Multiplex Madness
Animal Farm
⭐️
Genre: Comedy
Director: Andy Serkis
Starring: Seth Rogen, Gatan Matarazzo, Woody Harrelson, Kieran Culkin, Glenn Close, Iman Vellani, Steve Buscemi, Laverne Cox, Jim Parsons, Kathleen Turner, Andy Serkis
I want nothing but the best for Andy Serkis, who established himself of the Lon Chaney of this century. His directing career hasn't really lit the world on fire, but I've always held out hope that maybe he had something special up his sleeve. An adaptation of George Orwell's novella Animal Farm probably could have turned that around, which Serkis has been working on for fifteen years (dating back to a motion capture version with Rise of the Planet of the Apes director Rupert Wyatt). Animal Farm has been adapted twice before, once as a British animated film in 1954 and again as a live action TV movie on TNT in 1999 (which had a banger cast that included Patrick Stewart, Kelley Grammer, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Ian Holm, and Pete Postlethwaite). I'm not sure you could consider either a perfect adaptation, though there are virtues to both. If someone really nailed Animal Farm, there could be a cinematic masterpiece in the making. Don't let me down, Mr. Serkis.
Now I've seen the film, and I'm impressed. It's not every day where I see a movie where every creative decision made is the wrong one, managing to turn one of the most important stories ever told into a complete oddity that leaves the original text for dead in a ditch.
Conceptually, the movie is the same but dumber. Animal Farm is a parallel to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and how it led to the rise of Stalin in the aftermath...ya'know, except told with animals on a farm. The animals revolt against the farmer of the land and drive him away, creating a community where "all animals are equal," only for a greedy and manipulative boar named Napoleon to consolidate power for himself. This stuff happens in the movie, to an extent. The animals do drive off the farmer, but in this movie it's not organized and happens completely by accident. Napoleon does take power, but he does so by teaming up with a conglomerate and by buying lots of consumer products, mixing capitalism into the narrative as something evil that is poisoning the communists.
What.
The.
Fuck.
I think I can see what Serkis is trying to do here, wanting to give the story contemporary appeal to expand its reach to children, so adding things like corporate greed and consumerism are easy things for a more toddler focused narrative. So are the goofball stabs at humor in the film. The traditional version of Animal Farm is a very dark tale, and what levity it does have is laced in its wry satire. Turning it into a child-friendly narrative is challenging. It's also a really bad idea. In trying to both update and cutesify it, all the teeth have been knocked out of the story. The allegory for the rise of totalitarianism is now functionless and meaningless. The movie ceases to be its namesake at a certain point, going through select motions of Animal Farm but making the story buckle under the weight of added content. The film also falls into the trap of previous adaptations by featuring an extended ending that implies that Napoleon gets his comeuppance eventually, which is predictable in the movie's less grim tone while also erasing how haunting the story is by offering the bonus message of "if we work together, this horrible leader WILL lose." That's nice, but the point of Animal Farm is "WAKE UP AND PAY ATTENTION! Oops. Too late."
The one fair thing I can say in this movie's favor is that it's not particularly hard to watch, as opposed to some other animated films I've seen this year like Charlie the Wonderdog or Tafiti: Across the Desert. That being said, there is a subjectivity to whether this film is actively worse because I understand why those films exist as they are while, as someone who is familiar with this book, I can't fathom why Animal Farm exists in the state it's in. I spent most of the movie resisting the urge to pull my own hair out in frustration, as opposed to just being bored. I'll let the reader decide what type of experience is worse but, for me, this is definitely a contender for worst of the year. Maybe it's base competency makes it better than that, but few films approach being the complete antithesis of what they're supposed to be like this one does.
Deep Water
⭐️⭐️1/2
Genre: Thriller
Director: Renny Harlin
Starring: Aaron Eckhart, Ben Kingsley
THIS IS NOT A DRILL! RENNY HARLIN HAS DIRECTED ANOTHER SHARK MOVIE! Sadly, it's not a Deep Blue Sea follow-up but a more sincere effort, opting to be less of a big, dumb entertainer and more of a harrowing survival film. Harlin is not a good directorial choice if you want your movie to be harrowing. He's not subdued enough. I mean, a fucking shark took down an airborn helicopter without leaving the water! That's the most Renny Harlin thing I've ever seen!
The movie is kinda Society of the Snow but in the water and sharks are eating people instead of people eating other people. A plane crashes in the ocean and the survivors try to band together until a rescue team comes, except there are sharks in the water. Really persistent sharks too. They mad and they hungry. For the shark movie connoisseur, shark attacks are abound, though many are brief and sudden and they happen to very few people that actually matter to the story. But it probably was always going to feel that way because every character in this movie is a very base personality type, so development of said characters are thin, and sometimes death scenes are so sudden that it barely registers that someone (or, in some cases, a group of people) actually died. The movie is an uneven mixture of cheesy action intertwined with stoic survival melodrama, which I don't think I've seen on this scale since San Andreas. Deep Water is more interesting than San Andreas, mostly because, unlike San Andreas, it actually feels as if the main characters are in danger. In that sense, the swift threat aspect of the movie is a success and the movie is just entertaining enough. "Just entertaining enough" is often the ceiling for how good a Renny Harlin movie is going to be, though you can pry Cliffhanger and Deep Blue Sea out of my cold, dead hands. At least he's done soiling the Strangers franchise so he can finally squeeze something passable out.
The Devil Wears Prada 2
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: Comedy
Director: David Frankel
Starring: Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Stanley Tucci, Emily Blunt, Justin Theroux, Kenneth Branagh, B.J. Novak, Lucy Liu
I didn't watch the first Devil Wears Prada until I was prepping for this one this week. I was a little confused at first because I thought it was about a woman who worked for a fashion magazine and finds out her boss was literally the devil. I think somewhere down the line I got my wires crossed into thinking this was a comedic version of The Devil's Advocate. But that's neither here nor there because we've officially reached nostalgia range for mid-2000's comedies, so brace yourself for another Meet the Parents movie (kill me). The Devil Wears Prada is one that hasn't been milked dry, having done a singular movie and dropped the mic for twenty years. There are sequels to the book it was based on but, as far as I can tell, this second film isn't based on anything in them. The film brings Anne Hathaway back to her former job at Runway Magazine, this time as a journalist trying to hose down a PR fire for the company. This, of course, puts her at the whim of the equally demanding and iconic Meryl Streep, who is herself struggling with trying to keep the the magazine together as it switches hands from one owner to another.
The first movie didn't really have much of a story, it was more about a vibe. What story it did have was devoted to identity and possibly losing yourself in exchange for success. It was very Breakfast at Tiffany's like that. If the first movie was about the cost of success, the second is about the cost of preventing failure. The movie is more panicked, as characters are trying to keep things sturdy in the face of sudden change. It's solid plot progression for a sequel that is this belated. The film's villains are mainly progress and capitalism, as print media dies and new company heads threaten to gut the environment that these characters thrive in. Sometimes the commentary is a little toothless, as ideas like AI are thrown out and never really commented upon, but the most important part of this movie is whether or not it's a fun time at the cinema. It definitely is. It's cool. It's funny. Everyone looks swaggy and fabulous. The Devil Wears Prada is still strutting with pride. If that's what you're searching for, that's what you get.
Hokum
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: Horror
Director: Damian McCarthy
Starring: Adam Scott, Peter Coonan, David Wilmot, Florence Ordesh, Michael Patrick, Will O'Connell, Brendan Conroy, Austin Amelio
Oddity director Damian McCarthy is back with more spooky stuff in Ireland, as Adam Scott plays a novelist who visits a hotel in the great land, only to find that a little folk tale about the honeymoon suite might be more factual than he assumes at first. McCarthy is swiftly making a name for himself in the horror community, crafting effective horror films independently, basing all within his home country. The thing that strikes me about McCarthy's work in the genre is how he weilds shadow like a paintbrush, constructing suspense sequences that can startle even by showing nothing. Hokum devotes its entire second half to weaving horror out of blankets of darkness. Sometimes his tendency to not pace himself can trip him. Oddity's momentum could be non-existent at times, while Hokum can unspool in some unconventional plotting that makes the movie feel jumpy at times. If there's one thing I'd like to see him work on, it would be that, because as a director, he is already top-tier. I'd like to see his writing, as solid as it is already, reach that level also so he can be one of the best.
Movies Still Playing At My Theater
Michael ⭐️⭐️
Mother Mary ⭐️⭐️1/2
The Mummy ⭐️⭐️1/2
Over Your Dead Body ⭐️⭐️1/2
Project Hail Mary ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie ⭐️⭐️1/2
New To Digital
Forbidden Fruits ⭐️⭐️
Hoppers ⭐️⭐️⭐️
They Will Kill You ⭐️⭐️
New To Physical
Cold Storage ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Dust Bunny ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Coming Soon!
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