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Can Sandra Bullock and company pull off 'Ocean's 8'?Bill Goodykoontz USA TODAY NETWORK
Published 1:16 p.m. UTC Jun 6, 2018
There is much to admire about “Ocean’s 8,” another take on the star-studded heist franchise, this time with a team made up of women.
Unfortunately most of what's admirable is off-screen. Of course it’s great to see so many terrific actresses working together; such a thing is long overdue. What’s not so great is the story itself, co-written by director Gary Ross and Olivia Milch.
And could someone please wake up Sandra Bullock? The movie’s almost over.
OK, that’s a bit much. But Bullock’s attempt, as heist leader Debbie Ocean, to give a measured performance as a criminal genius who can’t be shaken no matter what obstacles get in her way is so flat it barely registers.
Not that there are that many obstacles. Like the original, Frank Sinatra-led “Ocean’s 11” and the George Clooney reboots, there’s a big score to be had that requires layers of complex planning.
Too much planning, evidently. Every eventuality is so well-considered and planned for that the film has little tension or conflict. Too often it plays like a training video on how to commit the perfect crime instead of a story in which characters overcome challenges.
The film begins with Debbie Ocean getting out of prison, where she’s served five years. Her brother, Danny (Clooney's character), isn’t around, but that doesn’t matter. From nearly the second she’s released, Debbie is scheming, having spent half a decade working on the perfect crime. And it’s a big one — she wants to steal a necklace so valuable it hasn’t been seen in public for decades, and she wants to snatch it at the Met Gala, the snootier-than-though photo op for the super rich and famous.
But it will take a team. That means calling in old friend Lou (Cate Blanchett), who is hesitant to help, for about 30 seconds. That, of course, is just the start. They also recruit other women who are skilled in various forms of crime, among them Amita (Mindy Kaling), Nine Ball (Rihanna), Tammy (Sarah Paulson) and Constance (Awkwafina).
The plan is to get two-time Oscar winner and self-centered superstar Daphne Kluger (Anne Hathaway) to wear the necklace to the Met Gala. So they enlist the help of Rose (Helena Bonham Carter), a potentially past-her-prime eccentric designer.
It’s a pretty weird film. Ross occasionally gives a clue that something might cause trouble somewhere down the line. Nah. Just keep on keeping on.
Things pick up a bit when James Corden shows up as an insurance investigator, seemingly ad-libbing his way through his work. Rihanna is interesting as the super-hacker Nine Ball, and Awkwafina and Carter have a nice sense of fun. So does Hathaway, whose snobby actress is probably the best thing about the movie.
But Bullock’s performance anchors the movie — and nearly drags it down. “Ocean’s 8” has the cast, and the cultural moment, it needs. It just doesn’t do enough with it.
Reach Goodykoontz at
bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Twitter: @goodyk.
'Ocean's 8,' 2.5 starsDirector: Gary Ross.
Cast: Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway,
Richard Armitage, Mindy Kaling, Rihanna.
Rating: PG-13 for language, drug use and some suggestive content.
Great ★★★★★ Good ★★★★
Fair ★★★ Bad ★★ Bomb ★
Published 1:16 p.m. UTC Jun 6, 2018
https://eu.azcentral.com/story/entertainment/movies/billgoodykoontz/2018/06/06/oceans-8-sandra-bullock-anne-hathaway-caper-movie-reboot-review/670539002/Zitat:
Ocean's 8 Review: A Reboot that Scores Big
Ocean's 8 makes for a refreshing and clever reboot for the Ocean's franchise. It also has scene-stealing turns by Rihanna and Anne Hathaway.
Review Delia Harrington
Jun 5, 2018
How do you make a spinoff to the wildly successful reboot of Ocean’s 11 without making the whole thing feel completely played out? Get an all-star cast, keep the intrigue, fun, and style from the original, and make everything else uniquely female. From the target and methods employed throughout to the personnel and their reasons for joining the crew, Ocean’s 8 offers refreshingly feminine perspective to this well-worn franchise that despite any early stumbles scores big.
Sandra Bullock’s Debbie Ocean, sister to (maybe?) deceased conman Danny Ocean, is released from prison and has a plan when the movie starts. In the five or so years she’s spent in the slammer, she crafted the perfect heist: steal a $150 million necklace off the neck of an unsuspecting movie star at the Met Gala. But to take the rocks from the famous Daphne Kluger (Anne Hathaway), she needs her old partner Lou (Cate Blanchett) and five others in on the scheme. Debbie and Lou collect their crew from a jewelry store (Mindy Kaling as Amita), suburbia (Sarah Paulsen as Tammy), a three-card Monty game in Central Park (Awkwafina as Constance), a failing fashion show (Helena Bonham Carter as Rose Weil), and…well, Rihanna’s Nine Ball simply appears on Lou’s couch and proceeds to steal just about every scene she’s in.
The performances are largely as you’d expect—in addition to Rihanna’s never-ending supply of charisma, the stacked cast serves the material well. Bullock and Blanchett easily carry much of the film, and Mindy Kaling got some of the best laughs. Her combination with frequent-scene partner Helena Bonham Carter was an unexpected joy, with HBC more or less playing the straight man, for once, and with an occasional Irish brogue. Meanwhile, Hathaway was delightful as their mark, vamping it up as an exaggerated version of the worst interpretation of her public persona. She shined in a role that let her clown on herself and her industry, insinuating that she knows how she comes off, and she’s cool enough to roll her eyes at it.
Ocean’s 8 is saturated in women’s perspectives in a million tiny ways. The very concept is something Danny Ocean would never come up with—how many straight men even know what the Met Gala is? From their first con, it’s clear that Debbie and Danny have different moves, though equally fun and ingenious. Throughout the heist itself, the women use gender and all its trappings to their advantage. As Debbie Ocean says, “I don’t want a him. Not for this job. A him gets noticed and a her gets ignored. And for once, I want to be ignored.” This culminates in a knowing sequence that shows Anne Hathaway’s character is a director, leading an all-female crew. The detail of the women cinematographer, boom operator and others is an unexpected wink toward the audience. Your attention is drawn toward the lead actress, a dead ringer for Hathaway, who tosses a nice zinger her way, but it’s there, clear as day. Even for a detail that half the audience won’t notice, Ocean’s 8 has a clear point-of-view.
Sometimes, however, the references may have been too insider-y, leaving some in the dark. An early joke was predicated on knowing that La Perla is a lingerie brand. It’s tough to know if the lack of reaction was due to the joke falling flat or there simply being too few people in the audience with the necessary knowledge to get it.
The cameos from the Y Chromosome Ocean’s crew are well done, a well: light touches that move the story along, bring back a welcome face, but don’t linger too long. Oh and that long-rumored and much-petitioned Matt Damon appearance? If it happened, he was in deep cover and not listed in the credits.
The other cameos come so fast and furious that the “special thanks” section of the movie is a mile long and even includes the Winkelvy of not-founding-Facebook fame. Everyone from Alexander McQueen and Zac Posen to Katie Holmes and Olivia Munn was there. Thankfully most are confined to the red carpet (every time Kim Kardashian came on screen the audience grumbled or laughed). Other red-carpet cameos blended more seamlessly, even when they had more screen time and lines, such as a welcome Heidi Klum.
The fashion was similarly toned down, largely reserved for the red carpet, and rightfully so. The biggest reaction was for Rihanna’s Met look. She and the rest of the crew, particularly Cate Blanchett, had more iconic looks throughout the movie than the other Gala guests. Still, the best cameo may have been the queen of the Met Gala herself, Anna Wintour. Like everything else in this movie, it comes with a head-shake and a wink, somehow making her expected appearance a fun surprise.
One troubling aspect to the self-aware humor, unfortunately, is Lou and Debbie’s relationship being teased as more throughout. This is a standard issue case of frustrating queer-baiting. They refer to each other as partner and flirt continuously, even feeding one another. While we see Debbie’s past relationship with a man, we see nothing from Lou, and get no confirmation that her jealousy of that man goes beyond the professional. Would it have killed them to show at least Lou’s sexuality directly?
The series of reveals was fun, putting all the odd pieces into place for several good twists. Unlike some heist movies, Ocean’s 8 continues until well after the heist itself. But the final scene was a bit of a letdown after all of that, leaving the flick feeling so unfinished that many in the audience expected an after-credits scene (there isn’t.)
Things started off a bit slow for this updated fourth installment of the Frank Sinatra-turned-George Clooney movies, but once it gets cooking there’s plenty of laughs, a wardrobe to die for, and enough twists and turns that at least one should surprise you.
4/5
http://www.denofgeek.com/us/movies/oceans-8/273985/oceans-8-review-a-reboot-that-scores-bigZitat:
‘Ocean’s 8’ Film Review: Sandra Bullock and Her Female Crew Idle Amiably in Heist Farce
It’s all amiably slick and charming and funny, but the movie never quite kicks into high
Alonso Duralde | June 5, 2018 @ 8:59 PM
Ocean's 8
The right people have been hired, and everyone is where they’re supposed to be. That level of planning makes the heist in “Ocean’s 8” run fairly smoothly. As for the film itself, similarly curated with care, it gets the job done without ever being one for the record books.
The idea of a spin on the breezy “Ocean’s” capers featuring an all-female cast is a great one, and the crew assembled here represents an octet of terrific screen presences. So terrific, in fact, that it’s hard not to mentally leap to how great the movie could have been while it amiably spins its wheels. It’s not a waste of time, but it does feel like a wasted opportunity.
Take Sandra Bullock: as mastermind Debbie Ocean, who has spent years in jail concocting an intricate scheme to rob the annual Met Gala, she’s brilliantly deadpan in the early scenes, in which she convinces an off-screen parole board member (voiced by Griffin Dunne) that she’s through with crime and ready to work a day job and pay her bills. Soon thereafter, she’s shoplifting half of the Bergdorf Goodman makeup counter before grifting her way into a luxury hotel suite.
So far, so good. But as soon as Debbie starts assembling the rest of the team, “Ocean’s 8” relegates Bullock into the straight-man role, standing back as her fellow castmates get their moment in the spotlight. (The film does the same to Cate Blanchett, playing Debbie’s second-in-command Lou.)
And for the other six leads, those moments in the spotlight are fleeting, leaving us wanting more. Like the recent “Book Club,” “Ocean’s 8” is at its sharpest when its talented cast gets to sit down and just bounce off each other, but both films underserve those moments.
Debbie’s scheme involves the participation of a down-on-her-luck fashion designer (Helena Bonham-Carter), a hacker (Rihanna), a pickpocket (rapper Awkwafina), a jeweler (Mindy Kaling), and a thief-turned-soccer-mom (Sarah Paulson). And if major movie star Daphne Kluger (Anne Hathaway) gets stuck in the middle of Debbie’s machinations, well, too bad for her.
(There’s also a quartet of veteran actresses who come aboard toward the end of the scheme, and in a just world, they’d get a spin-off of their own.)
The actresses dig into the material as much they’re allowed, and while the screenplay by Olivia Milch and director Gary Ross (“The Hunger Games”) doesn’t give any of them enough to do, everyone in the ensemble manages to carve out a moment or two of deft comedy, whether it’s minimalist banter or broad slapstick.
The MVP winds up being Anne Hathaway, trolling the detractors who think she’s an irritating It Girl by playing, brilliantly, an irritating It Girl. (And if you aren’t taking Hathaway seriously as an actress, go back and watch last year’s underrated “Colossal.”)
Ross — and seriously, they hired a man to direct this? — definitely nails the mechanics of the heist and its aftermath, and he and editor Juliette Welfling (“Dheepan”) keep it all breezing along, even if “Ocean’s 8” never quite delivers the danger or excitement promised by the score from Daniel Pemberton (“Molly’s Game”). (If you want a heist movie with actual stakes or suspense, skip the “Ocean’s” series and go dig up “Rififi” on FilmStruck.)
Cinematographer Eigil Bryld (“In Bruges”) gives the proceedings the high-gloss of a SkyMall catalog, which is appropriate for a movie about robbing a legendary Cartier necklace at fashion’s most exclusive event. (Zac Posen, Heidi Klum, Anna Wintour and a host of other real-life Met Gala attendees pop in to cameo as themselves.) And between the sheen and the talented performers, “Ocean’s 8” does eventually coast on froth and good will.
What it doesn’t do is live up to the big score that this crew might have pulled off under better supervision.
https://www.thewrap.com/oceans-8-film-review-sandra-bullock-cate-blanchett-rihanna/Zitat:
Film Review: ‘Ocean’s 8’
Sandra Bullock leads a heist caper that's clever enough to get by and sly enough to treat its female cast as a natural spin on the 'Ocean's' brand.
By Owen Gleiberman
Director:
Gary Ross
With:
Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway, Helena Bonham Carter, Mindy Kaling, Sarah Paulson, Awkwafina, Rihanna, Richard Armitage, James Corden.
Release Date:
Jun 8, 2018
In “Ocean’s 8,” Debbie Ocean (Sandra Bullock), a tough cookie who’s all raccoon eyes, ironically pursed lips, and long stringy black hair, gets paroled from prison with hardly a dollar to her name. The moment she’s on the streets of New York, she devises a way to walk out of Bergdorf Goodman with a bagful of beauty products and then walk into a luxury hotel room. Right off, we grasp the essential thing there is to know about Debbie: She’s got what it takes to take what she needs.
Debbie, of course, has larceny in her blood. She’s the kid sister of Danny Ocean, who from all apparent indications is deceased. Out of the slammer, where she has spent several years serving a sentence for fraud (which resulted from her former partner in love and crime turning evidence against her to save his own skin), Debbie wastes no time rounding up a veritable sisterhood of thieves, charlatans, hackers, and hustlers, all to pull off a heist that’s just impish and elaborate and “perfect” enough to leave the audience gratifyingly tickled.
On the scale of Rube Goldberg ingenuity, it’s not the most dizzying or outrageous heist you’ve ever seen; it doesn’t scale the rafters of high-wire insanity the way the one in “Ocean’s Eleven” did. (Then again, what has?) But it’s clever enough to get by. It leaves you with that classic head-spinning “Ocean’s” feeling of “Yep, I bought what I just saw,” even when your head stops spinning enough to tell you that what you just saw is a pleasantly preposterous mission impossible.
You could say, and you’d be right, that the concept of the heist in “Ocean’s 8” carries a distinctly feminine flavor. Debbie and her crew launch a plot to infiltrate the most fabulous New York party of the year, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s annual Gala, and to steal a legendary Cartier necklace, the Toussaint (named for the jeweler’s most fabled designer), that’s constructed out of $150 million worth of antique diamonds. The piece slips all too neatly around the neck but still looks like what it is: more than six pounds of elegant ice.
The Met Gala, an event so posh that it’s pronounced gah-la, is a star-studded cluster bash that sounds like it could have been the setting for a “Sex and the City” Cinderella fever dream. In the movie, its cachet is bolstered with cameos from the likes of Anna Wintour, Heidi Klum, and Katie Holmes, and that draped lattice of jewelry, if viewed from the proper princess angle, is certainly the stuff that dreams are made of.
Yet one of the sly jokes of “Ocean’s 8” is that the crooks in question pull off their “feminine” version of a heist not because they care (much) about the la-di-da trappings of glamour, but because they’ve got a hardened knowledge of how those trappings play out in the real world. That gives them a distinct advantage. When Daphne Kluger (Anne Hathaway), the evening’s beaming celebrity guest of honor, who’s wearing the Toussaint necklace, is made ill by the vegan soup she’s eating and has to stumble into the ladies’ room to throw up, only to emerge without the necklace, there’s more than a bit of girls’-club wiles at work in the logistics of the deception. (They hinge on men not being allowed in the ladies’ room, which is no mere rule. It’s chivalry.) “A him gets noticed,” says Debbie. “A her gets ignored. For once, we want to be ignored.” And why not? When you’re stealing a mound of jewelry that’s worth more than Mr. Big’s portfolio, who wouldn’t use every advantage under the chandelier?
In a better world — the one that’s now arriving like a locomotive but isn’t completely here yet — the notion of doing a “gender-flipped” remake of, or sequel to, a beloved Hollywood movie wouldn’t seem innovative or audacious or a challenge to the status quo. It wouldn’t seem like anything more than the most natural thing in the world to do.
Yet two summers ago, when our moviemaking system gave the concept a walk-around-the-block tryout with the all-female remake of “Ghostbusters,” the result was an unfortunate debacle — not because the film itself was so bad (though let’s be honest: For all the wicked talent of its stars, Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig, it never did figure out how to do a new version of Bill Murray’s standing-outside-the-frame absurdist snark), but because the vicious hostility it inspired represented a full-scale volcanic eruption of on-line misogyny. Whatever one’s opinion of the movie, the trolling basically came down to a single toxic thought: Women have no right to be remaking “our” favorite ’80s bro comedy!
The first thing to say about “Ocean’s 8” is that it takes the bad karma that clung — unfairly — to the “Ghostbusters” remake and leaves it out in the trash. For here’s a gender-flipped sequel that not only works just fine, but renders the whole “novelty” of the concept a borderline irrelevance. A crew of women teaming up to boldly go where so many male-dominated heist teams, from “Rififi” to “The Italian Job” to the “Ocean’s” films, from “The Asphalt Jungle” to “The Town” to “Logan Lucky,” have gone before? Unless you believe that men possess some innate talent for sneakiness that women don’t, what could be more overdue? In “Ocean’s 8,” Debbie and her team come together and devise their jigsaw puzzle of a heist with an aplomb that feels as natural as it is crowd-pleasing.
That said, this is still, despite the freshness of the casting, the fourth “Ocean’s” film, and so the whole gathering-of-thieves storyline, and the sleight-of-hand fakery of the heist, doesn’t summon the rush of delighted surprise it once did. If anything, we’ve seen these sorts of movies once too often, and Gary Ross, the director and co-writer of “Ocean’s 8,” though he does a smooth job of keeping all the balls in the air, never conjures that Soderbergh sensation of taking this juggling act into the realm of gravity-defying virtuosity. The heist is fun and convincing without being dazzling, and some of the most amusing stuff in the film is just character comedy — like the deadpan joshing of Debbie and her old comrade-in-crime, Lou (Cate Blanchett), or the attempt by Rose Weil (Helena Bonham Carter), a flaked-out ’80s relic of a fashion designer, to woo Daphne into allowing her to dress her for the Gala.
Rihanna, as a rasta-hatted hacker and surveillance wizard known as Nine Ball, and Awkwafina, as a master street grifter, both make their presence felt — they’ve got surly bravado to spare — but you wish that some of the other roles (in fact, most of them) popped a bit more. Sarah Paulson, as a cheery thief of a suburban mom, and even the great Cate Blanchett, so game for amoral games, don’t get a chance to create indelible characters. (They don’t get enough good lines.) Anne Hathaway, however, is commanding at every moment; even her red-carpet myopia has awareness.
An “Ocean’s” movie is all about the heist, to be sure, but the exhilarating beauty of “Ocean’s Eleven” is that it was a screwball buddy comedy, as well as a romantic comedy, all vibrating through the tossed-off intricacy of the robbery. “Ocean’s 8” doesn’t take wing in that way. Debbie’s motivation for the crime, apart from the prospect of getting her team members $16.5 million apiece, is to take revenge on Claude Becker (Richard Armitage), the art-gallery swell and former lover who ratted her out. “Why can’t you just do a job?” asks Lou of Debbie. “Why does there always have to be an asterisk?” But in “Ocean’s 8,” there actually isn’t enough of an asterisk. The movie goes on for a good long while after the heist is complete, and though James Corden has a scene-stealing naughty puckish glee as an insurance-fraud investigator, the vengeance plot plays out in a way that’s more action-film conventional than diabolically ingenious.
Then again, the film’s real asterisk is its gender celebration. Sandra Bullock strides through this movie with the debauched insolence of a hungry criminal who has elevated thievery into an ideology. Her Debbie doesn’t just want to be rich; she wants to be spiritually sprung, under no one’s command. “Somewhere out there,” Debbie tells her team, “there’s an 8-year-old girl dreaming of becoming a criminal. You’re doing this for her.” “Ocean’s 8” is a casually winning heist movie, no more and no less, but like countless films devoted to the exploits of cool male criminals, it lingers most — and not just for 8-year-olds — as a proudly scurrilous gallery of role models.
Film Review: 'Ocean's 8'
Reviewed at Warner Bros. Screening Room, New York, May 29, 2018. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 110 MIN.
Production: A Warner Bros. release of a Warner Bros. Pictures, Village Roadshow Pictures, Smoke House Pictures prod. Producers: Steven Soderbergh, Susan Ekins. Executive producers: Diana Alvarez, Bruce Berman, Jesse Ehrman, Michael Tadross.
Crew: Director: Gary Ross. Screenplay: Gary Ross, Olivia Milch. Camera (color, widescreen): Eigil Bryld. Editor: Juliettte Welfling. Music: Daniel Pemberton.
With: Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway, Helena Bonham Carter, Mindy Kaling, Sarah Paulson, Awkwafina, Rihanna, Richard Armitage, James Corden.
https://variety.com/2018/film/reviews/oceans-8-review-sandra-bullock-1202830271/Zitat:
“Ocean’s 8” Barely Bests a Tricky Problem: How to Be Familiar and Surprising
by Alan Scherstuhl
June 6, 2018
The all-star cast of “Ocean’s 8” that includes (from left) Sandra Bullock, Sarah Paulson, Rihanna, Cate Blanchett, and Awkwafina gets upstaged by James Corden, but through no fault of the women. Barry Wetcher/Courtesy Warner Bros Pictures
As a British friend of mine might say, Ocean’s 8 does what it says on the tin. That’s not nothing. Here’s a clockwork heist that’s both more surprising and a touch more plausible than the previous Ocean’s films, carried out by a squad of women whose every scene together suggests a Vanity Fair cover shoot, all set at the high-fashion Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. You’ve got stars, gowns, and crisp montage sequences of team building and crime planning, which are, I humbly submit, the two best subjects for Hollywood montage sequences. (Next on the list: training and makeovers.)
You want squad walks? Check. You want a low-key funky soundtrack that forever tries to suggest “Green Onions” without actually playing “Green Onions”? Coming right up. You want one scene to wipe into the next by splitting the image into thirds and then spinning them like the reels of a slot machine? Then this is the movie for you. The pleasures of Ocean’s 8 are just what you think they’ll be: Anne Hathaway, screwball-hilarious as a dim-bulb actor, but unironically radiant as she beams in a cape more grand than any supervillain’s. Or this Vogue-punk Cate Blanchett, a wicked slash in leather pants and a velour jacket who looks something like what Johnny Depp wishes he could pull off.
All that’s engaging enough that it took more than an hour of screen time — and the arrival of James Corden — before I finally understood what was missing. Surely it’s a mistake that the excitable talk-show host swans in late and then steals a movie top-lined by ringers like Sandra Bullock, Mindy Kaling, Rihanna, Awkwafina, Sarah Paulson, and Helena Bonham Carter? That he does is not the fault of the women — though it certainly doesn’t help that mastermind Debbie Ocean (Bullock) exhibits little apparent chemistry with or affection for her right-hand woman, Lou (Blanchett). Instead, it’s just that Corden is free to riff, to let his own comic metabolism dictate the pace of his scenes, while the women are forever subservient to the plotty, precision filmmaking of the franchise. They have to charm us on the fly, sketching characters and burgeoning friendships in the limited breaths they’re given between setting up all the twists and fakeouts the Ocean’s movies demand.
Simply put, the clockwork heist that Ocean’s 8 promises (and, by its end, dazzles with) limits the film’s ability to offer what you might actually want from it: the chance to relish this cast. Director Gary Ross, who also conceived of the story and co-wrote the script, prioritizes getting the pieces into place over making us care about the pieces, and as his movie bounces along it’s easy to miss the smooth, unshowy mastery of Steven “Ocean’s 11–13” Soderbergh, who usually made the piece-placing stylish fun.
Bullock’s Ocean — the sister of the suave sharpie George Clooney played in his Ocean’s movies — sets the heist in motion after years in prison, mostly just because she has a good idea for how to pull it off. A born-and-bred con artist, she dazzles in early scenes with her casual thieving from Bergdorf Goodman and her ingenious stealing of a luxe hotel room. But she’s got little compelling motivation, and her scenes with Lou, her top longtime partner in crime, have no snap to them — and no sense of shared history. Bullock is one of Hollywood’s great comic reactors, but the air is so dead between her and Blanchett that they may as well have shot their lines separately, weeks apart, for the tech team to splice together.
Bullock’s best moments come when she’s onscreen alone — when, like Corden, she can set the pace. At the start, we watch Debbie address her parole board, snowing them with tearful talk about only wanting to live the simple life. Then, when the gala rolls around, Debbie delivers a daft pep talk to her squad via their earpieces, promising them that no matter what happens their story will inspire some eight-year-old girl out there to also take up a life of crime. I admire the boldness of making our hero an unrepentant crook, someone robbing a priceless Cartier necklace mostly for the hell of it. But that choice also contributes to the sense that we’re watching trained pros — the stars and the thieves — hit their marks rather than achieve something more. Only Hathaway, playing vain and stupid and transparently needy, and Bonham Carter, playing nervous and batty, are given the few seconds it takes to register as characters rather than cogs. Both are funny, and Hathaway is transcendent, suggesting deep unhappiness and a welcome cunning beneath her movie star’s vacuousness. It’s a superb comic performance, a reminder of how much more these performers might be able to offer if Hollywood could be bothered to write them parts worth playing.
Ocean’s 8 is, like its heist, a complex whirligig with little time for distractions like fun and human emotion, the very things that spark frivolous entertainments to life. And yet I still recommend it if it looks like the kind of film you might savor. For much of its running time, it seems to offer little more than it’s obliged to, but Ross and his crooks spring welcome surprises in the final scenes, staging them with a warmth and enthusiasm that might have cheered up the rest of the film. Whether the end, a memorable party trick, fully justifies all the piece placing and mark hitting — well, that’s an individual preference. But I still can’t fathom how James Corden gets more laughs than Sandra Bullock in a Sandra Bullock movie.
Ocean’s 8
Directed by Gary Ross
Warner Bros. Pictures
Opens June 8
https://www.villagevoice.com/2018/06/06/oceans-8-barely-bests-a-tricky-problem-how-to-be-familiar-and-surprising/Zitat:
Ocean’s 8 Review
Ian Freer
5 Jun 2018 18:01
Last updated: 6 Jun 2018 04:59
Release date
22 Jun 2018
Movie
Ocean's Eight
Criminal Debbie Ocean (Bullock) looks to pull off the most audacious heist of her career: the diamonds worth $150 million from movie star Daphne (Hathaway). But first she needs to get together a crew.
★★★★★
Cate Blanchett has joked that the reason Ocean’s 8 earned its title is because there are actually only eight women working in Hollywood. But where the gender-swapped sequel to Steven Soderbergh’s early noughties crime trilogy doesn’t break from familiar heist-movie beats or raise the stakes, it more than makes up for that in cast chemistry and star power. It’s a breezy, enjoyable 110 minutes that feels human-sized in a summer of Wookiees and Indoraptors, and is all the better for that.
This time round, the action focuses on Debbie Ocean (Bullock), sister of the now deceased Danny (George Clooney). One of the film’s biggest joys is seeing Bullock playing a lead role. Just out on parole, Debbie is a career criminal — her nifty blag of cosmetics will be played out in Debenhams up and down the country — who has been planning to lift a $150 million necklace from the neck of celebrity Daphne Kluger (Hathaway on broad, movie-star bratty form) at the Met Ball for five years, eight months and 12 days. Bullock makes a believable hardened criminal without shedding her inherent likeability. She also gets to use her German ancestry to comic effect during the heist.
There isn’t a lot of time to etch rich characters, but the screenwriters smuggle in telling grace notes.
As is par for the heist-movie course, the team Debbie assembles is a motley crew of different skill sets and market-pleasing demographics. Cate Blanchett’s Lou, watering down vodka in the only nightclub to play clips from Jules Et Jim, becomes Debbie’s second-in-command. Helena Bonham Carter’s Rose is a washed-up fashion designer who scoffs Nutella from the jar and is hired to dress mark Daphne; Sarah Paulson’s Tammy is a former fence — her garage, full of washing machines and bikes, looks like behind the scenes at Argos — just trying to raise her kids in a nice house in the suburbs. Mindy Kaling’s Amita is a jewellery expert looking to get out of the clutches of her mother. Rihanna’s Nine Ball (“What’s your real name?” “Eight Ball”) is a spliff-smoking tech wizard who can hack anything, and Awkwafina’s Constance is a beanie-wearing pickpocket grifting in New York. The more numerate will have noticed this is only seven. The film has a surprise up its well-coutured sleeve.
How all these talents come together to overcome the initial hurdles is fun. Daphne’s refusal to wear the rocks, doing a 3D scan of the jewels without an online signal, and a clasp to the necklace that can only be underdone by a specific magnet all pose tricksy challenges for the group. As with Soderbergh’s Ocean’s films, there isn’t a lot of time to etch rich characters and explore relationship dynamics, but screenwriters Ross and Olivia Milch smuggle in telling grace notes — best of the bunch is Constance explaining the mysteries of dating apps to Rose. There is also a nice line in gender stereotype subversion; at one point, Debbie suggests, the group are “doing this for all the eight-year-old girls lying in bed dreaming of being criminals”.
When we get to the heist it’s an engaging mixture of unusual elements: toilet cubicles, spiked soup, Cate Blanchett in a doner kebab van and a bizarre coterie of celebrity cameos (Katie Holmes, Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova, various Kardashians/Jenners and the Winklevoss twins made famous by The Social Network). But what it doesn’t do is turn up the heat on its protagonists. While the heist-gone-wrong trope is cliché, Ocean’s 8’s robbery could have benefited from more jeopardy. Even when James Corden’s English insurance investigator (we know he is English because he is missing Arsenal in the Cup Final) turns up in pursuit of Debbie, the peril doesn’t really ramp up.
Gary Ross, a kind of Ron-Howard-a-like best known for Pleasantville, Seabiscuit and the first Hunger Games movie, mixes ’60s style (split screen, funky scene transitions, Daniel Pemberton’s groovy score) with a more ’70s vibe (it’s zoom lens a go-go) but doesn’t bring the loosey-goosey flair of Soderbergh.
But there’s lots to like, most of it coming from its movie star ensemble. Blanchett is cool personified, Paulson probably has the most to do (she has a run-in with Vogue editor Anna Wintour cooing over Roger Federer), Awkwafina is a lively presence, and Rihanna effortlessly erases the memory of Battleship. By the time they are strutting in full Met Gala finery to These Boots Are Made For Walkin’, it’s hard not to root for them. There is something refreshing about seeing a group of women thrive on their wits, guile, smarts, cunning, proficiency and chutzpah rather than sex. It’s just a shame they weren’t tested even further. They could have handled it.
Plot-wise Ocean’s 8 cleaves closely to the tenets of Heist Movie Lore but does little to enliven or tweak the formula. It lacks the jazzy swagger of Soderbergh’s trio but delivers a fun, likeable romp built on the charm and charisma of its cast.
https://www.empireonline.com/movies/ocean-8/review/Zitat:
Review: Ocean's 8 struggles to capture energy of the originals
6 Jun, 2018 4:00pm
By: Tom Augustine
The Ocean's films of the noughties have routinely been marketed and thought of as men's stories. Sure the occasional superstar actress cropped up, but their point-of-view has always been strictly through the eyes of suave men doing suave things, suavely.
Following the dispiritingly controversial trend of gender-flipping male-oriented narratives, from the all-women Ghostbusters reboot or Bridesmaids and Girl's Trip being modelled off The Hangover, we come to the latest experiment with Ocean's 8.
It's a direct sequel to the noughties Ocean's Trilogy, with a few twists and turns directly relating to the narrative of that original story - along with some welcome cameos.
Sandra Bullock is Debbie Ocean — sister of George Clooney's Danny — a convict just-released when she decides to enact a five-years-in-the-making plan to steal an enormous diamond necklace off the neck of a superstar actress (Anne Hathaway, stealing every scene she's in) at New York's glitzy Met Gala.
Naturally, she needs a team.
What follows is a surface-level recreation of what was fondly remembered about both the original Ocean's series and Frank Sinatra's 60's version — exceptionally glamorous celebrities having a whole lot of fun and pulling off a labyrinthine scheme.
For the most part, Ocean's 8 rollicks along on wheels, assembling a team of cool, kooky characters (including Cate Blanchett, Rihanna, Helena Bonham Carter, Sarah Paulson, Mindy Kaling and highlight Awkwafina as a crafty pickpocket), and laying out in methodical but enjoyably snappy fashion the whirling gears that comprise that perfect heist.
The set-up drags a little, as does the film's denouement, but when the action starts, it's thrilling.
The cast has crackling chemistry, and bounce off each other with that same sense of fun Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Julia Roberts had back in the day.
What keeps Ocean's 8 from transcending above the line of serviceable, however, is a lack of strong directorial vision. Veteran director Gary Ross (The Hunger Games, Seabiscuit) is at the helm here, and while he's a perfectly solid filmmaker, he lacks the whizz-bang invention and verve of master filmmaker Steven Soderbergh, who managed to find the most interesting, fizzing way to shoot even the most thinly written sequences. His direction elevated the original trilogy from the staid 'superstar hangout' movie into something intoxicatingly fresh, particularly in trilogy highlight and cult-favourite Ocean's Twelve.
Ross' direction too often puts all the weight on the backs of his stars, with his camera aping Soderbergh's whips and zooms and pans but never capturing that same whirling energy.
What results is something entirely enjoyable and worthy, but one can't help but wonder what a stronger vision behind the camera may have produced.
Director: Gary Ross
Starring: Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, Sarah Paulson, Rihanna
Rating: M
Verdict: Frothy and fun, aided by a game cast having the time of their lives
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=12065472Zitat:
It's an all female cast and they're off to the ball in the rollicking Ocean's 8
By Sandra Hall
Updated6 June 2018 — 3:09pmfirst published at 2:00pm
OCEAN'S 8 ★★★½
(M) General release (110 minutes)
In the Ocean's series of heist movies, Danny Ocean and his gang adopted a modified version of the Robin Hood principle. They robbed from the rich but any idea of giving to the poor stopped at their own wallets.
A complex heist is carried at the Met Gala by eight women who are also professional thieves.
With Ocean's 8, Danny is out of the picture and the mantle has been passed to his sister Debbie (Sandra Bullock), who's just served five years in gaol for fraud, having used her time inside to plan a robbery that is supposed to rival her brother's work at its most baroque, and, in line with the times, she's recruited an all-female crew.
I doubt that this gender switch is going to cause the series' most avid fans to react with the indignation that Ghostbusters die-hards displayed when that film's all-woman remake appeared. But if so, so what. Director Gary Ross (The Hunger Games), who's taken over from Steven Soderbergh, has kept things cool and dry and the banter flows just as smoothly. The camera work glides along to the rhythms of a soundtrack filled with pop hits and the centrepiece is a jewel heist staged at New York's classiest party, the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Ball.
To add a little more piquancy to the inside jokes that embellish the script, one of the gang is played by Rihanna, who headlined the event in 2016 when Andrew Rossi anatomised it in his documentary, The First Monday in May.
Ross filmed much of Ocean's 8 inside the Met and the ball's mastermind, Anna Wintour makes a couple of appearances. A known tennis obsessive, she's shown in one scene at her laptop, taking time out to watch her favourite player, Roger Federer, at work.
In keeping with its setting, it's a film high on fashion, some of it satirical. In that spirit, the costume department gleefully exploits Helena Bonham Carter's willingness to wear anything, the more outlandish the better, by enveloping her in an assortment of layered garments topped with funny hats. She's cast as Rose Weil, a dress designer who joins the gang because she's desperately in need of a cash infusion, and Cate Blanchett is here, too, playing Debbie's chief lieutenant. She scores the most glamorous wardrobe, heavy on leather, leopard prints and bling. And she gets to ride a motorcycle.
Ironically, the most straight-faced member of the group is Bullock. As the mastermind of the scheme, she can't go pratfalling all over the screen, but she can afford a smile or two. As it is, her extreme degree of coolness gives her all the charm of an ice-pick.
As with most heist movies, much of the fun is in the planning and the hiring. A jeweller, a fence, a hacker and a con artist adept at sleight-of-hand complete the gang, who have a multimillion-dollar diamond necklace from Cartier in their sights. It will be worn to the ball by Daphne Kluger (Anne Hathaway), a movie star who's been inveigled into accepting a dress designed by Rose.
From this point, it's all in the timing and the deployment, with more sleight-of-hand displayed in glossing over the script's many improbabilities. You go along with it because the group generates a strong sense of camaraderie - indispensable to any successful heist movie with a comic tilt to it - and because the pace never falters. And there are enough ingenious touches in the details that power the scheme to convey the temporary illusion that there's a trace of logic attached to it.
They're the same elements that launched the series in 1960 when it was conceived as a showcase for the macho spirit of Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack. It's a durable formula, as well as an adaptable one. And this time the climax is played out amid the glories of the Met's Temple of Dendur, where the ball is held. Here, the choreography of the scam is almost upstaged by the gang's costume changes. They're spectacular. At least their effect is. How they're achieved is another question that goes unanswered. The whole film is a con trick, but a good one.
https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/its-an-all-female-cast-and-theyre-off-to-the-ball-in-the-rollicking-oceans-8-20180605-h110ed.htmlZitat:
I WANNA ROB
Anne Hathaway Steals ‘Ocean’s 8.’ If Only the Rest Was as Much Fun.
There’s no denying the pleasure of seeing Hathaway, Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, and Rihanna share the screen. They’re so good together you even forgive the film’s biggest sins.
Kevin Fallon
06.06.18 12:01 AM ET
For a proper heist to be pulled off successfully, every element must be executed flawlessly. We know that much from watching, well, the Ocean movies, Steven Soderbergh’s jazzy-sexy crime trilogy from the turn of the millennium.
The women in the Ocean’s 8 all-female spinoff of the popular George Clooney-Matt Damon movie-star bonanza rise to their replacement positions gamely, injecting their caper with the flair, showmanship, and mischief you’d expect from the blinding constellation of stars: Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, and Rihanna among them. In fact, they’re so game and so assured in their slick superstardom that the heist—and the movie—work despite some baffling, near-disastrous hiccups in the plan.
Watch the buzzy trailer that debuted earlier this year and look at that dream of a cast list—Mindy Kaling, Helena Bonham Carter, Awkwafina, Sarah Paulson, a scene-stealing James Corden—and it becomes almost inexcusable how lethargic the film’s direction and editing is—the director and co-writer this time is Gary Ross (Hunger Games, Seabiscuit)—and how convoluted and energy-zapped the robbery itself is. But, for our money—and, honestly, we would gladly be burgled for any amount if it meant getting these ladies on screen together—it’s a downright magical performance by Anne Hathaway that rescues the film from its sleepiness and makes off with all the jewels.
It’s tempting to say that Hathaway is the best she’s been in years, playing a petulant movie star desperate for attention, but that would frankly be ludicrous. We won’t re-litigate the misogynist dissection of Hathaway’s public-facing personality that suffocated all the joy out of her Les Miserables awards run in 2013. But there was something about that unholy mess of a media cycle that had the effect of dismissing her talents. She’s since proven herself as skilled at selling the broad (The Intern) as well as the nuanced and strange (Colossal), and Ocean’s 8 unexpectedly demands both of her.
She plays the fantastically named Daphne Kluger, the film’s fictional It Starlet, calibrating a triumph of actress-y camp that hammers every hilarious note on its way to, without spoiling much, a shaded portrait of a woman far more aware of how society views her than others—and the Ocean’s 8 audience—give her credit for. The added meta layer of it being Hathaway who carries that arc should trigger a well-timed guilt complex: We keep underestimating and making false assumptions about women. Perennially, it’s crass. Increasingly, it’s to our own peril.
The film kicks off with Sandra Bullock’s Debbie Ocean, sister to Clooney’s Danny Ocean, a fellow convict being released from prison on account of good behavior. She wastes no time returning to the family business, shoplifting through Bergdorf’s and conning her way into a new hotel room and wardrobe before reuniting with her former partner-in-crime, Cate Blanchett’s Lou. Blanchett manifests what could only have been her character description: “the most intimidatingly cool person any of us will ever meet; owns many fabulous coats.”
No one would accuse this script of being a master class in character development, so we’ll just skip to the part where Debbie starts assembling her team of crime Avengers. You’ll likely end up twiddling your thumbs waiting for the film to get there, too.
There’s Mindy Kaling’s Amita, an expert jeweler from Queens desperate to escape her overbearing mother. Sarah Paulson’s Tammy is a suburban housewife with an unexpected knack for fencing stolen goods. Breakout star Awkwafina is Constance, an ace pick-pocket, and Rihanna’s Nine Ball is a hacker extraordinaire.
Completing the team is Helena Bonham Carter’s Rose Weil, a washed-up Irish fashion designer who owes the IRS $5 million in back taxes, and who is the key to the whole plan. The women are going to rob the annual Met Gala. Rather, they’re going to conduct a robbery at the Met Gala. The plan is to convince Hathaway’s Daphne Kluger to hire Bonham Carter’s Rose Weil to design her gown and then trick Cartier into loaning Daphne a rare $150 million diamond necklace for the event—which the team will then lift right from her neck.
This all sounds like a blast: Bullock! Blanchett! Rihanna hacking a security system while smoking a fat joint! The Met Gala!!! But the film never accelerates to the breakneck speed at which Soderbergh’s films moved, nor to what's necessary to ascend to the level of that plot description. An air of playfulness is confusingly missing from the screenplay.
Thankfully, when you cast these actresses, who don’t just know their way around a performance but also around the mood a film should give off, you make up for that in spades.
There’s an assuredness in their character turns from the top down, starting with Bullock’s Debbie Ocean. It’s a role that the Oscar-winner could play in her sleep, making it all the more delightful that she zaps it with such shrewd vitality. Debbie is a ballbuster with Teflon confidence in her ability to do what she is good at, and she is damn good at stealing.
She landed in jail because she was betrayed by someone she thought loved her, not because she wasn’t a boss at her job. That unquestioned competence is something perennially delightful to see onscreen, but especially in 2018, even if that job involves robbery. The Sandra Bullock Stare of Confidence, a face-off she has with multiple characters in the movie who dare doubt her, is the film’s most explosive special effect.
For all the ways in which Hathaway underlines why she’s a goddamn star, people, Awkwafina is a revelation. The Queens-born rapper-actress is the least-known of the fantasy cast, but still commands her light in the spillover of all their star power, delivering some of the best line readings of the movie.
Hathaway and Bonham Carter have an extended physical comedy bit so skilled, kooky, and charming that you wonder why it’s still such a novel idea to have actresses as proven as they are in films together doing extended physical comedy bits! At one point Kaling and Awkwafina share a bonding scene, and you’re first struck by how sweet and well-played it is, and then by how meaningful it is to have these two minority actresses in a scene together at all in a studio film.
There is a slew of celebrity cameos, some baffling but endearing (Katie Holmes? Dakota Fanning? All right!) and some wasted (spot-the-Kardashian isn’t nearly as fun as you’d think). Timely quips about Russia and journalists will tickle audiences. As a critic, however, we found ourselves not so much laughing throughout the film as we were breathing sighs of relief.
We remember what happened the last time a gender-flipped take on a popular franchise was attempted. The reaction to and ultimate failure of the all-female Ghostbusters reboot is the kind of bananas pop culture fever dream we still can’t quite wrap our heads around, but which still served as a cautionary tale for this Ocean’s 8 experiment. If this didn’t work, would anyone take a chance on an all-female studio tentpole again? We have our quibbles with it, but the sheer event of it all is still worth the price of ticket alone. Dear god, make more of these!
When the film’s premise was announced, there were those who wondered why an Ocean’s film starring women had to center on diamonds and fashion instead of something less stereotypically gendered, and the answer is quite simply that diamonds and fashion are effing cool. Did anyone dumping on the decision to parade these actresses in breathtaking ball gowns also criticize the budget devoted to George Clooney’s bespoke designer suits in the last franchise?
That the film embraces its femininity while making a loud statement about the ways in which Hollywood dismisses female power is actually transgressive in its own right. By all accounts on the press tour, the actresses involved had a blast with the fashion, which is a boon for Ocean’s 8 in a way that so many movies and filmmakers ignore: A good time is contagious!
There’s a line midway through the film that might just serve not only as the movie’s thesis, but maybe its broader cultural mission statement—and, let’s face it, this movie’s entire inception, execution, and ultimate critical and audience reaction is inextricable from a political statement it hopes to make.
Bullock’s Debbie Ocean is explaining to Blanchett’s Lou why she doesn’t want a man on the team when they attempt their Met Gala heist. “A Him gets noticed, a Her gets ignored,” she says. “For once we want to be ignored.”
With that, Ocean’s 8 makes the case for why we should all be paying attention—and buying tickets.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/anne-hathaway-steals-oceans-8-if-only-the-rest-was-as-much-fun?ref=wrapZitat:
Movie Review / 5 Jun 2018
Ocean's 8 Review
The franchise continues with a new all-star female cast, an entertaining heist, and more depth than any other installment in the series.
By William Bibbiani The slick and sophisticated world of ultra-complicated criminality continues to expand in Ocean’s 8, a satisfying spin-off of the hit Ocean’s 11 franchise with an all-star cast of amazing women, including Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway, Helena Bonham Carter, Rihanna, Mindy Kaling, Awkwafina and Sarah Paulson.
It’s as impressive an all-star lineup as any heist movie ever had, and just like all the other entries in the Ocean’s franchise, a big part of the appeal is just watching these stars hang out together, plotting the heist and commiserating about their problems. Ocean’s 8 makes great use of the entire cast’s talents, giving everyone laugh-out-loud and victorious moments as they scheme to steal the world’s most valuable diamond necklace from the prestigious Met Gala in New York City.
Sandra Bullock stars as Debbie Ocean, the sister of Danny Ocean (played in the previous films by George Clooney). She’s spent the last few years in prison, plotting an elaborate robbery that will require seven - yes, seven - highly skilled thieves to pull off correctly. She reunites with her old partner, Lou (Blanchett), and assembles a small army of jewelry experts, fashion designers, sleight of hand artists, computer hackers and single-mom highway robbers to infiltrate the exclusive publicity event and manipulate the egotistical superstar Daphne Kluger (Hathaway) into being their unwitting stooge.
Like the other Ocean’s movies, Ocean’s 8 is stylish and appealing, but exceptionally low on stakes. No one’s life is in serious danger, and just before the heist begins, Debbie even goes out of her way to tell the rest of the team that prison isn’t nearly as bad as advertised. And of course, this isn’t the kind of crime movie where all the criminals turn on each other and it ends in a violent bloodbath. The audience knows early on that everything’s going to turn out fine, making Ocean’s 8 - again, just like all the Ocean's movies - less suspenseful than many other heist films.
But that isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. The Ocean’s movies aren’t so much about the heists as they are about making the impossible look easy. Steven Soderbergh’s movies used that breezy charm for light escapism, and that was effective enough for light entertainment. Gary Ross’s film transforms that confidence into something inspirational. Taking the franchise away from the original proprietors who treated it like a lark, and giving it, instead, to female actors who don’t typically get these types of roles has undeniable significance that the characters themselves acknowledge.
“Somewhere out there is an eight-year-old girl lying in bed, dreaming of being a criminal,” Debbie Ocean tells her team. “Let’s do this for her.” And so they do. The cast and crew of Ocean’s 8 - in the film and behind he cameras - pull off an impressively entertaining heist, with all the reversals and humor and prestige we’ve come to expect from this franchise, along with additional layers that make the film truly distinctive.
Setting the heist at the Met Gala isn’t a coincidence: Ocean’s 8 also delivers sharp commentary about celebrity culture. The crew manipulates gossip columns for their own personal gain, commiserates about the scathing reviews that hurt one of their troupe’s feelings, and respond with disgust when they are mistaken for - shudder - journalists. Ocean’s 8 gives its characters the power to challenge, subvert and take total advantage of expectations, and come out victorious on the other end. And it's that kind of thoughtfulness that separates Ocean's from other heist movies, and elevates it above the usual summer entertainment pabulum.
The Verdict
Ocean’s 8 is the most satisfying installment in the franchise. The all-star cast is impeccable, the shift in focus yields sharp insights, and the heist itself is wily and enjoyable. What the film lacks in suspense it makes up for in style, and that style has undeniable substance.
http://www.ign.com/articles/2018/06/06/oceans-8-review