Delayed Reaction: The Bad News Bears (1976)

Premise: An alcoholic former Minor Leaguer coaches a rag tag youth baseball team.

 

I'm a simple man. I love swearing children and adults talking down to kids. That's what Bad News Bears delivers, so I really liked the movie. I can almost stop there.

 

Here's something that always sort of bothered me. I saw the 2005 Richard Linklater remake years ago and loved it. They made sure it was at least PG-13. Billy Bob Thornton didn't hold back hurling insults at the kids and being genuinely depraved. What's not to like? I remember that movie not getting great reviews though. Often people just complained that the original was better, which is just a cousin of saying "the book was better" about other movies. Now I've seen the original. Guess what? It's really good too. It was more original at the time. It has Tatum O'Neal as one of the kids, which immediately gives it more prestige. I guess you could criticize the remake for being a little too similar. Then again, the original has some aspects that haven't aged very well, so what's the harm in having a TV-friendly remake that's nearly identical? I'll give Walter Matthau the edge as the better Morris Buttermaker, although I like that Thornton's take is more openly abusive. Matthau treats the kids as a nuisance. Coming off Bad Santa, Thornton is openly hostile to the kids.

 

I guess what I'm saying is, watch either version. They're both enjoyable in their own way and hit the underdog sports story beats well.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Defending Your Life

Premise: After he dies, a man has a trial of sorts to determine if he can go to heaven or has to live another life on Earth.

 

I've seen a lot of depictions of the afterlife, and this one is probably my favorite. Part of that is a cheat. This movie only really covers phase 1 of its version of the afterlife. It stops before it has to explain the heaven equivalent. That said, as someone who loves going to Disney World far too much, a tram right to paradise sounds like a great start. It also manages to thread an important needle for me when thinking about "what's next". Since I don't actually believe in anything happening after death, I don't like being told that life is only a test. It suggests that trying to live a good life now has no meaning in the moment. But this film suggests that the way to be worthy of its heaven is to embrace life in a meaningful way. It's a clever calibration that I can tell Albert Brooks worked on to get right.

 

'Calibrated' really is the word that comes to mind as I think about this movie. It does a tremendous job of explaining only as much as it needs to. I understand the general concept of "defending your life". I get that the number of days is a sign of how difficult it will be. I understand that they are rating how much you let fear run your life. I don't know the exact technicalities, but I believe that everyone participating in them does. It's a lot like the feeling of starting a new job or going to college. I trust that the people in charge know what they are doing enough until I can understand it myself. There's a lot about this movie that still makes no sense to me, although I believe they make sense in the world of the movie, (even if Albert Brooks - who wrote and directed this as well - may not even know). Like, do they ever address why Meryl Streep thinks she knows Albert Brooks? If they do, I missed it, and I like not knowing better anyway.

 

As a comedy, this works more on a level of clever wordplay than gags and howlers. Often, Brooks talking to Streep plays like a guy who can't believe his dumb jokes are working. It's a lot of jokes that are funnier to describe to someone later than when they really happen in the movie. That said, I laughed out loud plenty at the series of misjudgments section. There needs to be more room in this world for 5-10 second comedy premises.

 

I'm a little torn about Meryl Streep in this movie. Not about if she's great. I think she's really wonderful in a more subordinate role. These days, she's either a lead or a big character in a supporting role (and sometimes both). It probably would've been a waste to give her more roles like Defending Your Life as opposed to the meatier stuff she did get, but she is undeniably lovely in this. Albert Brooks has the Woody Allen problem of not being able to disappear into a role very well. Especially when he wrote and directed this. His voice is all over it, so the most I can say is that Albert Brooks is a really good Albert Brooks in this.

 

I really can't point to any complaints about this movie. I'm curious to see how it ages with me. I could see it turning into one of my favorite movies or I could see it being one of those movies I really liked that I never get around to revisiting.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

Premise: Gordon Gekko's future son-in-law finds out why he earned that reputation in the 80s.

 

Oliver Stone isn't a filmmaker I get excited about. I haven't ever loved a movie of his. I like aspects of them (typically a performance like Tom Cruise in Born on the Fourth of July) and that's about it. What happens almost every time is that I get about 15 minutes into the movie and think "OK, I get it already", then I still have another 2 hours of underlining that same point. Like, Wall Street: Greed is bad. Born on the Fourth of July: the American dream is a lie. JFK: Institutions can't be trusted. Hell, I didn't even need to see W. to figure that one out. The only ones that this doesn't apply to are the ones that baffled me too much to get there. Alexander remains an odd decision that I can't figure out. I spent all of World Trade Center trying to figure out where his cynicism was.

 

Wall Street is a movie that always bothered me. On a movie fan level, I saw Gordon Gekko as more of a prominent supporting character, so Michael Keaton winning the Lead Actor Oscar never sat well with me. On a more personal level, I'm annoyed by Gekko becoming an icon of sorts for many of the wrong reasons. Simply put, he's a bad guy because he's breaking the law, not because he's greedy. It's essentially the difference between being competitive and cheating. In sports, it's the difference between stat chasers and rule breakers. I wish people would stop misidentifying what's bad about that character.

 

I can't say I ever independently asked myself "What would Gordon Gekko be up to now?" Still, when I heard that there'd be a sequel to Wall Street, that did prompt me to ask that very question. It turns out, the answer is that he got out of jail and plotted until he found the right opportunity. Sadly, a five-minute answer got made into a 2-hour movie.

 

I guess I didn't hate Money Never Sleeps. The cast is great. Michael Douglas is perfect as Gordon Gekko. It's just nice to see him on screen in the role. I miss that period when everyone was trying to turn Shia LeBeouf into the next big thing (even though he's not great in this). There's just a lot about this movie I found tedious. It annoyed me how obvious it was that Gekko was going to screw his future son-in-law over. It really doesn't make sense to me that Gekko's daughter hates her father so much but dates a younger version of him. And it's not like the movie is making a point by doing that. It just needs her to be dating LeBeouf to make the story work. Then there's the simple fact that I don't want Gordon Gekko to be softened. What makes him an interesting character is how monomaniacal he is. I don't want to see him as a man who cares about his daughter or unborn grandchild. Oddly, his nuance is in how one-sided he is.

 

I'll be honest though. My biggest frustration isn't really the movie's fault. I picked this movie because I was in a Carey Mulligan mood, and she was far too sidelined.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Three Caballeros

Premise: Donald Duck opens presents from his friends in Latin America that lead into assorted animated segments.

 

Why aren't there more movies like this? Especially kids’ movies. You see, kids are stupid. It's not their fault. Their brains aren't done figuring things out. But it means that kids are stupid. They have no attention span. That's why so many animated shows are broken into shorter segments. So why aren't more kids’ movies structured like six 10-15-minute-long segments that are loosely connected? Kids can start and stop them whenever from home. When the 5-year-old has to take a bathroom break in the middle of the movie in the theater, she won't be asking what she missed for the next hour, because it's moved onto something new after a few minutes. Before you scoff at the idea, I just want you to think about it for a minute. Is there really a good reason why we don't do it like this anymore?

 

Most of my Disney Animated feature blind spots are these package films. I hope they are all this lightweightly enjoyable. The Three Caballeros is short. It's got some decent segments. I've got the Three Caballeros song stuck in my head now. Sure. Aspects of the movie don't age that well. It's not exactly a nuanced take on Latin America. Donald Duck is not really a character that I was to spend this much time with.

 

Weirdly, the most fun I had with this movie was the Wikipedia section about contemporary reviews. Apparently, reviewers found this to be an assault on the senses. Many people were uncomfortable with how horny Donald Duck was. And to all that...ok, fair. I just can't imagine having to come up with a critical assessment of this. I mean, my attempt to do so here dedicated the first half to talking about how stupid kids are.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Trophy

Premise: A documentary about the realities of big game hunting.

 

I need to start this off by admitting something. I have no idea what the answer to this problem is. And neither does Trophy. That's what's nice and frustrating about this documentary. It brings up numerous problems. It attempts to point out inconsistencies all around. It makes passive judgments about several people (or makes it clear to the audience what their opinion is). It shows the solutions some people have come up with, then doesn't pretend to know what's right. I like when documentaries take a more passive look like this, but I'll admit that the lack of a real arc to the story was very unsatisfying. I generally avoid the documentaries of this ilk that say "here's why we're all screwed" then end. They aren't good for my mental health.

I realize that I have inconsistent views on this topic. I'm in the category of people who like meat but don't like to think about where it comes from. I don't hunt. It's not at all appealing to me. I don't like guns and I don't like killing things. That's on me. At the same time, there's also a hunting culture that concerns me. Some people are just a little too into it. Like, you can show me all the venison and talk survival skills all you want, but I'm pretty sure you just wanted to shoot something at some point.

 

Trophy isn't about deer though. It's about big game: the stuff most of us have only seen in zoos. I personally like the idea of a world with rhinos and lions. They seem like cool animals. I don't have a solution for how to keep them around though. It's easy for me to say that I want there to be more lions when they aren't killing my livestock. As the human population grows and expands, there isn't the same ecosystem for all these animals. At some point, we do have to create an excuse to keeps them around that's more than "it would be nice". That's where this stuff about harvesting and selling the rhino horns or paying to hunt big game comes from. If there's a legal market to harvest or kill, there will be people making sure they stay around. Otherwise, poachers will kill them all. That seems pretty logical to me. While Trophy does explain all this in some way, it then also asks why people would spend so much to hunt big game. It seems weird that people would pay tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for a chance to kill something. I can kind of understand the thrill of really tracking it for a week or two, but then you move into this boutique industry where people have a group of guides in a structured environment that allows them to kill in a day or two. Increasingly, the experience is the kill not the hunt. And it just seems odd to me that the argument is that this animal won't go extinct because there are some many people who want to kill one.

 

I think Trophy does a fine job arguing the complexity of this topic while not painting the hunters in a very favorable light. Overall, I think it's an effective movie, but I suspect that whether or not someone watches it will come down more to whether or not you can stomach dead animals, animals in pain, or animals getting shot. Like there's a scene with a rhino calf crying because its parent was shot and it nearly broke me.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: State of Play

Premise: A reporter investigates a conspiracy involving his Congressman friend.

 

It's odd for me to miss a movie like this. While I haven't seen every movie out there, my focus has largely been high profile modern American films, including Oscar bait. State of Play fits each part of that description. I truly don't know how it snuck by me. I often confuse it with Body of Lies, which I haven't seen either. Maybe in my brain I canceled them out somehow.

 

Anyway, State of Play came out in 2009. It's based on a 2003 BBC mini-series and it shows. This is a packed movie. It even plays like it's being told in chapters. Kevin MacDonald and company do a great job condensing it all down to a little over two hours, but it could use some time to breath. Had the series been adapted in 2019 not 2009, it very obviously would've been a mini-series that's just set in the U.S. rather than a film. Limited series have attracted almost everyone in that cast at this point anyway. It would hardly look like slumming it for TV. Also, by 2019, no one was making these mid-budget thrillers anymore. In 2009, this was already the last of a dying breed.

 

I really can't get over this cast. By my count, 8 people have had Oscar or Emmy nominations since this came out* with a 9th if you go back to include Russel Crowe's Oscar. It's crazy that they have Viola Davis, fresh off an Oscar nomination for Doubt, in a medical examiner role for a scene or two. I found out later that there was some reshuffling of the cast, and that makes sense. Russel Crowe has that hair, not as a choice, but because he was about to shoot Robin Hood and was called in at the last minute to replace Brad Pitt. Ben Affleck was replacing Ed Norton too. Crowe and Affleck don't really register as the same age. There's an 8-year difference that's exasperated by the fact that Crowe has always looked grizzled and Affleck is baby-faced. Everyone on an acting level is fine though in a procedural way.

 

*Affleck (Argo), McAdams (Spotlight), Mirren (The Last Station & Phil Spector), Wright (House of Cards), Daniels (The Newsroom and others), Viola Davis (too many to count), David Harbour (Stranger Things).

 

Other than the lazy complaint that I'm more interested to see the mini-series version of this story, I liked this movie plenty. I've seen too many thrillers to really be surprised by the movie (I knew the handful of different ways it could go without knowing exactly which one they'd choose), but sometimes it's nice to just go along with the beats. I love a newsroom movie that talks about how papers are dying yet has a protagonist who is gainfully employed without writing that much. It's also cute to remember the days when the online portion of the news site was treated as a joke. And a well-placed self-righteous comment about journalistic integrity leaves me swooning. It's was so refreshing to find a movie that felt like a movie on TNT in the early 2000s that's I'd lose an afternoon to.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Quick Reaction: Going My Way

I'm not really sure how I'll tie this one back to World War II like I've been doing for all the other Best Picture winners I've been watching. I suppose I could say that it was the kind of wholesome comfort entertainment that people were looking for in late 1944, when it seemed likely the Allied forces would win but not yet official. Instead, the thing to note about this movie is how odd it is now to see a major movie with a priest as the main character who is an all-around likable guy. The pendulum has swung far in the other direction since the early 2000s, where the only priests I see any more in shows or movies are pedophiles. Don't get me wrong, there's still a little something off about people going into priesthood, but it was a little nice to see one who wasn't a vile human being in a movie. This movie really is sickeningly wholesome in a way that just can't win Best Picture anymore. It's crazy to me that this swept the Oscars so completely that year with wins for Picture, Director, Screenplay and Story, Song, and Actor and Supporting Actor. The craziest thing is that Barry Fitzgerald was actually nominated for Supporting Actor and Lead Actor. That is the only instance of this ever happening and led to a rule change shortly after. I think it's sweet how boring the movie is. It has no business being over 2 hours long, but at least most of the extra time went to Bing Crosby singing.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Hell House LLC 2: The Abaddon Hotel

Premise: A group of reporters investigate the continued incidents occurring at the Abaddon Hotel.

 

Horror sequels are hard. A single horror movie is a closed circle. We're all familiar with campfire stories. They can work as fables or folklore. When the stories end on an ellipsis, the implication is that the continuation of the story could happen to you. "They never found him" means that you could find him. It's not as scary if I'm telling someone a scary story around the campfire and end it with "and next week I'll tell you about that time the psycho killer they never found who roams in these woods killed another group of campers". When someone make a sequel to a horror movie, that means there's a mythology now. It's no longer a random act. The mysterious stranger is part of a coven of witches. The man following you with the pick axe is a soul with unfinished business. Someone must complete the satanic ritual. All that explaining takes away from the scares. Because, you see, horror movies aren't real. As unlikely as it is that the crazed clown can go on a neighborhood killing spree all night, it's even more unlikely that he comes back and does it five more times.

 

I think Hell House LLC is as close to a perfect horror movie as I've seen in a long time. Great mystery. Excellent use of the found footage style. The actors are all very natural. There's just enough explanation about where the footage came from for it to feel plausible. The ending doesn't really explain that much. It hints at more while giving all the important details now. Coming back to this story for a sequel was going to be a letdown. They'd feel the need to deepen the mythology and make the investigation even more high profile. As expected, The Abaddon Hotel does just that. This time, the story is framed around a fake morning news program and a wannabe Vice reporting group. The story of what happened in the first movie continues to intrigue people and the authorities are still tight-lipped about what is going on there. In terms of new scares and all that, the movie doesn't offer that much. We already know the basic landscape of the hotel. While being abandoned is scary in its own way, it was going to be hard to match the creepiness of when it was set up as a functioning haunted house.

Really, the thing hurting The Abaddon Hotel is that found footage effectiveness is inversely proportional to how professional the footage looks. It's a lot easier to fake backyard footage than morning talk shows, paranormal detective shows, or Vice investigations. It's the uncanny valley of found footage. The more legitimate they make the source of the footage, the less believable it is. In fact, the best moments in this movie are some of the urban explorer YouTube videos they play throughout.

 

Also, I don't know how else to say it. The quality of the acting just wasn't where it needed to be. That ties back to the quality of the footage argument. It's a lot easier to make amateur actors believable when it's just a couple unsuspecting people playing around with a camera. The Abaddon Hotel has an extra layer of glossiness that exposes the performances more. So, while I think Jillian Geurts give a good performance in the movie, it always felt like an actress playing a character.

 

I'm being way too harsh on this movie because of how much I liked the first movie. The Abaddon Hotel still has a solid number of scares. Even just mining the material from the first movie yields a lot of results. They certainly find a lot to do with those mannequins in clown costumes. I am curious about the mythology they are building up. I wish they would've slow played it a little more. It took Paranormal Activity about 4 movies before they really overexplained things. The hotel itself is a wonderful location. All those thin hallways kept me on edge throughout. There's a third Hell House LLC movie out there I now want to see, because all they have to do is pull back a little bit to keep up the scares.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Better Watch Out

Premise: A babysitter is terrorized by the kid she is babysitting.

 

I love the inventiveness of horror. Because the genre has a lower acceptable quality threshold (i.e., technically bad or cheap filmmakers are embraced easier), filmmakers in the genre feel emboldened to try out every crazy idea they come up with. Even the worst horror movies have a pitch that would be great if they could pull it off. You're Next is an example of this working out well. The idea is simply "what if home invaders accidentally target a group with a woman in it who was trained for specifically this scenario?" That idea could go south fast, but it was executed well and ended up being a really fun movie. On the other end is something like The Collector. I strongly disliked that movie but the idea "what if someone goes to rob a house on the same night that another criminal has targeted the house and set up traps." is undeniably awesome if they can make it work.

 

I'll go ahead and say I didn't love Better Watch Out as much as I wanted to, but it's has an undeniably good pitch and twist. Going just off the trailer, this is a movie about a babysitter and the kids she's watching turning the tables on a home invader. Sort of a gory Home Alone. It turns out, there's another twist buried in the movie: the kids are actually the villains. I was already interested in the movie, then when it got to that reveal in the movie, I was stoked for what the next hour would look like.

 

However, at that point, I realized the core problem that the movie wasn't able to overcome: kids aren't that threatening. No matter how good he is at playing a sociopath, I'm just not intimidated by a 13-14 year old Levi Miller. And the movie isn't quite the comedy I expected. It's actually more about revealing the horror in what should be a funny premise. A kid as the threat is funny. The idea of them recreating Home Alone traps that are actually quite dangerous sounds like dark comedy gold. But the movie opts to play up the horror rather than the comedy. It just didn't work for me.

 

Enough bits and pieces work though that I still came away slightly favorable about the movie. Olivia DeJonge is a good final girl. I like that it's a stealth reunion of the kids from The Visit with DeJonge as the babysitter and Ed Oxenbould as Levi Miller's friend. It has some clever use of Christmas imagery. Like, it's not a new idea, but I love the visual of tying someone up with Christmas lights. Miller's masterplan turns out to be pretty clever overall. The way the very end plays out is pretty fun. The Christmas Horror Comedy genre is surprisingly crowded, but this is a nice addition to it, even if it doesn't quite measure up to its pitch.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Little Woods

Premise: In the final days of her probation, a woman gets pulled back into the drug selling and transporting that got her in trouble before in order to help her sister.

 

I enjoy a good Neo-Western. My lizard brain has a very narrow definition of a Western that says they can only take place in the Southwest U.S. from about 1860-1910 or so. They need Cowboys and/or Indians. There should be sheriffs, outlaws, and gunslingers with no name. You know the drill. It's a much wider genre than that though. There are Westerns set in other countries or other time periods. AFI sums it up well by describing the genre as being about the spirit, the struggle, and the demise of the new frontier. So, Neo or Contemporary Westerns end up being about people living on the fringe of society. Movies like No Country For Old Men, Hell or High Water, and Wind River. While I have no desire to live in these worlds, I think there is something comforting about being reminded that no matter where or when you are, it's still very possible to live an unplugged life. It didn't occur to me when I picked it, but Little Woods is definitely a Neo-Western, only it's set up in North Dakota. I like cold Westerns. There's a miserable quality to them. Like, the characters are barely tapped into society AND they have to wear a coat.

 

I obviously picked this movie because it had Tessa Thompson and Lily James. Thompson's career has been fun to follow, because even though she looks like Tessa Thompson, she seems to favor gruff or prickly characters, like she's showing up to the same casting calls as Karl Urban. Best of all, she totally works as those characters. I'm a Lily James fan too, even though I can't quite pin down what I like about her. She was a good Cinderella. She was appropriately effervescent as young Meryl Streep in the Mamma Mia sequel. She hit the right notes in Baby Driver, Darkest Hour, and Yesterday. I'm sure some part of why I like her is simply because I like seeing pretty people on screen. I wish I had a go-to performance of hers to point to though.

 

I wish more filmmakers would take a note from this movie with how they handled Thompson and James playing sisters. There's one quick line about Thompson being adopted and that's all I needed. I had no problem treating them as sisters for the rest of the movie and it wasn't at all distracting. I don't know if that was in the script already or if it was added to explain the casting. Either way, it totally works. I'd also like to extend the same logic to allowing characters to use their natural accents. Obviously, it wouldn't work in some movies. It wouldn't make sense for Lily James to have an English accent here, but many other movies could throw in one line like "I moved here from England" and eliminate the distraction of bad accent-work.

 

I should probably talk about the actual movie a little, right? I mostly liked it. I liked the dynamic between James and Thompson. They are both screw-ups but in different and complimentary ways. While, they are get involved in a lot of illegal activities, the movie actually hinges on their relationship. Writer/director Nia DaCosta could've built the climax around crossing the border from Canada back into the US. The stakes of that are plenty high with Thompson still on probation and James potentially losing her son. Instead, that part ends up being an afterthought. The emotional climax of the movie is actually their talk the night before when they come to terms with Thompson leaving for that job in Washington. The movie had plenty of criminal underworld stuff before that, so that was a nice shift at the end.

 

I do think the movie turns the screws a little too much overall. Each individual complication seems fine in a vacuum (still on probation, selling drug again, having to cut Luke Kirby in, the trailer getting towed, someone raiding the trailer before Thompson could, not having a proper fake Canadian ID), but all of it combined felt like a bit much. One big thing going wrong feels more believable than 10 small things going wrong. Overall, a solid movie though. It's cool that DaCosta was able to turn this into making the new Candyman movie and the next Captain Marvel movie.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Girl, Interrupted

Premise: A girl checks into a mental hospital in the 1960s and figures out that it's not a great place.

 

Let's be honest. This is the "Angelina Jolie won an Oscar" movie. There isn't much else to remember about it. The only other second life I've found for it is as a "Really, ____ was in this?" movie. It has a ton of people in it. People who don't feel like they are all of the same generation. Winona Rider, Angelina Jolie, Clea Duvall, Brittany Murphy, Jared Leto, and Elisabeth Moss all had much different heydays. And there's comedic actors like Whoopi Goldberg and Jeffrey Tambor going serious. In my mind, I realized I'd lumped this movie in with Gia, because, even though I know Angelina was the Supporting Actress winner, I expected her to be the lead of this movie. I got over it quick though.

 

This movie is...fine. It's sort of Winona Ryder's last moment as a star. She had a great 90s, and was about to hit the point where her characters would be women instead of young women. I don't mean she was moving into "mom role" territory. It was the end of her "young woman getting ready to take on the world" roles. No more student or recent graduate roles for her. After this, her career went sideways for a while. Other than Mr. Deeds, she spent most of the next decade lost in the woods. It really wasn't until she moved to TV with Show Me a Hero, The Plot Against America, and of course Stranger Things that she got her mojo back.

 

Angelina Jolie's career has been odd after this movie. She's excellent in this movie, but she's never quite matched the promise of this role. Almost immediately after this, she turned into the biggest star in the world with Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Other than a stray nomination for Changeling (which she was never going to win), she's struggled to be invited back to the Oscars. Every few years, she comes around with a movie to remind us that she could be the world's biggest star whenever she wants (Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Salt, Maleficent). I sometimes wonder what her career would look like if she didn't have a family or other interests. But yeah, in 1999 it would've surprised me if you told me Girl, Interrupted would be her one real shot at an Oscar.

I'm not a huge fan of this type of movie. I just don't find treatment centers that interesting. I don't revere One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest as highly as others. Awakenings is pretty dull. I guess once the shock of "these places really aren't that pleasant" wears off, I'm bored by the struggle. Some people are worse off than others. Some people are more willing to accept their issues than others. There are the good people who work there and the bad ones. I think this movie was well done and all. It amped up the drama a little more than needed. The performances were really good though.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: In A Valley of Violence

Premise: A Western about a mysterious stranger who comes into town and gets revenge after some men there commit an act of violence against him.

 

Have you ever thought to yourself "I'd really like to watch a Sergio Leone movie, but who has the time?" Well, you're in luck. In A Valley of Violence gives the same basic thrills and performances in half the time. Or, have you ever thought "I like John Wick, but I wish it was a Western?" Guess what? You're also in luck. In a Valley of Violence has the same kind of revenge story but set in a Wild West town.

 

I don't know if director Ti West is a great writer/director for original ideas. I did like his "Second Honeymoon" segment in V/H/S, so maybe he is. I do know he's great at making homages or movies that feel familiar in some way. The House of the Devil perfectly captures the charm of an 80s horror movie. The Sacrament and The Innkeepers are technically original ideas, but they both feel familiar when I watched them. Appropriately, I don't think I can point to anything truly unique about In a Valley of Violence, but it sure is an enjoyable Western. I've seen words like homage and pastiche thrown around for this, and those are correct.

 

Coming in with the understanding that anyone watching this likes Westerns, there isn't much to dislike about this movie. The cast is strong. I don't think there's an actor alive who's having more fun aging out of his boyish good looks than Ethan Hawke. He loves being old enough to have a dark past and wears it well. I've seen Taissa Farmiga in a lot of movies at this point, but this is the first time she really popped for me. She plays a nice ball of energy: a young woman desperate to be taken more seriously. That role works for her. James Ransone is appropriately repugnant. I feel a little bad for him as an actor, because he's so well-suited for squirrelly villains that's it's hard to see him as much else. I hope he's a nice guy with a family who loves him in real life. John Travolta isn't great, but if there is a role in this movie for a hammy former A-lister, his Marshal role is it. I'm not sure where I land on Karen Gillan. Her American accent just isn't great. She masks it some by turning it into a hyper-old West accent, but she's always one flubbed syllable from breaking into a full cockney accent. It's a shame they couldn't concoct a way to let her use a more natural accent, because I'm otherwise a fan of when Gillan trashes things up like this.

 

Like Ti West's other films, this has a nice mix of genre homage, offbeat humor, and bursts of violence. Except for the fact that I don't condone movies using an act of violence against a dog as an inciting event, I quite enjoyed this movie and its simple storytelling.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend