Dev Patel plays kid, a homeless underground fighter with perfect teeth and a thirst for revenge. Watch and see how many different action movie references you can find! See if you can collect all the parts of The Hero’s Journey! And if you only take one lesson from this film, let it be this: Don’t mess with the Trans community.
Lots of fun, but how can you make a movie called “Monkey Man” and not include the Rolling Stones song? Maybe it was in the end credits and I missed it.
Advice: If you’re going to see three movies in three days, don’t watch the quiet subtitled foreign language film on day three after a no dialogue movie on day one and a frenetic tons of layered jokes film on day two.
Also: if you are going to ignore this advice, make sure the day three movie is worth watching. La Chimera was worth the sudden lane change and gear shifting.
What? That doesn’t seem like a review? Well, who told you this was a review blog?
I saw The People’s Joker last night, and I couldn’t figure out a clear way to describe it. There’s so much going on. It uses existing characters, except they’re really distorted parodies of the characters. It looks like it had an eight dollar budget. It’s direct and garish, but also subtle and clever. It includes a ton of different media styles – live action, CG, animated, musical, whatever it can afford- but it all holds together. Packed with references to three different worlds, but somehow still cohesive. How do you condense that into a word a phrase?
Then I listened to the Maximum Film podcast discussion of the movie, and they had the right term: this is a movie version of a zine. Take existing materials, cut them up, mix in your own creations and ideas, and make something wonky and wonderful. Something undeniably new.
I think I can safely say this is the best trans self discovery story seen through the lenses of mainstream superhero films and the stand up comedy world ever created.
The general consensus about Sasquatch Sunset seems to be: “If you are in sync with what the Zellner Brothers are doing, you’ll find this moving touching and poignant. If it doesn’t work for you, you’ll find it gross and boring. There is no middle ground.”
That makes me the unicorn of this Bigfoot movie. Yes, there are a lot of impressive excretions, but all the characters are animals. They aren’t afraid of or embarrassed by their bodily functions. And I wasn’t bored- but I wasn’t enthralled, either. There were a few moments where a chuckled, and more moments where I connected to the feelings of the creatures, but for the most part I just watched with mild interest.
Riley Keough’s mother Sasquatch is given the biggest (but not very big) character arc, and she’s the easiest to connect with. The other actors do well with what they’re given, but what they’re given isn’t very much.
I just figured out a way to add some hidden text, so let’s try adding some spoilers!
The practical effects mostly work, but good golly they should have thrown a little CGI at the Sasquatch baby! Also: There’s a scene that’s a direct reference to the “drowning under a log” scene in Sometimes a Great Notion.
I’m out of practice.
This is not a movie to watch for the intricate plot or complex mystery. This is a movie to watch Jessie Buckley, Olivia Coleman, and the rest of the cast show off their character part chops. Some lovely swearing as well. Not at all “important,” but fun to watch.
I bet I would have LOVED this movie forty years ago, but now I cringe at a ton of the jokes. Too much non-consensual nudity and casual racism for me.
Here’s what I think happened: there was a meeting about movie ideas, and someone said “We should do a classic ‘Fish out of water’ story,” and someone else said “Yeah! With Vespas!”
It’s not exactly a deep story with a complex message, but it’s fun, and the animation is light and breezy. No dark shadows or ominous music here. Even the constant threat of the main character getting hunted and killed is played for fun.
I only went to see this because one of my students was talking about it- and I am so very glad he did. Black and white, low budget, full of cartoon effects, no dialogue – and hilarious. I laughed harder than I have at any movie in years.
It’s the story of a drunken applejack salesman out in the woods of Wisconsin in the winter who becomes a beaver trapper to win over the heart of a furrier and the approval of her father. It’s Looney Tunes meets prime Mel Brooks. There are a couple of sight gags that parents might not want to share with kids, but no swearing and no nudity.
Side note: I’ve noticed that I tend to write less about movies I like. I think it’s because I don’t want to give away details of films I enjoyed.
Spoilers ahoy!
A movie like this really makes you appreciate how good Godzilla Minus One is. This is not so much a review as a plot breakdown. If you are worried that this will spoil the movie: it will not. If you are going to enjoy this, there is nothing I can do to interfere with your pleasure.
The plot: King Kong fights some monsters in Middle Earth or whatever they call it, then goes to the dentist. He gets a new implant, then goes on a road trip with a little jerk monkey to find other apes. Since he can’t talk, he makes exasperated or disgruntled faces when the jerk monkey is particularly jerky. He has to fight things along the way.
Meanwhile, Godzilla fights a monster and takes a nap.
Then he fights another monster and climbs in a hole for half the movie.
Also, a woman goes to Middle Earth to find out why her kid is dreaming of triangles. She brings Kong’s dentist, a guy who exists to play the part of Samuel L. Jackson in Deep Blue Sea, and a guy who saved the world but now is a failing podcaster. They find out that an Evil Monkey is trying to get to Earth with the unwilling help of a bunch of other monkeys and an ice dragon.
The Evil Monkey laughs at Kong’s new tooth.
Kong gets frostbite, but the humans happen to have a giant super-powered wrist brace with them (lucky for them it was made for the same side Kong hurt!) so it’s fine.
It turns out the kid was dreaming about triangles because she’s supposed to free a big moth. She does that, and everybody has a big fight. Many CGI fights are criticized because none of the characters seem to have any weight, but GxK:TNE solves this by explicitly having the fight in zero gravity. It’s not enough, though, and Evil Monkey gets to Earth, where he is defeated by everyone (including Jerk Monkey and Ice Dragon) teaming up to fight him.
Kong goes back to Middle Earth to celebrate with the other monkeys and his new pals, Jerk Monkey and Ice Dragon.
Godzilla takes a nap.
END OF MOVIE.
Also: Star Trek II was originally supposed to have the subtitle “The Vengeance of Khan,” but they changed it to “The Wrath of Khan” because they were afraid it was to close to the announced title of the third Star Wars film, “The Revenge of the Jedi.” Meanwhile, the Ghostbusters and Godzilla/Kong franchises both released movies with “Empire” in the title within a week of each other. I guess “Empire” is striking back.
This movie about a murderous toy that certainly isn’t an Elmo doll wasn’t great, but it was a lot more entertaining and inventive than Lizard X Monkey: FIGHT TIME. And it probably cost about as much to make as any random two minutes of the other film. Probably the best bloody puppet horror movie I’ve seen all month.
This movie felt like when a kid tells you a story, but in all the right ways. A fairytale set in modern Wyoming (with Celtic overtones). Low budget, earnest but rough acting from three kid actors, and a plot that starts out with a child-planned warehouse robbery that evolves into a search for a speckled egg to make a blueberry pie so the leads can get the password to the TV and play the game they stole. Yeah, that old trope. It’s a quest movie about trying to play a quest game.