The Hating Game | Big George Foreman | Love Again | The Green Knight | Five Easy Pieces | Fast X | Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse | You Hurt My Feelings | The Flash | Transformers: Rise of the Beasts | The Little Mermaid (2023) | Elemental | Asteroid City | No Hard Feelings | Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
The Hating Game, 03 May 2023, streamed via Hulu
Two nights in a row, I stayed up until 3 AM reading @Sally__Thorne's The Hating Game. I was DELIRIOUS, friends, but WORTH IT. The ebook I was reading used the "Now a Major Motion Picture," cover, so while I was getting into bed, I toggled around in my phone to see where I could stream it, and then I just ended up, like, WATCHING IT instead of going to sleep like I had intended.
Because here's the thing, y'all: I am a sucker for many, many romance novel tropes. And you know what I'm the most suckerish for? ENEMIES TO LOVERS. It's a classic will-they-won't-they except, OH MAN, the chemistry first manifests as utter disdain and perhaps some yelling that is CLEARLY sublimated desire and COME ON ALREADY.
So anyway, in The Hating Game, Lucy Hutton is the executive assistant to Helen, the lead of a book-lover's publishing company which was recently forced to merge with a supposedly soulless publishing company. In merging offices, Lucy ends up spending every day sitting across from Joshua Templeton, the executive assistant to the lead of the other publishing company. Lucy hates Joshua because she thinks Joshua hates her.
Spoiler alert: They are actually in love. Or, they will be. Eventually.
Romance novel tropes, y'all. THEY'RE THE BEST.
Big George Foreman: The Miraculous Story of the Once and Future Heavyweight Champion of the World, 06 May 2023, Century Olympia
If you're looking for a straightforward inspirational sports movie, this is totally one.
As one of the production companies is Affirm Films, an American Christian film company, you can also expect this to be a mostly wholesome, supposed-to-be-morally-uplifting sort of story, too. I mean, I wouldn't say this is inherently proselytizing or anything, but George Foreman did, in fact, become a preacher for several years, so it's baked into the narrative. (Also, as someone who grew up in a fundamentalist community and can clock if a band has roots in Christian rock in the first three bars of a song, the overall tone of the story is very "if you know, you know.") But, I mean. It's a nice story!
The redemption narrative should be pretty familiar, after all: Foreman grew up poor, turned out to be good at a thing, then was seduced by Worldly Stuff. (With fame comes substance abuse and meaningless sex. This is not a new or unique story--read the Wikipedia summary for any celebrity of note.) Foreman experiences a brush with death and changes his life, but when money troubles roll around, he turns back to boxing.
Khris Davis does good work in the role, as do Sonja Sohn as his mother and Forest Whitaker as his trainer. And I didn't know anything about George Foreman, not even about his surprising comeback, so hey! Solid work, film.
Love Again, 07 May 2023, Century Olympia
Priyanka Chopra Jonas plays Mira, a children's book author who lost her fiance in a tragic accident a year or so ago. She's in a slump and, as part of her grieving process, she begins to text her thoughts to her dead fiance's old phone number. (Meanwhile, her sister gets her on a dating app, which leads to a HILARIOUS scene where her real-life husband, Nick Jonas, cameos as some workout-obsessed bro she meets for drinks.)
Sam Heughan (AKA the guy from Outlander) plays Rob, then cynical music journalist who suddenly starts receiving Mira's texts on his brand-new work phone. Instead of texting back the CLEARLY GRIEVING HUMAN or even just, like, BLOCKING the wrong number, Rob, TOTAL WEIRDO, decides to check out the sad texting person when she mentions she's going for drinks with someone.
Through circumstances I swear to you I have legit forgotten about by this point, Rob ends up talking to Mira, they go out on a date, then they talk all night, and then they fall in love, AND THEN she finds out his work phone is her dead fiance's old number.
Also, Celine Dion is extremely involved in their personal lives, I don't even know.
In any case, I enjoyed this! There are not a lot of rom-coms out in the theatres lately! We should support them! The credits treat for this film is everybody lip-syncing to Celine Dion! The Scottish guy wears a kilt!
The Green Knight, 11 May 2023, Blu-ray
I previously talked (quite briefly) about The Green Knight in October 2021. When I signed on to pick something out for the faculty film series this quarter, this movie was the first thing that came to mind as fitting into the "art house" theme.
To prep for doing a quick intro for the showing, I listened to a bunch of podcast reviews/interviews, including the Ringerverse with Mallory Rubin, the Big Picture with Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins, Spirits podcast with Amanda McLoughlin and Julia Schifini, and the A24 Project with Lee Hutchison and Dallas King. I also read Joanna Robinson's Vanity Fair article, Alissa Wilkinson's piece for Vox, and pretty much all the "Top Critics" reviews linked on Rotten Tomatoes. I'm not sure if any of that shows up in my notes below, but it was fun prep to do.
The Green Knight is an adaptation of a 14th-century poem written by an anonymous author, "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," though as you'll hear in the film, maybe it's Gah-WAYNE, or GAY-win, or GAH-win, or maybe even GAHR-win--who knows, honestly. If you're not familiar with the story, it hardly matters, because like a lot of art house stuff, this movie is very much about vibes over narrative coherence. Or, to say it in a different way, there's a narrative here, but it's up to us to pull those threads together.
David Lowery is the writer, director, and editor of this movie, and he's joined by cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo. The film was released by A24 in 2021, but it was actually meant for a bit earlier than that--like a lot of recent films, the pandemic lockdown shifted the timelines. In interviews, Lowery has talked about how he completely re-edited the movie while in quarantine. It had a budget of about $15 million, which is shockingly low, given how gorgeous it is.
And there's so much other stuff packed in here that would take a lot longer to talk about--the Arthurian clash of paganism and Christianity, the sense of encroaching nature and corrupting war, and the ever-present intersections of gender, ethnicity, and class. The story's episodic structure helpfully breaks up Gawain's adventures into anecdotes, but it also ensures we keep on reaching.
Like I said before, the construction of this film is meant to confound us--it uses effects and casting in order to unmoor our understanding of identity and our perception of time. It deliberately highlights the stereotypical distractions and traditional preoccupations of a young man--sex and death and the meaning of masculinity--and it underlines them to amuse and disturb us.
In the original poem, the Green Knight is an embodied cataclysm, someone sent to challenge the mettle and honor of King Arthur's Round Table. The question, I guess, that we are meant to ponder the most in this movie is: Who has made Gawain who he is so far, and going forward, who is he trying to be?
Five Easy Pieces, 18 May 2023, Blu-ray
This was another film in the campus "art house" film series. Ebert gave it four stars! Basically, a young Jack Nicholson plays Robert, a dude on the run from his own privilege. In the beginning, he's working the oil fields and treating his girlfriend like crap. We only get that he's disaffected and loose with his affections. But then there's this weird piano scene...
Then Robert finds out his father is dying or something--there's a scene at a recording studio that's disorienting at first--and he takes a surreal road trip, reluctantly bringing along his pregnant girlfriend, whom he keeps trying to ditch.
There's a whole thing about, I don't know, disposability and culture wars and people being assholes at each other. And Robert pretty much sleeps with any woman who'll look at him twice.
When the movie ended, I put my head in my hands and asked the room with total sincerity, "Is...is Jack Nicholson handsome?" And that's pretty much my takeaway on this movie?
Fast X, 29 May 2023, Century Olympia
Early on in #FastX, Little Nobody says he tried to get in contact with the team by swiping right on Han's dating app, and on one hand, it could be a joke, but on the other hand, WE'VE GOT CANONICALLY BI HAN, WHAT UP.
Fast X continues the trend of the franchise in which EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED and also relies extremely strongly on our knowledge of their, like, continuity? Because the Big Bad of the film is Dante, the son of the Big Bad of Fast Five, and they spend a lot of flashback time convincing us he was there THE ENTIRE TIME and now he's BACK FOR VENGEANCE.
Jason Momoa absolutely GOES FOR IT in this role in the weirdest way possible, playing with gender that is sometimes fun and sometimes uncomfortably tied to his ostensible psychopathy. BUT he's a good match for Charlize Theron's energy--they only share one scene in the film, but it's crackling.
Theron's Cipher is in the film largely because, y'know, why not? Also, it's the franchise way: If you're the enemy in one movie, you're going to be family eventually. See also: Every other villain in this series.
But also, yeah, let's just keep putting Cipher in scenes with Letty, because the best thing about these movies is often whenever Michelle Rodriguez punches things. Or does anything, really.
Um. There's other stuff that happens in this movie, but does it matter? Oh, it ends with a cliffhanger that almost doesn't matter, because said cliffhanger is bookended by two cameos that are absolutely WILD.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, 02 June 2023, Century Olympia
The rapidity with which Hobie goes from The Worst to The Best is astonishing.
We all know the Oscar-winning Into the Spider-Verse is possibly the best movie ever made, right? Well, it's possible Across the Spider-Verse is better. (It all sort of depends on how the final film ends up, because the "To Be Continued" cut on this one is ROUGH, particularly for all the people in my theatre who didn't know it was going to be a two-parter.)
The absolute heart of the first film is still intact as we see Miles and Gwen, in their own dimensions, deal with the isolation and loneliness that being a Spider-person brings. I'm not entiiiiirely certain how we're supposed to read their relationship--Miles certainly has a crush on Gwen, but I'm not convinced it's reciprocated. She definitely yearns for him, though, even if it's simply as a friend who understands her. And they both struggle a ton with how and/or if they should share their burdens with their lovingly oblivious parents.
Also, Peter B returns and he's got an adorable Spider-baby named Mayday. Turns out he DID want kids, after all!
And I don't want to say anymore because then I'll be talking forever! Except that this movie is SO GORGEOUS, and at some points, so gorgeous that it actually takes over the story? Like, the story may or may not be second to the art, but only just. And I love love love many of the new characters and all the conflicts that spark feel really organic.
I CANNOT WAIT FOR THE NEXT ONE WOOOOOOOOO
You Hurt My Feelings, 03 June 2023, Century Olympia
You Hurt My Feelings is pretty simple: Julia Louis-Dreyfuss plays Beth, an author and teacher who is struggling with her latest manuscript. Tobias Menzies plays her husband Don, a therapist who is very tired. He has been telling her he loves her latest work; by happenstance, she overhears him telling someone he actually doesn't like it. That is the story!
Michaela Watkins plays Beth's sister, Sarah, and Arian Moayed plays her husband, Mark. Sarah's an interior decorator and Mark is a C-list movie actor who's trying to become a Serious Theatre Actor, so as you can imagine, they also have a lot of feelings about little white lies and artistic honesty. They're pretty great.
There's also a nice runner with Owen Teague, who plays Beth and Don's son, Eliot, and how his awareness of their default positivity has impacted how he feels about his own budding artistry. (In contrast, Beth and Sarah's mother is a master of passive aggressivity.)
This is a lovely, searingly truthful exploration of how we talk to the people we love when we think nothing is at stake. As well, there's a great side bit with Don's patients, among them Amber Tamblyn and David Cross as a married couple (LOL), Zach Cherry, and Sarah Steele.
The Flash, 17 June 2023, Century Olympia
I mean, it was fine. (And it's arguable about whether or not we should be able to put aside the numerous disturbing allegations against Ezra Miller, but that's what I'm doing here, and by seeing the film, so.) As with, um, EVERYTHING in the DCEU, there were some things that went well with the film, and plenty of things that went slightly to shockingly awry.
Have I mentioned that I dig Batfleck a lot? I just really like what Affleck brings to him: curmudgeonly and charismatic, pessimistic and confidently competent. Fun! And I know Keaton's Batman is The Biggest Deal with the film--he certainly occupies the largest slice of it--but what he brings has much in common with what I like about Batfleck.
And how did the film do in terms of Dangerous Ladies? Well, Kiersey Clemons is utterly charming as Iris West--clever and compassionate in ways that make her hinted romance with Barry make total sense. Meanwhile, Sasha Calle as Kara Zor-El is fantastically fierce. Her initial appearance was spoiled heavily in the trailers, but the moment right before it, when we see her emaciated hand rejuvenating in the sunlight? Gorgeous.
Most touching, however, was Maribel Verdu as Barry's mother, Nora, whose murder is the crux of the entire story. She emanates warmth in every single scene she's in; it's easy to see why Barry would be willing to shatter universes to keep her alive. And Ron Livingstone does solid work as Henry. The movie's biggest failing, IMHO, is its complete disinterest in who actually killed Nora and why she died.
If you're the type to geek out about Easter eggs, then you've probably already seen The Flash? Or at least spoiled yourself about all the craaaaaaaay multiverse stuff, a couple of which absolutely made my jaw drop. The CGI was not great, but I sort of came to terms with it early enough. (It's not like I wanted them to get extremely photorealistic about that baby in the microwave, yeah, YOU READ THAT RIGHT, it happened.) And Miller, well, they were perfectly good in the role. I actually teared up in the final scene with Barry and Nora!
But yeah. It was fine.
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, 18 June 2023, Century Olympia
I mean, someday I will watch all the Transformers films? Like, OBVIOUSLY, the cartoon one is the best and the soundtrack is one banger after another that will live forever in my heart. I saw the first live-action one twice in the theatre! And then the second one happened and, yeah, I did not watch any others until I heard the Hailee Steinfeld Bumblebee was pretty good. And it was! So I figured, why not roll on this? I support Anthony Ramos and all his choices! (I maintain Anthony Ramos is the closest we will ever get to seeing a John Singer Sargent painting walking around in real life.) Also, I saw the trailer for this approximately fifty bajillion times over the course of several months; marketing blitzes work.
Anyway, this Transformers movie is a period piece! It takes place in NYC (at first) in the 90s, so enjoy that hip-hop soundtrack, my friends! Noah (Anthony Ramos) plays a young veteran who is dabbling with the idea of some light grand theft auto in order to pay the medical bills for his adorable younger brother, beset by leukemia. (The real villain of the piece is the shitty American medical system; early on, said adorable youngster is turned away from treatment because, lacking insurance, the family can't pay for the treatment.) Dominique Fishback plays Elena, an intern at an art museum who is incredibly knowledgeable, but whose boss keeps stealing credit for her knowledge. (The other real villain of the film is systemic racism.)
Elena accidentally breaks open an artifact that is actually a half of a Transwarp Key (or something) that sends out an intergalactic signal (or something) that alerts the servants of Unicron, PLANET EATER, that it's time to chow down on Earth (or something). Noah happens to be trying to boost robot-in-disguise Jazz when the signal goes out; he ends up dragged along because the Autobots don't know how to properly break into a museum.
Everybody ends up in Peru. It's a thing. An archaeology thing.
I actually have no emotional ties to Beast Wars and whatnot, y'all! So aside from recognizing Michelle Yeoh as voicing the giant robot bird, Airazor, I was mostly like, "Cool! How did alien robots from another galaxy end up with animal forms that mimic Earth creatures?"
Seriously. How?
Then there is a lot of robot fighting! It's quite clangy.
I enjoyed this! It was enjoyable! I will totally watch another one, should another one come to pass!
The Little Mermaid (2023), 19 June 2023, Century Olympia
Putting aside that there's no pressing narratiev reason for most of these Disney live-action films to exist, I am totally on board with the making of more films that reflect the diversity of the intended audience. Also, I attended a showing of this almost a month after it opened, and the entire theatre was filled with kids dressed up in mermaid costumes. I could not harden my heart if I tried.
Also, Halle Bailey's got PIPES, y'all.
I did really like what they did with the Ariel/Eric romance! Rather than just, like, swoony eyes and ~*~body language~*~ (a line that, criminally, was cut from Ursula's song), the two of them have an adorable chemistry. They spend hours in a library together looking at maps! I mean, come on--Ariel and Eric falling in love because they're a pair of nerds? I approve.
In one neato bit of world-building I loved, the film established that the seven daughters of Triton are representative of the seven seas! I'm just guessing, but I'd divvy them up so:
- Karina = the Arctic Ocean
- Perla = the Gulf of Mexico
- Indira = the Indian Ocean (HI KATE SHARMA HI)
- Tamika = the Atlantic Ocean
- Mala = the Pacific Ocean
- Caspia = the Mediterranean
- Ariel = the Caribbean
So, like, YES, the original Little Mermaid is better? But I don't know, man, this is still pretty fun.
Elemental, 24 June 2023, Century Olympia
Pixar movies always look gorgeous, don't they? This one has kind of a fun concept, in that different elements are personified and are (mostly) living in harmony in the city. Somehow, I didn't twig to the fact that the immigrants who populate the fire portion of town represent Korean immigrants. (There's actually a whole thing about how they immigrated because their land was hit by a catastrophic storm, which I assume is partially a metaphor for the Korean War?) Our Heroine, Ember Lumen, is voiced by Leah Lewis, an actress of Chinese descent, and the folks voicing fire people seem to be mostly of Asian descent.
Ember is a Good Daughter who is being raised to take over her family's little store that caters to fire people, except she constantly loses her temper because, I don't know, customer service can often be soul-draining? And one day she hides in the basement to do some primal screaming, and her tantrum exposes a leak in the pipes that just will not stop. And who swims into the basement but city water inspector (or something) Wade Ripple.
Wade is voiced by Mamoudou Athie, an actor of Mauritanian descent. (The folks voicing water elements appear to be of both Black and white descent, and there doesn't seem to be major consistency in the earth and air elements, though those folks get much less screentime.) There's some interesting stuff to do with class differences here--while Ember and the folks in Fire Town are very clearly immigrant working class, Wade's family lives in a high rise with a doorman, and they are very clearly coded as upper middle class, if not actually wealthy. Which makes Wade's whole, "I'm just trying to find a job that works" with city inspection kinda...weird? I'm still trying to parse that bit.
Anyway, Wade pretty much heart-eyes Ember immediately, and they set out to figure out what's causing the pipe leak that might lead to the store being closed indefinitely due to, I don't know, building codes or something.
Elemental is at heart a romance, where we root for Ember and Wade, two directionless Gen Z try-hards, to figure out themselves and each other by the end of the narrative. It gets a little weird in that "systemic racism" is the villain of the piece, but actually the film could have benefitted from an actual bad guy to defeat. Instead, they just, like...fix a broken dam? And really, really, really believe in each other? Or something?
Whatever. It's really sweet! A lovely diversion.
Asteroid City, 25 June 2023, Century Olympia
Extremely annoyed that Wes Anderson made a movie specifically about a bunch of things I love. As I have previously documented, pretty much most of Anderson's oeuvre is stuff that is like grit under my nails.
Then again, perhaps I should congratulate Anderson on having more than the bare minimum of BIPOC actors in the cast? Specifically:
Jeffrey Wright, Stephen Park, Ethan Josh Lee, Aristou Meehan, Seu Jorge, Hong Chau, Sam Marra (I think, though his social media doesn't indicate what his ethnic descent is).
You bet your ass I counted.
So the conceit is thus: Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman) is a grieving husband and father of four children. Woodrow (Jake Ryan), is his eldest, a genius kid who has won a Stargazer scholarship from the military (?) and they're heading to the eponymous Asteroid City for the awards ceremony. Augie also has three adorable daughters whose names I honestly couldn't tell you. Tom Hanks plays their grandfather and it almost doesn't matter at all.
Asteroid City is the location of an asteroid and it would be pretty low-key boring, except that during the ceremony, an alien comes and sheepishly retrieves the asteroid. It's pretty hilarious.
Anyway, movie star Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson) is there with her genius daughter, Dinah (Grace Edwards). Midge and Augie strike up a romance; Woodrow and Dinah strike up a romance.
Everyone gets quarantined in the area, but the Stargazers get the word out through some kiddish chicanery. And then there are setpieces like this musical interlude.
But do you know what put me wholly in the bag for this film? IT'S A STORY WITHIN A STORY. The bulk of the film represents a play being performed, and the framing narrative is all in black and white and meta and I love it a lot even if it doesn't make any sense.
You can't wake up if you don't fall asleep. Damn it, Wes Anderson. Ya got me.
No Hard Feelings, 26 June 2023, Century Olympia
I enjoyed this much more than I expected I would! By which I mean, having lived through the dark American Pie era (is it weird that one of John Cho's most significant contributions to society is by speaking the term MILF into existence), anything that signals "sex comedy" sort of gives me the bad sighs? And honestly, "broke woman agrees to seduce nineteen-year-old man in exchange for a used car" isn't the greatest logline.
That said, this is kind of sweet? Maddie (Jennifer Lawrence) is kind of trash, but the reason she's so broke is that the house she inherited in Nantucket has had its property taxes skyrocket in recent years due to rich assholes buying summer houses in the area. She's worried she's going to lose her mother's house, and as she spitballs things with her friends, she thinks, hey, why not take advantage of the rich assholes and their rich assholery. (There's a great bit where she and her friend Sara, played by Natalie Morales, rapid-fire list all the reasons they've decided to have sex for reasons other than pure lust. It's sad and also feels really hilariously awfully true.)
Percy Becker (Andrew Barth Feldman) is the young man in question: He's smart, incredibly awkward, and intensely introverted. In the sweetest bit, actually, he learns how to play "Maneater" on the piano because he and Maddie discussed it in an earlier conversation.
Hilariously, while there ARE some scenes of sex-related things, the most explicit (depending on your definition of the word) has nothing to do with sex at all! Instead, a bunch of jerk kids steal Maddie's and Percy's clothes while they're skinny-dipping, and Maddie emerges from the sea like an angry goddess and it's glorious, honestly.
Maddie and Percy end up being friends, it turns out. It's sweet! I liked it.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, 30 June 2023, Century Olympia
We sure do love nostalgia, don't we? Certainly I'm not against it! And Harrison Ford is one of our greatest national treasures.
Then the film opens with a surprisingly long sequence of Indy back in the day! With de-aging and it's both effective and unsettling! But honestly, are we going to argue about Indy punching Nazis with his buddy Basil Shaw (Toby Jones)? With said Nazi, Voller, being played by Mads Mikkelsen in his creepiest glory? PLUS, this is how we get introduced to our MacGuffin, the antikythera. Which is an actual ancient mystery thing, btw! What fun!
Then we fast forward to "present" times, which is actually moon-landing-related. And Indy wakes up, grumpy about THE YOUTHS playing their music loud for the celebrations. Because in addition to the celebration, it's Indy's last day of professoring. (And I will point out, as I did when I watched all the Indy movies from before, Professor Jones is not actually that great a teacher.) Retirement day! He is given a nice clock that, charming ingrate that he is, he hands off to some rando in the street.
Oh, also, his goddaughter Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) shows up to reminisce about the antikythera that her father,
I've got to say, one of the weirdest choices that I'm still trying to get my head around is that they cast Shaunette Renee Wilson to play Mason, a Black CIA agent who is tasked with, uh, playing aide-de-camp to a bunch of Southern friend Nazis? It's...honestly, really upsetting. Like, what asshole CIA coordinator decided to stick her with the racists? And on a movie narrative level, who was like, "Let's inject some American diversity," and then did...this? Wilson is really good in the part, btw--my complaint is largely, well, what? WHAT?
On the other hand, I wholly endorse the casting of Ethann Isidore as Teddy, Helena's sidekick. A fine tradition! I really love Teddy and Helena's whole schtick as loving, amoral assholes out to grift as many people as possible.
There's a whole TWIST at the end that I will not talk about, except to say that you will either love or hate it, and yet I neither loved nor hated it? It was a choice, and I remain unopposed to it. The end.
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, Indy!
There! May and June movies I saw, finally! Now I just need to hustle so I'm not two months late reporting on July.
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