I’ve been a bad movie fan this year, struggling to maintain a consistent schedule for viewing and criticism. It’s been difficult for a while, but this year has felt particularly challenging. I’ll write up something more concrete at a later date, because I think the reflection would do me well. In the meantime, I want to talk about a few movies I managed to catch before they ended their theatrical run. Generally speaking, they were pretty good, but since I waited too long to write about them I don’t have nearly as much to say. Let’s knock these out in viewing order.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die
I rated this sucker 4-out-of-5 stars. A zany film directed by Gore Verbinski and led by one of my acting faves – Sam Rockwell. The script by Matthew Robinson was tight and funny, and had great chemistry with Verbinski in the way that I had hoped for Raimi’s Send Help. The editing was solid, and I never felt that dreaded middle-of-the-movie drag that sometimes stymies high-concept films.
It’s a movie that’s difficult to summarize in a way that sparks curiosity rather than contempt. Rockwell plays a time-traveler – or so he says – who has come back to save the future from Artificial Intelligence. He enlists random diners to join him on his quest and immediately all hell breaks loose. A few of the characters have interesting connections to each other, revealed at just the right time to complicate the hell out of what follows. There’s a particular section of the movie that features one of the blackest bits of humor I’ve encountered in awhile, and it lands regardless of what side of the “school shooter” issue you fall on. Being real dang vague here not to spoil anything, nor suggest a political bias.
Highly recommend.
Hoppers
A waste of time whose weaker moments felt like they were generated using a “Do Pixar” prompt in AI, but without clarifying which Pixar to emulate. Mabel, our young hero, and Jerry, the evil mayor, aggressively fight over a beautiful little glade and what should be done with it. She wants to preserve it because it’s her connection to her grandmother, and he wants to replace it with a beltway. To achieve her ends, Mabel uses a device to transfer her consciousness to a Beaver, which inadvertedly leads to all the animals and insects of the glade trying to murder the hell out of Jerry.
If you squint and focus hard enough, you can see a decent movie in there somewhere. A few funny moments in the last act are bright spots, but nowhere near enough to save this thing. The emotionally manupulative moments the filmmakers crammed into this thing somehow land, but the foundation is made of sand. I’m not even sure the kiddo enjoyed it all that much either. They seemed to have a better reaction after Zootopia 2.
Easy skip; wish I had.
They Will Kill You
I nearly missed this one thanks to a complete lack of targeted marketing. Saw an advertisement on Facebook and then a friend messaged me saying the movie was nearing the end of its theatrical run and he wanted to see it before it left. I went in knowing almost nothing about the flick other than what the trailer showed me: a pantsless Zazie Beetz killing a bunch of Satanists.
On that front the movie delivered in spades. If, like me, you have a strong aversion to Satan and his ists, the movie is 94 minutes of pure, unadulterated bliss. I chuckled, I guffawed, and when Zazie absolutely wrecked a Satan-possessed pig head jammed atop the villain’s body, I may have cheered.
A few pacing, plot, and structural issues dampened the experience for me. Not enough to ruin the affair, but enough to stick with me now all this time later. The explanation for how the Satanists achieved immortality felt a bit too clunky in its technicalities, and when it was used to pull a fast one on the villains and put everything right in the end, it felt weirdly out of sync with the rest of the movie.
Solid recommend from me. Best viewed with an energetic midnight movie crowd. Don’t worry; Zazie eventually found some pants.
In Summary…
Two goodies and a clunker. Not a bad haul as far as movies go, but I wish I could have added more to the average. I suppose my lament of “not enough time” is getting borderline boring at this point. What adult doesn’t lack the time for their hobbies these days? Time to redouble my efforts, I suppose. If not to find joy in going to the cinema once again, then at the very least to maintain my current moniker.
