Delayed Reaction: Captain Blood

Premise: A physician, arrested and put into slavery by King James II, becomes a pirate captain on the West Indies.

 

This is a pretty perfect Hays Code adventure movie. It has a hint of scandal with the title. While Blood is actually the character's name, calling this "Captain Blood" immediately makes its 20% cooler than if it's was called "The Physician Pirate" or "The Swashbuckling Doctor". It's able to talk about the evils of slavery without discussing race. There's a bunch of big action. Best of all, they don't have to question the morality of the lead character being a pirate, because he's pardoned by the end. The only way this could be more Hays Code is if one of the ships Blood sank was run by communists.

 

It's easy to understand how audience saw Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland in this and thought "Yes, more please". Flynn is a great gentleman rogue. De Havilland is assertive in a non-threatening way. This was a star making turn for them both for good reason.

 

I was most impressed by the action sequences. The movie packed a lot of cannon fire into this and the minutes they used for the naval warfare were pretty good. I only really noticed they were models when a cannon ball would hit a life raft and send rigid bodies (clearly figurines) into the water.

 

This movie did a lot to remind me why that first Pirates of the Caribbean movie is so appealing. Give a couple rough but ultimately endearing leads and a pirate ship and I'm good for at least 2 hours.

 

Side Thought: Even more so in The Adventures of Robin Hood, I couldn't stop thinking about Cary Elwes when I saw Flynn in this. I realize I'm about three decades late to make this observation, but I wanted to mention it anyway. Is there a reason Hollywood didn't remake all of Flynn's movies with Elwes?

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Freaky

Premise: A teenage girl swaps bodies with a serial killer.

 

I imagine body swap movies are really easy to interest actors for. They are a great way to let performers play characters they never would in any other circumstance. The high-concept and even stilly premise makes it a free pass to look as stupid as they want. And, generally speaking, they get some amount of praise no matter how good or bad the performance actually is. Remember how people tried to push Jamie Lee Curtis into the Oscar conversation for a Freaky Friday performance that didn't actually resemble Lindsay Lohan very much?* Regardless, it's a clear pitch with tons of easy jokes. The biggest question is how it can be mixed with another genre.

 

*Jamie Lee Curtis played a generic high schooler trapped in her mother's body well, however there's wasn't much indication that she was trying to mimic anything Lohan was doing with the role pre-body swap.

 

On the basic fun level, Freaky works. It delivers exactly what it promises. It's a throwback slasher movie where a psychopath commits a bunch of creative murders. It has Kathryn Newton and Vince Vaughn gamely swapping characters for a number of jokes and sight gags. Newton has the much easier task. The Blissfield Butcher is a quiet, interior person. She rarely has to say anything as him, and when she does, it's specifically when he's trying to mimic what a teenage girl would sound like. Most of the time, she's just walking around looking like a badass. Vaughn has the tougher role, playing a teenage girl trapped in a 50-year-old man's body. Much like Jack Black in Jumanji, I think Vaughn plays a good generic high school girl, but I'm not sure how much he's playing Newton's character. That's not a huge deal, because the movie is more comedy than serious horror.
 

There were some very frustrating things about this kind of movie that I was pleased to see this one avoid. I love how quickly the friends believe Millie is in Vaughn's body now. Same with the love interest. I wasn't looking forward to a long stretch of Millie not being able to tell anyone. I also like how little interest the Blissfield Butcher has in trying to hide himself in Newton's body. It's smart to just stay quiet. And the movie does play with each of them discovering the limitations of their new bodies. Millie hasn’t adapted to being tall. The Butcher can't rely on strength anymore.

 

This is a movie that's best to not think too hard about. Even basic logistics like why they switched bodies at midnight rather than at the time of the attack don't really track. That's literally just there for script ease. I think this could've found room for a few more character moments. By the end, I still really didn't have a grasp of who Millie was as a person. Unlike a Happy Death Day, there would be no appeal to a sequel, since the character had to be generic enough for two actors to play.

 

Side Thought: Is Kathryn Newton a giant? I don't think she is. She looked normal height in most scenes. The internet says she's only 5'5. The scenes with her before she kills Melissa Collazo's character though make her look Elizabeth Debicki-sized. According to the internet, Collazo is 5'1. Was she wearing flats and Newton had some boots with heels? Or are 4 inches really that noticeable? Was this an intentional framing by the filmmakers? I'm far too interested in this one small aspect of the movie.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Nomadland

Premise: After her factory town shut down, a woman adopts a nomadic lifestyle, living out of her van.

 

Even though this isn't my favorite movie from the last "year", I hope Nomadland is the Best Picture winner at this upcoming Oscars. I've long believed in the idea that Best Picture winners shouldn't be seen as the best movie of their years. Instead, they are a reflection of that year and what was seen as important at that moment. It's hard to find a more 2020 movie than Nomadland. It's somehow both aspirational, with the wide-open spaces and open roads, and a sad reminder of the state of things, set in the shadow of the Great Recession and filled with economic panic.

 

Nomadland is a movie I'm very sad I didn't find a way to see in theaters. It's just not the same watching at home when I can pause and have so many distractions. This isn't an event heavy movie. The best moments happen in between. It's a collection of smaller adventures following Fern (Frances McDormand), a woman who moves into her van after her factory town shut down thanks to the Great Recession. She's living the life of a nomad, which means finding menial odd jobs throughout the year and living cheap from her van, finding assorted locations that she can set up shop in. It's not a glamourous life, but there is an appeal to it. She can go anywhere she wants. Every day is a new adventure. After a year spent mostly confined to my apartment not meeting any new people face-to-face, Fern's life is practically taunting me for 2 hours. That said, I could never do this lifestyle. I enjoy too many of the little comforts in life. Hell, I'm barely comfortable with the freedom of a laptop instead of a desktop.

 

Writer/director Chloe Zhou's strategy of casting a few professional actors around mostly amateurs really works for this. Check the cast list. Every actor except McDormand goes by their own name (and Fern isn't that far off). At times, the movie feels only slightly removed from being an Anthony Bourdain style travel series starring Frances McDormand. It's so delightful without ever feeling lightweight.

 

I suspect when all is said and done, Nomadland won't end up winning Best Picture. It still feels like a movie that critics are trying to sneak in as a frontrunner due to a paucity of traditional options. This feels much more like a Florida Project than a Moonlight. The filmmaking is wonderful but not showy. It's packed with emotions, but they are quiet emotions. I hope I'm wrong, because this is a great movie and a fine representative of 2020.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Quick Reaction: The Vanishing Prairie

There's not a lot to say here. It probably ended up on my watchlist due to an Academy Award Documentary nomination or a National Board of Review Documentary list. Disney made many of these nature documentaries and they are what they are. This is a kid-friendly attempt to make prairie wildlife interesting without getting into too many thorny topics. It does a good job of narrativizing the collection of footage of buffalo, coyotes, prairie dogs, badgers and more. It has uncommon distinction of being a movie that both put me to sleep and had me unable to take my eyes away from it. That coyote trying to get the prairie dog was riveting stuff, yet I struggled to stay awake after 10 minutes about prairie dogs. I also had to remind myself a few times that this was shot in the US. I'm too used to squirrels and chipmunks as the only wildlife in this country. I'm sure I'll check a few more of these docs out. They are barely an hour.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Waiting for "Superman"

Premise: A documentary examining the assorted challenges of the American public educational system.

 

Fixing education is hard. That's the big takeaway from this movie. Apparently, this movie took a lot of criticism from assorted educators due to all the things that it left out or oversimplified. To me, the fact that anyone involved in education could "what about..." this movie to death for all the things it leaves out or oversimplifies is evidence of the complexity of the issue, not a failure of the movie. There's no way a 100-minute documentary can capture it all. And that's the point of the movie.

 

Waiting for "Superman" is my favorite execution of this kind of documentary, even though it ends in a frustrating place. I can tell that director Davis Guggenheim went in asking "how do we fix the education system in America?" and explored that without thinking he already knew the answer. This is a curious movie. Guggenheim explores everything from the importance of good teachers to charter schools to teachers’ unions to economic gaps. It's a lot and the question of education is a Gordian Knot at times. Every time Guggenheim gets into one topic, it brings up three more to untangle first.

 

I like that he doesn't try to give blanket solutions. He's not suggesting that we throw even more money at the problem or abolish teacher unions. He's puncturing some myths and explaining the history of some problems; even pointing out some ongoing policies that have outlived their usefulness, such as school structures that assume only 20% of students go to college. The movie is ultimately hopeful. He points out a number of ideas and schools that are working. He confirms that a good teacher is really worth their weight in gold without romanticizing the profession. He tries to focus on the good intentions of policies like No Child Left Behind before examining why they ultimately don't work. Most importantly, he ends with compelling evidence that kids in the wrong neighborhood don't have to be lost causes.

The fact that Guggenheim leaves so much out is a feature, not a bug of the movie. It's an intro level course in the challenges of the American public education system. The kind of thing I wish more people would watch before weighing in on the debate.

 

If I step back and try to look at Waiting for "Superman" on an entertainment level, it's nothing impressive, but it works well enough. The occasional animation is often helpful to explain issues and doesn't undercut the point by being too playful. Guggenheim's narration feels necessary rather than intrusive. This is an active lecture, not a fly on the wall examination. It's edited together as clearly as it could be to keep me interested throughout. I do think it milked the school lottery scenes a bit much. The movie balances the macro vs. the micro well, focusing on both individual families and larger systems. It's just depressing that the movie is 10 years old and it feels like nothing has changed*.

 

*I'm not an educator or parent, so I'll admit that I'm not tracking this stuff closely. Maybe there have been sweeping changes to stuff I don't know about.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Euphoria

Premise: Two sisters go on a retreat that turns out to be an assisted suicide center for the sister who reveals that she's dying of cancer.

 

It's hard for me to take my mind out of the Oscar mindset sometimes. I start seeing every movie in terms of Oscar hopes. For any movie with a serious subject matter, I imagine the agent coming to an actress screaming "I found your next Oscar" or I envision directors dreaming of being the talk of the Venice or Toronto Film Festivals. In truth, it's probably much more favor, collaborator, and experiment-based than I give it credit for.

 

Take Euphoria for example. This is a movie about Eva Green as a woman dying of cancer and designing her last few days. Alicia Vikander is the sister blindsided by both the cancer diagnosis and the purpose of this trip. This screams "Oscar bait" to me. Vikander had just won for The Danish Girl and was looking to level up. Eva Green is a highly respected actress who's never found that Oscar nomination and was picking a role that was sure to get that kind of attention. And maybe that was the intent of the movie. Look at it a little closer and I see a different story though. Vikander's newly created production company made Euphoria movie. The director is Lisa Langesth, who is a fellow Swede Vikander had worked with on two previous movies. Perhaps they're just friends who were more focused on working together than attention that would come later. As much as I love Eva Green, she's mostly known for playing Tim Burton-y character roles. Maybe she just wanted to play a different kind of character than she normally gets to. Maybe Charles Dance had an opening in his schedule and was bored. Maybe Charlotte Rampling simply wanted a chance to work with "that lovely Vikander girl who Michael [Fassbender] spoke so highly of on the set of Assassin’s Creed".

 

So, before I call this failed Oscar bait, I need to remember that it was probably not even made with that intention. OK, I got that out of the way... Euphoria was too overwrought for my taste. It uses this controlled environment to focus even more on the emotions the characters are processing. It has the unintended effect of making them too isolated though. There's nothing else going on other than them facing Green's death. No real world concerns. No lingering questions about how much time she has left. It all feels abstract at this suicide center. The movie is meant to be about two sisters who barely ever see each other and are reconnecting in their final days together. By taking them out of the world though, there's no sense of their lives being apart. It felt like an acting camp where each day they were focusing on a different emotion: anger, regret, harmony, peace, etc.

 

It's far from my favorite role for either of the main actresses. It's a lot of Alicia Vikander scowling and Eva Green acting like she's two hours into an argument that Vikander didn't know she was in. I wish the movie had more to say that I haven't heard before. It lands on the same stuff about coming to terms with your own and others' mortality.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Clay Pigeons

Premise: A man finds himself connected to a series of deaths and murders around the same time that a serial killer rolls into town.

 

So...this movie rules. I don't remember exactly how I became aware of it. I think it was a random recommendation from an early Filmspotting podcast. By the time I watched it, I forgot everything about it except that it had a really great 1998 cast - pre-Gladiator Joaquin Phoenix, post-Swingers Vince Vaughn, Romy and Michelle era Janeane Garofalo! It comes from this mini-era of late 90s Southwest dark comedies like Bottle Rocket and Out of Sight. I could even extend it out to include Very Bad Things, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and From Dusk Till Dawn. They are these sunbaked movies with big characters and comically extreme premises that are dumb but committed. In fact, it's funny how many of those were used as stepping stones to a higher level in the directors' careers. Stephen Soderbergh turned Out of Sight into Ocean's Eleven. Wes Anderson used Bottle Rocket to make movies increasingly in his specific style and vision. Peter Berg parlayed Very Bad Things into The Rundown and other increasingly muscular movies. And, it's not surprising that David Dobkin eventually turned this job into Wedding Crashers.

 

I love how quickly this movie sets the tone in the very first scene. And, it kept escalating whenever I thought I knew what kind of movie it was going to be. It even throws in Garofalo quite late to disrupt the equilibrium of the movie. It baffles me that I never caught this movie at 1AM on HBO when I was 13, thinking that it was weird and funny (and holding out hope that there'd be boobs in it, because that's how things worked then...and maybe now too). This is a perfect time for everyone in the cast. Joaquin was still willing to be goofy for a director who doesn't have Oscar nominations. Vince Vaughn was still young and lanky enough to be handsome and just a little threatening. It was the golden age of Garofalo as a castable actress*.

Seriously. She was in 17 movies from 1997-1999 alone.

 

I don't want to build this movie up too much. It's messy and it's more generally funny than a constant knee slapper. It's better to discover it than to build it up with expectations. It seems fitting that the transfer picture quality of the movie to Amazon Prime is so shitty. Or maybe the movie itself was in low quality when it was released. Regardless, my experience watching it reminded me of watching a DVD from 1999 that looked like they recorded it from a VHS copy. Try not to hold it against the movie though.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Map of Tiny Perfect Things

Premise: Two teens are stuck in a Groundhog Day situation and make a map of their favorite moments that day to fill their time.

 

I'm not sure how many Groundhog Day movies I'd need to see before I got tired of the idea, but I think the number would be pretty high. As long as the idea comes with some extra idea then I'm on board every time. It makes sense. It fits with my love of "seize the day" and "live your best life" movies. I mean, what is About Time if not a Groundhog Day in which the protagonist is in the driver's seat? The Map of Tiny Perfect Things is a play on the same idea, escalating the idea a little more. This time, it's two people trapped in the same day unbeknownst to each other until a chance meeting.

 

The movie begins with Mark (Kyle Allen) already deep into this temporal loop. He's come up with a daily routine of sorts that's a little bit anarchy and a little bit good Samaritan. At midnight, each night, he's transported back to the same morning when he's woken up by his mom leaving for work*. He's contented himself on reliving this same day in his small town over and over again. He's found enough to keep him interested still and he hasn't turned to full nihilism yet. Then, one day, his routine is disrupted by a girl, Margaret (Kathryn Newton) who he's never seen before, which means she's caught in a loop too. They become friends, although Margaret is closed off about a lot of things and isn't as thrilled to be caught in this loop. Still, they find new meaning by trying to catalog all the cool things they've observed in their town during all these iterations and eventually look for a way to get out of the loop.

 

*It's a kick in the balls that it's midnight and doesn't wait for him to go to sleep to reset. He could have some fun in those A.M. hours and milk more time with some caffeine.

 

I'll go ahead and say that the way they get out of the loop is some lame YA bullshit, but its heart is in the right place. Before that, the movie checks off all the stuff I want from this kind of movie. It doesn't focus too much on butterfly effect inconsistencies throughout the day (i.e., whether or not Mark steals a bulldozer earlier in the day would surely affect some other events that happen in the small town later). It doesn't try too hard to explain the reason for the time loop or get too bogged down in the more depressing aspects. Like, Mark never once commits suicide to end a day early. Most importantly, Newton and Allen are really sweet together. I appreciate the role reversal where Newton is the disillusioned one and Allen is the manic pixie dream boy. I'd certainly prefer the version of the movie that focuses more on Newton, which the movie also realizes in a roundabout way.

 

I enjoyed this movie a lot while being fully aware of its flaws. It's not the best Groundhog Day movie out there, but it's not the one that will destroy the genre either. There are even some keenly observed points about what a time loop really means for the other people in the loop. It's better to think of it as a movie about growing up anyway. When the movie says Mark can't keep reliving this day forever, it might as well say "you have to grow up eventually".

 

Side Thought: Is Kathryn Newton a name yet or at least a face? I've accidentally seen her in a lot of shows and movies since 2011 (i.e., she's in things I see for other reasons then she appears). Starting in 2017, she's shown up in so many things. At this point, she's a draw for me on her own, and I can't figure out if that's a result of my weird corner of TV/movie choices or if she's actually becoming a big deal.

 

Random Thought: What happened with the pool girl Mark was hitting on early in the movie? I get the sense that was supposed to be the equivalent of the Margot Robbie character in About Time, but I didn't realize how literally the movie was going to drop her the second that Kathryn Newton arrived.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: To All the Boys: Always and Forever

Premise: Lara Jean and Peter go into Senior year with questions about what colleges they will choose and the effect that will have on their relationship.

 

I'm pretty sure I've started all of these Reactions for this series with a form of "I'm not in the demographic they're targeting for these movies", which remains true. What's especially apparent though is that as the series has continued, the movies have gotten less about the gimmick and more about the characters. The first movie has the very fun love letter premise. The second movie has further fallout from that. By the third, the letters are a distant memory, and it's fully about if Lara Jean and Peter will stay together. And that's where my age difference from the target demo matters in how I watch the movie.

 

I'm sorry to say, I don't believe in Lara Jean and Peter. I think Lana Condor and Noah Centineo remain wonderful together. They are most of the reason these movies are still popular and so watchable. For Always and Forever to work though, I need to be invested in the idea of them as a forever couple, and I'm not. I just assume they'll go to college and split up due to distance and growth as people. Lara Jean's backdoor pilot adventure at NYU reminded me that she's still figuring herself out. To me, it actually sounds like a bummer for those two to stay together throughout college. Everyone I knew in college got more interesting when they finally broke up with that boyfriend/girlfriend back home. So, I spent this movie actively rooting against the interest in the movie. That made for a more frustrating 2 hours.

 

I continue to be impressed by how these movies feel like a TV show season that was expertly edited down to movie size. Like, I can easily imagine all the B and C stories with the dad, sisters, and friends that were cut out to focus only on the Lara Jean and Peter story. The downside for the casual viewer of the movie is that there's more assumed familiarity, even in the first movie, like I already know the characters well. This works better the more invested in the series you are. As someone only planning to watch each movie once, it makes me feel like it's test day and everyone else did the reading I didn't know about.

 

This is a fitting end to the series. It keeps the focus on that central relationship without betraying either of the characters. The drama feels very high school in a good way. It ends on a hopeful but not absolute note. I did miss the days of fake relationships and choosing between boys. Choosing between a boy or a college is a little less compelling. From here, I'd happily follow "Lara Jean in the City" adventures, but I'm done with anything more focused on that relationship.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Wanda

Premise: An aimless woman becomes an accidental companion of a bank robber.

 

I wish I had more to say about this movie. It's the lone film from Barbara Loden (who also starred in it) as a director and is a rather famous independent film from 1970. It upended a lot of Hollywood norms at the time with its improvised dialogue and verité style. The fact that it was directed by a woman and the depiction of Wanda as listless and passively sexual were both highly uncommon for that era. The movie almost feels out of place in time.

 

I've been wanting to get around to this for a while. I'm intrigued by the legend of Barbara Loden, who died only a decade after this. It's odd that even though she earned decent praise for the film (it won a major award at the Venice Film Festival), she never directed another movie. I suppose that's not all that odd for that era. It was more expensive to make movies then. She's often compared to John Cassavetes, and he was known for taking acting jobs to later pay for his movies. Perhaps Loden didn't have the stomach or fame to do that. She definitely would've been a Sundance fixture if nothing else these days.

 

The movie is ok. I like Loden's performance. She's very reserved. She isn't doing much more than she must. The plot moves at her pace and there's almost something funny to the way she just drifts from one adventure to the next. I half expected her to be sleeping in the backseat of a car that gets stolen with her in it. I'd label this more as educational watching than purely entertaining, but I found it worthwhile.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend