Delayed Reaction: Zodiac

The Pitch: How to make the Zodiac murders into a coherent narrative.

The many phases of the Zodiac killer investigation covered over 2.5 hours.

It's hard to come up with a better TV show/movie companion than Mindhunter for Zodiac. I just finished binging Mindhunter and decided that I wanted more. I'd seen Zodiac before, but remembered almost nothing about it*. I forgot how perfectly it matches up with Mindhunter. Both are about getting into the mind of a killer while resisting the urge to sensationalize it. I highly recommend the pairing if you have the time.

*I had a bad habit of putting on Netflix rentals while writing term papers back in the day. That's why, despite technically watching it twice, I'm not sure how much I can count Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels toward my overall movie tally.

Zodiac is a bold challenge for both screenwriter James Vanderbilt and director David Fincher. First of all, it's an unsolved case. Second, the murders occur over a big chunk of time and, accordingly, the investigation moves in fits and spurts. The key players change. There's no natural climax to the story. On paper, this really looks like it would work better as a season of something like Mindhunter or American Crime Story rather than a single movie. That still might be true. Fincher and Vanderbilt sure make it work as a movie though. The smartest move is to shift the focus between Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, and Robert Downey Jr. and being fine with leaving one or two of them out for significant chunks of time. Making it both a police procedural and newspaper investigation movie worked surprisingly well too.

I guess you do need to be prepared for what this movie is and isn't. It's isn't an action thriller. It's a mystery without any hard answers. The pace is deliberate but not always escalating. David Fincher directs the hell out of it and kept me on edge the whole time.

Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Winning Season

The Pitch: Sam Rockwell would've made a good Morris Buttermaker too.

An alcoholic deadbeat coaches a high school girls basketball team.

There are many, many movies that The Winning Season borrows from. The sports genre is filled with movies about ill-equipped coaches of rag-tag groups of misfits. The Mighty Ducks, Slap Shot, Major League, Hoosiers, Ladybugs, Little Giants, Rebound. It's actually hard for me to think of one that isn't about that. The most obvious comparison, of course, is Bad News Bears. I wouldn't say The Winning Season is even as good as the 2005 remake (which I still liked a good deal). It's still enjoyable though. I mainly saw it because the cast is pretty great. I don't think Sam Rockwell has ever been bad in anything. It has a pre-Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, pre-Social Network Rooney Mara. It's from the early days of Hollywood trying to figure out if Emma Roberts is a star. It features Emily Rios before she started making the rounds on a lot of great shows (FNL, Breaking Bad, The Bridge). And, Margo Martindale has been around for decades, but this is right before Justified made her an Emmy winner and she became a character actor cult hero.

The movie isn't anything special. It is entertaining though and subverted my expectations enough to keep it interesting. I would've bet money as soon as I heard that Rockwell's Bill had a daughter that she'd end up on his team by the end. I would've also predicted the girl with the broken leg would be called in to shoot some free throws in a key moment, a la Hoosiers. That didn't happen, and they really did try to take Rockwell's alcoholism seriously and addressed some issues like racism and homophobia that they could just as easily avoided. So, good on them.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Love Story

The Pitch: I want to make everyone cry. Everyone!!!

A rich Harvard boy and a "poor" Radcliffe girl fall in love. Then she dies.

I saw Love Story for exactly one reason: It was a massive hit. For some context, adjusted for inflation, it was bigger than Spider-Man and Independence Day, and only slightly below The Dark Knight and The Avengers. It made a lot of money. Like a lot of movies though that made an insane amount of money, the reviews are pretty mixed, even in hindsight, when people tend to show undeserved reverence.

This plays like the proto-RomCom without the 'Com'. There's a nice meet-cute. We see all the stages of the relationship. They fight. They make up. They have "hard times". They have easy times. It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. I'm still trying to figure out if the opening scene is a strength or a burden. I could see most movies saving the gut-punch of Ali MacGraw dying for the end. Letting that be known early does put a cloud over the whole film. Without it, the movie is pretty slight. Manufactured drama, in fact. I had trouble buying into Ryan O'Neal's feud with his father and the degree to which he was disowned. I also had trouble seeing Ali MacGraw as a girl from the wrong side of the tracks. She's fairly comfortably attending Radcliffe, after all.

Still, McGraw and O'Neal are charming together. Except for one of the dumbest taglines ever ("Love means never having to say you're sorry"), I like their back and fourth. I had trouble breaking myself from thinking of Zack Morris every time she called O'Neal "preppy" though. I liked the score a lot at first, but they really overused it.

As with most mega hits, I understand about 2/3s of the money it made. The last third is just "right place, right time". It certainly makes more sense than My Big Fat Greek Wedding: still the most unlikely hit I've been alive for. Ultimately, I had too much trouble connecting to this, despite the parts that do work, which dulled my feelings on the big tear-jerker moments. It hit a point where I realized the movie was sad for the sake of being sad. There wasn't really a lesson or a theme to it.

Also, I got really mad that the doctor told O'Neal about McGraw's condition before he told her. That's not a common thing, right? At least, not anymore, right?

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Nosferatu

The Pitch: Let's make a Dracula movie but not call it Dracula even though it's clearly Dracula.

I don't have much to say about this one. Count Orlok looks creepy as fuck. The film making is pretty advanced, given when it was made. I'm getting better about how to watch silent movies, but I still get taken out of it a lot. I start thinking "I wonder how the pulled off that practical effect" rather than actually getting sucked into the story. It's definitely worth seeing, although I'd say I appreciate it more than I liked it.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: An American Werewolf in London

The Pitch: Can a horror comedy actually be scary and funny?

After a man is attacked by a werewolf one night, he becomes one and terrorizes London.

This is a messy little horror comedy. I get why it has become a cult classic. The makeup is tremendous, deserving of all the praise it has received over the years. It's pretty funny and could even stand alone as a horror movie. That's pretty rare. Most horror comedies are much more comedies than horror. I definitely liked parts of the movie more than the whole. There a moments when John Landis is fully engaged that are a thrill to watch. The werewolf rampaging through London is great, for example. I also rather appreciate how quickly the movie ends. The story as a whole is underwhelming though. It only makes enough sense to get it to the next good set piece. It's a really rough movie, which is part of its charm. I like whenever a genre movie is made by an obvious fan of the genre. (It's the difference between Young Frankenstein and Spaceballs. Both are good, but only one is a classic)

One final note: I was tickled by the use of "Blue Moon". That's not an application of the song that I expected.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Movie Reaction: Pacific Rim: Uprising

Formula: Pacifc Rim + (Ender's Game / The 5thWave)

Not all sequels are built the same. They come from different places. Most sequels these days are planned ahead of time. Some trilogy or greater universe is mapped out and the success of the first installment is assumed. If it's a Star Wars or a Harry Potter, that works out. If it's a Golden Compass or an Eragon, it doesn't. The more traditional sequel is the result of an unplanned success. These are almost all star-driven and rarely have a natural story to continue as a sequel. Look at Legally Blonde or The Hangover as a good example. There's the reboot sequel too, which tries to update a classic for a new generation but keeps a connection to the original. Blade Runner and Tron are great flag-bearers for that type. Probably the least successful of all sequels s what I'd call the "concept sequel". That's when there's a story idea that someone is convinced is the star of the movie, not the actors. I'm sure there are a few successful examples of this, but all the ones that come to my mind are not. Remember xXx: State of the Union, Smokin' Aces 2: Assassins' Ball, or Cruel Intentions 2? The mighty Fast and the Furious tried a concept sequel with Tokyo Drift and it nearly killed the franchise.

Technically speaking, Pacific Rim: Uprising is a reboot sequel since it brings back actors from the first movie, but functionally, it is a concept sequel. The idea is that people want to see giant robots fight giant monsters. The exacts of how are almost irrelevant. The first Pacific Rim was fought above its weight class. The credentials and resources behind it didn't match the idea. It was a big swing for Legendary at the time. They gave Guillermo del Toro (not an Oscar winner at the time but already treated like one) nearly $200 million to bring this big idea to life. It was meant to make a star out of Charlie Hunnam and give Idris Elba the vehicle he needed to really become "Movie Star Idris Elba" (still waiting on that to happen, but it was worth a try). That film was an absolute treat because it was popcorn entertainment under the enthusiastic care of an auteur.

Pacific Rim: Uprising is more like what I expected when I first heard the description of Pacific Rim. Somewhat smaller budget. A less proven director. Big-name producer helping it along. A couple fresh-faced stars. A bit more targeted to a younger audience. This is a movie that feels like it exists to sell toys much more than the first one. Although, let's be honest, both were sold on the idea that these could make some pretty cool toys.

Set a decade after Pacific Rim, the world of Uprising is mostly rebuilt for the carnage of the first film. The kaiju, the monsters that came out of a dimensional portal in the Pacific Ocean are gone. The main threat now is from people trying to make their own Jaegers (large robots initially created to fight the kaiju). Jake (John Boyega) is the renegade son of Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba), the hero of the kaiju war who sacrificed himself to save the planet. Jake has no desire to follow in his father's footsteps, but a chance encounter with a young girl, Amara (Cailee Spaeny), who built her own Jaeger leads to her being enrolled in the Jaeger pilot training program and Jake being employed as an instructor at the training academy. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. Jake is a gifted Jaeger pilot. He's just running away from that life because rebels gotta rebel. Jake butts heads with his old frienemy Nate (Scott Eastwood), the senior instructor. Amara has trouble fitting in with the other young pilots. Well, it turns out that the kaiju aren't completely eradicated and all the named characters in this movie are the only ones available to pilot Jaegers to stop them.

Look, the story is pretty basic. The more movies I watch, the more I realize how much filmmakers rely on narrative shorthand to make things work. If this was the first action movie I'd ever seen, the beats of this wouldn't make much sense. Amara goes from outsider among the trainees to de facto leader in about three scenes. But, I've seen a dozen movies about training academies in which that exact thing happened, so I'm automatically filling in the blanks to make that story work. The movie never really explains why, at a massive Jaeger base, only two pilots and a handful of trainees are the only ones available to fight the kaiju. I didn't really question it though, because other movies have had stories about the A-team being sidelined so that the reserves have to step up, I assume all the beats necessary to explain it happening in this movie.

I remember hearing about a study that showed if you keep the first and last letter of a word the same and jumble the letters in the middle, you can still read the sentence because your brain unscrambles and processes it automatically. That's kind of what happens with Uprising. The screenplay isn't very good, but it fits more in it than it should be able to because it assumes the audience already knows where everything is going anyway. That means it can skip steps and still make sense.

The cast is reverse engineered for international appeal. The pilot trainee class is a checklist of markets Universal is hoping to appeal to (Russian, Chinese, American, etc.). The characters are mostly playing types, and that's fine. Cailee Spaneny isn't a strength or liability in the film. Going forward, she doesn't need to be the focus. Scott Eastwood is making quite a career out of being a classic leading man in a world not looking for a leading man. I think about his work in Uprising and The Fate of the Furious. He gets put in movies to be anachronistic. He's there for the lead to say "We don't need Captain America anymore". He's a good sport about it too (probably because he knows that there's always going to be opportunities for a classic leading man, even if it just takes a little longer to be handed a franchise now). Charlie Day and Burn Gorman are back, this time not used as much for laughs. That's a mistake, because, as much as I love Charlie Day, I can't take him seriously in a movie like this. John Boyega largely carries the movie. I'm not sure that he's ever going to be the "next big thing"-type of star. I don't think he has it in him to lead a great movie by himself like a Will Smith or a Tom Cruise. He is just what this movie needed though. He's able to add levity to situations without taking away the stakes. If this movie was too self-serious, it would be insufferable. He makes sure that doesn't happen. He's still a bit young for me to buy into him in the mentor role. Give him 15-20 years and he'll be marvelous in that mode.

Have I really gone this long without talking about the giant robots fighting the giant robots? Well, there's sort of a reason for that. If all you need is for the action to be big and loud, then Uprising is a success. It follows the sequel pattern of being bigger and louder than before. However, I wasn't as enamored this time. I spent most of the time wishing they were fighting away from the cities so that I could follow what was happening better. There was a lot of knocking over buildings, glass shattering, and missiles exploding, but I had a hard time connecting with what the Jaeger pilots were actually doing. The mind meld aspect I remember being key to the first movie. It's treated more like a nuisance in Uprising.

The enjoyment of this movie is inversely proportional to mow much you care to pick at it. The robot vs. monster action is fun, but it's not greatly staged. The characters are enjoyable without being indelible. The story is functional without being fully considered. It wasn't as much pure fun as the first movie, but there's still enough to like to feel like I got my money's worth.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Hell Baby

The Pitch: What if a horror comedy knew it was a horror comedy the whole time?

A man and his pregnant wife move into a haunted house and become possessed by the devil.

It's weird how some things stick with you. I remember reading a review back when this premiered at Sundance in 2013 that wasn't even all that favorable. For some reason, I remember it referring to Kumail Nanjiani being a scene-stealer in this and The Kings of Summer. Mind you, this was a year before Silicon Valley. I never watched Franklin & Bash. I wasn't aware enough of the stand-up comedy scene to really register who Nanjiani was. That review credited the single funniest scene of the movie to be Nanjiani's. I remembered that name and when he started popping up in other shows and films, I kept thinking about this movie and wondering what that scene was.

Hell Baby finally came up in my Netflix queue and I have to say, the scene was pretty funny. The rest of the movie...not so much. I've come to realize that I have to be careful about Film Festival reviews of movies, especially comedies. Certain movies just tap into fesival crowds in ways that aren't replicable. I recall films like Austenland and The Oranges being real crowdpleasers when they played at festivals, and when I tracked them down, they didn't really work. I can see how this movie could work in a full theater or with a slap-happy group. There is a lot of dumb humor. Not deceptively smart humor that looks dumb. I mean dumb humor. A lot of the laughs follow the principle that if they keep a bad joke going for long enough, it will wear the audience down and start being funny. So, the film reuses a lot of jokes (How many times did they stop to eat a Po Boy?) or hits a punchline extra hard (so much puking!). Often, the joke is that they pause to point out the rational response to a crazy situation right before dipping back into the lunacy. I wasn't a big fan. The movie was mostly a reminder of how casting agents have never known what to do with Leslie Bibb or Riki Lindhome: attractive blondes with great comic timing who normally get stuck playing bimbo roles. Hell Baby is a step above lazy horror comedies like the Scary Movie sequels and several steps below the best of the genre (What We Doin the Shadows, The Cabin in the Woods).

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Grave of the Fireflies

The Pitch: I feel like there's too much hope in the world. Let's ruin that.

A brother and sister try to survive by themselves in WWII-ravaged Japan.

Holy hell. What did I just subject myself to? I was warned and still I chose to track this movie down. My thought process was "It's animated. It can't really be that sad." Apparently, I forgot how even Disney films are littered with things like the opening minutes of Up or the end of Bambi that devastated me. Grave of the Fireflies is a-whole-nother level though. It's a remarkable look at a horrible situation that is terrifyingly plausible. I don't think it's possible to prepare yourself for something this aggressive dour. I wasn't even this shaken by Requiem for a Dream. Maybe season 4 of The Wire. That was rough too.

In fact, the only negative thing I can say about the movie is that it was almost too constructed to rip a hole through your heart. I've heard people refer to the "cry Olympics" for shows like This is Us or Parenthood, that try to one-up how much they can make you cry. For Grave of the Fireflies, it's the "misery Olympics". But, that's exactly the point of the movie. It's barely an hour and a half. The story does move forward. It just never moves upward. It's supposed to be a worst-case scenario. The movie literally starts by letting you know that.

I don't know if I will ever watch this movie again, but I'm glad I finally got around to it once. Now excuse me while I go play with a puppy or something. I need to feel again.

Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend*

*I mean, but be warned.

Delayed Reaction: Dogtooth

The Pitch: When someone tries to build a perfect family, that is doomed to fail.

Three adult children are raised by their parents with no awareness of the outside world.

Oh my god, can someone just explain this film for me? I'm having a hell of a time writing about this movie. Each time I've tried to start this post by being apologetic and explaining how I fail sometimes as a movie viewer, because I look at things too literally. I mention how I have trouble with the dream state of David Lynch or the mannerisms of a Wes Anderson movie. I then connect that back to Yorgos Lanthimos, who after The Lobster and now Dogtooth, I've determined that I don't get the appeal. I'm not convinced this is all on me though. I'm a strong believer that every movie needs to be grounded to a logic. Most films aim for real-world logic. Those are easy enough to test. What gets trickier is when the logic is bound elsewhere. Even Lynch is bound to something. It's just hard to define it. For Dogtooth, the more specific question I find myself asking is if the logic being applied to the world and to the characters is the same. My initial thought is "no".

I decided to give Dogtooth a try for three reasons. 1) There was a kernel of something that I liked about The Lobster. 2) Lanthimos' upcoming film*, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, looks good. 3) The guys on Filmspotting, which I picked up a few months ago, won't shut up about how great 2009's Dogtooth is. I think there's a lot of skill on display. Lanthimos couldn't leave a bigger fingerprint on this if he tried, with all the oddly cropped camera shots and meticulously chosen dialogue. Like a Wes Anderson movie, I don't doubt for a second that he is in full control of every second of the movie. I'm just not sure I bought into what it was doing. There's a little too much left unexplained, and most of it comes down to "why now?" Why after decades of raising these kids are things only falling apart now? Is the introduction of the employee the father brings in to sleep with the son being seen as the catalyst? Why would he even bring her in in the first place? Especially since the parents seem fine with a little incest by the end. The oldest daughter seems pretty curious about the rest of the world. Why is she only taking the initiative to escape now? Simply put, I don't believe these characters could've existed in the film before it begins. It's asking a little too much for me to believe these characters existed for that long in that way.

I spent a lot of time watching this movie thinking back to the documentary TheWolf Pack, which tells an inverted version of this story. Those real siblings were fully aware of the real world. They just accepted that they didn't need to go into it. The "children" in Dogtooth are a step beyond plausibility, especially given that outside of the walls of that house and yard, the world is presented as being pretty close to what it really is. I could buy into The Lobster because the whole world was in on the idea. It's harder in Dogtooth, because it's all bound to the house.

*It was upcoming at the time. I'm working through a backlog of these reactions.

I don't know whether to call this a strength or weakness, but I never could tell if this was a dark comedy or just dark. It's a bit absurd, which leads me to think some things are meant to be funny, at least in hindsight, but I spent most of the time mortified. The son killing the cat was just messed up, as was the daughter beating her own face in.

How did the parent's keep the lie about the second brother going for so long. How is the father able to get away with beating an employee with a VCR? Why is he even bothering to introduce an outsider to all this in the first place?

I am clearly missing the forest for the trees with this film. I'm letting the larger point be obscured by smaller questions which might not even be bound to the reality of the film. I'm looking for anyone to explain what's so great about this forest that I shouldn't be picking at individual trees though.

Verdict (?): Strongly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Howl's Moving Castle

The Pitch: From the director of Spirited Away...oh, that's all you needed to know? OK.

A young girls is turned into an old woman by a witch and teams with a wizard named Howl who has a castle that moves.

I'm slowly working my way through Hayao Miyazaki's movies. I've seen Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke. Now it's time for Howl's Moving Castle. And, in short, I felt about the same about it as the other movies: very imaginative. Great characters and inventiveness. However, I didn't quite connect with it.

I'm very aware that I have limitations as a movie watcher. A lot of it has to do with familiarity. My hope is that if I watch enough of something, I'll recognize more of what makes that thing great. That's my approach to Miyazaki or Japanese films in general. I'm not there yet. I did like the movie. I'm just not used to that style of storytelling...

...Yeah, that's about all I have to say. I didn't take a lot of notes while watching this movie. Nothing in particular comes to mind. I like how all the characters are so different. Like, a step or two short of how all the characters in TheLego Movie belong in different movies. An wizard, a fallen star, a scarecrow, a young girl trapped in an old body. It's a nice and weird mix. Maybe by the time I get to My Neighbor Totoro or Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, I'll have more to say.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Queen

The Pitch: Shouldn't Helen Mirren have an Oscar by now?

Queen Elizabeth figures out the monarchy's response after the death of Princess Diana.

This is a biopic done right. I'd rather see an in depth story about small period of someone's life than something that tries to cover the whole thing and short-changes each chapter. I don't even care that much about the English royals and the palace intrigue in general, but I liked this. I was a little young to appreciate the impact of Princess Diana's death when it happened, so this was a nice perspective on it. It was a big deal. Like, I'm trying to think of a current comparison. She wasn't really a politician or an entertainer. She was just famous and visible, like Kim Kardashian if everyone liked Kim Kardashian. To the British royals, she was more of a nuisance though after the divorce. It's interesting to see that perspective of the events.

And Helen Mirren is great. That's one of those obvious Oscar performances. You watch it and think, " naturally, she won the Oscar. There's no other option". I don't think there are many people shouting that Judi Dench was robbed that year, for example.

As I mentioned though, I'm not a huge fan of this kind of palace intrigue, so I could only get so invested in the movie. None of the performances beyond Mirren's and maybe Michael Sheen's Tony Blair are much of anything and I think the film does rely a bit too much on already having a cursory knowledge of the different royals at the time. Like watching The Crown, I had a Wikipedia article or two pulled up the whole time.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: No Country for Old Men

The Pitch: Who can capture that Cormac MaCarthy nihilistic tone in a film? Oh yeah, the Coens.

A man finds a bunch of money from a drug deal gone wrong after the fact and several people try to track him down (and kill him).

This is another film I've seen before, not long after it left theaters. When I first saw it, the ending left an awful taste in my mouth. Nearly ten years later, with a lot more familiarity with the Coen brothers, it was about time for me to check in on it again. This is a fiercely entertaining movie. It's a slow-paced chase that turns into a game of cat and mouse. There are many moving parts and a lot of people being very clever along the way. Javier Bardem plays an iconic villain. It's crazy to think we had him and Heath Leger's Joker in back to back years. The Coens left some of their repertory players behind for this one and cast a bunch of people who fit this film perfectly. I even liked the ending a lot more now that I was prepared for it.

Given all that, I'm still not sure why this movie is so beloved. I remember it was a comfortable frontrunner for the Oscar that year and topped most "best of" lists that year (or at least split it with There Will Be Blood). I have a similar feeling about this film as with RagingBull. Why is this one so revered? I assume part of it is timing. 2007 was a weak year overall past the very top movies. The Coens had an "it's their time" narrative, even though this was directly preceded by two of their most disliked films - Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers. No Country for Old Men looks a lot like a non-comedy version of Fargo, which was their last Oscar close-call. Perhaps No Country for Old Men just matched the taste of that Oscar voting body at that exact time. It must've been something in the water. After all, before The Departed won Best Picture the year before (and maybe Crash the year before that), the last time a crime movie won the award was The Godfather Part II back in 1974, which was also part of a run a crime movie winners. The Departed was absolutely a make-up call win for Scorsese (that film doesn't top any Scorsese Best Of lists). No Country is a bit different, because that normally is up there with Fargo among the best Coen brothers movies.

I don't know. I've clearly invested too much time thinking about this. I'm officially overthinking it. I really like this movie. I'm glad it gets the attention it does. I'm just surprised that it gets that attention.

Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend

Movie Reaction: Love, Simon

Formula: You've Got Mail * Easy A

(I'm dropping the ball with this formula and I apologize)

This post is going to be a diary entry as much as it is thoughts about a movie, which I think is pretty fitting since Love, Simon is all heart anyway. I have the softest of soft spots for high school movies. High school is this universal thing that I think we all feel like we did wrong. At least, that's how I feel about it. In a lot of ways, I had a typical high school experience. I hung out with friends. I did a lot of homework. I had a part time job. However, there's a lot of things I didn't do that I've never forgiven myself for. I spent a lot of time trying to hide. I never went to parties. I never drank or broke any of the rules. I never had a first love or even a crush (An all boys school has that problem). I kept myself in a bubble and often opted to stay home when I should've gone out. I didn't get a license until right before I graduated. The first dance I ever went to was senior prom and I didn't even know my date until that night. I didn't start to get the hang of high school until it was over. That's all consistent with the person I am now by the way. I've come to terms with a lot of it, but there's still a part of me that looks at high school as a big "what if". That's what makes a movie like Love, Simon irresistible to me.

The simple, possibly reductive description of Love, Simon is that it's a movie about a kid trying to come out and trying to find his first love. Technically, that's right. but there's so much more to it than that. It's about the fear of changing. It's about the fear of people not liking who you really are or the fear of losing who you were to be who you are. It's about how one experience doesn't have to come at the expense of another. It's as emotionally universal as all the best high school movies are, even if the details don't match up with your own.

I'm riding on an emotional high right now, so I'm not sure I can think very critically about this, nor do I care to. I loved almost the entire cast. As Simon, Nick Robinson does a great job. He's expressive with and without dialogue, which the role requires. His friends, played by Katherine Langford, Alexandra Shipp, and Jorge Lendenborg Jr. feel like any other group of friends, each with their own drama. The high school is populated nicely with believable characters. I got perhaps more of Logan Miller's Martin than I cared for, but that was kind of the point. The teachers are drawn a bit more broadly. Tony Hale as the Vice Principal plays it a bit too broad at times. Natasha Rothwell is a hoot as the head of the Drama department. Jennifer Garner and Josh Duhamel are imperfect ideal parents the movie needs. I'm not sure anyone beyond Robinson [for obvious reasons] really stood out, because this is a movie about moments more than highlighting characters.

I don't know what it's like to come out, but I've always been intrigued by the idea of it. I've never had something like that to hide or to reveal to people. I'm a fairly closed off person though. I can't imagine how invasive it must feel to have announce something like that. I still shutter at the thought of all the dumb questions I've asked friends who came out; the kind of questions I've never had to answer about myself. Still, there is something I envy about the idea. In Love, Simon, Jennifer Garner has a wonderful speech in which she compares coming out to holding your breath for a long time then finally exhaling. I relate to holding my breath, but I don't have an exhale moment like coming out. I suppose for me it's more like being constantly reminded that I've never had to hold my breath ever in my life. Obviously, I know there's more to it than that. A person is never done coming out. I never have to worry about being rejected by people I care for because of something I can't change. There's a thousand other things that never even occurred to me. I think we all romanticize the experiences of others while ignoring the difficulties.

I think what I love the most about Love, Simon is that it doesn't treat experience as a zero-sum game. Everyone has their own problems. You don't have to take away from one person's problems to fully feel your own. It's the same thing I loved about Lady Bird. All the characters exist beyond Simon. While he's the center of this movie, he's not the center of everyone's lives. That makes the conversations in Simon's "coming out tour" even better. I adored every single one of those talks. The very first person Simon tells is handled so simply and beautifully that I wasn't sure the movie could get outdo it (I was wrong). His mother is so sad there's things he has to experience alone. His dad is so afraid that he made things harder for Simon to open up. None of that takes away from Simon's diffuculties, but it makes the conversations even more impactful. Simon's whole social circle is all so ideal. The movie does a terrific job showing how his decision to wait to come out is more about himself than others.

Certainly, the scene that most wrecked me was Simon's talk with his lifelong friend Leah (Langford) after he is outed. I may not know coming out. I may not know first love. But I do know that conversation. It's weird hearing exact things I've said or thought in a movie. You'd think I run into it all the time because almost all media is targeted at my exact demographic, Sure, I love my father, so the end of About Time makes me weep. Yes, I've had crushes on women who don't feel the same way about me, so I relate to every tragic romance ever. The feeling of having to find out that a close friend is gay from a relative stranger and wondering what I "did wrong" to not be trusted with that information sooner hits as close as anything I've seen in a movie*. And the handling of that conversation in the movie is dead on.

* Of course, there's way more too it than that. I'm mainly referring to the gut reaction feeling. It's surprising how long that's lingered.

Love, Simon is a happy movie mostly, which is so refreshing. I'm a sucker for happy endings and optimistic outlooks. A lot of things in life are scary enough without having to be reminded of everything that could go wrong. I get exhausted by movies that focus on the hardship more than the joy. I certainly recognize more in Love, Simon than I do in a lot of similar movies. It's a terrific example of universality through specificity. It's a great movie about love, friendship, and family. Sorry if this post turned into talking about myself more than the movie. All I'm really trying to say is that it's a good movie.

Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend

Movie Reaction: Tomb Raider

Formula: Raiders of the Lost Ark / Batman Begins

At first glance, the idea of adapting video games to movies sounds like a slam dunk. Both are visual mediums and often center on a recognizable hero. There are clear goals and the looser structure allows the studio to take liberties with the story that would get them roasted when adapting a book. By now, we all know this isn't the case. The successful video game adaptation is Hollywood's white whale and they appear to be no closer to succeeding. That's because there's a fundamental difference between what a movie does and what a video game does. A movie tells a single story. It's linear and can only move forward (even when it's moving backwards). It is fully formed before the audience ever sees it. The characters have their own personalities and the stories can go in directions the viewer never imagined. Books are the same way. That's why they work so well as movies. Video games on the other hand are all about the player. As video games have become more sophisticated the story is increasingly in the player's control. Making the game into a movie takes away that fundamental element of the game's appeal. While video game characters may be recognizable, they get so much of their personality from the player controlling them. A movie character should be able to surprise the audience. A video game character really shouldn't (i.e. If you move left on the controller, the character better move left).

Tomb Raider is just about the best case scenario for the video game adaptation. Lara Croft is the selling point, and she's broadly established enough to give an actress an idea of how to play her. The Tomb Raider premise is an easy pivot to a structure audiences can recognize. In fact, it's hardly a coincidence that the series already holds the distinction of biggest video game adaptation success with 2001's Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Fifteen years after the sequel fizzled and with a recent revitalization of the video game franchise, it's now Warner Brothers' turn to see what it can do.

The result is a delightfully generic adventure movie. And, honestly, that's all I was hoping for.

This Tomb Raider is an origin story, and one that is familiar to any fan of action/adventure movies. Lara Croft (Alicia Vikander) is the heir to a massive family fortune. Her father (Dominic West) disappeared 7 years ago. Rather than accepting his death and inheriting the estate, she passed up school and works as a bike courier. After a run in with the police, she's convinced by a friend of the family, Ana Miller (Kristin Scott Thomas), to finally accept her inheritance. Before she does that, she gets a clue from her father that reveals where he disappeared to: a mysterious island near Japan where legend says a ruthless Japanese queen was buried. She goes to that island with the help of a ship captain played by Daniel Wu, and finds a small army is already there, led by Mathias Vogel (Walton Goggins), who wants to find the remains of the queen for nefarious (and possibly supernatural) purposes. By all means, it's a repurposed Indiana Jones script, and there's nothing wrong with that, unless you don't like Indiana Jones movies.

The big difference between the 2001 and 2018 movies is that Angelina Jolie's Lara Croft is cool and Alicia Vikander's Lara Croft is tough. Vikander isn't as obvious a choice as Jolie was. There was something superhuman about Jolie in 2001 which fit the famously impossible proportions of Lara Croft in those days. Jolie was a complete badass and it felt like everything she said was the last line of a Law & Order scene before it goes to the opening credits. I much prefer Vikander's version of the character. They still cast an insanely attractive person to play the role, but Vikander put in the work to play the part too. For instance, there's an early fight scene in the movie that exists just to show us that she's got abs. Like in all adventure movies, I question her ability to survive and recover so quickly, but it's no different than if it was Tom Cruise taking the beatings. I'm not sure that Vikander has enough movie star charisma quite yet to make the character work all the way. She's given a few quips throughout the movie and she doesn't have the swagger to pull them off. She still plays the character the way she would in a more serious role. She's still working on making it look easy. I mostly loved what she was doing though. She took everything seriously, no matter how silly it was. She carried herself like she belonged in that world. The swagger will come in time.

The rest of the cast was fine. There weren't any scene-stealers. No one was going against type. Dominic West is a paternal figure, flawed with destructive self-interest. Walton Goggins is slimy and composed in a nearly charming way. Kristin Scott Thomas, even when she's being nice, makes you feel like you aren't allowed to slouch as long as she's in the room. Daniel Wu is an amalgamation of all the adventure movie sidekicks you've seen before. Props to the powers-that-be for not forcing any sexual tension into Vikander and Wu's dynamic. The movie was better without it.

Nothing about Tomb Raider makes much sense and very little is plausible. It's the kind of movie where the good guys come out of a flurry of bullets unscathed, centuries-old traps work with the efficiency of the Disney Monorail, caves they take hours to get into can be exited in minutes, and the person with a bow and arrow is more lethal than the one with an AK-47. I feel like a hypocrite being so bothered by the lack of story cohesion in A Wrinkle in Time last week and not being bothered by it at all in Tomb Raider this week. That's all because Tomb Raider isn't aspiring to be anything more than a dumb adventure movie. The beats of a story in this genre are almost reflexive at this point.

I went into Tomb Raider hoping for a poor man's Indiana Jones and that's what I got. My only hope was that Alicia Vikander would get a chance to shine, and she did. Otherwise, the rest of the movie is no better than it needs to be. The rest of the cast is fine. The action set pieces are big and exciting and a little too convenient. The story makes enough sense to get from scene to scene. If this leads to 6 sequels, I'll probably watch them all, and if this ends up being the only one, I won't miss it. 

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Suspiria

The Pitch: Dance school is hell.

An American woman enrolls in a dancing school in Italy that has experienced a string of mysterious deaths.

When I think about it, Suspiria goes against all the things I normally like in horror movies. It's colorful. It's loud. It employs all sorts of cuts that manipulate the audience. It's deliberately staged. These are all things I condemn other horror movies for.

But, I don't care. I loved Suspiria. Go big or go home! At certain a point, excess turns into an asset. The soundtrack/score is great, so the fact that it's blaring throughout the movie isn't a problem. The use of primary colors are so striking that the whole movie feels like a nightmare. You are always aware of Dario Argento's direction while watching this. It never takes a break. Where most horror movies get into trouble is that they don't own up to what they are doing. When a movie plays it straight for 20 minutes, then slips into cheap horror manipulations, that annoys me. When it commits to the fact the it's a horror movie from the beginning to the end, it's much earlier to excuse.

I came across a review of the film that said the movie only makes sense to the eye. Despite the glibness, I completely agree with that. It's a feast for the eyes [and ears]. For a brief, 90 minute film, that's fine. I kind of get the story, but not really. There's a witch coven at the school. When people start to figure out the truth, the witches kill them. If I start breaking the plot down more than that, I lose track of a lot of the decisions, but again, I don't care. Frankly, too much horror is concerned with explaining everything. Explaining rarely helps horror. No one is afraid of answers.

I'm eager to see this movie again and I'm still processing it. It has shot up my board of favorite horror movies though.

Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The War Room

The Pitch: Put cameras inside the Bill Clinton campaign headquarters and hope they say something juicy.

A documentary about the 1992 Clinton presidential campaign, told from the perspective the the campaign quarters' war room.

In the interest of complete transparency, I saw this movie so I could better appreciate the Documentary Now! episode parodying it. That said, it is an interesting documentary in its own right.

This is no doubt a sanitized cut of what was really going on in the war room for Clinton's 1992 election, but they still capture a lot of the spirit  of what goes on. Most of it - debating how to edit a 30 second commercial, chasing leads about a republican campaign sign "scandal", strategizing talking points for the camp before and after debates - are things that I've seen in several shows like The West Wing and Veep in one form or another. No doubt those shows used this documentary as part of their research, and there's something about it being the real thing, actually seeing it happen, that pulls me in more. I love how so much of their big crises are things average people hardly even notice. James Carville is determined to get "Read my lips. No new taxes" in a commercial three times rather than two. I don't think I'd give that a second thought if I saw the commercial, but that was a fight he wasn't willing to lose.

I'm also struck by how many of the talking points are the same as they are today. I don't think everyone fully appreciates how slow and cyclical government/politics is. You could take Carville's war room speech at the end and apply it to nearly any election and it's equally true. That's both sad and comforting depending on the mood I'm in.

Overall, I didn't think of this as all that political of a documentary. It's not like watching a Michael Moore movie. I don't think it has an agenda. Of course, the talking points are naturally political. However, I don't think the filmmaker is trying to assign a value judgment. I often refer to the two main types of documentary: one's that are investigating and one's that  are trying to prove a point (Or, I suppose an easier dichotomy is whether the film knows it's conclusion after or before it's made). The War Room is in the former category. I think it started from the idea "I wonder what it's like in a war room" rather than something like "let's prove that Clinton was better by filming in his war room". It's a subtle but important difference. That's also why I can get something out of watching it 25 years later.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend