Delayed Reaction: Dawn Patrol

The Pitch: Point Break should've been darker and edgier.

A surfer gets revenge after the murder of his brother.

I like to go off book sometimes. I have a pretty intricate list of movies that I work off. It's a mix of recommendations from friends or podcasts, online lists of classic movies, directors I admire, and a bunch of other considerations. I'm pretty pleased with the selection of movies I end up watching. I do like to pick something completely random on occasion on the off chance that I'll discover some hidden gem. It normally doesn't work out. Dawn Patrol was one of this random picks. The most I can point to for why I picked it is that it has Kim Matula in it. She was pretty forgettable in a bad season of UnREAL, but I liked her on LA to Vegas. She doesn't have a long filmography outside of her 900 episodes of The Bold and the Beautiful, so seeing her in something else had me a little curious. That's about all I can point to though. A totally earnest Scott Eastwood certainly wasn't a selling point. Rita Wilson hasn't been given a good film role in years.

Dawn Patrol is really bad. I think if you are a fan of this kind of brooding revenge drama with pretty people, it's harmless enough. Otherwise, it's bad. Scott Eastwood is at his best when he's in on the joke, winking at the camera either directly or indirectly. He can't play it straight in a movie that's playing everything straight too. All the older actors in the film have the hesitation of someone who doesn't trust the director with a committed performance. Like, if Rita Wilson gave her role 110%, one of her scenes could've been turned into another "crying Dawson" meme. She holds back because the movie isn't good enough to risk it. The less I say about Kim Matula the better. She's given a generic sex-bomb role. I mean, she looks good in a bathing suit, but there's not much more to the role beyond looking attractive and a few melodramatic lines. No one came out of this looking better.

I mentally checked out of this pretty early, so it's hard for me to pull out specific things about the movie to talk about. If you like people talking about surfing as a metaphor for life, then you're in luck. Most of the movie is told in flashbacks. In the film's present, Eastwood is some kind of soldier telling a Muslim woman his story. I'll be honest, I wasn't paying attention at all by the time they explain all that. He joins the army to get away from the drama in his home life. It was pretty dumb.

Verdict (?): Strongly Don't Recommend

Movie Reaction: Hearts Beat Loud

Formula: That Thing You Do / Say Anything

The more movies I see, the more I've had to shift what I'm looking for in movies. I can't go in expecting to be surprised every time. Not every movie can be a revelation.  Increasingly, I'm looking to execution or how well a film hits an emotional beat to determine how good a movie is. No need to reinvent the wheel. Just inspect it to make sure that it's perfectly round, made out of good material, and is thematically rich with a well-structured screenplay. OK, the metaphor fell apart with that last one, but you get the point.

Hearts Beat Loud is nothing I haven't seen before. Maybe I have see this exact combination of pieces, but I recognize all the individual parts. It's the story of Frank (Nick Offerman) and his daughter, Sam (Kiersey Clemons). Frank owns a dying record shop in New York City. His wife died years ago. And, it's the summer before Sam goes off to college across the country. Frank is not looking forward to what his future holds without her around, so when a song that he and Sam record gets a modicum of attention on Spotify, he uses that as a last attempt to stay close with her. So yeah, it's about as Sundance as it gets. It's a small cast - just Offerman, Clemons, Toni Collette, Sasha Lane, Ted Danson, and Blythe Danner. Frank is able to keep a record shop open that didn't even open until 2001. Sam has a coming of age story. Her first love is with a "starving artist". Frank's best friend owns the local bar. This is about a group of people who, in my experience, only exist in little indie movies. It reminds me of a Mindy Kaling joke about RomComs that have a character who runs an art gallery (How many people really run art galleries anymore?).

The trailer of the film is a nice misdirect. It paints the movie about being about the father/daughter band with a sleeper hit song. That's certainly an element of the film, but it doesn't turn into That Thing You Do! It's always about that central relationship and how it's inevitably going to change. Frank doesn't know how to let go, and Sam has to grow up. Knowing that, the direction things go are appropriate and satisfying.

Offerman and Clemons are sweet together. Post-Parks & Rec, it's been fun separating Offerman from the Ron Swanson character. He's much goofier in this than as Ron. Frank is a dreamer. Offerman still has that excellent deadpan though and that amazing, giddy laugh. Seriously, if that laugh doesn't bring a smile to your face, something is wrong with you. I should have more opinions about Clemons than I currently do. Since Dope in 2015, I've seen her in a lot of shows and movies. She's always good, but I haven't nailed down what makes her tick yet. For now, the appeal is the simple fact that I always believe her. Despite playing a bartender, Ted Danson is much more like his character in Bored to Death than Sam Malone. I like that he's at the point in his life where he knows he has nothing to prove. I like a relaxed Ted Danson, happy with roles no matter what their size. Sasha Lane plays off Clemons well. I'm not particularly fond of her as an actress yet, but this is a nice first step. It's equally nice to see Toni Collette not running around terrified. After Hereditary, this is a good reminder that she can give a charming, small performance too. The weakest part of the cast is Blythe Danner, only because the story with her as Frank's mother is completely tacked on. She's just one more complication in his life. I can't think of a single necessary scene with her.

The original music written for the movie (including the song used as the title of the movie) hits the right note. The songs are good enough that I was tapping my foot along with them but still rough enough that I could believe they came from a father and daughter recording for a couple days in an apartment with decent equipment.

Hearts Beat Loud starts a little rough. It introduces at lot of indie movie cliches and is a little clunky in how it introduces the individual pieces (for example, there's the obligatory scene where we see that Frank is a pretty awful owner of a store and has horrible customer service). Once it sets the foreground though, I was all in. By the time is gets to their climactic performance (because of course that's where it's all leading to) I was rooting them on.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

After the Credits

I'm a little split about the Jeff Tweedy cameo. You see, his cameo is an awkward scene that adds nothing to the story. It's a little funny if you know who he is (which I only 40% did). Otherwise, it's so clunky that my first thought was "that must be a famous musician they got to do a cameo". But, I do appreciate that they don't go overboard with it. They don't go out of their way to point out who he is and why the cameo is cool. You either know who it is or you don't. I'm fine with that, I guess.

Delayed Reaction: Kicking & Screaming

The Pitch: Reality Bites but more meandering.

A bunch of recent college graduates have no idea what to do next with their lives.

I remember what it was like to be a middle class, white, somewhat elitist recent college graduate with no direction, so I related to Kicking & Screaming well. This movie isn't for everyone, and it's fair to malign it for its specific and privileged point of view. With that understanding, I quite enjoyed it. This group of guys reminded me a lot of my friends, especially my college friends. We were pretty insular and tight-knit too. We had a lot of pointless conversations that we thought we profound at the time. My favorite detail of the movie was how often other people told them "You guys all talk alike". That sums up the whole movie. I graduated from college about a decade and a half later than Noah Baumbach but I recognized enough of this to appreciate it. I'm certain that if I graduated from college  in the mid-90s and saw it then, this would be one of my favorite films.

There's a lot of shades of Noah Baumbach. I'm not crazy about his writing collaborations with Wes Anderson (The Life Aquatic, Fantastic Mr. Fox). The Squid and the Whale grated against me. I've enjoyed his collaborations with Ben Stiller (Greenberg, The Meyerowitz Stories). He's best when he works with Greta Gerwig (Frances Ha, Mistress America), because, honestly, who can hate Greta Gerwig? Kicking & Screaming is easily identifiable as his debut film. It's undeniably myopic. Watching it is kind of like when a stand-up comedian is more concerned with making the other comedians laugh than the audience. The movie is directed right at the kind of faux-intellectuals who would blog about their thoughts on movies they watch. Think about it: if this movie was made in 2015, how many of those guys in the movie would've had a blog? The fact that no one used the word "zine" in this is kind of astonishing.

I'm hedging too much, I think. Kicking & Screaming has a lot of problems and a limited audience. I liked it though. Parker Posey, even in small doses is always nice. Chris Eigeman has never used his specific brand of pretentiousness better*. Carlos Jacott has some nice running gags. There's worse ways to spend 90  minutes.

*Granted, I still haven't seen Metropolitan.

Oh, and that mid-90s Lionsgate Film logo in the credits was bitchin'.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Interrupters

The Pitch: There are people whose jobs are to step in the middle of gang violence to bring about a peaceful resolution...not cops, just people.

A year in Chicago spent following the people working for the Violence Interrupters program.

This is one of those documentaries in which the concept is arguably more interesting than the film itself. There's a program in Chicago where volunteers go to the most violent parts of the city and try to stop violence from happening as it's about to happen. Knowing that such a program existed was the most interesting thing about the movie. I mean, it's a Steve James film. Give him some time in this setting and he can make Hoops Dreams, so The Interrupters has some good stuff. The different interrupters have eclectic backgrounds and interesting stories. James lets the footage dictate the story, so it does have some lulls. I certainly appreciated what the movie was doing.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend