Movie Diary
I really dug this, it was weird and original and pointed in its cultural commentary while kind of casually letting a lot of the wardrobe and set design kind of set the otherworldly tone without being too explicit about whether it took place in a slightly different vision of our world or just the near future or something. I felt like it was missing a little something to be a cult classic, but definitely a good debut feature for Alice Waddington, looking forward to whatever she does next.
I was curious to see this because of the buzz, some of it positive and some of it negative, over the twist ending that made it not quite the standard holiday romance the trailers made it out to be. And while the twist wasn't as great as Paul Feig's last movie, A Simple Favor, I found it sweet and poignant. I especially how it kind of flipped the 'this girl is such a disorganized trainwreck!' rom com trope and made it into kind of a beautiful story of self-realization. The presence of George Michael songs throughout the movie really tied it together well, loved the selection of songs and where they were deployed, thought it was a great tribute to his body of work.
Jim Jarmusch has always marched to the beat of his own drum so much that it's a little weird to see him kind of join in on a trend like zombie comedies a decade past its prime, with the most high profile cast he could assemble (including someone who was in Zombieland). But it's really entertaining in how much it conforms more to Jarmusch movie rhythms than zombie movie rhythms, Tilda Swinton and Carol Kane and Tom Waits in particular were a lot of fun. But I didn't love the last 15 minutes when they really went "fuck it" and threw in a couple of ridiculous twists instead of trying to wrap it up coherently.
d) Stuber
It's funny to think that between this and The Lovebirds, Kumal Nanjiani did two movies as 'nervous nerdy guy who's been dropped into a crazy action movie scenario' right before he got incredibly jacked to star in a Marvel movie. Both are solid minor entertainment, though, Dave Bautista has such natural comedic timing and the strip club scene with Steve Howey was hilarious.
e) Jexi
I absolutely hated Spike Jonze's Her so I was up for a movie that seemed vaguely like a mean satire of it. But Jexi was written and directed by the guys responsible for all the Hangover screenplays and it just felt like they threw every obvious 'smartphone AI becomes powerfully sentient' joke at the wall and made everything as broad and extreme as possible until it just wasn't funny anymore. Adam Devine did his best to be the animated foil to everything happening to him, like Jim Carrey in something like Liar Liar, but it just didn't pop. Also, congratulations Adam Devine, you're now old and successful enough that you get a love interest in movies that seems way too young for you!
f) Pachamama
An animated feature on Netflix that takes place in the Andes Mountains, absolutely gorgeous visual style to this.
This entry was posted
on Monday, November 23, 2020 at 10:29 AM.
You can skip to the end and leave a response.
Post a Comment