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Sunday, June 25, 2023

Cinema Playground Journal 2023: Week 25 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness


Asteroid City
⭐⭐1/2
Genre:  Comedy, Sci-Fi
Director:  Wes Anderson
Starring:  Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Gilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Liev Schreiber, Hope Davis, Stephen Park, Rupert Friend, Maya Hawke, Steve Carell, Matt Dillon, Hong Chau, Willem Dafoe, Margot Robbie, Tony Revolori, Jake Ryan, Jeff Goldblum


Traditionally I don't care for Wes Anderson, so any and all fans may want to take whatever I say with a grain of salt.  I get what he does, but I always stare at his movies blankly without finding them charming or interesting.  It's great that he's committed to his thing, though.  I'm happy for him.  I had some draw to this one in its aesthetic, as its presenting itself like a script to a stage play or a cheap 50's TV production, but it almost wants us to believe it's a movie that accidentally has too much money.  It's a movie with millions of dollars in the bank that wants to look like it only has hundreds, framing large, detailed sets and props like they're supposed to look like cardboard cutouts against canvas backdrops.  That's cute and I enjoyed that.  I also like how Anderson is playing with a genre-bending sci-fi "first contact" concept, which shows him pushing his comfort zone even if he never leaves it.  My pitfall is the same one I always get with Anderson and it's that I'm just over it in twenty minutes, but the movie still has over an hour left and I just have sit here and take it.  The things I wish this movie would do are things that Anderson would never do, so the fact that it doesn't lean into "cheap sci-fi" homage enough and saying it's "too Wes Anderson" isn't even something I can fairly criticize.  It is what it is.  He's an artist that is both free to be creative with his own pallette that's distinctly his and also boxed in because he does almost exclusively what his auteur status holds him to.  People will love this movie for that and I can't even be mad at it.


God Is a Bullet
⭐⭐
Genre:  Thriller
Director:  Nick Cassavetes
Starring:  Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Maïka Monroe, Jamie Foxx


A cop tracks down a Satanist cult that kidnapped his daughter with the aid of an ex-member who claims the same thing happened to her.  Claiming to be based on a true story, God Is a Bullet instead feels like writer/director Nick Cassavetes doing his own take on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo story of an investigator with unlikely help from a psychologically scarred pessimist, only done with a much heavier hand.  The movie is very high on its own extremity.  It even seems to think its nihilism is poetry.  The film wades so much time waxing on about life being a few miserable decades followed by a dirt nap while its main character has a crisis of faith.  It spends too long analyzing its own philosophy that it doesn't realize how long its prattling on.  The film deserves to be much tighter than it is, as its stacked with dead end subplots and characters who spend entire scenes just trying to depress each other.  When the movie does work, it's not great, but there are elements that show promise.  I was invested in the main story, it just takes too long to travel through it and there are about five tying-loose-ends endings it has to go through before it's finally finished.  The honest to god truth is that it feels like a Netflix show that was deemed overlong and boring and was mercifully pruned down to a still too long two-and-a-half hour movie and thrown into a theater without promotion to die.  I'm sure that's a metaphor for the movie's entire global outlook, though.


Past Lives
⭐⭐⭐
Genre:  Drama, Romance
Director:  Celine Song
Starring:  Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, John Magaro


Past Lives is the story of two childhood sweethearts from South Korea separated after one immigrates to America.  After years apart, the become reacquainted in an effort to find closure for the romance that never blossomed even as their lives lived in the time apart keep them from exploring it as deeply as they may need.  The movie is a lovely ode to the missed connection, the thing that should have been that didn't happen for one reason or another.  Its look at it is sad and reflective but never melancholy or resentful, looking for a silver lining in its clouds.  What holds it back is that its screenplay isn't meaty enough.  It feels intimately detailed at times, and undernourished in others.  The film's flash-forward presentation doesn't heed it any favors, because while the passing of time is represented, their lives don't feel lived in, as if they stopped existing in twelve year gaps then just say "We're back, this is what happened while we were gone."  This is rather minor nitpick in the grand picture of the movie, but it's what keeps its good instead of great.  The movie sells itself on its commitment to the presentation that love isn't a fairy tale.  It happens the way it happens often by happenstance.  There's nothing romantic about that, but we love our rose-colored glass view of it.  Maybe "the one" is someone else.  Sucks to be them.  Don't dwell on it.  It's unhealthy.

Netflix & Chill


The Perfect Find
⭐⭐
Streaming On:  Netflix
Genre:  Comedy, Drama, Romance
Director:  Numa Perrier
Starring:  Gabrielle Union, Keith Powers, Gina Torres


Gabrielle Union plays a disgraced fashion journalist who is trying to rebuild her career under a former rival's company, but soon finds herself having an affair with the boss's son.  The Perfect Find is a very basic pop romcom that feels like it wants to be steamy, but is always pouring too much water on its own fire; wants to be funny, but is more of "oh, what an awkward situation" than a laugh-generator; and wants to be romantic, but is very content on coasting on how attractive the leads are.  The movie mainly seems to want to be vibes more than a story, as it often cues up soft tunes to play under its scenes, like the director has stuck earbuds in the viewer and is playing you their personal seduction playlist while you watch their movie.  The movie trips over itself on its way to being a sexy good time, though while it's not particularly good, it's hard to imagine that romcom fans won't enjoy killing an hour-and-a-half to its smooth beat.


Unwelcome
⭐⭐
Streaming On:  Shudder
Genre:  Horror
Director:  Jon Wright
Starring:  Hannah John-Kamen, Douglas Booth, Colm Meaney


This fairy tale inspired horror film sees an expecting couple inheriting a cottage from a great-aunt's passing, which comes with the superstition of giving woodland creatures known as "Red Caps" and offering of meat each night.  But as they find their neighbors to be less than neighborly, they also discover the superstition might also be a dangerous reality.  Unwelcome is highlighted by a committed, unhinged Brothers Grimm presentation, with some imaginative fantasy design and outstanding creature effects.  The Red Caps themselves are such devilishly charming elvish creatures that I found myself wishing they were in more of the movie.  That kinda brings me to the downside, because the film doesn't lean hard enough in this direction.  The Red Caps are largely irrelevant to the story of our characters, as they just burst in and create havoc and confusion in the climax.  One could argue that fairy tales being structured like this is not unheard of, but a smarter screenplay could infuse everything more harmoniously.  For the majority of the screentime, the movie is about a couple who are provoked and bullied by aggressive outsiders who wish them harm for no reason.  Thematically the film seems to want to be about standing your own ground and fighting one's own battles (which is a weird theme to have when you start out with a pregnant woman being attacked by hoodlums with knives), but it never comes together, especially when one layers the fantastical subplot on top of it.  It turns the film into something whimsical and quirky while also being angry and aggressive at the same time. 

Movies Still Playing At My Theater
The Blackening ⭐⭐⭐
The Boogeyman ⭐⭐1/2
Elemental ⭐⭐⭐
Fast X ⭐⭐1/2
The Flash ⭐⭐1/2
The Machine ⭐⭐

New To Streaming
Love Again ⭐⭐

New To Physical
Avatar:  The Way of Water ⭐⭐⭐1/2
The Covenant ⭐⭐⭐

Coming Soon!
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Thursday, June 22, 2023

"The Bicycle Driver" & A Tribute to Santa Claus (MST3K Special)


The Short

Ho ho ho!  Nothing says Christmas Time quite like...bicycle safety?  Well, kids get bicycles for Christmas sometimes, so I...guess?  After all, we got not one, but TWO bike safety shorts for our yuletide livestreams this year, so this can't be coincidence.

This bicycle safety short melts my brain less than the last one, so I didn't have a hard time paying attention, despite it being far more boring.  It's covers some of the basics that they other short covered, like hand signals and traffic safety, but also takes a few moments to talk about details like reflectors during night rides and whathaveyou.  Is The Bicycle Driver a better short than Bicycling Visual Skills?  Better is a relative term, but also varies depending on what you're specifically referring to.  I think Bicycle Driver has more information packed into it than Visual Skills, but I'll give props to Visual Skills for trying to be edutainment, even if it failed at both the edu and the tainment.  Driver is just a bland list of rules.

"In the 'Driver' trilogy, this falls in between 'Baby' and 'Taxi.'"

We have Pearl in the theater again for another short! This time, instead of taking it on with Erhardt, she drags Synthia and Mega-Synthia into the theater with her!  What I like about this short is that it short is that it gives Rebecca Hansen and Yvonne Freese some well-deserved play in the theater, especially Yvonne, who's Mega-Synthia character was practically ignored all season.  This short by itself gives her more screentime as the character than the entirety of Season 13.

They do a bang-up job too.  We're served up some doofus education with some solid laughs at its expense.  There are solid jabs at the short's inconsistency, as one minute it claims the purchased bike is a birthday present and the next says the receiver needs to pay it off somehow ("Have fun paying for your birthday present, son!").  Caution is thrown to the wind with safety tips, as the mother asks her son if he can guarantee that he won't ride at night, only to have the response be "I can't even guarantee you I won't sell it for cigarettes."

So yes, it's a delight to see Pearl and her clone stooges doing a riffing session.  While I don't think The Bicycle Driver rivals Cavalcade as far as Mads shorts this season, the Mads are becoming the highlight of these little bonus riffs of the season.  I almost don't even want to see Jonah or Emily do another one.

Almost.

Get back in the theater, you slackers.

Thumbs Up
👍


The Livestream

Our Christmas feast of Mystery Science Theater 3000 continues with Mike's holiday special Santa Claus (review here), so it's good to welcome the second host of the series into the festivities somehow, even if he can't make it for the multi-host finale.  This swell episode is accompanied by new segments featuring Jonah and his Bots, contrasting yesterday's stream that featured Emily's crew.  We have Jonah learning about various demons in addition to Pitch, as well as him exchanging gifts with Joel.


In this third night of holiday magic, the stream brings us a portion of the Phoenixville show where the cast got up and sang songs from the series for the audience with musical guest hosts Paul & Storm.  This is all pretty self-explanatory, and I really don't think I need to discuss it much further.  Participants here are Jonah Ray, Emily Marsh, Baron Vaughn, Kelsey Ann Brady, Tim Ryder, Rebecca Hanson, Yvonne Freese, and Deanna Rooney, while Joel Hodgson pops in briefly for Patrick Swayze Christmas.


One thing I will say is that I think the energy of the room lights up more once they leave the Christmas songs behind.  The audience is so much more jazzed for the rapid lyrics of Mother Crabber and just watching Baron and Jonah's impressive wordplay with Concepts.  I'd personally say the fact that Baron and Jonah still have that number down at all is impressive and makes this event worthwhile.

But there is still more to come.

To Be Continued...

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Monday, June 19, 2023

Cinema Playground Journal 2023: Week 24 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness


The Blackening
⭐⭐⭐
Genre:  Comedy, Horror
Director:  Tim Story
Starring:  Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Melvin Gregg, X Mayo, Dewayne Perkins, Antoinette Robertson, Sinqua Walls, Jay Pharaoh, Yvonne Orji


The joke that forms the basis of The Blackening is that Black people rarely survive horror movies, so comedy director Tim Story utilized an all Black cast for a slasher movie parody which sees a group of friends taking a Juneteenth vacation but find themselves tortured by a psychopath through a board game that judges "Blackness."  I personally would have preferred if the film had leaned into horror harder than it does, because while there are a few tense sequences in the movie, the horror element is more of a backdrop.  Even the "sadistic board game" element of the story winds up negligible and tossed to the side quicker than you'd expect, whisking away what could have been a creative element in favor of turning it into a chase movie.  The movie entertains in spite of that, even if comedic personality can be played up too much at times.  It's a fun watch, though genre enthusiasts might be disappointed it doesn't push itself as far as it could.


Elemental
⭐⭐⭐
Genre:  Fantasy, Comedy
Director:  Peter Sohn
Starring:  Leah Lewis, Mamoudou Athie, Ronnie del Carmen, Shila Ommi, Wendi McLennon-Covey, Catherine O'Hara


It's Zootopia, but with elements.  People made of fire, water, earth, air, and maybe other things, who knows.  Pixar's latest is about a fire girl trying to save her father's shop from being closed down, and forming an unlikely romance with a water guy alone the way.  It's more of Pixar's patented formula of "imagine if random inanimate thing were people" in full force, with all the cuteness and human elements you've come to expect from their work.  Most might say its light and safe, but it's a fun and cute movie in of itself.  There are lovely metaphors for racial relationships while also highlighting how differing personalities can enhance each other and the pressures of the life we need versus the life we're given.  It can be too on the nose for its own good, but its a beautiful movie at its best moments.


The Flash
⭐⭐1/2
Genre:  Superhero, Sci-Fi, Action, Comedy
Director:
Starring:  Ezra Miller, Michael Keaton, Sasha Calle, Ron Livingston, Maribel Verdi, Kiersey Clemmons, Ben Affleck, Michael Shannon


It was a long and turbulent run (lol) to get a Flash movie on the big screen, iterations dating back to when the CW show wasn't even out yet, and that show lasted nine goddamn seasons before one actually hit theaters.  And the resulting movie looks just as battered and beaten down as that path suggested.  Even finally putting together a production team that actually got it made, the film was plagued with delays, reshoots, certain off-screen drama that I'm not getting into, and a really bizarre studio shill campaign that included James Gunn, Tom Cruise, and even Stephen King for some reason as all tried to gaslight hype into presenting it as the greatest superhero movie ever made, which only served as the final nail in the film's coffin (the greatest superhero movie ever made came out two weeks ago and was called Across the Spider-Verse).  I wish the movie turned out exemplary in spite of everything that tripped it up, but it runs so frantically through its various ideas that it never feels like it's doing any of them justice.

Based on the big event run Flashpoint, which saw the Flash running back in time to save his mother only to find he created a chaotic alternate timeline, the film sees this Flash doing the same thing but instead of breaking time, he tumbles through the multiverse.  Despite its inspiration, The Flash is a giddy buddy comedy between the two Barry Allens of two universes, as if the take of the story is to do a Bill & Ted movie where Ezra Miller plays both Bill and Ted.  Despite how hard it's selling itself on action and drama in promotional material (as well as more Michael Keaton's return as Batman than anything else), the movie bait and switches the audience with an aloof comedy film with a sci-fi twist.  I don't blame it, because trying to sell your movie on Ezra Miller is problematic at this point in time and the nostalgia and sci-fi pieces are likely going to get more butts into seats, but tempering your expectations is key here.  The movie is flamboyant, which can be a strength, but it also becomes a weakness when it feels like its undercutting everything else its tossing into its recipe.

But the big problem I'm facing is the problem I've always had for this movie:  using Flashpoint as the basis for the first Flash movie is an aggressive miscalculation.  It's his most well-known story, but it's like using Civil War as the first Captain America movie.  There is way too much going on in it and you can't serve your franchise up successfully if you're just tossing the audience into chaos.  It's the wrong story for this movie, and while the movie puts the work in to make it cohesive it never earns it.  The best moments of The Flash are the ones that give you insight as to what a normal Flash movie without this nostalgia razzle dazzle would be.  It's a shame, because that movie is funny, charming, and even a little sweet.  Too bad they didn't make it.


No Hard Feelings
⭐⭐
Genre:  Comedy
Director:  Gene Stupnitsky
Starring:  Jennifer Lawrence, Andrew Barth Feldman, Laura Benanti, Matthew Broderick, Natalie Morales, Scott MacArthur


Surprise!  This movie isn't out yet!  But the stars aligned and I wound up at an early access screening!  I had absolutely no interest in this movie, so I have nobody to blame but myself.

The film features the normally drama-heavy Jennifer Lawrence in an unusual comedic turn.  Not just comedy, but a broad, Farrelly Brothers style sex comedy, where she plays a broke woman who is hired by the parents of a socially awkward graduate to lose his virginity to in exchange for a car.  The premise plays out as you'd expect it to, setting up awkward seduction fails and slapstick comedy, neither of which are constructed well enough to keep the movie from feeling one-note.  Every ten minute section feels the same as the last as it struggles to find new ways of telling its one joke, often giving up and telling one its already told.  The one slapstick sequence with any heft is one where Lawrence goes completely full-frontal nude and gets into a brawl, which you have to give her credit for going the full nine yards on.  The movie isn't a whole drag, it's just repetitive and off-putting at times, while it's attempt at sweetness and messages of personal growth and desire of connection over sex are plastic and hollow because the film doesn't seem all that interested in exploring them.  It's more interested in making Lawrence do a clumsy lapdance and saying double entendres.  I might be more interested in the character growth of this movie if it felt like the movie grew with them, but it always pulls back and regresses then claims they've changed at the end.  Maybe if the movie was funnier that wouldn't be a problem.  But the audience I was with laughed themselves silly, so don't take my word for it.  I guess it just wasn't as good for me as it was for them.

Netflix & Chill


Extraction II
⭐⭐1/2
Streaming On:  Netflix
Genre:  Action, Thriller
Director:  Sam Hargrave
Starring:  Chris Hemsworth, Golshifteh Farahani, Idris Elba, Olga Kurylenko, Daniel Bernhardt


The Flash isn't the only comic based property to hit screens this week, as the original was based on a graphic novel called Ciudad, which was co-created by Avengers:  Infinity War/Endgame directors Joe and Anthony Russo (Joe Russo also provided the screenplays for both Extraction films).  I'll be somewhat honest and say I barely remember the first Extraction.  It came out during the heat of the Covid-19 pandemic when no movies worth a damn were coming out and I watched it off of enthusiastic recommendations and found myself bored stiff.  I do remember Chris Hemsworth died at the end, and now he's back because walked it off, like all great action heroes.  He's back as immortal extractionist Tyler Rake and no I can't stop laughing at his name either, who is recovering from his injuries and hired to do some more extractioning almost immediately after his last extraction.  I probably owe the first film a rewatch because there was a chance I watched it in a cynical bad mood as I enjoyed Extraction II a bit more on its own scale.  The action sequences and stunts are absolutely terrific and those who love a good adrenaline pumping chase and gunplay scene will get a lot out of this movie.  The issue I come to is that I had difficulty watching this movie in one sitting, because while its action sells, it's drama is such self-serious, somber brooding that I found myself going "I just can't" about halfway through and turned it off.  This was what I mostly remember when I think of that first one when I'm dismissive of it, and if the action was this good during it, I certainly can't recall it.

Now we just wait for him to join Stallone and Statham as one of the Extractables.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater
The Boogeyman ⭐⭐1/2
Fast X ⭐⭐1/2
The Machine ⭐⭐

New To Digital
Kandahar ⭐⭐1/2

New To Physical

Coming Soon!
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Thursday, June 15, 2023

"Bicycling Visual Skills" & A Tribute to Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (MST3K Special)


The Short

Get ready for the short that Pearl calls "so boring it feels like a feature" but thrills enough for Emily to call it "The Fast and the Furious:  Toledo Drift."  Bicycling Visual Skills is a bicycle safety short designed for kids to learn the rules of the road so they don't wind up roadkill.  Some kids listen better than others.  Whoops!

It's a short that rushes through the rules while trying to also be lively enough that children won't be bored (good luck with that).  The problem that my ADD brain has is that it's easy to just glaze itself and the world just becomes fuzzy until its over, and by then I barely remember I watched anything.  I don't learn anything from something like this because information comes at me too fast with imagery that doesn't sink in.  Occasionally I'll snap out of my trance and collect a tidbit or two.  Whether it's useful is something I can't say at the time, but at least something stuck.

That's the impression I get when I watch this short, and all I remember is a whirlwind of color.  That goes for the riffing as well, unfortunately.  Here's the deal, originally I didn't review the last collection of Season 13 shorts and Gizmoplex events because my schedule didn't allow it (more on that below), with the intent of covering them in January.  But things weren't so cut-and-dry for me because everytime I sat down to do these entries, I was presented with this short.  Every single time it ends, I feel blank and it takes me a moment to recover, and I can't really write anything about it because I don't remember it.  After a while I just forgot that I never typed up entries for the rest of these shorts despite having event write-ups finished for a while now, when I suddenly decided "Oh snap, I need to get that done!"

It took me a while to realize just what was happening, but maybe it's bullshit to blame the short itself for this, but here I am trying to review it and I'm just typing this word salad instead.  I don't want to talk about it because I don't know what to say about it.

What I do remember is that the short is pretty funny.  I mostly remember quips at the beginning, such as Toledo Drift and using the Konami Code to unlock bicycle safety.  From there my brain hits cruise control, and while I recall being more amused than not, I just sit there coasting during it.  I'm not going to blame Emily and her crew, because they seem to be rising to the occasion.  This one's on me.

Thumbs Up
👍


The Livestream

Twas the special Holiday week of the Gizmoplex, and I was stuck at overtime at work.  Chances were low that I was ever going to attend these events, because they coincided with my normal work nights anyway and asking for an entire week off to watch old Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes was out of the question.  I'm glad the holiday tributes happened, because it seemed like a fun ride for some Yule Tide luls.  Apparently, I missed a full two-hour Gizmoplex crash, though, of which our stream hasn't seen the likes of since Demon Squad.  I did catch wind that they were directing people toward Trace and Frank's Mads stream that night while they fixed the issue, which was nice of them.


Following a hilarious Holiday-themed Jackbox Showdown on Monday, we spend the rest of the week watching our favorite show's Holiday specials leading up to the debut of The Christmas Dragon!  What a glorious Christmas present to all of us!  First up is, of course, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (review here), which is here to deliver a Patrick Swayze Christmas to one and all.  We also have a generous portion of new segments featuring Emily and her Bots accompanying it, which decides to take a bit of a dig at the movie Mean Girls, having the Bots get sassy about the movie's boxy bot, which makes Emily uncomfortable.  She also points out that this is the first movie to portray Mrs. Claus in cinema ("Score one for feminism!").

The aftershow is something a little different.  Earlier in December they had some live shows performed at the Colonial Theater in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, famous for a classic sequence in the 1958 monster movie The Blob, starring Steve McQueen.  They did a night of comedy there as well as debuted The Christmas Dragon in front of an audience, with a Q&A afterward.  The Gizmoplex offers us a peek at these events, broken up into segments and offered them as deserts to our tribute events.  And personally, I found them to be an absolute delight.


Our first offering is what Matt McGinnis calls "Memories Roasting on an Open Fire," an MST3K Yule Log of sorts.  This is a showcase of castmember family photos of Christmases past shown off to the audience where the cast is invited to riff on, roast, and heckle.  Only a few of the cast seemed to have participated, as we only see photos of Conor McGiffin, Emily Marsh, Kelsey Ann Brady, and Tim Ryder, but we have a pretty loaded batch of riffers, which include Emily, Kelsey, and Tim (Conor is absent), as well as Jonah Ray, Baron Vaughn, Yvonne Freese, and Rebecca Hanson.  The photos are suitably adorable and awkward and the jokes are high rate and very funny (I assume they edited out a bunch of duds for this experience).  Tim Ryder gets the largest amount of hazing, which he probably deserves for that loser of a blackface riff he did earlier in the evening.  Emily gets some of the most inspired content, as her photos seem to have the most to play with.  Then there is poor Kelsey, who gets mistaken for both Emily and Tim (somehow) at different points in the presentation.  But she does have that fun, giant dress photo, which is my personal favorite.  She is also the subject of my favorite riff, where she wears a "bell" costume in a school play and it's remarked "When Kelsey heard she was playing 'Belle,' this isn't what she had in mind."

Fun stuff.  Let's see what the third day of Christmas brings us!

To Be Continued....



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Sunday, June 11, 2023

Cinema Playground Journal 2023: Week 23 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness


Mending the Line
⭐⭐⭐
Genre:  Drama
Director:  Joshua Caldwell
Starring:  Brian Cox, Sinqua Walls, Perry Mattfeld, Wes Studi


Brian Cox plays a veteran who teaches an injured soldier how to fly fish to help cope with his PTSD.  Elements of Mending the Line run a little too similar to Causeway, as Sinqua Walls' character essentially echoes Jennifer Lawrence's in that movie.  The key difference between the two is that Mending the Line leans more into soapy melodrama than Causeway did.  Causeway was directed at cinephiles and is an overall better movie, though Mending the Line might prove to be a more palatable option for veterans who might relate to its subject matter.  It's a softer movie with big, sad puppy dog eyes that wants you to hold its hand.  It's solid, and both Cox and Walls are good in it, while it's always great to see Wes Studi in things.  One's tolerance of it is going to heavily depend on whether they're buying the way this movie serves thick drama on a platter though.  Otherwise Causeway is the alternative watch, especially since both movies are just basic "one day at a time" stories of trauma.


Transformers:  Rise of the Beasts
⭐⭐1/2
Genre:  Sci-Fi, Action, Adventure
Director:  Steven Caple Jr.
Starring:  Anthony Ramos, Dominique Fishback, Peter Cullen, Ron Perlman, Pete Davidson, Michelle Yeoh, Peter Dinklage, Liza Koshy, Coleman Domingo


The Transformers series got to the point where its movies have basically become apology runs.  I get the "If it makes money, why fix it?" attitude that brought us five movies under Michael Bay that just compounded convolution and incoherency, and I even like a couple of them in spite of their worst tendencies.  But I think back to those movies and am reminded of what Lindsey Ellis said about them:  "I just want a Transformers movie that was made by someone who doesn't hate Transformers."

Then Bumblebee came out, gave Lindsey what she asked for, and our response was "Wait...these movies could have been good this whole time?"  It's hard not to be salty at these goddamn movies.

Rise of the Beasts is in an awkward phase where it's adapting to what Bumblebee did right but also trying to be familiar to those who enjoy the Bay movies.  It grows even more awkward with its noncommittal to whether or not this post-Bumblebee iteration of the franchise are supposed to be prequels to the Bay movies or a full reboot.  They don't exactly line up with those movies all that well, but the Michael Bay series is so contradictory within itself that they don't exactly make the lore all that much worse if they are connected.  So its best to look at Rise of the Beasts solely as a sequel to Bumblebee, which sees Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, and several other Autobots looking for an ancient portal key in possession of beast Transformers called Maximals, lead by Optimus Primal, who have been hiding it from the planet-eating Unicron and his minions, Scourge and the Terrorcons.  The Beast Wars line of characters is mostly reimagined for this movie, as a group of protector monks who live in solitude and beat up anybody who threatens what they're hiding.

But is it better than the Bay movies?  Bay movies have more flourish and style, but I like that I can actually see what the hell is going on in this movie.  I also like that the Autobots are actual characters instead of personalities spouting catchphrases.  I also like how Anthony Ramos and Dominique Fishback are easily the most charismatic and non-aggressively obnoxious human characters in this franchise.  This movie, however, maybe reminds me a little too much of G.I. Joe:  Retaliation, which was a movie made by people who had a clear idea of what the ingredients to a good version of this franchise would be but didn't know how to put them together, so they just made a thing and hoped it worked.  It's flashy, but since this is the seventh movie, flash isn't enough.  We've seen this robot shooting shit before, and it needs to make it more exciting and less vanilla.  Bay, for all his flaws, did create excitement at the best of times (the finales of the first and third movies are nothing if not exciting).  I just wish I could scrap up this franchise and rebuild it from the best parts to show it what it could be.

Art Attack


The Starling Girl
⭐⭐⭐1/2
Genre:  Drama
Director:  Laurel Parmet
Starring:  Eliza Scanlen, Lewis Pullman, Jimmi Simpsons, Wrenn Schmidt, Austin Abrams, Kyle Secor


The Starling Girl is about a 17-year-old girl who is raised in a devout Christian family who has an affair with a married youth pastor, as well as makes other choices that will make the audience wince, tense up, and go "Oh, honey, no."  That is a phrase you'll be saying a lot during the two hour duration of this movie, and what makes it worse is that we understand why she takes the actions that she does.  Not just because she's young and stupid, which we all were at 17, but the movie gives a great sense of her environment, living in a strict Christian family (that is falling apart slightly out of her gaze, but that's something else entirely).  She finds herself in restriction as she yearns to explore love and sexuality, which includes a boyfriend that was personally selected by her parents which resembles that of an arranged marriage that she can't say no to.  Being a teenager is rough, as you discover who you are through turmoil and tenacity, and doing that in a place that won't allow you to find yourself is almost devastating.  And the thing is, her religion is not her enemy.  She loves her religion.  Her issue is those who use it to shackle her and take advantage of her trust and naiveté, instead of guiding her in the way she needs.  Most might say faith has all the answers, but this film sheds light on the personal questions that are still being asked and the frustration it causes when there is no answer.

Mistakes were made.  Mistakes will continue to be made.  Meaning of life.

Netflix & Chill


Brooklyn 45
⭐⭐1/2
Streaming On:  Shudder
Genre:  Drama, Horror
Director:  Ted Geoghegan
Starring:  Anne Ramsay, Larry Fessenden, Jeremy Holmes, Kristina Klebe, Ezra Buzzington, Ron E. Rains, Lucy Carapetyan


I suspect that Brooklyn 45 might have been better served as a stage production, as it's primarily a film about a group of people in a single room arguing.  That's what plays do best.  Instead it chose film and it feels off-balance.  The film centers on a group of military vets who served in World War II, who hold a seance to reach a friend who recently committed suicide.  Shit happens, they find themselves haunted by their past, their fear, their bigotry, and, of course, spooks.  The tone of this movie is strange, because while the acting is overall good enough to push the drama, it seems to take precedence over finding the right "feel" of the picture.  A part of me assumes that they're aiming to replicate a 40's film, which just makes it jarring when it gets more modern (the cinematographer bookends the film with a classical 1.33:1 aspect ratio while playing out the rest of the film in a modern 2.4:1, which is very curious).  But even if the film is trying to feel like a golden oldie, even chillers back then were atmospheric.  The filmmaking here is a bit too bright and flippant to the darkness of its story.  But the movie will surprise you with moments of effectiveness, including a thematically resonant conclusion that's based in uncertainty of the actions of our characters.  The fact that we don't know if everything played out the right way as the characters ponder this themselves proves there is at least a core to this movie that works.


Flamin' Hot
⭐⭐1/2
Streaming On:  Hulu
Genre:  Drama, Comedy
Director:  Eva Longoria
Starring:  Jesse Garcia, Annie Gonzalez, Dennis Haysbert, Tony Shaloub


Our nostalgia phase of entertainment seems to have entered a point where we're now making movies about our nostalgia for commercialization, how our favorite corporate products came to our shelves during and post-Regan era.  It's weird to think we got to this point, but maybe the targets of nostalgia IP sales have reached the age where they're branching off of just seeing a movie based on their favorite childhood cartoon and are venturing off into other interests.  This year alone has given us Air, BlackBerry, and Tetris, and it's only halfway over.  Flamin' Hot is about the invention of Flamin' Hot Cheetos, which tells the story of Richard Montañez, the janitor who came up with the brand and became an executive of the Frito Lay company because of it.  His claims are disputed and the factual basis behind any of this is something I can't speak on, but the movie does come off as an earnest sales pitch of hot air.  I want to believe this movie happened.  It's a cute little feel-good underdog story.  Its head is also in the clouds, leaning into tropes and cliches while also working a Hispanic flavor of quirkiness into itself.  That's the impression I get, that the film is more about Mexican pride and accomplishment in the face of adversity than the product itself.  That aspect of the film is lovely, directed with flavor by Eva Longoria (?!) like one long Luis rant from Ant-Man in narrative form.  It's probably worth a watch based on that alone, even if I'm not sure I'm buying what it's selling.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater
The Machine ⭐⭐

New To Digital
Fast X ⭐⭐1/2

New To Physical
Mafia Mamma ⭐⭐1/2
Renfield ⭐⭐⭐

Coming Soon!
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Sunday, June 4, 2023

Cinema Playground Journal 2023: Week 22 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness


The Boogeyman
⭐⭐1/2
Genre:  Horror
Director:  Rob Savage
Starring:  Sophie Thatcher, Chris Messina, Vivien Lyra Blair, David Dastmalchian


Not Hollywood's first attempt to blockbuster horror the concept of the Boogeyman, as Sam Raimi produced a lackluster film in 2005 that featured Lucy Lawless and Zooey Deschanel, which in turn spawned direct to video sequels starring Saw's Tobin Bell and former Power Ranger Erin Cahill.  And say what you will about that movie, but it's commitment to making the Boogeyman a little grey CGI man in a dumb outfit was...well, not commendable, but you have to pat it on the head and say "You tried."  This new Boogeyman movie has more pedigree behind it, being written by the guys who wrote A Quiet Place and based on a short story by Stephen King.  That short story was about a guy who was relating his experiences with the Boogeyman to a therapist, but the movie largely uses a similar situation to springboard a story about the Boogeyman now haunting the therapist's family, who are reeling from the loss of their mother.  One thing the movie gets right is that since traditionally the Boogeyman is a childhood fear of anything in particular (usually the dark) manifested into a catchall entity, the movie wisely tries to keep to a youthful perspective, which was something the last Boogeyman movies weren't smart enough to do.  Why it decides its main character needs to be a twenty-something actress pretending to be a high schooler is anybody's guess, but at least this movie isn't about a grown-ass man screaming "The Boogeyman is coming to get me!"  The film does the traditional themes of grief, loss, trauma, and fear that horror movies do best, though not as well as others.  Last year's Smile runs rings around this movie, for example.  Where the movie shines brightest is in its sound design, which is pretty is well weaved into the film and gives the suspense sequences some oomf.  Horror fans looking for a traditional "Don't open that door!" experience will likely have fun with this, though probably the best manifestation of a "boogeyman" in general is still Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street.


Shin Kamen Rider
⭐⭐⭐
Genre:  Superhero, Action
Director:  Hideaki Anno
Starring:  Sosuke Ikematsu, Minami Hamabe, Tasuko Imoto


Shin Godzilla begat a rather interesting trend in that Evangelion creator Hideaki Anno seems to be hounded by studios to do modern reinterpretations of their tokusatsu properties after that film's great success.  He passed off directorial duties of Toho/Tsuburaya's Shin Ultraman to his Shin Godzilla co-director Shinji Higuchi, while Anno just took screenplay credit.  Anno instead went to Toei to develop Shin Kamen Rider, which would be his first of these films without Higuchi by his side, choosing to write and direct by himself.

Kamen Rider is pretty niche in the west, with most only having the reference of the American rebranding off the back of Power Rangers, Masked Rider, which bombed hard enough that even the people involved with it don't want to acknowledge that it happened.  Shin Kamen Rider takes its influence from the first Kamen Rider series, which saw a motorcycle stuntman turned into a mutant soldier by the secret organization S.H.O.C.K.E.R. for world conquest or something (like one does), but is freed from their control and chooses to combat their animal hybrid beings as they are set loose on the public.  Unlike Ultraman, I haven't seen the entirety of the original Kamen Rider series (which is a whopping 98 episodes, which is an insane run for a toku show).  I've seen maybe ten or so episodes.  It's a gnarly show, in its own way.  Campy as fuck, but it goes for the jugular, trying to go as hard and dark as it can while still being a kids show (is it a kids show? Because it's insane, if it is).  It has a very distinct look and feel to it too, one that I saw reflected in Shin Kamen Rider, which like Shin Ultraman shows an intense love for the property it's portraying.  All three of the Shin movies have had a reverence for what each franchise was in its original incarnation and tried to polish it up and modernize it while also trying to reflect what made it popular, doing so in different ways.  If Shin Godzilla leaned into reestablishment and Shin Ultraman leaned into nostalgia, Shin Kamen Rider leans into kitsch, fused with elements of pulp and body horror.  It takes those elements of that original series vibe and cranks them up to 11 for an enhanced vibe of its own.  Its earnest embracing of absurd 70's Toei tokusatsu is entrancing.  It's not without fault, as its episodic structure can sometimes feel like certain segments are more interesting than others while there's an odd sense of humor at the expense of its own self-seriousness that is weirder than it is funny.  Because of that, it's probably the weakest of the Shin movies.  However, it's also arguably the most fun, and it's the only one of the films that doesn't lose steam in its third act.

The question is whether or not there is anything left for Anno to take on in this genre.  Shin Gamera?  Shin Super Sentai?  I'm rooting for Shin Japanese Spider-Man, myself.  And speaking of Spider-Man...


Spider-Man:  Across the Spider-Verse
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Genre:  Superhero, Action, Sci-Fi
Director:  Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson
Starring:  Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, Brian Tyree Henry, Luna Lauren Vélez, Oscar Isaac, Daniel Kaluuya, Issa Rae, Jake Johnson, Karan Soni, Jason Schwartzman


I'd like to think my expectations for Across the Spider-Verse were in check, even as a life-long Spider-Man fan.  I thought Into the Spider-Verse was a great movie, absolutely deserved the applause it received, but also found myself reserved on it, likely because my nostalgic love for Spider-Man 2 eclipsed it even as it was doing so many things so right and innovating not just the Spider-Man series, but animation in general.

Then I saw Across the Spider-Verse.  I'll put it this way, an hour after I came out of it I found myself angry.  Not because it was bad, but I was angry that I wasn't still watching Across the Spider-Verse.  I could go home and watch Into the Spider-Verse again, but it doesn't hit the same.  This movie is a fucking drug.  It is so beautiful to look at, with a gorgeous color palette that is constantly shifting and evolving as it goes, the visuals stimulate the senses while the story snuggles your heart, warming it with its emotion and threatening to smother it with as it hits heavier beats than you'd expect it to.  I've seen great superhero movies before:  Spider-Man 2, The Incredibles, The Dark Knight, Black Panther, Wonder Woman, Captain America:  Civil War, Avengers:  Infinity War...none of them made me feel like this.  Across the Spider-Verse seeks to broaden the scope of a superhero story to create something emotional, beautiful, and human.  It's a enveloping symphony of color and sound telling its story through its characters' emotional state, all the while wearing the mask of a superhero cartoon.  It's not only quite possibly the best Spider-Man movie yet, but, and I don't say this lightly, an argument can be made that it's the greatest superhero movie ever made.

There are caveats that come with this.  Personally there is very little about the movie I would change, but certain aspects create a double-edged sword.  The film is not nearly the clip that Into the Spider-Verse was, as its story is slower and more about self-discovery and taking control of your own destiny than a traditional good vs. evil narrative.  Because of that, this movie probably won't be an easy watch for young children, even if they sit through the first film just fine.  It's a long movie, running 140 minutes, which is almost unheard of in animation.  This isn't just because of child attention spans, but also because animation takes so long to do that studios often have to work more efficiently with their stories to spare the time and cost of creating longer and more intricate films like this one.  The film also doesn't tell an entirely self-contained story, choosing to instead end on a cliffhanger that doesn't quite wrap as much of the film up as you would like a film to do.  But this movie is also written so smartly that it doesn't just tell its story, it causes you to look upon that first movie in a whole new light, and we're constantly discovering new tissue among this overarching story.  And the plus side to its open ending is that even if the two-part film experience isn't immediately gratifying, I still have two more hours of this experience to look forward to.

Into the Spider-Verse became the surprise frontrunner and winner of the Best Animated Oscar when it was released, and well deserved too.  And unless the other animation studios really step up their A-game later this year, it's looking likely that Spidey is going home with another trophy.  And if they keep this up, he might do it again next year too.  See you then, Spider-Man.

Art Attack


Sanctuary
⭐⭐⭐
Genre:  Thriller
Director:  Zachary Wigon
Starring:  Margaret Qualley, Christopher Abbott


This indie erotic thriller does its best Hitchcock presentation, with lengthy camera takes and intricate composition to tell a twisted, mostly real-time story focused solely on two actors pushing their limits in a single set setting, and even concludes with an ending that Hitch totally would have done if this were his movie.  Revolving around a business man who has just severed his relationship with his dominatrix, only to have her to start playing mindgames in retaliation.  The movie has great moments, and while I think Margaret Qualley and Christopher Abbott are good in the movie, I don't love them in it as much as the filmmakers seem to.  They're often the victims of stilted and calculated dialogue, which forces them to get too theatrical for the movie's own good.  It kept me from getting too invested in the story, even as the movie worked hard to stimulate.  I admire the movie's confidence in itself, even if that confidence keeps it blind to certain things about it that don't function properly.  Is it a good movie?  Yeah.  Or maybe I should call it a bad movie and tell it to crawl on its knees and beg for a good rating.  Am I doing this sex thing right?

Movies Still Playing At My Theater
Kandahar ⭐⭐1/2

New To Digital
Hypnotic ⭐⭐
Fool's Paradise ⭐⭐⭐

New To Physical
65 ⭐⭐
A Good Person ⭐⭐1/2

Coming Soon!
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