Movie Diary
a) The Rip
This is pretty cleverly plotted, a good use of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck's natural chemistry, and Sasha Calle is really a star, I hope she gets more good roles in non-superhero movies. Smokin' Aces director Joe Carnahan's whole visual style is really dated and suffocatingly gloomy, though, I hate this movie's color palette so much. As far as recent crime movies starring Ocean's Eleven guys, I thought The Instigators and Wolfs were a lot more enjoyable.
b) F1
On paper, I think it's good for there to be the occasional Best Picture nominee that's a just a big loud crowd-pleasing movie with some charismatic stars and impressive setpieces with cool cars or planes (at least in the ten Best Picture noms era). In practice, though...F1 probably has a little more merit than Top Gun: Maverick as a contender, I rolled my eyes at it a lot less and was actually engaged in the plot, Damson Idris and Kerry Condon and Javier Bardem did a lot to make it feel like a little more than an empty Brad Pitt-and-fast cars spectacle. But a fast car movie should probably be better than this to get that kind of awards recognition.
c) Materialists
I can't think of many movies that have had worse word-of-mouth than Materialists in recent memory, and on one level I get it. There are probably a lot of people who went into the story of a love triangle with three glamorous movie stars hoping for a romcom, and probably some cinephiles who enjoyed Past Lives and found this almost overly academic and conceptual as an essay on contemporary dating and how people weigh income and height and all these superficial concerns against their actual emotions. I liked it, though, I thought it was pretty thoughtful and well done, aside from the supporting role from terrible person/terrible actress/podcaster Dasha Nekrasova. A lot of the criticisms I saw were from the kind of people that this movie is about who didn't seem to appreciate what it was saying about them. Definitely could be Chris Evans's best performance, if we're looking at MCU people who haven't always thrived in non-Marvel movies.
The idea of Darren Aronofsky making a crime caper comedy is very intriguing, and it's probably for the best that he didn't write the screenplay for Caught Stealing. I wouldn't say there's a total lack of humor or levity in his other movies -- there's some playful, darkly funny cruelty in what he puts his protagonists through in stuff like Black Swan or Pi. But a lighter tone doesn't come naturally to him, and at a point it feels like Caught Stealing would've been a better movie if he just doubled down on how traumatic the events of the movie are to Austin Butler's character, all the colorful jaunty casual violence and punk rock needle drops felt a little inorganic, I just kind of walked away from the movie never laughing or feeling much of anything about it.
e) Mickey 17
My wife read and enjoyed the novel Mickey7 but was apprehensive about watching Bong Joon Ho's adaptation because of what she'd heard about it. Finally, one night we decided to put it on, and she really hated the changes made to the story and found them all unnecessary. We also both really hated Robert Pattinson's weird Tobey Maguire voice, I really think Pattinson has this ambition to be a chameleonic adventurous actor who plays a wide range of roles but he should play British characters more often, most of his American accents are catastrophically bad and distracting. That being said, I liked Mickey 17 a lot, thinking about it as Joon-ho's follow-up to Parasite is pretty unflattering but I enjoyed it as a weird spectacle with great visual effects like Okja and Naomi Ackie is great in it.
Renny Harlin has made some bangers like The Long Kiss Goodnight but he's mostly an undistinguished journeyman who's taken all sorts of jobs, and a lot of his horror stuff has been just babysitting a franchise (the fourth Nightmare on Elm Street movie, an Exorcist prequel). The Strangers was a pretty good, pretty distinctive 2008 horror hit, but it wasn't so wildly popular that I really understand why someone decided to greenlight a Strangers trilogy directed by Renny Harlin 16 years after the original. Madelaine Petsch is adorable but she should stick to lighter stuff, she wasn't really up to the scream queen task here and that probably hurt the movie more than Harlin just blandly emulating the original.
It's kind of funny to see Call Me By Your Name now, almost a decade later, while Timothee Chalamet has gone on to several more Oscar-nominated performances while Armie Hammer has become a disgraced laughing stock. They're both really good in this, though, the praise is deserved. As a straight guy I found it to be one of the more moving gay love stories I've ever seen in a film, but also predictably found myself infatuated with Esther Garrel. Luca Guadagigno is kind of a funny director sometimes -- the 6 seconds of the movie that were un infra red heat vision, though, what the fuck was that? -- but it still pretty great. Michael Stuhlbarg is also great even if I thought his speech at the end was, I don't know, gilding the lily a little.
Depeche Mode on record, or even in music videos, have such a cool brooding mystique, and I feel like the totally different vibe of their live shows can demystify them a lot. It makes me like them more as people to watch Dave Gahan as an old man in a vest yelling "ARE YOU READY?" and "TAKE IT, BOYS!" over their hits, but I don't particularly think the songs sound as good live or take me back to how much I enjoy the records. I think I'd have a great time at a Depeche Mode concert, just didn't really dig them in the concert film format. I should watch 101 at some point, though, I've never seen that.
A decent little doc, I enjoyed seeing some big name writers and artists on film talking about their craft, but I dunno, felt a little bland and surface level for something celebrating a century of a cultural institution.
j) Misery
Misery was such a huge pop culture phenomenon in the '90s and I've seen so many bits and pieces of it on TV, but I'd never actually watched it from front to back, and it was probably the most significant Rob Reiner movie I hadn't seen, so I put it on this week. What a ride, Kathy Bates really earned that Oscar. But what I enjoyed the most were the little things I didn't expect like the great scenes of Richard Farnsworth and Frances Sternhagen as the sheriff and his wife/deputy.
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