10 for 10: too busy to review

[10 for 10... that's 10 movies (or tv shows) which we give ourselves 10 minutes apiece to write about.  Part of our problem is we don't often have the spare hour or two to give to writing a big long review for every movie (or TV show) we watch.  How about a 10-minute non-review full of half-remembered scattershot thoughts? Surely that's doable? ]

In this edition, some things I actually watched fairly recently but don't have a whole lot to say about:
Widows - 2018, d. Steve McQueen - netflix
Hustlers - 2019, d. Lorene Scafaria - amazonprime
Sicario - 2013, d. Denis Villeneuve - netflix
The Most Dangerous Game - 1932, d. Ernest B. Schoedsack, Irving Pichel - amazonprime
The Bee Gees: How Do You Mend A Broken Heart - 2020, d. Frank Marshall - hbomax
The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two - 2020, d. Chris Columbus - netflix
Juliet, Naked - 2019, d. Jesse Peretz  - netflix
Hotel Artemis - 2018, d. Drew Pierce - netflix
The To Do List - 201, d. Maggie Carey - netflix
Flight - 2012, d. Robert Zemeckis - netflix

....allons-y....

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 My intention was to do a big one-two punch of Widows + Hustlers, the former a movie I was very keen to see when it was originally released but never got out to see, the latter I was only mildly interested as a result of good buzz.  After watching them, and enjoying them both, I just couldn't connect the threads, other than being mildly crime related and being two films with a largely female ensemble cast.

Widows I wanted to love, based on its cast.  Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, and Elizabeth Debicki each heavyweight performers in their own right in my mind, and always make what their in better for their presence.  Yet, something about this film just didn't connect.  It's not a mess, it's not poorly told, directed, or shot, it just doesn't accelerate.  Is it as simple as the film brings Carrie Coon into the picture, another heavyweight who makes anything she's in better, and legitimately wastes her?  No, it's not, but it's kind of endemic of the film that seems to not know what to do with what it has.

I think this is the first Steve McQueen film I've seen, and he's a director with a solid reputation preceding him, but I'm not very impressed.  Davis is obviously the lead of the picture and she commands the screen but her character is left in sort of a confused limbo for much of the film as she tries to wrangle the other widows of her husband's gang into performing their last job.  She doesn't have a lot of options left to her, having become accustomed to a certain lifestyle.  Debicki has the biggest journey in the film, taking her character from abused spouse to sex worker to empowered force of nature and she walks away with the picture in the process.  Rodriguez plays demure, very against type for her, and it's rare to see such a softer side of her.  She's been playing tough girl since her debut.

I think this would have worked better as a pulpier, flashier movie, rather than attempting gritty realism which I hear is what McQueen favors.  The whole side angle of Colin Ferrell and Brian Tyree Henry's political aspirations gives a particular insight into tainted Chicago politics, but it's largely out of step with the rest of the film.  I just think it should have been more exciting, rather than striving for thought provoking...which it is, but only just.

[14:17]

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Hustlers though was more surprising than I expected.  It's a sort of friendship love story, about a woman with no options left it seems but to turn to stripping, and the star performer who takes her under her wing.  Constance Wu (Crazy Rich Asians) is the former, with Jennifer Lopez as the latter.  When Wu joins up at a high-end strip club in the late 2000's she feels like an outsider and doesn't know how to work the business.  Lopez is introduced via a pole dance sequence which somehow is shot avoiding the gross salaciousness of a strip club, and instead seems to admire and be in awe of her physical prowess.  Every time men in the audience creep into frame, to lob money at the dancer, it threatens to bring the performance down, but Lopez, in character, seems to be in a zone of her own.  It's something I think that takes a female director to pull off and it's what Scafaria brings, is such warmth, love and respect for these women and what they do.  There's no real judgement here.  It's a celebration of them. The backroom sequences early on, which bring together sort of a clan of women, including popular performers of the day Lizzo and Cardi B, are just so alive, and it's a pointed contrast to the future jump later on when the back room is populated by foreigners, possibly illegal immigrant, indentured sex workers (just watched season 2 of The Wire before watching this so it was prominent in my mind this possibility)

As Wu's character takes off under Lopez's guidance the two become fast friends and intimately connected.  They start a side hustle of getting their patrons, rich wall street assholes, too drunk and overcharge their credit cards.  Getting rich and moving up in the world.  But then the financial crisis of 2009 hits and the well dries up so their gamble turns more aggressive and serious, which winds up catching the attention of the police and a sting operation takes it down.

Based on a true story, but obviously loosely adapted, it's a powerful statement about the nature of wealth, and how it's obtained, as well as the different class and gender economies in the world.  It pokes around a lot of themes but doesn't extrapolate tremedously upon any of them.  It's a pretty good story though, and I think it hits in a more thought-provoking manner than Widows and is more fun too.  Lopez is great and talks of her being robbed for at the very least an Oscar nomination were bang on.

[30:54 - already 10 minutes behind]

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Sicario is one of those movies I had heard about when it came out, that it had one of the most intense sequences put to film, and that it had more than a few surprises under its belt.  I knew it was a movie about the cross border drug trade, but not much else... like, I didn't know until this past year that it was a Denis Villeneuve  film, nor that it had Roger Deakins as its cinematographer.  Those are two very key pieces of info that should have placed this much higher on my to-watch list years ago.

It's a film that had a modest amount of hype.  Not too overblown, but enough that kept the title resonant 6 years later, and obviously spawning a sequel that maybe didn't hit the same level of accolades but seemed to manage fine.  It was a film whose hype was modest enough that it could have easily lived up to it.  And yet, I felt kind of empty after watching it.  Like I wasn't quite sure what I should feel about it.

It's the story about a task force that doesn't so much as operate in the grey area as it operates rather illegally, dismantling drug cartels, but also working its own angle to keep supplies running -- the idea being that the drugs are going to flow anyway, might as well make it flow in the most efficient way with the least disruptive impact on society.  Emily blunt plays a New Mexico area FBI agent who gets recruited into this special task force (one blessed from on high), and she's never quite certain the role she's playing or why she's actually there...until she finally discovers what that is, and it's not good.

This is a hard film.  I mean it's really watchable and yes, there are some pretty intense moments, but it's a raw nerve, exposing the darker reality of our world in dramatically entertaining fashion, but no less makes for uncomfortable viewing.  The film's "good guys" aren't really that good, and the work they're doing makes sense, but it's without any ideals or scruples.  It's not even gray area, they're in the black, and the only thing that makes them the "good guys" and not the bad guys is that they're not really in it for the money.

I didn't feel the itch to watch the sequel after watching this and I'm not sure if I will.  

 

I probably will.  Although it won't have the Deakins-isms I so tremendously enjoyed in this.

[42:47]

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Another plan foiled from lack of time was the idea of doing a week long series of "to hunt man" reviews, spurred on by watching The Hunt .  The first film I watched after The Hunt I decided should be The Most Dangerous Game, the original hunting-man-as-sport movie (based on the original hunting-man-as-sport novel [novella?]).  

Well, you can't really even call The Most Dangerous Game a movie.  At about 62 minutes, I've seen TV episodes longer.  It falls in that weird runtime blank space where it's not a short film, but it's also not a feature.

What it most assuredly is is a truly goofy movie. 

A famed big game hunter is aboard a ship that crashes when the signal light that's supposed to guide them ashore is deliberately misplaced.  The lone survivor, he finds his way to a manor house where he's greeted by a cartoonish Cossack with extremely broad makeup and hair applied, like he's in a Universal monster movie.  A most ridiculously accented, highly theatrical Russian Count strolls down the stairs and introduces himself as well as his guests, a drunkard and a dame.  The drunkard is played by Robert Armstrong beautifully.  He's not at all "natural" drunk like in the recently reviewed Another Round but he doesn't quite play it like a cartoonish drunk either.  It's so far beyond that, that I could only applaud and be amazed by the choices he made.  Fay Wray (of King Kong fame) plays the drunkard's sister, and obviously the defacto love interest for our new hero (who, as a big game hunter, is, in modern eyes, a despicable piece of shit).  She tries to warn the new blood of the Count's intentions, but the Count makes them known on his own.  You see, the Count sees in him a kindred spirit, a man who understands the hunt, the thrill, but how the edge wears off after time, and you need a more dangerous game, one who can fight back with the same level of calculation... it's time to hunt man... are you with me, co-hunters, or against me , and be hunted.

Well, obviously it's no fun if they just hunt down people together so they square off in a tepid tete-a-tete that takes them through the jungles of the King Kong set.  Literally.  If you're at all familiar with King Kong you're going to recognize much of the terrain they traverse in this film's short run time.

Oh, this is a stupid, stupid story, and yet, it's kind of delightful to watch... like when the Count sics his dogs on the hunter and it's so very clear that the dogs are just playing and the man is holding treats for them to jump up on him.  And Fay Wray does what she's famous for doing, which is screaming, all the bloody time.  It's pretty grating, in a dumb fun way, both her screaming and the movie.

[58:25]

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How Do You Mend A Broken Heart is the subtitle of this HBO biopic of the Bee Gees, a sibling-led group whose legacy I don't think I've ever given too much consideration to.  The subtitle, one of the Bee Gees more popular songs, seems to indicate a sort of thesis for the film, but it's one that never comes to fruition.  Barry Gibb is the sole survivor of the trio, Robin and Maurice having passed away a few years apart in the past decade.  You would think this would be Barry, pontificating on what the loss of his brothers means as he reflects upon their 50 years in music, but no.  It's mostly a manufactured, talking heads retrospective that rapidly accelerates through their 60's and 70's discographies with a bit of dabbling in the 80's and beyond.  Because they were so prolific, having written thousands of songs, with dozens of hits (both to their name as a group and as songwriters for theirs), there's really no justice served here to any of it.  

If you don't know anything about the Bee Gees, and really I didn't, it does serve as a really good primer to their career, with a modest amount of insight into the influence they wielded, and the emotional highs and lows they experienced.  It attempts to get to the heart of the group, but it always seems a bit cold and distant whenever they try.  There's a lot more drama that could have been teased out, but with 50 years to cover there was no time.  It's like "hey we had drug habits...and then we didn't" and "we were married, and then divorced, and married again" with no real emotional connection to these events in their lives.  

A lot of the talking heads comes from interviews with the brothers from older interviews, and it keeps them at a distance, knowing that they've already passed and yet the film is trying to recontextualize their insight into this new narrative.  

My biggest takeaway was that I the Bee Gees had a very long career, but in that very long carreer, they produced only a small window of music (at pique disco) that I actually liked.  I kind of wish they just set the whole doc in that era and dove deeper into the making of their biggest hits.

[1:09:44]

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The first Christmas Chronicles movie debuted on netflix during our "dark year" here at T&KSD.  I know I watched the film, as I distinctly recall viewing it my phone during a stupidly long bus ride across town as we tried to deal with my daughter's lice problem at a professional facility.  You don't really forget something like that.  The film was quite fun, with a sort of Adventures In Babysitting (but with christmas and fantasy) kind of vibe, but far from perfect.  Kurt Russell definitely sold the damn thing with his gusto.  I was hoping for something bigger, more adventurous, and actually more action heavy...I wanted Russell to be "action Santa".  

So with the promise of a sequel, I was hoping that the 80's influence would spin it into something more James Cameron-y (as much as I dislike how the man directs, I like his idea of sequels going bigger)...alas Part Two is too much of a sequel, bringing back the character Kate from the first film, now an awkward pre-teen, and her new, soon-to-be stepbrother with her. 

By tying the film so closely to the first it does lend it a sense of connection that I think worked in favor of the overall film, but also set it on a path that I didn't personally want to see it go on.  It gets very magic-centric, which isn't ostensibly a bad thing, but director Chris Columbus brings to it everything you would expect him to, given his track record.  It's a family movie, and it's okay, but it doesn't stand out or apart in any way beyond Kurt (and the stunt casting of Goldie Hawn as Mrs. Clause...but it's not stunt casting if she's great in the role, right?).  I hope they keep making these so that maybe they'll eventually get a really good one.  Kurt and Goldie are awesome, and their wardrobes as Mr and Mrs C are my favourite Santas ever, so I can't not want more, even if what we've gotten so far has been mediocre at best.

[1:21:43]

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I was a big fan of Nick Hornby in my late teens/early 20s.  High Fidelity was my obvious gateway.  Being a music fan, but moreover just an obsessive nerd, I felt seen and understood by his novel, and the film made from it.  Fever Pitch was deep in the weeds about very specific British football obsession, and yet I could relate to that too, and About A Boy perfectly encapsulated white male ennui which I've been know to indulge in.  I followed Hornby on his subsequent two (maybe three?) but they stopped speaking to me.  He was eminently readable, he's got a very fluid style, but I didn't connect with what he was saying anymore.  It's like what he wanted to explore wasn't personal, so much as intellectual to him, and that created distance.

I didn't really want to see movies based on his books, I felt I had moved past him, his work, and derivatives thereof.  But, with Juliet, Naked, I mean...Chris O'Dowd.  I love Chris O'Dowd.  His Isrish accent and way of elocuting is one of the most soothing and enjoyable things on Earth.  Even though this film seemed to come and go without any fanfare at all, I was excited when it popped up on nextflix and it jumped to the top of my list. I just had to convice my wife that the O'Dowd factor would overrule her dislike of Ethan Hawke. (She left the film early, not because it wasn't interesting she said, but she had a book she was more into reading)

Well, damn if this wasn't just a complete joy for me to watch, and if it's true at all to the book, it returns Hornby back to the type of personal, nerdy storytelling I originally liked about him.  In this case O'Dowd plays a man obsessed with a musician of nominal cultural impact, played by Hawke.  Along with a few hundred others online, O'Dowd is constantly deep in the weeds, talking bootleg concerts and the intricacies of songs with strangers for hours. Rose Byrne plays his long suffering girlfriend, whom he constantly tries to engage in his passion, and over the years his distraction has turned her off of him completely. 

But in the mail comes a cd with raw studio recordings of his "perfect album", Juliet.  Byrne discovers it and listens and is, frankly, non-plussed.  She inadvertently strikes up an email friendship with Hawke, and then suddenly we're introduced to Hawke's character and his life today.  He's now a loving and devoted father to a 10-year-old son, but there's other kids, from one night stands in the reaches that he's not connected with, including a young woman who is visiting him for the first time.  

Oh boy, I could talk at length about this film.  It stuck with me, and the beats are perfect.  There's not really heightened drama, it's too aware of itself to do that.  The characters are in a place where they want to have something real and nice, and with that in mind, they just try for nice, even though it might not always work out.  This isn't riveting cinema, but it's subtle, pleasant, and seems made for me.

I'll watch it again. And maybe read the book, get back on that Hornby train.

[1:38:56]

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I should be done...

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I don't know how Hotel Artemis came and went from theatres without making a single blip on my radar.  When it popped up on nextfilx, I had to search the inner reaches of my brain long and hard to figure out if I'd ever heard of this film before.  I mean, the cast is outstanding, with Jodie Foster, Sterling K Brown, Brian Tyree Henry, Jeff Goldblum, Dave Bautista, Jenny Slate, Charlie Day, Zachary Quinto, and Sophia Boutella.  I mean, that's a cast of characters you want to see no matter what the setting.

In this case it's a near-future dystopia where water supplies are managed by corporations and they're starving (dehydrating) out the citizens of LA, as they protest these entities which now can decide who lives or dies by who has water.  But this is literally just background.  In the fore is the titular hotel, where bank robbers Brown and Henry wind up when Henry gets himself shot up.  The Hotel is acually a hospital, with four beds, that services the criminal, the rich, and the criminally rich.  It has a definitive rules of operation/code of conduct, that the nurse (Foster) holds as gospel.  But with the events going on outside, her faith in those rules is doubly called into question, first when the Hotel's patron needs to check in (with no beds available) and the second when an childhood acquaintance of Foster's son (Slate) winds up on her doorstep severely injured.

It's a film that works only because it believes in its internal consistency and the world in which it operates.  The style is shadows and neon, such that it feels like it's an outside part of the John Wick universe... and even though it never directly connects to Wick, it at the very least owes it a debt of gratitude as inspiration.

It's fun, engaging, and full of neat, clunky, near-future tech that's equally possible and improbable.  I see Toasty is sitting on a review of this.  Can't wait for his thoughts.  I bet we agree.

[1:50:36]

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Is The To Do List an earnest homage to horny teen movies of the 80's and 90's or is it a satire of them? 

I mean, why can't it be both?

I think it would have made for, well, maybe not a better movie, but maybe a more impactful movie had it picked a lane. It's spends more time in the homage lane than the satire but this could have been Wet Hot American Summer level great had they flipped it into satire, especially with this cast.  I mean, the bulk of this cast playing teenagers is in their late 20's or even early 30's, so they don't look the part.  Why not play into that?

The crux of the film, though, is that it's a female-led, sex-positive, "horny teen" comedy so if it spent too much time satirizing the genre, then maybe that point of giving a teen woman's POV sex comedy wouldn't come across as hard. 

I liked the resolution of the film, which has nothing to do about landing one guy or another but rather reinforcing the point of one freely and openly exploring one's sexuality without guilt or shame. I can't help but think that making it set in the early 90's just makes the whole endeavour seem strange though (mercifully the 90's jokes aren't so dominant or overpowering).  It's really just....why? There's nothing about this story that really needed the setting to be the '90's.

I enjoyed it, but I didn't love it.  It should have been far funnier than it was, but not for lack of trying.

[1:56:34]

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Oh, Robert Zemeckis.  Why, why do I even bother?

Because they were covering it on the Blank Check podcast and I thought, surely with Denzel, it can't be *that* bad right (for the record, the Blankies weren't really panning this film, they were actually fairly positive about it all things considered).  I basically watched the film on 1.5 speed, and was intercutting watching the film with listening to the podcast, so I may have tainted my viewing experience a little... but being semi distracted is pretty much the only way to watch a Zemeckis film that's not BTTF or WFRR?

Denzel drops his usual rocksolid, watchable performance, (although I have to compare his drunken acting against both Another Round and The Most Danger Game and Denzel's drunken acting doesn't feel real or natural like Another Round, but it's not funny like TMDG, nor) but this is the typical manipulative and laborious tripe from Zemeckis which reminds me why I stopped watching his movies. I laughed, inappropriately, often.

The idea of a very flawed man doing something incredibly heroic is compelling but the story doesn't negotiate it in a satisfactory manner. If anything it's played too subtly and via relationships that don't really seem to matter to the character or the viewer.

Like so many Zemeckis films it tries so hard to play for realism but then has moments (or sometimes just production decisions) so broad or ridiculous that it's like the director is self-satirizing his own story.  It's not good.  The Blankies pointed out the frequent on-the-nose musical cues and yeah, I just had to roll my eyes.  Feelin' Alright, indeed.

And even without looking it up, I just know that rolling a commercial passenger plane is just impossible.

[2:00:54]