Multiplex Madness
Golda
⭐⭐
Genre: Drama
Director: Guy Nattiv
Starring: Helen Mirren, Camille Cottin, Liev Schreiber, Lior Ashkenazi, Dvir Benedek
The Hill: The Rickey Hill Story
Sappy, trite, and pandering, The Hill is a baseball movie made either for people who have either seen every baseball movie ever made and are gearing to see even more or never seen a baseball movie before and have less context for how bad it is. The film tells the true story of baseball player Rickey Hill, and how he started his journey to the bat as a little boy with a degenerative spinal condition who dreams of playing baseball, but his strict pastor father won't allow it. Apparently that latter point is seen as more dramatic than the crippling disease, but the movie needs to hammer home its "God's will vs. the passion life gives me" message. I do like the movie's message of living for one's passions along with one's beliefs, but the movie is such a dollar store version that investment is minimal. What's mildly frustrating is that the movie shows some confident presentation, and can sometimes pull a soft moment of humor out of its ass that are actually pretty funny. There is a competence here that's drowned out by its thick overbearing sentimentality. Subtlety and nuance is not is specialty, though, choosing to instead to just throw every trick in the book at its audience hoping it masks how desperate it is for an emotional reaction.
Retribution
Liam Neeson is back. Has his particular set of skills met their match? Probably not. This time has plays a man in his 70's with teen children, who he tries to drive to school but finds out a bomb has been planted in his car and he must do what the bomber says to get his children out alive. Retribution feels like an attempt at a bottle thriller, which takes place in a single location featuring a limited cast in a threatening situation that is mostly handled through dialogue. The movie I thought of the most while watching it was 2003's Phone Booth starring Colin Farrell, though I do confess Retribution also plays out like a low-rent Saw movie without balls. Retribution is just a broken movie that seems built from a nugget of an idea that was scripted and shot before they found a way to make it compelling. Nothing in the movie is nurtured to fruition, its thrills lack tension, and the film has no sense of pacing, which is utterly astonishing for a movie that's only ninety minutes long. And somehow the thing that irritated me the most was the villain's master plan involved turning his cash into crypto (you fucking idiot). Retribution probably could have been a really fun diversion of a movie, but it just settles for just being something dumb and quick to kill time on a boring weekend.
You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah
Wow. A Happy Madison production that actually got good reviews? I think cinema is dying.
Golda is what I call a "performance movie," a film that's less about the character at the center of it and more about how well the actor plays that character. Movies like this can be great, while others are only carried by that performance alone. It largely depends on whether the narrative around them completes the package. Golda aspires to be the former, but falls short of its ambitions as it feels at some point it was going to settle for being a movie shown to high schoolers in class for a "movie day." But the performer at the center of this is Helen Mirren, who must be shooting for another Oscar as she plays Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir during the days of the Yom Kippur War leading up to the cease fire with Egypt. If I were to judge Golda via its best moments, I'd give it a pass, but ultimately its failure is that while its politics can be investing, it never gets past the surface level, choosing to instead just have us "look at the actor, goddammit!" What we're left with is Helen Mirren, who is pretty good in this movie, and a handful of arty shots that seem leftover from a point when the film had a vision. Golda is not a bad movie, but it is a missed opportunity. But I did enjoy the lovely line of "All political careers end in failure." To bad the movie based on one's career ended in failure too.
The Hill: The Rickey Hill Story
⭐1/2
Genre: Sports, Drama, Faith
Director: Jeff Celentano
Starring: Dennis Quaid, Colin Ford, Jesse Berry, Scott Glenn
Sappy, trite, and pandering, The Hill is a baseball movie made either for people who have either seen every baseball movie ever made and are gearing to see even more or never seen a baseball movie before and have less context for how bad it is. The film tells the true story of baseball player Rickey Hill, and how he started his journey to the bat as a little boy with a degenerative spinal condition who dreams of playing baseball, but his strict pastor father won't allow it. Apparently that latter point is seen as more dramatic than the crippling disease, but the movie needs to hammer home its "God's will vs. the passion life gives me" message. I do like the movie's message of living for one's passions along with one's beliefs, but the movie is such a dollar store version that investment is minimal. What's mildly frustrating is that the movie shows some confident presentation, and can sometimes pull a soft moment of humor out of its ass that are actually pretty funny. There is a competence here that's drowned out by its thick overbearing sentimentality. Subtlety and nuance is not is specialty, though, choosing to instead to just throw every trick in the book at its audience hoping it masks how desperate it is for an emotional reaction.
Retribution
⭐1/2
Genre: Thriller
Director: Nimród Antal
Starring: Liam Neeson, Noma Dumezweni, Lilly Aspell, Jack Champion, Embeth Davidtz, Matthew Modine, Arian Moayed
Liam Neeson is back. Has his particular set of skills met their match? Probably not. This time has plays a man in his 70's with teen children, who he tries to drive to school but finds out a bomb has been planted in his car and he must do what the bomber says to get his children out alive. Retribution feels like an attempt at a bottle thriller, which takes place in a single location featuring a limited cast in a threatening situation that is mostly handled through dialogue. The movie I thought of the most while watching it was 2003's Phone Booth starring Colin Farrell, though I do confess Retribution also plays out like a low-rent Saw movie without balls. Retribution is just a broken movie that seems built from a nugget of an idea that was scripted and shot before they found a way to make it compelling. Nothing in the movie is nurtured to fruition, its thrills lack tension, and the film has no sense of pacing, which is utterly astonishing for a movie that's only ninety minutes long. And somehow the thing that irritated me the most was the villain's master plan involved turning his cash into crypto (you fucking idiot). Retribution probably could have been a really fun diversion of a movie, but it just settles for just being something dumb and quick to kill time on a boring weekend.
The biggest smile I got from this movie was seeing that Liam "Darkman" Neeson's wife was played by Embeth "Sheila from Army of Darkness" Davidtz. That's a serious Sam Raimi pedigree power couple right there.
Netflix & Chill
You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah
⭐⭐⭐
Streaming On: Netflix
Genre: Comedy
Director: Sammi Cohen
Starring: Sunny Sandler, Samantha Lorraine, Adam Sandler, Sarah Sherman, Idina Menzel, Jackie Sandler, Sadie Sandler, Luis Guzmán
Wow. A Happy Madison production that actually got good reviews? I think cinema is dying.
Based on a young adult novel from 2005, this film is about a middle school Jewish girl who has a falling out with her best friend over a boy in school. Adam Sandler adapts it into something of a family enterprise, primarily as a vehicle for his daughter Sunny Sandler, while he his wife Jackie, and other daughter Sadie have supporting roles. Basically its vibe is Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret, only more Jewish, contemporary, and underlined with that trademark Sandler rude goofball humor. For those of us who loved the Margaret movie as it was, there's not a whole lot to wring out of this movie that we haven't already seen this year, but having another coming-of-age movie for women that is this cute, sweet, and funny isn't a bad thing. Those who tend to lean soft on Sandler will likely enjoy it more than others, but the extremity in which a Sandler production can go for is both a blessing and a curse to this movie. When the movie is funny, it's really funny (there's an argument scene between Sunny and Adam Sandler's characters that is heard while everyone downstairs can hear that had me laughing for days), but it does have a tendency to jump past the taste line to a point of no return, which isn't unusual for this production team. And even when it's not going too far, there is some stale material on generational culture that most definitely feels like some boomer wrote it thinking "This is how kids talk these days, right?" (the jokes about cancel culture made me groan). But Sandler doesn't get to make movies like this very often, and the fact that he can inject his trademark style into this particular work as successfully as he does is something of a minor miracle (the last time he did so was The Wedding Singer, probably?). It's a flawed movie that wins points with its adorable personality, so I'm inclined to think positive on it.
Movies Still Playing At My Theater
Gran Turismo ⭐⭐1/2
Jurassic Park ⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Little Mermaid ⭐⭐1/2
Oppenheimer ⭐⭐⭐
Strays ⭐⭐1/2
Talk to Me ⭐⭐⭐⭐
New To Digital
New To Physical
The Blackening ⭐⭐⭐
You Hurt My Feelings ⭐⭐⭐1/2
Coming Soon!
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