Rate That Movie Part IV: Movies Never Sleep

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An Eternity of You and Me 3/10

A largely pointless documentary about a Danish couple struggling to become parents. Despite being only 75 minutes, it feels twice as long, the subjects are rather uninteresting and often annoying, and much of the film felt staged to me. There is nothing about this one that suggests you should watch it in a theatre. It's a long YouTube video at best.

[StarLord123]

Some quickie reviews, as I don't have a whole lot to say about these:

The Covenant 7.5/10
A tense and well-executed war story with a solid lead performance from Jake Gyllenhaal, and an opportunity for Guy Ritchie to flex his directing muscles.

Strays 6/10
An entirely watchable raunchy comedy with its fair share of funny moments and good vocal performances, but the shtick starts to get old after a while and it becomes less funny, and it tries to be somewhat emotional towards the end which doesn't work that well.

Totally Killer 6/10
Basically Back to the Future fused with any generic slasher movie. An interesting idea but the execution leaves something to be desired. For an R-rated slasher it's rather tame, it feels like they originally wanted this to be PG-13 but later decided to add some blood. It does have a good and charming lead performance from Kiernan Shipka.

[Buscemi2]

The Burial 8/10

Entertaining dramatization of a 1995 case when a Mississippi funeral director and a Florida personal injury lawyer manages to take down a conglomerate over a breach of contract when the the firm draws out the contract of a sale in hopes of taking over the entire company instead of the originally-agreed share. Jamie Foxx gives one of his best performances as the lawyer, showing what he is capable of when he is focused on the role instead of trying to focus on himself, while Tommy Lee Jones is reliable once again as the funeral director and the film's production values are solid. I'm honestly surprised MGM didn't release this one wide as I feel it would have done really well with audiences tired of seeing of the same kind of Hollywood drama but I'm sure Amazon would have used the film's anti-corporate message as an excuse to dump it while pushing something like Saltburn instead.

All in all, a well-made depiction of a little-known but fascinating legal case.

[Buscemi2]

A pair of underwhelming Pedro Almodovar shorts.

Strange Way of Life 5/10

Well-made but underwhelming Western about two old lovers, one now a sheriff and the other a rancher, reunite when the rancher's son is accused of a crime he didn't commit. The issues with this one lays in Almodovar's decision to shoot this in English and with Ethan Hawke's performance. As a result, we get a short that doesn't feel quite right in a non-native language while Hawke's performance feels too much like a copy of a Nick Nolte performance. In the end, Almodovar might not have been the right choice to direct this.

The Human Voice 4/10

The reason why I went to this double bill ends up being the weaker short. Tilda Swinton more or less does a one-person show as a forgotten actor who is living in a world of delusion. Outside of the middle, it's ultimately a short that tries too hard to be experimental and not hard enough to be entertaining.

[StarLord123]

Meg 2: The Trench 4/10
The first Meg movie is silly, but it knows what it is and has fun with it, so I can enjoy it. It also managed a fair balance between silliness and seriousness. However, this sequel is ass. At least the first movie's plot actually revolves around the shark, the plot here is near incomprehensible shit about undersea miners and a group of cartoony villains. What world am I living in when I barely even understand the plot of a shark movie? At least half the movie takes place in this dingy underwater setting, and it reaches a climax which has just as much emphasis on little Dino knock-offs than it does the shark(s). Plus it's not even self aware or humorous like the first movie, it takes itself seriously, and Statham feels like a completely different character, like he's some wannabe vigilante busting ocean polluters now?? The first one is dumb fun, this is just plain DUMB! Some brief moments of fun and excitement can't save this dud. At least it's still not the worst shark movie this year, since the ungodly abomination called The Black Demon exists.

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Honestly, I would've rather watched Statham beat up polluters for nearly 2 hours than the meandering, overly serious mess that was the bulk of Meg 2.

[Buscemi2]

Just give it to a different director than the guy behind Rambo: Last Blood.

[StarLord123]

Killers of the Flower Moon 8/10
Overall a very good film, but IMO not quite the full-on masterpiece some have hailed it as. Leo is real convincing playing a very gullible person, De Niro fits into a Scorsese film like a glove, portraying a manipulative scumbag with ease, the performances are quite good across the board. Also, the direction and cinematography are expectedly top notch, the film is pretty engaging for about 75% of its runtime, and it gives a very in-depth and important look at an overlooked part of history. However, it does start to drag and becomes patience-testing in the latter section. I feel like they could've trimmed it to around 2h 45min for theaters and saved this 3h 25min version for a home video director's cut. The ending is also a bit odd, it's like Marty suddenly realized the runtime maxed out and had to rush through the final points.

[Buscemi2]

The Killer 3/10

David Fincher returning to his early hits, this was not. After years of Oscar bait projects, Fincher's latest is a largely pointless exercise in Nihilism and brutality, where the plot can largely be summed up as "Fassbinder kills someone, goes to another city, kills someone else, rinse, repeat". This could have been decent had it been the kind of thing that's over the top in a John Wick way but Fincher decides for some reason to make it this existentialist drama about how empty the life of a hitman is, scored to The Smiths' greatest hits. The final product is a very pretentious and ponderous bore without a real ending that might only truly appeal to angsty teenage boys after the critics have moved on to the next two or three weekly movies they'll rave about.

It looks like peak Fincher is never coming back, replaced with a Fincher who thinks he's more profound than he really is.

[StarLord123]

No Hard Feelings 5/10
This type of film typically isn't my cup of tea, but I gave it a look since it was streaming on Netflix, and yeah, wasn't really a fan. JLaw and the young actor gave fairly good performances and they have okay chemistry. I didn't find the movie to be very funny at all however, I laughed or chuckled just a handful of times and naturally most of the funny bits are in the trailer. Also, the way the basic premise was handled didn't sit right with me, the movie sort of tries to be sweet and profound and it doesn't really work in context.

Five Nights at Freddy's 5/10
As someone who's not overly familiar with the FNaF games, this movie was watchable but unremarkable. The stuff involving the animatronics was neat (cool practical effects usage), it's visually nice, the performances are fine, but it's not even remotely scary or frightening, and the story is essentially a lifetime-tier drama, the movie falls into the seemingly common trap of taking itself too seriously. It also drags on too long, if anything should be a tight 90 minutes it's this. Willy's Wonderland with Nicolas Cage shows what this movie should've been, unapologetically campy fun.

[Buscemi2]

The Holdovers 5/10

Alexander Payne's comeback film seems to suggest he might have been better off staying away from directing as this is a largely unambitious Christmas film designed to hearken back to the days of About Schmidt and Sideways. Unfortunately, those days were long ago and we end up with an overlong drama made for boomers and Oscar voters that's more interested in trying to look like a movie from the 70's than feel like a movie from the 70's. It's a modern Hollywood generation gap movie in flea market clothes. While Paul Giamatti and Da'Vine Joy Randolph (who likely wins an Oscar for her performance) do very well, the problems lay in just about everything else, as it feels more like you needed to be around then or have been a boarding school kid in 1970 Massachusetts to understand and care about any of the proceedings. I might have enjoyed it more had they made Giamatti's character a child-hating asshole who has a nervous breakdown while watching the students and it becomes a bizarre dark comedy with a gleefully evil protagonist.

However, I'd honestly prefer if this won Best Picture over the favored Oppenheimer or what I expect to win in Barbie. It's not as Oscar baity and there's something I liked about it, even if the film didn't work for me.

[Buscemi2]

Anatomy of a Fall 4/10

It sure took a long time to tell us it was a suicide. This year's Palme d'Or winner might have been decent as a two-hour movie but at two and a half hours, it's far too long, especially given how it's set in a universe where Occam's razor doesn't exist. If you've ever listened to a true crime podcast, you are likely to come up with solutions well before the characters do. While the performances are solid, the script is the biggest problem, spending more than figuring out the most verbose ways to say the simplest things.

Also, it's bizarre of Neon deciding to reveal a website before the movie where you can decide whether or not it was a murder. Not only does it suggest something that doesn't really exist in the film as it's a strangely happy ending but it's kind of pointless to suggest such an idea given how simple the reveal is.

[StarLord123]

Barbie 5/10
Shocker, but I had not seen this film until just the other day. The film that took the world by storm and made a shit-load of money. I'll start with a few positives, the movie is visually splendid, it's very nicely shot, and the production design of Barbieland is insane. That work will rightfully receive Oscar nominations.

However I don't think this movie should be nominated for much else (it will), because it kind of blows in my opinion. It's supposed to be a comedy, but I giggled once or twice, I didn't find it to be funny at all. It eventually stops being humorous and conveys a message that means well, but it's portrayed so on-the-nose and so preachy that it lost me. Plus, the movie is based off a toy after all, it tries to be too profound, and tackles too much for its own good. The performances are fine, but these characters are caricatures, maybe intentionally so, but I couldn't relate to or sympathize with anyone as a result. I can see what they were going for to an extent, and with a sharper script maybe it could've worked, but overall it didn't land. I do think it's cool that this seemed to resonate so deeply with so many people, even if it wasn't really for me.

[Buscemi2]

The Pigeon Tunnel 5/10

The life of David Cornwell is an interesting one, as he balanced a successful writing career under the pen name John le Carre with being a spy for the UK government. However, Errol Morris might have been the wrong choice to direct this documentary, as combining the very English Cornwell with the very American Morris creates for a culture clash that ultimately makes the end result unauthentic. Furthering the unauthentic, a lot of the film consists of re-enactments of events that may or may not have happened due to Cornwell's elusiveness. Outside of the re-enactments, much of the film seems to consist of Cold War nostalgia and clips from le Carre adaptations when it's not being dry with the details of Cornwell's life. In the end, it's less a le Carre documentary and more an Errol Morris film, who might be showing himself to be past his prime after years of being a pioneer in making documentaries mainstream.

If they had really wanted to get this above average, the story would have been done as a narrative film and with a director more experienced in telling a story about the horrors of the Cold War and people with difficult lives. Morris just felt like he wasn't up to the material.

[StarLord123]

The Marvels 7/10
As it turns out, this is a somewhat tricky film for me to rate.

Starting with the obvious, Iman Vellani is a superstar, I adore her. She's genuinely RDJ level casting for the character of Kamala. She radiates endless charisma and energy and brings this film to life. She actually might be my favorite MCU character of all time after this, or at least near the top. Additionally, the "switch" dynamic is quite creative and cool, and makes for some fun action. Carol is a bit more likable than she was in the first Captain Marvel film, she's not quite so distant here. Monica is likable enough also, and the 3 leads have solid chemistry. Kamala's family can be quite funny at times, and the humor is generally funny without feeling too overdone. There's a specific scene later on involving cats, where I have to applaud them for going as far as they did.

However, Dar-Benn is an abysmal villain, among the worst in the entire MCU, which is quite a feat. There was no attempt whatsoever to give her proper development. The movie's pacing is too quick, it bounces between settings and tones like a pinball. It was less difficult to follow on 2nd viewing, but it still should've had 15-ish extra minutes of breathing room, this was definitely chopped up to some degree in the edit. For example it abruptly cuts to The Marvels already suited up with their new outfits in the middle. Nick Fury doesn't serve much purpose other than hanging around and saying quips, which is kind of bizarre. The film is entertaining throughout and is never boring, but the narrative is messy.

Ultimately, despite some glaring flaws, Kamala singlehandedly carried this film over the victory lap for me, although I wish she could be put in a project that's truly great. Without her, this would've been yet another bottom tier MCU release.