February Movie Preview

[Note: It looks like I wrote this then forgot to post it. I know it has no use now, but I feel like posting it anyway]

It looks like the strategy of this February is aiming for the kids. The biggest movies of the month are geared toward families with two major animated sequels and a long awaited SciFi Robert Rodriguez/James Cameron production. There are still a few releases targeting to Valentine's Day crowd, but everyone is too cool to go straight romance. If anything, counter-programming for Valentine's Day is driving a lot of the decision. I'll have to check back on this a year from now to figure out if it's a trend or a phase.

Seeking Out

The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part (Feb 8)
There's a new threat to the LEGO universe and somehow, Emmet is called upon to be the hero again.
Working For It: The LEGO Movie was blissful anarchy that I didn't see coming. It cemented Phil Lord and Chris Miller as comedy voices at the highest level and the movie assembled a stellar voice cast. I expect the same from the sequel, even if it will lack the surprise factor. What's really exciting is that the screenplay still has Lord & Miller and it has Raphael Bob-Waksberg, the man behind BoJack Horseman. Everything IS awesome.
Working Against It: Losing Lord & Miller as directors and replacing them with relative journeyman director Mike Mitchell is a downgrade. I'm not sure how much it will really matter though.

How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (Feb 22)
Hiccup and Toothless find another Night Fury which leads to discovering a hidden dragon world.
Working For It: This is the gem of Dreamworks Animation's catalog. I'm not sure what I need to say about this. The same great voice cast is back. The same writer and director. The animation still looks great.
Working Against It: What's going on with Dreamworks Animation? They took 2018 entirely off. In fact, they haven't released a movie since Captain Underpants back in June 2017. And this seems like a weird place on the calendar to release this movie. I would've thought this would be more of an event movie than something put out the same weekend as the Oscars. The whole year is in play these days, so I guess it doesn't really matter.

Alita: Battle Angel (Feb 14)
A young woman/robot finds her purpose in a future world. That purpose appears to be "to kick ass".
Working For It: I won't say I'm excited for this movie, per se. In my own parlance, this is a Long Ranger Rule movie. I've seen advertising for it for too long. It's got an interesting cast. There's Rosa Salazar in the lead role. Lana Condor (To All the Boys I've Loved Before) and Jorge Lendebrog Jr. (Love, Simon) too. Oscar winners like Mahershala Ali, Jennifer Connelly, and Christoph Waltz are peppered in. Robert Rodriguez is a director known for taking big swings and this has a lot of backing from producer James Cameron. That makes this one of the bigger curiosities on early 2019.
Working Against It: The movie has been delayed once or twice already. The title was changed (Alita to Alita: Battle Angel). This sure looks like it's getting the Jupiter Ascending treatment.

Fighting with My Family [Limited] (Feb 14)
A young British woman trains to become a WWE wrestler.
Working For It: My god, I have so many mixed feelings about this. Florence Pugh has quickly become my latest British obsession. I used to be a huge WWE fan and I still have some fond memories of all that, even though I haven't followed it for about 2 decades now. While I hated The Rock in his wrestling days, I love him now. This is written and directed by Stephen Merchant, who co-created the British The Office. And it's premiering at Sundance. I kind of want this to be my favorite movie, even though I have haunting flashbacks of Ready to Rumble.
Working Against It: This really looks like it's trying to be about a dozen different kinds of movies. With Nick Frost, I'm reminded of Edgar Wright's comedies. Pugh tends to be associated with more dramatic roles. It could just be fan service to WWE fans (It is produced by the WWE, after all). It could be too winky. It could be too earnest. There's a lot of ways this can go and I don't know which is the most likely.

Still Waiting:
Destroyer (December Preview)
Cold War (December Preview)

Undecided

Miss Bala (Feb 1)
After her friend is taken by a drug cartel, a woman works to infiltrate the cartel and take it down.
Working For It: I am all for Gina Rodriguez becoming a star. While I haven't seen her in Jane the Virgin, whenever she pops up in something (Deepwater Horizon, Annihilation), I like her.
Working Against It: I'm not sure I buy Gina Rodriguez in this role. I can buy her in a gritty movie. I can buy her as a badass in a lighter movie. I'm not sure she can be a badass in a gritty movie. I'm not there yet. And, Catherine Hardwicke as a director has been on a pretty steady decline since her debut film (Thirteen) back in 2003. There's kind of a B-movie feel to the trailer that I don't think is intended. It looks a lot like Peppermint: that Jennifer Garner revenge movie last year.

Cold Pursuit (Feb 8)
A snow plow driver gets revenge on the people he holds responsible for his son's death.
Working For It: Liam Nesson movies are self-parodies at this point, and they know it. They must. Look, Liam Nesson is reliable using his "special set of skills". I'm a fan of Emmy Rossum showing up in anything. Laura Dern too. If the movie is going to be silly, then at least it's owning it.
Working Against It: There is a reason I stopped seeing these Liam Nesson action movies. They are pretty lazy. I'm not sure any amount of winking at the camera can make up for that.

Arctic (Feb 1)
A man tries to keep himself and an injured woman, the only other survior, alive after a plane crash in the Arctic circle.
Working For It: The man vs. nature thing can be entertaining. I like Mads Mikkelsen and the idea that this will be a movie, I imagine, that won't rely much on dialogue to drive things.
Working Against It: The last thing I want to watch in the middle of winter is a movie about a guy trying not to freeze to death.

The Prodigy (Feb 8)
A mother with a genius young son realizes there may be something supernaturally wrong with him.
Working For It: I do have have built up goodwill for Taylor Schilling from years of Orange is the New Black, and "creepy horror kid" is an easy sell. Oh, and it's nice to see it get the R-rating.
Working Against It: Horror is tough to gauge in a trailer. The writer and director are both new to me. They aren't new to filmmaking. They have a number of credits. Just new to me. I get suspicious of horror from people I haven't heard of yet.

Everybody Knows [Limited] (Feb 8)
A woman's daughter goes missing and she starts to suspect that everyone around her knows something more than they let on.
Working For It: It screened at the Cannes Film Festival, stars Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem, and comes from the writer/director of two Best Foreign Film Oscar winners (The Salesman, A Separation). The credentials are unassailable.
Working Against It: Cannes was 9 months ago. And it was at the Toronto Film Festival too 5 months ago. Why haven't I heard anything about it? This concerns me.

Under the Eiffel Tower [Limited] (Feb 8)
A pathetic man having a mid-life crisis goes on a trip to France and maybe finds meaning.
Working For It: This has a weird combination of supporting character from Veep and Casual like Matt Walsh, Reid Scott, Michaela Watkins, Dylan Gelula, and Gary Cole. I like all those people. The director hails from my hometown, so maybe I should support that.
Working Against It: This looks like a less restrained Sideways. As much as I like Matt Walsh, I'm not that interested in a movie about how he got his groove back. 

What Men Want (Feb 8)
A business woman gets the ability to hear what men are thinking.
Working For It: Tarajih P. Henson is as well equipped for this premise as Mel Gibson was 18 years ago. The idea is an easy one for humor. I think it would be hard to make a version of this that's awful.
Working Against It: Simply put, the jokes in the trailer didn't work well enough for me.

Isn't It Romantic (Feb 13)
A woman who hate RomComs finds out that she's living in one, much to her dismay.
Working For It: I like Rebel Wilson, more in supporting roles than as a lead so far, but with the right role, I'm open to changing that opinion. I'm intrigued by people like Liam Hemsworth and Priyanka Chopra trying to be earnestly silly. And there's plenty about RomComs to make fun of.
Working Against It: Kind of like I Feel Pretty last year, this sure feels like one joke trying to be expanded into an entire movie. And I suspect this is also going to try to have its cake and eat it to: become a RomCom while making fun of them.

Avoiding

Total Dhamaal (Feb 22)
The third installment of what looks like a wild series. This is a take on Cannonball Run or Rat Race. That really isn't my kind of humor, especially if I don't know the actors already. And there's a lot of bad CGI in this. It is notable anytime an Indian movie gets a wide release in the states. That only happen a few times a year, so I wouldn't be surprised to see really good per theater averages opening weekend. 
Happy Death Day 2U (Feb 13)
The same girl gets stuck in a killer loop again. I never saw the first movie. Even assuming that I get around to that one and I like it, I'm not sure I need another helping of the same thing.

Ruben Brandt, Collector [Limited] (Feb 15)
An animated movie about a psychotherapist who gets patients of his to steal famous paintings that have been haunting him. I don't like the animation style and there's something about it I find hard to take seriously.

Sorry Angel [Limited] (Feb 15)
A foreign film about a writer and a student who fall for each other...at least, I think. I could only find a non-subtitled trailer. Nothing really jumps about about the movie.

This One's For the Ladies [Limited] (Feb 15)
This documentary about the black exotic dancing community isn't quite my cup of tea. Maybe it's OK.

Birds of Passage [Limited] (Feb 13)
A trippy South American drug epic that looks intense, but not really different enough from other cartel movies to hold my attention.

Run the Race [Limited] (Feb 22)
Two All-American brothers work toward getting scholarships so they can leave their dead-end town. And maybe they find God along the way. This movie reminds me why FNL is so special. Making this kind of family sports drama is hard to get right.

Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga [Limited] (Feb 1)
I could only find a trailer for this Indian romance without subtitles so...I don't know. It looks sweet, I support. A little dull for what I'm used to seeing from Indian cinema

Delayed Reaction: Roger Dodger

The Pitch: Jesse Eisenberg, years before The Social Network or even The Squid and the Whale.

A fast-talking Lothario shows his nephew around New York City in search of sex.

This is another movie I know about because of Filmspotting that wasn't served well by the build up. The Filmspotting guys in the early days of the podcast praised this movie constantly. To keep up with my slow listen-through from episode 1, I really needed to check this movie out.

On the surface, this looks like a movie I'd like. I'm a fan of conversation movies like the Before Series or Top Five: movies that are almost entirely a couple people talking, normally over a single night. Roger (Campbell Scott) has some interesting things to say. In my notes, I called him "the guy at the party who is fascinating for the first hour and insufferable for the rest of it". I appreciate that the goal of that character is to make a guy say repugnant things in a way that's still likable. He's like listening to a Bill Burr comedy set. Jesse Eisenberg is a great scene partner for Scott, because Eisenberg always looks like his figuring something out; like he's making a decision before he ever decides to say something. The movie is in top form when Jennifer Beals and Elizabeth Berkley show up. The scenes with them perfectly encapsulate why Roger is able to bed so many women and why he's pathetic and alone.

I didn't care for the movie though. Roger is too detestable for my taste. While the movie doesn't exactly champion Roger, it gives him more of a pass for his behavior than something  made today would. His salvation comes too late and too completely. When he's giving the boys advice at the end of the movie, I was grimacing, because I kept expecting it to turn badly. I don't think that's how I was supposed to see it. And the very final moment I didn't see as a victorious moment.

I appreciated the direction more than I liked it. In theory, I like that Dylan Kidd never lets the audience forget how busy the streets are or how crowded the bars are, but it was distracting. I would've appreciated if the direction was a little more invisible in this and if he let the performances and screenplay stay the focus of the movie.

Also, I despised the score. Despised it. It was noisy and bad. I don't have the vocabulary to describe music, so I'll just stick with "it hurt my ears".

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend

Movie Reaction: Us

Formula: (The Purge * Invasion of the Body Snatchers) ^ Get Out

After a debut as wildly successful as Get Out, Jordan Peele's sophomore effort was all but guaranteed to be a let down. Even if it was a better more, it would be a disappointment. Get Out is a unicorn. It's a horror comedy* that got legitimate Oscar love. That does not happen. Ever. It will be hard to top that. You only get one chance to make a first impression. Once people know your work, there are only two ways to get the same kind of love that you did for the breakthrough film: 1) do something wildly different. 2) do the same thing for a long time at a high level. Well, Us is similar enough to Get Out that, despite being better in some ways, it won't be as wildly praised. And that's fine.

*I don't get why the fact that it's a comedy as much as anything else is seemingly getting wiped from the record. Respectable movies can be funny.

The trailers for Us are pretty-straightforward when it comes to the story. As a child, Adelaide (Lupita Nyong'o) has a traumatic experience on the Santa Cruz pier. Years later, she returns there with her family. The first night in their summer home, they are visited by a doppelgänger family, dressed in red, carrying scissors, who look just like them except creepier. That's as far as the trailers go, so that's where I should stop as well. Needless to say, this doppelgänger family hasn't come to borrow some sugar.

Us is straight horror this time. The laughs come only out of necessity to ease the tension. Where Get Out clearly came from a comedic mind trying to move into another genre, there's little direct evidence of Peele's comedic background in Us. And that's probably for the best. 'Horror comedy' is a tightrope with no margin for error. Pulling that off twice would be like hitting back to back grand slams: feasible, but no one needs that kind of pressure. I imagine Peele also didn't want falling back on comedy to be his crutch. He needed to make a movie like Us to grow as a filmmaker.

I'm not sure there's a filmmaker out there who understands the iconography of horror better than Jordan Peele. Get Out had the sunken place and the stirring of the tea cup. Us doubles down on the visuals. He makes bunnies scarier than anyone has since John B. Watson. If people dressed in red, holding scissors isn't a top costume for Halloween this year, I'll be stunned. The film is packed with striking images. Peele has an amazing eye for that. While Us isn't a comedy, I think it takes a comic's mind to make the film. Peele breaks down horror with a comic's eye. He does the same thing someone looking to parody the horror genre would do. Except, instead of pointing  the conventions out to undercut them and mine them for laughs, he uses that understanding to create efficiently creepy images. It doesn't even matter if they don't make a lot of sense.

Because, Us is not an easy movie to understand. I'm sure all the bunnies and Hands Across America stuff have clever deeper meanings that Jordan Peele could explain for hours. That doesn't mean the movie makes much sense in the moment. There's a lot about this movie that is driven by the idea "this would be scary". Why the red suits? Why the scissors? Why doesn't the doppelgänger Lupita Nyong'o talk like that? In most cases, the simple answer is "because it's scarier that way". Unlike Get Out, Us is not a movie I'm going to think about weeks later. It's more like La La Land:  full of color and captivating in the moment, but as soon as it's over, I have trouble remembering why I was so caught up in it at the time.

Lupita Nyong'o is an Oscar winner. This is bafflingly, her first major leading role despite 12 Years a Slave being six years ago. She is, to no one's surprise, great in both her roles. She's natural and believable as Adelaide and creepy and unnatural as her doppelgänger. She barely even registers as the same actress in the two roles. She makes the movie work as much as anything Jordan Peele does as writer/director/producer. The rest of the family (Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Evan Alex) are fine. They have their moments and look like they're having a lot of fun as the doppelgängers. Elisabeth Moss and Tim Heidecker are underutilized (OK, maybe just Moss). Or maybe they aren't needed at all. Still, I'll never turn down an opportunity to have more Elisabeth Moss in my life.

Us is far from perfect. The story is a little wacky. It has a lower pop culture permeation factor than Get Out. Still, Peele is even more in control of the tone. The photography is gorgeous and haunting. The performances are calibrated just right. I'm convinced that, while Get Out was a best case scenario, it certainly wasn't a fluke.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Elizabethtown

The Pitch: Cameron Crowe brings his talents to the country.

After failing in business in spectacular fashion, a man must return to Kentucky to pick up his dead father.

Elizabethtown has a special kind of infamy. The first reason for the infamy is local. I live in Louisville. Not many movies are shot in the Louisville area. People still bring up parts of Stripes being shot here. Tammy takes place in Louisville, but it's clear to anyone from Louisville that none of it was shot there. The last big movie I remember being filmed in Louisville was Elizabethtown - 13 years ago. C'mon, Kentucky. Let's give some tax breaks. When the movie came out, I felt required to watch it, just for the fun of recognizing locations. It's a feeling people from hubs like Los Angeles, New York, Vancouver, or Atlanta can't appreciate as much. In fact, my motivation to rewatch Elizabethtown was that I'd just watched Science Fair, which also partly took place in Louisville (and I couldn't remember why I didn't like the movie). Ultimately, I came away disappointed by the representation of the characters in the movie, but I also distanced myself by pointing out that Elizabethtown (the city) is not Louisville. So, how dare they make people from around here look that bad, but, they aren't really from this area anyway.

The other, larger infamy with Elizabethtown is that Nathan Rabin's review of the movie created the term "manic pixie dream girl" (MPDG, for short). I kind of hate the term, partly because I can't stop myself from using it. It's an irresistible combination of words. I get why it took hold. In case you don't know the term, MPDG refers to female characters in movies that exist with no backstory and are only there to bring wonder and whimsy into the male protagonist's life. It's a very smart observation. What annoys me about it is that people really lost track of why the term was created. MPDG is a knock on the writing, not the performance or the actress. Instead of using the term to criticize a filmmaker, people weaponized it against the actress. Let me use everyone's favorite MPDG punching bag to explain what I mean:

• Zooey Deschanel, the person, is not a MPDG.
• Zooey Deschanel in the movie Yes, Man, is playing a MPDG, but that alone doesn't mean she's bad in the movie. It only means the character is written poorly.
• Zooey Deschanel's character in (500) Days of Summer is not a MPDG. Joseph Gordon Lovett's interpretation of her often is a MPDG, but that's not quite the same. The whole movie is about the perception of a relationship. It's specifically meant to play on the MPDG trope.

That is the reason why I can hold the following two opinions: 1) I agree with all the criticism thrown at Elizabethtown about how Kirsten Dunst is the prototypical MPDG. 2) I think Dunst is charming and likable and injects life into a dull movie. She's the main part of the movie that worked for me. Orlando Bloom on his own is a drip. I never felt much of anything for him, and only part of that was because his American accent felt really unnatural. I think Crowe tries to round out the family members in Elizabethtown, but they start a little too stereotypical to recover from. Judy Greer, as Bloom's sister, exists only for grimaces and eye rolls. Susan Sarandon, as Bloom's mother, gets a good speech that was supposed to be a great speech when Crowe first imagined it. Frankly, every time Kirsten Dunst showed up on screen, I wanted to follow her and leave the rest of the movie behind. I wanted her to be more than this mystery girl who is immediately smitten with Orlando Bloom's mopey failed businessman.

I'm curious what Cameron Crowe's response to the MPDG claims are. I'm sure I could find an interview, but I'm lazy. Dunst isn't his first MPDG. A lot of people consider Kate Hudson's Penny Lane in Almost Famous to be a MPDG. I don't know that I agree with that, even if my reason is a cop out. Penny Lane cultivates her own mystery. She designs herself to be something close to a MPDG. If that's intentional, can she really be a MPDG? Besides, we do know what's going on in her head some of the time. If the rest of the movie around Dunst was better - if Bloom wasn't so deflated throughout, if the editing wasn't so scattered - would the MPDG label bother me less when applied to Elizabethtown? Probably not. Her character probably unfairly became an example of a trend. It's kind of like how one police shooting may not be any better or worse than another, but one ends up being the straw that broke the camel's back. The movie is bad enough to deserve it's awful legacy. The performance isn't.

So, the moral of this story is, when it comes to MPDGs, yell at the filmmakers, not the actresses (or actors in the case of the Manic Pixie Dream Boy). Also, more things should film in Louisville.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend