Movie Diary
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a) Anora
I saw and liked Sean Baker's earlier movies Tangerine and The Florida Project at the time and thought Mikey Madison had real star potential on "Better Things," so I was kinda vaguely pro-Anora during awards season to the extent that I get invested in these things at all. Winning a few Oscars definitely raised my expectations, though, and I dunno, I found it a little underwhelming, it was simplistic and Hollywood in some ways but almost not Hollywood enough in other ways. I thought Madison's accent work was dreadful and hackneyed, but it was a good performance otherwise (if anything she deserved an Emmy for season 5 of "Better Things" more if you ask me). Most of the other performances were nothing special, including the guy who also got an Oscar nod.
b) Blitz
After CODA's Best Picture win and Killers of the Flower Moon's 10 nominations, Apple TV+ was seemingly becoming a consistent Oscars contender, until they landed zero nominations this year for the only movie that had a little awards season buzz, Blitz. Steve McQueen's a remarkable filmmaker and it was great to finally get his first proper feature since one of my personal favorites, Widows. I thought it was a really strong concept, doing a war movie fully from the perspective of civilians in a city under siege, he captured that in such a visceral way.
There's a lot of schadenfreude anytime people who broke box office records with their Marvel movies make an underwhelming streaming movie, and there was even more than usual for The Electric State, which at a $320 million budget is one of the most expensive movies ever made. As usual, I wish the Russo brothers brought someone from the great sitcoms they've worked on to punch up the script, but I thought it was a decent middle tier Netflix popcorn movie, with some fun supporting performances from Ke Huy Quan, Stanley Tucci, and Jason Alexander.
Speaking of Marvel schadenfreude, it seemed like everybody seemed to take some pleasure in this bombing. Every time I see Aaron Taylor-Johnson in something I'm less convinced that he has any screen presence whatsoever, let alone leading man potential, so I only hope this movie's failure helped take him out of the running to play 007. Christopher Abbott and Ariana DeBose, however, are definitely too good for this movie, I was actually a little bummed out to see them in it. Incidentally, a few months ago, I spent a day in M&T Bank Stadium working on a really stupid cross-promotional Baltimore Ravens/Kraven The Hunter TV spot starring now-disgraced Ravens kicker Justin Tucker (I was pretty much there as a backup in case feeding lines to people before they went on camera wasn't working and they needed a teleprompter and they never did, so I didn't really do any work that day, I just got some hours on my timesheet for showing up and eating at the craft services table set up in John Harbaugh's office).
I remember liking Buster Poindexter's "Hot Hot Hot" as a kid and thinking this guy was so hilarious and magnetic in Scrooged and even enjoying the widely panned Car 54, Where Are You? movie on cable, well before I ever listened to the New York Dolls or realized it was all the same guy. So I really enjoyed this 2023 documentary co-directed by Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi, kind of David Johansen's last big project before his death in February, which centers on a cabaret show where he essentially performs the music of David Johansen in character as Buster Poindexter. It's one of those ideal music docs that would lay out his whole career well for anyone who's not familiar with him, but also is a lot of fun for fans as well. I particularly like the edits where you'd cut between the same song being performed in different decades, or even the same anecdote being told in different interviews.
A pretty strong directorial debut from cinematographer Molly Manning Walker, very much a feelbad kind of coming-of-age movie, but the subject matter is handled sensitively and realistically. One of those movies where you don't even feel like you're watching actors and then realize that the actors are better than you realized.
When I reviewed seasoned stuntman J.J. Perry's directorial debut, Netflix's Day Shift, I was impressed and suggested he deserves to book some bigger movies. So I'm glad that his next movie, The Killer's Game, got a theatrical release and was even better, even if it wasn't much of a hit. Dave Bautista has said that he'd like to do a romcom, and this feels like a good bridge in that direction, he has good chemistry with Sofia Boutella.
I feel like both meta comedies where celebrities play over-the-top version of themselves, and the general cottage industry of making fun of Nicolas Cage's mannerisms and eccentricities, probably peaked well before this movie was made. That being said, it managed to work pretty well, like many Nic Cage movies, partly off the sheer commitment of his performance.
i) Rogue Agent
I'll watch anything with Gemma Arterton in it, but this kind of surpassed my expectations, interesting story. This movie does, however, end with one of the worst "easy listening cover of an old hit song" needle drops in cinematic history.
j) Come Play
I had never heard of this before I caught it on SyFy the other day, but apparently it was actually in theaters in 2020 and was #1 at the box office for one weekend. I don't think the premise and the CGI totally worked for me, but I liked seeing Gillian Jacobs in a horror movie, she could definitely do more horror.
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on Thursday, March 27, 2025 at 11:40 AM.
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