Welcome to my blog dedicated to movie riffing! Here we will journey through the many episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000, the files of RiffTrax, the DVDs of Cinematic Titanic, and hopefully many others.
Join me, won't you?
Starring: Jodie Comer, Austin Butler, Tom Hardy, Michael Shannon, Mike Faist, Norman Reedus
Loosely based upon the nonfiction book of the same name, this fictionalized take sees a motorcycle club started by Tom Hardy deteriorate over the years into degenerate violence. Most of the movie is narrated by Jodie Comer, doing her best Laverne DeFazio impression, telling of her relationship to her bikeriding husband Austin Butler. The Bikeriders is an interesting piece of character evolution, though it's a story told via a group of rambling characters who tend to trail off, so their is a requisite in bearing with it when it flies off with incomplete thoughts. The cast is uniformly fantastic, acting like they're only here to hang out rather than to make a movie (Norman Reedus feels like he's just here because he wants to be). It's a good movie that's a bit of a basic slowrider. But any motorcycle film without sidehacking loses any cool points it tries to achieve. I'm sorry, that's just how it is.
The Exorcism
⭐️
Genre: Horror
Director: Joshua John Miller
Starring: Russell Crowe, Ryan Simpkins, Sam Worthington, Chloe Bailey, Adam Goldberg, Adrian Pasdar, David Hyde Pierce
What if spooky stuff happened on the set of The Exorcist? I don't know the answer to that, but I imagine it would have been a lot more interesting than this. The Excorcism is a meta horror in the tradition of New Nightmare or Shadow of the Vampire where the supernatural element of the movie seems to also be haunting the set. In this case, it's an exorcism movie starring Russell Crowe where Russell Crowe starts to act possessed. The movie mixes its meta with an allegory for repressed trauma, alcoholism, and emotional abuse, which feels like a step too far because it's never quite clear whether the the meta or the allegory takes priority when they begin to clash with each other. They both wind up feeling half-assed in the end, with the meta aspect never really taking shape and the film's thematic value never feeling fleshed out enough to become sufficient. The movie feels incomplete, having a rough idea of what it wants to be about but feels at a loss of how to actually turn it into a story. Instead, it just vomits up something boring and atrocious on the screen. I sat there for so long waiting for the movie to actually try to be something, but it never worked up the energy.
Thelma
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: Comedy, Adventure
Director: Josh Margolin
Starring: June Squibb, Fred Hechinger, Richard Roundtree, Parker Posey, Clark Gregg, Malcolm McDowell
In what I can only assume is a tribute to all our beloved grandmas everywhere, Thelma sees a 90-year-old woman get scammed over the phone. Rather than accept she's out ten grand, she instead hits the road to hunt down the people who stole her money. It's a rather flavorful little road movie featuring June Squibb in the title role and the late Richard Roundtree as her sidekick, getting into mischief while a family is left behind worried sick about their frail family member. And frail she might be, but she's also determined. The primary source of humor falls with the stubbornness of those set in their ways while also navigating through a world that is more advanced than their normal perception anymore. Traditional and recognizable elderly jokes do ensue, including technology incomprehension, rambling tendencies, and reduced mobility, but while the movie leans into these qualities, it also never fails to make Thelma sharp and self-dependent, making her a heroine worth rooting for as opposed to a walking joke. It's a delightfully silly hoot of a movie that never succumbs to mocking its subject matter.
Starring: Amy Poehler, Maya Hawke, Phyllis Smith, Lewis Black, Liza Lipera, Tony Hale, Ayo Edebiri, Kensington Tallman
The original Inside Out is my favorite Pixar movie, one of my favorite animated movies, and a contender for best movie of the last ten years. That's where I stand going into Inside Out 2: with impossible expectations. But Pixar has turned unlikely sequel potential into pure ugly-cry fuel before. Just look at every Toy Story movie. Except maybe Lightyear.
We venture back into Riley's head, as we see her emotions manifest as living beings once more. Now hitting puberty, several new emotions join the group in Riley's mind, led by Anxiety, who could lead Riley down a worse path. Inside Out 2 does a good job continuing the themes of emotional balance of the previous film, and the concentrated depictions of anxiety are strong and the center of the film's emotional weight. I find myself more subdued on it over the first film because it just never hits nearly as hard. It has good moments of emotional vulnerability and a strong core, but it lacks the heaviness and imagination of the first film. A lot of its settings and landscapes are things we've already seen, and while there are a couple of new offerings, there isn't anything that equals the pure creative playfulness that we got previously. But it's almost unfair to ask a movie to play at such a high standard, even if it is a direct follow-up. Inside Out 2 is a movie that works, and fans of the first film will likely respond to it and possibly hold it to high regard. Inside Out 2 isn't nearly as effortlessly beautiful and poetic as the first film, but as a high-concept comedy, it's still a splendid entertainer that is both funny and heartfelt.
Latency
⭐️⭐️
Genre: Science Fiction, Horror
Director: James Croke
Starring: Shasha Luss, Alexis Ren
This tech-based supernatural horror sees a professional gamer named Hana using an experimental neural device to win a video game competition, only to begin seeing ghostly apparitions in her apartment. Hana suffers from agoraphobia, but also has workout montages to make sure the viewer knows that despite her anxieties, she is still hot. She is emo, young-adult drama pretty and somehow has more video games in her early-thirties than Angry Video Game Nerd in his entire career (she still has a functioning Game Boy that she plays daily, which, by itself, is impressive). Sasha Luss gives an almost good performance, but her main problem is that she slips in and out of her natural Russian accent that she's trying desperately to downplay. Premise-wise, the movie is a surreal allegory for feeling trapped in one's own personal space by one's phobias, while the tech and gamer twist adds a bonus theme of technology addiction. They do a lot with the confines of its one set, and it's almost inspiring. There are some solid spook scenes where we see ghosts fade in and out of mundane backgrounds, though it tends to get undercut by the fact that most of its big scares is just screaming at the audience. But the movie acknowledges this, see, because Hana's screenname is "Banshee" and she's being haunted by an actual banshee. The moments of inspiration feel gutted by the film's slip into delusion, as the third act is reality-bending chaos that works overtime to feed its allegory rather than come together in a sensible way. There is a swing here of making something high-concept with a thin budget, but it's not paying off. While the movie isn't all that good, I like its plucky spirit.
Tuesday
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: Drama, Fantasy
Director: Daina O. Pusić
Starring: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Lola Petticrew, Leah Harvey, Arinzé Kene
It might look like one of those super weird experimental movies that A24 likes to distribute (if nothing else, advertisements often reminded me of the movie Lamb), but Tuesday is a far more straightforward movie than one might assume. The film sees a girl who is about to succumb to her terminal illness, only to make friends with Death himself as he is about to take her. She asks to see her mother, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, one last time, who complicates the situation by refusing to let Death take her. The movie is a contemporary version of one of those fables where a person has a conversation with death, just with a giant parrot representing the supernatural being. The movie's primarily a look at looming mortality and grief, though it tends to be too on-the-nose to be a genuine allegory. Writer/director Daina O. Pusić steps up to the plate with big ideas conveying personal stakes. These ideas can overwhelm her, sometimes causing the movie to ramble and ponder when only a few words would suffice. Tuesday isn't a movie that breaks new ground on the "Yup, we're all gonna die some day" corner of arthouse cinema, but it's a well-made and passionate entry into it.
Treasure
⭐️⭐️1/2
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Director: Julia von Heinz
Starring: Lena Dunham, Stephen Fry, Zbigniew Zamachowski
Based on the 1999 novel Too Many Men, Treasure sees Lena Dunham attempting to take a trip to Poland to see locales of her family's history, only to be accompanied by her father, Stephen Fry, at his insistence. Dunham and Fry hit the road as a uniquely awkward pairing, and a lot the film's humor comes Fry's abrasive nature steering Dunham's deadpan calmness through an environment that she's unfamiliar with. The drama, on the other hand, plays into Fry's repressed trauma, as Dunham desires to understand her history while they're visiting sites that unpack a heavy load of memories that Fry would rather forget, many of which are Holocaust related. The movie is quite touching and heavy at the best of times, and endearingly funny as well. It also tends to meander and sometimes lacks a forward sense of momentum to really keep the audience invested. Dunham and Fry are excellent, regardless, and the material can give them the strength to overcome that. One just wishes it was more consistent and providing that for them.
Starring: Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Jacob Scipio, Vanessa Hudgens, Alexander Ludwig, Paola Núñez, Eric Dane, Ioan Gruffudd, Rhea Seehorn, Melanie Liburd, Tasha Smith, Tiffany Haddish, Joe Pantoliano
Every action fan has a favorite buddy cop movie or series. I have fondness for 48 Hours, Lethal Weapon, and Rush Hour, myself. And yes, I quite enjoy the Bad Boys movies. The first two are more audacious flicks that push their own extremity to limits that certain audiences might be turned off by (especially the second one), but that's kind of what makes them a kick of over-the-top nonsense. The new wave of Bad Boys movies are more mellow and subdued, which seems to have made them more palatable to critics and general audiences, propelling the third film to series-best reviews, while also becoming the biggest hit of 2020 (which happened by default, but it does carry the title).
The fourth film follows where the last one left off, which sees Will Smith and Martin Lawrence untangle a frame-up of the recently deceased Captain Howard (Joe Pantoliano returns in a cameo), only to get swept up in the conspiracy and go on the run. The movie plays out about as you'd expect, with predictable twists and obvious bad guys eventually unveiling themselves. There's also an underdeveloped subplot of Captain Howard's U.S. Marshall daughter out for revenge against Will Smith's son, but it amounts to so little screentime and has so little to do with anything that it might as well not be here. This, like a lot of Ride or Die's story elements, is fairly half-baked, and if the movie dwells on it too long, it starts to become tired. But when it focuses on the action, it gets wired. The movie is full of the reckless disregard for human life that defines the series. We're largely here for the Smith and Lawrence banter and all the guns blazing. Audience members following the series will get more of that, more of them with their AMMO sidekicks from the previous one, and everyone's favorite character, Reggie, finally getting his time to shine in one glorious setpiece. That's all I ever wanted.
The Watchers
⭐️
Genre: Horror, Thriller
Director: Ishana Night Shyamalan
Starring: Dakota Fanning, Georgina Campbell, Olwen Fouéré, Oliver Finnegan
Oh dear. We have a Night Shyamalan dynasty now. M. Night Shyamalan's daughter, Ishana, makes her directroial debut, and we can only hope her career has more ups than her father's. If The Watchers is any indication, it's going to be mostly the same. Large concepts that never go beyond concepts, padded up with heavy, monotonous melodrama from bored-looking actors, wasting what probably could have been a good movie at some point if there was a collaboration to help meat it up. But auteurism, I guess.
The Watchers has Dakota Fanning getting lost in the woods and coming across a group that lock themselves in a little window box overnight where mysterious creatures just like to look at them overnight. It sounds creepy. It probably could have been if there was anywhere compelling to go with it. The Watchers just fizzles with its lack of any sort of story to go with this idea. It's an undercooked, go-nowhere bleak fairytale full of characters who exist to give stilted exposition while wearing an uncomfortable expression that says "My underpants are on backwards." Shyamalan adds a lot of atmosphere and visual style to lend the film, but there is nothing to pull us into the movie and embrace the high-concept scenario of being cornered in the woods. There is no emotional heft to it, and the characterization is so dead-eyed that the audience will write-off getting invested in it early on. Like her father, Shyamalan isn't entirely void of directorial talent. Also like her father, she needs to learn one lesson that will improve their movies significantly: there is a major difference between milking a concept and telling a story. Big Daddy Shyamalan has gone a quarter of a century without confronting that, but I hope she is more receptive to it.
The last time I saw an auteur movie about hitmen on Netflix it was that lame duck of a David Fincher movie. Surely Richard Linklater won't make anything near as bullshit as that, can he? At any rate, Hit Man (they added that space in the title so you don't think it's a sequel to the video game movie franchise and it absolutely doesn't work) sees Glen Powell playing a fake hitman who catfishes potential buyers into incriminating themselves for the police to arrest. One mark is actually a super hot lady, so naturally she's the one he talks out of it instead of leading on. He then begins a sexual relationship with her, who still believes him to be a hitman, which leads to intense complications.
Hit Man boasts being "inspired" by a true story, in that there was actually a guy who played a fake hitman for cops that led to dozens of convictions. A lot of it is embellished, though I hope the attempted murder rate was. I'm concerned with how many people want to hire a hitman in this city within the few months that this movie took place. I'd probably think about moving. The opening half-hour is this extended montage of Powell just catching a bunch of potential clients. It's probably the part of the movie that needs the most trimming, because it's pretty much the same joke told over and over, just with different tones. It really slows the movie out the gate, adds practically nothing, and exhausts the movie's charm early on. After that point, the movie gets more interesting, because the relationship built on lies between Powell and Adria Arjona is interesting. It takes too long to get to the spice of the movie, but the spice does uptick the interest level. I feel like the movie often often bakes with a simple recipe and then overcooks it, as periods of it feel like compounded problems that are waved away with simple outs. The film would often come up with a thriller twist, but solve it with a anticlimactic comedic punchline, as there was more than one scene where I was like "That's a cool twist, I can't wait to see where this goes" and it just dies. It also just throws a lot of complexities into the characterization that don't really go anywhere, like Powell being both this fake hitman and a college professor, which I believe is taken straight from the reality that this was based on, but this movie is already just a fantasy scenario based on the mere idea of this guy, and the more of reality you try and add to it, the more it clutters it up. It leads to a climax that doesn't really feel like a climax. There are still a few lingering questions I had, but the movie just decides it's done.
Those are all my nitpicks, which makes for some hefty reading and probably giving a false impression of the film, which is mostly solid. Hit Man is primarily a saucy romcom with sexy leads where one of them is lying to the other and it's just a ticking time bomb of when the truth hits, and I was swept up in it, for the most part. Powell is great in it and I enjoyed seeing Adria Arjona, because I worship the entire cast of Morbius (except Jared Leto, fuck Jared Leto). Hit Man is a more enjoyable evening watch than most romcoms you'd find on Netflix, though I found it more bloated and clumsy than I would have liked. It struggles to find its own rhythm, and that's a shame, because I was ready to dance with it.
Under Paris
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Streaming On: Netflix
Genre: Thriller
Director: Xavier Gens
Starring: Bérénice Bejo, Nassim Lyes, Léa Léviant
It doesn't matter what Netflix store-bought auteur movie came out this weekend. It doesn't change the fact that they also put on a brand new SHARK MOVIE the same werk, so forgive me if I'm much more excited for that. It's been a while since we've had a genuinely good one. Some might say The Shallows, but I'd argue that The Shallows was just a glossy, hyperactive retread of The Reef and isn't even as good. And even if you're fond of the Meg movies, it's probably because you're in love with how stupid they are. The exciting thing about Under Paris is that it is a genuine attempt at a shark thriller that goes for that raw Jaws excitement.
The film sees a breed of Mako shark adapted to freshwater, infesting the flooded catacombs of Paris and preying on those who happen to stumble upon them. Forgiving the preposterous credibility of a freshwater Mako shark, because I'm not trying to project my intellect over a monster movie, Under Paris works hard to maintain tension throughout, genuinely going for excitement over scares. It tends to lose its grip as it goes on and shoots for more extravagance, becoming almost a cartoon, clashing with the grit that it's trying to project. In one scene it can give us the harrowing image of a woman trampled to death in a panic to get out of the water and also give us a goofy ariel shot of the shark jumping out of the water and swallowing someone else whole. The seesaw in its tone does succeed in giving the movie a bit of character, though sometimes its drama doesn't always land. The movie has two human antagonists, one is a copy of the Jaws mayor, who wants to keep the water open because money, and the other is an environmentalist, who goes to sometimes absurd lengths to make sure the deadly shark isn't killed by the evil human beings. They're not great characters, though I did enjoy the protagonist played by Bérénice Bejo (Oscar enthusiests might recall her as Peppy from The Artist). It all leads to a climax that is total carnage, some of which is just amplified by things that are coincidentally happening at the same time and lead to an open-ended conclusion. It's not a well-plotted movie, but I got a kick out of watching it. It does something a lot of shark movies don't and just tries to do a serious shark thriller without a hint of irony or its tongue in its cheek, making something that's not Jaws, just different. It's about time.
Starring: Vicky Krieps, Viggo Mortensen, Solly McLeod, Garrett Dillahunt, Colin Morgan, Ray McKinnon, Luke Reilly, Atlas Green, Danny Huston
Viggo Mortensen writes, directs, and stars in this western where he falls in love with a French woman, who is left behind to fend for herself as he enlists in the Civil War. The Dead Don't Hurt is more Vicky Krieps' movie than Mortensen's, as the lengthiest portion of the movie has her living by herself in a desert landscape and dealing with complications that arise from being around lawless characters in an isolated area. Mortensen takes control of the film during intermittent epilogue portions, where he puts the spotlight on himself to deal with conflicts in the aftermath. There are elements to this movie that are very lovely, though I tend to hold myself at bay from overly praising it as Mortensen falls back on tropey conflicts of a woman dealing with animalistic masculinity. He could keep the story the same but flesh it out more and the film would be richer for it. As is, it's a story of a woman living within her own feminine victimhood and while inspiring a tale of her man's rage. The movie isn't entirely void of Krieps' emotional state, though it cries for more complexity when she just quietly subjugates to it. It's a neat idea for a western, there are just little ways it could reach its potential that it chooses not to reach for.
Ezra
⭐️⭐️1/2
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Director: Tony Goldwyn
Starring: Bobby Cannavale, William Fitzgerald, Rose Byrne, Robert DeNiro, Whoopi Goldberg, Rainn Wilson, Vera Farmiga, Tony Goldwyn
The Ezra Miller Story?!?! NOOOOOOOOO!
Oh good, it's just about an autistic child. That I can handle.
This movie has Bobby Cannavale playing a stand-up comic with an autistic son, who he kidnaps after being put on questionable medication, and they go on a road trip across the country to film a stand-up spot on Jimmy Kimmel. I'm curious about how he stayed booked on Kimmel if he was constantly on the news for kidnapping his son, but movie magic, I suppose. Ezra has good intentions, as Cannavale wrote the film basing it on his relationship with his own son. There are genuinely endearing moments in it, though it tends to struggle with its schmaltzy side, suddenly shifting its tone to less subtle melodrama. But the movie handles Ezra's own extra needs in an exceptional way, showing the ways in which his autism commands his life but also journeying into growing past it in his own way, beyond what his parents can offer them. It's a solid feel-good movie.
In a Violent Nature
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: Horror
Director: Chris Nash
Starring: Ry Barrett, Andrea Pavlovic, Cameron Love, Reece Presley, Liam Leone, Charlotte Creaghan, Léa Rose Sebastianis, Sam Roulston, Alexander Oliver
It's not often that slasher movies go arthouse. One can argue for the artistic merits of Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween, or Scream (though, more successfully, you could put up Psycho), but when one comes up that really deconstructs and reassembles the genre, it's time to sit down and pay attention. In a Violent Nature is a movie that takes a slasher movie premise but sets its camera with the killer instead of the victims. With that, the movie doesn't have much of a plot. It's just a slasher movie. A very bad slasher movie, judging by the context clues we're given. A group of partying friends accidentally disturb the grave of a campfire story serial killer, who hunts them down one by one. For a while, the film's experimental artistic gimmick works beautifully, creating a rather base scenario seen through an uneasy new lens. When it comes to maintaining it, the movie struggles more than I was comfortable with. Halfway through the film is one of the film's most elaborate and showstopping death scenes, but it also marks a downturn in quality. It's likely one made to get horror fans buzzing, but it's set up too poorly for it to hit as hard as it wants to, primarily because the victim just freezes in place and lets it happen, with no actual reaction or survival instinct. After this point the movie never regains its footing, because it seems to be sliding further into being its meta-sidestory of a bad horror movie with hollow characters rather than the fresh outlook on the genre that it wants to be. However, rather than ending with an action set piece, it chooses to halt all proceedings and climax with a cameo that slasher fans might recognize, who gives a monologue about the animalistic nature of violence. It's not an uninteresting gesture, but it's longwinded and on-the-nose to the point that it is just exhausting. I don't think the second half kills the movie necessarily, but it does hinder it from delivering something fantastic.
Diane Keaton, Kathy Bates, and Alfre Woodard play three childhood friends who attend a summer camp reunion and try to relive their past in this strained comedy. I feel like I've watched more Diane Keaton nostalgia comedies over the last few years than I've seen actual Diane Keaton movies from her prime. This is probably some sort of penance for something, but I also can't help but notice that this is the second movie in a month that've seen that has had Nicole Richie in it and I'm starting to get concerned that I am legitimately being punished. Summer Camp is like a Nickelodeon TV movie directed at middle-aged women. The movie does try to be poignant for its audience, but its juvenile nature undercuts everything it tries to do. I get that it's about women trying to relive their youth, but it seems extreme to crossbreed child-friendly slapstick comedy in search of a laughtrack with jokes about vibrators and vaginas. The movie is mostly an excuse to set jukebox tunes to pratfalling, and it even does that poorly, as the music in the movie lacks a consistent era for its pandering, mixing golden oldies like Bad Moon Rising with more modern jams like Handclap, which makes the movie feel even more tonally confused. This is such a bizarre movie that seems to be exactly what it wants to be, but what it wants to be is just a confused mess.
Young Woman and the Sea
⭐⭐⭐
Genre: Drama, Sports
Director: Joachim Rønning
Starring: Daisy Ridley, Tilda Cobham-Hervey, Stephen Graham, Kim Bodnia, Christopher Eccleston, Glenn Fleshler
Based on the true story of Gertrude Ederle, this film tells the story of how she aspired to become a championship swimmer and became the first woman to swim the English Channel in 1926. Ederle is played with endearment by Daisy Ridley, who puts on that million-dollar smile of hers and wins over the audience's graces. I've always liked Daisy Ridley. I felt like, even as a newcomer, she brought more charisma to Star Wars than you'd expect from a non-Harrison Ford performer in that series (until Rise of Skywalker seemed to wear her down, that is). Young Woman and the Sea is a film that is more dependent on that charisma than a film about space lasers. In lesser hands, this is a movie that could run into the same pitfalls as last week's Sight, because it's reliant on schmaltz for its ambitions to inspire the audience. Young Woman and the Sea benefits from finding an inspiring narrative, which is something Sight didn't do. But it's still schmaltzy, no question about that. The movie is so earnestly sincere, wanting to be viewed without cynicism nor irony. Not everyone will abide by its wishes, but it's likely to be a movie that will mean a lot to young girls who might view it. The theme of the movie is female empowerment, underlining the unfair treatment of women in its time period and telling the story of a woman who set out to prove that anything a man could do was something she could do just as well, if not better. It most certainly is that, and it has no intention of being subtle about it, but it also want to be literate to children, so that's passible. I think it will inspire, and those who it does inspire will hold it in high regard.
Starring: Ilana Glazer, Michelle Buteau, John Carroll Lynch, Oliver Platt, Sandra Bernhard, Stephan James, Hasan Minhaj
Directed by Pamela "Bobby Hill" Adlon in her directorial debut, Babes stars comedian Ilana Glazer as a woman who finds out she is pregnant after a one-night stand with a man who died the very next day. Now, with the future of being a single mother, she carries the baby to term with the help of her already two-time child-bearing bestie, played by fellow comedian Michelle Buteau, offering her guidance and emotional support. The film is very much a woman-made comedy that is targeting other women, getting frank about women things, trying to make boyfriends uncomfortable while their girlfriends either nod their heads or laugh themselves silly. Some parts are pretty funny, but it's also a movie that feels like it's playing itself up to the audience by cramming too much deadpan awkwardness in every given scene. Its vibe is inconsistent, feeling like Woody Allen to Billy Crystal to even the Farrelly Brothers, all distinct flavors that work in isolation, but tossed in together, become a bizarre puree of mixed tones. Ilana Glazer is likely keeping to her own tonal style that works for her stand-up, so I can't be mad at her for leaning into her personality (it's often the smartest thing an artist can do), it's just having issues gelling in longform narrative, and when she tries to mix in sentimentality, the movie just feels junky. I kinda feel the same way about it as I did the audacious queer comedy Bros from a few years ago (lol, Bros and Babes, this is fate), where its forgetting good comedy isn't really just audacity by itself, even if the product still doesn't end up suffering all that much because of it. Those looking for a girls' night out with a few laughs will probably want to check it out. I'd absolutely not dissuade that, it just doesn't hit a home run for me.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: Action
Director: George Miller
Starring: Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Burke, Alyla Browne, Lachly Hulme
It's been a long wait. Not as long as the wait for Fury Road, but I think most of us assumed Mad Max was out of gas after Beyond Thunderdome, and I'm not sure anyone was really "waiting" for it. George Miller then took his franchise that most fondly remembered as an 80's relic and just casually threw out one of the most insane action movies ever made and dropped the mic. In this age of IP, pressure is on to follow that up somehow, though Miller's hopeful Furiosa spin-off was put on the backburner as Miller and Warner Bros. went to court for earnings from the last movie. Nine years, a settlement, and a genie movie later, Furiosa finally tells her origin story.
Taking over the role from Charlize Theron, Anya Taylor-Joy plays Furiosa, a girl from the post-apocalyptic "Wasteland" who was orphaned at a young age and given up into slavery. Years later, in the midst of tensions between factions that may lead to war, Furiosa seeks revenge against the gangleader who murdered her mother and stole her from her home. To be frank, those wishing for more of Fury Road's hyperviolent and stylized escapism will get it in spades. Like Fury Road, Furiosa is an action extravaganza that continues the Mad Max tradition of being a revved-up, vehicular stunt show. If there is any difference between the two films, it's that Furiosa is more of a sprawling film than Fury Road. Fury Road was a chase movie, while Furiosa is a biblical epic, telling of one woman's journey in multiple episodes, spanning decades. The film furthers the status of the Mad Max series as a sort of apocalyptic Greek demigod mythology, with each film telling of a trial for its characters, who vanish into the night only to appear when the next one comes about. Taylor-Joy is magnificent in the title role, while Chris Hemsworth is a delightful ham in the antagonistic role of a dangerous idiot. The movie isn't the taut thrill-ride that Fury Road was because it has too much plot, but because it's such an encompassing character journey that still maintains the high-octane action that the series is known for, it still rises to the occasion. Depending on one's taste, it's also arguably a better movie. But you wouldn't be blamed for prefering one over the other.
What? Review's over.
Okay, fine, I'll say it: "Can't we just get beyond Thunderdome?"
The Garfield Movie
⭐️⭐️1/2
Genre: Comedy
Director: Mark Dindal
Starring: Chris Pratt, Samuel L. Jackson, Hannah Waddingham, Ving Rhames, Nicholas Hoult, Cecily Strong, Harvey Guillen, Brett Goldstein, Bowen Yang, Snoop Dogg
Based on the long-running comic strip/media empire, The Garfield Movie attempts at an origin story for the tubby tabby, who is adopted off the street by his owner, Jon. Years later, Garfield and his canine best friend, Odie, are kidnapped by a feisty feline to attract the attention of Garfield's estranged father, and subsequently get sucked into a milk heist at a local dairy farm. Garfield is a tricky character to adapt to film, because it's difficult to relate an actual story without betraying Garfield's lazy spirit. Garfield has lasted as long as he has because he's a character that is ideal for short form, be it three-panel comics or ten-minute Saturday morning cartoon segments. One of the reasons Garfield & Friends is one of the most beloved children's cartoons in history, and honestly still kinda holds up today, is because it understood that hit and run comedy was what worked for this franchise. But when you get Bill Murray to play Garfield for eighty minutes in a movie, it feels strained, because it wants to be a movie more than it wants to be...well, Garfield.
Flash forward to this animated reboot of the Garfield film franchise (it's Garfield's third film, or sixth if you include direct to video ventures), which sees Chris Pratt playing the icon, and it seems like only partial lessions were learned. One of the things the movie does well is that it litters itself with brief jokes, like you'd see in a comic panel, which is where the character is always at its brightest. The cartoon world is more animated and flavorful than in the live-action films. And, quite frankly, Odie is an absolute scene stealer in this movie. Most of the most amusing gags in this movie belong to the dim-witted fido. The problem with The Garfield Movie is the same problem with the original Garfield movies...it's trying to make a movie out of Garfield. It feels like it needs to justify its existence with something more intricate than you'd normally see Garfield do, and while it's humor is in-character, the story really isn't. The movie has enough of Garfield's spirit, though its plot tends to get too complicated for the character. Garfield doesn't do complicated. He works with extravagant, which is why the climax is a highlight, but complicated exhausts him. Working in Garfield's father is an interesting touch, because we've met Garfield's mother over the years (notably in the excellent TV special Garfield on the Town), but never his dad, but giving Garfield daddy issues is something that isn't really suited to his personality. Sentimentality also has rarely suited the character, unless it's done in a very specific way (Garfield on the Town is still a frame of reference), and The Garfield Movie juggles that with more plot than the franchise can handle, while also maintaining the comic-strip nature of the character, and strains itself in doing so. It's a cute diversion movie for families with young children, but it feels like they had thought too hard in the wrong places and not hard enough in areas where this movie could shine.
Sight
⭐️1/2
Genre: Drama
Director: Andrew Hyatt
Starring: Terry Chen, Greg Kinnear
Nobody can make a true story feel fake quite like Angel Studios. Their one-dimensional approach to dramatization is very much a vibe that they intentionally achieve, but to be fair, that's because bigger studios don't make movies like this often, so they have to fill the niche, and studios certainly don't put them to a higher standard when they do. Sight is a movie that understands the theory of drama but doesn't understand the presentation. It will show events, but never with detail or interest. It's a movie that firmly believes compelling storytelling lies in zooming in on actors delivering feel-good smiles while nodding, while conflict is always in lack of immediate success despite progress or in traumatic backstories caused by non-characters who inflict pain for no reason and vanish from the movie. The film itself tells the story of Dr. Ming Wang, telling of his challenging upbringing in China to developing groundbreaking procedures in medicine that let the blind see again. It sounds like an amazing story. It deserves an amazing movie. Sight is not it. Sight is a bland generic chore that has absolutely nothing to keep a viewer from playing with their phone throughout its duration. Greg Kinnear does his best to inject some personality into the proceedings, but he's the only one that doesn't come across as if he's sleepwalking through this whole ordeal.
Starring: Marisa Abela, Jack O'Connell, Eddie Marsan, Leslie Manville
I know very little about Amy Winehouse. I've heard the name, but I'd be hard-pressed to say I've ever listened to her music. It's not a slight against it, as I barely seek out any music artist, really, so I don't intentionally avoid her. Now there is a biopic and I have to pretend I know what I'm talking about. Well, I don't and you're stuck with me.
Back to Black, named after her popular single, is primarily about her relationship with her husband Blake Fielder-Civil, and her turbulent life with him that led to substance abuse. Back to Black never rises above a rather simple dramatization, but as far as dramatizations go, it's not bad. It's not compelling, but it's strongly performed. It's a similar problem I had with Bob Marly: One Love, though I'd dare say Back to Black has a stronger flow to it's plot. It does, however, sometimes fight against its flow, seemingly to its own annoyance, somehow. There are times where the film feels fragmented, likely trying to portray Winehouse's life feeling fractured and chaotic. It just can't work the drama enough to patch together shattered pieces of it narrative. The movie even ends pretty abruptly, as if it's story hasn't concluded, which feels like a metaphor for Winehouse dying so young, as if she never had the opportunity to tell the rest of her own story. There is a poetry to that, but it leaves you with too much longing for more to relate.
I Saw the TV Glow
⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Mystery
Director: Jane Schoenbrun
Starring: Justice Smith, Bridget Lundy-Paine, Ian Foreman, Helena Howard, Fred Durst, Danielle Deadwyler
I Saw the TV Glow is a very specific type of movie aimed at a very specific type of filmgoer, working as an analysis of the socially awkward escape from realism into fantasy and how dead reality can feel without it. The film centers on a pair of recluse teenagers who are obsessed with a TV show called The Pink Opaque, who use it as a surrogate to their daily lives. As time goes on, one of them disappears after the show is cancelled, only to return a decade later claiming a blur between fantasy and reality. Jane Schoenbran uses The Pink Opaque as a stand-in for what I'm sure most Gen-Xers and Millenials might recognize from their adolescence. Specifically, she is referencing Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Amber Benson, who played Tara on that series, has a brief cameo), but The Pink Opaque itself seems to lie in a combination of a lot of shows. It could be substituted for whatever your favorite genre show was, from Buffy to Smallville to The X-Files, or even something more childish, such as Power Rangers or Goosebumps. It's more Specifically about the distancing from life and social issues one might gain from becoming obsessed with such a show, coming home every week and living in another world for an hour. The film starts out as a story of friendship between two isolated teenagers, depicting a socially awkward closeness formed through a mutual love of TV, but ventures out into surrealism as the escapism collapses around them. It's a fascinating construction, though those who won't relate to their worldview probably won't relate too heftily to it, especially as it gets stranger as it goes. The ending is fascinating. Some might call it abrupt and unsatisfying, but there are intriguing metaphors at play that can be interpreted a number of ways, from the importance of putting childish things away to what we suffer when we lose our imagination. Hell, it also almost feels like the frustration of one's favorite show ending on a cliffhanger, yearning for closure that never comes. This movie is fun to disect for those looking for subtext.
IF
⭐️1/2
Genre: Fantasy, Comedy
Director: John Krasinski
Starring: Cailey Fleming, Ryan Reynolds, John Krasinski, Fiona Shaw, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Steve Carrell, Louis Gosset Jr.
The poster to IF asks the question "What if imaginary friends were real?" The answer to that is that they wouldn't be imaginary. This isn't rocket science.
John Krasinski leaves A Quiet Place behind to make another movie about families, just with less monsters trying to eat people. This written/directorial effort instead comes off as if Bing Bong made him cry in Inside Out and he's been carrying that trauma with him for ten years and needs therapy. The Walking Dead's Cailey Fleming playing yet another girl with a dead mother and MIA father. However, she soon finds that she has the gift to see "Imaginary Friends," and decides to help them connect with new children after their old ones have forgotten them. That last bit seems out there to me, as the point of an imaginary friend is that the attributes are unique to the imagination of a child who created it, and just giving friends second-hand imaginary friends really defeats the purpose of imaginary friends in a way. Krasinski tries his best to create a Monsters Inc. out of this concept, but he can't figure out just what in the hell he's supposed to do with it. It's almost impressive just how aggressively this movie fails to be about anything. It's whimsy in search of a premise. Every time the movie promises to have a story, it cowers and just throws more whimsy in your face. It's tiresome with how meaninglessly cute it's trying to be. I really wish there was something of substance for the performers to grab ahold of. Ryan Reynolds seems almost shafted in his role, as he contributes almost nothing to the movie except to be present. Something needs to be said for Cailey Fleming, though. She dives straight in and embraces the tone of the movie and vibes with it. Fleming helps make this movie an easy watch, but she's just trying to make us forgive a film that never fleshed itself out beyond being a concept. Children will likely be more forgiving of that than adults, so I suppose it will still hit with its target audience.
The Strangers: Chapter 1
⭐️1/2
Genre: Horror
Director: Renny Harlin
Starring: Madeline Petsch, Foy Gutierrez
Someone in Hollywood must be very determined to make a Strangers franchise a thing, even though the time for it probably passed over a decade ago. The Strangers works as a story of a hit-and-run case of senseless, unprovoked violence from a group of people who disappeared into the night. The second Strangers film, Prey at Night, worked on a somewhat ironic level, as if the original were some sort of horror classic from the 70's and the second was the punk rock 80's cash-in sequel to it that arguably missed the point, like a slasher franchise would do if the first movie made a lot of money and the producers wanted more (if The Strangers were Halloween, Prey at Night would be Halloween 4). But the more they try to expand this franchise, the more it feels like Texas Chainsaw Massacre all over again, where every studio is making a bid to turn it into their go-to horror franchise, but none of them pan out, leaving it as an effective chiller that turned into an oddball, schizophrenic string of reboots, where some suck harder than others.
The thing is, I don't even like The Strangers that much. It's a movie I've always wished I loved, but it just never hit me the way it's supposed to. I think it's a very well made movie that has great moments, but it always felt like a thirty minute short film that was padded out to eighty. But if I ever think of it fondly, I think of little moments where it wanted you to read in between the lines. There are points in the film where the killers show a humanity that they're trying hard to mask, which helps make that film feel as real as it does. Every other Strangers film seems to completely miss that, trying to portray them as soulless and psychotic as possible, while reutilizing lines like "Is Tamara here?" or "Why are you doing this?"/"Because you were home." as catchphrases. It feels like the antithesis to the first movie, which sent out the undertones that the Strangers were just a normal group of people who did what they did simply just to experience taking a human life.
Evidentally, The Strangers: Chapter 1 was rooted in a pitch for a revamp of the series that told one big, sprawling narrative that was too ambitious for one movie, so they decided to film it and split it into three. Whoever thought this was a good idea should probably be fired, but the damage is done, and we're getting a three-part Strangers movie whether we want it or not. Chapter 2 is due out in the fall, and Chapter 3 probably in the winter. That is, assuming Chapter 1 doesn't flop hard enough to dump them all directly onto streaming. Horror movies tend to keep their budgets tight, though, so that's probably unlikely. Chapter 1, more-or-less, is just the first Strangers movie again, with minor detours. The main couple is stranded in a nowhere town and staying at a Bed & Breakfast, and have some interaction with citizens in the first act. Other than that, there are little-to-no plot beats that aren't repeated from the first film, as a trio of masked individuals terrorize them throughout the night.
Here's the thing that I can't get out of my head: I'm curious why you would make this movie at all when it's so painstakingly similar to a movie that already exists. You could have just made your part 2 and 3 and made them direct sequels to the first movie with seemingly little alterations. I don't even know if I could spoil this movie, because the end result is practically the same as the first film, right down to who lives and who dies. I just don't see the value in selling us on an already shot trilogy by introducing us to it with a movie we've already seen before, but duller. The movie doesn't even pay off the trailer tagline of "Witness how the Strangers became the Strangers," which implies this is some sort of origin story that will reveal who these masked people are and what drives them to do this. Not only is it not that, it struggles to be anything. It's a boring remake of the first film that slapped "To Be Continued" at the end without giving us any sort of hook to be excited for more. Why the fuck would I come back for another one? The small hope that now this one is out of the way, it might actually become interesting? Fuck you, movie.
The best thing I can say about this movie is I expected it to be worse, but that's more of a statement how low my expectations were than any praise for the film itself. I almost wish it were worse. A bad movie can handle. Something odd and stupid can generate enthusiasm for me. Madame Web, while arguably a worse movie, is still the most rewatchable movie of the year. The Strangers: Chapter 1 is probably the frontrunner for most regrettable ticket purchase. It's IP repetition at its most uncreative. That's something I had hoped it wasn't, but nobody was willing to rise above that standard.
Wildcat
⭐️⭐️
Genre: Drama
Director: Ethan Hawke
Starring: Maya Hawke, Laura Linney, Rafael Casal, Philip Ettinger, Cooper Hoffman, Steve Zahn
Ethan Hawke directs his daughter Maya in this semi-biography of writer Flannery O'Connor, portraying her creative struggles while those around her fail to understand her work. Intercut throughout are adaptations of O'Connor's short stories, with Maya Hawke playing the lead in each. The best moments of Wildcat are absolutely worth watching. I just wish it were a better movie to house the inspiration. The idea of being both an biopic and work adaptation is pretty clever, as it helps us understand both the woman and her imagination at the same time. The film is made with a pure and focused ideas and vision, but it frustrates as it struggles to make it feel whole. It's almost as if the film was written by its main character, letting her stories out only to flummox the audience who probably isn't ready for them. This might be intentional, though while the film is great at at portraying O'Connor's polarizing nature, it fails to find a throughline that comes off as anything but a chaotic and grim mess. The question becomes whether or not that's the point. If it is, the movie fails to elevate it to any level of importance. It does emphasize the conflict between artistic expression against audience understanding quite well, though. It just also feels like it's an allegory for the finished film.
