Delayed Reaction: Okja

The Pitch: What if The Jungle was adapted by the same director as Snowpiercer?

A young girl tries to save her superpig from being slaughtered by the company that technically owns it.

That was a weird little movie. I saw a lot of similarities to Snowpiercer, unsurprisingly. It has a odd sensibility. My memory of every character is of them being bug-eyed. I don't think they actually were all bud-eyed, but they carry themselves like they were. It's a cartoon world. That's what I'm trying to say. The satire is very direct. I appreciate how willing the movie is to go for it in every scene, no matter what 'it' may be at that moment. I enjoy movies that happen inside a larger world. While Mija's quest to reunite with Okja is technically the primary story, the film is far more interested in the stories happening around that with the Mirando Corp. and the ALF.

Really, all my problems with the film were a matter of taste. The exact brand of humor isn't a kind I care for. It's a little too proudly aware of itself. I didn't care much for the pig, Okja. Perhaps it was too obviously CGI or more of an object than a character. I also had a hard time connecting with the girl, Mija. I think that comes down to her often being the only person not speaking English in a scene. I can pick up on delivery and word choice with all the English performances but I spent most of the time with her reading subtitles. It's hard to pick up the subtleties like that, so the performance looks limited by comparison. Again, that's more on me for not being bilingual as opposed to being a problem with the performance [I think].

Bong Joon-ho cast this very well. All the actors are having a great time playing these weird characters. Tilda Swinton is perfect for this type of high-strung quirk. Jake Gyllenhaal sure loves to play weirdos and goes for broke in this. Paul Dano is another actor with crazy in his eyes that fits right into the world.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend

Movie Reaction: All the Money in the World

Formula: Ransom / Richie Rich
 

There are times when it's impossible to separate a movie from the story around it. The best example of this is The Interview which made international news after its planned release led to a massive Sony hack and the movie being dropped from most major theater chains. All the Money in the World isn't surrounded by that level of controversy. The story behind it is just distracting enough that I probably need more time away from it to form a useful opinion. Then again, I'd say that about most movies, even if nothing about them is causing a stir.

I'm too young to have lived through the kidnapping of J. Paul Getty III. I've heard about it before this movie though and read about it while going down Wikipedia rabbit holes at different points. In case you aren't aware of the story, in July of 1973, the grandson of J. Paul Getty, the richest man in the history of the world, was kidnapped in Italy. Getty famously refused to pay the ransom and haggled for months to get the ransom down. All the Money in the World is a dramatization of the story.

Charlie Plummer plays the kidnapped grandson. Michelle Williams plays his mother, who married into then divorced out of the Getty family. Mark Wahlberg is Fletcher Chase, the former special ops agent hired to get the kidnapped teenager back. Romain Duris is the kidnapped Getty's primary handler. The key bit of casting is Christopher Plummer as J. Paul Getty. What makes it especially key was that until 2 months ago, the role was played by Kevin Spacey. After Spacey's fall from grace, director Ridley Scott rushed to reshoot Spacey's scenes weeks before the film was scheduled to be released rather than delay the release. I was already looking forward to this movie before all that happened. That only made me more curious. And, Christopher Plummer is very good in the film. I spent the first half of the film distracted by three things: 1) thinking about how Spacey would've done that scene, 2) wondering which shots were from the original shoot and which were from the reshoots 3) being thoroughly impressed by how much Plummer is in the film. I did finally settle into a groove and enjoyed the movie on its own. 

I didn't like this film as much as I'd hoped. It's hard to make a film about a well publicized event. Life doesn't happen like a movie script, so the screenplay bends over backwards trying to shuffle everything to work in a satisfying way. I was somewhat prepared for that, although I expected it would be smoothed out a bit more than it was. More importantly, I don't think the movie ever decided on what the point was of telling a story about Getty. I believe the idea was to show how these people live an existence much different than every one else: in lazy terms, "the burden of wealth". That's more stated than shown though. It all centers around Getty, who is a complex individual. The film wants to understand Getty more than condemn him, which is great. It's hard to do this when also keeping him at a distance so much. 

Perhaps this is a problem stemming from the fact that the film attempts to tell the story from every angle. Getty being cold and elusive is the key story to the movie, but it's only a supporting story. Williams and Walhberg trying to get the young J. P. Getty III back and getting stonewalled at every step by the older Getty is the largest part of the film. They are both fine, although they are giving completely reactive performances for most of the film. It's the aspect of the movie that feels most bound by the actual events. I could've gone without following J. P. Getty III at all. He's mainly followed in the film to let the audience know that the kidnapping isn't a hoax. Thematically, I don't see any value to it. That's not to say Charlie Plummer or Romain Duris were bad. They do good albeit unneeded work.

I feel like I'm being more negative than I intend to be. The movie moves at a nice pace despite being a little on the long side. The real star of the movie is Ridley Scott's direction. The set design is dripping with obscene wealth. There's a great Chris Rock bit from years ago about how he doesn't want to be rich. He wants to be wealthy, because that a-whole-nother level. All the Money in the World is a visual essay designed to explain the difference. This is the kind of movie in which all the parts are good when I was hoping they'd be great. There's worse things to be.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Icarus

The Pitch: You know what this trite sports doping movie needs? International intrigue that puts lives in danger.

A man making a movie about how to get away with doping gets pulled into an international conspiracy.

Here's a comparison you weren't expecting: This documentary really reminded me of Cloverfield. Only in one way, but it's a big way. Cloverfield is a found footage movie that's supposed to be about a goodbye party for a friend moving to Japan. Then a Godzilla happens! Well, Icarus is the same thing. Amateur cyclist, Bryan Fogel wanted to make a movie about how athletes can get around the doping tests. Then a Godzilla happens! The Godzilla of this movie is the Russian government, which is much scarier.

Fogel's attempt to cheat the doping tests leads him to Grigory Rodchenkov, a Russian scientist who was in charge of or ranked highly in Russia's athletic drug testing program. For years, if a Russian athlete needed to be cleared for the Olympics, they went through him. Rodchenkov takes on Fogel as a special project to teach him about how easily the system can be cheated. However, in the middle of all this, Rodchenkov basically blows the lid off a decades-long doping conspiracy by the Russian government that sets off an international shit storm. Rodchenkov has to flee the country for his own safety. He at the center of news stories all over the world. Suddenly, Fogel's movie becomes about something much bigger. This all happen only a year an a half ago, so you may remember a lot of this from the news. This is a very special inside-look. Right place, right time doesn't get much better than this.

The story is very compelling. The film making isn't quite ready to match it. I'm not sure if Fogel isn't a good enough documentarian or if he was just completely caught off guard by the size of the story. Either way. the latter half of the movie feels like it's playing catch up with story. That inside looks makes this worth seeing. Just know that it's not the most polished final product.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: City of Ghosts

The Pitch: But do you really know how bad ISIS is?

The story of the media activist group Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently.

I did not properly prepare myself for this movie. That's on me, I suppose. This is Matthew Heineman's follow up to Cartel Land, after all. Cartel Land isn't shy about the violence it covers. City of Ghosts is another level though. It makes sense. It's a film about ISIS protestors in a city run by ISIS. It's hard to understand how much danger these men put themselves in to let the rest of the world know about the atrocities committed by ISIS without showing the atrocities. I just wasn't ready to see that much footage of executions. I've never been curious about that kind of violence. Back in high school, I looked up a Taliban execution once by mistake and it messed me up for a while. And that was just a couple pictures. Ever since, I've avoided seeing anything like that. That's not one of the dark corners of the internet that I want to look in. So, what I'm trying to say is, this movie is not for the feint.

Once you get past that, it's a great spotlight on some people who have done something incredibly brave. The film making isn't all that engaging and it doesn't really need to be. Just running through everything these men have been through is remarkable enough. The story does sputter at the end when the men all get to Germany. Sure, there's anti-immigrant protests there, but it's very safe by comparison. I'm glad it's safe[r] for them. There's not much for the story at that point though.

I mainly would recommend this film to give you a clear picture of what is going on with ISIS in Syria, but it you think reading a newspaper article will do, I won't press the matter.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Raw

The Pitch: People don't focus enough on the cannibalism aspect of zombie movies.

A girl at veterinary school gets a taste for human flesh after a hazing prank.

Why? Why? Why did I do that? I had every warning sign. I had every reason to skip this. I don't know any of the actors or the people behind the camera. It's foreign. Subtitles alone are a go-to [lazy] excuse for me to not watch something. I knew it was about cannibalism and would cross a gore-threshold that I don't have the stomach for. It's not even like it was topping any year-end critic lists or getting awards attention.

But still I watched.

I regretted it almost immediately. None of this has to do with the quality of the film, mind you. It's actually quite well made. I like the music. The performances, especially Garance Marillier and Ella Rumpf's, are really committed. The story has some nice turns. I really appreciated the reveal at the end. In a lot of ways, it was like a more disgusting Neon Demon.

I didn't need to see any of that though. I ended up watching a half dozen Parks & Rec episodes afterwards to get some comforting thoughts and images in my head. Even non-cannibalism images were rough. I remember a character with her arm up a cow's ass at one point. The Brazilian wax scene was impossible to watch even before someone lost a finger. Even just a hamburger in a pocket looked absolutely disgusting.

So, yeah. Only see this if you really want to see some interesting and skillful film making and have a strong stomach.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: I Don't Feel at Home in this World Anymore

The Pitch: What if Falling Down was made with a clearly depressed woman?

A woman gets mixed up in a robbery plot when she goes looking for her stolen computer.

I enjoy that a whole subgenre exists that I call "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore." movies. I wouldn't say many of these movies are favorites of mine. In fact, the movie I pulled that quote from is a one of the classic films I most actively dislike. Nothing to Lose is an entertaining enough comedy. Falling Down maybe takes itself to seriously. I do adore God Bless America though, which is a shame, because it's the most similar to I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore (IDFaHiTWA, for short). So, I spent an unfortunate about of the movie thinking "I'd rather be watching God Bless America right now".

IDFaHiTWA feels like a movie full of mostly-formed ideas. Not bad ideas, just incomplete ones. It abandons the vigilante streak a little before I expected and moves into a crime movie that's not fully cooked enough. It starts discussing police inefficiency and doesn't do much with it. Even a character like Elijah Wood's feels more like a collection of quirks than someone with a story arc. In other words, it feels like a Sundance movie. (Fun fact: I typed that last sentence before I looked up if it was actually a Sundance movie) My go-to comment is that Sundance movies are like short stories that are trying to be novels.  IDFaHiTWA feels like a couple short stories combined to fit novel length. Sometimes that works. A lot of the time, it comes down to personal taste. Had I connected with Lynsky's character even a little bit more, I probably would've ignored a lot more of the messiness of the movie. It's like the telescope effect: movie it a couple degrees and you're looking at something completely different, because it's a compounded effect. I wasn't able to buy in early, so by the end, it was way off the mark.

All that said, I liked elements well enough. I think it's a shame that Lynsky is best known for being on Two and a Half Men and hasn't had that many big opportunities. She's quite good in IDFaHiTWA and plays her character well. There's just some confusion about how that character is supposed to be responding to the rest of the world. Elijah Wood is having a great time being weird. It's almost like he's making a meta joke about him attempting to "break type". Seeing Jane Levy show up was nice, even though it made me kind of miss Suburgatory. I didn't even recognize Christine Woods. She too needs more/better work.

IDFaHiTWA didn't miss its mark much for me. As is, I find it more forgettable than bad.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Girl with All the Gifts

The Pitch: It's a zombie movie, but different, I swear.

A group of survivors and an infected girl try to find safety after a zombie hoard overruns their facility.

We really should be out of ideas for zombie movies by now, right? First of all, it's not like zombies are that complex. They're undead and eat the living. That's about it. Sometimes they're fast. Sometimes they're slow. Sometimes they transform slowly. Sometimes remarkably fast. They can always be killed by headshots. Whenever there's an outbreak, the zombies win or at least take down society with them. There's a surprisingly strict set of rules. Secondly, market saturation for zombie movies was surpassed years ago with movies, TV shows, video games, and parodies. There's always room for quality though.

The Girl with All the Gifts is quality. I was lucky, because I got to come into the movie completely cold. I didn't even know it was a zombie movie (btw, if you didn't know that and read this, sorry-not-sorry). Even the idea of reforming or understanding the zombies that the film explores isn't all that new. Really, it's Sennia Nanua who makes it all work. If I didn't end up liking the kid so much, this would be pretty bland. Gemma Arterton, Glen Close, Paddy Considine, and Anthony Welsh are all fine. They just have pretty archetypal roles.

Director Colm McCarthy (who cut his teeth on all the big British series) does a great job shooting the zombie scenes. (I suppose his DP Simon Dennis deserves some of that credit too) Scenes felt tense in all the ways they should without relying on a lot of the cheap tricks to get a jump out of the audience.

Extra points for the really silly, kind of dark ending. I don't really know if it fits with the rest of the movie, but I don't particularly care.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Movie Reaction: Darkest Hour

Formula: Lincoln / Dunkirk

I've spent the last few days trying to decide if the presence of Dunkirk hurts or helps Darkest Hour. It's certainly going to hurt some Oscar hopes. Either Darkest Hour will look slight in comparison to the scope of Dunkirk or the recency of Darkest Hour will push Dunkirk to the side. I know I'm tired WWII movies, so two different movies centered on the same event sounds tedious. Or, they could have the same effect as in 2016 when there was both a TV show and a documentary series about OJ Simpson: they inform one another and make both deeper experiences.

I haven't come up with an answer yet. What I can say is that I enjoyed Darkest Hour a lot. This shouldn't be much of a surprise. I'm a bit of a procedure wonk. I spent most of 2016 shouting praise for Eye in the Sky every chance I could. Darkest Hour is the same movie 60 years earlier in a lot of ways. Darkest Hour is one of the better "baptism by fires" I've seen.

As a biopic, the film is nicely limited. It takes place entirely during the first month or so of Winston Churchill's first term as British Prime Minister. He is handed a dire situation. Nazi Germany has nearly conquered all of Western Europe and the entire British army is trapped on a beach in France. Churchill refuses to open peace talks with Germany, but if he states this refusal on the record, his enemies in Parliament will use that refusal to kick him out of office. He has nothing but bad options to choose from and must find the least awful one that kills the fewest troops, pleases the British people, and doesn't get him removed from office as soon as he got the job. Needless to say, it's a trying time for Winston Churchill.

Gary Oldman is the focus of all the attention for this movie and rightfully so. Even ignoring the "it's his time" Oscar talk, this is a big, towering performance. The camera appears to think the movie is a hagiography even if the script says otherwise. Oldman disappears into the role - all the makeup helps. Really great make-up work too. It's not like Lincoln in which every scene is designed for him to give a speech. Churchill certainly fills every room he's in, but he's just as likely to mutter something in the corner as give a rousing speech. The film does a great job showing how Churchill was able to get to this lofty position and also what held him back from getting it earlier or more easily. It's not the must-see performance of the year, but it's certainly among the performances most vital to making a movie work.

It's not a one-man-show either. Kristen Scott Thomas plays Churchill's wife, Clemmie, who has clearly spent decades mastering how to prepare Winston for and present him to the public. Ben Mendelsohn is nice as King George VI, even though you can sense him saying "Don't do it like Colin Firth. Make it different" in the back of his mind the whole time. Lily James is Churchill's typist and a stand-in for the audience a number of times. She's good in what's a fairly anonymous role by design. There's a number of interchangeable old British actors who populate Parliament and Churchill's war council. They are collectively very good even if I couldn't pick any of them out of a lineup.

I have to give director Joe Wright and company some credit. They ratchet up the tension without making the film bombastic. You feel the weight of every decision on Churchill and that's not just because of the performance. A few a the camera tricks, like looking at Churchill through a small window on a door in a moment when he feels especially trapped by his circumstance, are a little on the nose, but there's a lot more good than bad.

Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Gerald's Game

The Pitch: What's the worst case scenario from taking Viagra?

A woman is trapped, tied up on her bed after her husband dies during foreplay.

Gerald's Game is a fucking great idea. It's simple. It's easy to imagine. It requires very little to set in motion. It is also the equivalent of a one-joke sketch on SNL. After the first big beat, what do you do with it? The movie clocks in at 103 minutes. Even that is too long. The best version of this movie shouldn't be a second over 90 minutes and could even excuse getting down to 80. I wasn't crazy about any of the tricks the movie uses to buy time. The fantasies, the flashbacks, and especially the creepy "man of the moonlight" all felt like the equivalent of padding a term paper with redundant sentences to reach a required page count. I've seen enough movies that use limited space to great effect - like Locke or Buried - that I'm not giving this an immediate pass due to degree of difficulty. And, the parts that were simply about Carla Gugino trying to survive being handcuffed to a bed with a hungry dog ready to pounce were pretty good. OK, good is a bad word to use, because that part includes how she gets out of the cuffs -- I haven't squirmed and looked away so much while watching something since the needle pit in Saw II*. Perhaps "effective" is a better word than "good". Regardless, the "Carla Gugino tries to get out of this awkward and perilous situation alive" movie is great.

*For the record, there's other disturbing things I've seen in more recent movies. I've just seen Saw II more recently.

I get the need to have her talking her way through the situation with projections of herself and her dead husband. Other confined movies can use cell phones. That's not an option in this, so imagined people is pretty almost required. It all got a little arch though: less like she was battling her own impulses and thoughts and more like she was fighting actual ghosts or demons. I mentally checked out of the movie when it became about her being abused as a child. I spent my One Big Leap on Gugino getting trapped and her husband dying and all the neighbors being gone. Adding the obvious metaphor of a woman trapped physically by a sexual act in the present being trapped mentally by a sexual act in the past was too contrived to forgive. And all that nonsense about the "man in the moonlight" is out of another movie entirely and had no business in this one. Even if that was part of the original Stephen King story, it just didn't work.

It's funny looking at my issues with the movie: flashbacks to prior trauma, imagined sequences, and an unexplained malevolent force. It sure sounds like another Mike Flannagan film - one of my favorite movies of the last few years - Oculus. Granted, it makes all the difference in the world that Oculus is built around the idea of a haunted mirror. So, weird shit happening is the One Big Leap. Gerald's Game is built around Carla Gugino getting trapped. Too much of what follows is not a natural consequence of the set up.

It's a shame that I bought so little about the story, because Carla Gugino is really good and Flanagan shoots a lot of it well. It starts off, like a lot of Stephen King adaptations, looking really bland. It's almost like a made-for-TV movie how it's shot. As the screws turn, the movie looks a lot more polished and genuinely unnerving. That's all intentional and works well.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend

Movie Reaction: The Shape of Water

Formula: Creature from the Black Lagoon + Romeo& Juliet

I have a problem a lot of other people don't have. It has to do with the fact that I see a lot of movies in theaters. I see a lot of trailers. I like trailers. I always have. I know some people think they spoil the plot too much. That rarely bothers me. My problem is that inevitably, there are trailers that I see a lot and get tired of. That inspired what I call my "Lone Ranger Rule". If I've seen the trailer for a movie enough times combined that it equals the length of the film in question, then I'll see the movie. That's how I decided to see The Lone Ranger and more recently Valerian. I figure that if they are pushing it that hard, I might as well see why. I build up a lot of weird rules like that. The Shape of Water is certainly a "Long Ranger Rule" movie. The unfortunate part is that because I increase the number of movies I see even more in the last couple months, I grew very tired of that trailer. The song and Richard Jenkins' narration started to grate on me after the dozenth time. They did update it eventually, so I got a little variation. I appreciated that, but it wasn't enough. This all goes to say that I went into The Shape of Water movie a bit more combative than I do with most films*.

*On that note, I'm outright militant about Phantom Thread at this point. I'm hostile when I see the MPAA screen saying the following film is Rated R for Language followed by the Focus Features logo then that shot of the car pulling up. That movie needs to come out soon so I can be rid of that trailer.

It doesn't help that I'm still looking for my "in" with Guillermo del Toro. That was Pan's Labyrinth for most people. It didn't make a huge impression on me beyond the visuals. Crimson Peak was more style than substance. His Hellboy and Blade movies were OK comic movies. Pacific Rim was a lot of fun in the moment, but I haven't had the need to revisit it. I'm told I need to see some of his early movies. Maybe those will do it. I don't dislike his work, but I wouldn't call him a visionary, as I've heard often. With The Shape of Water, I'm still on the outside looking in when it comes to del Toro.

I'm not sure what constitutes as a spoiler for The Shape of Water, because the trailer is more cryptic than the plot demands. It's set in Baltimore in the early 1960s. Elisa (Sally Hawkins) is a mute woman who works for the cleaning crew at a secret government facility with her friend Zelda (Octavia Spencer). Elisa lives above an movie theater and the free time she doesn't spend alone she spends with her neighbor, Giles (Richard Jenkins), who lives a similarly quiet existence. One day, an amphibious creature who stands like a man is brought into the compound Elisa works in. This creature was caught by a ruthless government agent (Michael Shannon) who treats it very poorly. Elisa bonds with the creature over time and decides to break him out of the facility when she finds out that the government plans to kill it. Michael Shannon is not about to let that happen.

The pseudo-spoiler is that The Shape of Water is a love story between Elisa and the fish man. That's the reason the film exists. Unfortunately, that's also where all my problems with the movie come from. I get the commentary about non-traditional relationships and fear of the "other" it's trying to make. It's really feels misplaced though. You know when someone is arguing against gay marriage and they pull out the old "what's to stop someone from trying to marry their dog" false equivalency? The Shape of Water uses an extreme to make its point, but it gets a little to close too the dog argument, which in turn, undermines the point a little. That's really a small gripe though. The bigger gripe is that I don't buy the relationship between Elisa and the fish man. It's not developed enough early on for me to believe that Elisa would risk herself to help him. I have no idea how she even communicated the escape plan to him. Once she has him back at her apartment, the only apparent connection is his [I'm sorry] animal magnetism. He's mostly a non-character. I didn't buy any stage of their relationship. That's a problem, because everything hinges on that. If I bought into the relationship, really everything else in the more works.

I did otherwise like a lot about the movie. The creature costume is pretty incredible. It's mostly accomplished through visual effects and looks terrific. It's common to run into a movie that is mainly a vehicle for its star (Still Alice immediately comes to mind). You could argue that The Shape of Water is a vehicle for that costume. I wouldn't say that though, because there are other performances that hold their own. Sally Hawkins is pretty great. Despite almost never speaking, she gives a full and expressive performance. Michael Shannon has a lot of fun sinking his teeth in a very foul character. No one plays a sad sack better than Richard Jenkins and he adds another layer to his character I wasn't expecting. The production design recreates the look of the idealized late 50s but gives it an odor. The visuals at the beginning and end in particular are quite striking.

My first impulse was to say that The Shape of Water is like a pretty person with no personality: all style, no substance. That's not accurate. It's more like it's a beautiful person who you share some interests with but you just don't connect with. I liked it on a technical level. I wasn't moved by the story, even as I appreciated what it was doing.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Movie Reaction: Pitch Perfect 3

Formula: Pitch Perfect ^ The Hangover: Part 3

It's the start of the fourth quarter. The Golden State Warriors are up by 50 already, playing at home. They had a little resistance from the opponent in the first quarter. Otherwise, it's been a cake walk. They seemingly can't miss. The starters have barely played since halftime. Even the bench has had the chance to get all the touches they need. In a blowout this big, many of those in attendance have already gone home to beat the traffic. The only people left in the stands are the diehard fans and they want a show. So, coach Steve Kerr puts the starters back in. He doesn't give then any plays to run or sets to practice. He just tells them to have some fun and do what they do best.

That is Pitch Perfect 3 in a nutshell.

Pitch Perfect has never been a franchise that's taken itself too seriously. The first movie is fully aware of how ludicrous its characters and stakes are. I mean, the puke scene at the beginning is virtually a metaphor for purging the audience of any of its expectations. There's only enough grounding to make the story work in a vaguely traditional sense. The second movie employs that recent sequel trick of rubbing the audience's nose in their hope for more of the same exact same thing (22Jump Street is another great example of this). It doubles down on the jokes and the scope. By the third movie, everyone involved is fully aware that the only people still watching are the fans, and the fans couldn't care less about a movie that makes any sense. 

Instead of the traditional embarrassing performance at the beginning, P3 starts with a flash forward that prepares the audience for how far things are going to go (all I'll say is that there's an explosion). It then cuts back to a few weeks earlier. The film quickly undoes whatever story points it needs to from previous installments to bring back only the characters it needs. Pretty much all of the Bellas are out of college and hating life. After a failed reunion performance reminds them all how much they enjoy being together, Aubrey (Anna Camp) uses her father's military connections to book the Bellas for a USO tour. There's also some business about Fat Amy's (Rebel Wilson) father tracking her down that leads to some of the more bizarre moments in the film. Really, it's all an excuse to bring the gang back together and let them do a lot of a capella performances. They even use DJ Khaled to add a competition element to it.

Here's what's important: the performances are good, the movie is paced well, and the characters are all funny. Aubrey (Camp) is intense. Beca (Anna Kendrick) is kind of awkward. Chloe (Brittany Snow) is obsessed with being a Bella. Lilly (Hana Mae Lee) is still creepy. Rebel Wilson is playing to the back rows. Ashley and Jessica fill the background of shots and have maybe a line each. There's a bunch of excuses for Gail and John (Elizabeth Banks and John Michael Higgins) to add commentary. Hailee Steinfeld is back as the only person in the cast playing older than she actually is. In other words, everyone is doing exactly what you want and expect them to do. There are a few new characters played by people like Ruby Rose and Matt Lanter. They mostly stay out of the way, and I appreciate that. They know that it's not about them.

With a movie like this, the aim isn't to get a new audience. I'm not writing the reaction to convince anyone to become a fan. The most I'm doing is assuring fans that this one doesn't ruin things. Given that, I ask myself how someone who liked the first movies could not like this one. Here's what I've come up with. The guys are all gone, so if you liked the Treblemakers as a counter to the Bellas, you'll be missing Skylar Austin, Adam Devine, and Ben Platt. The film moves even further away from the plot actually mattering, so perhaps you'll hit a break point there. Honestly though, if you didn't already have a problem with the second movie because of that, then your threshold confuses me.

Pitch Perfect 3 is both what I expected and what I needed it to be: inconsequential and a good time.

Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Split

The Pitch: Primal Fear x 23!

A man with dozens of distinct personalities kidnaps three teenage girls.

I like that M. Night Shaymalan has loosened up. After the mega-success of The Sixth Sense, Signs, and to a lesser extent, Unbreakable, Shaymalan got really tied to a formula. Specifically, he became too focused on his twists. That didn't create too much of a problem with The Village, which is better than it's remembered as but not great. By Lady in the Water and The Happening, it was clear he lost that magic. I respect his attempt to try something new with The Last Airbender, even though it was awful. AfterEarth is better than people give it credit for. Even though The Visit relied on some of his old tricks, it felt looser. Split is a nice change too. There are no tricks. It's all laid out pretty early and is allowed to function as a straightforward thriller.

All that said, I didn't care much for it. There was too much about the multiple personalities that felt convenient. I'm willing to use my One Big Leap accepting the personalities and the internal power struggle between them. That still leaves the fact that Anya Taylor-Joy just happens to be an expert hunter who has unnatural poise in this situation and Kevin's doctor not having a better system in place for when things go off the rails for him to accept (among other things). That's too many leaps for me to make. "Sometimes people are dumb or unlucky" isn't good screenwriting. There's also the matter of every female in this movie existing to be victimized that made me feel pretty icky.

I was expecting to have a much harder time accepting McAvoy playing all these different personalities. He mostly made it work though. I say mostly because that final form of his (the Beast) was just silly. It was a shame that Haley Lu Richardson and Jessica Sula didn't get more of an opportunity to do anything good in the movie, because I've liked them in other shows/movies I've seen. Anya Taylor-Joy is perhaps too stoic. By the time she loses her composure over the window not being real, I didn't buy it.

In short, the payoff wasn't good enough to accept all the setup required. Perhaps this Glass sequel Shaymalan wants to make will work better since he won't be so concerned with covering up that it's an Unbreakable sequel.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend

Movie Reaction: Downsizing

Formula: Seeking a Friend for the End of the World / 5000

There's a point late in Downsizing when Matt Damon's Paul is in Norway, faced with his second huge, life-altering decision of the movie. He starts listing off to someone a long, crazy list of all the unlikely things that have had to happen to get him to this place, at this moment, with these exact people. My first thought when he was done was, "You missed a few."

I'm not going to dance around this at all. I did not like Downsizing. I was counting down the minutes for this movie to end. While there are many more incompetent movies I've seen this year, I'm not sure there have been any I was so ready to get to the end of. I couldn't believe it was only 2h 15m. It felt much longer.

Let me back up. Downsizing is a social satire from Alexander Payne about a world in which people can shrink themselves through a process called downsizing. The idea is, smaller people, smaller waste. It's originally discovered and perfected as a humanitarian effort to combat overpopulation. Pretty quickly, people realize it is also a cheap way for middle-class people to live like kings. That's what makes Paul and Audrey Safranek (Damon and Kristen Wiig) interested in the idea. They decide to go through the shrinking procedure to take their fortune to the shrunken community of Leisure Land. When that doesn't go according to plan, Paul finds himself downsized but back in a middle-class life before he's pulled into an adventure with a Vietnamese protester (Hgoc Lan Tran) and an opportunist (Christoph Waltz) who has become even more wealthy than normal after downsizing. As I pointed out in that first paragraph, it's a story filled with chance meetings, lucky breaks, and perfect timing. Any one of these things would be enough for the One Big Leap I'm willing to give any movie, and that's assuming that goodwill wasn't already spent on the downsizing idea to begin with. Altogether, it's hard for me to look at the story as anything other than a mess. And sure, the screenplay, through Damon, twice points out that it's aware of this mess, but he should've been saying "this is crazy" way before either of those moment for me to buy into it. Even if I forgive all that coincidence, it ultimately is for nothing. There's no reason the story has to jump through so many hoops to make the point it makes by the end, and there's little gained by making that point in such an extreme circumstance. It's all one big mess.

This would be a good time to point out that the difference between a messy movie and a movie being a mess is largely in the eye of the beholder. When a movie isn't tightly structured, it's a judgment call to determine if the pointless diversions and inexact plotting bother you. At the top of my head, Me & Earl & the Dying Girl is a messy movie that I happen to love that I could easily see someone else thinking its story is too cute by half. I developed my One Big Leap test to help figure out what my limit is and if I'm being fair to a movie. Another test may work better for someone else. I see a lot of what this film is doing. Alexander Payne and co-writer Jim Taylor are too smart for me to believe anything in the script isn't intentional or thought out. They are making a point about what makes life worth living and what really matters in the end. Damon faces huge decisions in the movie twice, toward the beginning and the end, to show if he's learned anything. There are movies I'm too dumb for. I readily admit that. I really don't think this is one of them.

I'll give Payne and company credit. They do a really good job creating this world. Throughout the film, it's clear that careful consideration when into how everything works in this world where people can shrink themselves. What would a shrinking procedure involve? How would it look once its normalized? What products do and don't need to be changed? As an example of world-building, I give it a solid A-. I just wish they didn't feel the need to show off how much they thought things through. Part of the reason the movie is so long (or felt so long) is that it needs to highlight all the things they've thought through. So much of it feels like Payne and Taylor are looking for someone to pat themselves on the back for being so clever. There's a scene in the bar where a guy goes on a rant about how downsized people shouldn't get full voting rights because they are so small and have less physical impact. That's an interesting thought, but it has nothing to do with anything else in the movie. The movie has many unneeded detours like that. Good world-building explains everything to the audience. Great world-building is confident to let it happen in the background. It has all the answers ready if they are needed, but it only shows what's needed for the story. That's where Downsizing falls short.

I didn't even care for the performances much. Matt Damon plays an everyman: a very dull everyman. Paul is just boring. He seems to think he's making the decisions in his life, but he's really just going along for the ride. Even his big moment, when he finally does the "right thing" manages also to be the least risky decision he's made. There's nothing wrong with having a character be an observer. Damon doesn't do anything interesting with it as a performer though. I've liked Hong Chau since I saw her on the show A to Z. I think she's giving a helluva performance in Downsizing, but I felt icky watching it. There were several points during the movie in my theater when several people in the audience were laughing at her. I couldn't tell if they were laughing because what she was saying was funny or because she was saying it with very broken English. That's when I realized I wasn't even sure what the film's intent was. IO got the sense that the movie was looking down on the character, which felt really wrong. Perhaps I'm reading too much into that, but it was very uncomfortable. Christoph Waltz is just playing Christoph Waltz. It felt like his character was at odds with the message of the rest of the movie. Then again, I'd have to think the movie had a consistent message to be sure. Really, the rest of the actors and actresses you'd recognize aren't around all that much, so I can't say what I thought of their performances.

I'm just going to stop here. I don't like piling on about a movie I didn't like. I'm amazed any movie is ever able to come together, even a bad one, considering how many different people have to work together to see a vision through to the end. It's no fun pointing out everything that didn't work. I do think Downsizing is exactly the movie that everyone involved intended to make. I just happened to like little about it. I hope I've covered why well enough. If you ask me, I say don't bother with Downsizing.

Verdict (?): Strongly Don't Recommend

Movie Reaction: The Greatest Showman

Formula: Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story - karate + the circus

I know absolutely nothing about P.T. Barnum. A month ago, if you'd asked me, I wouldn't've known that was a real person. After seeing The Greatest Showman, I'm not sure how much more I actually know about him. I'd estimate that maybe 15% of what's in the movie is true or not an exaggeration, and I'm completely fine with that. A phrasing that I've liked every since I first heard it that Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story is "a lionized account of the life of the martial arts superstar". In that movie, turning events in Lee's life into intricate fights somehow felt truer to Bruce Lee than an actual biopic would've. The same goes for turning Barnam's life into a showstopping musical.

There's an episode of any TV show with kids at a school in which one of the kids leaves the main group and tries to fit in with the "cool kids". By the end of the episode, this character sees the cool group for the ugly people they are and comes crawling back to the original group of misfits, realizing the error of his or her ways. In my mind, I'm imagining characters from Recess, but any show will do. Well, that's more or less the plot of The Greatest Showman. It's about Barnam trying to gain acceptance from high society. It's actually about a lot more than that too, which is sort of the main problem. The film covers a lot of beats in Barnam's life. There are numerous subplots going on with many characters. It's too much. Great musicals can be a lot of things but plot heavy isn't usually one of them. I could start picking at a lot of individual parts of the story that don't work, but I'd rather just underline the central point: there's so much story that nothing gets enough time to work.

I'm pretty used to ignoring the story for a musical. Watching a musical for a story is like going to a concert to listen to the band kill time between sets. The Greatest Showman doesn't have the greatest songs or the best choreography I've ever seen*, but it tries so damn hard. And, the harder it worked, the more I liked it. Sure, it's nice when a movie or an actor makes something look effortless. There's also something great about watching something that you know took 30 takes and a week of prep to get right. You can almost see the performers counting there steps at times. I liked that I could see that determination. At times, the musical numbers feel like when you get a new keyboard and try using all the special settings at once. However, they keep toying with everything until it mostly works. As long as this things were moving, I really enjoyed the film.

*Just to be clear, I actually did enjoy a lot of the music and dancing. I just don't see this soundtrack becoming a sensation.

It helps that Hugh Jackman is the best actor of the current era to star in something called The Greatest Showman. While he's enjoyable and best known as Wolverine, Jackman always looks like he's having the most fun when he's able to sing and dance. This is an ideal role for him. Michelle Williams and Rebecca Ferguson are nice singers too. Zac Efron and Zendaya came out of the Disney factory, so you know they can bring it. They got the right people for the movie and that goes a long way.

I'm an easy judge on musicals. They just needs to be competent and I'll have a good time. The Greatest Showman is competent and I did have a good time. The story drags it down too much and too often for me to really urge anyone to see it. I'll say this though. I saw a 10 pm showing of this in an otherwise empty theater and I had no trouble finding energy while watching this.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Lost City of Z

The Pitch: The African Queen, but with no sexual tension, and a lot more mystery.

In the early 1900s, British Naval officer Percy Fawcett searches for a lost city he believes is in Bolivia.

I had a hard time getting into this movie. It's well made. I just didn't find it that engaging. I found the idea of this lost city of Z to be too abstract. I could feel too many constraints set by this being based on actual events. The story covers either too much land or too much time. The film never gets deep enough into a single expedition before it's time to report back to the Royal Geographic Society in England. I get the desire to be somewhat faithful to what really happened, but knowing how easily Fawcett ends up back in England took away any tension from the jungle scenes.

Charlie Hunnam is fine in the lead role, an officer initially desperate to improve his social standing and later the victim of his obsession with finding the lost city. Robert Parttinson is casually a lot of fun. Sienna Miller and Tom Holland are good, if not underutilized. The jungle scenes are shot well and the period is recreated nicely. I just couldn't get over the mechanics of the story.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Mudbound

The Pitch: There should be a movie about racism that also reminds people that farming is filthy work.

Two soldiers, one black, one white, return from WWII to the racial tensions in Mississippi.

I often talk about there being two ways to be a quality movie: innovation and effectiveness. History tends to remember the innovators, but there's nothing wrong with doing something familiar and doing it well. That's Mudbound. This is a movie made up of the two most common topics among American history films: World War II and southern Racism. It even relies heavily on narration. There's all sorts of forbidden love and friendship. I'm not sure there's a new idea in the movie, but it's so well made that it really doesn't matter.

It all starts with an excellent cast. On one side, there's Garrett Hedlund, Carey Mulligan, Jason Clarke, and Jonathan Banks. On the other, there's Mary J. Blige, Jason Mitchell, and Rob Morgan. I'll watch anything with Carey Mulligan (and it's not all because I fancy brunette Brits). Jason Clarke is fine whenever I need a dirty Patrick Wilson or Matthew Rhys. As I mention any time I see Garrett Hedlund in a movie, I'm still trying to form an opinion of him other than "not Charlie Hunnam". Jonathan Banks is really good at playing a repugnant character. I forget that, because I like him so much in the Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul universe. Mary J. Blige is getting the most press for her performance in the film. She's very good, although a part of me thinks she's getting extra-praise for successfully not playing Mary J. Blige, since she's mostly known for singing. It's kind of like when people wouldn't stop talking about Mariah Carey's transformation in Precious. Rob Morgan must have an exclusive deal with Netflix, because just this year, he's been in this, Stranger Things, Godless, and their Marvel shows (The Punisher, The Defenders). I was worried that Jason Mitchell, so good as Easy E in Straight Outta Compton, would have trouble fitting into this WWII setting. It turns out that fear was unfounded, because he is quite good in this too.

Perhaps the cast was a little too good, or rather, too large. The story is pretty diffuse. There are a lot of stories to juggle and there are times when the screenplay struggles to keep all the balls in the air. The relationship between Mitchell and Hedlund is the core of the movie, but the movie has to lay a lot of groundwork first. While the movie is mostly about Mulligan and Clarke and Blige and Morgan at the beginning, they fall to the background for much of the end. I think the ideal version of this would be a mini-series. As a two hour film, Dee Rees makes it work as well as possible.

Finally, I have a small gripe. The Ku Klux Klan makes the story way too easy, right? It's one thing for someone to be racist. You can question how resolute they are. Maybe there will be a character turn at some point. There's some ambiguity to it. As soon as someone puts the white sheet over his head, it's over. He become generic evil. It kind of takes away the agency of the individual in favor of the group. When the Klan got involved, I got a lot less interested in where the movie was going. It's like the message shifted to "Only this select group of white people are the problem in the South" rather than, "there's this systemic problem that's pretty complex". And, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe in that era the Klan was super prevalent and behind all the awful things. It sure felt like a narrative shortcut though: a way to make the issue not just black and white, but black and sheet white.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend