Movie Diary
a) The Batman
I'm a little surprised that Matt Reeves, a guy who started out doing lighter stuff and made action movies with a sense of humor about themselves like Cloverfield and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, would do a Batman movie that makes Christopher Nolan looks like Joel Schumacher. The Batman is so reminiscent of The Crow that I kind of wished they'd gone all the way and made Batman play a guitar solo on a rooftop. I think my favorite part of watching this was when my wife came in the room and I pointed to The Penguin and I informed her that it was Colin Farrell, and she just said "why?" I mean I'm giving this movie a hard time, but it was fine, I thought the action scenes were pretty badass, sort of outclassed the rest of the movie. I will say, though, Paul Dano was one of the parts of the movie I was the most skeptical about but I liked his performance, he brought a little wired energy into his scenes that the rest of the movie was lacking. But the story wasn't much, it's weird to get to the end of a 3-hour action movie feeling like there was going to be one more big setpiece but instead they just shrug and it's over.
I really enjoyed this documentary, I feel like it was a lot more interesting to center a film on one key writer/editor from Rolling Stone's '60s and '70s heyday than, say, a doc about the Jann Wenner or the magazine as a whole. I really enjoyed the book Fong-Torres wrote about Little Feat but I haven't read as much of his classic interviews because it was before my time and the online availability of it is spotty, but I liked that the film got into particular pieces he wrote and what was special about them, and the parts about his family history and his brother's death were surprising and poignant.
c) The Bad Guys
The Bad Guys is a book series that my 12-year-old son is a big fan of, and we decided to make the movie adaptation our first time back in a theater since the pandemic started. His 6-year-old brother was also up for going, so it also ended up being pretty much his first movie theater experience ever. Pretty good movie! The animation had a very interesting, unique aesthetic, very textured, there was kind of an Ocean's Eleven vibe to it all, and the voice cast was excellent, especially Sam Rockwell and Anthony Ramos.
d) The Survivor
I've always thought that Ben Foster is one of the best actors of my generation and wish he'd really risen to real movie star status by now, I think he deserves to be at least at the level of a Ryan Gosling or Jared Leto. I was happy to see that The Survivor reunites Foster with the director of one of his best early roles, Liberty Heights, and Harry Haft is a meaty, compelling role for him, a boxer and an Auschwitz survivor. The story is pretty horrifying, even by Holocaust movie standards, but Foster gives a great performance, as do Billy Magnussen from "Made To Love" and Dar Zuzovsky.
This looked fantastic and had a couple standout scenes but I don't know if it really left much of an impression on me, maybe I just wasn't in the ideal mood but it just kinda came and went.
f) Mixtape
A pretty charming movie, I'm a sucker for any movie where kids start a band. That said, I'm amazed this got 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, though, it wasn't exceptional even as a coming-of-age comedy.
g) Metal Lords
I reviewed this for Consequence when it came out a few weeks ago, once again I'm an easy audience for anything where kids start a band. I just wish it had a better director and made better use of its supporting cast, but really it was a pretty nice little movie.
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on Monday, May 09, 2022 at 11:51 AM.
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