Movie Diary
This was pretty charming, but it felt more like a calling card for writer/director/star Cooper Raiff to go on and do big things than an especially good or particularly memorable movie in and of itself. The aimless recent college grad living with his parents and falling for an older woman who has a kid, I dunno, it all felt like a hundred other indie dramedies, but Raiff and Dakota Johnson had enough chemistry that it was a pleasant little diversion with a couple poignant moments.
b) The Northman
I think like a lot of people I was on board for this pretty much as soon as I saw that this cast and this director were doing a viking movie. And the fact that it was based on the same Scandinavian legend as Hamlet made the story a bit familiar and predictable, but also, well, satisfyingly epic and Shakespearean, they really stuck the landing.
c) Respect
I think part of why reasons music biopics frequently suck is that it feels like so many boxes need to get ticked for them to even be passable, and the stars rarely align for that to happen. But Respect had so much going for it: an EGOT-level actor/singer who looked and sounded the part, a sizable budget, and the approval of the subject, whose death 3 years before the movie's release primed the public to want to see their life story on film. And having a recent subpar competing TV project to compare it to, "Genius: Aretha," really set it up to be an easy win, if not the best music biopic since Ray. But Respect is merely good, with a handful of really electric scenes (like Aretha working out the "Respect" harmonies with her sisters), too little of Aretha's real, larger-than-life personality, and some of the same cheesy, muddled ideas about how to dramatize her life than "Genius" had.
d) Old
I like M. Night Shyamalan more than the average crank, and I will always root for him as this sort of unusual talent who hits it out of the park at times and is his own worst enemy at other times. But I kinda hated Split and Glass and was hoping for the best with him kind of returning to the kind of project that seems perfect for him on paper, even if it was adapted from a novel and he historically does best with his own ideas. Old is hard to watch, but some of that is due to some effective horror filmmaking where you feel the anxiety and fear of the characters, and some of that is due to Shyamalan's erratic choices. The premise is a little more interesting than the oft-mocked "beach that makes you old" summary and the way it unfolds produces a few good memorable moments. And I will say that I think a lot of movies fall apart when different actors have to portray a character at different ages, but they totally nailed it in Old and made it feel fairly seamless, which was a really accomplishment. All in all, it's kind of a mess that recalls The Happening more than any of his other movies, but it definitely had some pieces of a good movie in there, another more conventional horror director probably could've done something a lot better with the material.
I really liked A Quiet Place, and I particularly loved the ending, which kind of went out on a high note and left a little of the climactic action to the imagination. Making a sequel that picks right back up there maybe undermines that moment a little bit, but I still enjoy being in this world with these characters, even if it's frequently tense and terrifying. This did all the things a good sequel should do: a gripping flashback scene, letting the supporting players from the first movie (Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe) take a little more of the spotlight, add a good new character (Cillian Murphy, clearly a pro at surviving apocalypses after 28 Days Later), let you see the monsters in broad daylight a little more, etc. That said, when the movie ends, they've just survived a few immediate predicaments but there's no salvation or end in sight, so it just feels like they're setting up more sequels with no real arc and threatening to become a "Walking Dead" sort of endless horror survival franchise.
Obviously Daniel Craig is the biggest factor in how good the Craig-era Bond movies were. ut I think they also did a fantastic job with casting the other parts, especially the villains. And Rami Malek was up there with Mads Mikkelsen and Javier Bardem as one of the best recent Bond villains, even if it kind of felt like he got less screentime than them to really make an impression. There were some great action sequences this one, and it felt like the fun little Ana de Armas sequence was probably Phoebe Waller-Bridge's primary contribution to the screenplay, wouldn't have minded that being a bigger piece of the movie.
It's hard to make a feature spun off from a series feel like a real theatrical movie while the show is still airing, especially an animated feature. And "Bob's Burgers" isn't as iconic as "The Simpsons" to really still feel like as much of a spectacle, but then they're still closer to their peak after 12 seasons than "The Simpsons" was after 18 seasons when The Simpsons Movie came out. So it just feels like a pretty good extended 2-part episode with some fancier shading, but it was still pretty funny.
When left his own devices, my 7-year-old will usually just watch "Spongebob" or, even more annoyingly, Minecraft YouTubers, so I usually try to get him to check out new animated films when they come out just to try something else. And I put this new Netflix feature on recently but honestly neither of us wound up being too into it, it wasn't bad but a little boring.
i) Sing 2
My kids both liked the first Sing, but this was another one I kind of put on one day that didn't garner much interest. The additions of Bono, Halsey and Pharrell to the voice cast were fun, these aren't great movies but they're pretty cute and some of the musical performances are pretty good.
I had heard the name Clarence Avant before watching The Black Godfather, but I really didn't appreciate the scope of his career in the music industry until I saw the documentary. It seems like he was just everywhere for decades, managing everyone from Sarah Vaughn to Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis and signing Bill Withers. Lots of great interviews and stories, although it feels like they may have sanitized his image a little bit and left out anything that might've been salacious or unflattering, especially given that the movie was released by Netflix, and Avant's daughter is married to Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos.
This entry was posted
on Friday, July 22, 2022 at 7:50 AM.
You can skip to the end and leave a response.
Post a Comment