MST3K, RiffTrax, and Beyond: Cinema Playground Journal 2023: Week 38 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Dumb Money

⭐⭐⭐

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Director: Craig Gillespie

Starring: Paul Dano, Seth Rogen, Pete Davidson, Shailene Woodley, America Ferrera, Anthony Ramos, Myha'la Herrold, Talia Ryder, Vincent D'Onofrio, Nick Offerman, Sebastian Stan, Rushi Kota, Dane DeHaan, Clancy Brown

Apparently some stock thingy happened in late-2020 to early-2021 where a bunch of working class people bought a lot of GameStop stock and kinda turned Wall Street upside down. I wasn't paying attention because A) this is when my father passed away and B) I was pretty caught up in the Mystery Science Theater Kickstarter, partially to occupy my mind from overthinking about the former. I remember hearing something about GameStop, but I never was compelled to look to deep into it. Well, it's now been dramatized into a movie, so I now have a cliff notes version. Paul Dano plays a low level YouTuber who discusses his interest in the GameStop stock and sets off a short squeeze effect where hundreds of small-time investors jack up the stock, causing hedge fund millionaires to lose money in the process while the little people get richer. I don't know enough about how Wall Street works to fully understand the complexities of what happened, but the film sells itself on the underdog fight by getting us invested in colorful characters who are flat broke running circles around people who make money exploiting people like them, which is enough to make the drama interesting and the comedy funny. I think the movie could do with a little less "people staring at computer screens" to fuel its fire, but I also remember that this took place during the pandemic, so...yeah, that's pretty much what everyone did anyway. It's a fun and interesting watch, and it has quite a few laugh-out-loud moments thanks to its lively cast.

Expend4bles

⭐⭐

Genre: Action

Director: Scott Waugh

Starring: Jason Statham, Sylvester Stallone, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, Megan Fox, 50 Cent, Tony Jaa, Iko Uwais, Jacob Scipio, Levy Tran, Andy Garcia

That rowdy group of mercenaries is back for another round, this time trying to finish an old score of Sylvester Stallone's by unlocking secrets of a mysterious bad guy and prevent World War III by blowing up a boat. Just normal stuff. Expendables 4 is the first movie done without the participation of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jet Li, and Terry Crews, while even Expendables 3 new recruits Antonio Bandaras, Wesley Snipes, Ronda Rousey, Kellan Lutz, Glen Powell, and Victor Ortiz also sit this one out. And those faces are sorely missed. Part of what makes the second movie the best one is that it took this massive slate of stars with larger-than-life personalities and just let them loose to be their personas. Expendables 4 has the same idea, but it struggles with its slighter cast with smaller personalities. Martial artist Tony Jaa and The Raid star Iko Uwais are the only new cast members with hot action cred, and maybe Megan Fox too if you want to include Transformers in this. The rest of the newcomers include rapper 50 Cent and MacGyver supporting player Levy Tran, who don't add a whole lot to the movie but fill out the team with their good looks (Tran plays a recruit named Lash, who steals a couple of scenes with her chain whip but serves little purpose other than to be leered at by Randy Couture). Otherwise the movie is headlined by Jason Statham, who does Jason Statham better than any other, while Stallone mostly sidelines himself for this entry. Statham has the blunt and chiselled action movie charisma to prop up an action movie tent pole like this, but the movie largely collapses around him though haphazard editing and low quality VFX work that only make the action less exciting. One thing I will give credit to Expendables 4 for doing is having a playful vibe to the characters that allows them to be fun to follow even if the movie is lacking, which helps keep the movie amusing when it fails to be exciting. That won't be enough for a lot of people, but it will be appreciated by action junkies.

Is it the worst Expendables movie? Probably. Expendables 3 was definitely not very good, because it dove away from the franchise's strengths and underthought why its audience was there, but it still had its big stars being themselves. 4 embraces some of the strengths while ignoring others, and just doesn't have that presentation in its favor while also flaking out on adrenaline. Pick your poison.

It Lives Inside

⭐⭐⭐1/2

Genre: Horror

Director: Bishal Dutta

Starring: Megan Suri, Neeru Bajwa, Mohana Krishnan, Vik Sahay, Gage Marsh, Beatrice Kitsos, Betty Gabriel

A teenage girl investigates the disappearance of her estranged best friend, who had previously confided in her that she had a monster trapped in a Mason jar. The truth behind it holds ties to her Indian heritage, which brings a lot of cultural appeal to It Lives Inside, taking Indian folklore and crafting a teen horror out of it, filled to the brim with dread. Horror fans who hold disdain for PG-13's place in the genre may be dismayed by the film's lack of aggressive horror tactics like body count and gore, but horror can and should be versatile, like all genres. It Lives Inside is horror used as a means to metaphorical strength, weaving a film about those moments where inner turmoil is so great that you feel you can't ask for help, and also the support family and friends can offer when you feel alone. It doesn't go for body count and gore because it wouldn't benefit from either as all it needs is a good central performance. It has one in Megan Suri, who is really good in this movie. She at various times warm, cold, vulnerable, strong, and touching throughout the film and keeps it sturdy on her shoulders. The horror elements do tend to get clumsier at points when the film opts to get noisy, but it only accounts for a fraction of the film's runtime. The rest of it is a tense chillfest with a heavy emotional weight.

Art Attack

Amerikatsi

⭐⭐⭐

Genre: Drama, Comedy

Director: Michael A. Goorjian

Starring: Michael A. Goorjian, Hovik Keuchkerian, Nelli Uvarova, Mikhail Trukin, Narine Grigoryan, Jean-Pierre Nshanian

Shawshank meets Rear Window in this Armenian film about an Armenian-American who tries to trace his lineage in 1948 but winds up in a Soviet prison instead, keeping his spirits up by watching an artist and his wife live their lives through his window. The film is primarily a showcase for writer/director/star Michael A. Goorjian, who goes full Luke Wilson in this role of a hapless imprisoned man making the best of a bad situation. The guards nickname him "Charlie Chaplin" as their own personal gag, and the movie does feel like a Chaplin film sometimes, with its sweet optimism when the chips are down. But it treads a fine line between the harrowing and the schmaltzy, hoping for something beautifully bittersweet even if it doesn't always come together. Probably too much of its plot plays out through happenstance and coincidence for me to fully work with it, but it has a loveliness to it that's hard to deny.

Netflix & Chill

The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster

⭐⭐⭐1/2

Streaming On: Shudder

Genre: Horror, Drama

Director: Bomani J. Story

Starring: Laya DeLeon Hayes, Denzel Whitaker, Chad Coleman, Edem Atsu-Swanzy

This movie made ripples earlier this year after debuting at South by Southwest and a limited theater run and a paid streaming run. It's been on my list of movies I needed to get to for a few months now, so I was happy to see Shudder acquired it for this year's Halloween festivities. The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster retells the story of Frankenstein from the lens of a prodigy Black teenager living in an urban neighborhood filled with drugs and violence, who becomes obsessed with "curing death" and successfully brings her brother's corpse back to life. It takes a story that has been told dozens of times and adds a fresh nuance to it, aspects that ring personal to the filmmakers while also showcase why Frankenstein is an enduring story after over a century of telling it and retelling it. The film lacks subtlety, choosing instead to convey its themes often through its dialogue, but its heart is fully in itself, crafting a complex and compelling work. The film often finds itself at crossroads of cynicism and optimism, with most films of its type choosing the former over the latter. I kinda expected a bit more of that Pet Semetary-style "fuck no" commentary in the obsession that maybe we can control mortality, though this movie trots a middle path with a message of accepting the finality of mortality while also implying with a mischievous smile that that moral is only "for now" because who knows what the future might bring. It's an interesting message of hope amongst the hopeless, and while that might at first seem like the wrong moral for this story, sometimes hope is the only thing that keeps us going in the darkest of our reality.

Between this, Talk to Me, and It Lives Inside, this has been an excellent year for artistic horror films that are both personal and surprisingly emotional. Speaking of, this year also brought us...

No One Will Save You

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Streaming On: Hulu

Genre: Science Fiction, Horror, Thriller

Director: Brian Duffield

Starring: Kaitlyn Dever

There was all that talk last year about how the Hulu movie Prey was good enough to be released in a theater and likely would have made a killing at the box office. Personally, I'm more disappointed that No One Will Save You passed theaters in favor of streaming, and the fact that less people will likely champion it over Prey is a little sad.

I've always been a pretty big fan of movies that can convey themselves visually instead of verbally; a movie you can put on mute and still understand everything that's going on. No One Will Save You achieves this to an Nth degree, delivering little to no dialogue for its characters, and when it does, it's usually light and inconsequential. The film's story is simple, but it's simple with a purpose, scaling back from complexity to keep from weighing itself down with context and exposition. The film features Booksmart's Kaitlyn Dever as a socially isolated woman living in a large house in the country, who finds her home raided by extra terrestrial visitors. The intent of the aliens is unknown to her (they at different times come off as benevolent or hostile, and if they're the former they do a shit job at trying to communicate with her), but she's by herself with these beings in her home with nobody around to see her distress. Dever is absolutely fabulous in the role, expressing herself through the intense body language the film requires her to do.

The aesthetic of the movie is interesting, as it takes place in the present day, but certain luxuries that Dever has are a bit out of time. She wears light flowery wardrobe that feels out of the 60's, while she has a landline rotary phone, listens to vinal records, and also displaying an expensive modern day smart TV in her living room. Then there is the design of the aliens themselves, which is the traditional 1950's idea of thin grey men with large, slanted black eyes who do telekinesis stuff because why wouldn't they? The film is largely a visual milestone up until its ending, in which it juggles a lot of its ambiguity frustratingly. But when the film wants to be a whirlwind event seen through the eyes of a confused main character, I'll let it slide knowing that we're just along for the ride like she is.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

Barbie ⭐⭐⭐1/2

Blue Beetle ⭐⭐⭐

Bottoms ⭐⭐⭐

Camp Hideout ⭐⭐

The Equalizer 3 ⭐⭐⭐

Gran Turismo ⭐⭐1/2

A Haunting in Venice ⭐⭐⭐

Jurassic Park ⭐⭐⭐⭐

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 ⭐⭐1/2

The Nun II ⭐1/2

Oppenheimer ⭐⭐⭐