The Emmy B-Team: The Scruff

I'm back with another year of the Emmy B-Team. The idea of the B-Team is simple. I look and the Emmy submission ballot and make the strongest list of actors/shows/episodes that were not nominated for the Emmy Award. Then, I compare the nominees with the B-Team and decide which I think is stronger. This started as a way to determine if the Emmy voters were as bad at making their picks as everyone thinks. Quickly, I realized that the Emmy picks are pretty strong when compared with the available replacements. The idea now is more about highlighting the "snubs" that are worth mentioning.

There's a lot of Emmy awards. So many that there's an entire other ceremony before the Emmys that people already largely ignore. That's the Creative Arts Emmys, and if you think the main ceremony has a lot of awards, then don't check out the list for the Creative Arts ceremony (It takes two nights even). There's a bunch of awards for lighting, cinematography, and sound that are more technical than I understand, so I won't be finding B-Teams for those. There's others, like the award for Documentary or Nonfiction Special or Information Series that I wanted to include for this. I did last year. I'll save some time and tell you there's not enough options to make a competitive B-Team. For the bigger categories, it's easy. For the niche categories, the 5 shows nominated are often the only shows anyone has heard of and there's a reason for it.

As happy as I am that the Short Form series are finally getting some love, now with acting awards of there own and nominations for both series and variety series, I don't watch or hear enough about any of these shows to make even a guess about B-Teams.

There are a few categories that I couldn't help but throw in my two-cents though that don't really belong anywhere in particular. Let's take a look.

(Final Note: I'm sure that I'll mention this more than a few times, but this is based on who is submitted and where. For example, Hugh Dancy did not submit for Hannibal, only submitting his name for The Path, so I cannot include him in the B-Team for Hannibal, even if I want to. Similarly, even though it aired episodes in the eligibility period, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart was not submitted and won't be considered. Finally, there's the Rob Lowe Rule. Rob Lowe always submits for the lead role. Even when he was on Parks & Rec. he submitted as a lead, so that's the only thing I could consider him as.)

* Indicates a show that I haven't watched this season.
# Indicates a show I've seen before, not this season.

Animated Program

 

Nominees:
Archer ("The Figgis Agency")
Bob's Burgers ("The Horse Rider-er")
*Phineas and Ferb ("Last Day of Summer")
This Simpsons ("Halloween of Horror")
#South Park ("You're Not Yelping")

B-Team
#Rick and Morty ("Total Rickall")
BoJack Horseman ("Escape from L.A.")
#Robot Chicken ("DC Comics Special III: Magical Friendship")
#Family Guy ("A Lot Going On Upstairs")
*Gravity Falls ("Weirdmageddon 3: Take Back the Falls")

This is a confusing category in that I don't understand the single episode submission. I'm going to treat this the way most people do, by rating what I know of the series as a whole.
Like SNL, people overstate how much the quality of The Simpsons has dipped. It's not as fresh as it once was, but it's impressively stable. I'd take it over Family Guy. Phineas and Ferb and Gravity Falls are both children's shows that I've heard some adults rave about, so I'm putting them on equal footing. It comes down to the other three nominees. Bob's Burgers is the best traditional animated series around at this point. South Park had a resurgent season from what I hear. Archer was definitely down though, feeling older than animated series tend to. While I don't know much about the Robot Chicken DC Special, I assume a baseline quality for it. Rick and Morty and BoJack Horseman are two of the most adventurous series, animated or not, on TV.
Winner: B-Team. The two groups are pretty evenly matched. The Nominees are pretty traditional while the B-Team is more ambitious. When all else is even, I reward ambition.

Special Class Program

Nominees:
The 73rd Annual Golden Globe Awards
*Grease: Live
The Oscars
*Super Bowl 50 Halftime Show
*69th Annual Tony Awards

B-Team
*American Music Awards 2015
*The Wiz Live!
*21st Annual Critics' Choice Awards
*2015 ESPY Awards
*58th Grammy Awards

This one is pretty easy. Everything in the B-Team is the weird cousin of something in the Nominees. The Tonys put on the best show around. The Grammys is just like watching a concert with occasional interruptions. I give the Super Bowl show an edge over the ESPYs because of the degree of difficulty. The same goes to the ambitious Grease: Live over the still difficult to pull off, The Wiz. Honestly, the rest of my B-Team was picking the best available, which wasn't saying much. The Oscars and Golden Globes are technically well done even if the ceremonies themselves feel sort of antiquated.
Winner: Nominees. More because of the weakness of the B-Team than the strength of the Nominees.

Children's Program

Nominees:
*Dog with a Blog
Girl Meets World
*It's Your 50th Christmas, Charlie Brown!
#Nick News With Linda Ellerbee: Hello, I Must Be Going! 25 Years of Nick News with Linda Ellerbee
*School of Rock

B-Team
*Austin & Ally
*Liv & Maddie
*Degrassi: Next Class
*My Depression: The Up and Down and Up of It
*100 Things To Do Before High School

A few bullet points.
-Yeah, Nick News is still on the air. It looks like it finally ended this year. Farewell to a legend.
-I watch Girl Meets World. Even though it's frustrating, it's actually pretty good.
-Disney Channel sure loves ampersands in their titles.
-Did they just reboot Degrassi again? Crazy Canadians and your addictive teenage soaps.
-Dog with a Blog is a show that exists and is a perennial nominee. We should all pause and reflect on that for a moment.
Winner: Nominees. Millennial nostalgia (Girl Meets World), boomer nostalgia (Charlie Brown), domination in the category (Nick News), and a dog that is able to maintain its own blog (Dog with a Blog). The Nominees check every box.

Stunt Coordination – Comedy Series

Nominees:
*Angie Tribeca
Brooklyn Nine Nine
*K.C. Undercover
Saturday Night Live
Shameless

B-Team
*Ash vs. Evil Dead
*Galavant
#It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
*Lemonade
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt   

Anything that gets Shameless a nomination is good in my book. Angie Tricbeca and Brooklyn Nine Nine mean the voting body responds to cop shows for the category. SNL probably uses way more stunt work than I realize for all those digital shorts. I have a feeling that Ash v. Evil Dead alone has the stunt work needed to carry the B-Team to a win, but I didn't see the series.
Winner: Nominees. Until I get a better eye for this, I'll assume the Nominees are well enough chosen.

Stunt Coordination – Drama Series

Nominees:
*The Blacklist
Game of Thrones
*Gotham
Marvel's Daredevil
*Rush Hour

B-Team
Arrow
#Marvel's Agent Carter
Fargo
#The Flash
The Leftovers

Game of Thrones is probably enough to carry this. If that's the case, then Daredevil seals it, as its second season amped up the fights and action even more than the first. I'm sure the other nominees were serviceable as well, given the premises of the shows. The B-Team has a lot of DC and Marvel shows, because stunt-work is vital to those (I left Jessica Jones out specifically because it was more character work and less action). Fargo has some big shoot-outs and what not. And, I'm going to include The Leftovers anywhere that I can. Learn and accept this now.
Winner: Nominees. Too strong at the top to consider otherwise.

For those keeping track, that gives an early 4-1 lead for the nominees. Anyone who has followed this the last couple of years will know that that the best case-scenario at this point. It should be another overall victory for the Nominees, but we'll see.

Delayed Reaction: Tim's Vermeer

The Pitch: A man tries to recreate a Vermeer painting.

Oh yeah, this is why I like documentaries.

Tim's Vermeer is a little-seen documentary from 2013 about a man who decides to recreate a Vermeer painting using technology he believes Vermeer himself used. Tim is a millionaire with a Vermeer obsession. He's fascinated by the level of detail of Vermeer's work and after learning of a special technique used by other artists of that era, he believes he's discovered the secret to Vermeer's work. At its core this is as much about one man's obsession (he spends years on this project) as it is about the relationship between technology and art. Of course, all art is tied to technology or else we'd still be drawing on caves with rocks. But then there's the question of if you know how the art was created, does that make it any less impressive? This is produced and directed by Penn and Teller which ends up being very appropriate when you consider the central questions in the movie.

I can't talk this movie up enough. It's engaging, fascinating, and in some ways enlightening. It's pretty short too.

Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend

Movie Reaction: Don't Think Twice

Formula: Sleepwalk with Me ^ Saturday Night Live

This is the 300th Movie Reaction that I've done for this blog of mine (Apparently, it all started with Drive). It's hard to find a movie that's more appropriate than Don't Think Twice for such a benchmark. After all, this is a film about doing something over and over again for little or no attention because you enjoy doing it. I've put a lot of time into this blog. A lot. When I think about it, a crazy amount of time, and on a good day, I'm getting only a hundred views. That's really not a lot, especially when you consider that I've been posting regularly for five years now. The idea of stopping is crazy to me though. I'm building something, even if I don't know what, exactly. I don't know if I do this for me or for attention, but at this point, it's part of my identity. If I don't do this, what do I do?

All of this ties perfectly into Don't Think Twice, Mike Birbiglia's follow up to Sleepwalk with Me, which I adored. However, instead of the rise of a stand-up career, Don't Think Twice follows the end of an improv group. Mike Birbiglia, Gillian Jacobs, Kate Micucci, Keegan-Michael Key, Tami Sagher, and Chris Gethard are all members of a improv troupe called "The Commune". They've all been in the troupe for a while, but a mix of circumstances are pulling them apart. Their theater is closing due to financial problems. One member, Jack (Key), gets hired to work for Weekend Live (a thinly veiled SNL cypher), which raises jealousy and resentment from the rest of the group. The rest of them are all competing for writing jobs on Weekend Live that none are likely to get.

Birbiglia does a fantastic job showing all the different kinds of personalities in this world. Jack is ambitious, working toward bigger things. Miles (Birbiglia) is the founder, who trained everyone in the troupe and hasn't accepted that he's not good enough to succeed at a higher level. Samantha (Jacobs) loves The Commune and doesn't see why anyone needs anything more than that. Bill (Gethard) is trying to mend his relationship with his recently injured father who looks at him as a disappointment. Lindsay (Sagher) is distanced from the group because she is lucky enough to get a lot of financial assistance from her parents, which has led to her having a questionable work ethic. Allison (Micucci) is paralyzed by the idea of failing if she aims for something bigger. These are all familiar characters and, with the exception of maybe Jacobs, their stories all go in directions you expect by the end. The skill is in how well each story is balanced and the authenticity of the characters.

I'm not sure how this film will play to most people. I love the comedy world and all the romantic ideas behind it. I've spent countless hours listening to podcasts and watching programs that talk about what happens behind the scenes. This is pretty ideal for me. I think the film is generally very enjoyable, but I do wonder how this plays to people who, say, don't know the name Del Close before coming into the movie.

The movie does tap into a very specific pet peeve of mine. I don't like when dramatic, climactic moments happen on stage, specifically in the middle of a stand-up or comedy show. It happens a surprising amount, and every time it does, I imagine being in the audience when this is happening and how super uncomfortable it would be. I paid $5 to laugh an see a show, not see this person's life fall apart. What works in a movie doesn't necessarily translate to a real situation. As I said, it's a pretty specific issue.

Despite the cast, this is much more of a drama with moments of comedy in it. A lot of the laughs are uncomfortable ones in which you aren't always sure you're allowed to be laughing. This is career-best work for a lot of the actors. I love how personal Mike Birbiglia's movies are (he wrote and directed this) and I hope he keeps getting opportunities to make these shaggy little character studies.

Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Begin Again

The Pitch: Once with a budget.

I'll say this much. John Carney knows the kind of movie he likes to make. Begin Again is his follow up to Once and it's obvious that they are from the same person. The only difference is the level of polish on Begin Again. It has bigger stars (Oscar nominees Keira Knightley, Mark Ruffalo, and Hailee Steinfeld) all giving incredibly charming performances. It's hard to not fall for Ruffalo as the screwup or Knightley as the "true artist". Even Adam Levine (surprising), James Corden (less surprising), and Catherine Keener (not surprising at all) get good, smaller roles. You could fault this for being overly sweet or presenting an idealized version of New York City. Reviews I came by kept dismissing it as not as good as Once (because Once took them by surprise and this didn't), which is probably true. I fully enjoyed the performances though. The music is great and since that is 90% of the reason for this movie, that pretty much means the movie is great, right? There's plenty of things to be irritated about in this movie, but life's too short to convince myself that I didn't enjoy watching this, tropes and all.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Creep

The Pitch: What ever happened to that creepy kid I knew in 3rd grade?

I'm on a horror kick lately so I've been looking up every good one I can find on Netflix. All I knew about Creep was that it has Mark Duplass who just works too much to be a human. But that's beside the point.

I love how efficient this is. Only two actors (and briefly, the voice of Duplass's wife, Katie Aselton - also from The League). Less than 90 minutes. No effects. Nearly no budget. It's lean. Its simple. Duplass is intense in a great and unsettling way. Patrick Brice isn't as good an actor as Duplass, which works in his favor, since he's just supposed to play "some guy". I'm a bigger fan of being unsettled rather than being scared, so I appreciate that they don't go too big at any point.

The only drawback is that it is so bare bones that even its already short run time felt a little long. There's been talk of making a sequel to this. I'm not sure I want that. The simplicity of this one is what works so well.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension

The Pitch: You've got questions. Before we go, we've got answers.

Paranormal Activity is responsible for the most recent boom in found footage movies. The original was kind of a phenomenon and easily is the most effective film in the series. It isn't a series that gains a lot by expanding on the first though. It's nice to get some answers, but each movie has fewer effective scares and more contrived reasons to be filming than the one before. By the time I got to The Ghost Dimension, all I wanted was to see how they wrap the story up.

The Ghost Dimension was a pretty big disappointment. After The Marked Ones gave the series a little life by not being about an affluent white couple*, Ghost Dimension (which was actually filmed around the same time as Marked Ones before being delayed 2 years) dips back into the same bag of tricks and gets lazy about them. I believe this film features the first scenes that drop the "found footage" aesthetic. The "gimmick" this time is that someone rigs a camera that can see the demon Toby and other supernatural occurrences. That's nifty but betrays one of the core principals of the series: the series is effective because of what you can't see. This is almost a different genre than the rest of the series (leaning heavily into the supernatural, almost science fiction) and easily the weakest one. Its only value is for completion and a couple answers to questions no one really cares about. Mostly, it made me want to go back and watch the first and third movies again (the two best by far).

*I get it. They probably need to be rich to afford all those cameras, but that certainly backs the creativity into a corner.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Dark Skies

The Pitch: Paranormal Activity for aliens.

How I Came Into It: I don't know if the alien part is supposed to be a surprise, but I've had three years for that part to be spoiled if that was the intent. I'm always on board for more Keri Russell.

Why I Saw It: This does a solid job of building the tension. The collection of odd occurrences, the birds crashing into the house in particular, are effectively unsettling. Fine attempts were made to make the parents not ignore what's happening while also doubting the more incredible claims about what's causing it. The twist to make it the older son that the aliens were after took me by surprise. That was a good move.

Why I Wish I Hadn't: Answers are the death of horror movies, or at least a certain form of horror movies. Dark Skies is most effective when you don't really know what's happening. I wish the would've found a less obvious way to answer things than bringing in J.K. Simmons for a data dump. The way they ended the movie, the way it chose to depict the actual alien abduction felt more required than inspired. This is about what I expected though from a big studio horror movie.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Locke

The Pitch: Tom Hardy in a car for 90 minutes. Your move, Samuel Beckett.

How I Came Into It: I forget how, but I stumbled across the trailer for this a while back and it intrigued me. Tom Hardy is one of my favorite actors over the last 5 or so years. I tend to like these limited perspective experiments. Phone Booth is fun. Buried is more engaging than it should be. I hoped for similar results with Locke.

Why I Saw It: This doesn't work if Tom Hardy isn't fun to watch. Just seeing his temperament change depending on the person he's talking to. There's the authoritative ease telling his replacement what he needs to do, the desperation talking to his wife, the irritation talking to the woman having his child, the rage talking to his father's ghost. I was impressed by how easy the pace of the movie was. A movie of driving shots and phone calls shouldn't be this interesting.

Why I Wish I Hadn't: But it still is a movie of driving shots and phone calls. It feels more like an experiment than a fully realized movie. Sometimes you don't want to play pool though, you just want to see trick shots. As a trick shot, it's good.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Jenny's Wedding

The Pitch: A movie about coming out to one's family that isn't about the person who comes out.

How I Came Into It: I'll admit, the thing that got me in the door was Katherine Heigl and Alexis Bledel as a couple. That's all I knew, and on a lazy afternoon when I need something on on the side, that'll do.

Why I Saw It: This movie is done a lot differently than I expected. Based on the beginning, I assumed it would be about Katherine Heigl more. She's almost a supporting character though. She comes out to her family, then it becomes about the family's response. The variety of responses are good. The brother doesn't care. The sister uses it as a way to be angry at he for other things. The mom mostly doesn't want people to gossip. The dad initially doesn't care, but then feels attacked. All that I found very interesting.

Why I Wish I Hadn't: The movie though, isn't very good. It has all the Indie Movie 101 problems you'd expect. I literally laughed out loud after one scene ended on a serious note then immediately and loudly, cue the inspirational empowerment ballad. The grass metaphor was super subtle. The story lost the thread of the conflict repeatedly. I can't really tell if the acting was bad or if no one had chemistry with each other. Both Heigl and Bledel are great when they're used right but aren't known for their range. Tom Wilkinson tries to add shading to his character, but there's just not enough room in the script for it. I have to say, I was very surprised to see that this came from someone as experienced as Mary Agnes Donoghye (Screenplay: White Oleander, Beaches).

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Movie Reaction: War Dogs

Formula: (Savages + Scarface) / The Hangover

Since I dropped the rigid category structure for these Reactions, I've noticed that they've gotten even longer. I like that because it normally means I'm digging deeper into the movies I see. Not all movies need that though. War Dogs certainly doesn't.

It is one of those "based on a true story" movies that makes for a better Wikipedia article than a screenplay. Back in 2005, David Packouz (Miles Teller) is a two-something struggling to make ends meet until he reunites with a childhood friend, Efraim Diveroli (Jonah Hill). The two of them become arms dealers for the U.S. Military. They stumble their way through completing orders of escalating size until they get one that is too big for them to handle. David has a pregnant girlfriend (Ana de Armas) and Efraim is shady as fuck. They start getting into big trouble when they team up with a supplier who is on a terrorist watchlist (Bradley Cooper). Things end poorly, as you'd expect.

Even if you haven't seen this movie before, you have: Humble beginning, rags to riches, illegal activities, double-crossing, then taken down by the government. Watch Goodfellas. It's a lot better. Familiarity with the beats of the story is fine if I like the characters. I saw this for Teller and Hill who are two of my favorite actors. But, Teller is too passive to root for and Hill isn't interesting enough to make his commitment to his sleazy character worth it. The two actors have surprisingly little chemistry. Given that this is from the director of the Hangover movies (and not helped by the advertising) I expected this to be more of a comedy. And it's not good enough to not be funny, if I'm being blunt.

Lastly, this is the second movie this month with a distractingly bad soundtrack. I guess that's my new pet peeve. Every single song choice was on the nose and I don't think a single song from 2005ish was used, even when characters are listening to the radio. That's just weird.

I see the appeal of making a movie about this scandal. It's a crazy story filled with interesting details. I get the sense that this was trying to be Pain & Gain (ridiculous characters and reminders that this is a true story). War Dogs is too generic though and it has no business being generic.

Verdict (?): Strongly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Z for Zachariah

The Pitch: After the apocalypse, only pretty people survived and then they get jealous.

How I Came Into It: This one excited me from the moment I heard about it from Sundance 2015. Margot Robbie, Chiwetel Ojiofor, and Chris Pine are all actors I like, and the post-apocalyptic premise intrigued me. I didn't realize until afterwards that it was adapted from a book.

Why I Saw It: Margot Robbie is certainly a draw. I like seeing Ojiofor in meatier roles. Those two play off each other well. Robbie is so used to being alone that she doesn't know what to do when Ojiofor shows up. Ojiofor is like a beat up puppy dog the whole time. You get the feeling that he had a number of issues even before the virus wiped everyone out. Pine shows up entirely for conflict, which is needed. He's definitely the least interesting of the three in this. It's nice to see essentially a SciFi movie on such a small scale. Even though this isn't the normal genre you see there, this feels very Sundance-y.

Why I Wish I Hadn't: I often talk about how a lot of time, indie movies feel like short stories more than novels. Z for Zachariah is only about an hour and a half and the pacing is still elongated. There's not a lot to the story. It felt like it was missing something. It's a snack, not a meal.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Hotel Rwanda

The Pitch: Germany's wasn't the only genocide. It's about time there was an African Schindler's List.

How I Came Into It: I'm at that point with my Netflix queue where all the movies are either films that I'm too afraid to watch when I'm not being attentive enough (Foreign, strongly visual, depressing movies) or have so little urgency that I have a hard time excusing watching one of them over the first type (a lot of Sundance movies and movies that never played outside of L.A. and N.Y. due to lack of demand or finances). Hotel Rwanda has been sitting around in the former category for a while. I was sure it would be good, but did I really want to get depressed that night?

Why I Saw It: While this wasn't a jolly movie, it wasn't as hard to watch as I expected. It was informative as much as anything. One of those movies that I'm pulling up the Wikipedia article about the actual events while I'm watching it. Don Cheadle is great in it. And, I got to be reminded of how funny looking those U.N. Peacekeeping force outfits look (Canary blue. Really?).

Why I Wish I Hadn't: The closest thing I have to a complaint is that after years of build-up in my head, the movie didn't blow me away. It's a solid four though.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Longest Ride

The Pitch: You know Nicolas Sparks, right? Well, here's another one.

How I Came Into It: I've been on a Britt Robertson kick since Tomorrowland. I'm not about to watch Under the Dome and I'm not in the mood to look for Life Unexpected. I already checked out Ask Me Anything. This is the logical next stop.

Why I Saw It: I like Britt Robertson. She has an Ellen Page vibe that I like. She's not doing anything that I wouldn't've thought she could pull off.
Hey, it's Alan Alda. I like Alan Alda. I'm not ready to think of Alan Alda as being this old. I can't stop that though. There's no chance that I'm actually remembering the difference between Arnold Schwarzenegger's son and Clint Eastwood's son(s?). Whoever this is, he's fine.

Why I Wish I Hadn't: It's not new to me that the Sparks adaptations aren't my preference. It is bothering me the level to with he self-plagiarizes (or "sticks to formula" or whatever you want to call it). A proper girl. A guy from the wrong side of the tracks. Telling stories in two different times. The lover left behind (always the guy, from everything I've seen). The Notebook. The Best of Me. Message in a Bottle. Safe Haven. A Walk to Remember. They all have it. There's a good chance that if he shook up the formula, one of them I could like. I'm not really the target audience though, so I get why that won't happen.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: John Wick

The Pitch: Taken, except they kill his dog.

How I Came Into It: I've heard nothing but good things about this as people've slowly discovered it. My hesitation has been knowing that the dog dies. You just don't hurt puppies*. That's my line.

*'Puppies' is my blanket term for all dogs.

Why I Saw It: This is lean as hell and greatly entertaining. I believe the director is a former stunt man who has worked with Keanu Reeves for years, and that shows. The fight scenes get first billing and most of the focus. Reeves has his limitations, but this kind of stoic badassery is within his scope. Everyone in the cast feels right - Willem Dafoe channeling his Boondock Saints energy, Dean Winters as comedic relief, Adrianne Palicki fitting in perfectly, and throw in some actors from The Wire in a pinch. This was a lot of fun and I'd happily watch a sequel.

Why I Wish I Hadn't: It could've used more of the puppy. The one real downside to this movie is that it's for a very specific mood. It's not a multi-faceted movie. It's a collection of fights scenes that doesn't take itself too seriously. There's nothing wrong with that and I'm very likely to watch this again.

Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: I Love Trouble

The Pitch: This is some strange mix between The Pelican Brief and Up Close and Personal.

How I Came Into It: Isn't this the movie that everyone points to and laughs at when they remember that Nick Nolte was People's Sexiest Man Alive one year?

Why I Saw It: (Club 50) Only one thing matters: How well do Nolte and Julia Roberts play off one another. The answer is "pretty well". There's endless fun to be had with the "two competitors in a given field fall in love" (That's why Mr. and Mrs. Smith is so much fun to name just one other example). I looked at this as a RomCom first and a thriller second.

Why I Wish I Hadn't: The extent to which women were fawning over Nolte is reminiscent to Barbara Streisand movies at the time (which solidifies my dislike of The Prince of Tides). It's a certain level of vanity above my threshold.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Last Five Years

The Pitch: Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan sing for an entire movie!

How I Came Into It: I saw a stage production of this a year ago. It's an impressive musical and I loved the structure. Great songs too. I'm mildly obsessed with Anna Kendrick (I saw Elsewhere and Camp, for god's sake), so seeing this movie was a no-brainer ever since I heard about it.

Why I Saw It: Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan are great, Tony caliber singers and performers. I'm sure that a stage performance of this starring them would blow me away. They both play well on screen too. Director Richard LaGravenese smartly keeps this small. The scenes don't go bigger than in the play. They're just fleshed out some. I glad he kept it mostly musical rather upping the straight dialogue.

Why I Wish I Hadn't: I don't see or read many works before they are adapted into movies. It almost never works in the movie's favor for logical reasons. I mean, a novel was designed as a novel, so it's going to play better as a novel than as a movie almost always. At first glance, you'd think that a play would translate to film better than books due to being live-action and all, but I'd argue it makes it even harder. With books, Filmmakers actually have to work to adapt it into something. With plays, they often think all they have to do is put the thing on film and their work is done. That's pretty much the issue with The Last Five Years. It feels like a play and it's so much better suited as one. A lot of the novelty of individual scenes is lost when not limited to the stage.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Lazarus Effect

The Pitch: Flatliners for a new generation.

How I Came Into It: The biggest consideration for the movies I've been picking lately, specicifically from Netflix online is the cast. I know most of the mainstream directors who I like and have already seen most of their movies, so I'm looking for writers and directors who I don't know well yet. Without bodies of work to go off, the next best strategy is to assume that a good cast means a good movie. If so, that must apply to The Lazarus Effect. Mark Duplass is one of the hardest working actor/director/producers in Hollywood. He's impressively prolific in front of the camera in particular. I've liked Olivia Wilde since her days on The O.C. I generally like seeing Sarah Bolger and Evan Peters showing up in anything. Donald Glover is one of my favorite comedic performers at any level, which he normally brings to even his non-comedy projects.

I think I need to coin a term for cases like this. I'll call it my casting threshold. That's when I ask myself if I like a cast enough that even the worst version of a movie would be watchable. This meets that criteria.

Why I Saw It: There's a lot of potential in this idea. Being able to bring someone back from the dead is interesting, and I'm surprised more horror movies don't use that idea. Early on, the movie does a good job building the tension. The regenerated dog's behavior gives indications without revealing everything. When they are allowed to, the cast plays off each other well enough. The more Glover and Peters the better.

Why I Wish I Hadn't: Ok, the pitch is more like "Flatliners meets Lucy". This is one of those gibberish science movies that you just have to turn off most of your brain for. The scares are mostly lazy jump-scares and I'm not sure that anything about Wilde's powers make sense. I've also grown tired of "let it* play out" as a fix in horror movies. There's been some good uses, but largely it's a way to force a narrative when the writer(s) hasn't thought through the story all the way. I saw that director David Gelb's history was mostly in documentaries before this. I hoped that would mean he'd take a more distant approach to staging this. Instead, it's shot in a very obvious way. There's no chance for any growing dread or lingering unsettledness.

*"It" being a dream, premonition, and vision.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend

Movie Reaction: Sausage Party

Formula: Veggietales / Team America: World Police

I'm not going to change your mind about Sausage Party. In most ways, it is exactly what it seems. It's an animated movie with with a hard-R rating that features excessive profanity, violence, and a lot of explicit sex-humor. It's from the guys who made Superbad, Pineapple Express, and This Is The End. I won't pretend that this is something like Eye in the Sky that starts slow, then wins you over by the end. If you don't like it within the first few minutes, then you aren't making it through to the end to appreciate what works well in the film.

I was very hesitant about this movie. I love Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, and company. I could not be in their camp any more than I already am, and even still, Sausage Party is a big risk. Adult animation is tough to pull off, and the tone of this film in particular is even tougher given the layers of irony. If there was any more overtly appealing alternative this weekend, I probably would've opted to wait until this went to video. I'm glad I didn't wait though.

Sausage Party is a simple enough movie on the surface. It's a food Toy Story, where food is alive but people can't see it. The movie centers on a pack of sausages and buns with familiar voices including Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Kristen Wiig, and Michael Cera. The food in the store has built up a mythology that being bought and leaving the story is the same as dying and going to heaven. After a jar of mustard is returned to the store and reports back to the other food about what really happens to them (they get eaten), they all have to decide whether to believe him or not. There's a journey across the store, a douchey villain, and a "come to Jesus" moment, as you'd expect, and that's about it in the broad strokes.

This is the best screenplay that has come from Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (and Kyle Hunter and Ariel Shaffer). That isn't something I say lightly - As I've already mentioned, I'm a superfan -  but it's the truth. This script is as dense with jokes and wordplay as anything I've seen. It reminded me of Airplane. That movie doesn't work without full commitment to what it's doing. If Airplane would've pulled back at all on what it was doing, it would've gone from brilliant to bad quickly (See: Epic Movie, for instance). Sausage Party walks that same tightrope. It is fully committed to the world it has created. They fit in every single bit of wordplay you can imagine. Sometimes it's homonyms. Sometimes it's double meanings. Sometimes it's playing on ethnicities or shapes. It doesn't let up and that's why it works. It's a constant, almost exhausting barrage of jokes ranging from high to low brow, subtle to overt. I'm in awe of this screenplay.

And it's not all jokes either. There's some substance to the story. There's a pretty intelligent dissection of organized religion and sexual repression in there. I was continually surprised by how many ways they found to twist the concept of the film to make the story work on another level. It takes smart people to make something this profoundly dumb work and have meaning. I'll accept a lot of criticism that someone wants to throw at this movie, but it should never be directed at the script.

The voice cast is all the regulars you've come to expect. If you've seen a Judd Apatow produced movie, then you know who shows up: Rogen, Hill, Wiig, Cera, James Franco, Bill Hader, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson, Paul Rudd, and Nick Kroll. A couple outsiders worth mentioning are Edward Norton who is doing his best Woody Allen impression as a bagel and Salma Hayek as a sexy taco (Hey, I didn't say the jokes weren't obvious). No one is really stretching their voices here, doing anything new, or playing against type. I like that crew though, so I have no complaints.

None of this would work if it didn't feel authentic. Rogen and Goldberg needed this to play like a legitimate animated movie that would regularly be geared toward children. Like the best of Mel Brooks' movies, this doesn't work if it doesn't start from a place of authenticity. So, they brought in co-directors Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon. Vernon has directed a few Dreamworks Animation movies and Tiernan, no kidding, is known for Thomas the Tank Engine movies. The film doesn't work without people like them playing it straight.

I came into Sausage Party expecting maybe a couple good laughs over 90 increasingly tedious minutes. However, it exceeded all of my expectations. There's a few buzz-worthy scenes that will dominate all the discussion about the movie, and rightfully so, but this is a very full, a very complete, and a very funny movie. It's the kind of movie that you do or don't like on a gut level. There's going to be plenty of people who will watch 2 minutes of this and it just won't work for them (I'm reminded a lot of Team America in that way). For anyone who thinks this kind of movie could work for them though, I highly recommend it.

Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: A.C.O.D.

The Pitch: A man copes with newly discovered issues caused by his parents' divorce when he was a kid.

How I Came Into It: It's hard to surprise me with a movie starring Adam Scott, Amy Poehler, Catherine O'Hara, Richard Jenkins, Clark Duke, Jane Lynch, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead with Adam Pally and Jessica Alba in small roles. I'm going to know about that one early. It was only a matter of when it would be available.

Why I Saw It: Adam Scott is an underutilized lead. He's ideal in that he can play the straight man and still get laughs. That's why Jason Bateman always has jobs lined up. Scott needs more of them too. There's a lot of old pros in this movie all playing up to expectations. I like how some of the smaller characters, Poehler and Ken Howard - the step-parents- got the biggest moments. I'm assuming the ending was meant to be unclear about who is getting married, in which case, good call.

Why I Wish I Hadn't: It's damn near a formula by now: If you take a bunch of TV all stars and seasoned character actors, add an inexperienced director, given no more that a couple million dollars for a budget, and  - voila, you get a movie that isn't funny enough to be a comedy or dramatic enough to be a drama, that's pretty easy to watch. Not every movie has to be memorable.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Chi-Raq

The Pitch: Lysistrata in Chicago

How I Came Into It: I keep watching Spike Lee movies because I want to like more of them. He's definitely an influential director and absolutely a unique voice in film. Now that I'm looking at his filmography, I'm realizing this guy is damn near Woody Allen-level prolific. He works a lot.

Why I Saw It: Chi-Raq isn't remotely subtle. Subtlety, I've learned, is not Spike Lee's style. I love his commitment to this. Just about about the whole thing is written in verse. Who does that?! He follows through on all the big ideas he present in and has some pointed commentary on society (again, no surprise there). He gets great performances out of frequent collaborators like Wesley Snipe and Samuel L. Jackson (having a fantastic time as the narrator) and first-timers like Teyonah Parris (who dominates this movie) and Nick Cannon.

Why I Wish I Hadn't: I got a little exhausted watching this. Was that just me? That's my problem with a lot of Spike Lee movies. He doesn't stop when he makes his point. He has to make sure even the back rows get it. He and Tarantino both get so caught up in how much fun they're having that they end up isolating anyone not quite on their same frequency.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Gone with the Wind

The Pitch: A civil war epic as a way into a doomed romance tale.

How I Came Into It: Technically speaking, this is the biggest movie of all time. I don't know how exactly they get those figures, but I do think it's unfair to compare box office returns more than 20 (if that) years apart from one another. The landscape has changed so much*. This is the ultimate "event movie" and required viewing, given my Club 50 mentality. I will admit, I went into this looking for it to prove itself.

*GwtW was in theaters for years with many re-releases. Star Wars came out in a time when movies regularly expanded theater counts and maintained steady profits. Super recent movies like The Force Awakens, battling piracy, get huge openings and trail off fast. Comparing how all this performed in the box office is pointless.

Why I Saw It: Vivian Leigh. Wow. She's good. Clark Gable is solid too. I especially loved his joy over being a father. That poor sap really loves Scarlett. But Leigh is the takeaway from this film. She's just tremendous. I hate her and I love her. I can't see the movie working without her.
I'm torn about the two parts of the movie. The first part is the epic. That's what has the burning of Atlanta and most of the excitement. The second part is when Scarlett becomes awesome, although there's less of a driving force keeping it going for a solid two hours.

Why I Wish I Hadn't: I wonder what an auter-driven version of Gone with the Wind would look like. As is, it's a production-driven achievement. Production began before a script was even settled on and the movie went through three directors. All that shows. Gone with the Wind feels like a big movie. That's about it. There is no reason for the four hour length. An hour of circuitous dialogue and redundant scenes could be cut out without breaking a sweat. The pacing is deeply flawed and apparently stuck far too closely to the book.

Oh, and of course, a lot of the racial stuff hasn't aged well at all, but I was hardly surprised by that.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Paper Towns

The Pitch: A manic pixie dream girl scavenger hunt.

How I Came Into It: My only experience with John Green before this was the film adaptation of The Fault in Our Stars, which gave me a decent template for what to expect: teens, coming of age, some twists on expectations. Unfortunately, the only thing I remember about this movie being released is the morning TV show interview Cara Delevingne did that didn't go well at all.

Why I Saw It: It's impossible to not be sucked in at some level by this story. Nat Wolff is a textbook everyman. If you can't relate to him in some way then you must've not been awake from the age of 14 to 18. It's easy to see how Delevingne could be his dream girl. For someone fairly new to acting (I don't remember her in Anna Karenina, which is her primary credit before this), Delevinge is very good. In fact, the movie's hindered by not having more of her. The chemistry of the road trip group is natural. They play off each other well, even when the script doesn't make it easy to do so. The conversation at the end when Quentin finally finds Margo damn near forgives any of the contrivances leading up to it.

Why I Wish I Hadn't: I can't totally place it, but there's no way that this passes the One Big Leap test. There's just too much about this that doesn't feel right. Margo, the myth, simply can't exist. That's the point of the movie. Even the real person Margo is hard to believe though. She's too many things. I don't get how someone that worldly and alternative is also part of a very traditional group of "cool kids". Would she really be dating a jock like that? Do I just not understand the dynamics of the cool cliques in high school? I like the idea of pointing out at the end that manic pixie dream girls don't actually exist, but I think she's either built up too much for the first 90 minutes or not broken down enough in the last ten for that message to work.

I don't know what to make of the structure of the movie. It's broken into three very distinct parts fairly equally: Quentin and Margo's night out, the aftermath of her disappearance, and the road trip. It makes the movie seem a lot longer than it really is. All three parts end up short-changed. I could see an entire movie made about each third. Trying to fit all three in only allowed room for the spine of each story. Quentin and Margo's epic night wasn't all that epic: a couple pranks and a slow dance. The search for clues was an album box and an atlas. The road trip was mostly without incident and rushed the development of characters for the sake of having more characters. It's a very strangely-paced film.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: All Good Things

The Pitch: There's this true story about this Robert Durst guy that is begging to be made into a movie.

How I Came Into It: The Jinx is phenomenal. If you have access to HBO I recommend seeing it as soon as you can. All Good Things is based pretty directly on the true story told in The Jinx. Andrew Jarecki made both. In fact, many of the interviews he collected while researching All Good Things went on to be used for The Jinx. These two projects are more linked than any non-franchises than I can think of.

Why I Saw It: Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst are the highlights of the movie. Gosling really embraces the non-"pretty boy" roles like this. Knowing Durst as I do now, Gosling does a solid job recreating his mannerisms. The talking to himself is especially interesting given how The Jinx ends.

Why I Wish I Hadn't: All Good Things is a tough movie to make. I remember reviews of The Jinx saying that if Robert Durst wasn't a real person, you wouldn't believe he exists. That makes his story, especially a fictional adaptation of it (Gosling played a man named David Marks, not Robert Durst, after all), difficult to tell. And, if you haven't figured this out by now, The Jinx is so damn good that it has rendered Jarecki's earlier effort redundant.

So, what I'm trying to say is this. If you haven't seen this and don't know the story, don't bother watching All Good Things, find a few more spare hours somewhere, and watch The Jinx instead.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend

Movie Reaction: Suicide Squad

Formula: (Guardians of the Galaxy * Deadpool) / Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice

It sure is hard to be surprised by something like Suicide Squad. It's a major D.C. superhero movie and those don't take anyone by surprise. Every bit of casting and production news is reported. People lose their minds over talk of reshoots. Trailers and stills from the set are dissected like the Zapruder film. Think pieces are written about character representations before anyone has even seen it. And, right now, the D.C. modus operandi is "while this movie may be disappointing, the next one will be great". After Man of Steel underwhelmed, Batman v. Superman was going to fix all woes. When BvS cracked under the pressure of too many big names, it was the misfits of Suicide Squad who would have the freedom to make the most out of that cinematic universe. It's a promise of delayed gratification that puts a lot of pressure on the next movie. It's impossible for any movie to succeed under that kind of microscope stuck in that kind of hype machine.

So, no, Suicide Squad didn't blow me away. It couldn't. And that's fine.

The idea is simple enough. After Superman's powers scare the bejeezus out of everyone, a high ranking government agent, Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), assembles a group of bad guy metahumans (aka Supervillains) as a contingency plan for when problems get too difficult for regular people to handle. The film introduces the Squad through a series of voice-over flashbacks followed by checking in on their current incarceration.

• Deadshot (Will Smith), a hit man who never misses and only cares his daughter he never gets to see.
• Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), a former psychiatrist who went insane after falling for the Joker (Jared Leto) while he was in Arkham Asylum.
• Boomerang (Jai Courtney), a jewel theif who, uh, throws things really well.
• Diablo (Jay Hernandez), a reformed gang member who is a human torch.
• Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), a man/crocodile creature.

They are led by a special ops solider, Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman). Flag's girlfriend is a cursed metahuman called the Enchantress (Cara Delevigne). Well, one day, the Enchantress goes crazy and the Suicide Squad is assembled for the first time to stop her. They have to learn to work as a team despite not being teammate material. Oh, and this whole time, the Joker is trying like hell to reunite with Harley Quinn. The basic structure is one that you've seen dozens of times (Team assembles and races toward a thing that's going to destroy the world). The details of the story are gibberish (Something about Enchantress building a machine to destroy humans because humans used to pray to her but now pray to machines). If you want to get bogged down in the story, it's easy to hate the movie. It's full of plot holes, cheesy moments, lack of payoff, and unearned sentimentality. It's not a great movie and I won't pretend it is.

They sure cast well though.

Two movies keep coming to mind when I think about Suicide Squad. One is Deadpool. Had Deadpool already made $363 million when Suicide Squad was in pre-production, you better believe this would've had an R-release. Given the characters and the overall aesthetic, there's probably a better movie in here if it was able to lean in to all the anarchy and nastiness for an R-rating. Instead, it's Guardians of the Galaxy that comes more to mind. That was another motley crew of renegades with characters only known to the comic book die-hards. The story in that movie was beside the point. The characters made that movie and the same is true of Suicide Squad. Will Smith is Will Smith. I love Will Smith, so I liked Deadshot a lot. He and Harley Quinn are definitely the leads of the group. Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn is worth all the build up. She the breakout character of the movie, which should be a surprise to no one. She really sinks her teeth into that role. There's a great mix of malice and innocence to the character. She either doesn't care or doesn't know any better and the movie isn't interested in clarifying which it is. Diablo is the next most built up character and Jay Hernandez makes the best impression of any of the actors I didn't already know well. Viola Davis nails her role. In a movie full of villains, Davis as Amanda Waller is the biggest badass of them all. She may have the most long term usefulness in the DCU of anyone from the movie. Jared Leto's Joker is memorable and different than any other depiction of the character. He needs more time to be fleshed out, but what I saw looked good. That's an issue with most of the cast actually. The cast is too big to give everyone a proper arc. That would bother me more if this was meant as a stand-alone, but it looks like there will be plenty of opportunities to focus on the Killer Crocs and Boomerangs of the world later.

Another reason I bring up Guardians is the music. Suicide Squad has a lot of musical cues and I don't know whether I liked that or not. The songs, anything from Queen to Eminem, all fit the moments they were selected for. They didn't really fit together though. The best theme I could determine was "the most obvious choice"*. It's not a big part of the movie, but you'd think that if someone was that interested in using music that much, they would be interested in curating it a little more consistently. This is a pretty small point in the scheme of things though. I just noticed it, then couldn't stop noticing it.

*It is worth giving them credit for not using Don't Stop Believin' earnestly or ironically.

Is Suicide Squad "26% on Rotten Tomatoes" bad? No. Is it being severely underrated by the critical community? No. Is it an entertaining enough 2 hours that establishes characters that I'd happily see more of? Absolutely.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Some Like It Hot

The Pitch: Two men escape the mob by pretending to be women.

How I Came Into It: Lately, I've been working through a lot of movies that are considered "the best". AFI chose this as the top Comedy movie in American Cinema. It was among the first 25 films added to the National Film Registry (before movies like Fantasia and The Godfather). Short of maybe Citizen Kane, my expectations couldn't've been higher.

Why I Saw It: As with comedy more than drama, context matters. Many of the jokes don't land as powerfully these days because comedy is about surprise. Something this well known has been done and redone and referenced and complicated and reconfigured a million ways by now. And this is farce, which almost demands suspension of disbelief. That said, it's hard to pick at much in this movie. Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon make a great duo (It's no surprise that they went on to work together many times after this). Marilyn Monroe wasn't an exceptional actress, but she certainly plays to all her strengths here. I was surprised how many jokes the movie got away with. It is so heavy on innuendo that I didn't think was allowed back then. As it turns out, this film's success was one of the major blows that brought down the Hays code. That cements its significance.
Simply put, I liked this for its levity and direction of the well-crafted screenplay.

Why I Wish I Hadn't: I'm not as big of a fan of this brand of comedy. I end up spending too much time trying to poke holes in the mechanics of the farce, even if there end up being none.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend