By: Henry J. Fromage –
This week I catch up on some recent theatrical and streaming releases in a bid to stay relatively current.
561. Troll
This Netflix sci-fi disaster flick from Roar Uthaug, the director that brought us The Wave and the new, quickly forgotten Tomb Raider, is about, well, a troll that awakens and terrorizes the Norwegian countryside. Played strangely straight and full of legitimately quality CGI action, this is a strange concoction, but a pretty darn entertaining one all told. Three Beers.
562. Lightyear
Pixar’s latest took a lot of shit for its not as convoluted as it sounds premise (this is the Buzz Lightyear movie that the toys were based on- not that complicated), but for my money this was a very respectable Pixar outing. The humor, pathos, and action are all there, as well as Pixar’s trademark kind of dark adult emotional concepts, plus there’s a robot cat. Give it a try. Two Beers.
563. Bones and All
Luca Gugadino sure likes his taboos (nobody really wants to acknowledge that Call Me By Your Name is basically about a pedophile and his conquest- flip the sex of Chalamet and it becomes a Woody Allen movie). There’s no denying he’s a master of the cinematic form, though, so I came into this with guarded optimism. Yep, it’s pretty great aesthetically and the character-work is excellent (the two leads, yes, plus Mark Rylance in a creeper performance for the ages, only rivaled by Michael Stuhlbarg’s maybe even creepier cameo). The cannibalism is pretty damn gory, too, but it somehow doesn’t not work, even with that objectively terrible and yet somehow effective ending. Two Beers.
564. Lady Chatterley’s Lover
I guess it was about time we got another rendition of D.H. Lawrence’s infamously horny literature classic, this time with butts and fronts. Emma Corrin and Jack O’Connell are great on-paper casting, and do their level best, but the more passionate love affair on display here is Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre’s infatuation with blue filters (the naturally colored above image is a bald-faced lie). Everything is so wan and lifeless, it’s like a metaphor that never emerges like the Lady and her lover are ostensibly supposed to do. Five Beers.
565. Medieval
Okay, this, well, Medieval action film that boasted the largest movie budget in Czech history that is still more or less the financing behind something starring Mel Gibson these days is pretty filtered to death as well. The difference is I prefer bad period action over bad period romance, I suppose. Full of notorious paycheck-takers like Michael Caine, the drama here is a non-starter but the action is surprisingly brutal and scratches that broadswords and chainmail itch for another few years. Four Beers.
566. Avatar: The Way of Water
It should be stupid to bet against James Cameron, but he keeps on making it so tempting to do so (and to be fair, we’re a long, long way from knowing whether this particular absurd financial gamble will pay off, despite the great critical reception). Well, for my money, he’s exceeded my dubious expectations (I was meh on the first one, although I also didn’t get a chance to see it in 3D). This is an absolute visual marvel, especially in the stunning undersea sequences, and it’s not a half bad character piece either, simple like the first, perhaps, but adequately tapping into universal themes in the process of creating well-rounded characters. I think I could stand another couple of years before sitting for three hours with 3D glasses on, but I’ll be there for the next one. Two Beers.
567. The Volcano: Rescue From Whakaari
This Netflix documentary documents the struggle for survival that ensued after the unexpected 2019 eruption of New Zealand’s Whakaari, or White Island, a popular tourist destination due to its rare status of a volcano that you can walk right up to the crater’s edge and observe the roiling acid within. Presented as a fairly straightforward minute-by-minute account of the disaster and its aftermath, it’s sobering and in the case of the survivors’ testimonies, strangely uplifting. Two Beers.
568. Hostage: Missing Celebrity
Hwang Jung-min stars as himself in an action film about what would happen if he himself was abducted by a bloodthirsty kidnapper ring. This is a crazy short (solely by Korean standards), yet propulsive thriller that strains credulity here or there, but Hwang sells you on it with one of the sweatiest performances you’re ever likely to see. On Prime and worth your time for sure. Three Beers.
569. 20th Century Girl
Chasing one Korean flick with another, it’s perhaps surprising that this Netflix melodrama was stretched into at least 10 episodes. It’s a pretty classic example of the form, about a high schooler who promises to send her friend who is overseas recuperating from some kind of serious illness updates on the boy she has a crush on, only to get involved with him and his friend and starting to develop feelings for the latter. You can probably guess the twists from there, and the cast has good chemistry if slightly overwrought romances are your thing. Four Beers.
570. Soft & Quiet
I’m surprised a bit that Blumhouse bought this up to distribute it, but as horror goes, this is probably one of the more harrowing of the year. A kind of anti-Women Talking, we join a group of women, well, talking, but it quickly becomes apparent the topic du jour is all the White Supremacy they love. The second half devolves into a different kind of (still realistic) horror, but honestly it would have been even more chilling if we just sat with these women for the whole film and heard them deliver their poisonous ideology with straight, prim, self-rightous faces. These people all exist, and they may be closer to you and your children than you ever dare imagine. A Toast.
571. Smile
This mid-budget horror got a lot of hype based on its genuinely terrifying trailer, and as studio scaries go, this is pretty high-caliber, if no A24 masterpiece. I thought the jumpiest jumps were in the trailer, but Hollywood scion Sosie Bacon holds the center well and I think there’s enough meat on this bone for another sequel or two. Three Beers.
572. Avengement
This movie answers the question of “what if Guy Ritchie, but basically one setting and Jason Statham is Scott Adkins?” The answer, of course, is “Awesome”. No new ground is being broken plotwise in this story of a criminal who goes after his former gang who abandoned him to die in prison, but Adkins and Jesse V. Johnson once again deliver on the bone-crunching action. The abuse that Adkins gets in prison is way more brutal than any he doles out, by the way- I understand why he’s pissed. Three Beers.
573. Nail Bomber: Manhunt
This Netflix true crime documentary examines the case of the 1999 London Nail Bombings perpetrated by skinheads in three public spaces frequented by minorities and LGBT people and the desperate three week manhunt to find and capture the culprit before he struck again. The documentary does a good job of contextualizing the British political context of the time, when the ultra-far right British National Party was enjoying some of it’s greatest reach, and even interviews a police officer undercover with Neo-Nazi movements at the time (him explaining how he had to fight not being brainwashed himself is sobering stuff). Three Beers.
574. Rosaline
This amusing little film on Hulu stars the always radiant Kaitlyn Dever as Rosaline, Romeo’s first girlfriend who finds herself sidelined when he encounters Juliet (her cousin) by chance. This is one of those period pieces where everyone talks in modern slang and bounce against the Fourth Wall, but it’s a well done and consistently entertaining if not terribly original example of the form. Three Beers.
575. Emancipation
Will Smith frankly delivers one of his best performances in the story of Peter, a slave who escapes a labor camp in search of the Union Army that is slowly but surely advancing towards his Louisiana home once he hears whispered word of the Emancipation Proclamation. This is his Revenant (he even wrestles an alligator!), which of course all smacks different after last year’s events, but must be acknowledged for the tour de force it is. Antoine Fuqua does a great job directing in a washed out but not quite black & white palette that actually works way better than it probably should, and Ben Foster gets in yet another fine performance as the slave hunter on his tail. Two Beers.
