X-Men (Bryan Singer, 2000) — B
Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018) — B
Dark Waters (Todd Haynes, 2019) — A
Teen Titans Go! To the Movies (Peter Rida Michail, Aaron Horvath, 2018) — A-
Valley Girl (Rachel Lee Goldenberg, 2020) — B-
Assassin 33 A.D. (Jim Carroll, 2020) — D
The Last Thing He Wanted (Dee Rees, 2020) — C-
Coastal Elites (Jay Roach, 2020) — C
Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made (Tom McCarthy, 2020) — B
Enola Holmes (Harry Bradbeer, 2020) — B+
Because I Said So (Michael Lehmann, 2007) — D
Coffee and Kareem (Michael Dowse, 2020) — C-
The 400 Blows (François Truffaut, 1959) — A+
Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Blake Edwards, 1961) — A
Pride and Prejudice (Joe Wright, 2005) — B+
I did a whole bunch of catching up on movies released this year available on streaming services this week. A few were good, most were pretty middling, hence their availability and the fact that I hadn’t watched them yet. The winners were probably Valley Girl, Enola Holmes, and Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made. Valley Girl, a musical remake of a 1983 teen movie and director Rachel Lee Goldenberg’s first of two movies out this year, started slow, mostly because I felt like it the kind of thing that comes adapted from the stage, with a bunch of over-acting and a soundtrack of existing ’80s pop songs, but the sheer force of the movie’s upbeat nature and outrageously colorful palette and the fun of the song performances won me over eventually. Enola Holmes was a charming take on a very, very, (very) well-established fictional universe. Millie Bobby Brown plays the younger, near-estranged sister of an already-famous Sherlock Holmes, and honestly, I wasn’t sold on her based on Strangers Things, but now I feel like she’ll really become something, or at least should. Timmy Failure was a true surprise. Tom McCarthy took five years after winning Best Picture for Spotlight and he returns with a children’s film based on a book I’ve never heard of that goes straight to Disney+. And yet, I really enjoyed it. Timmy is a fifth-grader with a mullet and an imaginary polar bear sidekick who thinks he’s a private eye and truly commits to the bit. It feels kind of like a quirky little indie film with some quirky little flourishes and despite the main character’s precociousness, he never really becomes grating.
I’d probably put Coastal Elites in the middle, in that it’s not great, not terrible, but it’s also not really a movie. It’s basically five monologues performed by talented actors about the state of the world. They’re all playing so-called coastal elites and are essentially ranting about “President” Trump and other connected to him. It becomes really evident by the end that these are all written by the same person, as the rhythm and the word/phrase choices really become repetitive.
The Last Thing He Wanted really came and went this year. A movie starring Anne Hathaway and Ben Affleck based on a book by one of the best writers of her generation from a rising star of a director, and yet, it had no cultural impact when it hit Netflix and even less now that it’s been a few months. The movie doesn’t feel boring for a while, especially while Willem Dafoe is crawling around in it, and there’s some dialogue gems that sound like they’re straight from Joan Didion, but it slowly gets to the point where I realized I was bored and then eventually shifts to where I realized I was confused. It was better than the last two 2020 movies I watched this week, though. Coffee and Kareem really tests my patience for Ed Helms, even though its barely more than 80 minutes. This movie seems to understand all of the white cop-in-a-black-neighborhood trappings that its dealing in and yet, misses the mark every time. Especially watching it at this point in time, it just feels incredibly tone-deaf, not to mention aggressively unfunny. Assassin 33 A.D. is likely a first of its kind: you know those faith-based dramas that you see previews for in theaters (or used to) that seem like complete amateur productions made by people who just want to preach at you? And you think, who watches these movies? Well, Assassin 33 A.D. is one of those movies if the filmmakers were also obsessed with violence and science fiction. Basically, some Muslim extremists hire some young geniuses to create a matter-transfer-type device, but they instead create a time machine. So the extremists instead use the machine to go back in time and stop the resurrection of Jesus. You may be asking, why would Muslim’s even think to do that, since they don’t believe in the resurrection in the first place? And if they just wanted to go back in time and witness the resurrection to see if it actually happened, why would they stick to their original beliefs once they see that it actually was true? Well, then you already put more consideration for non-Christian religions and more thought into this movie than the creators of it did. It’s crazy xenophobic and poorly shot and the performances are truly bad.
- I’ve never been a huge franchise watcher, but I’ve been catching up on a lot during quarantine. After all of the Mad Max, Lethal Weapon, Mission: Impossible, and Pirates of the Caribbean movies, I’m jumping into a big one that I am completely oblivious of: X-Men. The only X-Men movie I’ve seen is Deadpool, which, as I understand it, isn’t really in that universe. I knew a few of the main players across the franchise and I vaguely knew a few of the characters and that the comics use mutation as a human rights metaphor, but I really have no idea what is coming up. I enjoyed this movie a lot — I had always assumed the metaphor was a lot subtler, but it’s actually right at the forefront of the story. There’s some real cornball moments, but it is a comic book movie, after all; and the action was at times a little hard to follow and seemed sloppy. But I’m on board.
- Isle of Dogs is good, mid-tier Wes Anderson. Quirky and purposefully staid dialogue; emotion that just barely hits the mark; a huge cast of A-listers. I guess, I’m not really sure why the whole thing even had to be set in Japan? All it really does is give Anderson an excuse for some homage which almost reaches the point of fetishization and makes me wonder why Japanese dogs all have the voices of white Americans.
- I’m a huge Todd Haynes fan, but somehow I skipped Dark Waters when it came out last year. Part of it is that I really didn’t know it was a Todd Haynes film until I saw a trailer on TV, part of it was that it seems more like a director-for-hire job for him, and the other part is that I was traveling the week it came out. I don’t know the exact details of his mercenary status on this one, but I can definitely say it feels enough like a Todd Haynes film and has the quality of one, too. Basically, Mark Ruffalo is a corporate lawyer who defends chemical companies who is approached by his grandma’s neighbor to sue a chemical company. It’s based on the true story of Robert Bilott and DuPont and the reason we don’t use Teflon frying pans anymore. You can easily see this in the hands of someone like Clint Eastwood and how it wouldn’t feel as cutting or as empathetic. I would’ve never pegged Haynes for a legal drama like this, but he’s a perfect fit. Ruffalo is excellent; Anne Hathaway is sorta overqualified for her role as the stay-at-home, sometimes-nagging wife but her casting is kind of redeemed during her Oscar clip-moment towards the end; and even though every thing was running smoothly for the first hour, Bill Pullman shows up like a firecracker and raises the energy considerably.
- I’ve never seen the television show that Teen Titans Go! To The Movies is based on. I used to watch the original on occasion, but never the sillier, newer installment. So I can’t speak to whether this movie is just an extension of the show, but I can speak to how delightful it is. Taking aim at the gluttonous amount of self-serious superhero movies, Teen Titans Go! To The Movies is funny, smart, metatextual, and as visually stuffed as any animated movie.
- Because I Said So felt incredibly contrived in some ways and completely bizarre in others. Diane Keaton’s senior citizen flibbertigibbet-ness was way overcranked, and as much as I love her in other, better movies, every time her overbearing mother is on screen was near painful. Just an absolute waste of a movie where Mandy Moore, Lauren Graham, and Piper Perabo are sisters.
- The 400 Blows is the very first film by French New Wave pioneer François Truffaut. The story of its creation is an all-timer: he was a film critic who was so harsh on French directors that he was banned from attending Cannes and then came back the very next year with his own film and won Best Director. The movie, about a rebellious, curious, impoverished 12-year-old in France and what happens when he is put up against indifferent parents and antagonistic educators, is passionate and heartbreaking and life-affirming and on and on.
- Boy, Breakfast at Tiffany’s would basically be perfect without the bizarre Mickey Rooney-in-yellowface upstairs neighbor. It’s not just that it’s a racist character, it’s that it has absolutely no reason to be there. Literally the only purpose the character serves is to show us the perfect character detail of Holly constantly not having her key and buzzing her neighbors to let her in. If we look the other way for a minute once every so often, though, its an iconic and funny and thank god for that cat.
- Joe Wright’s version of Pride and Prejudice is like the emo teen version of it, where everything that anyone feels is felt so hard. I like it.