WBCA Podcasts

Words On Film

Today on "Words On Film", Dan Burke reviews "Megalopolis", "The Wild Robot", "The Forge", "Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story", and "Boys Go to Jupiter". Mr. Burke also runs down the movies subject to being released into theaters for the week of September 30th - October 4th, 2024.

Broadcast on:: 30 Sep 2024
Audio Format:: other

For this show, I have two brand new movies to review for you. The other three movies have been released either over the last couple of weeks or have been making the film festival circuit. As a matter of fact, two of them are films that I saw at the Nashville Film Festival that concluded earlier last week. It ran this year from September 19th to September 25th. And man, I wish it had lasted longer, but what can you do? I feel that way about a lot of film festivals. But in any event, I've got two brand new movies to review for you. I will review the one that is probably the most talked about this week. The first movie I'm going to be reviewing for you is Megalopolis. This is a film that will probably be the last directorial effort of Francis Ford Coppola because he is 85 years old and he hasn't actually retired. He just over the last, I would say 27 years has directed films that not a lot of people have seen, including but not limited to youth without youth, tetra, twist, distant vision and betwixt now and sunrise. If you haven't heard of any of these films, you're not alone. Honestly, he hasn't directed a big film since the Rainmaker in 1997, the film that Matt Damon starred in before Goodwill Hunting and was based on a book by the same name written by John Grisham. And Francis Ford Coppola has directed this film in addition to also writing the screenplay himself. And if you really look back to a lot of Francis Ford Coppola's greatest films, you will notice that they're either based on previous material or Francis Ford Coppola wrote the screenplay along with somebody else, like Mario Puso, for example, with whom he wrote the screen plays to the Godfather, the Godfather Part II, the Godfather Part III, and also the Cotton Club. But Francis Ford Coppola in terms of writing and directing is all in his own on this one. And does that make a difference? Well, I'm about to tell you. So Megalopolis takes place sometime in the 21st century, presumably a couple of decades from now where there is a city by the name of New Rome, which is either a new metropolis on its own, or it's a new name for New York City. But the city of New Rome is the main conflict between Caesar Catalina, who is a brilliant artist and architect who is in favor of a utopian future, and the greedy mayor, Franklin Cicero. Between them is Julius Cicero, her loyalty divided between her father and her beloved. And when they use the word "beloved" in a description like this, you can automatically tell that is quite ostentatious. So the ambitious artist and architect Caesar Catalina is played here by Adam Driver, great casting choice there. The mayor of New Rome, Mayor Cicero is played by Giancarlo Esposito, another great casting choice, and some of the other casting choices here feel kind of strange. But the part of Julia here is played by British actress Natalie Immanuel, and she certainly is an excellent actress, and has great chemistry in this movie between her and Adam Driver. That's probably one of the driving points behind this. But there are a lot of other big name actors in this film who surprisingly have small roles. They've either worked with Francis Ford Coppola before, or they've been willing to take a smaller role and presumably a pay cut in order to work with Francis Ford Coppola again. Not that I blame them entirely. For example, Lawrence Fishburn is in this film as Adam Driver's character's personal assistant and driver by the name of Fundy Romaine. And he is probably best suited in this film for playing the narrator, because Lawrence Fishburn has a great narration voice, but here in the film he largely just kind of doesn't do very much and doesn't save very much, which makes me kind of wonder, anybody else could have played this role besides Lawrence Fishburn. So why did Lawrence Fishburn, who is an Academy Award-nominated actor, take on a role this small? I don't exactly know. But Lawrence Fishburn did make his big screen debut in 1979 in another Francis Ford Coppola film, Apocalypse Now. Also taking some surprisingly small roles in this film include John Voight, who plays in a wrist crap with the name of Hamilton Crassus III, Talia Shire, who is Francis Ford Coppola's sister, who plays the mother of Adam Driver's character, and Jason Schwartzman, who is also Francis Ford Coppola's nephew, who plays one of the mayor's assistants. And there's also another part here played by Dustin Hoffman, who plays a fixer for Mayor Cicero, and Dustin Hoffman doesn't have that big a role either. I think the thing for this film was that a lot of people, a lot of actors who signed on to do this film, presumed that this was going to be Francis Ford Coppola's last movie, which it just might be, and of course they signed on to it automatically. Well it is certainly an ambitious film, and the set design here is amazing. The acting, I gotta say, is not bad, but a lot of times it's kind of bounces back and forth between a Greek tragedy and also just flat out campiness, but sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between the two of them. There are a lot of subplots here, there are a lot of character developments that largely don't really have any big consequence when it comes to the story here. And there are subplots here that seem to come out of nowhere, and at the end of the movie it doesn't seem like these subplots tie into a grand story here. And that's really unfortunate. And I do think that if Francis Ford Coppola had collaborated on this screenplay with somebody else, with anybody else, I think the story wouldn't have been lost in the great cast as well as the special effects and the amazing set design that this film ultimately has. It certainly is a very ambitious film, and it calls itself not just Megalopolis, but the official name for it is the full name of the movie is Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis of Fable. I'm not sure exactly why I decided to call itself a Fable, or why I couldn't just call itself Megalopolis, because that altogether is a very grandiose name that during my last week's segment of What's Coming Up Next, I kept accidentally calling Megalopolis. But as I was watching the film, I began to think, is this a great film where there is Method in the Madness, or is Francis Ford Coppola just playing a big trick on us and the Emperor really just has no clothes? I couldn't exactly tell, but by the end I felt profoundly disappointed by how the story was going, the certain plot threads that seemed to either fix themselves, or had very little explanation as to how they were fixed, or were just altogether not tied up in the end. It was, Megalopolis is a very strange film, and I do think, kind of typical of Francis Ford Coppola, there is a director's cut out there that is probably much better than the film that I see right here. You can definitely see a lot of these actors really trying their best, but when all is said and done, a lot of these characters that the actors play aren't particularly well developed, and they also have certain powers that aren't really capitalized upon as the movie progresses. For example, Adam Driver's character is not just an artist and an architect, and an ambitious one at that, but he also is able to pause time. But the times that he pauses time seem very inconsequential, and it also is one of those plot threads that doesn't really go anywhere. Why he decides to pause time here and there, I don't exactly know, he just seems to do it for his own benefit, or so it seems that Francis Ford Coppola has written the character for him to do. So Megalopolis is a disappointment in terms of its storytelling as well as its character development. I do credit it for being an ambitious film, and if this is the film that Francis Ford Coppola goes out on, well, all the power to him. But as for me, Megalopolis or Megalopolis Fable gets my rating of a low checkout. I wouldn't go as far as to giving it a strikeout, because while there is madness in this film, I do see some method to it, and there is a good story here about an ambitious architect as well as who probably could be a corrupt mayor trying to stop him from creating Megalopolis out of or separate from New Rome. That's a good story right there. I did like the love story between Adam Driver's character and Natalie Emmanuel's character, but it did seem like some other characters here weren't exactly needed, like Shia LaBeouf's character, and you would anticipate that Shia LaBeouf would be a very eccentric character, which he most certainly is. But again, the subplots involving his character don't really go anywhere. But knowing Francis Ford Coppola like I do, there probably is a longer, i.e. close to three-hour director's cut that's out there that's probably going to come out a little while later. As it stands right now, the cut of Megalopolis is ambitious but overall very bloated. [Music], and I'm going to show you how to make a video of this. [Music] Welcome back to Words on Film, the spoken word showed dedicated to moving pictures. I am your host and movie critic Dan Burke. The next movie I'm going to be reviewing for you is The Wild Robot, and this is from DreamWorks in collaboration with Universal, and it is not their first animated film in a while, but it's their first excellent animated film, probably since Puss in Boots, The Last Wish. And The Wild Robot, when a lot of people see it for the first time, will probably inevitably be compared to Wally, because this is about an intelligent robot who lands on Earth where she doesn't quite belong, but is intelligent enough to survive the terrain. Very similar to Wally, and Wally, I think for any animated film, is a very tough act to follow if you're going to make an animated film about robots, because not only is Wally considered a great Disney Pixar film, it's also considered a great movie in and of itself. In fact, it is the only Disney film, not just the only animated Disney film, it's the only Disney film so far to have been released on the Criterion Collection. That's how great Wally is, so The Wild Robot is not nearly as great as Wally, and I'm not just saying that because the comparisons between the two movies are practically inevitable, I'm saying that also based on its story structure as well. And The Wild Robot, unlike Wally, is actually based on a book that was written by Peter Brown back in 2016, and it was a bestseller, it put Peter Brown on the New York Times best seller list, but The Wild Robot does have a lot of things going for it. As a matter of fact, as I was watching the film, while it is not perfect, I refused to give this movie a low or lower rating based on its comparisons to Wally, because honestly, it's not a rip off of Wally. The robot in this scenario is not a robot that's sent down from outer space, it's actually an intelligent robot that was made for human consumption, and the robot has a personality very similar to Siri or Alexa, but with a voice of Lupita Nyong'o, who honestly, if Lupita Nyong'o hadn't gone to the Yale School of Drama and hadn't become a household name like she ultimately did after being in the movie 12 Years of Slave, she probably would have made a really great living being the voice of one of those AI systems. But, in this movie, after a shipwreck, an intelligent robot called 'Roz' is stranded on an uninhabited island, and by uninhabited what I mean is, it is not inhabited by humans. And to survive the harsh environment, 'Roz' bonds with the island's animals, particularly an outcast fox who is voiced by Pedro Pascal, and cares for an orphaned baby goose, who is played at least in teenage or adult form by Kit Connor. And when 'Roz' begins to raise this baby goose by herself, with some assistance from her sly fox companion, she finds that she's not able to raise the goose the way that probably this goose should have been raised. So for example, the goose that she raises has a hard time swimming, and 'Roz' can't really help with that, because robots can't exactly swim, but most especially, robots can't fly either. So while 'Roz' is raising this baby goose, she is also trying to find her way in the world, and she's flirting with the idea of ultimately calling tech support of the company who created her and being sent back to the lab in order to be where she ultimately belongs. So I liked those plot elements of the film, and interestingly enough, with Pedro Pascal here being the voice of the sly fox by the name of 'Fink', I couldn't actually recognize Pedro Pascal's voice, because Pedro Pascal has a Spanish accent, and here he puts on an American accent and kind of sounds like Jason Bateman, which almost brings me back to another celebrated Disney film where Jason Bateman not only provided the voice, but also provided the voice of a fox, Zootopia. And the scenes between Lupita Nyong'o, Pedro Pascal, and Kit Connor are very poignant, and they work together very well. And there are some other great voices in this film as well. There's Bill Nahi, who plays the voice of a seasoned goose by the name of Longneck, who ultimately serves as a mentor to the baby goose Bright Bill, the one that Rosie is trying to raise. There's also Stephanie Shoe, who like Lupita Nyong'o, if she hadn't become a household name like Stephanie Shoe almost is almost, not as much as Lupita Nyong'o. She probably would have made a great living as a voice over actress, not to mention being the voice of an automated system. But here she plays the voice of Vantra, who's kind of like Hal in the sense that she is automated, but also to the eyes of humans does some things that are evil, but she doesn't see them as evil because she is programmed to be arguably a sociopath. And there are some other characters here who are voiced by Ving Rames, Mark Hamill, Catherine O'Hara, and some other well-known actors, not to mention ones who have done pretty well with voice acting as well, not to mention they have also done voices for other Disney films. So the Wild Robot has a lot going for it. Its animation is beautiful, as a matter of fact, I like the fact that the animation on the mechanical characters, particularly Ros, is very finite, but the animation on the other natural elements, like the uninhabited forest, and even some of the creatures that inhabit this deserted island, are almost kind of like watercolors. A bit more detailed than watercolors are, but almost like something Bob Ross would have been fond of painting, for example, and the two of them work together really well. And the Wild Robot certainly has some plot elements I wasn't expecting, as well as some elements with which I was largely familiar, but overall I liked the Wild Robot, and I give the Wild Robot my rating of a knockout, because it is certainly one of the stronger films that, the stronger animated films that DreamWorks has put out recently. Again, they surprised me very much back last Christmas with Puss and Boots the Last Wish. I didn't expect that movie to be as great as it was, particularly because the last three three films before that in the Shrek universe were largely subpar. The animation was good, but the stories weren't quite as strong as the first two Shrek films. But the Wild Robot is taking some chances here, albeit they did create a movie that's based on previously written material, but they shouldn't be faulted for that. Instead, I really sympathized with Lupita Nyong'o's character, even though she is mechanical, and I think that Lupita Nyong'o not only provided a realistic voice of what the AI for such a robot would sound like, but she also had some poignance in her performance as well, especially when she begins to be programmed to have morals, particularly where she's raising this baby goose by the name of Bright Bill. And I think overall the Wild Robot works really well in a lot of ways, and the sum of this film is definitely greater... excuse me, the film is definitely greater than the sum of its parts. [Music] Welcome back to Words on Film, the spoken word showed dedicated to moving pictures. I am your host and movie critic Dan Burke. The next movie I'm going to be reviewing for you is The Forge. This is a faith-based film that is directed by Alex Kendrick, who also wrote the story in the screenplay along with his brother, Steven Kendrick. And this is the second film that I've seen from them so far. They've made a name for themselves, or rather, Alex Kendrick has made a name for himself directing faith-based films over the last 20 plus years. He started with the movie Flywheel and then directed other films like Facing the Giants, Fireproof, Courageous, and the first movie that I saw from him, War Room, back in 2015. And War Room is a film that debuted at number one at the box office. And I was doing my show actually when this movie came out its first week. And not only did I not anticipate that this film, War Room was going to reach number one at the box office, I had never even heard of it. So I was all the more surprised when it was number one at the box office. But I saw it the next week and then later gave it a review. But War Room is considered what's called a sleeper hit. And what that is for those of you who don't know is a piece of art, particularly a movie in this case, that comes out with very little fanfare, very little advertisement. But despite that, ends up making a dent at the box office and a lot of people end up seeing it. And War Room was not a great film and I certainly had some problems with its narrative. But I did give it my rating of a check out because there was a lot more good to that movie I thought than bad. And the forge, in addition to being Alex Kendrick's next film after the movie Overcomer, which came out in 2019, and which I didn't actually get to see, the forge is actually a spinoff of War Room because the characters, the main characters in this film are actually related to the ones in War Room. And the characters from War Room actually make appearances in this film as well. So the forge is a movie about an unambitious high school graduate by the name of Isaiah Wright, who's played by Aspen Kennedy. Without any plans for the future, Isaiah receives a push to start making better life decisions. And his push comes when he gets a job with a man by the name of Joshua Moore, who runs a fitness center, and Joshua Moore is played by Cameron Arnett. And initially, Isaiah Wright is just trying to get a job to get his single mother off his back. And his mother in this film is played by Priscilla Shire, who was the star of the movie War Room. And apparently Priscilla Shire's character here is sisters with the character she played in War Room. So she plays two different people in this film, which in some instances, I guess it really depends on the movie. But sometimes when one person plays two people like twins, for example, it feels like a cheap gimmick. But in this film, even though it wasn't entirely necessary for this to be in the same cinematic universe as War Room, it kind of worked for some reason. And I actually did like the idea of this young man who doesn't have plans for a career or for college and spends a lot of his time playing basketball with his friends or playing video games in his room until the long hours of the night. I liked the fact that he establishes a mentorship with this guy who started out running his own business and becomes a vital member of his organization as well. But the forged part of this film actually comes from another organization that this character, Joshua Moore, starts that he encourages young Isaiah to join. And it's a fellowship of men who talk about their lives, but also talk about how God and how Jesus is an important part of their lives. It is a faith-based film, and people who are not expecting this to be a faith-based film and probably aren't very strong Christians themselves, this part may rub them the wrong way. But I actually liked that part of the film. I was anticipating this film being a faith-based film, and I don't have any problem with people talking about God, talking about Jesus, and making their lives better as a result of joining a close-knit community. That's great. I think that was probably one of the biggest strengths of this film, and it was delightful to see this kid Isaiah improve in a lot of areas of his life. I don't exactly buy the fact that his mother, his single mother is played by Priscilla Shirer, and that's not any comment on Priscilla Shire's acting. Her acting is actually very good. I don't exactly buy Priscilla Shirer being a single mother, judging from how attractive she is, and of course, I am getting a little bit off topic here, but yes, Priscilla Shirer is a very attractive woman. I'm just going to say that. I also acknowledge that she is married, and she's been married for 25 years, and I wish her the best in her marriage. I definitely don't want her to leave her husband, but just saying for the record she is most certainly attractive. I don't know if it's exactly unrealistic for a woman who is attractive as her to be a single mother, but I guess in this day and age you can never tell, plus being attractive is not an infidelity-proof vest, that's for sure. But the forge definitely had me at the narrative, where it lost me, though, was the same place where it lost me in War Room. There's always this scene at the very end, and this may be typical of Alex and Stephen Kendrick films, I don't know for sure, but there's a part of the end where the actor who plays Joshua Moore, Cameron Arnett, says to his members of the forge, not just that they remain a tight-knit community, but also that they have to go out into the world and recruit other men to create forges of their own. And that's where they start showing stock footage of football coaches and politicians and even showing some exterior shots of the White House. That taking over the world and if you're not with us, you're against us mentality is really where the film lost me. This film didn't need to have that kind of message and end like a public service announcement or an after-school special. You know, if people don't believe in Jesus but they still get along very well in their lives, all the power to them. But this movie seems to imply by that last scene where they're showing that montage of stock footage that you could probably find on YouTube that this is the only way to live your life. And that's where a lot of faith-based films lose me because if a movie is, if a faith-based film is telling a story about somebody who's lost in his life, doesn't quite know what to do and finds meaning in his life through believing in God and believing that Jesus will help him through the tough times, I am all in favor of that. But when it becomes this kind of message like Jesus is the only way you can live your life or believing in him is the only way you can get through such a rut. That's where it loses me because Jesus is not the only way believing in God is not the only way and there are other deities in whom you can believe, not to mention being part of other close-knit communities that aren't necessarily religious. But this movie implying that joining this kind of group and also letting other people know how they can be saved, that sounds less Christian and more specifically Mormon. And I don't think that Jesus, if he came back to life again, would approve of this kind of message. He would most certainly approve of believing in God and he would also most certainly approve of having direction in life, but telling everyone else how to live their life, no, Jesus wouldn't be in favor of that. But I think aside from that plot thread of the forge that happens at the very end, I like the film overall and the forge gets my rating of a check out. Again, the forge is a faith-based film. It's not for everyone, that's most certainly true, but the end scene where they imply that it has to be for everyone, I don't like that, I really don't. But I think the forge did a lot more right than it did wrong, but when it really tied up everything by becoming ultimately a public service announcement or an after-school special, that's what prevented it from being great. So if it had just cut the pretense out, I think it would have been a much stronger film. [Music], and I think it's a great thing. [Music], and I think it's a great thing. [Music], and I think it's a great thing. [Music] Welcome back to Words on Film, the spoken word showed dedicated to moving pictures. I am your host and movie critic Dan Burke. The next movie I'm going to be reviewing for you is Any Other Way, The Jackie Shane Story. This is one of the films that I saw at the Nashville Film Festival this year, and as you might expect from a film festival in Nashville, this is not just a documentary, it's also a music-based documentary. But unlike other documentaries that were at the Nashville Film Festival, this one was not only not made in Nashville, it was also not even made in the United States. One of the directors of the film Michael Mabbitt is actually a native of Toronto, and he was actually at the screening to talk about the film, and his Canadian accent was very obvious when he was talking a boot how the film was made, if you know what I mean. But who is Jackie Shane? Well, Jackie Shane was a singer in the 1960s who was one of music's pioneering black trans performers, and on the edge of stardom, why did she disappear? Any other way, the Jackie Shane story hands the mic over, revealing her extraordinary journey in her own unmistakable voice. And what's amazing about this is that Jackie Shane did come to prominence in the 1960s. She was born in, actually, Nashville, Tennessee, which is probably one of the big reasons why her documentary premiered at the Nashville Film Festival. And she was born here on May 15, 1940, and she was moving around a lot as a young adult. And she ultimately settled in Toronto in the province of Ontario in Canada in the 1960s. And she became a prominent singer in the local music scene in Toronto. In fact, she became so prominent that at one point the Ed Sullivan show contacted her to be on the program. And for those of you who don't know this, if you were any kind of performer, especially if you were a musical performer, and you were invited on the Ed Sullivan show, that was a big deal. But unfortunately, the producers of the Ed Sullivan show told Jackie Shane that she had to wear her hair a certain way and also not wear the gender neutral clothes that she usually did on stage. And Jackie Shane ultimately turned the Ed Sullivan show down. That may have been consequential to Jackie Shane's becoming a big star like she ultimately was. But there is enough music in this film by Jackie Shane, including the song Any Other Way, which is an amazing song. It's one of those songs that you know it's from over 50 years ago, but the moment you hear it, you think to yourself, or at least I thought to myself, where has the song been all my life? It's amazing. But the reason a lot of Americans probably haven't heard of the song Any Other Way, as well as other songs in Jackie Shane's repertoire was because it was a regional top 10 hit in Toronto in 1963, and a modest national chart hit across Canada in 1967, peaking at number 68. In the United States, it didn't go anywhere. But this movie is pretty amazing, and not only did Michael Mabbatt use a lot of archival footage and some photographs of Jackie Shane's life, he also was able to get Jackie Shane's first-person perspective of her life, and he took the recordings from phone conversations with her and incorporated them into this film. And this movie probably wouldn't have worked as well without Jackie Shane telling her side of the story. In addition to that, a lot of scenes of Jackie Shane speaking on the phone, as well as performing in nightclubs where there aren't any direct archive footage, is actually brought to you in this movie with this amazing rotoscope animation that reminded me both of watercolors, as well as the Beastie Boys' music video "Shadrock" from 1989. It is a pretty amazing animated video, and the Beastie Boys' song "Shadrock" is probably one of my favorite songs by them, and it's also from one of my favorite albums, not only by the Beastie Boys, but my favorite albums period, Paul's Boutique, which was their sophomore effort. But I'm getting a little off topic with the Beastie Boys here, but as this documentary demonstrates, Jackie Shane had an amazing story to tell about how she could have changed aspects of herself, not just the fact that she was a trans performer or trans person, and by that I mean transsexual, not transvestite. But she did have transvestite qualities as well as she became a woman and still dressed in men's clothing, but it worked for her persona, but it didn't exactly work for the mainstream. But thanks to documentaries like this, Jackie Shane's chapter, even though, unfortunately, Jackie Shane died in her native Tennessee in early 2019, can still be told. Which is why I give any other way the Jackie Shane story my rating of a knockout. It is a fantastic documentary, let alone a fantastic music documentary, and I hope that the Academy Awards take notice. But then again, it's one of those things where whenever I see what I think is an amazing documentary, sometimes it's nominated for an Oscar for best documentary feature, sometimes it isn't. And I'm not saying that the Academy is necessarily wrong if they don't nominate this, but they should most certainly pay attention to this film. And I do hope that director's Michael Mabbitt and Lucas Rosenberg Lee at least submit this to the Academy, and hopefully the Academy makes good decisions in terms of what documentaries it puts out there. But any other way the Jackie Shane story is most certainly a contender. Welcome back to Words on Film, the spoken words show dedicated to moving pictures. I am your host and movie critic Dan Burke. The next movie I'm going to be reviewing for you is an animated film that is also very strange and another film that I saw at this year's Nashville Film Festival. The movie is called Boys Go to Jupiter, and it is directed by Julian Glander. And this film is very crudely animated. It certainly has a distinctive colorful 3D animated style. And Julian Glander himself has actually done cartoons for the New Yorker, and he's also programmed video games, but this is his first feature film. And it is certainly a movie that is of an acquired taste. I will definitely give it credit for being an ambitious film to a certain extent, and as crude animation I didn't actually mind. The animation in this film actually reminded me both of claymation and also of the characters in the Kroger commercials. They all have round heads, they have that kind of stop motion animated feel. Even though this movie is CGI, I'm not entirely sure that it is, but it's set in the liminal period between Christmas and New Year's, and the story follows the adventures of a guy by the name of Billy 5000, who is a teenager who's voiced by Jack Corbett. And he works, he makes a living actually as a gig worker for a grub hub like company. Basically he gets food orders and he delivers them, he picks them up and delivers them on a hoverboard. He works with a rise and grind mindset, and his quest is made is to make $5,000, but that quest is derailed by the appearance of a gelatinous little dude from outer space. And this gelatinous little dude looks kind of like a donut, and is probably affectionately, but maybe even because there aren't a ton of other names, and maybe Billy 5000 isn't all that creative, Billy 5000 calls this gelatinous creature donut. And using the power of lo-fi musical numbers and deadpan comedy, Billy must save donut and his family from the evil schemes of the Dolphin Grove's juice company. And you would think to yourself, why would a juice company be evil? But I guess in this case, in Florida, juice is a very big business, after all, what kind of fruit do you think of when you think of Florida? I don't think that this juice company is based on any real juice company like Tropicana, for example, but it's a movie that has a lot of deadpan humor very similar to Adult Swim. And if Adult Swim on Cartoon Network, if Adult Swim is still around, is able to show this film, it wouldn't seem out of place alongside Tim and Eric Awesome show Great Job or Aquatine Hunger Force. It most certainly has that kind of deadpan humor to it. Some of it made me laugh, others kind of had me scratching my head, but I kind of enjoyed this film. I think that it wasn't exactly hilarious, but it does actually have some other voice talent here that you might recognize. For example, the juice company in this movie is run by somebody by the name of Dr. Dolphin, who's voiced by a very recognizable voice, Janine Garafolo, probably the most recognizable voice in this movie. There's also another recognizable voice by the name of Ms. Sharon, who is voiced by Sarah Sherman of Saturday Night Live. There's a friend of Billy 5000, whose name is Beatbox. She's voiced by Elsie Fisher, and there are other characters as well. The characters are weird, the scenario is weird, a lot of times the pacing of Boys Go to Jupiter is sluggish, but I guess I kind of liked it, and I appreciated the film for what it was. It certainly does not measure up to some other more ambitious and bigger budgeted animated films that have come out this year, like Inside Out 2 or The Wild Robot. But it is a serviceable film, and I do have the feeling that Boys Go to Jupiter might actually go on to become a cult classic, which is why I give Boys Go to Jupiter my rating of a check out. It's not a film that I loved, but I did appreciate its originality, I did appreciate its going for gold in terms of its deadpan humor, so it seemed to try really hard by not seeming to try it all, but I did think it had some cute moments to it. I just wouldn't have it be a movie that I would ultimately see again, but I do see this movie as being a cult favorite years from now. [music] Welcome back to Words on Film, the spoken word show dedicated to moving pictures. I am your host and movie critic Dan Burke, and now that I've reviewed all the movies that I have to review for this show, it's now time for me to get into my final segment which is What's Coming Up Next. This is a spoken word preview of movies that are subject to being released in theaters for the week of September 30th through October 4th, 2024, and my god, it is hard to believe that 2024 is 3/4 of the way over, or at least it will be in a couple of days as of the date that I am recording this podcast, but it really is amazing we've come this far in the year, and I hope, I really, really hope that this year ends well, but I'm approaching actually my five year anniversary with Radio Free Nashville with recording my show from their studios, so that's another story for another time, maybe I'll get more sentimental come January, but let's just focus on the movies that are coming out this coming week. On October 2nd, 2024, there is a movie that is subject to being released in theaters and it's called Food and Country, and Food and Country is about a trailblazing food writer by the name of Ruth Raishill, hopefully I pronounced that last name correctly, who examines the precarious state of America's food system. That is all the description is telling me, but chances are, this is a documentary like Food Inc, for example. Food Inc, by the way, is a documentary that I've heard of, but I haven't actually seen, and I actually am kind of afraid to see it, because I don't want to be disgusted by what I eat, and I suppose there's that whole idea of ignorance being bliss, and if taking ignorance over bliss, I'll definitely take ignorance over knowledge, I'd most certainly take knowledge over bliss, that's what I meant to say. But Food and Country looks like an interesting documentary, but because it's subject to be released in theaters on October 2nd, I don't know if this movie is going to be coming to a theater near me. If it is, and I'll see it, I'll let you know what I think on a future show. Another movie that is subject to be released in theaters, this time on October 3rd, is a movie that's called The Legend of Johnny Jones. This movie is set in the housing projects of New Jersey, where a young man who has known only poverty and abuse all his life suffers a mental breakdown and embarks at a killing spree unlike any other in history. This movie is described as an action horror thriller, but is not based on a true story, but I'm interested to see how this film is, but judging that it's coming out on October 3rd, which is a Thursday this year, chances are I might not see this, but the movie stars Dylan Playfair, Hector David, Jr., Emily Rose Hernandez, and Raven Armando Astone. None of these actors are those with whom I'm familiar. But if this movie comes out in a theater near me, I will see it and I'll let you know what I think on a future show. On October 4th, 2024, that's where the big movies come out, and one of the biggest movies, if not the biggest movie of this coming weekend, is Joker, Folly Adoo, and that's in French. I don't exactly know what Folly Adoo means, I'll look it up definitely before reviewing this film, but this movie is bringing us back to Arthur Fleck, who is the character not only portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix, but the character for which Joaquin Phoenix won an Academy Award back in 2020 before the world went completely to hell. But Arthur Fleck in this film is institutionalized at Arkham, awaiting trial for his crimes as Joker, and while struggling with his dual identity, Arthur not only stumbles upon true love, but also finds the music that's always been inside him. So this movie, Joker, Folly Adoo, is not only a crime drama, as well as arguably a comic book film that is fortunately outside of the DCEU because the DCEU has largely sucked, but it is also a jukebox musical. So this movie is probably subverting a lot of people's expectations even more than the original Joker film from 2019, which, like this film, was directed by Todd Phillips, is doing. And interestingly enough, Joaquin Phoenix and Zazie Beets come back to reprise their roles, and Lady Gaga is playing the role of Lee Quinsell, who is the psychiatrist who ultimately becomes Harley Quinn. And Lady Gaga has a very tough act to follow playing Harley Quinn after Margot Robbie, and the three films in which Margot Robbie played Harley Quinn range from excellent in terms of the Suicide Squad to not particularly great, like Suicide Squad. And no, I didn't make any mistake when I said that. But Lady Gaga here is a performer who most certainly has surprised us, most especially in her remake of A Star Is Born, where she also had a very tough act to follow following Judy Garland and Barbara Streisand. But here I'm interested to see how she's going to do as Harley Quinn. And I'm not going to write this film off based on the fact that Margot Robbie is not reprising her role as Harley Quinn, but she was so good and she was a lot better than the films in which she acted as Harley Quinn. So some of the other actors in this film whose names you might find familiar include Katherine Keener, Ken Lung, Brendan Gleeson, Harry Lottie, Steve Coogan, Bill Smitrovich, and others. So Joker "Falia Do" is a movie that I will see, and I'll let you know what I think on a future show, presumably on next week's show. Another film that's coming out on October 4th, or is subject to come out on October 4th, is a movie that's called A Different Man. And this is a movie about a man by the name of Edward, who, after undergoing facial reconstructive surgery, becomes fixated on an actor in a stage production based on his former life. A different man in this film is played by Sebastian Stan, who plays the character of Edward, I should say, and the other actors in this film include Renate Reinswe, Adam Pearson, who actually did have facial reconstructive surgery, and Miles Jackson, amongst other people. This is a movie that certainly looks very dark. It could ultimately be darker than Joker "Falia Do." I don't exactly know, but it's taking on a very heavy and hot topic here, and it's a movie that I will see, and I'll let you know what I think on a future show, but I don't necessarily know if I'm going to be necessarily seeing it on next week's show for you. I have a lot of movies on which to cap chop. I will let you know what I think on next week's show, regardless. That just about does it for this episode of Words on Film. Words on Film is the spoken word show dedicated to moving pictures, and I am your host of movie critic Dan Burke, reminding you that the views and opinions expressed on Words on Film about movies or other topics are solely those of your host of movie critic Dan Burke. They do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of any employees or volunteers who are working at WBCA or the station as a whole. Until I watch a whole bunch of brand new movies, this is Dan Burke saying I'll see you at the movies. (upbeat music)