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John Wick 2 - It's hard to rate this because it's basically a meathead action movie, but it's so gooood at it. Everything I liked about JW1 was back and fresh and just different enough to feel worth the sequel while true to the formula. The stuntwork is amazing, perhaps not technically on par with the Raid movies but excellent for attention to detail and peppering long fight sequences with mini-arcs moment to moment. Visually the film was a treat to watch, with excellent camerawork and set design, lots of delicious things to look at and angles to look at them from. The plot is spartan but gets the job done and doesn't insult your intelligence. The world-building is phenomenal this time and I'm in love with the "Modern Luxury Assassin Fantasy" setting the Wickiverse shows us. It reminds me a lot of the 100 Bullets graphic novel. I'm trying to think of any quibbles or problems I had with the film and I'm drawing a blank. It doesn't pass the Bechdel test, I guess? This film felt a lot funnier and sassier than JW1. It really feels like the filmmakers were composing the movie with a confidence and verve this time that allowed for more jokes and sight gags. A few scenes had me belly-laughing. Lastly - NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED THIS TIME thankyouverymuch. Judged on its merits as a genre piece that knows what it is and plays to its strengths, this is a 5/5 for me. I can't say enough good things about it.
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Feb 13, 2017 13:48
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I Don't Feel At Home In The World Anymore - It's like if Fargo and A Serious Man had a baby and let Napoleon Dynamite watch it for the weekend. One part Coen crime thriller, one part indie tragicomedy. Behind the antics and thrills lies a resonant meditation on powerlessness and banal evil. Macon Blair is as great an actor as his is a director it seems. On Netflix now, go catch it. 5/5
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Mar 9, 2017 03:52
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68 Kill - 3/5 This is a greasy, grimey, gross little crime thriller that reminds me a lot of Killer Joe. The film takes place in Trailerville, Trashtown. Chip is a down-on-his luck loser who pumps septic tanks part time. He lives with Liza, a sex worker who pays most of the bills by sleeping with her main rich sugar daddy. Liza hatches a plot to steal $68,000 from the sugar daddy but, predictably, things don't go so well. I enjoyed my time with 68 Kill while at the same time finding it fairly lurid and sleazy. There's plenty of gore, plenty of violence against women, possibly some implied sexual violence against a male character, and a fairly nihilistic-yet-comical worldview. It definitely takes a lot of cues from early Coen films and early Tarantino and maintains a black comedy posture throughout. It has some genuinely funny moments and some real tension to it. The director, Trenta Haaga, has roots in Troma films and I would say he skews much closer to Troma than, say, Blood Simple or Reservoir Dogs. Unfortunately, I've recently seen I Can't Feel At Home In This World Anymore by Macon Blair, Green Room by Jeremy Saulnier, and Lost River by Ryan Gosling. All three are crime thrillers that take place in depressed areas or with characters struggling with poverty. ICFAHITWA is a gory crime thriller while also being emotional and charming, unlike 68K. GR is a crime thriller (really just a thriller) with better directed tension and terror than 68K. And LR is a crime thriller with stunning visuals and an artistic flair missing from 68K. So, all in all, I had fun with 68 Kill, but I don't expect to remember it by next year. It was competently made, showed some style, but ultimately, should Haaga find long-lasting success as a director, I think it will always exist as a technically just-okay freshman effort rather than a cult classic. But hey, there's nothing wrong with that! I would definitely watch his next one to see where he ends up next.
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Sep 5, 2017 14:11
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Mother! - Dir. Darren Aronosfky, starring Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer Claustrophobic, paranoia-inducing, haunting, and nightmarishly surreal at times. The film begins with quiet tension and continuously escalates into scenes that are terrifying, disturbing, hard-to-watch. Some audiences will hate the extreme violence that pops up. Others will find the allegories/themes over the top or on the nose. Personally, I loved the film. It was sledgehammer-subtle at times, but it was such a spectacle and such a masterclass in tension and repulsive violence that it more than made up for any artistic excess. The film supports multiple readings and interpretations but doesn't ultimately feel indulgent or sloppy. It's a unique film, unlike anything out in theaters this year, and if you can hang with some genuinely unpleasant violence against women and children, but not animals, I recommend it. 4/5
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Sep 17, 2017 16:33
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JIGSAW - (2017) - Yep, it's Saw 8. We're back with more traps, more bad dialogue, and more gore. This time, a group of 5 people are stuck playing a deadly game (and paying for past sins) in a barn while a corrupt cop and a medical examiner with a tortured past investigate. It's been 10 years since Jigsaw was dead and buried. Is... is he back? I see these films out of tradition, not because they are good. 1 and 2 are pretty interesting but the series get progressively worse and unfocused as time goes on. 8 isn't a terrible film but it's as stupid and sloppy as any of the latter Saw films. The dialogue approaches the federal limit on hamfistedness, complete with characters narrating their own histories to each other or repeating taglines written for trailers, not for real humans. The plot is standard SAW twisty-turny fair. Whoa is Jigsaw still alive? Whoa is someone working with him? Who's in on it? What's REALLY happening? The twists are lazy and unearned, but if you were expecting Hitchcock... why? Many characters are forgettable, some are mildly likable, but no one really steals the show. The traps and gore are... fine I guess, but there's only so many ways you can watch someone get dismembered and the franchise has done it all. The grand over-the-top trap didn't even really make any sense and it wasn't clear exactly how it managed to mangle the victim. All in all this was an unnecessary, unasked-for re-boot/visit/hash that adds little to the franchise, certainly no fresh ideas. That said, as someone who has seen every Saw film in theaters, I can't say I was BORED. It was a middle of the road stupid slasher coasting on the wings of an iconic mythology. I don't regret going but... this isn't going to rekindle anyone's passion for this stupid franchise. 2/5 for normal people 3/5 for idiots like me That Dang Dad fucked around with this message at 15:00 on Oct 31, 2017 |
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Oct 31, 2017 14:57
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Finally got around to seeing Lucky (2017) - This is a tough film to review. It's essentially a walking simulator with Harry Dean Stanton's life and career as a setting. HDS plays the eponymous Lucky, an ancient resident of a tiny town who has his routine down to a science. A health scare kicks off a series of meditations on aging, dying, legacy, loneliness, fear, and peace. HDS is joined by David Lynch, Tom Skerrit, Ron Livingston, Ed Begley Jr. and others for a series of set pieces and conversations, some hilarious, some poignant, some downright harrowing. Nothing much happens, but it feels like A LOT happens at the same time. I think this film is excellent. It's quiet and contemplative, but the character interactions are enough to keep the runtime feeling purposeful and worthwhile. Depending on your "life stage", this movie may land with you differently or not at all. My wife and I are in our mid-30s still trying to have kids, so the depiction of the relentless march of time was perhaps sadder and scarier than if we were 24. If you were 90, it's probably a really amazing example of making peace with the Void beyond. My HDS knowledge is confined to Alien and Twin Peaks, so for me, this was a solid 4/5. If you're a real Stant-head, this is probably a 5/5 for you.
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Nov 13, 2017 15:47
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THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER (2017) - Haunting, eerie, unnerving, unpleasant, at times darkly comic, at other times bleak. Elsewhere I described the film as a weird mix of Eyes Wide Shut, We Need To Talk About Kevin, and The VVitch. That's the best I can do. The film is a tale of cosmic revenge, ancient and unknowable, told with the weird sterile alienation of late capitalist creature comforts. It's kind of about class and kind of about justice and kind of about real fear and real menace. 4/5 - it's unlike anything I've seen this year, it will stay in my mind a long time, and I love that someone allowed such a film to be made
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Nov 14, 2017 04:15
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Star Trek: A Last Jedi (2017) - As someone who never cared about Star Wars even as a kid born in 83, it's always been on my cultural radar but never important to me. So, as a "passerby" who likes ESB and who liked TFA but forgot about it 5 days after seeing it, for me, Star Wars The Last Jedi is top tier Star Wars. I found it fun, full of action that made sense, characters I gave a poo poo about, and full of stunning visuals. I liked the comedy aspects because it always felt like Rian was having fun WITH the goofiness inherent to Star Wars, not at the EXPENSE of it. I think TLJ is bombastic, a little uneven, pretty weird at times, a little too long, but ultimately dazzling. It could probably be 20 minutes shorter and a little more focused, but for me, TLJ is going to age MUUUUCH better than TFA and it and ESB are the only two Star Wars films I would care to rewatch a few more times. The film does make me afraid that Abrams is going to unweird TLJ in Star Wars 9 which may retroactively ruin of some of the risks taken, but for now, at least today, The Last Jedi is as good a Star Wars as I could reasonably want. 4/5
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Dec 17, 2017 06:09
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Love, Simon (2018) - This is being called a gay coming-out John Hughes movie and... that's not inaccurate. Simon is a closeted gay teen who becomes fascinated by an anonymous poster on the school's blog who reveals he's gay. Simon and "Blue" begin a correspondence via email that helps both process their sexuality, their relationship to their friend groups, and so on. Unfortunately, a dipshit at the school spies Simon's emails and threatens to reveal his secret. The film is sweet, sentimental, and I'm pleased to say, pretty funny. I laughed out loud several times. The characters are standard teen coming-of-age types, but they play their parts well and have nice chemistry. I laughed, I cried, I left satisfied. It should be noted: this film is VERY white (despite several characters of color) and VERY upper middle class and very best case scenario. This is the story of a privileged white boy coming out and how it rattles some of that privilege. This is definitely NOT the experience of every queer teen and it plays out more like wish fulfillment than telling a ~powerful untold story~ or whatever (at least to me). There is a transwoman of color in the film who actually is the first to come out at the school years prior, but much like many trans WOCs, her pioneering feels a little... glossed over by the film. If racial/queer intersectionality is extremely important to you, this film may frustrate you. The film has also been criticized for being banal. And it is. It's banal in the way John Hughes movies and Can't Hardly Wait and She's All That and 13 Going on 30 and Never Been Kissed and all those other heteronormative me-too teen movies are banal, and that's why I think it's important. Queer kids deserve poppy, sugary normalizing romances just like anyone else. To paraphrase Ricky Carmona from the Who Shot Ya podcast, sometimes it's nice to have a film about the cause that's not about the cause, you know? However, if you are expecting to see a trenchant, insightful character study that challenges everything you thought you knew about sexuality, you will be disappointed. This is a sweet little story about two gay boys trying to figure out how to kiss (and maybe... just maybe... they will!). 3/5 stars - it's nothing special and that's exactly why it matters That Dang Dad fucked around with this message at 13:44 on Mar 27, 2018 |
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Mar 27, 2018 13:42
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The Farewell - 2019 - Apparently in Chinese culture, sometimes families choose not to tell their elderly loved ones they have a terminal illness, believing it's more important to let the loved one die with happiness instead of fear. This does not sit well with Americanized Chinese woman Billi, who loves her Nai Nai and wants to spill the beans. The family travels to China to say clandestine goodbyes trying to shield Nai Nai from the truth of her cancer diagnosis. This was a lovely film. It's all about the tension of family secrets from the banal to the bombastic. The performances are rich and emotional and I liked the depth most of the family members get. This film is funny, sweet, tense, and intimate. I think it also explores really interesting ideas about community, family, individuality, and duty. It's a small film with big ideas and I think it strikes a perfect balance. I can't say enough great things about this film. 5/5 That Dang Dad fucked around with this message at 22:19 on Aug 3, 2019 |
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Aug 3, 2019 22:09
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Cross-posted from my Letterboxd BLACK CHRISTMAS (2019) As students leave campus for winter break, a group of sorority sisters are disappearing one by one. Revenge for exposing a fraternity president as a date rapist or something more sinister? BLACK CHRISTMAS ('74) is often considered the first modern slasher film, so a remake/homage like Black Christmas ('19) won't get the luxury of being judged on its own. Fortunately, I think it's a fun update that preserves the spirit of the original but strips away some of the bloat and adds a dash of freshness from the current era. I think the lead actors have some good charisma and chemistry on screen and I enjoyed spending time with them. The film is well-paced (only 92 minutes!) and never lingers too long anywhere. Most of the shots are standard for films of this type, but there are a few inspired sequences and compositions that I really responded to. The film deviates from the original version in some major ways, at times evoking other influences like SUSPIRIA, which I though was a well-executed choice. This film is nakedly political and I think some audiences are having a tough time with that. For me, the political themes inform the action, the motivations, and ARE the horror of this horror film. Is it on the nose? Sure, but this isn't a contemplative art house meditation; it's a slasher. The villain is patriarchy. As a cohesive whole, I think it works. I have minor nitpicks; the politics could have been sliiiightly more subtle without losing anything. The finale was crowd-pleasing but a little jumbled on screen and hard to follow in places. Also, I don't know if my theater was having audio issues but it sounded like there was a lot of ADR in the film that was occasionally distracting. But, minor stuff. This movie is a blast, I think it would play well at a party, and I wouldn't be shocked to see it become a minor cult favorite down the road. 4/5 stars
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Dec 20, 2019 20:45
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