Movie Reaction: Snatched

Formula: (The Guilt Trip + Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle) * Romancing the Stone

Comedy duos come in many configurations. Different genders, ages, races, or, as Turner & Hooch showed us, species. The only thing that they all need is conflicting personalities. “Buddy cop” movies are so common because it’s a great way to force an unlikely pairing - it's their job. One of the less seen pairings is parent and child. That makes sense. There's not much discovery there. Even estranged family members know each other pretty well, and the blood connection means there’s already a commitment to one another. The last few attempts I’ve seen to pair two generations of the same family (Tammy, The Guilt Trip) haven’t been great. With the extreme premise, I hoped Snatched could change the trend.

That extreme premise is a simple one. Emily (Amy Schumer) is a 30-something mess who just got dumped by her boyfriend. She has already paid for a non-refundable trip to Ecuador with him though. When none of her friends want to join her, she brings her neurotic mother, Linda (Goldie Hawn), with her. And, they get snatched by some men hoping to collect a ransom. They escape and have to survive in the Amazon rain forest as they search for safety. Along the way, some crazy shit happens.

This is being billed as a two-hander with Schumer and Hawn. It’s not. This is Amy Schumer’s film. I think of it as her Identity Thief. That was Melissa McCarthy’s follow-up to Bridesmaids. It was the test to see if the “Melissa McCarthy” character could be used elsewhere successfully. Snatched is Schumer’s test after scoring with Trainwreck. Schumer’s results are better, but she has some of the same problems McCarthy had. She has to do too much of the heavy lifting. Filmmakers tend to forget that even a great comedic performer benefits from having a good character to play as a foundation. Emily is an under-written character. You get the sense in nearly every scene, that someone said “Amy will find a way to make it funny”. Often, she’s able to make it work. Other times, she’s left flailing, trying to find a punchline that isn’t there. While they relied too much on Amy Schumer, they didn’t take advantage of having Goldie Hawn at all. She made a career out of playing ditzes who are actually quite sly beneath the surface. There’s none of that here. Linda could be played by nearly anyone. There’s no sign of why they wanted Hawn for the part. This is Hawn’s first movie in 15 years, so maybe she’s out of practice. I don’t really want to lay the blame on her though.

Once you get past the poorly-written lead roles and very thin story, the movie is pretty decent. It’s not a laugh riot, but there are enough good jokes to keep it interesting. There are a couple delightfully zany bits of physical comedy by Schumer. Katie Dippold’s script loves to undercut the jokes you expect by hitting punchlines a beat or two earlier. Ike Barinholtz and Bashir Salahuddin nearly steal the movie with their escalating scenes as Schumer’s brother and the government agent in charge of finding the women respectively. Other actors like Christopher Meloni, Wanda Sykes, and Joan Cusack show up for jokes that are so stupid that they kind of work.

Mostly though, your opinion of this movie will depend on how funny you find Amy Schumer. And, I mean Amy Schumer, the performer. She didn’t write this. So, if you are like “I love Inside Amy Schumer and/or Trainwreck”, try to think about if you loved the writing in those or loved that it was Amy Schumer delivering those lines. I could be a lot more savage about this movie. I didn’t care for much of it. Some of that is personal taste. The jokes didn’t land at a high enough rate for me to ignore my other issues. I imagine other people will be far more forgiving (similar to how I devoured Free Fire a few weeks ago in a way that other audiences didn’t, all because I loved its specific sense of humor). In other words, this is one of those super helpful Reactions I give that could be summed up as “Meh. It could be worse”.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend 

Delayed Reaction: 37

The Pitch: What was going on with the people who watched and did nothing on the night Kitty Genovese was murdered?

The Kitty Genovese murder is a famous case of indifference. In case you don't know, in 1964, Kitty Genovese was brutalized and murdered outside her apartment building. It was reported that 37 of her neighbors witnessed this and did nothing. 37 is a film about what was going on in those people's lives to make them do nothing.

The film is shot like a horror movie - or, maybe not a horror movie - like a nightmare. The story is told in scattered chunks and there's an uncomfortable pause before any of the actors say anything. The color palette is musty, almost decayed looking. The actual Genovese murder isn't important to the different stories. It's just going on in the background, kind of like in a dream, when there's something incongruent in there that no one addresses.

I respect the different ideas that writer/director Puk Grasten had for the movie and a lot about her execution of them. But, the film kept me at an arm's length the whole time, making it very hard to connect to anything. I didn't buy into enough of the characters, partly because the dream state didn't make them feel real. I didn't recognize many of the actors (only Samira Wiley from Orange is the New Black and Adrian Martinez from bit parts in a lot of things), which helped sustain the unfamiliar feel of the movie.

I decided to watch this to try and see the Kitty Genovese from a new perspective. It turns out, 37 is about as useful to understanding the Kitty Genovese murder as JFK is to understanding that assassination.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: A Man Called Peter

The Pitch: The true story of a man who was the chaplain for the United States Senate before he died.
The Hays Code. My god. Good riddance to you.

For a while now, I've been looking for a new project. I functionally finished with Club 50 and have had a solid year of being lost in the wilderness, seeing where my whims take me. That's fine, but it lacks any urgency and doesn't force me to look outside my genre comfort zone. One idea I had was to work through the National Board of Review lists, going back to when then began in the 30s or 20s. Another was to see the top 10 movies in the box office for every year I could track before 1987. In the spirit of that latter idea, I found A Man Called Peter on Netflix.

It's going to be hard to keep up with this new box office list if this movie is a good representation of popular sentiment during the Hays Code era. The Hays Code, for anyone unfamiliar with it, is the standards for film production that the MPAA ratings replaced. As bad as we may consider the MPAA ratings, the Hays Code was worse. A Man Called Peter feels like a poster child for what the Hays Code was all about. It's a sleepy movie, full of long sermons about God and how to live chaste and moral lives. There isn't any real drama. The characters aren't complex. It's just some speeches and plot in between to get to the next speech. Really, the less said about it the better. Sometimes, movies are forgotten about for a reason.

Verdict (?): Strongly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Central Intelligence

The Pitch: Twins, but they aren't related, and with spy stuff.

It's hard to think of a movie genre as easy to get right as the buddy comedy. Take two people with different personas and put them on an adventure together. As long as the two actors mesh, the movie almost always works. That's the idea behind Central Intelligence. It isn't a particularly smart or complex movie. It's not clever and packed with can't miss jokes. Surely, you've seen everything in it a dozen times before. But, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Kevin Hart work well together and give it their all, so it works. Johnson isn't the greatest actor in the world, but no one shows up to work better than him. No matter what the role, he's always ready to give it everything he's got. In this case, it means being weird. Deadly and effective, but weird. It's easy to buy him as the kid everyone made fun of in school and he wears that damage well. Better than I expected. Kevin Hart has settled into being Kevin Hart in every role and he's good at it. A lot of people give actors grief for having no range. I say, if the role doesn't call for range and the character is one the actor can play well, then that's not a bad thing. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this film is the role reversals. Hart is playing the straight man. The only other time in the last few years he did that (Get Hard) was pretty awful. He was much better at it this time, partly because he had a better character to play off than Will Ferrell's spoiled rich man. Johnson could easily be the tough guy, action star. Instead, he's the strange one. He's the nerd and Hart is the jock. See how easy that is?

There's not much to say about the movie itself. It is what you think it is. Melissa McCarthy has a fun cameo. People like Jason Bateman and Aaron Paul show up for appropriate parts. It's a fun comedy.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Movie Reaction: Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2

Formula: Guardians of the Galaxy + Jokes - Plot

Guardians of the Galaxy was a fun gamble by Disney back in 2014. That was before people who weren't already fans of his modestly rated TV shows knew that Chris Pratt was a star. Guardians was the least known Marvel franchise to earn the movie treatment by a healthy margin. The most bankable star in the movie voiced a badass raccoon. Hell, they had the uphill battle of making a "badass raccoon" a thing audiences would buy into. It's a minor miracle that they pulled it off, and a lot of that had to do with James Gunns' deft handling of the material, knowing just when to undercut the standard superhero tropes and when to lean into them.
Sequels are hard though. Even for a Marvel machine that regularly engages in the dark art of extended stories.

Volume 2 picks up shortly after the first movie. The team is a well oiled machine in their own sloppy way. Seedling Groot is now an adorable baby Groot. Otherwise, they are the same motley cast of rogues. After a job goes sour, the gang narrowly escapes the army of a group known as the Sovereign, led by their thin-skinned High Priestess (Elizabeth Debicki). They do this with the help of a man named Ego (Kurt Russell), who says he is Peter Quill's (Chris Pratt) father. While Rocket (Bradley Cooper), Baby Groot (Vin Diesel, kind of), and their prisoner Nebula - because who doesn't bring Karen Gillan back if she's available - are busy fixing the ship, Peter, Gamora (Zoe Saldana), and Drax (Dave Bautista) join Ego on his planet. Eventually, Rocket and company have a run-in with Yondu's (Michael Rooker) gang, who have been hired by the Sovereign to capture them, and Quill's group tries to figure out what to make of Ego.

Now most of that is gibberish until you watch the movie. While that all sounds very plotty, the movie itself doesn't feel that way. In fact, the first hour and a half feels like it's killing time. A lot of the story is feeding on leftovers from the first movie. Not in a "completing a story arc" way either. Things like Nebnula and Gamora's ongoing feud took up a lot of time, even though where it ended up was inevitable. Yondu's story was the same way, getting telegraphed from his first scene. The Ego story killed a lot of time before it turned into actual plot, then the movie becomes the standard "team races to a macguffin to save the universe" story that superhero movies normally turn into. I was really bored by the story.

And that's OK. You don't bring James Gunn in to direct and write a movie for his plotting abilities. You bring him in because he makes something that is a lot of fun. That much is still true about Guardians Vol. 2. It is very funny, knowing how to use each character for maximum comedic effect. All the characters are funny in the ways they were before. I can't think of any new shades added for anyone, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The Sovereign are entertaining because, despite the size of their army, they are only seen as a nuisance. Going in, I was worried that baby Groot was going to take over the movie. He was maybe a little overused, but not a crazy amount. The music is still great too. Terrific use of Fleetwood Mac among many others. The opening number of the film is lively in a silly and clever way, and the end credits might be the best part of the movie. No one can say this doesn't have the full James Gunn treatment.

However, this has a bad case of sequelitus. While nowhere near the severity of the quality swing, I'm reminded a lot of the first two Transformers movie. I love the 2007 Transformers movie. If people can look past the reflexive Michael Bay hate, it's a really entertaining action movie. The sequel, Revenge of the Fallen, is a shit movie for a lot of reasons, but the big one is how it handled escalation. Like a lot of sequels, it tried to do what the first movie did, only more. The action was bigger, so the comic relief had to be bigger and more constant to try to balance it out. And, in the process, the story got ignored. Guardians Vol. 2 has the same problem, on a smaller scale. I.e. "People like the jokes and music, so we'll add even more of that". Good sequels start with the story and use the fact that the characters and world are already established to allow bigger stakes, bigger laughs, etc. Guardians 2 tries to reverse that formula and it doesn't work.

Then there's the fact that I'm not sure how much James Gunn wants to make a superhero movie. To some extent, the same thing could be said about the first movie. Perhaps, it's just more apparent since Volume 2 has a few more problems to pick at. Or maybe it's because we live in a post-Deadpool world. I'm not sure why, but Gunn wasn't as successful at playing with the superhero tropes. It felt like Gunn was trying to have his cake and eat it too. There's a lot of undercutting scenes with jokes. A lot. Near constant. There's a certain amount of sincerity required to buy into a traditional superhero movie, which Guardians is, despite its efforts. It still fits too neatly into the MCU to pretend it's not. Volume 2 undercuts just about every sincere moment with a joke to diminish it. Volume 2 does it just a little too much for my taste, which made it difficult to buy into any of the stakes.

Gunn is not a technical wizard at staging action sequences. The geography of the climactic fight is a mess. It's the equivalent of a character diffusing a bomb with 1 second left happening over and over again. One character stops a ship from crushing someone else just in the nick of time. Two other characters manage to jump on a spire of rock that pushes them up right next to the ship. I never had an understanding about the limitations of the central antagonist's powers or how to destroy him/it. It's not something I want to harp on too long, because I think it was deliberately not a priority for Gunn. It's the kind of thing that makes a difference in the long run though.

I'm very pro-MCU. I think they deliver a good to great product that takes advantage of the benefits of seeing a movie in a theater (big screen, better sound, communal enjoyment). There's is not a big difference between the quality floor and ceiling for any of these movies. Even the worst of their movies is pretty enjoyable even if it isn't memorable. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is an average MCU effort and I'll take that. It's fun, with a cast who meshes well together. What worked the first time around didn't as much this time. I say some version of this a lot, but even an 70% as good version of the original Guardians is pretty good movie. Most of my concerns with Volume 2 are the nitpicky kind that built up, not a single severe misstep. If you are just looking for some enjoyment, it delivers.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend 

Delayed Reaction: True Romance

The Pitch: Either a quieter Natural Born Killers or a louder Thelma & Louise.

A lot of people had to die to make me aware of this film and decide to see it. First, it was Tony Scott. Mixed in all the retrospectives about his career, which seemed to focus on Top Gun and Man on Fire, there kept being mention of this messy little 90s movie with a great cast. Not long after, James Gandolfini died. While The Sopranos got most of the press, people kept mentioning first being aware of him in that same 90s movie. At that point, I decided that it was safer for Christian Slater, Gary Oldman, Quintin Tarantino, and the rest of the people tied to this if I saw it. (It still took me 4 years, but no one else died since then, so there's no blood on my hands)

Honestly, I feel like I would've found it even without those two deaths. Eventually, I would've gotten close enough to seeing all the films based on Tarantino screenplays to seek this out too for completion's sake, or I would've been motivated to track down "that movie with Oldman as a pimp with dreadlocks" that kept popping up during career retrospectives when Oldman finally got his first Oscar nomination for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy in 2011.

I'm not sure what to make of this movie. It's so messy that it works. Even though Tony Scott directed it, it still feels like a Tarantino movie. Apparently, the original screenplay told the story out of order. Scott and the editor(s) made it linear. That right there sums up why I have trouble with Tarantino in general. He doesn't know when to leave well enough alone. This is a confusing, twisty, wild movie as is. Putting it out of order would've been too much.

I'm pretty floored by all the different actors of note in this. Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Val Kilmer, Samuel L. Jackson, Brad Pitt, Gary Oldman, Christopher Walken, Michael Rapaport, Dennis Hopper, Conchata Bronson Pinchot. Were they playing "90's Bingo"? If so, this must've been a cover-all round. Some people were used a lot. Some were used a little. I was never sure what to expect next or from whom. It's fun to watch a movie that sincerely feels like anything is on the table to happen next.

Maybe this movie is my way into Tarantino. Reservoir Dogs to True Romance to Pulp Fiction to From Dusk Til Dawn with credits in Natural Born Killers and Four Rooms in between. I can see how someone who followed him through that 5 year stretch could become an acolyte. His post-2000 work still weighs far too heavily to turn me though.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

May Movie Preview

I must be getting older or maturing or becoming more stodgy, because the summer box office doesn't do it for me the way it used to. It used to be that I'd wait for May, then all the good things came out for a few months. By mid August, it was back to a scant selection. Not anymore. May feels like another month, not the start of something exciting. There's a few reasons for this, most I've discussed before. Yes, some of it is because I'm more drawn to "awards-bait" than I used to be. I'm more likely to see 3 movies in a weekend in December than June. However, there's other reasons too. The major release calendar spreads across the whole year more. March's Beauty and the Beast could be the highest grossing domestic release of 2017 when all is said and done. Fate of the Furious, an April release, almost certainly has the global record locked up. That first weekend of May [normally Marvel] release isn't a major season marker anymore. It's just another big release on the calendar. Another theory I have is that I'm too aware of the formula in May. First weekend: major release. Second weekend: Counter-programming or sacrificial lambs. Third weekend: Less certain, sometimes experimental big budget feature. Memorial Day weekend: Franchise or franchise hopeful. Often X-Men. In other words, May tends to be very top-heavy, which is rough for someone who likes a two-movie weekend as much as I do.

This May follows the familiar formula. There's a major Marvel movie, some comedies which looks promising, a franchise that's liked more worldwide these days than domestically, and some lower-tier franchise films. The limited release market looks pretty weak. All in all, it looks like a typical, decent May.

2017
 Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr 
2016
Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | June | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec  
2015

Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | June | Jul | Aug | Sept | Oct | Nov | Dec 

2014

Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec

2013

Mar |  Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec

5/5

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
Star-Lord and company are back, this time, with a baby Groot.
Working For It: So, take everything you liked about the first movie (Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dav Bautista, Vin Diesel and Bradley Cooper's voices, Karen Gillan, Michael Rooker) and add Sylvester Stallone, Kurt Russell, and Elizabeth Debicki*. Same writer/director too. There's no reason to expect Marvel's accidental hit's follow-up to be a disappointment.
Working Against It: Other than it being something about Peter Quill's dad, I couldn't tell you a single thing about this movie. Some Marvel movies advertise heavy on the story (Iron Man 3, Civil War). Others are like, "Hey, here's a character or ten that you like. Go see this" (Avengers, Dr. Strange, Guardians vol. 1). There's no clear quality indicator one way or the other.
Verdict: The first movie was too much fun to justify missing this one.

*I've seen virtually all of Debicki's movies without meaning to. Everest, The Man From UNCLE, The Great Gatsby. I guess I'm a fan by accident.

3 Generations [Limited]
Elle Fanning is a trans-teen, with an supportive mother (Naomi Watts), a lesbian grandmother (Susan Sarandon) who doesn't understand her, and a father who doesn't accept her.
Working For It: I like Elle Fanning, Naomi Watts, and Susan Sarandon. The topic seems interesting.
Working Against It: I don't know the director well. I've noted at least one delay in release and title change (to make it more about the three women than just Fanning). That amount of repositioning is a little worrisome.
Verdict: I get a feeling that this is going to be a case of liking what the movie is doing more than liking the movie itself.

The Dinner [Limited]
Two couples (two brothers and their wives) have a dinner at a fancy restaurant and try to figure out if they should cover up a crime committed by their sons.
Working For It: That's my best understanding of the plot at least. The trailer is almost annoyingly cryptic. The central quartet (Richard Gere, Laura Linney, Steve Coogan, Rebecca Hall) make up one of those prestige-y casts that aren't as credentialed as you think* but still can get the job done. Writer/director Oren Moverman has made or written several films that I haven't seen but need to (Rampart, The Messenger, I'm Not There).
Working Against It: The trailer is too bombastic with the praise and nothing I'm seeing backs it up. It could be good or it could be raising higher stakes than it can deliver. It's hard to say.
Verdict: I'm very happy to take a wait and see stance on this.

 *Gere and Hall have some Golden Globe love but never sniffed an Oscar. Coogan has some non-acting Oscar love. Only Linney has an Oscar nomination for acting (3, in fact) but no wins. Gere is the only one who has ever led a big hit and those days were a long time ago. They are like the Carnage B-Team.

The Lovers [Limited]
A husband and wife who are both having affairs start to cheat on their lovers on the side when they rekindle the romance in their long-time dispassionate marriage.
Working For It: This was no doubt sold with a pitch like "what if a husband cheated on his mistress with his wife?". It's a clever enough twist on a familiar formula. Debra Winger and Tracy Letts are up to the task as the leads.
Working Against It: I'm sorry to use this so much as "working against", but I am unfamiliar with the writer/director. That's a slight wildcard. It's a shame there's not a way to pitch this movie without giving away so much of the plot. I feel like this movie is going to be a downer by the end, but I'm not sure I'd prefer a happy ending either. I just don't see a way for this story to resolve in a way that would satisfy me.
Verdict: I may get worn down by the number of times I've seen the trailer in theaters. More than likely, I'll wait on this one.

5/12

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
King Arthur gets the Guy Ritchie treatment.
Working For It: Remember Sherlock Holmes back in 2009? I thought it was a nice attempt by Guy Ritchie to mainstream what he does. Not perfect. Not a failure either. It looks like he's doing it to King Arthur as well. I'm not against the idea. Charlie Hunnam is a good Ritchie-type protagonist. Jude Law should be used as the villain in things more often, because he puts on the right demeanor for it.
Working Against It: King Arthur is a tough nut to crack. It exists in this weird space between truth and fiction, legend and cannon. The many texts collected of Arthurian legend don't match up with each other, although some stories are known better than others. The setting is magical and mystical but also based in the real world. Filmmakers have always struggled with deciding which way to go. I'm not convinced that Ritchie has cracked the code either.
Verdict: Despite my proclivity toward big action movies, like Warcraft this looks like it will be underwhelming enough in the box office to justify skipping it.

Lowriders
A graffiti artist is caught between his lowrider-loving father and ex-felon brother's feud.
Working For It: As much as I like the standard L.A. stories, it's nice whenever a filmmaker explores one of the lesser covered sides of the city. It's an eclectic cast, featuring Demian Bichir, Melissa Benoist, Eva Longoria, Tony Revolori, and several people I don't know as well.
Working Against It: Since I doubt I'm ever going to see this movie, I'm going to go on a small rant now. In the trailer, there's a part where the lead character almost gets himself and his girlfriend arrested because he has the urge to graffiti a wall with. The girlfriend pleads that an arrest could really negatively impact her future. He's willing to risk it because the art is calling to him or something. That's the kind of thing that can turn me off from a movie fast. I've never understood the whole "risking yourself and others for your art by breaking the law because it's more convenient in that situation". I guess I don't get graffiti. It looks cool when done well. Is it worth getting arrested for? I don't know. I guess I'm just boring.
Verdict: I don't get graffiti. I don't get lowriders (or the love of cars in general). The appeal of this film isn't high.

Snatched
Goldie Hawn and Amy Schumer are a mother-daughter duo kidnapped while on a tropic vacation.
Working For It: Hawn hasn't been used in a proper comedy in years, so people forget how much of a pro she is. Schumer knows her schtick and does it well. Writer Kate Dippold's most recent credits are Ghostbusters, The Heat, and Parks & Rec, so no concerns there. I really like or at least am fond of director Jonathan Levine's last few movies (The Night Before, Warm Bodies, 50/50). The plot seems loose enough to offer a ton a jokes. There's not much working against it, really.
Working Against It: But, why have a Working Against It section if I'm not going to use it? There's some key questions to those pluses listed above. Does Goldie Hawn still have it? Does Amy Schumer work as well delivering material she didn't write? Should I be worried that the only project of Dippold's that I listed in which she received sole credit was worst one: The Heat? These probably aren't real concerns, but that's the counter-narrative available.
Verdict: I'm not as excited for this as I feel like I should be. I assume I'll see it. I may not and I won't have a good reason.

Paris Can Wait [Limited]
Diane Lane is the wife of a Hollywood producer who drives through Paris with one of his business associates as a guide.
Working For It: In other words, it's Before Sunrise in a car and older people and probably not about those two falling in love. So, it's basically not Before Sunrise except for France. Diane Lane is generally charming and I'm sure the French landscape will be pretty.
Working Against It: This is in that I'll See You in My Dreams/Eat, Pray, Love/Under the Tuscan Sun ilk of movies that I have nothing against but am also not drawn to. This is the debut feature for director Eleanor Coppola, the 81 year old wife of Francis Ford Coppola. I don't know what to do with that information.
Verdict: I already cannot tell this apart from Under the Tuscan Sun and Nights in Rodanthe.

The Wall [Limited]
Two American soldiers in a remote desert region are pinned down by an enemy sniper.
Working For It: The two soldiers are Aaron Taylor Johnson and John Cena, which is an interesting combination, especially because Cena's role doesn't appear to rely on his physicality at all. I'm a sucker for movie with a "bottle-episode" premise like this. It's from the director of Edge of Tomorrow, The Bourne Identity, and The O.C. pilot, which is a decent set of credentials for a project like this.
Working Against It: However, the writer also works for Iron Fist, which is less encouraging. It's unfortunate that this is showing up around the same time as Mine, which looks much better than The Wall. Mine is about limited resources. The Wall is more like Saw, trying to beat a villain who has masterminded the situation. Both can be very good, but The Wall appears to have a lot more mustache twirling, which I don't care for as much.
Verdict: Let's seek out Mine first, then make a judgment on seeing this.

5/19

Alien: Covenant
A new spaceship crew discovers the aliens.
Working For It: I'm not sure how this differs all that much from previous Alien movies, for better or worse. I like Katherine Waterston in the lead role. I'm going to convince myself that James Franco and Danny McBride doesn't make this a Pineapple Express reunion. I didn't dislike Prometheus the way other people did, so Ridley Scott being back as the director or seeing people like Michael Fassbender or Noomi Rapace in this case doesn't alarm me.
Working Against It: I do wonder what the point of this movie is. Just because you can make another Alien movie doesn't been you have to.
Verdict: I mean, sure. Why not?

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul
The wimpy kid family goes on a road trip and PG-rated hijinks ensue.
Working For It: It's a maleable franchise that doesn't need to do much to reach its goals.
Working Against It: I know that Clueless was 22 years ago and Alicia Silverstone is 40. I'm not ready to see her in the mom role in a movie, not like this.
Verdict: You know, there's just so many movies in the series that I'd have to get caught up on.

Everything, Everything
A sick teenage girl who can't leave the house falls in love with the boy across the street.
Working For It: It's a straightforward story. It's based on a novel that was probably a New York Times Best seller. I'm pretty sure I know where the story is going. There's worse templates out there it could be following.
Working Against It: The young cast is pretty green. This is unfortunately a lower-concept version of The Space Between Us, which came out earlier in the year. With fewer genre contrivances to deal with, Everything, Everything will probably be more effective. I'm not sure I believe it's climbing to the heights of "decent" or "good" though.
Verdict: I don't think this was designed with me in mind and I'm OK with that.

5/26

Baywatch
The overzealous lifeguards of the Baywatch crew try to stop a local crime plot while training the hotshot new recruit.
Working For It: You already know if you want to see this. In case you somehow don't, let me help. This is 21 Jump Street on a beach with Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron. Both have been putting in overtime to hone their comedic chops (Central Intelligence, Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, Neighbors) and they give the roles everything they've got. I'm hoping this will be a chance for Alexandra Daddario to actually get to do something in a movie. Priyanka Chopra looks like she's having fun as the villain. The director has made several mediocre to good movies (Identity Thief, Horrible Bosses, Four Christmases) and worked on a lot of great TV shows (Community, Parks & Rec, The Office, The Jim Gaffigan Show, etc.). Most screenplays goes through numerous people's pens whether its listed in the credits or not, so I won't look at the six names attached to this script as a warning sign.
Working Against It: As much as I respect Johnson and Efron's effort, I'm not convinced either of them can work without a more natural comedian (Kevin Hart, Adam Devine, Seth Rogen in the examples I previously listed) paired with him. In almost every way, this looks like off-brand 21 Jump Street, so it becomes a question of how much is lost in translation.
Verdict: This is probably plenty enjoyable enough to see.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
Jack Sparrow is being hunted by Spanish pirate hunter who wants revenge.
Working For It: The Pirates franchise has been about chasing that first high for 14 years now. That's because that first high was so damn good. I keep waiting to see if Johnny Depp can "turn it on" again like he did in Curse of the Black Pearl. They seem to be on the right track, using Brenton Thwaites (Oculus, The Giver) and Kaya Scodelario (The Maze Runner) as Will and Elizabeth stand-ins*. Bringing in Javier Bardem as the villain could be a lot of fun. Since the films are box office platinum worldwide, Disney is putting in full effort on this, so it's sure to be a big production worth seeing on the big screen.
Working Against It: Depp hasn't put a full effort into anything in a while. An underappreciated fact about Curse of the Black Pearl is that Depp took over the movie from what could've been a supporting role. There was conceivably a story in place without him and he made it much better. Since then, the movies have been written around him and haven't worked as well. It's been six years since the last movie, which might be enough time to reinvigorate the franchise. Time away can build up excitement on both sides (audience and production). More than likely, this will be another On Stranger Tides: pretty decent yet unneeded.
Verdict: What better way is there to spend a Memorial day weekend?

*Orlando Bloom and Kiera Knightley are in the credits on IMDB. Their absence in the marketing suggests to me that it will be only a cameo or minor role.

Drone
Sean Bean is a drone pilot who is gets held hostage in his home by the victim of one of his air strikes.
Working For It: It's vaguely topical. I like the fact that it's in a fairly confined space. This could be a very taut thriller.
Working Against It: I feel like any points the movie gets for commentary on the problem with drones are negated by making this yet another movie about an Arab terrorist. Besides, there's already a great movie about a drone strike that no one saw called Eye in the Sky.
Verdict: Eh, no.

Delayed Reaction: Milk

The Pitch: How can Sean Penn win another Oscar? How about a gay politician with a distinct way of talking who was assassinated?

This jumped my queue a little after I saw Dustin Lance Black's wonderful When We Rise mini-series. After watching something as expansive as that mini-series, Milk was more concentrated and suffered from the comparison. It was fun to fill in some of the blanks. And, it led me to reading about the "Twinkie defense".

I wasn't very impressed with Sean Penn in this. Now, I'm not a big Sean Penn fan, more as a person, from what I know about him. I can get over that if the role is good enough. He's excellent in Mystic River, for example. He does a serviceable Harvey Milk impression. Was I supposed to get something more from it than that? I always got the impression that this was supposed to be a "special" performance, so I feel like I'm missing something. The rest of the cast is fine.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Lovers and the Despot

The Pitch: The true story of an actress and director kidnapped by Kim Jong-Il.

Choi Eun-hee and Shin Sang-ok were a famous South Korean actress and director respectively. They were married for many years but divorced in 1976. In 1978, they were separately abducted by North Korea. After years in isolation, they were eventually put in charge of [re]vitalizing North Korea's film industry. They did this for many years until escaping in 1986. "Filmmakers kidnapped by North Korea" is an intriguing pitch. I watched this as soon as I saw it was available on Netflix after having been made aware of it as part of one of my monthly previews.

I'll be honest. I was underwhelmed by this. I'm not sure what drove Robert Cannan and Ross Adam to make this documentary. They tell the story of the kidnapping and the time in North Korea, but it didn't feel like they had much to say about it. They could've really delved into the kidnapping, the propaganda, the films themselves, Kim Jong-il, or any number of things. Instead, they told the story at a measured pace, like they didn't appreciate the oddity of the situation. The story is inherently pretty interesting, so that sustains a lot of the documentary. If the documentarians had something pointed to say about it could've made it great. As is, it's still worth seeing if for no other reason than the Wikipedia pages about this as pretty bare.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Movie Reaction: The Circle

Formula: The Truman Show / Eagle-Eye

I have a complicated history with social commentary in a movie. A certain type, at least. Sometimes I love it and sometimes I hate it. The closest thing to a defining factor is when I get the impression that a movie thinks its much more clever than it is. Network is a movie I find entirely overrated. I think it makes the same commentary that every generation makes about the next, only it believes it's making those points for the first time. I don't like when a movie feels smug. There's a lot of Network in The Circle, attacking the internet rather than television.

The Circle is based on a 2013 novel of the same name, expanding on the premise of "What if Google got too powerful?" or something close to it. It begins with Mae (Emma Watson), an underemployed millennial, living at home with her parents. Her dad has multiple sclerosis and she tries to help with him as much as she can. She lucks into a job at a Google/Apple super-company called The Circle, thanks to a recommendation from her friend Annie (Karen Gillan), who is fairly high up in the company. She gets there and doesn't quite fit in at first. Everyone else worships their charismatic CEO, Eamon Bailey (Tom Hanks). She only meets one person (John Boyega) there who doesn't 100% buy into the culture of The Circle, and she doesn't get his name to keep in touch with him. The Circle introduces the idea of total surveillance everywhere on the theory that shared experience is shared knowledge is maximum knowledge, which is better for everyone. After an accident that Mae gets rescued from thanks to The Circle's surveillance, she become a full acolyte and films her entire life for the company as their main spokesperson to show the benefits of "full transparency". That is, until she's faced with some of the downsides to complete surveillance and must decide if the company is ultimately as good as it claims to be.

The film is blunt force social commentary that makes its point, makes it again, underlines it, puts in in bold, capitalizes it, doubles the text size, circles it - twice, types it into a Speak-and-Spell, maxes out the volume, then repeats it several times. That alone is not a bad thing. I can forgive a lack of subtlety (I loved Mad Men and that show was as thematically obvious as any movie most weeks). It doesn't have anything to say though. The pro-surveillance arguments it makes are not compelling, not in a way that intelligent people wouldn't see right through. And the anti-surveillance arguments are so obvious that they go without saying.

The argument you could make is that the movie is intended as a thriller more than a social commentary. That would be a poor argument, because the story is nonsense. It's been a long time since I believed a character's story arc as little as I did Mae's. At the beginning of the movie, she's the POV character and it's easy to read what her thoughts are. They're our thoughts. Then, she has one talk with Bailey and his COO, Tom Stenton (Patton Oswalt) and is a fully convinced true believer. From then on, the film has a 3rd-person limited POV of her. This is all in service of one big fake-out at the end. Her friend Annie has the opposite arc, going from believer to cynic,  also seemingly all at once. That's a problem because it invites the idea that someone could be soured on The Circle from within. To believe in Mae's transformation, you have to believe in an almost supernatural ability within the confines of The Circle to convert employees. When Annie is able to become disillusioned, not to mention John Boyega, who never seems to have bought in, that invites the possibility of dissent. In that respect, it sells out Mae, because her transformation is more of a plot device than earned development.

In short, I didn't believe the world or the characters. That is far too much to overcome, especially in a movie that doesn't have much else to offer. The performances are hampered by obvious story mechanics. For example, Tom Hanks isn't all that convincing as a charismatic leader when we first meet him. I forgave that, assuming he was intended to come off like that. Then, when the story needs him to be more convincing, he is and plays it well. Then, he's not , when the story turns again. His performances ends up looking bad because he has a character that has to change fundamentally based on what the story needs, not based on character choices. Emma Watson has a similar problem. Her character is what the story needs it to be. Gleene Headly and Bill Paxton (his final film performance) play her parents who probably have the most interesting story arc even though 99% of it happens off screen. Ellar Coltrance shows up essentially playing a continuation of where his character left off in Boyhood.I kept waiting for more to come from John Boyega's character and it never did.

I like John Ponsolt's work as a director/writer. I've seen almost every movie and TV shows listed in his IMDB page. His movies like Smashed, The End of The Tour, and The Spectacular Now were all much more personal films. The Circle is a big departure from that. The impulses that work well for him normally appear to be in direct conflict with what is needed for The Circle to work. You just can't make a personal character-driven story with the plotting the story demands.

I don't normally comment on the music in a movie. I'm a Luddite who doesn't typically notice the score the first time I see something. So, when I do notice the music, it's either a very good or very bad sign. In this case, it shouldn't surprise you that it's a bad sign. I like Danny Elfman's work most of the time. However, the music in this sounds like it was inspired by the incoming call sounds on Skype, then layered repeatedly until it was too loud.

This is a movie that I really want to here about from the people who do like it. I need to know if it's plain bad or if it simply hits all of the wrong buttons for me, like Money Monster last year. As far as I'm concerned, this is a dire movie that makes the Screenwriting 101 mistake or telling instead of showing over and over again. It seems to think that it's smarter than the audience. It takes an "ends justifies the means" stance on storytelling ("It's fine if this decision doesn't make sense, because it gets us to this other part we need to get to"). I'm overly-harsh on some movies, like Emma Watson's other Spring movie, Beauty and the Beast, because the small disappointments in it stick out from everything that is done right. That is not the case with The Circle. It isn't a couple changes away from being a good movie. In fact, I struggle to find anything about it worth recommending.

After the Credits:

(Some thoughts for if you've seen the movie)

I don't think I can express my issues with the movie in a proper way without giving some specifics that would lean too much into spoiler territory, so here I go, now that you've seen the movie or determined that you don't care.

-Why the hell did Emma Watson go rowing alone at night? That was completely manufactured to give her a reason to buy into The Circle doctrine. I get the impression that she would've known how dangerous that was, and when she was in the danger, you'd think she'd be experienced enough to know how to not be so dumb about all of it. That scene bothered me so much! If the subtitles were on, I assume it would've said things like "[Sound of splashing water and plot development happening]".

-The single biggest problem I had with the movie is when Mae decides to go transparent and film her whole life*. My issue boils down to this: So what? She is far from the first person to record her life for the internet. Attention-starved people have been doing it for years. The Circle is a company with 10,000+ employees and they act like she's the only one with the idea to do this. She becomes a rising star in the company for doing it too. This blows my mind. There is nothing special about what she is doing. Nothing! They never even bother to explain why anyone cares or why no one is imitating what she's doing. Or, if other people are doing it as well, what makes her special at all. Also, there's the matter of it being implausible for her to be so fine with this. Being on like that all the time is draining and she shows no signs of the wear. Not to mention all the commentary on the nature of celebrity which is just plain ignored.

*Except for the bathroom stuff.

-Ok, also regarding her "complete transparency". It's time for some real talk. Where are the perverts? I'm not trying to be glib. It's a legitimate question. In a way, the "bad element" of the internet is what prevents something like The Circle from becoming a reality. This film is showing us the sanitized version of the internet. Look at Instagram comments of a female celebrity for ten seconds and you'll see what I mean. The facts that I didn't see a single "Show me your tits" on all those reactions to Mae when she was being filmed told me that this is a fairy tale world and negated every bit of the social commentary the movie was trying to make. Guess what, if the internet was only filled with PG-rated comments, it would be super-easy for The Circle to take over privacy like it does. You can't just ignore that and expect to be taken seriously. That entire part of the movie felt like one big lie.

-I so thoroughly reject the ending that I'm wondering if I missed something. So, Mae shows up for a victim-blaming presentation in response to Mercer's death. We think that she's come up with a master plan to take down the company that is culpable in killing her friend. She shows up for this meeting and makes Bailey and Stenton go "fully transparent". They have all sorts of dirty laundry [because every corporate executive has to have a hooker and coke problem they keep hidden]. They are ruined and the company now belongs to...the people? In other words, she turns out to be even more of as true believer than before right as we expect her to reject The Circle. Then the movie ends with her canoeing and a drone shows up. Presumably, The Circle lives on.
Am I missing something? How does The Circle survive? Two of its three co-founders have just been ruined. Who in the public is trusting that company still? Couldn't Bailey and Stenton take the company down with them? Or am I missing the point entirely. Please, someone smart explain this to me, because all I'm seeing is holes in the story when I feel like I'm supposed to be seeing something clever.

-Needless to say, this fails my One Big Leap test.
I can buy that a company as all-encompassing as The Circle exists with relative ease and has the resources it apparently has.
Or, I can buy that Mae really did go from outsider to true believer, skyrocketing up the company ranks as quickly as she did.
Or, I can buy the idea of Mae's PG-rated life in front of a screen at all times.
Or, I can buy that a company as attentive and paranoid at this would allow one man, even a co-founder, to unearth all their dirty laundry to the public without the chief executives being at all aware of it.
Or, I can buy the convenience of Mae's canoeing accident and rescue to the plot.
Or, I can buy that Mae is somehow the only person in the company to not know who John Boyega really is.
I can but into any of these things, but I can't buy into all of them. At some point the writing has to do some of the work.

Verdict (?): Strongly Don't Recommend