Palm Springs (Max Barbakow, 2020) — A
Black Panther (Ryan Coogler, 2018) — A
Scoob! (Tony Cervone, 2020) — C-
You’ve Got Mail (Nora Ephron, 1998) — A
The Green Lantern (Martin Campbell, 2011) — D+
The Package (Jake Szymanski, 2018) — C
Goon (Michael Dowse, 2011) — A
Sinister (Scott Derrickson, 2012) — B
The Circle (James Ponsoldt, 2017) — C-
Blithe Spirit (David Lean, 1945) — A-
Psych 2: Lassie Come Home (Steve Franks, 2020) — B
Saving Mr. Banks (John Lee Hancock, 2013) — C+
The 39 Steps (Alfred Hitchcock, 1935) — A
After Earth (M. Night Shyamalan, 2013) — D+
A Teacher (Hannah Fidell, 2013) — B
The Sapphires (Wayne Blair, 2012) — B+
The Man in the Moon (Robert Mulligan, 1991) — A+
Mild spoilers for Palm Springs:
There’s going to be a million different write-ups comparing Palm Springs to Groundhog Day, which makes sense, seeing as the latter basically invented the stuck-in-a-single-day time loop premise and we’re just now getting into all the ways that people can play around with that premise (Edge of Tomorrow, 50 First Dates, Happy Death Day, Before I Fall). Also, the 1993 Harold Ramis-directed original is a masterpiece, a classic, a towering achievement of cinema. It’d be tough to make a movie with the same premise as Groundhog Day because it’s going to be tough to beat Groundhog Day.
But here’s the comparison I will allow: Palm Springs‘ romantic subplot is handled even better because both sides of the relationship are stuck inside the loop. In Groundhog Day, and even in a lot of its offspring, there’s a weird sense of inauthenticity to the romance because one party isn’t privy to all of the information and experiences that the other person is. It’s a one-sided relationship where one side is oblivious to the actual depth of that relationship. Not so here. Both Andy Samberg’s Nyles and Cristin Milioti’s Sarah are stuck in the time loop together. Nyles is there first, and the ways in which he abuses his knowledge becomes one of the movie’s largest conflict points, rather than a tool for its conclusion.
The movie smartly begins with Nyles already stuck inside the loop and already resigned to living his life inside it, without actually making it explicit. The movie is a Lonely Island co-production, but it doesn’t have that same sense of absurd comedy that movies like Hot Rod and Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping have. It’s more grounded and delightful in tone; equally as funny, with jokes arising from context and character.
Palm Springs also eschews the karmic self-improvement angle, instead focusing on the possibility of the time loop as metaphor for the crushing repetition of actual life. It’s even more appropriate now, as we’re all locked inside, forced to live the same basic day over and over again. I actually saw the movie at a drive-in, but I could imagine watching it on the couch wouldn’ve helped that sense of mundanity. After all, this is the longest March 13th we’ve ever had, right?
- The Man in the Moon is a beautiful movie. It spawned right in the confluence of two long Hollywood careers, serving as the final film by director Robert Mulligan (The Rat Race, To Kill A Mockingbird, Summer of ’42) and the first film appearance of Reese Witherspoon. Set in rural Louisiana in the ’50s, it’s a movie about young love, jumping in watering holes, first kisses, running through the field that is ultimately about how, no matter how you try stave it off, life is really hard. Reese is pitch-perfect as a countryfied, gum-chewing, skinny-dipping, rough-around-the-edges 14-year-old girl infatuated with an older boy. The entire movie feels so small in scope, yet entirely all-encompassing, rarely leaving the grounds of the two characters’ properties yet exploring a world of depth. (Another one where I’m not sure what happened with the rest of her career: screenwriter Jenny Wingfield. Her only credits following this debut are additional material on the straight-to-DVD Lion King 2: Simba’s Pride, a Hallmark Christmas movie, and two other movies I’ve never heard of — which is a shame.)
- I haven’t watched Black Panther since it was in theaters, and on this rewatch (a drive-in double feature with Palm Springs), the thing that really stands out to me is how Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger is positioned throughout the movie. There’s an argument to be made that he’s as much the main character as Chadwick Boseman’s T’Challa. One of the reason’s it works so well — and one of the things that sets it apart from other MCU movies — is that he has a very clear, well-articulated, and even legitimate motivation. In fact, he’s so in the right that he basically convinces T’Challa to agree with him. The only problem, of course, being that he’s so brutal and monstrous about it that it’s hard to side with him fully.
- I’m not saying it couldn’t ever work, but Scoob! is clearly an attempt to jumpstart an interconnected universe without actually starting a regular universe. This movie — presumably a hopeful first in a new franchise — splits up the Mystery Inc. gang and stuffs in all sorts of other Hannah Barbera characters. I get that maybe you want to make a movie with Dick Dastardly or Dynomutt or Captain Caveman and you can’t do that in 2020 because they no longer have name recognition or cultural cache, but this isn’t the way. The movie has some decent jokes, but I’d rather have just watched the core gang solve a real mystery.
- You’ve Got Mail is the type of romantic comedy plot that is ripe for people to state plot points outside of the context of the movie in order to make it sound like a terrible movie. Which I hate. You can’t just describe a movie’s plot to someone as proof of its quality. Actually, the fact that movies like You’ve Got Mail and Sleepless in Seattle sound so absurd when you describe them blandly feel even more like ringing endorsements, since writer-director Nora Ephron makes them effortlessly charming when you’re actually watching the film instead of reading the Wikipedia page. You’ve Got Mail is good, damn it!
- Although it’s clearly trying to start something, the only lasting effect The Green Lantern had on our culture is the Ryan Reynolds-Blake Lively marriage.
- The character types and dynamics in The Package are exhausting, even though the movie is fairly tight and well-scripted. I honestly watched it because I saw the trailer and thought, “Either they’re giving a lot away in the trailer or there’s a lot more to this movie.” Turns out there was more, so that was good.
- I love Goon; I’ve seen it a bunch of times. I watched it this week when it was my turn to pick the Zoom watch party movie. I’m a hockey fan so I’m predisposed to like a movie like Goon, but I’m also a big softy, and Goon‘s worst kept secret is that it’s a sugary sweet movie about a dumb (so dumb) but sweet (incredibly sweet) man who just so happens to kick ass at kicking ass.
- Part of being a big softy is that I’m not really into horror movies. It’s not necessarily that I don’t like feeling scared or unnerved; after all, I like a good thriller. It’s more that I don’t like seeing brutality, and Sinister is full of it. But I gotta switch it up sometimes, and I’ll watch anything with Ethan Hawke in it. Plus this is likely the movie that got Scott Derrickson the director job on the MCU’s Doctor Strange. I can definitely say that it’s unnerving and well-made, even if it’s not exactly my cup of tea.
- I remember following along with the pre-production of The Circle: a director I liked in James Ponsoldt (Smashed, The Spectacular Now, The End of the Tour) adapting a well-liked novel from a respected author in Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, A Hologram for the King) with the help of an all-star cast in Emma Watson, Tom Hanks, Karen Gillan, John Boyega, and Patton Oswalt. But the reviews were bad and the movie basically disappeared, so I never ended up seeing it. I watched it this week wondering how things could’ve gone wrong with this assembly of talent, and in truth, the movie is well-acted with a modern and timely premise and direction that is never distractingly bad, often fairly good. But it’s story of Evil Company that is abusing the Evil Internet under the auspices of Doing Good is just beaten into the viewer, even when it’s trying to be subtle about it. The good ideas go nowhere and the dramatic structure flattens out, leading to a limp climax that doesn’t justify all the repetitive wheel-spinning the first 80 minutes provided.
- The Blithe Spirit is an early David Lean directorial effort based on a Noel Coward play — which is evident based on the minimal set changes and dialogue-heavy approach to portraying the supernatural. Rex Harrison plays an author doing research on seances and mediums for a novel who accidentally brings back the spirit of his first wife, played by Kay Hammond, much to the dismay of his current wife, played by Constance Cummings. The movie is a lot of fun in a slapstick-y kind of way, as Harrison’s Charles is the only one who can communicate with the spirit, leading to many otherworldly shenanigans.
- I’ll probably keep watching Psych movies as long as they make them. It’s just an extended episode of the TV show — a little twisty, a lot jokey, some heartfelt moments. This one is really built around the real-life stroke suffered by Timothy Omundson, which kept him from the first movie. The movie has Omundson’s Carlton Lasseter in the hospital after being wounded in the field as the boys try to figure out the case he was working on. Being day-one content for Peacock — NBCUniveral’s new streaming service — the movie’s got a bunch of fun cameos from stars of former NBC shows, too. That might seem like it’d be distracting, but Psych is built light and airy enough to handle it.
- I have no emotional attachment to Mary Poppins, and as such, many of the heartstrings that Saving Mr. Banks is trying to pull just aren’t there. The movie is mostly boring — and apparently it’s factuality is questionable, too — but there’s some good scenes during the writing of the movie and it’s premiere. Mostly, I just found P.L. Travers, the author of the Mary Poppins books, to be exhausting and difficult, and the attempts to soften her in childhood flashbacks to be too little too late by the time they arrive.
- Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps is based on an adventure novel by the same name and stars Robert Donat as Richard Hannay, an Englishman unwittingly caught up in some international espionage. The movie’s tone perfectly lines up with what you’d expect from that description — it never takes itself too seriously while never sneering at it’s genre trappings; it’s got some implausible spy aspects that are just perfectly implausible without being over-the-top silly, and it’s humor is sprinkled in well throughout.
- I was not prepared for how much I was going to dislike Jaden Smith in After Earth. This movie — basically brought to life by Will Smith with help from M. Night Shyamalan — really marks the beginning of the end of Smith’s humungous movie star run, one that saw him regularly open mediocre, formulaic movies without issue. But here, he tries to hand his stardom off to his son and suddenly Jaden is tasked with being the only person on screen in a sci-fi action movie for more than 3/4th of the movie’s runtime and thanks to a ridiculous made-up accent that both he and his dad are doing combined with a plot built around being emotionless. And it doesn’t work — after all, what 14-year-old could make that work? The movie’s plotting is mostly tight, surprisingly, and it even brings some good ideas, but the execution, mostly in the dialogue and the performances, leave a lot to be desired.
- Hannah Fidell’s micro-budget debut, A Teacher, is about a young woman who becomes romantically involved with one of her high school students. There’s a lot to like in the movie, especially Lindsay Burdge as the titular teacher, and the things that don’t work are helped immensely by the movie’s relatively short (75 minutes including credits) runtime.
- The Sapphires is charming as all get-out. It’s an Australian musical that was apparently a pretty big hit in it’s home country. The movie’s title band are a group of Indigenous family members (three sisters and a white-passing cousin) in the late ’60s who are discovered by a washed up manager played by Chris O’Dowd and travel to Vietnam to sing for American soldiers. The musical numbers are sometimes a little too shrink-wrapped, especially the singing, but once you get past the production, the music is right up there with the sisters’ no-fucks-given hardheadedness and O’Dowd’s drunken confident sloppiness as the best parts of the movie.