Boss Baby Sequel to be Born a Few Months Later

The current state of cinema in America has had a hand in another shift, this time involving Universal Pictures, DreamWorks Animation, and the upcoming Boss Baby sequel. Just announced this week, The Boss Baby: Family Business will move from its positioned release date of March 26 to the new date of September 17. This move also bumps another Universal/DreamWorks production, The Bad Guys, to be moved off the release schedule entirely, rumored now to drop in 2022.

The original film grossed $520 million and was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the Academy Awards. The sequel will see the return of Alec Baldwin as the voice of Ted, the titular Boss Baby as well as Tom McGrath in the director’s chair. Family Business will pick up years later with Ted as an adult dealing with his niece (voiced by Amy Sedaris), who is the new boss baby.

This move makes sense to me. I wasn’t a big fan of the original Boss Baby, but I cannot deny that it was quite successful and well-deserving of a follow-up. The IP hasn’t really left the pop culture scene, as the original film spawned a Netflix series and a special choose-your-own-adventure short film. Whether or not I like the movie, the franchise has significant potential. With all the theater problems of the last year, it’s a smart move to push this film into September and save its monetary potential.

What do you think? Was it a smart move to push The Boss Baby: Family Business into September? Or would it have been better to drop on a streaming service? Let me know in the comments below!

-Kyle A. Goethe

December 29, 2020 0

[Early Review] Songbird (2020)

Director: Adam Mason
Cast: KJ Apa, Sofia Carson, Craig Robinson, Bradley Whitford, Peter Stormare, Alexandra Daddario, Paul Walter Hauser, Demi Moore
Screenplay: Adam Mason, Simon Boyes
90 mins. Rated PG-13.

Songbird is a film I didn’t know anything about before I started my screening. All I really had going for me was a very Quiet Place-y looking poster and the notion that it was written, filmed, and edited during the 2020 pandemic. I didn’t know what the plot was but the cast list was pretty respectable. Also, Michael Bay produced it, so I wasn’t sure how he could put explosions into a movie that was made during a pandemic, but I was curious to find out. I always have a laugh when Michael Bay produces a movie that uses his name in the marketing because he isn’t a great director, so the name doesn’t help, but Songbird is a film that couldn’t be any worse than if Bay himself had helmed. I can make it pretty clear for you: this movie sucks.

Set in 2024, Songbird tells the story of the world of COVID-23, a much more deadly version of the coronavirus that has a higher mortality rate, as it ravages the world. We are given several interconnected stories mostly set in the LA area, mostly centered around Nico (KJ Apa, I Still Believe, TV’s Riverdale), an immune delivery boy who wishes to get an illegal immunity bracelet for his girlfriend in order to free her from lockdown in her apartment. We also get a look at a budding friendship between artist and streamer May (Alexandra Daddario, Baywatch, 1 Night in San Diego) and one of her followers, Dozer (Paul Walter Hauser, I, Tonya, Da 5 Bloods), as she struggles with a relationship with someone who promises to help her career but seems to only want one thing from her.

I’m not sure if there’s a message to Songbird. In fact, I hope there isn’t one, because this movie is riddled with issues, most notably the main character, someone we should want to root for, is breaking the law to free his girlfriend, a potential carrier of a deadly virus. Why should we feel for them? Why should we want them to win? Then, there’s the narrative that people go to the “Q Zone” when quarantined but they don’t come back. Now, I get that the virus of the film is not COVID-19, but naming your virus COVID-23 creates the sense you are trying to connect the two. It’s clear that director Adam Mason (Blood River, Alice in Chains: Black Antenna) doesn’t understand how COVID-19 works, and he just decided to make COVID-23 do whatever is interesting for his narrative, unaware of the perception he is creating for viewers.

None of the stories in the film are entertaining, and none of the characters ever get out of a place of stock character tropes and plot points seen before in more interesting stories. The screenplay, co-written by Mason, just kind of has a lot of things happening, none of the very interesting. The idea, from the very beginning, that anyone would want to watch a pandemic horror movie about COVID is fundamentally flawed, and his storytelling showcases a lack of respect for the current situation of the country, where we are right now, where we were just months ago, and where we may be in a year. I’m not sure what the plan was for this narrative, for these characters, and for this movie, but it feels like this respectable cast owed a favor to a member of the production staff.

Even from a technical perspective, nothing in the film is very engaging. The cinematography is simple (the production crew needs a lesson in lighting), the editing boring, and the sound design rather dull. I could get past all of this in the grand scheme of things (filmmaking with a small crew and social distance guidelines) if the story wasn’t just so dull. As it comes down to it, the technical aspects of the film are the least of their problems. Hell, I’m not even sure what Songbird means as a title. Did I miss something?

Songbird is a bad movie on every level. There’s nothing that works here, from the inception of the story to the completion of the final product. Beyond that, this is just a tone-deaf piece of cinema that is clearly missing the mark in every way. This is a pandemic horror-thriller that should stay quarantined from viewers. I wouldn’t be so mad if this film didn’t try to make a mockery of the pandemic we’re currently in, but that’s exactly what it does. Seriously, this is one of the worst movies ever made. Ever.

1/5
-Kyle A. Goethe

December 10, 2020 1

[Oscar Madness Monday] A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Cast: Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee, Adrienne Corri, Miriam Karlin

Screenplay: Stanley Kubrick

136 mins. Rated R.

Academy Award Nominee: Best Picture
Academy Award Nominee: Best Director
Academy Award Nominee: Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium
Academy Award Nominee: Best Film Editing

IMDb Top 250: #103 (as of 9/30/2020)

I remember where I was when I first watched A Clockwork Orange. I was a teenager, jammed into my bedroom back home with two buddies. We had rented the DVD (my local video store had a 5-5-5 deal, 5 Movies, 5 Days, 5 Bucks) along with Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, and we planned for a midnight double-feature. I was eating a 3-foot gummy snake that would give me a rough stomach ache the next morning. As we settled in for A Clockwork Orange (my memory is a little hazy on this, but I believe we chose Clockwork first), I didn’t know what to expect. Both films were ones I knew little to nothing about, and that’s usually the way I like it. No research, just experience. I recently looked back on A Clockwork Orange, it being a film I haven’t watched in years, and I elected to dive back in, see if my initial thoughts on the film have changed and what, if anything, I was able to pull from it this time around.

A Clockwork Orange is the story of Alex (Malcolm McDowell, Star Trek: Generations, Bombshell), a deviant youth who spends his nights robbing, assaulting, harassing, and of course, drinking some delicious milk at the milk bars. Alex and his droogs are fans of all sorts of malicious mayhem, and Alex being the leader, he gets to have the most fun with displaying the “artistry” of his violent psyche. When he is caught by police, though, Alex is sent to prison for one of his more horrific deeds. There, he is given the opportunity for a strange and unorthodox method of treatment, said to fix his criminal ways, called the Ludovico technique. This possible treatment method could get Alex out of prison years ahead of schedule, so he elects to try it. Now, Alex has become a pawn in the rehabilitation process, one that may fundamentally alter his perception forever.

I still remember watching this film for the first time. I was in awe. As I took the occasional bite of the 3-foot gummy snake, I was entrance with what I was seeing. Certainly, at this point of my youth, I’d never seen anything like A Clockwork Orange. Even now, years later, I’m still not sure I’ve seen anything similar. After that viewing, it had become clear that this was my favorite Stanley Kubrick (2001: A Space Odyssey, Barry Lyndon) film, as it was the only one I didn’t initially hate (I had this rhythm with Kubrick where I hated his films on first watch only to rediscover them later and love them). Looking back on it now, I cannot say that it is still my favorite Kubrick film, but it feels the most unhinged and wild of his pictures, one that imprints itself onto the mind and stays there.

Malcolm McDowell’s take on Alex is so memorably menacing. It’s neither the way he speaks nor the horrible deeds he commits. Instead, it’s the way he derives joy from these acts, the way he views them. He is our narrator so we spend the film in his head, and we see that this violence, this debauchery, is merely his art, much in the way that music was Ludwig van Beethoven’s. He gets glee from the pain and mistreatment of others, singing Gene Kelly musical numbers while he inflicts physical harm on his victims. He’s the kind of young man who would enjoy kicking a puppy. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, he’s not a likable protagonist, but he is an interesting one, and I was fascinated in what would happen to him, how he would be changed by his arrest, incarceration, and “treatment.”

The film has a perfect three-act structure, one aided by intelligent and thoughtful filming techniques. Each of the three acts is easily separated from the others by unique choices in framing, lighting, and sound. Early on, there’s a menace to the filming techniques, but when we arrive in the prison with Alex, we get a colder, less-colorful world, and then there’s what comes after, something I’ll avoid getting into as you’ll want to see it for yourself.

There are themes abound in Clockwork, and so many of them resonated with me back then, in the basement, on a cheap projector, with two late-night friends, and they resonate all the more with me now. The way Kubrick showcases behavior conditioning and criminal reform is disturbing, and I think it’s great that Kubrick never feels like he is shoving his opinions down our throats here. In fact, he sort of feels like a curious child asking questions and letting us formulate our answers. I also really like the priest questioning Alex’s choice and free will in choosing to do good. He asks whether we’re really good if we’re conditioned to be afraid of being bad and how that loss of free will loses humanity as well. This question has been asked many times before, but not in this way, and rarely this effectively.

One wonders how A Clockwork Orange would have looked if made with Mick Jagger and The Rolling Stones as the droogs (which is how it originally would have been when Jagger owned the rights to the novel), but what we have is astounding nonetheless. It’s neither an easy film to watch but it is a wholly effective experience unlike any other. That’s what many of us search for in film, the unique experience, and Clockwork gives that in abundance. If you’re looking for a messed-up movie for your messed-up mind, give A Clockwork Orange a try.

4.5/5

-Kyle A. Goethe

For my review of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, click here.

December 7, 2020 1