My 14-year-old son has been catching up on a lot of Marvel movies lately, including the first two Deadpool movies, so he asked to go to this. I guess this is the first R-rated movie I've taken him to, although I've let him watch plenty at home (I went to see Pulp Fiction at 12, I'm pretty nonchalant about this stuff as a person and as a parent). Leaving the theater, we agreed that it wasn't the best Deadpool movie, which is probably the first one, but I had a good time, and I think it had easily some of the best action sequences of the series. I always enjoy a good Hugh Jackman performance, Wolverine or otherwise, and here he got to play the character as well as he always has and hit a lot of earnest notes while still making it work in a broad comedic context, mostly as a straight man. I know a lot of people hate MCU humor and especially Deadpool humor at this point, but I dunno, you could do a lot worse for a lead in a comedy than Ryan Reynolds if you ask me. 

I don't much care for Casey Affleck as an actor or a person, so I was a little annoyed to see him share top billing in a movie with Matt Damon that would seem like a much more natural layup if it was Ben Affleck instead of his little brother. But Casey Affleck co-wrote The Instigators with "City on a Hill" creator Chuck MacLean, so fair enough, it's his movie, and it's actually really good. Damon and Affleck play two guys whose lives are in shambles and get hired to pull off a heist that goes very wrong almost immediately, like in the first 15 minutes of the movie, and for the rest of the movie they're in constant danger of getting caught or killed, and it's just full of really entertaining twists and great little character actor turns (Michael Stuhlbarg, Ving Rhames, Toby Jones, Andre De Shields, etc.). There's one annoying moment where they steal an iconic dialogue exchange from "The Wire" (and it's delivered by Jack Harlow), but that's pretty early on and it's pretty gold from there. 

I kind of forgot how much I enjoyed 2019's Ready Or Not until recently when I realized its directors, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, have been busy with a bunch of other projects, including the last two Scream movies (I've never had time for that franchise so I may never see them, but who knows, maybe someday). Abigail, like The Instigators, is about desperate criminals who get stuck in an impossible situation, but this one involves a 12-year-old ballerina who turns out to be a vampire. One of my favorite things about watching a vampire movie or show is figuring out which canonical vampire weaknesses apply and which one don't (garlic? stakes? sunlight?) and Abigail has a bit of fun with that. I think my wife was a little underwhelmed by the cast and some of the twists but I thought it held together very well, was surprised to see Angus Cloud but this is probably the best project in his sadly brief career. Also, I could swear that Dan Stevens was doing a William Friedkin impression for the entire movie, which I loved. 

Speaking of weird acting performances that felt like impressions, The Bikeriders featured perhaps the most annoying Tom Hardy voice since The Dark Knight Rises. It almost sounded like he was doing Michael Shannon, when the real Michael Shannon was right there in a prominent supporting role. Everyone besides Hardy was excellent, though, I especially loved Jodie Comer. It was a great idea to kind of tell the story, populated almost entirely by male characters, through her eyes, and it was the first time I've seen her in something besides "Killing Eve" and went woah, she's not just great in that role, she's got a whole other arsenal of voices and characterizations at the ready.  

I'm a little irritated that Netflix listed They Shot the Piano Player as a documentary, it kind of gave me a false impression of the movie the entire time I was watching it. I thought the filmmakers had merely animated the true story of journalist Jeff Harris investigating the 1976 disappearance of a bossa nova pianist, and had Jeff Goldblum play Harris (several famous Brazilian musicians, including Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso, appear as themselves). But Harris is a fully fictitious character, invented as a narrative device to tell the story of Tenorio Jr., who was rounded up and murdered by Argentinean government forces while on tour. And it's not even contrived very well, Harris/Goldblum is just about to fly to Brazil to write a book about bossa nova, listens to some records and gets intrigued by this pianist who doesn't have a lot of other recordings, and goes down this rabbit hole of learning he disappeared and eventually finding out why. It's an interesting story and the movie is fairly charming, but I dislike the way an animated docudrama was labeled a documentary. 

Fancy Dance is a pretty good Lily Gladstone vehicle that almost completely flew under the radar, despite being released on Apple TV+ like the movie that made her an Oscar-nominated star, Killers of the Flower Moon. I definitely recommend it to anyone that's clamoring for more excellent Gladstone performances, although it's a tight 90-minute missing person story with a few poignant or thrilling moments, nothing earth-shaking. 

A better movie than Ghostbusters: Afterlife by at least a thin margin, both because it does the nostalgic Ghostbusters fan service stuff a little better, and because it feels a little more aware of the fact that a comedy starring Paul Rudd and Carrie Coon has effortless charm and charisma to burn. But Jason Reitman made two movies early in his career that were nominated for a total of ten Oscars, so I have to wonder if he's ever going to make something with ambition again or just continue paying tribute to his father and his father's peers (his next movie is about the beginning of "Saturday Night Live"). 

There have already been two miniseries about Purdue Pharma's role in the opioid crisis, and Pain Hustlers hits a lot of the same notes in in the story of another company, Insys Therapeutics, that played its own role in the opioid crisis. And a slick Netflix movie with big recognizable stars and familiar subject matter that's already been dramatized a lot is the exact kind of thing that gets pans and sinks without a trace after eating up a $50 million budget. Maybe I am still just an irredeemable Emily Blunt fan, though, I thought it was a decent movie that she was very good in, although I'm definitely starting to miss when all the movies she's in were more than decent. 

| Next »

| Next »

| Next »

| Next »

| Next »

| Next »

| Next »

| Next »

| Next »