Goodrich: An engaging family dramedy

Goodrich (2024) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, and perhaps too harshly, for profanity

Available via: MAX

By Derrick Bang

This seems to be “Memory Lane” season for Michael Keaton.

 

He resurrected his saucy demon in last summer’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, and this dramedy is a sorta-kinda reboot of 1983’s Mr. Mom.

 

Parenting isn't easy, as absentee dad Andy (Michael Keaton) discovers, when trying to
make up for lost time with his 9-year-old twins, Mose (Jacob Kopera) and Billie
(Vivien Lyra Blair).

But only sorta-kinda. Writer/director Hallie Meyers-Shyer eschews broad comedy strokes in favor of gentler, kinder humor that arises organically from her story’s plot beats.

That said, Keaton is inherently, effortlessly funny, even when dialed down; this has been obvious since his breakout supporting role in 1982’s Night Shift. His signature smirky grin is disarming; the recipient never knows whether a joke is being playfully shared, or if he’s the victim of the zinger.

 

Here, though, that twitchy smile is a reflexive self-defense mechanism, designed to conceal true feelings ... which is at the heart of the title character’s failings.

 

Andy Goodrich (Keaton) is a 60-year-old Los Angeles art dealer. He’s always taking calls, courting the next Hot Talent, and working long hours at his boutique gallery in order to prepare an upcoming installation ... all at the expense of spending time with his much younger wife, Naomi (Laura Benanti), and two 9-year-old twins, Billie (Vivien Lyra Blair) and Mose (Jacob Kopera).

 

The film begins as a phone call blasts Andy out of bed one morning; it’s Naomi, calling from the rehab clinic where she has just checked in for a 90-day detox program. As it happens, this will span the holiday season of Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas.

 

Andy is gob-smacked, having been oblivious to her prescription pill addiction. That only makes the situation worse, and Naomi coldly demands that he not visit her.

 

He tries anyway, only to be rebuffed by a cheerfully unhelpful receptionist who won’t even confirm or deny Naomi’s presence. 

 

Kimberly Condict, as the receptionist, is on camera for barely a minute, but her sweetly condescending, I’ve-got-your-number-buster manner is absolutely hilarious.

Ready or Not: Gleeful gore to come

Ready or Not (2019) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated R, for violence, gore, drug use, relentless profanity and buckets o' blood
By Derrick Bang

Fans of dark-dark-dark humor — who can work up a macabre chuckle amidst gore, gouts of blood and the occasional decapitation — are guaranteed to have a great time with this little chiller.

Concealed — and as yet undetected — behind a bed, Grace (Samara Weaving) has just
discovered the lethal details of the "game" her new husband Alex (Mark O'Brien)
insisted that she join.

The timid and squeamish — which is to say, everybody else — are advised to steer veryclear.

Ready or Not comes from the gleefully demented minds of a filmmaking trio collectively known as Radio Silence: co-directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillet, and executive producer Chad Villella. Their previous big-screen efforts haven’t made much noise — V/H/S, Devil’s Due and Southbound are best left forgotten — but this one likely will elevate their cred.

As well it should. Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillet have made the most of a sharply honed script by Guy Busick and Ryan Murphy, which develops a simple premise into an exciting, 95-minute thrill ride. The execution may be gruesome, but there’s no denying the edge-of-the-seat suspense.

That “simple premise” will look familiar to those with fond memories of 2017’s Get Out, because the opening act is pretty much identical, albeit with a gender reversal: young adult brings lover home to “meet the folks,” whereupon the unsuspecting newcomer discovers all manner of dangerous weirdness within the massive mansion walls.

Mind you, Ready or Not doesn’t have anywhere near the ingenious social subtext that brought Get Out’s Jordan Peele a well-deserved Academy Award for original screenplay … unless, perhaps, Busick and Murphy intend a satiric shot at the notion that the obscenely wealthy really arehopelessly out of touch. But that’s probably giving them too much credit. 

At best, Ready or Not is a guilty pleasure, and an unapologetic tip of the hat to the cheerfully grotesque excesses of France’s infamous Grand Guignol stage productions, with a literary nod toward Marlowe and Goethe.

We open on a wedding day, with humble Grace (Samara Weaving) brought by fiancé Alex (Mark O’Brien) to the immense estate owned by the parents from whom he has been estranged for many years. We initially wonder why he’d bother, given that so many of the arriving clan members seem related to the Addams Family, but — as Busick and Murphy carefully establish — everything happens for a reason.

Only the Brave: A soaring tribute

Only the Brave (2017) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, occasional profanity, mild sensuality and fleeting drug use
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.20.17

Everything that makes this fact-based drama compelling — and its qualities are many — also will make it a very difficult experience for Northern California viewers.

Having helped to establish a "border" by digging trenches, cutting back small trees and
shrubs, and lighting controlled back burns, Brendan (Miles Teller, left) and Christopher
(Taylor Kitsch) wait to see if their efforts will help diminish an expanding wildfire.

Serendipity is a curious beast, particularly when cinema collides with the real world. The China Syndrome was disparaged as alarmist fantasy when released on March 16, 1979; twelve days later, the film proved eerily prophetic when Pennsylvania’s Dauphin County experienced its Three Mile Island nuclear accident.

Similarly, the folks at Sony/Columbia couldn’t have known, when they scheduled Only the Brave for release today, that California still would be struggling to contain the worst and deadliest series of firestorms in state history. Director Joseph Kosinski and scripters Ken Nolan and Eric Warren Singer simply wished to venerate the Granite Mountain Hotshots, whose heroic efforts to battle Arizona’s Yarnell Hill Fire made headlines in late June 2013.

The filmmakers achieved that goal. Only the Brave is intelligently scripted, persuasively acted, and sensitively directed: a thoroughly engaging example of heartstring-tugging melodrama. The gripping narrative blends angst, suspense and humor with a spirit of comradely bonding that succeeds because of the care with which the actors tackle their parts.

Numerous characters populate this story, all of them depicted as distinct individuals: a rare thing, when so many high-profile Hollywood projects feature a few stars who overshadow one-dimensional supporting players, who do little but take up space.

At its core, this is a war movie: Instead of man against man, it’s man against nature. Josh Brolin’s Eric Marsh has a telling line, early on, when he leads his team to a mountaintop forest overlook, and encourages the newest recruits to savor the view in the manner of civilian innocents, who admires the majestic ocean of gently swaying green.

Because after having endured a battle against flame, Marsh warns, the next time “You’ll only see fuel.”