July 2017 Movies

Fun, but unfortunately, probably beloved by the type of people who are, like, Really Into Music and think that their relationship with music is somehow deeper and more intense than the rest of the population’s. Despite that fact that basically everyone is really into music–you can avoid books and movies and TV, but unless you’re deaf–and, I think, not even necessarily then–music is a pretty unavoidable form of media, and I think it’s much much rarer to have no musical preferences than to have some music you’re Really Into. But let’s maybe try not to allow other people’s opinions/our own dumb pet peeves to get in the way of a pretty enjoyable movie?

Also yesss @ the use of that weird Blur instrumental. 2017 has been a very Blurry year for me.

(It’s super dumb to think this, but one does sort of feel like Edgar Wright sold out–whatever that even means–by having this set in the US and casting people like Ansel Elgort, Kevin Spacey, and Jamie Foxx instead of somehow working in Simon Pegg and Nick Frost? One wants him to be successful enough to have the resources to keep making the movies he wants to make without becoming too popular or ~mainstream~. One should probably get the fuck over that, though, and again, just focus on the content itself.)

Yep, solid. An unfortunate case where some of the best jokes were in the trailer, but we won’t hold that against it.

Surprisingly awful.

I really hate comedies where someone maintains a lie for no apparent reason other than to further a plot full of comical misunderstandings; we don’t know enough about Lake Bell’s character to know why she wouldn’t just clear up the misunderstanding at the beginning, and at the same time, Simon Pegg’s reaction to finding out the truth is ridiculously uncalled for–except, of course, to further the classic rom-com plot arc in a really artificial way. After all, what’s a rom-com without a big break-up 3/4 of the way through to make way for a Grand Romantic Gesture of Reconciliation and Commitment at the end? (A much better movie, probably.)

Not super substantial, but a decent enough way to spend an evening–two brothers run rival Indian restaurants in Leicester and refuse to speak to each other due to an old–wait for it–misunderstanding that is only gradually revealed, but the daughter of one of the brothers wants them to cook together for her wedding. It all goes pretty much the way you would expect, although anything with a curry competition as a major plot point gets some bonus points in my book.

I kind of wish it had been focused more on the daughter, mostly because I’m shallow and don’t care about old people, but also because it’s legitimately frustrating to watch middle-aged men behaving so pettily/immaturely. Not sure what that would have meant for the plot, though. Maybe I’d just like to watch a totally different rom-com starring Amara Khan and Tom Mison.

I like the idea of this–old Jewish guy hires young Muslim guy to work at his kosher bakery that’s in danger of being put out of business by the chains, young guy starts putting marijuana into the dough, business mysteriously thrives–more than the actual execution. Because it is in that genre of heartwarming British movies of two sets of underdogs overcoming their differences and banding together against a Society that doesn’t look out for their interests–see also Pride, Kinky Boots, probably some others that I’m overlooking–that I tend to find really affecting. But maybe the pot stuff is a little too broad? Something just doesn’t click about it, when it really should given the combination of baking and Jews.

Mostly solid.

It stresses me out so much to watch Peter bailing on his commitments and not being able to explain why, which, like, I get is a big part of the comic book mythology–although I think my familiarity is more with the four-panel  newspaper Spider-man comic than the actual Marvel comics oops. Apart from the super tired “I endanger everyone I love” angst, one of the main things left to explore once you’ve passed the origin story is the fact that Peter Parker has to be flaky in order for Spider-man to be reliable. But it’s somehow more stressful when he’s missing a high school debate tournament than deadlines for his newspaper job? Maybe because his high school in this–a specialized science and tech school–was similar to mine, while I can’t relate to freelance journalism at all.

So at least all of the obnoxious anti-origin story people won’t be able to complain about here–and I have to wonder, are all of these people actually anti-origin story for any particular reason or just because that’s the memetic criticism of superhero movies? Without the origin story, it’s kind of harder to sympathize with Peter Parker. His motivation seems to be more to impress the Avengers than to actually Do Good, so when he fucks up, it’s kind of just like…well, you didn’t have to do this in the first place. But I guess it’s an alternative route to With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility? (Presumably the sequels will tell us what the deal is with Uncle Ben in this canon.)

I suspected this would be the case going in, and yeah, having watches this, I can now confirm that I am not Canadian enough to appreciate most of the humor in this movie. Unless it’s actually not that funny in Canada either?

Anthropologically interesting, though, get some sense of Canadian Anglophone vs Francophone stereotypes.

Sure.

Nooope. It’s not like egregiously bad or anything, but a total waste of my time. I expected funnier from the Gene Wilder/Richard Pryor combination.

Sure. Gorgeous costumes.

Also love that both this and Lady Macbeth have Chekhov’s fungi–if you show a girl foraging for mushrooms in the first act, then someone’s getting poisoned before the movie’s over.

Sean Penn’s performance in this is so grating, holy shit. Every time he blew his hair out of his face, I just felt this visceral repulsion that I think was not the intended reaction. (And it was the character’s tic, so he did it…so…many…times.) Meryl Streep had similarly affected cutesy mannerisms in Mamma Mia; in both cases, it very much feels like an actor Acting rather than a person Being, and that actor is Acting in such an annoying way.

The excerpt of a review in the critical response section on wikipedia probably puts it best “an ill-conceived dramedy with a shockingly annoying performance by Sean Penn.” I don’t necessarily agree that it was ill-conceived apart from the casting of the lead role; it has two very solid, interesting concepts: the day-to-day life of a former goth music icon (and the image of a middle-aged man still sporting that look as just his everyday look, not a performance thing) and the idea of aging former Nazis leading normal lives in the US. Does the intersection of those two things work super well in the movie? Eh, I don’t know, because the aforementioned grating Sean Penn performance is so distracting.

Sorrentino’s whole Deal–at least between this, Youth, and The Young Pope–is either legitimately confusing or just particularly hard for me to parse, but it is intriguing.

Fuck this as well. At least now I understand what they were going for with that weird-ass reference in the Riverdale pilot (I love you, Riverdale).

Man, between this, The Beguiled, and My Cousin Rachel (and Personal Shopper? YMMV.), 2017 has been a really good year for super aesthetically pleasing and Gothic-as-shit movies.

Would this work better as a TV show? It doesn’t seem like it’s structured to be a movie so much as an extended pilot or something–you reach the end and it’s like, that was a pleasant 90 minutes but also that’s…it?

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Google