Hamilton (Thomas Kail, 2020) — A
The Predator (Shane Black, 2018) — C
I Love You, Beth Cooper (Chris Columbus, 2009) — F
Adventures in Babysitting (Chris Columbus, 1987) — A
Guns Akimbo (Jason Lei Howden, 2019) — C+
Now and Then (Lesli Linka Glatter, 1995) — A
Michael Clayton (Tony Gilroy, 2007) — B+
The Week Of (Robert Smigel, 2018) — B-
Desperados (LP, 2020) — C
The Firm (Sydney Pollack, 1993) — A-
Morvern Callar (Lynne Ramsay, 2002) — A+
Drop Dead Fred (Ate de Jong, 1991) — D-
Vice (Adam McKay, 2018) — C+
John Wick: Chapter 2 (Chad Stehelski, 2017) — A
John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum (Chad Stehelski, 2019) — A-
Michael (Nora Ephron, 1996) — C
Greyhound (Aaron Schneider, 2020) — C+
Is this filmed version of Hamilton the best at-home viewing experience of the musical? It’s possible. A true film adaptation would never work. With the many options available to filmmakers, film is an expansive medium that is at it’s strongest when it is showing and not telling. Meanwhile, theater is limited to what can be produced in person, all at once, and in a single room. While there are plenty of ways that stage productions can show rather than tell, it can never be as thorough as a piece of art made for the screen. A true adaptation would create many more opportunities for showing, but Hamilton excels at telling. It basically looks at its own story and says, “We’re forced to tell, but how can we tell in the most electrifying way possible?” Not only would you remove all of the energy that builds within the performers when they are in front of a live audience, but you’d either have to remove some of that electricity, or have it be made redundant by pairing it with a visual, thus removing the electricity anyway.
Before this, I had never seen Hamilton and had held off listening to the soundtrack to create as pure an experience as possible if I ever got the chance to. But with Broadway shut down, it doesn’t seem like that’s going to be happening for quite a long time. So I can’t say how watching this Disney+ version of it compares to seeing it live, but I can say that this version is immensely enjoyable. The play itself is absolutely stuffed with sharp turns-of-phrase, beautiful rhymes, and choreography and staging that is basically non-stop. Thomas Kail — director of the film production — makes no attempts to hide the fact that it is a stage production. At times we can see into the wings, or get angles from the seats with audience members in them, and from overhead we can see the spinning floor as the performers expertly dance in and out of each other. It’s the best way to present it: theater is about the performance of it all. It can’t hide behind any kind of veil of reality because its audience is literally in the same room. Disney+’s Hamilton is all the better for understanding that and keeping it intact.
- Now and Then is like if Nora Ephron wrote her own version of Stand By Me. It’s funny and charming in a very Amblin-y, kids-on-bikes-in-the-summertime kind of way; it hits on some major tenets of growing up with grief and sorrow and finally realizing that your parents are just regular people, too; and there are some scenes where the girls (Christina Ricci, Gaby Hoffman, Thora Birch, and Ashleigh Aston Moore) sing together that make the whole thing worthwhile on their own. It’s a shame that neither the film’s director, Lesli Linka Glatter, or writer, I. Marlene King, ever made much of a film career following Now and Then, mostly being relegated to television (in Glatter’s case a lot of television). I’d suspect it has nothing to do with either their talents nor their ambition to do so.
- Likewise, the fact that Samantha Morton had both Minority Report and Morvern Callar in the same calendar year back in 2002 and we didn’t immediately all hand her an award that says A-lister and put her in a bunch of movies is a travesty. As an aimless, young Scottish woman in Lynne Ramsay’s second feature, she is pitch-perfect. Ramsay’s direction is haunting and visceral and the two leads, Morton and Kathleen McDermott are rough-around-the-edges complex even when they come off as shallow.
- The Predator almost felt like a Shane Black movie: some good ideas, some larger implications, some quippy dialogue. But by all accounts, the final product was not exactly the film he set out to make, mostly because he ultimately wasn’t allowed to make the film he set out to make. It’s too bad, because there are few franchises that could handle his voice as well as this one, and his one-for-them/one-for-me strategy doesn’t work as well when the one-for-them bombs at the domestic box office and in the reviews.
- I think John Wick: Chapter 2 is the best one? It’s hard to say, they’re all of pretty similar quality. People diss the plots in these movies but honestly, they’re not non-existent or even poorly plotted, they’re just super simple. I think Chapter 2 builds momentum in it’s plotting better than the bookends — every big battle and kill leads to the next logical maneuver and eventual battle and kill. It also really starts to world-build in the best possible way: it’s weird and never over-explained and literally every character seems like they could have their own prequel.
- I Love You, Beth Cooper is a movie with bad values and bad ideas that are executed badly. The script is misogynistic full of gay panic undertones, hand-waved-away drunk driving, and stupid jokes. There’s a character who is supposed to be a film geek, but he basically takes the most basic phrases other people say and pretends like they meant it by giving the movie title, year, and director. Not to mention that he gets it wrong at one point, citing Brian De Palma’s Scarface as an ’82 movie rather than an ’83. Was there not a single read-through of this script?
- In fact, the movie was so bad I had to go back to one of the director’s better efforts, in this case, his debut. After writing Gremlins, The Goonies, and Young Sherlock Holmes, Chris Columbus ventured into directing with 1987’s Adventures in Babysitting. Whereas Beth Cooper feels like dull scene after dull scene set in a nondescript location, Adventures in Babysitting, starring Elisabeth Shue as the titular babysitter, includes almost exclusively interesting scenes and locations, jumping from bedroom music video to tow truck to Chicago skyline to warehouse rafters with energy and aplomb.
- I mostly watched Guns Akimbo because I am always thoroughly charmed by Samara Weaving. And she’s pretty great here as the opponent to Daniel Radcliffe’s protagonist forced into a city-wide firefight. But the movie wants to have its cake and eat it too; it scolds viewers who enjoy watching violence and then makes us watch a whole bunch of violence.
- I was looking for a good, sleek, snappy legal thriller when I put on Michael Clayton and yes, it’s good and is about the law and is thrilling, but it’s much more cerebral than your average legal thriller. It’s as much about the personal lives of these men and the effect that their profession has on them than it is about legal loopholes and quick-witted tête-à-têtes. In fact, the movie never even steps into a courtroom.
- Which is why I later went for The Firm, which also never makes its way into the courtroom, but is nonetheless much more of a conventional legal thriller. Tom Cruise is commanding and charismatic and the story slowly unrolls in an intensely watchable manner. Also, Gary Busey makes a wicked/wonderful one-scene appearance.
- The Week Of is probably towards the better end of the spectrum of latter day Happy Madison productions, which is a fairly low bar to clear. But instead of one of his usual directors, this time Adam Sandler has legendary SNL/Conan writer Robert Smigel behind the camera here. Yes, the movie — starring Sandler as the father of the bride and Chris Rock as the father of the groom — is full of stupid jokes that don’t always land and is pretty predictably plotted, but it does have some heart. Sandler is almost playing a character as a put-upon, hapless, but dedicated patriarch of a lower class Long Island family. The movie, with it’s familial dysfunction and Billy Joel soundtrack, has heart, which is more than can often be said for the Happy Madison-Netflix movies.
- I think that all those movies in the ’90s where there’s some form of chaos incarnate, movies like Clifford and Blank Check and Drop Dead Fred, were probably written and made by people who hate children. They either look at children and think they’re just motivation-less agents of destruction, or they’ve never taken the time to get anywhere past that thought. Drop Dead Fred is dreadful, the “lessons” we learn by the end are nonsense, and while Phoebe Cates’ physical comedy works very well in places, her comedic timing is lacking.
- There always seems to be one movie a week that I fall asleep during, whether it’s because the movie is boring or I’m just tired: with Vice it was probably a little bit of both. The movie is mostly good, McKay is in full-on political mode with cutaway visual metaphors and timestamps and weird fourth-wall breaking, like The Big Short on steroids, but in the end it’s a movie about a hateful person made by people who hate him. So it’s kind of a grating experience.
- I’m mostly tired of war movies in general, World War II movies specifically — I just feel like there’s so much more history to be told. And possibly the worst thing anyone could say about Tom Hanks and still be telling the truth is that he’s a little too obsessed with World War II. He’s had an impeccable career full of critical, commercial, and personal success, though, and has completely earned the right to keep on going back to the same well. Greyhound is the latest installment of Hanks’ late-career mode of playing good, decent, commanding men that are exceptionally competent at their specific job (The Post, Sully, Bridge of Spies, Captain Phillips). It’s got very solid directing, solid writing, and solid performances. It’s a solid dad movie, even if it’s premise and setting are a little worn out at this point.
- Michael is one of Ephron’s more bizarre efforts: John Travolta plays the archangel Michael, while William Hurt, Andie MacDowell, and Robert Pastorelli are gossip mag journalists who set out to write a story about him. The tone is sort of light and touching and pleasant throughout, but when you really think about the plot and each decision made, the whole thing makes almost no sense whatsoever. It’s kind of like a house of cards, except it’s more like when I make a house of cards — which is to say that it’s delicate and does not work at all.