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

Delayed Reaction: Mad God

Premise: An assassin travel through a dark underworld where...stuff happens.

This movie is beautiful. It's a stop motion feast for the eyes. Scene after scene I was amazed by the level of detail and depth on the screen. And those visuals are distinctively grim and ugly. I commend the level of craft involved in making this.

 

The movie overall didn't do much for me. It was craft without a ton of substance. The film is told wordlessly and is scene after scene of gnarly images. I totally get the people who really fell hard for this. There are different kinds of movie fans out there. I'm clearly not a target for this one. Seriously, it's worth checking a few minutes out though. You'll know quickly if the movie is for you or not, and it is for you, it'll entrance you right away.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Luck

Premise: An unlucky young woman finds herself in the land of luck and risks ruining everything.

If your goal is to ape Disney animation, a good way to start is by bringing in the disgraced producer who masterminded the second animation Renaissance at Disney. That's what Skydance did, hiring former Disney exec John Lasseter to run their animation division. I won't get into the discussion of if he deserved this second chance, mainly because I don't know. What I can say is that Luck feels very Disney. Maybe it feels too Disney. Luck comes from the Inside Out or Zootopia school of "Let's come up with some basic rules for an abstract or fantasy world." So, the rules and concept of this feels really familiar. But effective enough.

The animation isn't quite Pixar level, but it's more evolved than, say, Netflix Animation. The protagonist is winning and the supporting characters are fairly inventive. It's hard to argue with the overall message. I really don't have strong feelings about this movie. I doubt it was worth Skydance and/or Apple's investment, but it's an entertaining enough watch.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Sea Beast

Premise: A seafaring kingdom kills giant sea beasts...but maybe they shouldn't?

Netflix Animation sure makes me appreciate the more established animation studios. A Disney or a Pixar may have a formula, but it's a proven formula. The Sea Beast feels like an approximation of what a good family animation film should be. It's basically Moana meets Pirates of the Caribbean. The sea and water effects do look great. They really found ways to convey the detail and scope of that. The character animation is still lacking. The writing isn't there either.

 

It seems like Netflix put a decent amount of money into this. Over time, I think they can establish themselves as something more than off-brand Disney. The studio is only about 4 years old though. Give it some time. Meanwhile, The Sea Beast has some charm and certain animation strengths, but it's not appointment viewing.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Greatest Beer Run Ever

Premise: The true story of a guy who decided to deliver beers to friends in Vietnam to show his appreciation.

This is the follow up from the director who won Best Picture for Green Book. That is both a factual statement and a descriptive statement. Green Book is a fine movie. It's a little silly that it won Best Picture, and there's been buyer's remorse since the moment it won. It was an accident of circumstances. Peter Farrelly is beloved for his 90s comedies with his brother. He ventured out on his own with a movie about race relations that was surprisingly good, considering the last 2 decades of films that people largely (and rightfully) ignored. That awards season had a lot of flawed nominees, so Green Book could sneak through.

 

Now Peter Farrelly is a director with Oscar pedigree, but that was the exception to his filmography, not the rule. So, how does he follow that up? He's not really an auteur. He won't start making Romas or Nomadlands. The Greatest Beer Run Ever is a comedy movie made by someone who is expected to make more than a comedy movie now. And I don't think that's working for anyone.

 

The movie is most comfortable early on, when Chickie Donohue (Zac Efron) is stumbling his way to and around Vietnam. Chickie is a fool with a good heart. That's Farrelly's specialty. It's even what works best about Green Book. Now, imagine if Harry or Lloyd were thrown into Platoon. It would be strange, right? That's what happens in this. It becomes a different movie, and not one that works as well. It doesn't all fit together. The individual parts aren't bad though. Farrelly does a good job depicting the attack on Saigon. It's more technically impressive than I expected. It's just a different movie.

I remain optimistic about Zac Efron. I like how determined he is to work in comedies. He just continues to have the Arnold Schwarzenegger problem. The man is chiseled and he can't hide it. The more people don't acknowledge it, the stranger it is. For the Schwarzenegger comparison, that's why Twins works and Jingle All the Way struggles. Efron's Chickie is a slacker merchant seaman who drinks every night yet also looks like he hasn't had a carb in a decade and never misses leg day. It's less that he's miscast and more that the film ignores who they cast.

 

I don't know where Peter Farrelly goes from here. I don't think he wants to go back to Dumb and Dumber but I don't think he'll ever find the alchemy of Green Book again. After The Greatest Beer Run Ever, I'm hoping he at least gives himself the freedom to not think he needs to make an award movie every time.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend