Multiplex Madness
The Baltimorons
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: Comedy
Director: Jay Duplass
Starring: Michael Strassner, Liz Larson, Olivia Luccardi
Both odd and oddly endearing, The Baltimorons is an interesting display of an unlikely bond formed by seasonal depression. Those always form the strongest relationships, probably. I don't know, really. Just assuming. Screenwriter Michael Strassner plays the lead, a man who last-minute bails on his girlfriend's Christmas Eve get-together when he breaks a molar, causing him to need emergency dental work. The only dentist who picks up the phone during the holiday is lonely-heart Liz Larson, who patches him up and tries to send him on his way but an unfortunate series of events keeps the two together as they tour Christmastime Baltimore. I think a lot of The Baltimorons' strength lies in that it feels like the premise is just taking two characters, throwing them together, and seeing where the story takes them. The movie feels metaphorically about those moments in life that you just jump into, where you don't know what the future will be that stems from that moment, and it probably isn't great but you need to do it anyway. I like that little vibe of "the moment" that the movie has. I think it goes a little further than I would have liked it to, as it takes a turn of "sexual tension" that I wasn't really feeling the vibe of but the movie seems really into. I also kind of feel like some of the supporting characters get shafted in the movie, especially Strassner's girlfriend, played by Olivia Luccardi, who is kind of delt a really shitty hand in this screenplay and the movie just kind of brushes her to the side as almost unimportant. But the movie is a really interesting Christmas comedy, otherwise. It's a little dark, a little cringe, and a little heartwarming. Somehow, that seems like the right vibe for Christmas.
Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: Drama
Director: Simon Curtis
Starring: Hugh Bonneville, Michelle Dockery, Jim Carter, Paul Giamatti, Elizabeth McGovern, Penelope Wilton, Laura Carmichael, Raquel Cassidy, Paul Copley, Brendan Coyle, Kevin Doyle, Michael Fox, Joanne Froggatt, Harry Hadden-Paton, Robert James-Collier, Alan Leech, Phyllis Logan, Sophie McShera, Leslie Nicol, Douglas Reith, Dominic West, Simon Russell Beale, Arty Froushan, Alessanrdo Nivola, Joely Richardson
Downton Abbey is back to shovel posh comfort food into your mouth until you choke on it. Love it or hate it, nobody has that recipe nailed like Downton Abbey. Bridgerton, maybe, but Bridgerton is more of a spicy smut rag finger food. Downton Abbey is the classy vegan tray. I've probably watched more Downton Abbey than you'd expect for a man who has seen every episode of Mystery Science Theater ten times. I have no explanation for this. Sometimes things just fall in front of my eyes. I've also watched all three of the movies in a theater. I have no one to blame but myself. Perhaps I just have a thing for Michelle Dockery and seeing her in sparkly jewelry and fabulous gowns is a fetish of mine. I'll never tell.
Scandal rocks the status quo of Downton, as word breaks out that Lady Mary Crawley and Henry Talbot are...(dramatic pause)...divorced! ::gasp:: Well, I never! Mary's socialite status falters in the wake of her nuptials being shattered, but the heiress must gain control of her family's name and reputation as her father Robert prepares to retire and pass the reigns of Downton to her. All of the drama of polite conversations of spoiled rich white people talking about maintaining wealth, finances, investment, and stature is intact. The plucky help is still offering counterprogramming, with the friendly "Happy to serve!" spirit that is underlined with a hint of common folk charm, along with the stern ones who take their work even more seriously that the aristocrats that hire them. Everything that makes Downton Abbey what it is can be fully accounted for and it's just as self-adorning as ever. I love how Downton is always revealed the same way the Enterprise is revealed in a Star Trek movie. Slow, methodically, full of love, and letting the music whisk the viewer off into their fantasy. It's a setting that the fans of the series find warmth in and they want to bask in it. The characters are still ingrained in their pretention, though wry enough to humanize them. There are small laughs here and there to take slight pleasure in, probably the highlight being when Robert tours an apartment flat and tries to wrap his head around the idea of it as a living space that non-wealthy people have to use, which is a hearty chuckle of a scene, I don't care who you are. It's those little crosses between the pampered and the middlebrow that make the amusement in the movie glow.
"Is this funny or impertinent?"
"Find it funny, please."
Is this the best one? I will admit that I don't remember the first movie all that well, which was pre-pandemic and that was a thousand years ago. I remember liking how fun-spirited the second one was, with that low stakes story about a movie being filmed at Downton. The Grand Finale is more relevant to the character arcs told through the series, which means this one might be the most dramatically satisfying of the three. After all, one of Downton Abbey's earliest conflicts is Robert Crawley's struggle with the fact that he did not have a male heir and Mary facing the reality that what she felt was her birthright will be passed on to someone else. The Grand Finale fully pays that off here in his final acceptance that he must pass his legacy on to his daughter, who is currently separated from her husband and free from male influence to distract from the fact that she now has full authority of the estate. This feels like the best possible conclusion to this story.
Downton Abbey fans got pretty spoiled with a show that not only had a healthy lifespan on TV but concluded with three movies that are all in step with the spirit that made them fall in love with it. There's nothing about any of these movies that make them feel more cinematic than their TV source material, but seeing the lush locales and stunning sets on a giant screen has more charm to it than you'd expect. Now we have a complete trilogy to cap everything off. Firefly only got one movie. The Walking Dead's big screen continuation was dicked around with and cancelled. And we're still waiting to see if the Community movie is just a pipe-dream. Downton Abbey lived the dream. Good for Downton Abbey. They really showed them who was boss with that "Six seasons and a movie" rally call.
The Long Walk
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: Thriller
Director: Francis Lawrence
Starring: Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Mark Hamill, Garrett Wareing, Tut Nyuot, Charlie Plummer, Ben Wang, Roman Griffith Davis, Josh Hamilton, Judy Greer
The second of three Stephen King adaptations this year, and the first of two based on his run under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, The Long Walk is the story of a group of adolescent boys who are selected for a "long walk," where they have to continually walk forward at a pace of three miles per hour or get shot in the head. Winner gets a prize! The Long Walk is an interesting story because it works as sort of this life allegory for the working class where people are forced forward by the privileged until they are in an exhausted state, filling time by bullshitting to keep their own spirits up. One by one, they all drop, leaving those who knew them briefly behind to continue in their exhaution until its their turn to drop. The actual competition itself doesn't seem to have a purpose, it's just a nihilistic display of the powerful to remind people that they have the power. There is almost perfection in the concept because its a nihilistic display of puposelessness that tells a purposeful display of nihilism through its story. It's hard to make nihilism meaningful, though Stephen King found a doorway in. The fundamentals don't have much different than any other live-or-die dystopian competitive tale such as Battle Royale, Death Race 2000, that terrible book series that I'd rather not bring up, and another Stephen King story that is getting a new adaptation in November, The Running Man. That being said, The Long Walk doesn't focus on action so the characters have to fill up the time with personality, each telling their own stories in their own words, hoping it doesn't end here.
Fans of the book will likely be pleased that most of it is stuffed in the movie, even though character traits have been jumbled around. Normally, this would have been done to make the screenplay tighter and reel in the amount of characters to work in a film's runtime, but the curious thing is that this doesn't seem to be the case here. The movie has about the same amount of speaking characters as the book, they just seem to be sharing each other's arcs without much reason. It feels like the only purpose of this is to keep book-readers on their toes even if the movie doesn't really play with expectation enough for that to have any serious impact. That is, aside from the ending, which is a complete rewrite. The ending to the book is nothing to write home about and I have no inclination to be protective of it, but the ending to the movie is a flat attempt to make it more theatrical that only feels numb and meaningless. If one was going to change the already not-excellent ending of the book, the last idea I would have chased is "Let's make it even more melodramatic." But I guess director Francis Lawrence picked up too many bad habits from that other survival thriller book series that has been strangling his career.
Not enough of this offsets The Long Walk from being a mostly good experience. Small flaws weight it back, as it could be less lean and meatier. It feels brief, so the length of time that these characters have been walking barely sets in, and the characters rarely look as exhausted as they should be in an attempt to keep everyone in "Hollywood bad shape" instead of actual bad shape. A lot of the violence is overly animated with CGI, making the film feel like a cartoon when it's trying to be haunting. It undermines itself, sadly. The story is still interesting, but it doesn't hit as hard as it could.
Spinal Tap II: The End Continues
⭐️⭐️1/2
Genre: Comedy, Mockumentary
Director: Rob Reiner
Starring: Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, Rob Reiner
Spinal Tap is back, baby! The fake band that was made famous by one of the greatest mockumentaries ever made broke up years ago and are now convinced to come out of retirement for a final reunion concert. And yes, they have a new drummer. Let's all pray that she doesn't die like the last eleven. To be frank, I wasn't entirely sure what to expect. I've seen This Is Spinal Tap, but while I enjoyed it quite a bit, it's been years and I was weary of what revisiting these characters might look like so long after the fact. The movie loses something in how glossy it looks, but that's also because it looks like a modern documentary and not an 80's documentary. Seeing the band together after so long but as old men feels a little deflating, but then you realize how many period rock stars are the same age and are still active, including ones who have cameos in this movie. Spinal Tap feels a little different because they existed in that time capsule that is the original movie (and you can always pretend their story ends with that episode of The Simpsons that they cameoed in and perished), so seeing them aged feels hard to swallow, but I'm also willing to accept it if the movie is good. Full of snickers instead of belly laughs, Spinal Tap II never fully sells that the world is richer for reuniting the band forty years later. But if This Is Spinal Tap were to have any companion film at all, I'm just thankful that it's reasonably fun. There is a lot of good material to mine from the artists, as they combat a sleazy new manager and try to move past old beefs, all of which bring fun sequences to the table. I also greatly enjoyed their new drummer, Didi, mostly because I like a punk rock drummer girl. I wish she were in more of the movie, because she's such an energetic presence, but I understand keeping the focus on the core three so I'll begrudgingly accept that she's strictly a background character. But what it boils down to is that Spinal Tap II is a not-very-special sequel to a very special movie. It's really hard to run away from that, even if it's probably worth watching once if you're a Spinal Tap fan.
Traumatika
⭐️1/2
Genre: Horror
Director: Pierre Tsigaridis
Starring: Rebekah Kennedy, Ranen Navat, Emily Goss, Susan Gayle Watts
Traumatika is one of those horror movies that declined to show footage of itself in ads because it was "too terrifying." Normally, when this happens it's because the movie is cheap trash and they don't want the customer to know it, so they show off as little as possible. I wish I could say Traumatika bucks that trend but, honestly, it just solidifies it. It's a shame because Traumatika shows promise in the beginning. It's at its strongest during the opening twenty minutes when its just a confident tour of its grotesqueries and showcasing star Rebekah Kennedy being fully committed to whatever twisted thing it asks her to do. When it comes time to explain what the fuck is going on, the movie wears its flaws like a broken toilet. That opening, though, which sees Kennedy playing a witch-like woman crawling around and haunting a little boy through a house is an excellent short film, by itself. The movie misses a step when it provides context for it, allowing lesser actors to ham up lackluster roles. Then the movie grinds to a halt in its second half, which follows up on the type of adult the young boy from the prologue becomes. This portion of the movie is slow, boring, and not really anything. I think the movie convinced itself it's about adults who don't confront their demons becoming those demons. It's hard to ignore the theme being trauma because the movie continuously states in dialogue that this is what it's about. What exactly it's trying to say about trauma is a bit murky. Maybe it's about needing to go to therapy now before you become a serial killer, but feels more like utilizing trauma to put on a geek show. That probably would have worked better if an hour of this movie didn't feel like unnecessary padding to an opening that felt like it was the only portion of the movie with vision. But telling stories is hard, especially when you don't have a story to tell and just wing it.
Movies Still Playing At My Theater
Caught Stealing ⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Fantastic 4: First Steps ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Freakier Friday ⭐️⭐️1/2
The Roses ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Superman ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Weapons ⭐️⭐️⭐️
New To Digital
Honey Don't! ⭐️⭐️
The Naked Gun ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Strange Harvest ⭐️⭐️
Weapons ⭐️⭐️⭐️
New To Physical
Ballerina ⭐️⭐️1/2
Bride Hard ⭐️
Clown in a Cornfield ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Elio ⭐️⭐️1/2
Jurassic World: Rebirth ⭐️1/2
Materialists ⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Ritual ⭐️1/2
Coming Soon!
