Unpregnant (Rachel Lee Goldenberg, 2020) — A
The Running Man (Paul Michael Glaser, 1987) — B+
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (Joachim Ronning, Espen Sandberg, 2017) — C-
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Jacques Demy, 1964) — A+
Beauty and the Beast: Belle’s Magical World (Cullen Blaine, Daniel de la Vega, Barbara Dourmashkin, Dale Kase, Bob Kline, Burt Medall, Mitch Rochon, 1998) — D+
I Wanna Hold Your Hand (Robert Zemeckis, 1978) — A-
Banana Split (Benjamin Kasulke, 2020) — B+
The Last Boy Scout (Tony Scott, 1991) — C+
Sisters (Brian De Palma, 1972) — B+
I fully expected to like Unpregnant going in. It’s got a bunch of stuff I typically love: coming-of-age, road trip, Haley Lu Richardson. It’s also got a simple hook based on a real-world issue. You know when you watch someone on TV explain how different Midwest states make it really hard to get an abortion? There’ll be like one in the state and they keep changing how wide the hallways have to be and all that stuff. Basically, Unpregnant is like the fun teenage road trip version of those exposés.
A 17-year-old type-A Missourian (played by one of my faves, the aforementioned Richardson) finds out she is pregnant and, after some phone calls, realizes that the closest clinic she can go to without needing parental consent is nearly 1,000 miles away in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She keeps it from her gossip-y in-crowd friends and instead calls upon an ex-friend who is on the outside and who happens to have a car (Euphoria‘s Barbie Ferreira in her very first film role).
Things go wrong more than once, there are some wacky side trips and weirdo characters, and some car sing-a-alongs, but at its core the movie is about friendship. There’s a near-wordless moment early on where we learn the extent of their childhood relationship compared to their 17-year-old relationship and it works beautifully and makes the entire thing click into place.
There are bound to be comparisons to another 2020 traveling teenage abortion movie, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, but Unpregnant strikes a much lighter tone, even when it is hitting the issue as hard as it can. There’s always room for two when they’re both doing different things and doing them well.
- The Running Man is just dumb fun. I think thanks to its origins as a Stephen King novel its got a little more on its mind than the typical ’80s sci-fi action star vehicle, but it’s at its weakest when it realizes that and takes itself a little too seriously. It’s early-ish Schwarzenegger, in that his peak was still yet to come, and he’s exactly what we expect from ’80s Arnold. Richard Dawson, though, is inspired casting as the host of the violent, futuristic reality TV show that gives the movie its name.
- The fifth Pirates movie is a predictable mess. I was glad to see a short runtime (relative to the previous films) when I started, but halfway through it still felt long. I’ve been a fan of Kaya Scoladerio since the UK Skins, but she hasn’t really had much success in terms of film quality. I think this movie uses her well — I like the idea of a scientific character entering this universe as kind of a 18th Century Dana Scully — but the movie isn’t really up to snuff.
- I’ve been reticent in the past to watch musicals in foreign languages — it just seems like there’s no way I’m not going to be missing something. Maybe that’s still totally true and I was missing something from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. But what I got was still something beautiful. It’s an entirely sung-through musical, with no big numbers or even definable songs. Everything just kind of flows from one thing to the next. Set in a small coastal French town between 1957 and 1963, which includes the Algerian War, the story is an archetypal love story full of charm and heartbreak and overwhelming joy, with an incredibly colorful set and costume design that makes the entire thing come to life. Musicals are inherently artificial, and Demy uses all of the artificiality of movie-making and turns it up to 11, to the point where it all feels incredibly genuine. This movie makes me want to learn French.
- Making a sequel to the animated Beauty and the Beast was already stupid — if it’s a prequel then the principals don’t know each other; it it’s afterwards, then all the side characters look completely different than we know and love. So the second one was set within the timeframe of the original. Even stupider is Belle’s Magical World. It was originally to be a television series set entirely in that same timeframe, but instead the three episodes in the can were smashed together and released as a movie. So it’s essentially an anthology film that’s poorly animated and full of nonsense that only raises more questions. Wait, the candlestick is straight? And has a female love interest? And then all of a sudden a second female love interest? Why does Chip still behave like a child when it’s been over a decade since he got turned into a cup? How many people actually worked in this castle serving this one lone prince? And was the castle entirely devoid of any furniture or appliances or accessories before the curse?
- Robert Zemeckis’ first film is truly a hidden gem. I assume it’s difficult to find because of all the Beatles songs on the soundtrack, but if you get a chance it’s definitely worth it. A group of Jersey teens attempt to get into The Beatles’ performance on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. It’s a simple set-up that plays out in legitimately funny ways and fits together like a puzzle.
- I was looking for one of the dumb teen rom-coms that Netflix cranks out and then doesn’t tell anyone when I put on Banana Split, but I actually found it to be a cut above those. It’s a pretty great ode to friendship — here specifically the burgeoning friendship between a teenage girl (Hannah Marks) and the new girlfriend (Liana Liberato) of her recent ex (one of the Sprouse twins looking like he’s auditioning to be a Hemsworth). It’s basically if “I thought I would hate her but she’s actually pretty nice” came to life and someone filmed it.
- I enjoy a good Shane Black script — a mismatched pair, a precocious kid, hit-or-miss one-liners, a strong structure. The Last Boy Scout has most of these things but the structure isn’t as strong and the one-liners miss more often than they hit. Bruce Willis is a washed up ex-Secret Service agent and Damon Wayans is a washed up ex-NFL quarterback who team up when Halle Berry — Willis’ client and Wayans’ girlfriend — is murdered.
- The biggest strength of Sisters is how simple and straightforward it is. A small-time Staten Island newspaper reporter witnesses a murder from her apartment window and sets out to investigate. The film is very upfront about everything — we know who everyone is, who died, and who killed him. We even know about a recently detached Siamese twin sister; after all, it’s right there in the title and on the poster. And we watch it all play out very thrillingly. There are some Corman-esque special effects but there’s also a few split-screen sequences that work incredibly well. When the movies gets a little more complicated in its final third and begins over-explaining things and flashing back it suffers a little, but it still lands a strong ending to a masterfully suspenseful thriller.