Delayed Reaction: Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar

Premise: Two middle-aged best friends go on a Floridian vacation where they happen upon a diabolical plot to kill everyone.

 

Dammit. I really wanted to be on the fun side of this movie. Good luck finding a bigger Bridesmaids fan than me. I've been rooting hard for everything with Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo have done. When this movie came out, all the discussion around it was filled with giddy joy. I really wanted to have a silly good time with this movie.

Unfortunately, while I appreciated what the movie was doing, I was not at all on its wavelength.

 

From the very first trailer, it was clear that this was a gamble. That colorful trailer with the kid on the bike. Barb and Star rambling on, self-obliviously about the trailer they are in and how it's not showing what they look like. The trailer was too cute by half and I couldn't imagine those characters not wearing thin after 90 minutes.

 

The movie is unapologetically what it is. Wiig and Mumolo came in with a plan and executed it. I fully believe they made the movie they intended to: a silly joke machine that doesn't quit. And here's where I must admit something that will lose me some friends. I don't like Airplane! that much. It's not my style. I don't care for throwing joke after joke at an audience, hoping they laugh at one long enough to forget the 5 that failed. Sure, 30 Rock is my favorite show of all time, but that show mixes in tons of jokes into a proper story. Barb and Star is aware of when its jokes are bad and tries to use that to make them good. Sort of like how bad puns are good sometimes just because the person had the audacity to make them in the first place.

 

It also doesn't help that I don't like Wiig's character work. I came back into SNL at the tail end of her run, and while I love Wiig, I was very ready for her to leave. She loves these big characters, and I could barely make it through a single sketch before the Target Lady became too much. Barb and Star is a Kristen Wiig character stretched out for an entire movie. Technically two Wiig characters, and a third Wiig character played by Mumolo. I didn't find enough depth in any of them. Jamie Dornan is a great himbo in this too, but like Jon Hamm before him, the willingness to be funny is only half the battle. I believe he'd be funny in future movies he may choose to make. I wasn't a fan of his comedy in this.

 

Also, does this all feel like an easy target to anyone else? It's taking down boring middle-aged midwestern people who treat Florida beach towns like Shangri-La. A lot of tough targets there. Maybe I'm too close to it. I'm nearly Midwestern. I'm catching up to middle-age. My ideal vacation is Disney World. I'm basic, I guess. But there's something about the combination of it all in the movie that bothers me. Wiig and Mumolo come from the Northeast and California. There isn't any sense of specificity to Nebraska or Vista Del Mar in the movie. It's just sort of, "small town mid-westerners and Florida vacation towns sure are tacky, huh?" Those shorthands have been done to death at this point. I wouldn't've minded as much if the humor of the movie worked for me more. Since it didn't, I had too much time to focus on how much was punching down. I guess I should just be happy they didn't make them from Indiana like every other show and movie does.

 

I suck. I am the wet blanket here. I get that. More power to you if the movie works for you. I can see why people would compare it favorably to Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion. It's a similar "best friends against the world" vibe, which I want to like. I just plain didn't though. Similar to Airplane! even a good hit rate on jokes for a structure I fundamentally find tedious can't save the movie.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Beckett

Premise: A man stumbles onto a secret government plot when he crashes his car in a fatal accident.

 

Beckett is a propulsive man-on-the-run movie. The last thing you could call it is boring. John David Washington starts running about 10 minutes in and doesn't really stop until the credits roll. While Netflix didn't produce the movie, it's about as perfect a distillation of what Netflix wants out of a movie as possible. It's a thrill ride with big names that works on any screen size. In addition to Washington, it's got Alicia Vikander, Vicky Krieps, Boyd Holbrook, and a bunch of European actors I can't name. I definitely saw this movie only because of the names attached. I had no idea what the movie was.

 

There are two kinds of audiences for this movie: People who can turn off the part of their brain trying to understand the reach of this conspiracy and those who can't. I could not, so I spent a lot of this movie trying to make sense of what the hell was happening. How are these cops so good at tracking Washington? How do they even have the US Embassy in on this? How is Washington still standing after the beating he's been taking the whole time, considering that he's had no combat training that we know of? Like, normally the premise of this movie involves the cook on the ship turning out to be ex-special forces or whatever. Washington is just a guy. And if you can accept that some guy can get in this deep on accident and carry himself like peak Schwarzenegger or Stallone, then enjoy.

 

Personally, I was annoyed by the misleading casting. There are only a few minutes of Vikander early on and Krieps doesn't show up until deep into the movie. I like John David Washington but I'm not at "I'll watch a movie just because it has John David Washington" yet. He's good in the movie. It's a purely reactive performance. I'm not sure I know a single thing about his character. I just see how he reacts to all these situations.

 

Beckett is an empty calories movie that will quickly be forgotten after watching it but keeps you entertained the whole time. Just try not to think about it.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Wicker Man

Premise: A police sergeant investigates the disappearance of a young girl in a secluded Scottish town full of strange customs.

 

I had an odd introduction to this movie. My junior year high school English class focused on British Literature. I can't remember what we were reading at the time, but we must've gotten to a unit of Scottish literature. For some reason, my teacher decided that showing us the ending of The Wicker Man was the best way to assimilate us into the culture. So yeah, he played us the last few minutes of the movie while jokingly praising the dancing and singing.

 

It turns out, that wasn't out of line.

 

Ever since, I thought of The Wicker Man as a campy, not very good horror movie from the 70s. A couple years later, the Nic Cage remake came out and really soiled its legacy. So, I went into this proper viewing of the movie with pretty low expectations. I ended up loving it. The movie is silly and a little campy. It's practically a musical at times. That's what's effective about it. Horror with the lights on is often scarier than when it's in the dark. Midsommar used that idea effectively a couple years ago. No doubt Ari Aster was incredibly familiar with The Wicker Man. I love how all the oddness is used for both tension and levity.

 

"Willow's Song" rules. That whole sequence is transfixing. After finishing the movie, I watched that scene again. And I'm pretty sure I would've done that even if it didn't have a naked Britt Ekland dancing around. It a psychedelic song shot hypnotically. This is a big movie for nakedness. It's gratuitous but consistent with the era.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Donnybrook

Premise: A man attempts to get his family out of their bad situation by competing in a bare-knuckle free-for-all brawl.

 

To some degree, I failed to meet this movie at its level. For some reason, I spent most of the movie resisting the idea that the climax really was a donnybrook for a cash prize. I've been led to believe that the first rule of fight club is that you don't tell anyone about fight club. Making an event about it seems wrong. As a result, I was a little confused throughout the movie. Or perhaps it's better to call it disbelief.

 

This movie revels in how ugly and gnarly it can be. Jamie Bell is a former Marine living in a trailer park with a wife who is trying to kick a meth habit. He's pursued by a terrifying meth dealer played by Frank Grillo. Grillo has a much younger sister played by Margaret Qualley, who feels like a concoction from a guy who took the wrong lessons away from Fight Club. She's like a sexy feral puppy. The scene when she has sex with the guy who is tied up right before killing him is...a lot. Then there's Grillo's acts of violence. I don't really get why he has to kill his sister and Bell's son. Like, I guess it really emphasizes that he's a bad dude, but it sure felt excessive.

 

This is a very bleak movie. It's hard for me to call any of the performances bad, because they all seem to be attempting to match the tone. Bell is brooding. Grillo is angry, raw, and dangerous. At the very least, based on her often-odd Instagram, I think Margaret Qualley saw a lot more depth in her character than I did.

 

This is an inert movie with occasional explosions of violence. I suppose I should've been more prepared for that with the title. It's my fault for picking a movie because the title was vaguely Irish.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Someone Great

Premise: Three friends in NYC have one last hurrah before one - who also just broke up with her long-time boyfriend - moves to San Francisco the next week.

 

It turns out, this movie rules. I remember Netflix pushing it when it first came out in 2019. I liked the cast, including Gina Rodriguez, Brittany Snow, and LaKeith Stanfield. I think I worried that it was more of a doomed romance movie than a hang-out comedy. It turns out, this is a hell of a fun hang.

 

There's nothing in this movie you haven't seen before, but if the idea of following Rodriguez, Snow, and DeWanda Wise on a series of misadventures sounds fun to you, I can assure you it is. This has a lot of Ferris Bueller or Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist vibes where it feels like there are too many hours in this day. I'm not sure I understand how anyone makes money in this movie. It's best just to assume that everyone one just happened to have the same day off. Who knows, maybe it actually is the weekend. Writer/Director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson's other credits make a ton of sense (showrunner/creator of Sweet/Vicious, writer of Unpregnant, director of an episode of Love Life). Her sweet spots seem to be female relationships, New York City, and/or odysseys. Those are the exact elements of this movie.

 

It sucked me in right away with that that odd exchange between Rodriguez and Michelle Buteau as a stranger at a subway stop. Then it continues with all these lived-in scenes between best friends. I believe that Rodriguez, Snow, and Wise's characters have a ton of history. While a lot of silly stuff happens in the movie, it doesn't lean that heavily on contrivance. I love when Snow and her boyfriend (Alex Moffat) break up. It's complication-free, because the movie realizes that no one actually cares. Stuff like that happens a lot.

 

Look, I won't turn down scenes with Rodriguez and Stanfield playing a couple, but I didn't really need that. If anything, it just made me sad that Stanfield wasn't in more of the movie. They could've cast someone half as familiar, taken out most of the flashbacks, replaced them with more shenanigans, and had just as good of a movie. It's hard to complain though, since so much worked.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Quick Reaction: The Last Letter from Your Lover

For how excited I was by the cast of this movie, I sure have nothing to say about it. The premise is clever enough: a reporter in modern times finds the old love letters from a man carrying on an affair with a married woman. It overplays its hand by also being an amnesia story though. I think Felicity Jones and Shailene Woodley should've switched roles. That has more to do with Woodley. She reads as exceedingly modern. To fit in the period setting, she has to be so wooden. Jones is better at finding the grace notes in period roles. The movie is dull. I couldn't get invested in any of the romances. The Netflix name makes movies like this more prominent than they otherwise would be. Normally, this would sneak away unnoticed at TIFF with a nothing release in theaters 9 months later. The main things working in its favor are that I generally like Jones and Woodley and while dull, nothing it the story actively annoys me.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Movie Reaction: Dear Evan Hansen

Formula: The Perks of Being a Wallflower / World’s Best Dad

 

There are few better hooks than Dear Evan Hansen’s. Evan is a social outcast, mainly due to crippling anxiety and depression. He writes a letter to himself as a therapy tool. Another reject at his high school, Connor, ends up with it and happens to still have it when he kills himself later that day. As a result, people think Evan was Connor’s only friend. Evan is then torn between maintaining the illusion that Connor’s family has hung everything on, which happens to also give Evan attention he’s always craved, or telling the truth, hurting Connor’s family, and going back to being a nobody. It’s a sweaty premise to set up, but it is a dagger emotionally. I get why the show became a hit and why they decided to make it a movie. And getting Stephen Chbosky to direct after great similar work with The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Wonder is the smartest choice I could come up with.

 

I’ve seen a stage production of Dear Evan Hansen and I don’t like it very much. I have no patience for stories built on two humans not having a proper conversation with each other. Stories built on stacked lies tend to rot everything else about the project. The writers take shortcuts in the story. The directors and editors have to cut the movie/show around obvious hurdles. The actors spend much of the performance explaining away natural impulses. My experience watching the show (and seeing the movie) was being fully clenched for two hours without the payoff to justify it.

 

Needless to say, I didn’t go into this movie with the highest of expectations. That said, there are things I quite like about the show. The music is good. I love the message. It normalizes anxiety, depression, and the need to ask for help. It discusses the different ways people handle it or cope with it. Cutting this dark story with songs, even if the songs are some of the most tear-jerking moments, offers an occasional release that makes it not unbearably sad from beginning to end.

 

People have had knives out for this movie for a while. Most of it has centered around Ben Platt reprising his role as Evan Hansen. It’s true that the now 28-year-old Platt looks too old to be in high school. I’ve enjoyed people passing around the 30 Rock gif of Steve Buscemi pretending to be in high school as a comparison. I think what’s lost in that gif is that, in addition to being obviously too old, Buscemi is performatively dressed to look like a high schooler. And that’s really my issue with Platt still playing the role. Sure, he looks a little too old. Then again, look at the rest of the cast. Amandla Stenberg is 22. Kaitlyn Dever is 24. Colton Ryan is 26. Nik Dodani also turns 28 this year. Look at any high school movie and I can find someone who is obviously too old. I love Superbad, but in no world does Jonah Hill pass for a high schooler. No, the problem with Platt as Evan Hansen is more about him still playing Evan Hansen for the stage in the movie. There shouldn’t be an “Evan Hansen look” for a movie. He doesn’t have to be so performative about his discomfort and anxiety. There are much smaller ways to play the same things that everyone else in the cast, not burdened by memories of playing the role on stage, choose to do.

 

Also, Dear Evan Hansen is the wrong kind of musical to bring to film. The point of a film musical adaptation is to feel the scope even more. Comedies can play big and broad. The dramas and romances that come to screen have a grandeur to them. They aren’t in the real world, but they are in a world they make real. Dear Evan Hansen is a pretty small and grounded story. The songs are there as cries to be heard. On film that plays a lot differently. As I mention with Platt’s performance, being smaller works better for the dramatic beats. More importantly, the music gets in the way of how convincing the story is. When Evan meets with Connor’s family for the first time and makes up the story about the orchard that they hung out at, it breaks into song right as he starts the lie. I know the song is there to express the moment emotionally, but in a movie about a big lie, the thing that’s supposed to convince the audience that the family believes the lie is how convincing the performance is. When that’s all done as a song, it’s like a cheat. “Here’s a song. Assume he was convincing because it’s a nice song.” Or, later in the movie, when Evan is giving the speech at Connor’s memorial. That speech turns into him singing “You Will Be Found”. That goes viral, but I heard the speech as a song. The song is really good. I could see the song going viral, but could I imagine that song as a speech going viral? I kind of want to see the monologue version of that scene instead. That could be an amazing scene. Time and time again, just as the acting is about to begin, it’s a song instead. This works really well on a stage. The artifice is right there since it’s a stage. In a movie, it actually gets in the way of the emotion, because this real moment turns into a weird fantasy moment.

 

Given how much the story of the movie annoys me, I liked this movie better than I thought I would. The supporting cast is quite strong. In the little that Colton Ryan is in the film before his character kills himself, he hints at more complexity than is on the page. Kaitlyn Dever as Connor’s sister and Amandla Stenberg as the class president who takes up using Connor’s memory to get help for others both give really human performances. They aren’t playing to the back rows. Amy Adams plays Connor’s mom with enough desperation that you can believe why she would invest in Evan’s stories so much. Like in the show, as Evan’s mom, Julianne Moore doesn’t come into the movie strong until late, when it feels like it has passed her by. She’s good but it’s so late. Few people are as good with stories of isolation as Chbosky. While his direction isn’t clinical, he brings what the movie needs. And the film does attempt to address a major issue I have with the show. It tries to develop Connor as a character after the fact. That’s the icky thing about the story. Connor gets lost in all of it. The film does better by him, although he’s still very abstract. For a movie/show all about how someone cares and we’re not really alone, ironically, Connor remains a mystery – almost a villain, even. The amount that I did enjoy the movie is an accomplishment, even though it falls way short of being particularly good.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend

 

 

Delayed Reaction: The Station Agent

Premise: A man with dwarfism escapes to an abandoned train station a friend left him in Newfoundland, New Jersey, hoping for solitude and finding unlikely friends instead.

 

The formula for a good Sundance movie is chaotic. It's similar to cooking a meal by adding more ingredients until it finally works. It's hard for me to think of a great Sundance movie in which I believe the filmmaker had a clear vision right away. Normally, it's a simple story that they keep adding details to until it's something unique. Coda, Me & Earl & The Dying Girl, The Wackness, happythankyoumoreplease, and Little Miss Sunshine all match this description and won the Audience award at Sundance. The Station Agent very much follows this formula.

 

Broadly speaking, it's about a man who feels rejected by society finding a new home in an unexpected place. The reason why he feels rejected? He has dwarfism. Luckily, there's the great Peter Dinklage waiting for a role like this. The man who breaks down his defenses? He's an overly friendly guy (Bobby Cannavale) who...owns a food truck. He takes care of his sick father too. There's a woman in the friend group too (Patricia Clarkson). They meet after she nearly runs Dinklage over...twice. Well, the two guys are a little broken. What's her damage? A dead kid. Oh, and Dinklage needs 'a thing'. Something he can enjoy to counterbalance his sour demeanor. Trains. He like trains a lot. And there's a kid who randomly like trains too. And a librarian (Michelle Williams) as a pseudo love interest. The details keep stacking and stacking until they have this charming little 90-minute movie that's about a dozen small things rather than one big thing.

 

It's fair to come out of The Station Agent wondering what it was really about. The best I could do is call it a movie about friendship or finding your tribe. That doesn't fully capture it. It's about second chances. It's about making the best out of the hand you've been dealt.

 

I finally got around to this movie because of the podcast episode of This Had Oscar Buzz about it. The idea of that show is to discuss movies that had Oscar buzz at some point then earned no nominations when the time came. This is a prototypical Sundance hit in that way. When you show the movie to a theater full of people, it's easy to fall in love with it. In the light of day though, it becomes a harder sell. The movie doesn't demand your attention, so it's easy to call it lightweight. Even if you like it, it's hard to say what worked. You could credit the screenplay or direction, but you then start to wonder if all the fun details in the movie are actually sloppy attempts to add quirk. The movie was light on star power at the time. It holds up much more in hindsight with the casting. Dinklage is a big name now due to Game of Thrones. Bobby Cannavale has gone onto a prolific, Emmy award winning career. The Station Agent turned out to be just one of the movies in Clarkson's breakthrough 2003. She got an Oscar nomination for Pieces of April instead. Father down the cast list is pre-Oscar nominations Michelle Williams, pre-Mad Men John Slattery, and pre-Brooklyn Nine Nine Joe Lo Truglio.

 

In other words, I get why this movie went from Sundance sensation to falling off the map so quickly. I think it holds up quite well though. It's has the thoughtfulness to character that has made Tom McCarthy’s other movies work. I don't need more of this movie, but I sure wouldn't mind hanging out with the movie for a few more walks on the train track or food truck dinners.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

Premise: Seven country brothers make ill-advised attempts to find brides in the 1850s.

 

The barn-raising scene. Good golly. It's hard to think of a better single dance choreography sequence in a movie. That alone make Seven Brides for Seven Brothers worth seeing. Had I hated everything else about movie, I still would've called it time well spent.

 

Luckily, I did like plenty of the rest of the movie. The songs are good. The performances are lively and fun. The movie is well under 2 hours which took me by surprise. Normally musicals end up being extra-long due to all the songs. Seven Brides is incredibly lean.

That has its drawbacks of course. Most of the brides and brothers are thinly built. There just isn't enough time to establish them all with more than a trait or two. The conceit about kidnapping all the future brides is hard to stomach from a modern lens. Rewarding the brothers for it sends a bad message. And it's odd to see a family musical based on an ancient Roman tale known as "the Rape of the Sabine women". To my knowledge though, this movie didn't lead to a wave of female abductions in the mid-50s, so I think most people understood that the kidnapping shouldn't be repeated.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Sword of Trust

Premise: Four people get caught up in a plan to sell a sword to a collector that supposedly proves that the South won the war.

 

This movie is a nice slice of humanity, prone to meandering, and amounting to little, in a satisfying way. The four main characters are pretty hapless and none of them buy into the supposed stakes of the movie. That probably sounds harsher than I mean it to be. I don't think Lynn Shelton, cowriting and directing what turned out to be her final film, wanted this movie to amount to much. The point of the movie seems to be that life is full of setbacks, but that's OK. Marc Maron plays a pawn shop owner who, believe it or not, is pretty annoyed most of the time. Jon Bass works for him at the shop, although "work" is a generous description. He spends most of the day watching YouTube conspiracy videos and the rest of the time just generally annoying Maron. Jillian Bell thinks she's going to inherit her grandfather's house, but when she and her wife (Michaela Watkins) go to collect, it turns out, all that's been left to them is a sword from the Civil War along with some ramblings about how it was given when General Sherman surrendered to the South. Bell and Watkins try to sell Maron on that story. None of them believe it's real, but they hatch a scheme to sell it to a buyer online who pays big money for "evidence" that the South really won the war.

 

They all end up way over their heads when the collector and his associates take this way more seriously than they do. The four leads essentially laugh their way through until shit hits the fan when it's too late for them to back away. And it all still ultimately ends up being meaningless.

 

I kept looking for something a little more resonant in the movie. Instead, it played a lot more like an IFC series than a movie. Like some cross between Maron and Lodge 49. I wanted to hang out in this movie rather than invest in the plot. That's a strength and a weakness of it.

 

If nothing else, it's a nice showcase for all the actors. They all play in their comfort zones really well. Maron in particular always ends up being a better actor in things than I expect. It helps that he doesn't exactly have to disappear into this role. Watkins I really liked too, playing something similar to her Casual character.

 

In the scheme of things, I'd rather watch a lightly humorous hang out movie like this than a lot of other indie movies that make abrupt dramatic turns because they think they have to. Sometimes it's nice to watch a movie that's about nothing.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Shadow on the Cloud

Premise: A female officer in WWII becomes a last second addition to a flight crew on a mission that quickly turns into something they didn't expect.

 

The ideal way to watch this movie is completely blind and with an open mind to see something wild. That's how I saw it thankfully. Despite being well under 90 minutes, this movie is packed with numerous twists, turns, and ever style changes.

 

I saw the movie because of Chloe Grace Moretz. I'm always curious to see what she's up to next. I noticed it was a WWII movie, and wasn't that thrilled for some kind of stuffy period piece. At best, I figured it would be about her putting up with a lot of shit to earn the smallest amount of begrudging respect from a male superior officer. Basically, I was imagining Private Benjamin while fighting Nazis. Then the movie starts, and it's this stylized opening set to spacy, hip music. That's when I realized I had no idea what movie I was signing up for. I wasn't crazy about Moretz adopting an Australian accent for the whole movie, but whatever. Almost right away, the movie moves her to the underside gunner seat of the plane. Then I thought, OK, I get it, this some kind of "Bottle movie" like Locke, where it's all about how Moretz sells the action in her performance from limited angles. Cool. I'm game. I figure it'll be a dog fight movie or something. Then she sees something. On the plane. So it's a "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" movie. Also cool. The whole time she's talking to the men on the crew who are ridiculously misogynistic. And there's the business about Moretz's special package they aren't allowed to see. Hold on. did her accent just disappear? Holy crap, there's a bat creature on the plane, destroying the engines. AND there are Japanese fighters attacking them. What the hell?! Her package is a baby! She's an imposter! She has to save her baby from falling by climbing across the bottom of the plane! What am I fucking watching?!

 

This movie is pulpy, B-movie brilliance. If I manage to convince anyone that this movie is worth watching, then I doubt they'll be quite as impressed with it as I was. For one, I've just spoiled most of the surprises. Also, now you know that it's a wild ride going in. So, this movie has my full-throated endorsement, but the second you hear that, I need to then somehow temper that endorsement.

 

That said, where else are you going to see Chloe Grace Moretz first fight a humanoid bat creature to the death?

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: No Sudden Move

Premise: In 1950s Detroit, a group of hired criminals scramble after a job falls apart and evolves into something bigger.

 

The only thing working against No Sudden Move is the history of its director. Steven Soderbergh makes a slick crime movie with offbeat humor better than anyone. He has a history of strong entries in the genre from the Ocean's movies to Out of Sight to Logan Lucky. No Sudden Move only suffers in that it's not any of those movies. Ocean's Eleven is a perfect movie as far as I'm concerned. While No Sudden Move has a starry cast, what Soderbergh movie doesn't at this point? So, I want to make it very clear how meaningless my single criticism of the movie is in the scheme of things: Soderbergh has done this movie better before.

 

It's still a greatly enjoyable movie. The core pair of Don Cheadle and Benicio del Toro work great together. I get the sense that they've both worked with Soderbergh enough to have a shorthand. Everyone who shows up is a name of some sort. Jon Hamm has a lot of experience playing period authority figures. Ray Liotta fits perfectly as a gangster at all times. I like this older, huskier Brendan Fraser too. The Matt Damon cameo perhaps gets a little too on the nose with the thematic stuff, but he's turned into a good "master of the universe" bureaucrat. Seeing Damon age over the last 25 years on screen really has been a delight.

 

With the period setting, this movie does feel like it's moving a little into the Coen Brother's or even Shane Black's space, but it all works nicely. Soderbergh is great at knowing when he needs to do a more commercial play after a couple indies or experiments for him.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Police Story 4: First Strike

Premise: A Hong Kong officer goes on a special mission in Australia.

 

At some point I'm going to watch a Hong Kong Jackie Chan movie that I don't like, right? There must be bad ones. Or perhaps that's the charm. They are all bad in a silly way. The fights are intricate but not necessarily believable. The comedy is slapstick, not subtle. Much of the comedy of this movie for instance involves the sight gag of Jackie Chan fighting giant Russian men. If Jackie Chan's movie were earnest, they be a lot worse.

 

This movie is quite nuts. The amount that Jackie fights against and around a shark is crazy. I can't think of many other movies that could have something that broad and not be derided for it. Some of the stunts from atop the hotel are impressive too. It so freaking unsafe. That's my opinion about all these movies, really. I hate to think of all the accidents that occurred because Chan makes it look so easy here that someone decided to try at home, but I sure do love the commitment to complex and insane choreography that looks effortless.

 

The closing credits with the blooper reel remain a highlight of the movie, simply because they give perspective to how hard those stunts really are. Not that I wish for this to happen, but surely there's been a Jackie Chan movie over the decades that has been shut down for an extended period of time because he was too badly injured.

 

I was a little sad to see this lose aspects of the first 3 Police Story movies. I enjoy the mix-ups and misunderstandings with his girlfriend. It was a shame to see her simply disappear by this movie. It's disappointing that Michelle Yeoh didn't become recurring either. I'm really curious to see these next two movies in the franchise. While the Police Story franchise has never been that concerned with interconnectivity, the 30 years between the first and last movie is going to be an interesting study in the evolution of the Hong Kong film industry. Like, I wonder how much 2004's New Police Story will ape the style of Infernal Affairs rather than the absurd energy of First Strike.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Space Jam: A New Legacy

Premise: LeBron James is pulled into the WB server to play a basketball game for the fate of the Looney Toons and his family.

 

My feelings about the original Space Jam are complex. I was 9 in 1996 and a budding basketball fan. I loved the movie at the time and have seen the movie numerous times. My affection for the movie hasn't lasted into adulthood though. Space Jam isn't one of my movies. It isn't very good. And I don't mean that as "it's so bad it's good". I mean the jokes are weak. The story is forced. Michael Jordan's acting is truly terrible. But I do recognize that there are a few things this movie does right. The sound track is legit great. It turned out that Charles Barkley was pretty good on screen. Getting Bill Murray on board is an underrated win. Whether by luck or by leadership, the movie got a few things right.

 

I went into Space Jam: A New Legacy with fair expectations. I don't hold up the original movie as some kind of classic to be measured up to. I know that Lebron is a better actor than Jordan, but I realize that all the praise he received for being in Trainwreck included the "for a basketball player" qualifier. I was even ready for this to be a transparent brand plug for Warner Brothers.

 

Despite all my level-setting, I still ended up underwhelmed by A New Legacy. It has all the problems of the original without any of the strengths.

 

The Looney Tunes have even less cultural cache than they did in 1996. To get around that, the movie decides to lean more into jokes about the Tunes being in other WB properties. I suppose there's a logic to that, but I wasn't prepared for just how much this movie was Ready Player One with Lebron James. Did you know that Warner Brothers owns film rights for DC, The Matrix, and [sort of] Harry Potter? You do now. I think this wouldn't've bothered me as much had they not just done a movie a couple years ago about how much people love the Iron Giant and King Kong now. The fact that it's the same brand is what annoyed me. Had Space Jam been Paramount and featured Jurassic World, Mission: Impossible, and Nickelodeon brands, it would've felt fresher, but we just did this with WB properties. And it didn't even feel that thought out. Like, why is there a DC World and a Wonder Woman World? They named these things, not me.

 

Perhaps I'm weird, but my favorite parts of the original Space Jam were actually the live action parts. Bill Murray makes the golf scene great. The basketball players losing their powers is silly and fun. The "Basketball Jones" scene with Charles Barkley is self-awarely funny. A New Legacy doesn't use that time as well. It spends most of the live action time with Lebron's family who - how can I say this nicely - I don't care at all about. If I'm going to see bad acting, make it be basketball players trying to be funny or A-list comedians slumming it.  Yet, this movie barely has any of the actual basketball stars in it other than Lebron. As much as anything, I was looking forward to Diana Taurasi trying to land a punchline, Anthony Davis doing awkward physical comedy, and Klay Thompson talking about scaffolding. Instead, I get one quick scene in a gym and some animated characters.

 

As long as I'm doing a drive-by of attacks on this movie, the soundtrack sucks. I never appreciated how much the soundtrack made the first movie until now. There are no bangers in this movie. That, more than anything, will hurt the long-term prospects of this movie.

 

Space Jam: A New Legacy thinks that I signed up for family and WB iconography, when I actually signed up for basketball and Looney Tunes. The miscalculation is as simple as that. No amount of Don Cheadle (playing the evil WB algorithm) going nuts can fix that. I'm not one to complain about cynical cash grabs by a studio. I welcome our media conglomerate overlords. Some of the silliest stuff out there comes from a studio being lazy and a couple creative people sneaking in something subversive. So, I want to make it clear that I'm not coming from a "studios are creatively bankrupt" place when I disparage this movie. Space Jam: A New Legacy is loud yet somehow boring. It doesn't understand how it should be cynical. They tried so hard and ended up with something somehow worse than if they'd put in no effort at all. It's quite baffling.

 

Verdict: Strongly Don't Recommend