Do you like sweaty people? Thumping music? Different points in time marked by Zendaya’s haircuts? Balls (type: tennis)? Then I’ve got a movie for you!
Also: I’m not a fan of exposition dump scenes, but I really needed someone to tell my non-sports brain the rules of tennis.
I had a hard time slowing down enough to appreciate this movie. I’m also having a hard time figuring out how to describe it without making it sound like a horror film. It’s a meditation on humanity’s connection with and responsibility to nature seen through a small village and a proposed glamping site. Go when you’re in a more contemplative mood and ready to bask in long quiet scenes of of passing trees and chopping wood- but also be ready for some unexpected turns.
Also: It’s in Japanese with subtitles, but it isn’t exactly dialogue-heavy.
I expected a movie about a stunt guy directed by a stunt guy to be full of stunts, but there’s a lot more to enjoy here. The mystery plot isn’t much more than what you would have seen on the TV show that this is loosely based on, but that’s not important. What’s important: Gosling & Blunt have great chemistry, the depiction of the movie industry feels wildly cartoonish yet somehow believable, and most importantly the stunts are a blast. The end credits are what every stunt man movie needs: an eighties-Burt-Reynolds-movie style flashback of behind the scenes shots showing the real stunts behind the movie stunts. There’s also a mid-credits scene that’s exactly what you expect. I saw it in IMAX for maximum explodey goodness. Thumbs up!
I really wanted to like this movie more. The lead kids have tons of charm, and their performances carry real weight when they aren’t trying to make the dialogue work. It’s not just them; the rest of the cast has to deal with the same problems. Add in some saccharine music and the whole thing falls apart. Even the color grading seems off, way more amber colored than the trailer.
By the way, I seem to be in the minority on this one. It has really strong critic and audience ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, and a pretty strong showing on Metacritic.
My brother and I saw the original 2002 Spider-Man movie in a theater last week, and it was great to see it with an audience. This week we went to Spider-Man 2, and the audience… sucked. Look, I know James Franco has been exposed as a less than stellar human, and I know his part is mighty melodramatic, but that doesn’t mean you should laugh every time he appears. Stay with the movie, people! I should have gone to the Alamo Drafthouse instead; audiences there are rarely jerks.
Rosemary Harris is the Aunt Mayest of Aunt Mays. Her Aunt May is also mighty strong: she hangs from an umbrella off the side of a build for nearly two minutes! I couldn’t do that.
I like the “grizzled and world-weary” version of Kirsten Dunst.
We never find out what caused the war, or why the states split the way that they did, but that’s not the part of the story this movie is telling. We’re not here for the war; we’re here to explore the creation of journalists. There’s some obvious foreshadowing- at one point I thought “here come the lovable-yet-easily-disposable characters that one of the main characters need to die so they can have an emotional breakthrough” – but it wasn’t so egregious that it broke the movie.
Tomorrow: Another day, another Dunst movie featuring photojournalism!
I’ve never really watched The George Lucas Talk Show- I flipped by it once a few years ago and I wasn’t in the right frame of mind for it, so I snap judged it to be not for me and never went back- but I enjoyed this enough to think I should give it another shot. Even if the show still isn’t for me, I appreciated the look into one man’s devotion to an idea that seemed more than a little too kooky to succeed.
BASED ON A TRUE STORY, YOU GUYS!
That’s what it said at the beginning of TMoUW (I’m declaring “TMoUW” to be the official shorthand name for this movie, by the way), and I’m sure there are chunks of somewhat-factual people and events in there, but most of it felt about as true as The Beekeeper. In fact, this is like a whole squad of Keepers of Bee. The main difference is that the unstoppable good guys in this movie all seem very pleasant as they plow through Nazis to save the world.
My main thought watching this: I wish they’d given Henry Cavill a chance to play a charming and happy Superman.
Man, this movie holds up. It’s a superhero movie that respects the source material without taking it as gospel. So good to see it on a proper screen.
Side note: when this movie came out I remember thinking “that guy is way to old to play Norman Osborne.” Now I watch it and think “Hey, look at Willem Dafoe’s baby face!”
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.