Movie Diary
I was a pretty big fan of the original Cloverfield, and I was disappointed when initial plans to do a proper sequel explicitly tied into that movie's plot never came to fruition. So I was pleasantly surprised when 10 Cloverfield Lane came out, which was probably an even better movie, even if it was pretty much a completely unrelated project that was kind of repurposed as part of the 'franchise' fairly late in development. Continuing in that lane of kind of making the franchise a loosely connected anthology of orphaned mid-budget sci-fi films is sort of a neat idea, but it's also a gamble. And in the case of The Cloverfield Paradox, which was titled God's Particle during production and which the screenwriter learned would be a 'Cloverfield' during shooting and began rewriting, that gamble didn't really pay off. It reminded me heavily of the space station mishap movie Life that I saw a couple months ago, which I think helped me enjoy it more than most people did -- at least The Cloverfield Paradox has a few really memorably bizarre FX setpieces, Life was just kind of violent and dumb. But the reaction to this movie, which was released immediately after being advertised during the Super Bowl on Sunday, has been overwhelmingly negative, and I'm not gonna defend it too vehemently, it was at best a pretty flawed movie.
b) Mudbound
It speaks to how good Mudbound is that it got multiple Oscar nominations even though it was largely seen on Netflix and not in theaters. I was most curious to see Mary J. Blige's nominated performance, but really I think what's impressive is just how restrained and almost unrecognizable she is, for someone who puts so much catharsis into her music, she really got a chance to let the emotions mostly stay just under the surface here as an actress. The end is pretty gut-wrenching. People like to say there are too many movies about slavery, which is a loaded but debatable topic, but I think there are probably not enough movies like this that take a hard look at the Jim Crow era.
c) Rough Night
Rough Night is a movie burdened by comparisons, particularly as a female version of Very Bad Things, and as a mostly white counterpart to the far more successful Girls Trip released a few months later. I haven't seen Girls Trip yet to compare, but Very Bad Things is one of the shittiest movies I've ever seen in a theater, so that's a pretty unflattering parallel. Rough Night is moderately better than that comparison suggests, but it's also a bit like the series "Search Party" in that it's at its best before the accidental murder plot point where everything takes a dark turn and it doesn't quite recover its sense of frothy absurdity. Kate McKinnon, Jillian Bell and Ilana Glazer are all incapable of not being at least a little entertaining, but this still felt well beneath their usual scene-stealing work.
d) Snatched
Another ill-fated comedy that mainly seems to exist to put women in the kind of raunchy absurd comedies that men usually star in but fails to really hit the mark. A bit better than Rough Night, Amy Schumer as Goldie Hawn's daughter is some pretty good casting, but really feels like the wrong vehicle for Schumer at a time when she needed to follow-up on Trainwreck with something stronger than it and really cement her spot in movies.
e) Wilson
Woody Harrelson has had a great, busy last decade or so of playing cranky yet lovable mentors in seemingly every movie. But as he settles into a groove as America's favorite supporting actor, he doesn't get as many leading roles, and so I was curious to see Wilson, Craig Johnson's follow-up to The Skeleton Twins written by Daniel Clowes. Harrelson and Laura Dern and Judy Greer are typically great in Wilson, but I dunno, it felt like just another rambling story where a veteran actor plays a misanthropic guy who constantly says blunt, rude things to people.
f) The Layover
William H. Macy has started directing films in the last few years, and I kind of assumed that even given his work in "Shameless" he'd probably direct the kind of character-driven indie films he's known for and not, well, a sex comedy starring two women, Kate Upton and Alexandra Daddario, who are primarily known for having large breasts. It's kind of an anti-Bechdel Test movie where the babes just spent the whole movie competing for a guy, so even when they ultimately inevitably choose to put their friendship first, it all feels pretty pandering and lowbrow.
My son absolutely loves the Captain Underpants books, so the movie was a real anticipated event for him. But that was my wife's turn to take him to the movies, so I didn't actually see it until it hit Netflix more recently, and I found it pretty enjoyable, I dug the way they transferred the amateurish drawing style of the books to slick computer animation in a way that felt right.
h) Gold
Gold is about a lot of wealthy investors getting ripped off in a scheme to mine gold in Indonesia, and it kind of feels like the movie itself mirrored that. Lots of big names were attached to the project at various points, including directors Michael Mann and Spike Lee and star Christian Bale, before it ultimately wound up falling to Syriana director Stephen Maghan and star Matthew McConaughey (who does pretty much the same kind of bald schlubby sucker that Bale ended up playing in American Hustle instead). It's not a bad movie, but you can kind of sense that the people behind the film got strung along hoping for a bigger payoff just like the characters.
i) Newness
This is a movie about a couple who meet and go through a rough patch and then start trying to have an open relationship with threesomes and voyeuristic titillation to spice up their relationship, and it all feels very po-faced meditation on dating apps and promiscuity. It might've had the profundity it was going for with better actors or a little more color in the dialogue, but it just felt like all these pretty people were scowling through the whole movie.
As I've said in this space before, my house is a place where Ben Foster is held in high regard, and he got to have a ball playing an unhinged bank robber in this Best Picture nom, he really carried the movie even if Jeff Bridges was the one who got a nomination.
I think I came home after my wife had started watching this movie so I missed the beginning, but it was a pretty good creepy ominous horror flick, some good jumpy moments.
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on Wednesday, February 07, 2018 at 11:24 AM.
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