MST3K, RiffTrax, and Beyond: Cinema Playground Journal 2023: Week 50 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Wonka

⭐⭐⭐

Genre: Fantasy, Musical, Comedy

Director: Paul King

Starring: Timothy Chalamet, Calah Lane, Keegan-Michael Key, Paterson Joseph, Matt Lucas, Matthew Baynton, Sally Hawkins, Rowan Atkinson, Jim Carter, Natasha Rothwell, Tom Davis, Olivia Colman, Hugh Grant

I've never been a huge Willy Wonka fan. As a child I found the original movie unpleasant and never saw the need to revisit it. As an adult, I found Tim Burton's remake was even more unpleasant and have even less of a desire to revisit it. I just associate this franchise with sitting is solemn silence and wishing I were dead. Now there's a prequel. Hooray?

In the surprise of the century, it actually isn't unpleasant.

Paul King, director of the beloved Paddington movies, brings us this story of a young Willy Wonka selling his chocolate on the streets and dealing with retaliation from the city's chocolate shop kingpins. The film has that huggable comfort vibe that made King's Paddington movies so enchanting, though with a bit more flamboyance, in line with what one might expect from a Willy Wonka movie. It succeeds in giving the Wonka franchise a whimsy that just seemed ugly in previous works. It's a fun and cute movie, if a bit overtly goofy in places (likely intentionally so). I admit, I didn't quite care for Hugh Grant's Oompa Loompa, but I've never liked Oompa Loompas in general because I've always thought they'd murder me in my sleep, and this movie did nothing to make that fear subside. The musical numbers are also a mixed bag. Some songs are good, some songs are meh, all are rather forgettable. It's not the best family movie of the year, but it does successfully entertain a family for a night.

Art Attack

Maestro

⭐⭐⭐1/2

Genre: Drama

Director: Bradley Cooper

Starring: Bradley Cooper, Carey Mulligan

Bradley Cooper finally graces us with a sophomore effort after his remake of A Star is Born, and it's another one that has built some Oscar momentum for itself. Cooper stars as famed composer Leonard Bernstein, probably best known to film fans for his work on West Side Story and On the Waterfront. Maestro tells a life story of Bernstein largely through his relationship with his wife Felicia, played by Carey Mulligan (who is a seasoned actress from Academy Award winning films like Promising Young Woman, but will always be Sally Sparrow from her one episode of Doctor Who to me), largely relating a complicated love between a woman and a man who has love affairs with other men on the side. Cooper goes bold with his style on the movie (he loves to play with transitional editing), which sometimes threatens to overwhelm the narrative of the film, but he lucks out in Leonard and Felicia's love affair being an intriguing dynamic. He is also very detailed with the film, portraying eras very true to form, both in reality and hyperreality. One thing he loves to do is switch up the cinematography and acting styles, so they ring true to the eras they are set in. The end result is an engaging film that thrives on the heart at its center. Netflix subscribers may want to check this one out when it hits streaming next week.

Netflix & Chill

The Sacrifice Game

⭐⭐

Streaming On: Shudder

Genre: Horror

Director: Jenn Wexler

Starring: Mena Massoud, Olivia Scott Welch, Gus Kenworthy, Madison Baines, Derek Johns, Laurent Pitre, Chloë Levine, Georgia Acken

It's The Holdovers meets The Devil's Rejects in a Shudder holiday offering which sees a pair of students and their teacher who are left over at a boarding school over the holidays terrorized by a satanic cult hoping to conjure a demon. That's only half the story, which has a few surprises in store during its narrative, a lot of which are really fun. The issue that The Sacrifice Game runs into is that it dicks around. The movie is a pretty bland offering of villains giving hammy "I am bad guy, hear me roar" speeches for over half the its runtime before deciding to save itself by twisting its premise on its head, which offers some inspiration in its "idiots who claim to be Satan's disciples accidentally getting what they want" idea. The few narrative hiccups left over from its shaky first half anchor it down, but it's not uninteresting. Horror fans will probably want to check it out for a pretty excellent performance by a young actress named Georgia Acken, who plays a student named Clara in the film. She spends most of it with a Christina Ricci/Jenna Ortega/Wednesday Addams style straight face, but when the movie decides to let her shine, she comes in guns blazing. She's also given a little dance, which is either the most unnerving thing in the movie or the funniest, but kudos to her for just jumping into that rhythm the way that she did.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

The Boy and the Heron ⭐⭐⭐1/2

Dream Scenario ⭐⭐⭐

Eileen ⭐⭐⭐1/2

Godzilla Minus One ⭐⭐⭐1/2

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (no)

Napoleon ⭐⭐1/2

The Oath ⭐1/2

Oppenheimer ⭐⭐⭐

Saltburn ⭐⭐⭐

Silent Night ⭐⭐⭐

Thanksgiving ⭐⭐1/2