Delayed Reaction: Your Christmas or Mine

Premise: A couple who are going to spend the holidays apart each decide to surprise the other by showing up to their family's Christmas.

Your Christmas or Mine is the kind of movie my One Big Leap rule was made for*. In this case, it's a leap that requires a lot of buy in. I have to believe that the premise could happen. That both Asa Butterfield and Cora Kirk would think to surprise each other, lose their system of quick communication (Kirk losing her phone), and be stuck in a situation where they can't just hop on a train to correct it (a snowstorm shuts the trains down). Once I get past those initial mechanics, I can just enjoy this silly little movie.

 

*A reminder, since I haven't referenced it for a while. The One Big Leap rule is that I'm willing to give every movie one big logical leap before I start criticizing it. Maybe that's a coincidental connection between two characters or a fantasy world that doesn't quite make sense. It's not a fool proof system, but it helps me from getting stuck on a "that just wouldn't happen" soap box.

 

Look, I'm going to be extra generous to this movie. I watched it Christmas morning. It's hard to be harsh on anything I watch then. It is a bit of a "chicken or the egg" situation though. This is also the kind of light-hearted movie that would put me in a good mood. So did Christmas make me like it or did I choose a movie I'd probably like because I wanted to stay in a good mood on Christmas?

 

I didn't know what the movie was about going in. I only knew the title and cast. As soon as I realized what was happening in the movie, I was excited. You see, one of my minor fascinations is what you can learn about a person without the person present. One of the most influential shows on my personal life was an MTV show called Room Raiders where a person would choose a date by looking through three contestants’' rooms. It got me thinking an unhealthy amount about what my living space says about me. And Your Christmas or Mine is a kind of actualization of that idea.

 

Now, the movie is also filled with a lot of shenanigans and extreme secrets the two protagonists have been keeping from each other. After the initial premise playing out, there wasn't a lot that I loved or that surprised me about the movie. It's pretty much what you'd expect. The familiar but not quite nameable cast are all charming. The movie throws in a lot of nice detail to round things out.

 

My one real issue with the movie is baked into the premise. It's hard to care about a couple who I barely see together. The movie hinges on the idea that Kirk and Butterfield are a couple I care about: who are even better as a team than together. Yet, the whole movie is about keeping them apart. I do like them together in the little bit that we see, so it's sad they don't get to spend more time together. It's hard to buy apples then complain that they don't taste like oranges though. I can't complain that the movie I watched was about exactly what it said it would be.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Movie Reaction: Babylon

Formula: Singin' in the Rain ^ Boogie Nights

 

It was either Robert Frost or S.E. Hinton who said nothing stays golden. All great times much come to an end. Change is inevitable. As one thing rots, another grows. There are many idioms saying virtually the same thing. And add Babylon to the list.

 

Babylon is about the early days of Hollywood. It starts in 1926, during the height of the silent film era and before the Hays code cleaned Hollywood up. These were the days when the movie business was run by whoever was insane enough to show up. Specifically, the movie starts on a night that arguably marks the height of the era. It's a lavish party bacchanal at a film executive's mansion. And it marks the start of the three main characters' stories (as well as several supporting characters). There's Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt), the biggest silent film actor of his time, basking in his centrality to the moment. There's Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie) a soon-to-be starlet who was built for this moment. And there's Manny Torres (Diego Calva) an all-purpose handyman at the party who dreams of something bigger. Over the course of the film, we see how their assorted stories intersect and track their specific rises and falls as the studio goes through many changes.

 

This is a lot of movie. It's well over three hours long and needs every minute. I couldn't cover everything that happens or every character here if I wanted. What Damien Chazelle has made is an epic about Hollywood's craziest years like we've never seen before. Because, we have seen this story before. Many times. Singin' in the Rain is about it: something Babylon is very aware of. The Artist won every award for telling this story. Shows like The Last Tycoon were about the fallout of this era. Babylon carves out its own space in this well-trod time by being the movie most about the excess.

 

That's the thing the trailers just can't prepare you for. We're used to the glitz and glamor of early Hollywood. That's how they have to advertise this movie. But Babylon is about the drugs, sex, and debauchery. I don't want to scare people away from the movie, but within 15 minutes of the movie, there's a woman peeing on a man. This movie is in love with those early days of Hollywood, but part of what it loves is the absolute anarchy of it. These early sequences - the raucous party, the wild day of film production the next day - they are when Chazelle is at his best as a director. They are a feast for the senses. He mixes long, chaotic, complex shots with fast and abrupt cuts. It's a blast.

 

Of course, this is a movie about the rise and fall. Talkies come and abruptly change what audiences want. The skillset of silent stars doesn't always translate. Hollywood's control switches from the renegades to the businessmen and society types. Our characters find it harder and harder to find a place for themselves in the new world order. The things they loved about the industry move to increasingly less savory places and the concessions they have to make to stay in the industry becoming increasingly dehumanizing. It's all a lot less fun.

 

I'll always remember the first time I watched Boogie Nights in college. Toward the end of the movie, right around when Dirk Diggler is getting beat up or Rollergirl is kicking a guy's face in, one of my friends stopped and dejectedly cried "where did the porn go?" It was a funny moment but really highlighted something about that kind of movie (which Babylon shares a ton of DNA with). No matter how well done and well-crafted the latter part of the fall is, the audience of going to miss the rise. Babylon is at its best in the early mayhem. Later, it slows down. It's still tense, but it's a hangover. My senses were assaulted for 2 hours and now I still have 80 minutes of disillusionment and disappointment. So, while I do think the movie needed to be as long as it was, I don't think it managed the momentum shift as gracefully as I would've liked.

 

Chazelle has a skill with endings. Whiplash is one of my favorite endings of all time. La La Land's ending patched a lot of holes in the movie before it and sends the audience out on a high note. Even the ending for the more reserved First Man is a needed release. The end of Babylon feels a little too forced. I love that it acknowledges what the audience has been thinking the whole time by pointing out the similarities to Singin' in the Rain. The final moment, when Manny smiles is perfect. I'm less enthused about the montage of the history and future of film. It's quite literally yelling the point of the movie at me. I appreciate the desire to want to end on a big moment. This is maybe too big though. I'm happy to sit with this for a while though. I could also see it growing on me.

 

I love that someone let Damien Chazelle make Babylon. It is big and ambitious in a way most movies aren't. The performances are all great. Pitt is dusting off a lot of his Once Upon a Time in Hollywood character. Calva is a nice discovery, although his is the least flashy role. I don't think Robbie has ever oozed with stardom more. She's a force. It's an odd performance to rate though. Not every actress can do what she's doing. It requires a star charisma that someone either has or they don't. I think that's part of why she's being left out of awards discussion. You need a Margot Robbie to play this role. So, when she does play the role, it feels almost too obvious to appreciate. I think I'm just short of loving this movie. It's so much movie that I left it drained and beat up. I'm still untangling how much of that was an intentional effect of the filmmaking and how much was an accident of inconsistency by the end.

 

Side Rant: I thought of this after finishing this Reaction and couldn't find the right place to fit it in. One of my favorite things about the movie is that it's not making a judgment about eras being better or worse. The early part of the movie still has a woman OD-ing at the party and an extra getting killed on the film set. Very bad things. It's not really about the industry changing for the better or worse overall though. It's about how the changes affect the generation of characters this film follows.  Pitt, Robbie, and to an extent Calva were built for a specific world and time. Some people are built to change and adapt. Some aren't. The bad things that do happen early on are the bad things these characters signed up for. In many ways, the things the industry turns into aren't objectively as bad, but to these characters they are. It's even fascinating how Pitt's character embraces the shift to talkies, not realizing that he couldn't survive the change.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Pinocchio

Premise: So, you know Pinocchio, right? Now imagine it in Mussolini’s Italy.

There must be a gene I'm missing. I don't seem to have that thing where I marvel at Guillermo del Toro's movies. Maybe it's in those first three movies of his (Cronos, Mimic, The Devil's Backbone) which I haven't seen, because I haven't found it in the rest of his movies, which I've all seen. It remains weird to me how much of an auteur he's considered. Pan's Labyrinth was good, although I'm cooler on it than a lot of people. I felt beside myself the whole season when The Shape of Water ran away with Best Picture. It's an OK movie. And his career other than that is some second-tier comic movies, a fun Kaiju movie (Pacific Rim), and a couple gothic dramas that fizzled as real awards threats. As is, del Toro is in my Quentin Tarantino bucket. I love his enthusiasm for movies. I like that it always feels like he's completely into the movie he's making. He hasn't made anything I've really loved though.

 

I thought Pinocchio could be that movie. It seems like it's making a strong awards run as a sentimental favorite of people's. The stop motion animation is a perfect fit with del Toro's distinctive visual signature. It really is a pretty looking movie. And mixing a fairy tale with real historical war has worked well for him in the past. I couldn't find a way in emotionally though. And by that, I mean, there were emotional aspects of the film but I connected with none of them.

 

Much of it has to do with Pinocchio himself. He's just plain annoying in this. He never grew on me as a character because I was too busy with how annoying he was. I know that's not unique to this version. There's a reason why I haven't seen any version of Pinocchio in a long time. This did nothing to make it better though. The whimsy and humor in the film were a little too gentle. It has the feeling of a movie made for kids that only their parents would like. Unlike other movies of that ilk - Where the Wild Things immediately comes to mind - this didn't hit me in the gut the same way. Perhaps it's one of those movies you have to be a parent to really feel. I don't know.

 

It's a shame I didn't like it more. It's a lovely movie. Had I been slightly more aligned with the film, it looked like a cozy world to lose 2 hours in.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Wonder

Premise: A nurse shows up to a small village to monitor a girl who has miraculously not eaten anything for months.

This happens every year. In my race to see as many movies before the end of the year as I can, I take a chance on a movie I've heard next to nothing about but has an actor I really like in it. I then find out why a movie with this actor has remained so ignored.

 

Florence Pugh is pretty good in this movie. It does feel like a "Pugh performance Greatest Hits" at times. The setting looks a lot like Lady Macbeth. There's a scene of her walking toward the camera upset that was reminiscent of Midsommar. There was a conspiratorial angle to the town like Don't Worry Darling.

 

To be honest though, the movie lost me right away with that intro where it tells us this is a movie and we should believe the actors’' performances. I don't see the value of that in this movie at all. That intro is much bolder than the movie can back up. Granted, that is the one thing I'll probably remember about the movie a year from now.

 

Verdict: Strongly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Navalny

Premise: A documentary about the political rival that Putin poisoned and how that story was exposed.

I suck. I'm not that tied into the news. I should pay more attention. At some point though, I made an unconscious decision that I wasn't going to seek it out. The big stories will get to me, and I'll look into them then. Otherwise, I have little interest in sifting through the filler between actual events of significance. I'm not a "fake news" person. I'm a "too much news" person. I accept whatever judgment comes my way for that.

 

This does mean that I get to really enjoy every step of a documentary like Navalny. I knew next to nothing about Alexei Navalny before this movie. I recall a story about a poisoned rival of Putin's. It was one of those stories that already matched my perception of Putin, so it wasn't worth exploring deeper. I'm not that interested in deepening my confirmation bias if I can help it. Getting to hear the full story in this doc was wonderful. Even better, it turns into an investigative journalism story. The highlight, of course is when they trick the Russian chemist into confirming the entire plot/conspiracy. You simply never expect a moment like that to be real, so it's incredible watching it really happen. Even if you know Navalny's story, this is still really valuable for the how.

 

The movie does show its slant a little too much at times. Navalny is clearly a skilled politician which carries a healthy dose of egomania with it. It sometimes felt like the filmmakers were happy to turn the film over to him a little too often. The end result was that instead of watching this like a profile of an inspiring person, I watched it more like "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." Still, a very worthwhile doc.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: American Carnage

Premise: A group of young Latin American citizens of the US are rounded up and forced to work in a prison camp for the elderly.

Do you ever think that maybe Jordan Peele ruined cinema with Get Out? That's not an attack on Get Out. The problem is that Get Out is too good. He made something incredibly hard look effortless. It convinced was too many filmmakers to try something similar without considering how hard it is. It's the same problem I have with The Wire on TV. That show is amazing but it convinced a lot of lesser TV shows that they could do the same thing. As a result, we've had a scourge of TV shows that don't think in terms of episodic structure and think they can make a really dull season as long as the finale pays off. Get Out has done the same thing with scary yet funny movies with social commentary.

 

American Carnage is the latest of these and...it's just not very good. The simple reason is that it's trying to do way too much. This movie takes on immigration policy, elder care, the meat industry, race, and corrupt politics while trying to be scary, funny, thrilling, and smart. It's too much. Everything feels half explored (or less).

 

Had the movie picked a lane, I think it could’ve been pretty decent. The cast is good. It's yet another Jenna Ortega horror movie in what's turned out to be a really impressive breakout year for her. I like Jorge Lendeborg Jr too. I can't say I know Allen Maldonado or Bella Ortiz from anything else, but they seemed to understand the assignment more than anyone else. The individual topics the film explores are pretty interesting. I like that they bring up colorism in the Latin American community. I appreciated the commentary on how difficult it can be to shake the immigrant label by many of the main characters being citizens with undocumented parents. I really wish they would've dropped some of the most forced aspects though. Old people having body horror contortions before they die: barely explored and just an excuse for some creepy visuals. Turning humans into cheap meat: the economics make no sense and that was so unneeded for the rest of the story. And for god's sake, if you are going to reference the governor and state so much, name the damn state! I know that the movie was trying to make a statement about how this could be anywhere and not obviously Texas. Pick any state though. Or make it a national thing. By specifically talking around naming a state, it felt like the movie was too afraid to stick to its convictions.

 

Verdict: Strongly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Good Nurse

Premise: A nurse comes to realize another nurse at her hospital is a serial killer.

The true story of Charles Cullen is a better inspiration for a movie than an actual story for a movie. He's a nurse who killed patients. That makes a good horror movie or crime thriller. It's the basis of a character that an actor could really develop and have fun with. Cullen's actual story though is pretty boring. He killed a lot of patients and used hospitals' fear of liability to continue to get jobs even after previous employers all but confirmed his crimes. He wasn't threatening in any other circumstances. It's not like Ted Bundy, where if you backed him into a corner, you could be the next victim. The investigation into his crimes was pretty straightforward. It just needed any detective to stumble upon one of the deaths and question foul play. Beyond some stonewalling for hospital records, it came together pretty easily. In the years since he was arrested, it doesn't sound like he's been that enlightening about his crimes. Just some of the standard "he thought he was ending their suffering" defenses. You can use the idea of him for a great story. You really can't use him as a good story.

 

That's the biggest hurdle with The Good Nurse and it doesn't clear it. Eddie Redmayne how two modes: bashful and charming, creepy and mannered. This is a creepy and mannered performance. His acting is big in how much he decided to retreat into himself. The film tried to make him an enigma, but it just made the character feel unexplored. Jessica Chastain is the actual lead of the movie and there's just not a lot for her to do. Redmayne isn't an actual threat to her, since he only goes after patients who can't fight back. So, most of Chastain's actions are noticing stuff and maybe pulling a file from work for police.

 

The Good Nurse is a well-executed medical thriller. There just isn't much to execute.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

Premise: The Weird Al Yankovic biopic we should've all expected.

I love Weird Al Yankovic. He's the first music act I ever liked and I never grew out of it. And part of what I've come to love about him is how uncomplicated he is as a public figure. By all accounts, he's just a good dude. He's been famous for four decades without a scandal. There aren't whispers about diva behavior...

 

[Note, I went on for quite a while after this about how much I love Weird Al. I eventually stopped myself and deleted it since it got me very off track. Instead, I'll just leave it as this. If you don't like Weird Al, that's fine. Different tastes and such. If you think you're above Weird Al though, you're wrong]

 

That's what makes Weird: The Al Yankovic Story so much fun. Weird Al is a man who seems physically incapable of taking anything about himself too seriously, so of course a movie about him is going to be non-sense. This movie is a blast. It's one giant tongue-in-cheek joke and they don't run out of people who want to be part of it. I adore how Daniel Radcliffe has handled his post-Harry Potter career. He got international fame and riches from those movies. Ever since, he's followed all of his weird whims and impulses. He's not great casting as Weird Al in any physical or mannerism way. He works because, like Al Yankovic, he has no vanity about this.

 

The way I feel about this movie is the way I feel about Weird Al music. You have to know the joke to get the joke. To many people, Weird Al is just the parody guy and Weird: The Al Yankovic story is just a Funny or Die Sketch that goes on too long. To fans who appreciate his ingenuity and creativity, this movie captures the spirit of listening to a Weird Al album. While it's not strictly callbacks to different jokes or songs, the movie really captures the spirit of Al Yankovic. I was relieved to see Yankovic has a writing credit on the movie, because it was uncanny how well the film mimicked his tone.

I don't know that this movie is great. It may only be for the fans. I'm a fan and I really enjoyed it.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Movie Reaction: Avatar: The Way of Water

Formula: Avatar + Water

The lead up to this movie has been...odd. It turns out, there's a collective haze about what happened in late 2009 and early 2010. A lot of people can't remember how Avatar became the highest grossing movie of all time. Years of bad 3D movies have obscured how effective the 3D of the first movie was. We still haven't figured out how to contextualize premium ticket costs for 3D when talking about the box office. We all recall how leading up to any long-awaited James Cameron movie comes with doubts about if it will work this time. It doesn't help that Sam Worthington has had very little career in the years since and Zoe Saldana is the quietest star with the most massive blockbusters. And since we can't recapture the moment when Avatar became a sensation, we forget.

 

As a result, there are a few camps that have formed. The first is the "no cultural footprint" crowd. I'm mostly in that group. We're the ones pointing out that there are no iconic moments from the movie (think of Titanic by comparison). The movie didn't make any lasting stars. As cool as Pandora: The Land of Avatar is at Disney World, the response I most hear about it is "That's really cool, but why Avatar?" This group is marked by an almost stubborn insistence that Avatar was an accident of circumstance. Another group are the Avatar truthers. These people feel gaslit. Avatar IS the highest grossing movie of all time. It HAS a land at Disney World. The 3D changed the film industry for years. How can someone say the film had no impact? And there's a final group of people who, like with most franchises, saw the first one because it was a thing to see at the time, liked it, and never thought about it again until now. These are the healthy people. We should aspire to be them.

 

I have no fondness for Avatar. I don't hate it either. I remember liking it in 2009. I rewatched it once years later to see if I could remember why it was so huge. I couldn't. For whatever reason, Pandora is just not a world I'm enraptured by. While Avatar is a fun enough movie, I'm just not invested in it. I couldn't come to Avatar: The Way of Water with unreserved excitement. Still, I did my best to leave myself open to be swept away. I love when a movie can transport me. Why would I stubbornly deprive myself of that experience?

 

So, Avatar: The Way of Water is fine. With 13 years of build-up, that's a little deflating. Maybe this is a movie I need to see twice: once to see what the movie is, once to enjoy it for what it is. While I didn't have preconceived notions of what I thought The Way of Water would be, I didn't think it was going to be a copy of Avatar but in the water and with more advanced effects.

 

The story of The Way of Water is very similar to the first movie. In the years since Avatar, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) have had several kids and adopted/taken in a couple others. Humans have returned to Pandora to exploit the resources again. Sully leads the Na'vi counter-insurgency. Eventually though, he accepts that the threat created by his presence is unfair to his tribe and decides to move his family far away to live with a water-based Na'vi tribe. So, where the first Avatar was Sully learning the way of the forest Na'vi, The Way of Water is Sully's family learning the way of the water Na'vi. The villain? That would be Stephan Lang's Quaritch again. His consciousness was transferred to an Avatar body. Sigourney Weaver returns as the teenage daughter of her Avatar somehow. So, if you really liked the beats of the story in the first Avatar, you'll be thrilled by how this movie plays out. I say that glibly, but I do mean it. For me, the story of Avatar was pretty underwhelming. It relied on the audience being dazzled by the land of Pandora. For whatever reason, I'm just not.

 

That is a major selling point of this movie though. It combines James Cameron's two biggest obsessions: Avatar and water. If you thought he loved the forests of Pandora, just wait. The underwater scenes in this are truly dazzling. Everything about this water tribe is detailed, considered, and pretty. If Pandora is your thing, then the middle hour of the movie when the Sully family are getting to know life in this new place is a dream. Me though? I don't say this because I'm looking to tear the movie down; I'm just saying what really happened. I started to nod off. I just did. Again, Pandora doesn't do it for me. I wasn't captivated enough. I don't know if that puts me in a minority. I just know it was my experience.

 

So, yeah. The movie recycles a lot of things. It's the same basic plot. The human threat is back. It's the same villain. Watching this, I got the feeling that the water tribe stuff is what interested Cameron the most. He considered a lot of scripts and went with the one that worked the first time.

 

Despite my negativity, I did like the movie and there's a lot to recommend. On a technical level, it's striking. The motion capture technology has gotten even better. The world is as vibrant and diverse as ever. I don't question for a second what this massive, massive budget went toward. I didn't see a high frame rate showing of the film - at least I don't think - but I could definitely tell there are some portions of the movie shot in high frame rate. It works well underwater, where I don't have real visual comparisons. I hated it anywhere above water. It always looks bad to me. It always looks like I'm watching people on a film set when it moves to high frame rate and that takes me out of the movie. Maybe it didn't bother other people, but it sure bothered me. I appreciate Cameron and other filmmakers trying to crack the code with high frame rates. Perhaps one day that will unlock a whole new world with filmmaking. For now though, it remains a distraction.

 

Let's also not forget that James Cameron's superpower above everything else is spectacle. There just isn't anyone better at doing a huge set piece. While the first hour of the movie was place-setting and the second hour was water admiration, the final hour is a huge water battle and series of set pieces that won't be matched by anything this year. The last hour made the first two hours’ worth it for me*. I don't know what else to say about it. If I had a checklist for all the things I wanted to see in a big sea battle, Cameron checked them all off then added a few things. He did so while keeping and even gaining momentum. If one of the reasons you go to the movies is to see something on a big screen that you can't reproduce at home, then you absolutely should see The Way of Water.

 

*Let me add a clarification. There are times when films take a lot of time to finally pay things off, so the awesome ending retroactively improves what you watched before. That is not The Way of Water. There are obviously plot points that pay off in the last hour, but the things about the battle that really worked for me worked pretty independently from the rest of the movie. As a result, The Way of Water is a movie where I put up with 2 hours to get to the good stuff, not a movie where I invested 2 hours and got a return on that investment. Think of it like going to a concert with 4 opening acts before the band you actually bought the ticket for.

 

I think that about covers it for me. Like the first Avatar, I'm glad I saw The Way of Water. It's a singular experience at the movies. James Cameron is a master at his craft. The film doesn't transport me to a world I care about though. That happens. I know other people who think I am insane for eating up every last second of the extended Lord of the Rings movies. At some point, franchise filmmaking comes down to if you care about the franchise or not. The Way of Water, for all its visual spectacle, doesn't get me to care about the franchise.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Quick Reaction: Luckiest Girl Alive

Mila Kunis has a weird career. I don't know that she's ever been a huge star, but she's been very famous for 20 years. She's done a lot in a lot of genres. She's better in comedy than drama, but she's not bad in drama. Luckiest Girl Alive is an example of this. She's pretty good in this. I believe her real personality more than the persona she puts on. I do struggle to believe that she's masked her true self that effectively for so long. She's not a sociopath, so to be that good at being that fake, you have to kind of like it; see the appeal of acting that way. However, Kunis has nothing but contempt for it the whole time. If I just accept that everyone is convinced when the movie begins though, I liked it.

It is depressing how much "person with a history of being in a school shooting" has become a thing. That's not a critique of the movie. More of a critique on society.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend