Movie Diary
I've been pretty cranky about Wes Anderson for most of his career, loving his first three movies but feeling indifferent, annoyed, or grudgingly respectful of most of his work since then, and often baffled that more people didn't think he'd kind of disappeared into his own stifling aesthetic and lost the ability to tell a story or direct actors. But I really liked The French Dispatch, the anthology format and the connecting thread worked really well and kind of freed Anderson from repeating himself even as he still indulged in a lot of his usual obsessions. And there were so many delightful moments from the cast, particularly guys he hadn't worked with before like Jeffrey Wright, Benicio del Toro, Christoph Waltz, and Steve Park. It reminds me a bit of "Documentary Now!" in its mix of affectionate parody and tribute to 20th century cultural history.
Thor: Ragnarok was easily one of my favorite Marvel movies, and I would've been prepared for Taika Waititi's follow-up to be just as good had I not seen it months after months of bad buzz and negative reviews. And perhaps I had just lowered my expectations a lot, but I found it to be pretty good, certainly not on the level of Ragnarok but as someone with little investment in the MCU, it hit the spot for me. Christian Bale and Natalie Portman were great, I laughed at some of the dumbest gags, and the GnR songs worked great as a running theme.
c) Morbius
Another Marvel movie where the terrible reputation around the whole thing lowered my expectations, but this one genuinely is bad, if in a sort of bland, awkward way. I particularly felt bad for Al Madrigal and Tyrese for struggling to make their crappy supporting roles work.
I'm of the opinion that Jurassic Park/World is a perfect example of a franchise where each sequel is worse than the movie before it. But out of a love of dinosaurs or Bryce Dallas Howard, I decided to subject myself to one more barrel-scraping entry, and it was at least fun to see the return of the stars of the original movie.
e) Uncharted
I liked that this movie started right off with a thrilling action scene (albeit with Tom Holland leaping through the air in ways that would've been implausible even if he was playing Spider-Man). But then it just turned out it was a flash-forward to the middle of the story, and then they backed up and showed it again in context. I liked Sophia Ali's character, sort of a Bond girl-style frenemy/antagonist/love interest, but the movie bored me when she wasn't around.
I put on this new Netflix movie starring Queen Latifah and Ludacris not knowing if it was a comedy or a drama or what. Turns out it's kind of a horror thriller where things quickly awry, which is a little more entertaining than what I was anticipating. Not particularly great, though. Sometimes people will suggest that Queen Latifah is the greatest or most accomplished rapper-turned-actor, and listen, I probably watched every episode of "Living Single" and she's a great sitcom-level screen presence. But she's really not much of an actor in anything with any dramatic stakes, she reads every line in the same way and never disappears into the character.
As someone who enjoyed Free Guy and the general Ryan Reynolds brand of nonsense, I checked this out and it was pretty good. Apparently Tom Cruise was attached to the script a decade ago and I could see it working as a bigger, maybe slightly more serious movie, but I think it worked out well as is. Catherine Keener and Mark Ruffalo were good and it put a moderately fresh spin on old time travel tropes.
I eagerly watched the new season of "The Kids In The Hall" when it debuted back in May, but I didn't realize Amazon also released a 2-hour documentary about them around the same time, so I watched that recently. Comedy Punks is sort of a film version of the excellent Paul Myers book about the troupe, One Dumb Guy, but it also feels equally essential in its own right, full of footage of their early Toronto performances, working behind-the-scenes on the shows and the movie, and some really funny, insightful interviews with the guys and some other comedians.
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on Monday, September 19, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
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