Movie Review Thread

[Mike]

[Mike]

Mr. Right
Anna Kendrick, Sam Rockwell. Romantic Comedy. He's an assassin. Funny, quirky, hyper-violent. I loved it.

[Mike]

Murder Party
This is an indie horror(ish) movie. And it's very indie. Hapless, clueless, lonely protagonist finds an invitation to a Halloween "Murder Party" laying in the street, so he decides to make a costume and attend. Turns out, a bunch of art-school types are looking to win grant money by performing and recording an actual murder. The rest is a mix of slapstick horror and Big Chill/Breakfast Club style sharing and discovery. It's very weird and engaging, and I feel like it was trying to say something deep about art, but I just thought it was a fun horror/comedy. It's a low-budget movie, and it shows, and the acting isn't top notch, but that's all okay. When Zombie picked it for the Movie of the Every Other Week club, I happily watched it again, but sadly, we didn't get to discuss it.

Side note: written and directed by the same guy who did Green Room (and Blue Ruin... but I haven't seen that yet), but I didn't know that until just now.

The Platform
This is social commentary... IN YOUR FACE! In an indeterminate and mostly unexplored future(?) world, we have a vertical prison(?). The top level is Level 1. And then it goes down from there to Level 100(?). Each level houses just two people in a very spartan cell, with a huge rectangular hole in the floor. Once per day, a feast for hundreds is laid out on a platform that starts at Level 1. And then every five(?) minutes, the platform is lowered one level. The people on the top levels can gorge themselves to their hearts' content, and each lower level gets their leftovers. That's your premise... now GO!

Does that intrigue you? If so, give it a watch. The commentary is not subtle, but it is engaging and the realities of this absurdly far-fetched premise are played out as realistically as possible. It is often violent and more often sickening and at every turn very disturbing. So if you have any doubts about that part, then skip it.

I was engrossed throughout and enjoyed it, but it's not going to be for everyone.

The Lovebirds
This is one of those madcap "romantic comedies" where the lead characters are already a long-time, established couple before the action starts. It reminded me of Date Night in that regard. Similar tone, similar comedy. It stars Kumail Nanjiani and Issa Rae. And it did it's job and entertained me. It wasn't a great movie, but it had enough fun moments to make it worth my time. If you want something light that doesn't require a lot of thinking, The Lovebirds works.

[akiva]

This past weekend I watched 3 movies, and in each of them Alexander Haig was portrayed by a different actor:

"The Final Days"--a TV movie based on the sequel to "All the President's Men." David Ogden Stiers is Haig, and he's a huge part of the movie. He's quite good; he always seemed like he didn't get the credit he deserved (for example, his work in the finale of MASH was heartbreaking). Very by-the-book, but it also clearly communicates complicated facts.

"Nixon"--there are some really good parts of this movie, but way too many Oliver Stone-isms. The stuff with Nixon as a kid is way too long and not in the slightest bit subtle or nuanced--and possibly entirely fictional. The acting is superb. I think David Hyde Pierce (John Dean) and James Woods (Bob Haldeman) stand out (too bad Woods is such a horrible person; I really like him as an actor). In this one, Powers Boothe portrays Haig. He's not in it that much since most of the movie happens before he took over as Chief of Staff. There is also a great Haig insider joke--when Nixon is on a gurney being rushed through the hospital, Haig says "I'm in charge here," which Haig basically said at the White House after Reagan was shot.

"The Iron Lady"--One scene where Thatcher meets with Haig briefly. Haig played by Matthew Marsh, who I don't think I know at all. He had very few lines, and was onscreen for probably about 3 minutes, so it's hard to judge. I found it funny that I saw Haig portrayed 3 times. I didn't see all of the movie, but it was fascinating and Streep is terrific. I don't know how much of it was historically accurate. I quite liked that the movie isn't really about Thatcher's career; it's about her accepting that her husband died. At least that's what I thought after watching about 80% of it.

[poorpete]

You researching Haig? Are you writing a Haig biography? a Hiagiography?

[akiva]

[Mike]

Priest
Remember how badass the trailers for Priest were? Seriously... it looked SOOOO good! And yeah I remember the shitty reviews, but... but... it's on Netflix now and the trailers still look awesome! So I finally watched it.

It's shit. It's really just shit. It's so slick and looks great, and I'm sure the comic it was based on was phenomenal, because the world is so bleak and stylistic, but Wikipedia says it's only "loosely based' on the comic, and it shows. The cast is a talented group, but they are given nothing to work with. The plot is little more than paint-by-numbers. The dialogue is all cliche. And there is really zero chemistry on display between any of the actors. Maybe Paul Bettany's cool detachment was overplayed here? But I don't think that's the problem, because even Christopher Plummer came off as a hack in this thing.

At least Hotel Artemis gave me enough meat to make me long for something more substantial--I could see the what-could-have-been hidden in there. Priest was just shit.

Time Trap
I liked this. It's a small sci-fi flick that looks like it could be a horror movie, but it's not. Dude goes missing himself while searching for a group that went missing in the middle of the desert years and years ago. So now a group of his students/assistants are out looking for HIM, and at each step, more weirdness ensues. The name of the film is Time Trap, so you can start putting the clues together early. There's time weirdness here. There's more science here than emotional investment, but it's good, juicy science so it was still a lot of fun for me. I always want to nitpick time movies, but except for a couple minor things near the end, there wasn't much to complain about. Some of the reveals were pretty obvious, but then they got me hard with one of them. I was sure I knew what was going on, but there was some timing stuff that wasn't lining up for me when I started calculating things. I chalked it up to the movie fudging on details, but I was wrong. The movie knew what it was doing all along. And it was really cool.

IO
This is a very small, personal story told against the backdrop of a very vast world and an end-of-humanity level threat. Margaret Qualley (the barefoot teen from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) is extremely good in this. And Anthony Mackie stars opposite her and is good as always. Other than that, there's Danny Huston in a flashback or two and then some dude who does a little voice work. That's everybody. It's very desolate and isolated and danger of the world is omnipresent. It's a well done movie that ultimately left me disappointed. I'm glad I watched it, but it's a movie that doesn't offer a lot of hope. There's choices here for the characters, but every possibility that was there to give these characters some hope still looked to me like a likely death sentence for humanity even under the best of circumstances. It was cool, but I felt the ending was largely bullshit. Your mileage may vary.

[Mike]

What I've been doing here is going back to review all the movies I've watched in the last 100 days or so since quarantine began. There's a lot of them...


Detective Pikachu
This was a really fun family movie. All of my boys have always been into Pokemon. Therefore, my wife and I have enough incidental knowledge to get by. The plot is pretty straightforward, and we had most of it figured out well ahead of time, but it's still very charming. The pokemon themselves were fantastic. The action was pretty solid. Ryan Reynolds was in fine form with a sort of Deadpool-lite style. We all walked away having enjoyed a fun family experience together. And yes, there was a LOT of fan service in here and a bunch of esoteric pokemon jokes that the adults in the room didn't get, but that was okay. If my kids hadn't been there to explain it to us, we never would have known we had missed anything. If you know nothing about Pokemon, then this isn't for you, but otherwise... easy fun.

Brightburn
Whoa! Kyle was so dead-on about this movie... It's great! What if the Kents had to deal with the fact that not only is their child Superman, but he's also way evil? Like Kyle pointed out, it was marketed as a dark superhero movie, but it is really just straight up horror. And really good horror! The movie is dark and tense and well-written, and this kid is genuinely one of the scariest movie monsters I've seen in a while. Well done.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
It's a Tarantino flick, and it's really good. All the actors are top-notch, as expected. The world of late 60's Hollywood presented here is deeper and richer and more developed than any of the sci-fi worlds I've raved about in other movies. The film is a series of masterful vignettes that are joined by a thread that feels thin and meandering. It feels weird to criticize it like this, because it's a really good movie, and there's so much to admire about it and yet... it was still lacking. I liked it, but was left dissatisfied. I felt similarly about Inglourious Basterds.

[Phoebe]

[Phoebe]

I liked Detective Pikachu too, not sure if I reviewed it as I was kind of snoozing while my kid watched it, and then I was like, hey, this is pretty good! So I revived and got the full backstory from kid and watched the rest.

[Mike]

[Mike]

John Wick Chapter 2
It's more John Wick! Not as good as the first, but solid fun action. The ending was a little disappointing, because I wasn't expecting it to end on such a depressing, to-be-continued note. I'll reserve final judgment until I see Parabellum.

Bad Words
Starring and directed by Jason Bateman, this is the tale of a bitter 40-year-old man who finds a loophole that lets him enter the national spelling bee. It's raunchy humor around a complete asshole who spends most of the movie being mean to children.

I don't know. I found some of this entertaining, but mostly it was mean-spirited. And by the end, the Grinch's small heart grows three sizes and all that, but it didn't feel earned. The heart just wasn't there. I like Bateman a lot, and I really really wanted to enjoy this movie, but I just couldn't.

We're the Millers
Jason Sudekis, Jennifer Aniston, Emma Roberts, and some random dude have to pose as a family to smuggle drugs over the border in an RV. Comedy ensues. And surprisingly, comedy DOES ensue. It's a formula comedy, but it's packed full of dirty jokes and great actors who really know their comic timing. I've avoided this movie for years, because I was certain I wouldn't like it. I was pleasantly surprised. It was very Vacation-esque, and it worked for me. I'm sure I will watch this again at some point. A nice diversion.

[poorpete]

Hamilton
Pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty good

[Mike]

[Tahlvin]

[Phoebe]

I want to see it so much! I saw it live last year, and we had tickets a year in advance so I purposely avoided listening to it or learning anything about it and just had the full experience right there live for the first time. AMAZING. We had certain actors in particular who were overwhelmingly good, it was beyond belief.

[Tahlvin]

Watched it again yesterday with the closed captioning on, which helps with some of the lyrics. Saw an article on fivethirtyeight that Hamilton would last 4-6 hours if it were sung at the same pace as other Broadway musicals, and I can certainly see that.

[poorpete]

I've seen it once all the way through and a few of the scenes on repeat. Just like the soundtrack, I wonder if I'll often jump straight to "Guns and Ships", because that to "Non-Stop" is still my favorite section. For the film, not all the songs I loved in the soundtrack lived up to it seeing it here, but many did. In recent years I've fallen off "You'll Be Back" which was once my favorite, but then kinda lame that the whitest song in the show was my favorite, but seeing Jonathan Groff's performance of it revived my love. Of the songs that weren't my fav, most exceeded my expectations, because either the choreography and/or the acting colored in what was missing.

The female-led songs I've always liked, but was often marred by annoyance that all their songs are about how much they love Hamilton. But it was always a writing issue: Lin writes songs about how all the girls love "him". Watching them performed though, in powerhouse performances, helped wash away much of that annoyance.

I got 1000 more little things, but one more little thing: Daveed Diggs was magnetic in every scene. Loved when Hamilton bragged to his Thomas Jefferson that he knew his Laffeyette before Thomas did. Love those fun little moments.

[Tahlvin]

[poorpete]

If we look at two Tony Awards where multiple Hamilton actors were competing with each other.

Best Leading Actor: Leslie Odom Jr vs. Lin-Manuel Miranda
Best Featured Actor: Daveed Diggs vs. Jonathn Groff vs. Christopher Jackson

Odom and Diggs won. And based on the film, I think those were the right choices. (Renée Elise Goldsberry also won for Angelica)

Another small thing... after showing the kids the OG Star Wars trilogy, we immediately played them "Seagulls - Stop it Now". When they're done with Hamilton, this will probably be in the Seagulls slot: