By: Henry J. Fromage –
This week sees me catch up with a few Oscar hopefuls, as well as some festival picks already hitting streaming right after their debuts.
652. One Battle After Another
You’ve likely heard all the accolades already, and I heartily cosign on the praise. PTA goes back to exercising his talents for pacing in service of something a bit more propulsive than he’s done in awhile, with aplomb- seriously, this is almost 3 hours and yet it simply does not stop moving. Leo gets another primarily comic role like he is so adept at, but its his supporting cast that runs away with the film, in particular a ridiculous yet disturbingly plausible Sean Penn as the White Supremacist military man that keeps upending poor Bob’s life. A Toast.
653. The Smashing Machine
I really wanted to like this one more, but for a movie about the UFC it strangely, almost perversely never raises its pulse. Dwayne Johnson is quite good in the kind of transformational role that Oscar can’t resist, soft-spoken but full of simmering rage that he only allows to vent in the ring (mostly- also hilariously at several might as well be papier mache doors throughout the film). I can see what Benny Safdie is going for here, and it is a radical way to tell this kind of sports story, but that doesn’t make it an effective one. Three Beers.
654. Swiped
This story of enterprising tech founder Whitney Wolfe Herd played TIFF before hitting Hulu shortly after. She was co-founder of Tinder before getting an ugly lesson in the sexist politics of Silicon Valley, then going on to create Bumble on her own as the kind of dating app she had hoped Tinder could be. This is an energetic and at times enraging story centered on Lily James’ enterprising and charismatic performance. Three Beers.
655. Betrayal: Under His Eye
The second installment of Hulu’s “I may have married a monster” true crime series tells the story of Dr. Justin Rutherford, a seemingly loving family man who’s life and lies start to unravel awfully fast when a hidden camera in the bathroom of his family’s home is discovered. I actually know a family acquaintance that went to prison for exactly this- I’m guessing it’s not as uncommon as you’d think. Rutherford doubled down pretty damn hard after that, up to attempted murder, so it’s easy to see why this guy got a whole series about how much of a snake in the grass he was. Two Beers.
656. Tsunami: Race Against Time
I found this after watching Hulu’s Katrina docuseries with the same subtitle. Just like that series, this one is constructed from primary footage of the disaster unfolding in front of its shocked documenters coupled with survivor testimonies. The scale and speed of this tsunami all across the Pacific is utterly mind-boggling both in macro and in micro in each of these incredible and devastating stories. Two Beers.
657. The Man in My Basement
Another Hulu debut shortly after playing TIFF, this one couples Willem Dafoe and Corey Hawkins. The latter is a bit of an asshole who’s about to lose his inherited Long Island home if he can’t get some cash together to fight it, and the former is the mysterious man who offers him an absurd amount of money to rent his basement for a month, no questions asked. Well, it gets weird from there, and while I won’t say that all of the metaphors of slave and master, complicity and evil deeds that filter down through generations work completely on screen, it’s a good time watching these two face off and grapple with the big ideas the film is attempting to. Three Beers.
658. Neighborhood Watch
This under the radar indie playing on AMC+ stars Jack Quaid as a man struggling to control his schizophrenia who witnesses what looks like an in-plain-day kidnapping, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan as a retired campus security guard who’s one those guys who thinks that makes him basically the same as a cop who Quaid draws into his investigation. It’s not the most surprising material out there, but the actors are fun to watch bouncing off each other and their journey is paced well. Three Beers.
