BuysTime for a new long-term video game project. The new Saints Row on sale? Let's grab that, thanks. Oh and for dirt cheap, Yakuza Kiwami as well.
"Accomplishments"
In theaters: Greta Gerwig is a genius and I always knew her Barbie would be hot stuff and I'm glad general audiences agree (and are probably being exposed to the strangest stuff they've seen in a movie in a long time). Gerwig and co-writer Noah Baumbach are nevertheless out of their element and could have fallen on their faces. But no, Gerwig rocks it hard, balancing satire, silly comedy and colorful fantasy with toy nostalgia, touching adult issues, and existentialism. FEMALE existentialism. The movie wears its feminism on its sleeve, exploring what is meant to be an empowering toy that then turned into a symbol of sexism and using that as a metaphor for all women faced with the impossible demands of the patriarchy. Ken's role as an incel villain of sorts is mitigated by the Kens essentially being treated the way women are in the real world, so the satire is muddier there (or more complex, if you like). The doll characters are "being played with" and therefore act like children, which at once amuses and reveals the absurdity of what's being investigated, while also perhaps harking to how children are "programmed" with both good and bad ideas. Given the portrayal of Mattel in the movie, they seem to be good sports, though they stand to make pink camper loads of money, so the accusations levelled probably don't sting as much (it's even lampooned in the movie itself). Great dance numbers, funny jokes, background gags, imaginative world-building, fun meta commentary, a good mother-daughter story, beautiful production design, and Margot Robbie can still do no wrong. It's the runaway hit of the summer.
The most Christopher Nolan movie ever made, because it's largely people explaining things, Oppenheimer is undoubtedly well-made, but probably too long. Two frame tales (to match each POV - Oppenheimer in color and Senator Strauss in black and white) that fuel a lot of early career stuff up front, and a lot of hearings in the back, couching the meat of the story - the Manhattan Project - in thematically interesting terms, sure, but also biographical detail that may or may not be required. There are 2 or 3 good movies in there, but they don't always play well with one another. To me, a biopic is successful if the film maker latches on to a theme, and according to that metric, Oppenheimer is good. The seemingly unnecessary explanation of quantum mechanics provides the key to the character, a man whose ambivalence is as paradoxical as his science. And so we can have a patriot who associates with enemies of the state, a science nerd who is also a womanizer, and most crucially, a man driven to create a weapon but conflicted about its use. Other characters' personal paradoxes are also exposed so that's really the artful point of the film. Other things, like shoehorning the famous Shiva quote, or a certain character's final testimony, are much less successful. On the actors' side - and there are practically no meaningful parts taken up by unknown faces - it's a great piece. Cillian Murphy is up to the challenge, Robert Downey Jr. is sure to get an Oscar nod (I mean, this is powerful Oscar bait all around), and I would watch Emily Blunt destroy a state prosecutor all day long. It's a quality film, but I don't think Nolan knows how to kill his darlings. So it's thematically appropriate that Oppenheimer can simultaneously be good AND frustrate me.
At home: It is historical fact that poor communities, African-American ones in particular, have been experimented upon by the government. Social experimentation with housing, but terrible biological stuff as well (crack, syphilis, etc.). So it's not so much a matter of fearing this kind of thing could happen, but that it could happen again or is, in fact, ongoing. They Cloned Tyrone takes this idea to science-fiction extremes, with secret labs holding a black community back to run their experiments on it. The title seems to give away the game, but it's the tip of the iceberg and the movie has more surprises to offer, using an amusing Nancy Drew reference as a template, but savagely twisting it. When John Boyega (somewhat in Attack the Block mode), WandaVision's Teyonah Paris (in a very different role and quite funny), and Jamie Foxx's pimp (who ticks the rating up with a hilarious performance) start to discover the truth, all hell breaks loose, leading to pretty rote ending, but for the final reveal. Props to director Juel Taylor for giving this a timeless feel - a grainy film look with needless cigarette burns, old tech mixed with new, etc. - thematically appropriate and looking pretty cool.
Let me start by saying that the AI-generated opening for Secret Invasion was for me a non-issue. It looks like it was built from art that was generated in house by a real artist (so no worse than CGI armies in Lord of the Rings, it's just a tool) and made thematic sense. It's only real sin was being done at this moment, when AI art is getting bad press, much of it for good reasons. But this MCU series was a hard sell for me. I thought the original storyline was a joke, but it's devalued by here being made as the kind of terrorism thriller that already populates television and keeping the superheroes out. It's so insular, this war is actually fought by a handful of people on either side (one of them getting fridged early), and often devolves into boring gun fights. Olivia Coleman is a charming creep, but I do wonder why she's in this instead of Valentina, because she's essentially playing the same role. The series gets better as it goes along, I think, and I'm at least intrigued by Fury's wife, but if there's a metaphor at play, the series only really dares mention it a few minutes from the end. And then we're left more or less where we were to begin with. it's fine, but underwhelming.
Covering some of the same ground as Harold Lloyd's earlier The Freshman, but with a thinner story, Buster Keaton's College sees his scholarly freshman try his hand at athletics to impress a girl. The premise is rife for slapstick, which requires a very athletic performer to act like he's physically useless, though I must say our boy is quite toned for a bookish nerd. The decathlon and baseball sequences are overlong, but earn their place in the climax where everything pays off, though it's still the rowing sequence that is the most clever. One sequence that DOESN'T earn its place is a mercifully short, pointless bit of black face (groan!) that would have worked almost exactly the same had it been done without this blight on early cinema. That said, the interstitial cards are actually pretty funny throughout College, and it's a fine thing when a slapstick silent comedy can make you chuckle with its script as much as its physical gags.
Early in The Trip, Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon - playing an echo of themselves - say how everything's been done and can only thus be redone better or differently. That would apply to the original format of this project, a 6-episode television travelogue series that has the two old friends drive through the north of England to try hotels and high-end restaurants, but you only feel that in some of the way those restaurant scenes are sometimes edited. Otherwise, it's a spoof of that kind of light entertainment, faux-reatity TV (with no TV, they're doing this for a newspaper) about a self-absorbed star and his annoying impressionist friend who nevertheless has the better attitude. In a way, The Trip is more subversive as TV, even though cut-down into a film, it subverts one's expectations of, I dunno, a plot. As TV (and I have not seen any of the series), it fits a recognizable format and proceeds to derail it with nonsense small talk, pulling girls, and fighting about who gets the best room. As a film, it's a meandering road trip that feels fairly realistic (imagine one of your own was filmed, it would be a lot like this), which creates its own subversion, but probably isn't as sharp. I am, however, surprised at how well it does work as a feature.
Coogan and Brydon switch places in a number of ways in The Trip to Italy, a follow-up that trades the gray mists of northern England for the gorgeous golden light of Italy, because now it seems like Steve is doing more adulting, while Rob, slightly less prone to spontaneous impressions, is captain of the trip. Frankly, I like it better than the first film. Having done the conversion from series to film once before, director Michael Winterbottom has made this second voyage more filmic at the source. It looks better, more things happen, there's most of heart and character thruline. Many have compared this series to Richard Linklater's Before trilogy, but for a repressed British bromance, and they're not wrong. The conversations are more subtly heady (as they're primarily, and very relatably, riffing on inside jokes and trying to make one's companion laugh), but the way we pick up each film at a different point in their lives, and leaving them the same way, with ambiguous endings, does make me think of those movies. One of those ambiguities tends to confirm my suspicion from the first film that the Emma character (Steve's assistant) quite fancies Rob, but perhaps we'll never know for sure.
The Trip to Spain feels mostly like it's plain... This third travelogue feels a lot more like what would happen if you took the first outing and made too close a sequel to it. Even some of the conversations seem repeated, which of course, is realistic in the context of a bantery friendship, but the personal stories are a step back from the Italy content. It's almost a reset, though the friendship feels warmer, and Coogan having broken in Italy, now allows himself to laugh a lot more at Rob's antics. That said, there are still some enjoyable comic and dramatic moments, and I always appreciate the literary allusions each film has used to support its themes. In this case, Don Quixote stands as THE Spanish masterpiece (of course), and it's about a pair of pseudo heroes tilting at windmills. It writes - or in this case, largely improvises - itself. Oddly, the film extends beyond the usual five days of the trip, as Coogan continues to race headlong into his fear of mortality.
Billed on the poster as the "Last Course", The Trip to Greece provides a fourth and I guess final travelogue and impression-off for Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, this time following in the footsteps (or the wake) of Odysseus, going from Troy to Ithaca. That Rob's wife is to join him there adds a nice little literary touch, and I've always liked this couple despite my 'shipping thoughts about Rob and Emma. While Brydon continues to provide a lot of the laughs (and marathoning these Trips has earwormed a lot of movie quotes in my head), Coogan is still there mostly to mope around, act out as a prima donna, and face his own mortality. Visiting ruins can do that, but there's a personal tragedy brewing that really brings it to the fore. If this is to be their last trip, it puts their second selves at a certain apotheosis of what their characters have been all about since this started. The comedy mask and the tragedy mask, parting ways to fulfill their functions.
Will freely admit that I became pretty addicted to the British game show Would I Lie to You? over the course of this year. This genuinely funny parlor game program has comedians David Mitchell (he's the flustered posh one) and Lee Mack (he's the working class improviser) and their teams of (mostly) comedians and C-list celebrities try to guess which anecdotes are true and which are lies (and those lies have to be invented on the spot, so there's some skill required). Once Mitchell and Mack get Rob Brydon as regular host, the trio become a dynamic cast you want to see take shots at one another on a weekly basis. 16 series to date, and I've seen every episode (via YouTube). I've laughed a lot. I've been puzzled by references to British personalities and programs a lot too. I think everyone will agree that Bob Mortimer is the best guest player the show's ever had, but it's made me discover a number of UK-based stand-ups whose work I'd be game to check out. Thinking about it, I'd be great as team captain on a French-Canadian version of the show because I've got a lot of insane anecdotes. You could probably bank on them being true though.
Some classic MST3K movies, regardless of comedy commentary... Mitchell: They only forgot one cop movie cliché - exciting action or a case worth solving. It's Linda Evans I feel sorry for.
The Brain That Wouldn't Die: The Amazing Static Woman! Redeeming feature? Cat fight comedy cut-away.
Teen-Age Strangler: Everything about this flick is as shoddy as its police work. But amusingly so.
The Wild Wild World of Batwoman: This tedious tedious rip-off nevertheless shows there's life for a super-heroine after 40. Some cute Batgirls.
Alien from L.A.: Kathy Ireland's squeaky voice and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
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