—are absolutely unforgettable. And though today's Black Americans have it a whole lot easier than they did back then, they're still fighting an uphill battle. That, to me, is the underlying message I walked out of the theater thinking about.

Grade: B

THE WOLF OF WALL STREET (2013)

Rated: R

STARS: Leonardo DiCaprio,  Jonah Hill,  Kyle Chandler,   Matthew McConaughey,  Rob Reiner
DIRECTOR: Martin Scorsese
GENRE: Dark Comedy

The first hour or so of The Wolf Of Wall Street is an out of control, never ending pep rally with cheerleaders who are out of their minds screaming right into your ear.  It's excessive and annoying,  like a nagging spouse trying to make the same point over and over when you already got it the first time. Which fits in, I suppose, with a film about excess and greed taken to ludicrous limits  ( based on the book of the same name by the infamous swindler Jordan Belfort. )  If you make it through that part of the  movie without cashing out and leaving the theater, The Wolf Of Wall Street pays substantial dividends the rest of the way.  

Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill are gut-busting funny as drug addled  stock brokers riding the crest of an artificially created financial wave that is about to crash into the rocks as it gets closer to shore.  With a cast of "thousands" of literally hysterical hangers-on and bosomy beauties letting it all hang out in an orgiastic microcosm of what the world would be like if we all  followed our base instinct to live for nothing but our own self- satisfaction without regard to consequence.    

Grade:  B +

JILL'S TAKE

Tim and I saw this flick two weeks apart so my feeble mind has forgotten much of what makes THE WOLF OF WALL STREET worth seeing. What I do remember, however, is Leonardo DiCaprio's Oscar-contending performance.

It's hard to believe he wasn't on speed while filming this movie. (His character certainly sniffed enough coke throughout!) I also remember thinking the movie would have benefited from some serious cutting. Not that I nodded off or anything. Still, the scenes of excess—drugs, yacht trips, group orgies—were overly long in my opinion.

Being a big fan of this film's director Martin Scorcese's hit HBO series "Boardwalk Empire," I had to laugh at how many subliminal plugs he gave that show. When the well-stoned characters were watching TV, guess what they were watching? And many of the actors in BE had bit parts in this film. I'm all for loyalty—especially among movie directors—but I felt a lot of those bit parts were unnecessary. (Like Shea Wigham as a ship's captain?) Then again, THE WOLF OF WALL STREET is all about excess. And since I have often been accused of living on the edge myself, I could certainly relate.

GRADE:  A -

THE DALLAS BUYERS CLUB (2013)

Rated:  R

STARS: Matthew McConaughey, Jared Leto,  Jennifer Garner,  Steve Zahn
DIRECTOR: Jean-Marc Vallee
GENRE: Drama


Ron Woodruff was a Texas good ol' boy who was diagnosed as HIV positive in 1986--back when AIDS was a highly misunderstood, feared and maligned disease. Rather than accept a doctor's bleak prognosis, Woodruff became a crusader (without the cape) for alternative drugs and supplements not approved by the FDA, but which showed some promise in treating the disease. And that's how The Dallas Buyers Club came into being. Woodruff became a smuggler--obtaining his meds by hook or by crook from far-flung locales such as Mexico and Japan. He then sold them to AIDS patients who, by all accounts, benefited through his efforts. And he kept himself alive for several more years. 

In The Dallas Buyers Club, Matthew McConaughey plays Woodruff as a foul-mouthed, bigoted, chauvinistic, homophobic, drug and sex addicted redneck rodeo cowboy who wants to take a swing at anybody who slights him or doesn't give him his way. The real Ron Woodruff was reportedly a bit of all that, but everything gets magnified in the movies. McConaughey has the look down pat--he dropped more than 40 pounds for the role--but the real Ron Woodruff had a softer, baby-faced kind of look, and he is remembered fondly by those who knew him. So I suspect he wasn't quite the scowling first-class A-hole portrayed here.  

Jennifer Garner plays Dr. Eve Saks, who becomes Woodruff's ally and friend. Jared Leto is Rayon, a transgender fellow AIDS sufferer who helps turn Woodruff from homophobe to seemingly compassionate advocate. Both characters are composites, and not based on actual persons. 

How much of Woodruff's motivation in forming The Dallas Buyers Club was selfish--to provide an income and keep himself alive--and how much of it reflected a compassionate activism, especially as time went on, is open to speculation. He stated in an interview that his mark-up on the drugs only covered his operating costs.

How much of Matthew McConaughey's motivation in shedding 40 to 50 pounds to be appropriately gaunt looking for this role was motivated by his paycheck, or wanting passionately to tell a compelling story is also open to speculation. Sacrificing for one's art is a noble endeavor, but in this case--messing around with his health in such a manner--I think he's plain nuts. 

But he's a lock for an Academy Award nomination, and most likely wins for Best Actor. (Anthony Hopkins has to consider himself lucky in that all he had to do to become Alfred Hitchcock was wear a fat suit!)

Grade:  B  +

JILL'S TAKE

Is it me or are more and more movies being made these days that are 'based on real people'? I guess Hollywood moguls have finally bought into the idea that "truth is stranger than fiction." Only in their eyes, "truth is more lucrative than fiction." Is it? If The Butler, Captain Phillips and Saving Mr. Banks are any indication, I'd say it is. Personally, I'd much rather watch something based on reality even if the screenwriters take a lot of liberties with the story line and the main character. No doubt Tim's research about Ron Woodruff being less of an asshole than the Ron Woodruff we see in The Dallas Buyers Club is accurate. But just like I prefer nonfiction movies, I also gravitate towards 'bad boys.' Nobody does bad boy better than McConaughey. And once you get over how incredibly skinny he is in this film, you can't help but love/hate the guy.

Those early days of AIDS are quickly established in the beginning of this movie when a bunch of redneck rodeo riders sit around gay-bashing Rock Hudson who, it has just been announced, has AIDS. (Of course I loved one knucklehead's reaction: "Who's Rock Hudson?") It's a poignant film and often painful to watch. And the person I predict will get an Oscar nod is Jared Leto who, aside from being a brilliant actor, is an accomplished musician and the main songwriter for the rock group Thirty Seconds to Mars.

I'm with Tim on this one. It's worth the price of admission—and then some.

GRADE: B+