Movie Diary
a) The Dirt
After the blockbuster success of Motley Crue's memoir, I kind of assumed the eventual film adaptation would be a big deal. But a few months after Bohemian Rhapsody broke every music biopic record, The Dirt kind of shuffled out quietly on Netflix, directed by a guy whose main qualifications for the job were every Jackass movie. The Dirt was a very entertaining book, but unsurprisingly seeing it on film is a little cartoony, and leaves out a lot of the minutiae that I thought held the book together, like Mick Mars rambling about dinosaurs and aliens or Nikki Sixx obsessing over The Sweet. What disappointed me that I didn't expect was that they'd blow something as easy as transitioning from Nikki's overdose to the Dr. Feelgood sessions without working in the writing of "Kickstart My Heart" -- like, arguably their best song is directly inspired by one of the major scenes, and you just kind of gloss over that!? Other than Daniel Webber not really seeming like Vince Neil at all, I thought it was pretty well cast, Tony Cavalero had a lot of fun with the Ozzy Osbourne scene. And it was kind of refreshing to see a rock biopic where the story centers on the rhythm section and the singer and guitarist kind of come off like sidekicks.
b) Wonder Park
I usually doze off for at least a couple minutes when I take my son to a movie, and dozed off more than usual in this one, but I think that was just me, the movie was fine. The porcupine voiced by John Oliver was definitely my favorite part.
c) Superfly
I think if I didn't watch "Grown-ish," I would've been able to buy Trevor Jackson as the star of Superfly more, but I just felt like I was watching his "Grown-ish" character in ridiculous pimp regalia. The whole thing just kind of strained under the weight of trying to modernize something that epitomized the '70s, though. And it was really funny that the villains in the movie were a gang called the Snow Patrol, like it always sounded like the drug dealers were talking about fucking up the Scottish band.
This was very good, although I may have expected to like it more than I did. Emily Blunt was, as always, fantastic, and it's kind of heartwarming that her husband wrote this powerhouse role for her where she got to kind of use her entire expressive range with barely any dialogue. Things about the premise and the monsters bugged me, though, I left with so many questions, when usually when movies don't over-explain things I just try to ride along. The prospect of a possible sequel seems promising, though, just to see what else they could do with the concept.
e) Uncle Drew
This is such an unapologetically ridiculous movie, I kind of have to respect the shameless goofiness putting bad gray wigs and beards on relatively young athletes and having them shoot hoops and dance. The parts where Lil Rel and Nick Kroll as brought in as the seasoned performers to hold everything together as a traditional comedy almost feel kind of unnecessary and pasted on, almost would have rather they didn't make those kind of concessions to it being a real movie.
It amuses me that the Michael Bay Transformers movies are really the first non-animated movies that my kids have taken to watching from start to finish. This one was really ridiculous on a level that even the previous ones weren't, putting the Transformers in the same canon as King Arthur and Merlin, it was just too much. Also one of the Transformers had Steve Buscemi's voice, it was all just way out of line.
I never heard of this movie when it came out in 2015, apparently it was a total box office flop, but it was on HBO the other night when I was just looking for something to watch. But it was pretty decent, a slow, contemplative post-apocalyptic drama that was, bizarrely, directed by the co-creator of Homestar Runner. Still, I thought at some point the movie started to fall short of its potential as it ultimately became just a movie where 3 survivors who find each other are all played by hot movie stars (Margot Robbie, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Chris Pine) who end up in a kind of stupid predictable love triangle.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, March 27, 2019 at 12:12 AM.
You can skip to the end and leave a response.
Post a Comment