Delayed Reaction: Cherry

Premise: A college student goes to war, comes back, becomes an addict, and robs banks.

 

This is a bummer of a movie. And, I don't mean it was a riveting portrait of a young man struggling with his demons. I mean, it's a movie where nothing good happens and I'm along for the ride for nearly 2.5 hours.

 

The buzz going into the movie was that it was the Russo brothers coming off mega Marvel hits pulling in Tom Holland for a dramatic role. It's not Holland's first serious role. His first big movie was 2012's The Impossible and just last year he made the Southern crime movie The Devil All the Time. Cherry is the first movie that, before anyone saw it, they said "I wonder if Tom Holland could be an Oscar contender with this?" It was also the Russos' chance to remind people that they are talented directors and not just really good at doing what the Marvel machine demands.

 

Ultimately, my response to this movie is: for Holland - too soon, and for the Russos - too much.

 

I think Tom Holland is a terrific actor and on his way to being a hell of a movie star. He just plain looks too boyish still. He's not grizzled. Yes, he looks great as a young college student and his physique is straight out of Jarhead. He just doesn't read as an Army veteran with PTSD and a drug addiction. It doesn't help that he's paired with Ciara Bravo, who will be able to play high school students into her 30s if she wants. It feels like this movie could be made with them in 5 years, when they can both easily pass for college students but also play better as real adults. I know it's a little unfair, because both actors are well into their 20s at this point, but this is how they read on screen right now: way too young-looking. And it distracted me from so much else of what they were doing.

 

With directors, I often like to say they need to get things out of their system. I'm not sure how true it actually is. I remember thinking Sucker Punch was Zack Snyder getting all of his excesses out of his system so he could move onto using his distinct style more conservatively for future movies, and that certainly didn't come true. Normally, I point to this idea for young directors. They get that first chance to make a movie and try to pack all of their ideas into it, just in case they don't get another chance this big. I think this applies to the Russos with Cherry as well. They went straight from inventive and ambitious Community (and other sitcoms) episodes to giant Marvel movies. So, they've made a career so far out of how well they mimic other formulas or make them their own. Cherry is their first time in a while where it would be known as a Russo brothers film first and foremost. And it's a lot. This movie is packed with expensive-looking shots or over stylized shots. It's like they are so used to shooting things on an Endgame scale that they forgot how to do small moments. I don't know what to say other than "calm down".

 

The motivations in the story feel a little thin. The circumstance around Holland joining the army plays like a confusion from a sitcom episode. Bravo becoming a junkie too just sort of happens. And the movie makes bank robbing look super easy. I'm annoyed as well by the in-media res beginning, where Holland starts walking the audience through how to rob a bank, because the composure of Holland then is not at all congruent with the Holland we see later robbing the banks. I can't think of a reason why they want him to be Zack Morris robbing banks early and caffeine pill-addicted Jessie Spano when he's robbing banks later.

 

Looking for parts of this movie I like is sand through the fingers. I was rooting for it a lot. I even saw it with a "fuck you" attitude after it was dismissed by initial critics. I was hoping to "well, actually" the consensus of the movie. Instead, it lived up to the poor reputation. The casting is wrong. The direction is overwhelming. The story lacks proper motivation. There just plain wasn't much to like.

 

Verdict: Strongly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Moxie

Premise: A teenage creates an underground zine at her high school to address the gender problems there and anonymously starts a movement.

 

Depending on which eye prescription I use, this is a movie that plays differently. If I use my high school prescription, when everything seemed much clearer more easily, it's a fun movie that addresses timely and important issues. If I use my current prescription, with vision that's been beat down over the years but appreciates more the times when I can see crisply, I see a sweet coming of age movie that really muddles the big topics it's going after. In other words, this is me giving myself cover with the lazy but effective "this movie may have just not been for me".

 

Mostly, I did enjoy this movie. I think I've more than established at this point that I'm a sucker for a good high school coming of age story. So, I'm a huge fan of Hadley Robinson in the lead role, Vivian. She's believable enough as a high schooler. It's possible to de-glam her enough to play someone "relatable". It's a great story about her finding her voice. The story is just convoluted enough to be fun without feeling impossibly unlikely. It populates the world well. I was surprised how well Lauren Tsai, as Vivian's best friend, played a high schooler. I remember her from the last season of Legion, where she already looked past high school age on screen, yet she fits here. The other girls in the class like Alycia Pascual-Pena and Sydney Park play recognizable types without feeling like lazy tropes. Nico Hiraga is a delightful manic pixie dream boy. Director Amy Poehler as Vivian's mom is just gravy. And the movie overall is just really good at sweet moments.

 

As a rule, the more front and center a high school movie makes a social justice issue, the clunkier it is. The best way around it is to create a world that's intentionally exaggerated. Mean Girls makes great points about bullying and the way women treat each other, and it can afford to be so obvious about it, because everyone in that school is extreme. I never look at it and think "that's my high school". Moxie can't decide how real it wants the high school to feel. It is not a subtle movie. The evil jock is cartoonishly manipulative and antagonistic. The amount that the administrators aren't concerned about what's going on with the student body is extreme yet treated like it should be believable. I don't know exactly how high schools are now, but I feel like they'd be working harder to shut down a list that goes to every student with "most bangable" awards. And, honestly, the student body barely feels real. It takes one woke student transferring in to magically make everyone start noticing the problems? I realize my thoughts are pretty scattered on my issues with the movie. Simply put, I never believed the world of the movie, which made it hard to invest in the stakes. It tried to take on too much.

 

Still, the coming-of-age and young romance stuff is still good enough to keep me favorable about the movie. I respect the attempt to tackle big topics (gender parity, racism and racial expectations, consent), even if the execution was a bit off. It's certainly an interesting pick as Amy Poehler's 2nd or 3rd movie as a director. Her first film was a TV movie called Dumb Prince, which I've never heard of and barely seems to exist. Her proper debut was Wine Country, which kept her very much in her comfort zone. Moxie is her first big swing and it makes me curious about what she'll try next.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Movie Reaction: Nobody

Formula: 1 / John Wick

 

"You messed with the wrong guy" is a pretty popular premise. There's an entire subgenre of action movies based on that. John Wick plays it up to almost comical levels. Most Liam Nesson movies play with some form of it: Taken being the best example. It was only a matter of time before someone tried to play with that concept even more. Nobody does so by reversing the idea. Instead of "You messed with the wrong guy", it's "The wrong guy messed with you". Which, in a way makes a lot more sense.

 

The movie begins with a home invasion. Hutch (Bob Odenkirk) discovers some petty criminals breaking into his house and passes up an opportunity to take one of them down. They get spooked and leave harmlessly enough, but everyone in Hutch's life looks down on him for not being a man of action. That, mixed with some other indignities in life, paints Hutch as the kind of beta male we'd all expect a 58-year-old Bob Odenkirk to play. At that point, I'm mentally prepping for a Falling Down story of a man turning vigilante and slowly, improbably becoming pretty good at it. Instead, there is a moment when he snaps. He thinks the robbers took his daughter's kitty bracelet in the robbery, and that sets him off. He goes looking for trouble, and even though the couple who robbed him don't actually provide any trouble once he tracks them down, he finds some on a bus. Until that bus fight, the movie drops small hints that there's more to Hutch than meets the eye. Once we get to the bus fight with some local goons, we realize that Hutch isn't a sheep trying to unlock his inner wolf. He's a wolf who has been posing as a sheep all along. He's a man suppressing something that he's finally letting back out. What follows is a wave of destruction that's badass and comically excessive.

 

This is an unexpected role for Odenkirk, which is why he was cast in it. Odenkirk is known for being a funny guy. The most rotten he ever is is a huckster. Any fan of Better Call Saul knows that he's capable of darkness, but he's not physically imposing. Odenkirk does bulk up a little for this role. He's clearly in better shape than he ever is for Better Call Saul. What's more important is that he takes a page from BCS co-star Jonathan Banks in how to be threatening without being built like a Hemsworth. Despite being in his 60s and 70s while working in the Breaking Bad-universe, Banks has always carried himself like a guy who could kick my ass. Odenkirk channels that same energy for Nobody. It's an impressive turn that I hope doesn't turn into a full-time reinvention like it has for Liam Nesson. Badass Nobody Odenkirk is surprisingly fun, but I'd miss Mr. Show Odenkirk. There are a few other actors giving good performances as well. Christopher Lloyd plays Odenkirk's father. While the 82-year-old Lloyd has lost his fastball, he takes delight in this unexpected role. Aleksey Serebryakov plays the obligatory Russian crime boss with violent charisma. The film could've done a little better by Connie Nielsen as Hutch's wife, but her role sort of demands that she be reactionary. Really, every performance is very secondary to Odenkirk's though.

 

It's fair to go after the movie for being a little lazy in the storytelling. It knows that we've seen John Wick or other movies like it, so it doesn't bother really explaining who Hutch is. It figures that we know the genre basics. There are just a few scenes of people quitting when they find out Hutch is involved or locking doors when they realize who he is. It's convenient for him to randomly stumble onto the brother of a major Russian crime boss on the night when he's looking for trouble. More importantly, I'm not sure this really passes the test of asking "could this character have existed offscreen?" I'm not sure I buy that Hutch could've really hidden his identity and true self so successfully for so long. Since the movie is fun though, I'll give most of that a pass.

 

The stunt work is pretty good. They cut around Odenkirk's physical limitations well. They make Hutch more efficient than physical, so he can pull off most of those stunts. This falls well short of a John Wick or Atomic Blonde, but I'd place it ahead of something like Upgrade in terms of the set pieces and fights. Most of the humor is in the extreme juxtapositions, so if you can't find the outlandishness of how a person is killed funny, then this isn't the movie for you. This will never be my first choice for an action movie, but it's a good one for any fan of the genre to see.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Rebound

Premise: The story of legendary street baller Earl "The Goat" Manigault.

 

I've had my Netflix DVD account for over 12 years now. I refuse to get rid of it, because there are some movies that just don't pop up on streaming. I suppose I could rent from Amazon for about the same cost these days, but I still get a thrill out of the red envelope showing up in the mail. And, Rebound is one of the movies that I've had in my queue the longest. I'm not exactly sure why. I recall hearing the story of Kareem Abdul-Jabber calling Earl Manigault the best player he ever played against when he retired. That must've caused me to find this movie, and the fact that the film still barely has a presence on the internet clued me into the fact that it probably wasn't very good. It never felt imperative to see it. However, all good runs must come to an end, and Rebound finally got to the top of my DVD queue.

 

As expected, the movie is not that great. It's an HBO Films production from 1996. ER's Eric La Salle directed it and gave himself a role as a Vietnam veteran who lost his hands. It's immediately obvious that he's holding prosthetics. He's always got a long-sleeved coat and his forearms are twice their normal length. There’s only so much they could do about that, but it does reflect on the level of production we're talking about.

 

It's nice getting Don Cheadle for Ernie "The Goat" Manigault. This is not one of his defining roles though. It's laughable early on when he's supposed to pass for a 14-year-old. It's worse than pretending to buy Florence Pugh in the younger years of Little Women. Even when he's in high school it's a tough sell, and that's a significant portion of the movie. Then there's the goat skill. Obviously, Cheadle can't be trained to jump 6 feet or whatever, so some visual trickery is needed to make Ernie jump so high in the film. It looks a little silly though, with the obvious cuts. Our minds can unconsciously do the math. If we see the beginning of the jump that Cheadle actually does, we know it lacks the acceleration and power to get that high. I don't know the solution to this. I'm just here to pick at things.

 

So, the basketball in the film isn't that convincing. The drug stuff is a little silly (especially seeing it in a post-The Wire world). Cheadle is asked to play outside his believable age range. It's not bad for the HBO 90's house style. I have to forgive a little because of the limited budget and resources, but this is a story that's probably better told with a Wikipedia read and a little light internet digging. And there's the part of me that wonders if the movie would've been made a lot differently has it be made a couple years later when "The Goat" died.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Treasure Planet

Premise: It's Treasure Island, but in space.

 

(Note: A computer snaffu caused me to lose my original draft, so if I sound perturbed, that's why)

 

I find the early and mid-2000s era of Disney animation fascinating. Basically, the period between the Disney Renaissance and the New Disney Renaissance. Several factors came together around the same time to give Disney one massive identity crisis. It pretty much boils down to 3 factors: computers, competitors, and consistency. The Disney formula worked exceptionally well throughout the 90s. 2D animation, great music, and clever ideas led to hit after hit. By the late 90s, they were still churning out hits, but they were clearly stagnating. The movies were getting more expensive and even $100-$120 million grosses weren't quite doing it anymore. And the formula risked getting stale. I suspect it worried Disney that Fox aped their formula so well with Anastasia that for years, most people assumed it was a Disney film. So, they had to figure out how to evolve the brand. In the late 90s as well, DreamWorks Animation showed up on the scene, offering Disney their greatest animated threat since Don Bluth broke off in the early 80s. By the time DreamWorks made Shrek, Disney realized they weren't going away and threatened to out-innovate them. Speaking of innovation. Disney Animation's greatest "competitor" came from in-house* when Pixar changed the game with Toy Story. The fully CGI film became the highest grossing movie of 1995. When A Bug's Life and Toy Story 2 also outgrossed the Disney Animated features those years (by a lot), that must've created a greater identity crisis.

*Pixar was independent initially, but since Disney handled their distribution, that's close enough to "in-house" for me.

 

This all goes to say that in the early 2000s, Disney animation had a lot of big and sometimes costly swings. Perhaps no swing was bigger than Treasure Planet. This 2D-3D computer animated hybrid attempted to be the movie that mastered the look of early DreamWorks movies like The Prince of Egypt. Disney sank a lot of money into it and lost big. It was a bomb. Disney hadn't seen an animated film bomb this hard in years. It was the least money made by a Disney Animation Studios* film since The Rescuers Down Under (And adjusted for inflation, that might be a toss-up). Given the estimated $140 million budget, that's a disaster. Really though, it just confirmed a trend started with the likes of The Emperor's New Groove and Atlantis: The Lost Empire: a film I still confuse with Treasure Planet.

*Remember: Disney does have niche divisions for smaller movies. Most notable at the time was Disneytoon Studios, which made straight to video films that occasionally became theatrical releases. These were smaller movies than Disney Animation Studios, so I'm not counting them. No one thought of Doug's First Movie as the next big Disney release.

 

That's a lot of table setting to say that it's a shame Treasure Planet is so tied to its financial failure. It's a pretty enjoyable movie. It looks unique from anything else the studio has made. The nonsensical mix of space and the high seas gives this a nearly steampunk look that I'm surprised hasn't caught on more, the way that The Nightmare Before Christmas has in the nostalgia market. The voice cast is fun. I especially like David Hyde Pierce channeling Niles Crane for his role and Emma Thompson really going to town with the swashbuckling captain role. Even the villain role of John Silver feels unique among Disney Animated movies. He's the primary antagonist, yet he's fully able to take an antihero turn within the movie.

 

It is hard to see the world where this movie was the hit that kept the Disney Renaissance going though. It took the studio a while to figure out how to replace the majesty and levity of the musical numbers. You see, most people just equate the music to the comedy (Thanks Golden Globes) like it's a 1 for 1 trade off. Take the songs out and add more jokes to keep the film balanced. Some of the songs were funny, but what they really did was give the movies a feeling of grandeur. "A Whole New World". "Beauty and the Beast". "The Circle of Life". These are songs that elevated the emotional resonance of the movie. Treasure Planet has a lot of wonder but can't express it as succinctly. Disney eventually figured it out. Meet the Robinsons still hits hard. Wreck-It Ralph has emotional resonance. And they've been willing to dip back into the musicals on occasion. Ironically, the story in Treasure Planet reflects the search that Disney Animation was going through at the time.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Antebellum

Premise: A modern black woman finds herself on a Civil war plantation.

 

Sometimes, there are movies that sound like a bad idea every step of the way. The inspiration comes from a bad joke. The pitch is defiantly shocking. The production has to be protected from out of context stories and photographs. By the time it comes out, it has ruffled so many feathers that it seems doomed to fail. Then, by some miracle, it comes together just right and becomes a resounding success that challenges people and breaks every rule along the way.

 

Antebellum isn't one of those movies.

 

I fully see the appeal. There are few things more horrifying than slavery. America's history with slavery and the long tail of slavery that continued after it is a topic that can't be examined enough. It seems pretty obvious to use slavery as the basis of a horror movie. Unlike a home invasion or being chased by a serial killer, it's a horror that is in virtually all of our family history in some way.

 

However, there is a reason why so few horror movies have touched the topic. It's actually quite hard to make good, thoughtful horror in general. That's fine, because normally, when filmmakers don't succeed at horror, they can fall back on exploitation. When A Nightmare on Elm Street runs out of things to say about teenage insecurity, it can just be a fun slasher movie. Perhaps Final Destination began with a deeper message, but at some point during production, they lost the thread of that, so it was just a dumb thrill-tease about death chasing people. Antebellum doesn't have that luxury. It's either a biting commentary on racial animosity in the U.S. today or it's a movie that uses the horror of slavery for cheap thrills. Unfortunately, it's very much the latter case.

 

This film is broken into three distinct sections. The first part of a generic slave narrative. Janelle Monae is a slave named Eden on a plantation suffering the daily horrors of it. Something is a little off about it. No one is trying that hard to have "slave dialects" like we're used to. A couple people have some style choices that I thought were modern "but maybe they did exist back then". It then cuts to Monae as a successful professor in the modern day. She's a major voice for black rights. On a trip to New York, she gets abducted by some white people who are tired of these black people who keep overstepping. The third act then returns to the plantation and confirms that all the plantation stuff is in the modern day. It's like The Village, but racist, and everyone knows it's a lie. So, Monae eventually makes her escape to realize that this is all a super exclusive part of some sort of Confederate Disney World.

 

The basics sound like they could be good satire or commentary. Yeah, this deep love of the Confederacy is something I find suspicious too. Yeah, white people do talk to black people with a lot of microaggressions. Yeah, slavery IS bad. But the movie doesn't have much more to say after that, and those points are delivered without any subtlety. In other words, they are writing this to be clear for the people who will just roll their eyes at it and tune it our right away. So, what everyone else is left with is meaningless misery porn.

 

Look, Monae is pretty good in the movie for what she's needed. She's out of place on the plantation and very natural in the modern day. She looks great in the revenge scenes. Jena Malone is unfortunately excellent at playing an arch racist Southern woman. Keirsey Clemons is pretty good as one of the newer "slaves" who has a harder time accepting her new situation. It was even nice to see Gabourey Sidibe show up in the modern-day parts, acting like she's in a completely different movie. So, the movie isn't all bad. Some people are pretty decent in it. The big twists are pretty effective on a basic storytelling level. As I referenced before though, this is mostly a horror movie. Like most horror movies, it doesn't all come together beautifully. The tone is muddled and that looks especially bad with this topic. It comes off like they are using slavery for cheap shock value. Really, I just wish this movie had more to say with such an explosive premise.

 

Side Thought: I wish I could understand why Monae hotboxing a bunch of racists to death seems fine to me, yet her dragging racist Jena Malone by rope from her horse feels like it's going too far? I guess it feels more dehumanizing. The hotboxing just plays like forced cremation. The dragging is much uglier and brings up some of the more shocking deaths of black people. I guess it highlighted that this movie wasn't sure whether it was going for exploitation or serious commentary.

 

Verdict: Strongly Don't Recommend