Movie Diary
a) Game Night
After a decade of various young actors have been taken under Judd Apatow's wing to write, produce and/or direct films of their own, John Francis Daley (Sam Weir from "Freaks & Geeks") seems to have slowly worked his way up to being a mainstream comedy filmmaker, along with frequent colllaborator Jonathan Goldstein, without really ever being part of the Apatow farm team system. I was never a big fan of the Horrible Bosses movies that were there breakthrough as screenwriters and that Vacation reboot was not a great step forward as a directors, but Game Night really hits the mark, one of the best big mainstream comedies in recent memory. It's crazy how little comedy Rachel McAdams has done in the last decade considering her breakthough in Mean Girls, hopefully this will make comedy a little more part of her niche.
b) Smallfoot
One of the better movies I've taken my son to see in recent memory, although as with most of them I ended up napping for some of the middle of the movie (the chairs in our local theater are really comfortable). Really enjoyed the cast and the basic concept was pretty clever, all the stuff about the Yetis having their own belief system and not wanting to divert from it ended up being kind of interesting and well done for a kids' movie.
I never thought I'd take my 9-year-old son to an Eli Roth movie, but I always thought his best stuff was the more overtly comedic Cabin Fever, so I'm cool with him making a silly family friendly Jack Black movie. Cate Blanchett seemed to have a lot of fun with her role, it was cool to see her in something like this.
Groundhog Day may be a movie that's aged well in terms of replay value, but the idea that you kind of root for the guy stuck in a time loop to basically use his situation to manipulate a woman into falling in love with him gets more troubling with each passing year. And When We First Met, in which a guy discovers a way to go back in time to the night he met his best friend and tries to use it to get out of the friendzone, feels almost like an entire movie built around that troubling conceit. Fortunately, it (spoiler alert) ends up mostly subverting that premise and criticizing it, albeit with the very Hollywood flourish of the average-looking dude giving up on chasing one gorgeous friend and ending up with another friend he'd ignored this whole time who's literally played by a former Miss Teen USA.
As someone who goes to the movie theater without their kid maybe 3 times a year, I always follow the Oscar race vicariously, kind of rooting for or against movies based on my opinions of the cast and crew's previous work or how convincing I find the positive or negative reviews and then finally seeing the movies 8-16 months later. So I was vaguely anti-Three Billboards all this time just on the principle that I thought Martin McDonagh's first 2 features were fairly empty, derivative dark comedies and I didn't think he had the depth to handle this movie's subject matter, even if I was happy that 3 actors I love got career boosts and Oscar wins or noms off of it. And for the first half of Three Billboards, I found myself enjoying it and maybe thinking I'd too hastily decided to root against it, but the end really just brought home how aggressively vacant the whole thing was.
I don't understand the whole thing where Paul Thomas Anderson is more revered than ever. Seems like a weird remnant of the '90s, like if people still took Beck super seriously or something. This one at least felt a little more straightforward and simple in its charms, and a little interesting and ambiguous in what it's saying about relationships and artists with demanding temperaments. I don't really understand the affectionate cult around the movie, though.
g) Next Gen
A pretty fun Netflix animated film, felt like a slightly lower quality Big Hero 6 but still pretty charming in its own right. I loved the opening montage where you see the protagonist grow from a sweet innocent child to a pissed off jaded teen, set to a Bikini Kill song, it was like a new twist on the Up montage.
h) Proud Mary
Taraji P. Henson headlining a throwback action movie where she plays the kind of role Pam Grier would've played back in the day seems like such a no-brainer awesome popcorn movie on paper. But in reality, this just doesn't quite pop as a fun movie or as a compelling serious movie.
I just kind of put this on in the background as a pleasant period piece with a bunch of actors I like (and also Johnny Depp), didn't really pay much attention to it, seemed alright.
I came home from work late one night and my wife was watching this, so I only saw like the second half, but the ending was really intense and kinda stuck with me.
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