Movie Diary
It's funny how even if you don't go out to the movies often enough to have seen the nominated films, Oscar season has a way of getting you swept up in rooting for or against movies you think you'd like or dislike. I always rooted for Moonlight over La La Land, and having seen them both now I still prefer Moonlight and am glad it won. But I enjoyed La La Land more than I expected to. I am weary of musicals starring people who are not seasoned singers, I am weary of Ryan Gosling in general, and I am weary of 'white savior' narratives, particularly of jazz music of all things. But I love Emma Stone and this is probably her best performance since Easy A, and Damien Chezelle really expanded on the kinetic camera movement of Whiplash in some cool ways. I mean, it was really stupid in some ways and it lost my interest a bit in the second half, but I liked it more than I thought I would.
c) The LEGO Ninjago Movie
I took my son to see this, which he'd been anticipating ever since we saw the trailer before another movie many months ago. He watches Ninjago all the time, he has a Ninjago backpack and a bunch of Ninjago LEGO sets, he's having a Ninjago themed 8th birthday party, and so on. So he really enjoyed it, but I thought it wasn't as funny as the trailer had me primed for, it kinda paled in comparison to The LEGO Batman Movie.
d) Claire In Motion
It seems like every other week now I'm complaining of an actor 'Winklevossing' in a film or series that didn't really need it. And What Happened To Monday ups the ante by having Noomi Rapace play identical septuplets in an overpopulated dystopia where people start having more multiple births and the government only allows one child per family. And honestly, I'm just tired of these kinds of showoffy performances and it feels like Rapace is just doing a watered down version of "Orphan Black" in this movie, it's not that impressive. I also hoped there'd be some more clever twists in the plot but I just kinda got bored.
I took my son to see this, which he'd been anticipating ever since we saw the trailer before another movie many months ago. He watches Ninjago all the time, he has a Ninjago backpack and a bunch of Ninjago LEGO sets, he's having a Ninjago themed 8th birthday party, and so on. So he really enjoyed it, but I thought it wasn't as funny as the trailer had me primed for, it kinda paled in comparison to The LEGO Batman Movie.
d) Claire In Motion
I think I was trying to do too much while I had this movie on and didn't pay it enough attention, but it was a pretty sad story, told slowly and sensitively with a lovely color palette, I can tell you that much.
e) Jackie
The first thing that struck me about this movie was Mica Levi's score, so I was very happy to see she got an Oscar nom for it. Her score for Under The Skin was also very good but perhaps more of a predictably suitable fit, whereas the queasy undercurrent of her string arrangements for Jackie felt more striking in Jackie, perfectly summing up the film's atmosphere of just barely holding together in civil and ceremonial situations after an incredible trauma. I think we all kind of register on a surface level that Jackie Onassis went through an experience that few others could really relate to, but the way it's depicted in this film really makes it felt on a real visceral level, often with a light touch in terms of direction and storytelling.
Every respected comic eventually does a talking animal voice in an animated movie, and some do it better than others, and sometimes it's not even really beneath them or out of step with their usual work. But usually there's a particular moment that gets burned in my brain, like Chris Rock as a zebra saying "crackalackin'." And The Secret Life Of Pets delivers that moment almost immediately, when Louie C.K. declares with unusual enthusiasm, "My name is Max, and I'm the luckiest dog in New York!"
g) The Bronze
I always thought Melissa Rauch could have had a more interesting and varied career if she hadn't gotten onto the "Big Bang Theory" gravy train for 160 episodes and counting. So I was happy to see that she took some of that sitcom money and put it into a little star vehicle that she co-wrote, about the dull and gloomy life of a grown up Olympic gymnast who stays in her hometown and revels in her local hero status. In some ways it feels like a Jody Hill movie, which is generally not my favorite kind of comedy, but at least having a woman in the Danny McBride antihero role is a little novel, and the execution of the story and Rauch's performance were better than I expected, the whole thing came together pretty well.
h) Knock Knock
Going to see Eli Roth's debut feature Cabin Fever with a few college friends was one of my more memorable theater experiences, just us expecting this boilerplate horror flick and getting his weird zany take on the genre made for a really fun, surprising time. But that movie hasn't aged terribly well, and in the decade since then Roth has become a Tarantino sidekick first and a predictable filmmaker second. So I put on Knock Knock with some mild interest and then groaned upon realizing it was a Roth joint. The first third of the movie is basically a Penthouse Forum letter, and then it gets even less realistic once the dark twist comes along. Ana de Armas and Lorenzo Izzo are great as absurdly hot and deranged villains, but there's just so little grounding to the story that it kind of floats away into endless arbitrary torture well before the movie is over.
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on Friday, September 29, 2017 at 11:43 AM.
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