Rate That Movie Part IV: Movies Never Sleep

[numbersix]

Long-haul flight viewing...

Bohemian Rhapsody: 5/10
How the hell did this film win sound and editing awards at the OScars. When it came to mixing, there are scenes in which Freddie sings in a large room or outside and he sounds like he's in a recording studio. And the pic editing was all over the place, desperately trying to get the reaction of every band member despite most of them never having a purpose in each scene. And then the final 20 mins is literally an exact recreation of their live-aid show, with nothing to say about plot or character. Rami Malik is convincing, and the buried theme of accepting oneself is good, but that's about it.

Ready Player One: 4/10
This should have been the perfect airplane movie. It looks action-heavy but with Spielberg at the helm. But it's so long and dull, especially when the pace slows down and tries to develop the shallow characters and the unconvincing love story. It also doesn't help that the action is almost always in a virtual world, making the stakes feel rather low. Maybe the kids who are addicted to Fortnite may associate, but I was bored.

Upgrade: 6/10
Clever sci-fi horror about a man whose spine is damaged in an attack, and is given the opportunity to regain the power of his body through an advance microchip that speaks to him. Imagine an r-rated Knightrider if the car was inside the man. It's well-shot, exciting, and has a few surprises I didn't see coming. Besides a few off-tone moments, this was solid genre film-making.

A Star is Born: 5/10
Better than expected. Cooper is quite good, but I was unimpressed by Lady Gaga's performance. During dialogue exchanges she was natural, but whenever she was reacting she entered full Looney-Toons mode. And you have to laugh at how the movie conveniently cut away to her about to cry, only to cut back with tears on her face. The film itself is more about Cooper's character than Gaga's, which makes the romance feel unbalanced (I had a similar issue with La La Land). The directing is solid, though.

Also watched Finding Dory (a disappointment, almost feeling like an episode rather than a fill movie) and, most excitingly, a 35mm print of Point Blank in Tarantino's New Beverley cinema.

[Ron Burgundy]

RP1, 4/10 ouch

I couldnt finish Finding Dory, such a step down from Nemo.

And im really looking forward to Hotel Mumbai, after a 9(!) from boosh

[Buscemi2]

Shazam! 2/10

A confused muddle with annoying characters that sold itself as Superman meets Big but turns out to be more or less a slightly-better version of Hancock. The film takes too long to get started (it's nearly 40 minutes before the transformation happens) and seems to have no idea when to end. Also, the film can't seem to make up its mind over whether it wants to be a deconstruction of the bright wonderment of superheroes or a dark thriller about the Seven Deadly Sins coming to life (there was a kid at my showing who couldn't handle the monsters). Lastly, the effects are pretty bad.

A big disappointment after the good reviews it had been getting.

[Screen203]

Shazam! 2/10

A confused muddle with annoying characters that sold itself as Superman meets Big but turns out to be more or less a slightly-better version of Hancock. The film takes too long to get started (it's nearly 40 minutes before the transformation happens) and seems to have no idea when to end. Also, the film can't seem to make up its mind over whether it wants to be a deconstruction of the bright wonderment of superheroes or a dark thriller about the Seven Deadly Sins coming to life (there was a kid at my showing who couldn't handle the monsters). Lastly, the effects are pretty bad.

A big disappointment after the good reviews it had been getting.

My exact thoughts on it, Boosh.

The acting was terrible too. Most of the actors were obviously trying to overact, but intentionally having all parties chew the scenery without being outright meta/satire never seems to work.

The parts before the transformation were better than anything after. The kids were the best part of the movie.

[Buscemi2]

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote 8/10

The movie didn't evaporate into a cloud of smoke, as many believed it would after its many delays. Terry Gilliam's newest is actually a fun adventure film that though not for everyone (after watching, it's not hard to see why Amazon decided against releasing it when you remember their current mission statement), keeps you engaged because it's so unconventional. A cross between 90's adventure film and criticism of filmmaking (I'm convinced the main character was based on Christopher Nolan, as if Gilliam thinks of him as being too obsessed with himself), Gilliam has a lot to say about cinema and society in 2019 as well as the literary heroes of the past. It's never a boring film, as Gilliam fills the 132 minute run time with lots of action and new set pieces as well as questioning the viewer over what's real and what's not. There's more imagination in five minutes of this film than all of Shazam.

It's too bad that it was only screened for one night but at least it's out.

[Buscemi2]

The Mustang 8/10

Enjoyable neo-Western about a convict who is brought into a horse training program in hopes of rehabilitating him and taming a wild mustang. Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, making her feature debut, keeps things interesting by focusing on the human relationship between man and animal and how the two are linked together in helping each other even in a bad situation. Also, it's an interesting take on the prison sub-genre as while it goes into the scarier elements of confinement, it's also a gentler one as the theme is one of hope rather than fear. No matter your crime, there is a case for redemption.

Between this and last year's The Rider, I think we might have a new trend of Westerns and it's coming from talented female directors such as Clermont-Tonnerre and Chloe Zhao.

[Buscemi2]

Dragged Across Concrete 8/10

The weakest of Zahler's three films (maybe due to the constraints of working with a studio, maybe due to the premise not being as ambitious despite a run time over two and a half hours) but there's still much to appreciate of this thriller about two suspended cops who go rogue to infiltrate a robbery and take the proceeds for their own use. It's a slow burn of a film, with Zahler putting emphasis on dialogue over action, as if John Cassavetes directed an action film. I also think that it's wrong for the film to be called a right-wing fantasy as no one wins or really benefits from their actions. This isn't the Death Wish remake or American Sniper. Dragged Across Concrete doesn't glamorize violence or defend its characters. It starts bad for the characters and it doesn't get much better (a better comparison to me would be 2012's Killing Them Softly).

[transformers2]

The Beach Bum 8.5/10
What a beautiful change of pace for Harmony Korine. While its vulgar content, hypnotic, episodic narrative style and oddball sense of humor will make it every bit as polarizing as his past projects, the lighthearted way in which this non-stop debauchery is delivered results in a project that features a heavy dose of positivity that never really crept into his past work. The former avant-garde rebel reflecting anything that even resembles happiness or mainstream accessibility in his work was a move I never would've ever expected, but am ultimately very glad came to fruition. Bonus points for giving Matthew McConaughey the role of a lifetime and reminding me of how god damn funny Martin Lawrence can be when he's given the right material.

Shazam! 7/10
It's evident that Shazam! was designed to be the most lighthearted DC film to-date. Nothing says "we're moved from our days as the bleak superhero movie universe" like the dude from Chuck (aka Zachary Levi) doing The Floss and walking around crowded malls charging people's phones with the lightning bolts that come out of fingers. For a while, Shazam! successfully commits to DC's mission statement. The humor is generally well-conceived and Levi does a good job of selling the goofiness and immaturity that just about every teenager would display if they were suddenly gifted with the ability to turn into an adult superhero on command. Things starts to unravel around the halfway mark when the rapid tone-shifting messiness that has plagued most of the recent DCU titles comes in like a god damn freight train. A surprisingly strong dose of corny family melodrama and some horrific overacting from Mark Strong as primary antagonist Dr. Thaddeus Sivana completely undermines its attempts to be a self-aware piece of superhero satire. Not to mention, David F. Sandberg handles the limited action setpieces with the grace of a non-trained dancer attempting to perform Swan Lake after sucking down a gallon of jungle juice. After the cohesion and confidence of Aquaman, Shazam! represents a disjointed and disappointing step backwards for the up-and-down DCU.

Hellboy 6/10
Reimagining Hellboy as an over-the-top R-rated splatterfest was a great idea... on paper. The beauty of this unfiltered reboot goes to hell (no pun intended) when the onslaught of gore is rendered almost completely indecipherable through choppy editing and only one actor (Mila Jovovich, who portrays a recently-resurrected ancient British sorceress looking to infect the world with a lethal plague) from the ensemble decides to fully embrace the monumental absurdity present in the story. Is it a completely joyless exercise? No. The comical plot twists and a couple of respectable hack-and-slash fight scenes help make it entertaining in spurts, but the choice to play material that is so profoundly stupid and corny (mostly) straight makes the proceedings a lot less fun than they should be.

[Shrykespeare]

Shazam! 7/10
Not to mention, David F. Sandberg handles the limited action setpieces with the grace of a non-trained dancer attempting to perform Swan Lake after sucking down a gallon of jungle juice.

Funniest thing I've read all week. Thanks, T.

[Buscemi2]

Penguins 8/10

It's no March of the Penguins and it's perhaps the weakest of the Disneynature franchise (it remains to be seen how Blue aka Dolphins is as that's being saved for Disney+), but it's still a likeable documentary about a family of Adelie penguins who fight for survival in the untamed wilds of Antarctica. This one also feels somewhat different from the previous entries as it seems to have more in common with some of the comedies that were popular in the 2000's. Think of this one as a G-rated version of a Steve Carell movie (the father penguin being named Steve can't be coincidence) but with Stu from The Hangover as narrator.

It seems like this will the last of the theatrical entries but if they continue Disneynature on Disney+ and Disney continues to do their charity work even without ticket sales, I'll be happy. This is a franchise I can't tire of.

[Buscemi2]

Missing Link 3/10

Laika's newest is a tiresome and cliche comedy about a selfish explorer who finds a Sasquatch and leads him to his cousins in Shangri-La. The premise sounds intriguing but at 95 minutes, it outstays its welcome quick and said Sasquatch really isn't the focus of the story. Also, I found that much of the film made little sense, primarily in the villain plot. If the anti-evolution guy is so dead set on stopping Hugh Jackman's character, why does he need the bounty hunter guy? He could just do it himself.

Aardman did all this much better with the Darwin subplot in The Pirates!: Band of Misfits. Laika to me is nothing more than the DreamWorks to Aardman's Pixar.

[Buscemi2]

Wild Nights at Emily 1/10

What did critics see in this film? The idea of Molly Shannon playing Emily Dickinson is intriguing but she's no Cynthia Nixon in an amateurish film that is nothing more than a glorified episode of Drunk History. Also, it seems to be less interested in the woman and her life's work and trying to set up a relationship with her sister-in-law. I mean, I can buy the idea of Dickinson being gay but the film seems to reduce Dickinson to being a sex-obsessed hack.

A one-joke film where the punchline has no reason to last 84 minutes.

[Buscemi2]

High Life 9/10

If Lars von Trier in his prime remade Silent Running. Claire Denis makes one of the most intelligent sci-fi films in a long time, focusing on a prison colony that slowly goes madder and more hopeless as they are used as sexual experiments while traveling to a black hole. It might sound like Event Horizon but it's a more ambitious and fearless film with an excellent Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche at her most sadistic. The film also focuses on the ideas of life and death and the struggle to find meaning even as the chance of survival dwindles down.

A certainly divisive film (a bunch of people walked out after Binoche rapes Pattinson but a fulfilling one.

On an unrelated note, this was my first 42nd Street movie viewing experience. It might have been on the sixth floor of a 25 screen theatre but the grindhouse experience lives on at the AMC Empire. The theatres are cleaner though.

[Buscemi2]

Family 8/10

Taylor Schilling does a really good impression of Maria Bamford in this dark comedy about an aunt who has to babysit her little-seen eleven year-old niece (think a cross between Bobby Hill and Charlie from Hereditary) and finds that despite the niece's quirks and her own misanthropy, they aren't much different. The Gathering of the Juggalos also features in the plot (and the Juggalos, as well as ICP, actually get an even-handed portrayal). The end result might be one of the strangest comedies to financed by a major studio (Sony made the film through its Stage 6 label but chose not to distribute theatrically) but it's far more entertaining than most comedies to open in 3,000 theatres because it's fearless and is unafraid to go beyond the norms for this kind of comedy.

The audience in 42nd Street (two-thirds full despite most everyone seeing Endgame!) roared in laughter and it was one of the most fun audiences I've been with in a while for a new movie. Maybe my warped sense of humor just aligns better in Manhattan than back home.

[Buscemi2]

Transit 8/10

Interesting drama based on the refugee crisis and the French reaction to it focused on a German immigrant who takes it on the lam to Marseilles with a manuscript in hand and soon finds that the material in the manuscript parallels his life as it happens while waiting to get permission to enter Mexico. Christian Petzold keeps things interesting by focusing on subjects we don't often see on screen and as a result, we are kept interested. Unlike another recent film, Michael Haenke's Happy End, the whole thing doesn't feel like a mean-spirited prank focused on uninteresting well-off figures. They are ordinary people stuck in a terrible situation and we feel for them. The device to have the manuscript serves as a parallel is also done in an unexpected way, kind of feeling like Claude Lelouch doing In the Mouth of Madness. The film is very twisty without feeling like a cheat.

I went into this film knowing almost nothing other than the director and found myself impressed.