Opus — 2.5/5
The 'Menu' but for music critics, I guess? Feels derivative, 'Midsommar' on down, but also has that A24 weaponized cinematography that makes you want to forgive aspects of it because it knows the language of making a movie just well enough to make you think you're watching something compelling unfold. But nah, it's just a collection of images and ideas—interesting ideas! But just the starts of somethings.
Happy Gilmore 2 — 1/5
In the beginning of the movie, he kills his wife by hitting his golf ball too hard. What a weird, dark way to start a comedy. Every time there's a callback, they show the clip from the original movie. What a strange, awful way to film a movie. The best thing I can say about this movie is how it simply does not matter and I will forget it exists, and that I ever watched it.
The Bear S4 — 3.5/5
Still a container for big highs, but the lows are feeling lower. Carmy has transformed into Sad Sack: The Man, while there's an increasing focus on Syd who is... I think the least compelling person in the show? Her drama is having to live with everyone else's drama; her interesting is being surrounded by everyone else's interesting. Meanwhile, Richie continues to grow as a human, to the point where the series feels like it would be better served to shift its focus more to him. As he says, very beautifully, very profoundly—he is not the large rocks that make up the architecture of existence, he is the sand that connects them. And then lol the last episode tries to center him more and it doesn't quite feel genuine, oops. I guess the point of sand is not to be the center ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Cool, lesson learned. This show, in its fourth season, starts to move away from those 'Ted Lasso' comparisons I was forcing on it in its previous seasons ("what it means to be a manager"), and moves towards "what it means to create a community," and the uncomfortable truth that lies within that: community is created within chaos, but can community survive the chaos that creates it? We become inextricably entwined, diamonds created within the pressure, while desiring to escape the vice grip hold it has over us. It has to be easier, right? Maybe. But also, then again—maybe not.
The Last Showgirl — 1/5
Stunt-casting at its best, and that's all. It's hard to separate whether Pamela Anderson is good in this, or just appropriate for it? Jamie Lee Curtis is really over-acting her way out of the past few years of goodwill? Dave Bautista's not bad? Sure, whatever, I don't know, man, it's just fucking boring. It's trying to be this Kodak light-leak of a movie; nothing to say, it just wants to show off how pretty it is. There was enough of a ground for this movie to have built something substantial: fading industry, the line between artistry and pornography, careers built on youth, the waylaid souls who wish to preserve time and beauty within amber. But it's just a tease of that, an hour and a half trailer for a more interesting movie. By the end, there is no growth, just the same tired delusion. I don't vibe with that shit. Eck. I'd love to have something interesting to say about this, but it did not lay anything at my feet.
Squid Game S3 — 3/5
Aw. I love the 'Squid Game' format. It, like 'Survivor,' is an infinitely repeatable format. New people, new inventive games, and a scooch closer to the truth at the heart of it. Had they just embraced this as a long-form show, I would have continued to enjoy it for years on end, and so much expectation wouldn't have been riding on it to end well. Oh well! Calling this a S3, instead of a back half to S2, does this season a disservice (while also doing that season a service) as, just a couple episodes in, the people we were left with weren't the people we had grown most attached to. The North Korean guard and the boat people were, ultimately, just stories that forked off of the story we cared about, without coming back to meet. And the story we cared about was now filled with people we barely knew. And a baby!!!! Who we have to be attached to because it's a baby, right? ¯\ _(ツ)_/¯ So much of Squid Game — unlike, say, Walking Dead, and its repeating cycles of 'every good thing we do only ends up hurting us' — was this cynical world that had very deep shades of hope in it. But by the end, who grows? What changes? We're just stuck in this cynical world of repeating cycles. The only thing gained is money. I suppose, for Hwang Dong-hyuk, the only way to stop it was to stop it. But, perhaps unfortunately for him, he introduced an idea, and you can't put a cork in that bottle.
This review was chaotic, I'm sorry. I had a lot of thoughts I couldn't thread together. Oh well!
Days of Thunder — 3/5
Wildly inconsistent movie with incoherent character shifts. Feels like five hours of movie stuffed into a 1h47m runtime. But man, does this thing have a quality. A quality, and the best movie names in a 50-year radius. Russ Wheeler. Rowdy Burns. Cole Trickle. These names are not only ridiculous, but they are accurate to this silly sport. They are NASCAR drag names. Which I suppose I'll use as a lead-in to a subject I've been wanting to discuss: Tom Cruise makes male musicals. The feelings are overwrought, but they're packaged up in fashionable, costumed men. The musical set piece, of course, becomes an action set piece where the characters work through their issues by banging into each other. There's a scene where Cole is having PTSD, and the only way to get over it is to speed through some burning cars. It's beautiful and stupid, but he did it: he got over his mental block by driving really fast. Just replace that with 'singing a song about feelings' and you've got your traditional musical but, you know, this isn't as gay as that, but also, guys, it really kind of is. I know Quentin Tarantino made the point that 'Top Gun' is about a man coming to terms with his homosexuality and yes, maybe, but I think these movies are more about the inability of men to do 'gay shit' (be emotional) without explicitly doing 'male shit.' It's okay to slap asses only after they've hit a dinger, dunked a ball, and won the Daytona 500. And the backdrop of all of this is a fucking lit Hans Zimmer soundtrack, so the music's still there, honcho. I think Tom Cruise's output of the last 20 years has mostly forgotten that fucking lit music is the backbone to his male musicals. This movie ain't great but, also, I fucking love this shit. I love the hair, I love the fashion, Robert Duvall puts in an all-timer performance, and then you've got Tony Scott with a grimy fucking male aesthetic. Everything feels like a hot day after a thunderstorm. Like I say, it's got a quality.
The Studio, S1 — 2.5/5
Technically sound, looks nice, sounds nice, but it falls into that modern trope of anxiety-as-a-primary-driver-of-plot. I love art that has an inherent energy to it, but the Anxious Age of movie-making has taken a thing I enjoy and almost ruined it for me. Seth Rogen, who I mostly love, is at best a co-lead who needs someone who offsets his anxious energy, but here he is surrounded by people who have their own insecurities and fears and shakes. I'm not saying the show isn't accurate to the creative industry: The Pitt was a shining star that makes you feel the urgency of your job, how every decision matters, and the pressing need to make that decision quickly. And this show sort of sits beside it to show that no decision matters, it's all just random choices that maybe, hopefully, possibly might make something better. Supreme importance placed upon the nothingness of it all. Which, in theory, I like!! But it's all just a tightly wound ball of disruptive energy, and the show's directorial style is to keep that going for 30m at a time. Every single episode could use a moment to just sit down and be comfortable doing nothing. This show needs a fucking xanax.
The Rehearsal S2 — 4/5
I feel we're right around the corner from everyone deciding that Nathan Fielder is cringe, but man oh man, does he know how to land a plane. Never once do you see where he's going next, odd tangent after odd tangent, but always connecting back to a straight line. He's the raptors in 'Jurassic Park,' having you stare straight ahead while he attacks from the side. And who he is now still ties back to what he was doing on 'Nathan For You'—weaponized idiocy as a problem-solving measure. Sincerity via stupidity. It all just screams of someone who knows exactly what they're doing.
Catastrophe S2 — 3/5
Continues to be a charmer but I think this season's dip has to do with making Sharon seem the worst of the two. Rob's got problems but he's mostly good, come to terms with himself, and is quick to apologize. So that just makes Sharon the stinker. Imbalances aren't wrong, but it just rubs me wrong.
The Monkey — 3.5/5
The first half of this is a miracle of tonality. It has a very casual absurdity to it, played seriously and then just passively stepping over the line before quickly stepping back. Theo James, at first glance, feels intensely wrong for this, but very quickly proves himself to be the right anchor-point for that line-straddling. (Contrast him with the brief cameo of Elijah Woods who is playing into the farce of it all.) The movie, for as long as possible, holds on to this wonderful tone before, understandably, losing control of the wheel in the second half. It drives headlong into the ridiculousness of it all, which is easier, and which is less interesting. But, for about an hour, as it held tightly onto the wheel as it headed down a bumpy road, it reminded me that horror-comedy is one of my favorite genres.
Field of Dreams — 3.5/5
I maintain that American can only be saved if men are allowed movies like this again. It's middle-American twee, closer to anything made in the '30s or '40s than most anything made in the span of my life. Kevin Costner defined an era of acceptable man; conservative at birth, but went to Berkeley, dropped some acid—but came back home. The 'common sense' man who toyed with some new ideas, maybe took on a few, but finally realized what his dad had been telling him all these years. We need more movies that make grown men cry. But noooo, we had to make fun of this shit, we had to call it drivel, we had to make them feel stupid for having emotions and now we have a *loneliness epidemic* and their only outlet is action movies featuring fading stars who've taken on serious expressions in their later years who must come out of their mundane life to become the badasses they always were. A small life as a thing to escape from, rather than escape to. This movie holds up surprisingly well despite never really making all that much sense because there is such an intense sincerity to its proceedings that everyone has bought into and I swear to you, I promise you, the world will be a better place if we can just let men have movies where they can miss their dad.
Love Hurts — 1/5
Ariana DeBose is very possibly my least favorite actress of all time. I make a solemn vow, here and now, to never see another movie that features her. The rest of the movie is chopped ham; the potential for a cute premise that wastes Ke Huy Quan's adorable qualities because it has no fucking clue how to connect characters when they're not hitting each other. The most damning praise I can give it is that the best part of the movie is a cameo from a Property Brother. lol I just watched the trailer again to remind myself of what happened and I still thought 'oh, this is probably a fun movie.' It's not. But, honestly? Ripe for a remake. Make every single character in it be in search for love in some way, and make it less about embracing the old life and trying to save this new, mundane life he's created for himself.
Train to Busan — 2.5/5
Fine at the time—sets up clear characters at the outset, keeps the energy up from there—but in just a few days has mostly faded from memory because it never really develops the characters into anything more than the rough sketch. Teases at interesting character interactions and larger themes but nah, not really.
Late Night With The Devil — 3.5/5
I feel like I tend to save my more pointed criticism to things that were almost something. I get frustrated at things that were almost good, almost great, because they went all this way and they got so close. This movie got so close! I love the premise! Blair Witch-adjacent, the fantasy that this might be real... an illusion which unfortunately the movie keeps breaking. Bad visual effects, from awkward CGI to faux-retro scanlines to poor Photoshops to the danged AI artwork, keep pulling you out of the movie, reminding you constantly that you are, indeed, watching a movie instead of a long-lost now-found tape from a bygone era. And a few more turns of the dial could have made the devil more real? Embrace even further the aesthetic of the time; use the tape from that era, remove the close-up documentary camera in the between-break interludes, replace it with a studio camera that was continuing to roll or an audio mic that never stopped recording. Welp, too late now!
All that to say, despite what I have to say, this is a fun movie that I would gladly rewatch on basic cable in this, the latter half of my life.
