Movie Diary
a) Sing
Last year I took my son to see Kubo And The Two Strings starring Matthew McConaughey, and a few months later we went to see another animated feature with McCounaughey in it, which means the AniMcConaissance is now in full swing. He didn't even really sound much like himself in Sing, he mostly spoke in this annoying chipper Mickey Mouse cadence. It's a cute movie, lots of fun musical moments, but it also kinda felt like a lot of the funny audition scenes were given away in the countless TV ads for the movie. My kid was happy, though.
I had zero expectations for this since Man of Steel was one of the most unpleasant movies I've ever seen, but it wasn't much better with Bruce Wayne looking like Mitt Romney and Lex Luthor sounding like Martin Prince from "The Simpsons." Wonder Woman was at least introduced well, I regard this as just an overlong trailer for her movie.
I watched this a couple nights after Batman v Superman expecting it would feel refreshing by comparison, and it was, but not by as much as I hoped. There was a whole lot of screentime taken up by the minor heroes introduced in the last Avengers movie that I never really cared about, and occasionally it used the ensemble well but it felt like a step down from the previous movies. The scenes with Spider-Man were funny and entertaining but the effects were so bad, it's like everybody in Hollywood forgot how to make Spidey flying through the air look cool and somewhat realistic.
d) Keanu
We watched this a few days after George Michael's death, not knowing that a huge chunk of the movie was recurring references to George Michael, so that was kind of nice and appropriate. Key and Peele have always been hit and miss for me, and I kinda knew from the ads going in which parts of the movie would be eye rolling, but it held together and was funnier than I expected.
e) Race
It's kind of a cliche at this point that any biopic about a famous black person needs to have a prominent white character shoehorned in as much as possible, and Race felt almost like an absurd parody of that. Jesse Owen's coach Larry Snyder is mentioned once in his 3,000 word Wikipedia entry, and yet Jason Sudeikis as Snyder feels almost more like the protagonist of Race than Stephan James as Jesse Owens. It was a fine movie in most respects, but that kinda stuck in my craw.
One thing I've always loved about most Coen brothers movie is how well they use their casts and give memorable roles to lesser known character actors and only rely on big name A listers for one or two lead roles. So it's kind of bittersweet to see their clout rise to the point that they can or perhaps have to populate a movie like Hail, Caesar! with wall to wall stars. I'm not such a snob that I'm against seeing a Channing Tatum or Scarlett Johansson or Jonah Hill in a Coen movie, but all at once just felt gratuitous. But Alden Ehrenreich was a clear standout of the cast despite being not too well known yet, which bodes well for his turn as Han Solo, I guess.
The first movie was goofy and fun enough that I was up for the sequel, where John Cusack opted out and they doubled down on the wackiness of the first movie. After a while it just felt like they're beating you over the head with every possible time travel gag and trying to be as bawdy as possible, hope they don't make a third.
This little Canadian indie from first time writer/director Jeffrey St. Jules is an ambitious sci-fi comedy musical. And sometimes it swung so wildly from goofy camp to swooning romance to perverse gore that it never entirely hit the mark or knew what it wanted to be, but I enjoyed it, hopefully this guy will get to make more movies.
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on Friday, January 13, 2017 at 12:20 PM.
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