In Which I Briefly Review Movies

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Spider-Man: No Way Home, 2021, Jon Watts, 8.5/10 - Yes I fucking did just rate a capeshit movie that high. The only real flaw for me is that the ending of the movie is too unresolved for my liking. There's a lot of reasons why I'm rating this movie so highly though. Most importantly was that they found a way to get all three Spider-Men in the movie, all the villains in the movie, and it not blatantly feel like pandering and/or a lack of care being given to the story of the movie. I also really enjoyed them finding a way to get JK Simmons in the movie more than I thought he would be. Even though I said the ending was unresolved, I'm referring to the after effects. I really, really like the decision they made when Dr. Strange cast his last spell. I should also point out here that more people clapped for the appearances of Green Goblin and the other two Spider-Men than anyone did during either of the last two Avengers movies. At least the crowds I was in anyway.

I also can't believe how full the showings for this still are. I elaborated plenty but I don't want to keep going. This movie is good.

 

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Licorice Pizza, 2021, Paul Thomas Anderson, 9/10 - Alright, so there's already a thread and I feel weird for posting this outside of that thread, but who cares anyway. This isn't PTA's best movie, but I'm still thinking about it. Even though it isn't as great as some of his others, Licorice Pizza is great in its own right. I have seen some whining about this premise too. 15 year old boy wants to date 25 year old girl. 25 year old girl has nothing going for her in life and wants to be friends with this kid. Whenever she gets too close to the sun with people her own age or older, things go really fucking badly and she retreats into herself, which is rather easily interpreted as retreating back into her own childhood when everything was so much easier. Obviously given my rating I love this movie. Pretty much anything set in the 70s is better simply for that reason alone, but there's much more to the film than just that. It could have run for another hour and I would have remained entertained. My sole complaint is that PTA is starting to rely on the audience to connect the dots between scenes and I think a lot of people just don't want to or can't do that. I was sitting next to somebody who was thoroughly confused.

I could go on and on but I've been attempting to shorten these for my personal sanity as well as in consideration of how much other people want to spend time reading something. Also, I hope people understand what the mayoral campaign story was supposed to mean, but again, I think this confused a certain kind of person. All in all though, Licorice Pizza is a movie that brings a lot of imagination and inspiration to the table, and that counts for a lot these days. I could go on forever but I won't.

 

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The Hunt, 2020, Craig Zobel, 5/10 - There's already been far too much talk dedicated to this movie, most of it was not done recently though. I'll still be brief. The premise of this movie is that elite liberals hunt Trump voters/conspiracy theorists. Liberals lose. The end. There's no reason for so much digital ink to be spilled. The first half of the movie is funny, but the second half is not. The second half suffers from funny characters in the first half of the film having been killed too quickly, but there's a ceiling to this kind of movie in the first place. I am tired of seeing political shit in TV/Film. The Hunt is a botched satire and that's really all that needs to be said.

 

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First Cow, 2020, Kelly Reichardt, 7.5/10 - This is a rare case of a movie critics liked more than I did. I don't like so often being aligned with critical opinion, it makes things feel like I'm just part of the crowd when I like or dislike something. This is a movie that I did like a lot, just not as much as other people. Our premise is solid. Cookie (John Magaro) and King-Lu (Orion Lee) are two loners on the frontier in Oregon. They meet each other when Lu is on the run after having killed a Russian guy. He needs some help and Cookie gives it. Eventually they get back to the fort and decide to start stealing milk from the only cow in the area. It goes well until it doesn't. My negative complaint about the movie is simply that this is too slow. Everything develops so slowly that First Cow becomes a long movie as a result of that. It doesn't need to be a long movie. Despite that issue, I thought this was a good story about trying to build a community from nothing, trying to get ahead in a world where it's nearly impossible to do so, and accurately portrayed how hard life on the frontier really was. This just shouldn't have been so long.

 

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Nightmare Alley, 2021, Guillermo Del Toro, 8/10 - Now we switch the situation to a movie I liked more than critics did. Yes, this movie is very long and I've complained about that before. In this case it is necessary and doesn't feel too long. There are effectively two stories told here. One is of what appears to be a murderer named Stan (Bradley Cooper) trying to make his way in the world. The other story is what happens after that. It's better not to say anything about the story because the lack of knowledge beforehand makes everything in a movie like this far better. That being said, of course this is a good movie when it features Willem Dafoe, Toni Collette, Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Ron Perlman, Richard Jenkins, David Strathairn, and Mary Steenburgen. It shouldn't be anything less. I was thinking while I was watching this that the second half of the movie wasn't as good as the first, but late in the movie I felt like it was every bit as good. That's what I was really hoping for here. There are some GDT trademarks here too, some weird characters and settings that are very inspired and not something you see every time you sit down to watch a movie.

I am fully aware that this is a remake, that everything isn't quite as inspired as I made it sound, but I haven't seen the original. Of course this will bomb because everything interesting bombs now. I liked it though.

 

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The Tragedy of Macbeth, 2021, Joel Coen, 8.5/10 - Unlike every other Coen movie, this one is played completely straight and seriously to its benefit. The Tragedy of Macbeth also has its dialogue in Anglo-Norman, so it isn't the easiest movie to understand. I gotta admit a few things though. I forgot the story of Macbeth prior to watching this. I also have not seen any adaptations other than Roman Polanski's version, which this film here is better than. It's strange to see cinema have so much money backing movies like these that now someone like Denzel Washington can have an experimental playground such as this. And that's what this is, an experimental movie to the core. The dialogue is straight from Shakespeare's pages. The sets here are as minimalist as possible. Black and white. Great cinematography evoking thoughts of the 1940's. I dig all of this. There's three great performances here. Denzel as Macbeth is really inspired casting. Frances McDormand is a great Lady Macbeth, but the real scene stealer here is Kathryn Hunter, who plays all three witches. I don't know if someone who only registers in two scenes can win an award, but I won't soon forget this performance.

 

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The Assistant, 2020, Kitty Green, 7.5/10 - For lack of a better way to describe things, this is a Weinstein movie. Jane (Julia Garner) is an assistant at a film production company. She's new at her job, enough that she knows not to step out of her place. Over the course of the day it becomes more and more clear that the chief of this company uses his position to bang girls who want to be in movies or work at the company. Over the course of this day specifically, it also becomes more clear to Jane what's happening. It also becomes clear to the viewer that the HR Department of this company is never going to do anything to stop their boss. So what do they do? Well, they can't do anything. And that's how this cycle of abuse is allowed to continue unfettered for such a long time. It's usually a good watch when industries skewer themselves and this is no different. This is one of the only movies in this space that doesn't feature too much melodrama.

 

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High Life, 2019, Claire Denis, 7.5/10 - I've been watching a lot of good movies lately and this is no exception. The reason I'm not watching any shitty ones is obviously because in playing catch up, this is most of what I have left. So the premise here is that death row inmates are sent into space on an experimentation vessel. People on Earth want to study the effects of black holes, both on conscious human subjects and via small vessels that can be sent into the black hole with a skilled pilot. Those in charge hope that the small vessel is also able to come back out of the black hole when sent into the periphery of it. The hope is that these people can extract energy from said black hole. These prisoners/astronauts are wild. Dr. Dibs (Juliette Binoche) is obsessed with one of the women being able to sustain a pregnancy and carry it to term in space. She also killed her kids back on Earth. Monte (Robert Pattinson) is on the vessel because he killed a girl who killed his dog when he was a child. The prisoners are also not allowed to have sex with each other, so they obsessively fixate on a box that can best be called a jerk off box. It's all going off on this space ship.

This is a neat movie here. It's space on a low budget, delving into what happens when real human experimentation kicks in. It's not like experimentation is all sunshine and roses. Real progress is made when scientists don't care about their test subjects. There's a reason that Unit 731 and Nazi scientists were given immunity after World War II. There's a reason we have made such large technological and pharmaceutical advancements after said war. In no way am I saying this is acceptable. It is just what it is. The experiments in High Life are nowhere near that level of atrocity, but those who organized the mission know that they're fucking with people's psyches. They just didn't care because those people were murderers. Anyway now that I'm done thinking about that, this story is also told in nonlinear fashion and that's probably for the best. Rape scene is rough though.

 

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Radioactive, 2020, Marjane Satrapi, 4.5/10 - Alright, so this is an interesting twist on a biopic in that it is both not entirely accurate and makes the creative decision to add in future events after Marie Curie's life. Some of those are also not accurate. So this is a weird movie, obviously. I didn't really care for it. A biopic is heavily reliant on whether or not their subject is interesting enough to carry it, and Marie Curie is not. She's just not. Rosamund Pike does about as well as someone could possibly do with this, but math/science biopics are boring as a rule and this is not an exception. The Imitation Game is an exception because there's a great script, the filmmaker is better at creating drama, and that's just not the case here. On the subject of said script, the person who wrote it is very intent on downplaying sexism to the point that I noticed it and found it offputting.

While Marie Curie is somewhat interesting, I'm not sure anyone could make an intriguing movie about her, and that's the biggest problem here.

 

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Blow the Man Down, 2020, Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy, 7/10 - Let's keep it going with the female directed movies. I have a decent amount of them on my list but this streak will probably be ending at 4 due to time constraints. Blow the Man Down has been described as a Fargo-like movie set in Maine, and I think that's so accurate as to not argue the point or go over why it is or isn't. This is a film that has some problems, but I liked it a lot. It's a nice twist on a duo trying to get away with a crime they might not even get in trouble for doing. People in the town have a secret they want to keep quiet and it's on the verge of leaking out even though seemingly most people in the town already know about it? These kinds of movies about small town America are usually interesting at the least and this is no exception.

 

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The Matrix Resurrections, 2021, Lana Wachowski, 6/10 - The streak wound up not ending at four, but it does end at five because I watched something a few minutes ago that I'll be reviewing tomorrow. I have been meaning to post this for a few days but I didn't feel like justifying myself. I feel like in saying that I liked it more than I disliked it, I would have to do so. It's true though. This isn't a perfect Matrix movie, and I don't like how Trinity was used, but I feel that this film provides far more closure than the third one did. Things feel like there's nowhere to go and I'm perfectly okay with that. I also felt that nostalgia was used in a proper fashion and that there were scenes that brought up warm feelings of the first film, even though someone different was playing Morpheus and there was a different representation of Agent Smith. That is not a problem for me. What is a problem is the amount of technical bullshit dialogue here. The action scenes weren't that good either, but I'm gonna be honest, I find most action scenes to be getting way old and tired with me. The thing is, I don't care all that much about the negative thoughts, I made sure not to go through these movies too many times when I was younger, and I had positive thoughts when this was over. At the end I was happy. That's good enough for me.

 

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Burning Cane, 2019, Phillip Youmans, 6.5/10 - This is a movie I'm sure nobody here has seen, but it was nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards and as such got on my radar. The long and short of it is that this is a story about two guys with an older lady stuck in the middle and not knowing what to do. Her pastor, played by my man THE BUNK, he is an alcoholic. His wife just died and he is spiritually untethered, he says in private while standing in his own church that he feels like he's just going up there and talking bullshit every Sunday. I'm not even sure we learn the older lady's name, but her son is also an alcoholic, and like I said, she's caught in the middle here. Her pastor is supposed to have his shit together, she seems to care more about this dude, but he doesn't have his shit together. In some ways this movie is kind of a mess. It's extremely poorly edited and doesn't establish its story the way I would have preferred. On the other hand, Burning Cane was directed by an 18 year old, the movie has a great closing stretch and ending, and I think the subject is poignant in addressing the hypocrisy of church leaders and how people look up to them. The director being young doesn't really matter to me, and it doesn't make me feel like the film deserves extra credit, but I thought I should mention it.

 

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The King's Man, 2021, Matthew Vaughn, 5/10 - I could very easily have given this a worse rating. The plot is all over the place and focuses on a boring character for far too long. This is also the least funny movie of the series. However, this movie does feature Rasputin and I'm a big fan of that guy. He's on the screen quite a decent amount and his section is by far the best of the movie. Otherwise this is a fucking mess. The movie almost falls into something by having the villain be pro-Scottish independence during the time frame of WW1. It just doesn't work though, everything is too serious and lacking in fun. Except for Rasputin.

 

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Judy, 2019, Rupert Goold, 6.5/10 - One of the problems with movies like these is that the director becomes so enamored with the performance he's getting that everything else in the movie gets thrown to the side. That's what we have here. This really is a great performance, but the rest is standard biopic fare. They want to show you some of the bad things that happened to Judy Garland without digging all the way into the story. They do some positive things too though. I have complained before about audio tracks replacing singing in movies like this one. That isn't the case here. It's also difficult to portray being this fragile, Zellweger does a great job of that. Third act isn't as good as the rest though. I couldn't see this when it came out, but it wasn't worth rushing for anyway. If not for the performance this movie would be a big nothing.

 

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Wasp Network, 2020, Olivier Assayas, 7/10 - A lot of critics did not like this movie but I'm in the opposite boat. I found it to be provocative taking into account the sentences of those involved in the spying. This is a spy story about people who leave Cuba for the US. Their intentions are to spy on Cubans who left Castro's Cuba and have the intention of paying people for terrorist acts. The role of this spy ring is to stop them, with no action taken against the US government unless you consider the US government to have sanctioned such acts against Cuba. Which they did. Some of them anyway. The spies information does also lead to deaths of those dropping leaflets over Havana, those deaths coming after repeated violation of Cuba's airspace. Was their ensuring imprisonment just? The latter is left for the viewer to decide. Of course, foreign agents are supposed to register with the government. Did their actions prevent deaths? Well, yes. Did they spy on the US? No. They infiltrated anti-Castro organizations. So the lines here are definitely blurred.

Anyway, I dug the movie. It's a good story that's acted very well. It looks good, they clearly filmed in Cuba. There aren't a lot of spy movies that deal with the human cost of espionage, and I appreciated seeing a film that did. This is also the other side of a lot of propaganda that we've been told. Surprisingly, even though this is filmed in Cuba it is not propaganda. You decide for yourself what you think about it, the information was easily digestible to me, and basically that's that.

 

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Scream, 2022, Tyler Gilpin and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, 7/10 - Dude, why does a movie need two directors? With that out of the way, this is a much higher score than I anticipated giving this movie, and it is also the best of these Scream movies. Yes, I did say the best. For once, the meta commentary in a movie actually makes sense! It doesn't hurt that the young actors here are actually good at their jobs. Of course there's a balance that has to be kept and I found that the script/directors did a great job of keeping things in check. Regardless, the new characters here aren't as memorable with one exception, and that's the case because of said script that I just praised. I do however think that it's a good thing the three older characters weren't in this movie for all that long. The focus shouldn't be on them anymore, their time has passed. People need to know when it's time to move on, but something needs to be written well enough to make up for that. Slasher movies also have a bad tendency to fall apart in the third act, but this one doesn't.

 

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The Photograph, 2020, Stella Meghie, 5.5/10 - I had to stew on this one for a few days to decide if I liked it, and the answer is clearly that I didn't. It's like this movie almost makes it over the hurdle that the screenplay placed in front of itself, but at the end it just couldn't do it. The problem here is that most of the flashback/still living but older characters are just better than the leads. They're more interesting, I would rather watch them, and there's a great movie buried in here that just can't get to the surface. Everything is too muted for me to get into. And considering the leads are great actors, that's rough. I promise not to spend Black History Month shitting on black art over and over again, but I don't do themed watching months, so it's possible this will happen again and someone might notice it if I don't do so now. As to the point about there being a great movie buried in here, the cinematography is excellent and every shot is carefully crafted, and again, the flashbacks as well as any scene with Rob Morgan is really good.

 

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The Lodge, 2020, Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, 7/10 - This is a big tonal shift from the previous movie to this one. I liked The Lodge more than some. The film isn't all that scary, but it's extremely entertaining and has a great twist towards the end. It's also nice to see a horror movie where the kids are the pieces of shit causing all these problems for someone else. There's some shit here that might not hold up under scrutiny and may be an indicator of plot holes, but honestly I don't care. I'm also used to movies that cut away from someone committing suicide, not seeing them blow their head off. All this being said, the religion aspect here ties everything together and is much appreciated. Although, I'm not sure why any good dad would leave his kids alone with someone his kids told him they want nothing to do with. His son is also obviously a sociopath. Anyway, good movie, watch it.

 

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Jackass Forever, 2022, Jeff Tremaine, 7.5/10 - Of course the last one would be the best one. I'm not going to go into detail about all the stunts, but this movie is far more gross than the other ones, and because the MPAA has relaxed their standards, you see everyone's dick. Sometimes the dick and balls are very zoomed in upon. That's alright though, it's just a dick. This one is really fucking funny and you should see it. That's pretty much all I can say without spoiling. Maybe this is what we need to bring the country back together.

 

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The Fallout, 2022, Megan Park, 7/10 - I hate giving out the same rating twice in a row, but that's where I landed. The next movie I'm going to watch has horrible reviews so I'm sure i won't be doing it again. If you've ever lived through a shooting this is quite the haunting watch. Yes, that is what it sounds like. I didn't have to live through a school shooting at least. The reason I'm not giving this a higher rating is because the plot following the shooting isn't as good as it could have been, and even though the reliance on texting is very realistic I'm not a big fan of seeing that on film. It makes things more dull. But how does a person move on from a shooting like this? That's what we see here. It isn't easy, it isn't always the same as everyone else. Maybe you never move on.

 

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The Fallout, 2022, Megan Park, 7.5/10 - I hate giving out the same rating twice in a row, but that's where I landed. The next movie I'm going to watch has horrible reviews so I'm sure i won't be doing it again. If you've ever lived through a shooting this is quite the haunting watch. Yes, that is what it sounds like. I didn't have to live through a school shooting at least. The reason I'm not giving this a higher rating is because the plot following the shooting isn't as good as it could have been, and even though the reliance on texting is very realistic I'm not a big fan of seeing that on film. It makes things more dull. But how does a person move on from a shooting like this? That's what we see here. It isn't easy, it isn't always the same as everyone else. Maybe you never move on.

This has pretty good reviews, I haven't seen anything suggesting it is "horrible" unless you meant to put something other than "review."

 

[Brooklyn Zoo]

This has pretty good reviews, I haven't seen anything suggesting it is "horrible" unless you meant to put something other than "review."

I think he meant the movie after this one.

This is one pretty good.

 

[AA484]

I think he meant the movie after this one.

This is one pretty good.

Oh, you're right. "Kid can't even read."

 

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Moonfall, 2022, Roland Emmerich, 3/10 - This is one big piece of shit, but I just wanted to say that I applaud what this movie turns into because it was too ridiculous to believe. I've gotten in the habit lately of not paying attention to trailers and I suppose this is what I get for not doing so. Unfortunately even beyond the movie itself I was always going to have problems with this. They cast the guy who played my absolute least favorite GoT character as a know-it-all conspiracy theorist and I just can't handle that. That's far worse than everything else I'd say. There's too much going on here, it's like ADD shit. The scenes have absolutely no room to breathe and things stay like that for the last 75 minutes of the movie. It's just stupid. Characters die in really horrible ways and there's no logic as to who dies when, there's also three hours of stuff packed into two hours. I can't say I didn't laugh though. I had to cover my face so that other people didn't hear me and when that happens, I know I'm seeing something worth writing about. I'm glad I'm not doing my old format though because I have absolutely no idea where to start with a recap of all this.

The following month, star John Bradley said that "if Roland goes down the direction that he wants to," the sequels would be "even more batshit crazy than the first."[31]

Lol dude why is this a good thing? Let's just waste tons of money that should be spent on something that has tangible value. Like almost everything else in the universe. Fuck off

I feel much more justified in hating this loser now. Where did all the good fat actors go? More Seymour Hoffmans and less of this mutherfucker.

 

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If you aren't gonna watch this movie, just watch this. Sums it up a lot better than I can.

 

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Her Smell, 2019, Alex Ross Perry, 8/10 - I'd been holding onto this one for a while. A lot of the movies I watch coming up will be in the same boat. I am finally going to clear this backlog list I've had sitting there since January 2020. Anyway, this was a really good one with a great performance from Elisabeth Moss. This is a movie with five distinct setups, disconnected from each other but influenced by the ones that come before. Meaning they jump from a gig, to studio, to home, etc. Moss plays Becky Something, her stage name as leader of a band called Something She. Her life is going to shit because of her dependence on substances and she can't handle it. I don't see the purpose in droning on and on but I thought this was great. The second scene was the best of the film. I thought it was a very accurate portrayal of when studio sessions go sideways. Elisabeth Moss put in a great performance there, I don't understand why she wasn't nominated for awards, and that's where I'm at with all this. I guess nobody watched this movie, or they waited until now like I did, and that's a shame.

 

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Death on the Nile, 2022, Kenneth Branagh, 5.5/10 - I needed to chew on this as well, and as time went on the more I think this is worse than the previous movie. The beginning of the film really hurts things here. It's drawn out as long as it possibly could be, and while the second half of the movie is pretty good, I think it comes too late. The effectiveness of a murder mystery is something I believe to be decided by the portrayals of characters when they're introduced. The characters here aren't interesting enough. Sometimes, like in Branagh's first Poirot movie, you need the characters to be outlandish in order to differentiate themselves. Of course this is not Branagh's story and there's a limit to the extent of changes allowed, but this doesn't all come off for me. Gal Gadot still can't act, and there's only so much they could hide Armie Hammer. The Armie Hammer thing here is fucking hilarious to me. I can't believe this would even make a dollar. I don't pay for individual tickets so I don't care, but I'm more surprised that anyone would release something with him featured so much. Regardless, Branagh as Poirot is good but the first half of this is too dry for me to think it's good.

 

[Brocklock]

Her Smell is so excellent. It's a hard movie to recommend because people are put off by that title, but it's so good.

 

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Kimi, 2022, Steven Soderbergh, 7.5/10 - Alright so I've seen a lot of Soderbergh movies, I'm sure most people have too because a lot of them are commercially accessible, and this is yet another good one. Things go down a road I was not quite expecting, and for once we have a bit of pandemic related entertainment material that I don't have a problem with. Kimi is in reference to an Alexa-like piece of smart technology owned by a startup looking to go public. Problem is that the CEO of said company has some shit in his past and there are people looking to capitalize on it. Angela (Zoe Kravitz) is an agoraphobic who deals with technical issues for Kimi and she hears something she would probably rather not have heard. What will she do about it?

Apparently she does a lot, and this movie is short and yet at the same time more layered than you'd think. This is also the kind of thing that will make you wonder what the technology in your house is doing when you aren't paying attention or giving it any thought. Basically meaning all the time. If I have a complaint here is that there's a lot going on here that's too ridiculous to believe. Maybe a company would or wouldn't hide a murder when they have an IPO on the way. I dunno. Zoe Kravitz is really good here though and elevates an ordinary script into something interesting. Great ending too.

 

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Lucy in the Sky, 2019, Noah Hawley, 3.5/10 - This is another big piece of shit, this one I'm shocked was made at all. Not an enormous budget here but it's plenty big enough and all of it is wasted. This is a movie that tries to visually tell you a story as well, except in this case the blurred lens kept making me wonder if my television was fucked up. This is a story clearly inspired by the diaper woman who got fired from NASA, a story that tries to tell you being in space can fuck with someone's mental capacity. While the story does illustrate that, it would be foolish to say this was anything other than a completely dull waste of time. I'm also not understanding why the diaper part of this story was left out, I'm not understanding a lot of stuff. This movie seemed like it was set during the 80s and all of a sudden it wasn't. I didn't realize until Jon Hamm was looking at a flat panel. I don't know what that says about me.

In any case, this is a waste of Portman, who tries to give a great performance of a crazy woman but the material isn't good enough for it to stick. We also have no indication of what Portman's character was like before going to space, we are left to make assumptions and that isn't a good thing. This movie goofs hard with that. We're shown none of the things that could lead to a breakdown. The life of an astronaut is very structured and there isn't time for goofing around. We don't get that. Astronauts have to learn to keep their shit in check so they don't ruin a mission. We see nothing here that makes it seem like Lucy had anything in check before she went to space. We meet her geeky husband after and she has a niece and that's the extent of what we know. It isn't enough.