Movie Diary
As poorly as the most recent Halloween trilogy ended, I'm not feeling very charitable towards 'clever'
modern revivals of old horror franchises, and it feels kind of like willfully missing the point to make Evil Dead movies without Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell, or anything like the wild-eyed low-budget moxy with which they made the original movies. That being said, the "Ash vs. Evil Dead" series kept that spirit alive pretty well, and I liked both 2013's Evil Dead and this year's Evil Dead Rise (the former a bit more than the latter). Rise really puts you through the wringer, one of the bloodiest, nastiest, most unrelenting mainstream horror movies in recent memory, with a plot that puts a little psychological horror into the mix as well with children watching helplessly as their mother becomes a murderous demon. It's pretty impressive stuff from the young Irish director Lee Cronin, but it mostly left me wanting to see his other feature and looking forward to his future (hopefully non-franchise work). Also, it surprised me to realize that though the movie takes place in America with American characters, it was filmed in New Zealand with mostly Australian and NZ actors during that COVID moment when it was much easier to film in NZ than in America. And it works kind of to the movie's benefit because it's a great cast full of people I've never seen before.
I like a good dumb espionage action movie, and with Mission: Impossible movies getting bigger and more bombastic all the time, I don't mind these breezy, forgettable Netflix action movies. In Heart of Stone, Gal Gadot plays an agent whose real name has 'Stone' in it and whose code name has 'Heart' in it, so that's the level of fluff you're dealing with. There's some pretty well choreographed action scenes in this, I enjoyed it. But it's definitely a little beneath Tom Harper, who directed the great understated country music drama Wild Rose just a few years ago.
I'm a poor sport about Wes Anderson, loved his first 3 movies but generally look down upon people who've maybe never seen (or just never appreciated) Bottle Rocket and eagerly await all his new movies and don't find themselves groaning at his shit. The French Dispatch was my favorite thing he's done in a long time, though, and I wanted to give Asteroid City a shot at winning me over as well, especially with the full circle feeling of that strange, charismatic teenager from Rushmore playing a graying, emotionally distant father 25 years later. I thought it was a pretty mixed bag, though, I really liked parts of it (some great moments from Matthew Dillon and Jeffrey Wright), but the play-within-a-movie stuff didn't work for me, great as the Margot Robbie scene was, I think I would've liked a more straightforward movie without all that stuff, and the ending felt like an abrupt shrug. The stop-motion animation sequences, which apparently took 2 years to complete, looked like absolute dogshit, felt shockingly out-of-place given how thoroughly committed Anderson is to his visual aesthetic.
Coming out of hiding two years after the surreal Veiled Prophet Ball controversy, Ellie Kemper stars in this charming, formulaic rom com about a recently divorced woman who goes on an Appalachian hiking trip, and is dismayed to find that her brother's ruggedly handsome best friend is in her hiking group. It all goes pretty predictably, but there was one little twist or two that I found poignant, the whole thing was enjoyable. I especially liked Ben Cook as the perpetually annoyed guide.
Most MCU trilogies have a consensus weak link (most trilogies in general, really), but it feels like most people agree that Guardians stuck the landing with three movies of roughly equal quality, although I'll definitely say Vol. 3 was probably my least favorite and I personally rate Iron Man as the best MCU trilogy. Apparently Starlord got a Zune with modern music in the Christmas special, but so much of the appeal of the first 2 movies was the retro soundtrack, having Starlord suddenly listening to Flaming Lips really made me roll my eyes. There's a bit less of Bradley Cooper doing that dumb voice, though, so that's nice.
I was trying to find something on Paramount+'s infuriatingly unhelpful menu screen the other night, and eventually gave up and just clicked on the first classic movie I hadn't seen. Jimmy Stewart is definitely one of my favorite actors of his era and it's very interesting to see him star opposite John Wayne, in some ways the contrasts between them also showed some parallels in how they had these familiar sets of mannerisms that could be tailored in subtle ways to each role. Some really beautiful framing and cinematography, definitely need to watch more John Ford movies.
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on Monday, August 21, 2023 at 8:00 AM.
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