Movie Diary
This isn't a fiasco like Bright or anything but this feels like another example of Netflix trying to kickstart an ambitious sci-fi franchise and failing. The idea of a street drug that gives people superpowers for 5 minutes is a little goofy, especially because it's always exactly 5 minutes and a lot of the movie revolves around people wearing stopwatches to time it and the powers stopping on a dime at a moment that's crucial to the plot. But, everybody has different powers and you never know what they'll have, so it's a little fun like an X-Men movie in that respect.
I had a feeling that it would be better to go into this movie cold. And I'm glad I managed to read or overhear very little about the plot in the last 2 years before I finally got around to watching it, because that 3rd act twist definitely lands better because I didn't see it coming. I like that it didn't take itself too seriously even as the points that the increasingly absurd and audacious satire was making were pretty dark, I don't know if it held together 100% but I really enjoyed it.
I really rolled my eyes at Ford v Ferrari's run as an Oscar movie. But it turned out to be pretty enjoyable, it's funny to realize just how rarely I've actually heard Christian Bale speak in a British accent in a movie. In these kinds of historical movies about skilled men doing important things, wives and girlfriends tend to be kind of perfunctory female leads, but Bale's scenes with Caitriona Balfe were really the best part of the movie, especially the scene in the car. She brought a really visceral anger to that role, which, given how the story ends, is pretty justified.
This horror movie is set at a metal concert in 1988 and is set against the backdrop of Christian moral panic about heavy metal suicides and Satanic death cults. But there's a pretty great little twist a half hour in that kind of flips around the premise from what it seems to be. It plays out a little predictably from there, but there's some good bloody action and it ends up being character-driven and engaging.
I put this on in the background while I was working on music, which is probably about as much attention as it warrants, although it felt like they got a little closer to a functional lighthearted action comedy than I expected given that Kristen "Party All the Time" Stewart is the only marquee name in the trio. Naomi Scott is really cute in this movie and showed some decent comedy chops
This animated movie came out in China 2 years ago and quietly came out here on Netflix after a U.S. theatrical release fell through. I don't really like the animation style of the movie, but the voice cast (Danny DeVito, Ian McKellan, Patrick Warburton, Emily Blunt, Wallace Shawn, among others) keeps it pretty entertaining.
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on Wednesday, August 19, 2020 at 3:11 PM.
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