Haunted Mansion (2023) | Spy Kids | Oppenheimer | Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem | How to Blow Up a Pipeline | Blue Beetle | The Last Voyage of the Demeter | Meg 2: The Trench | Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story | Golda
Haunted Mansion (2023), 09 August 2023, Century Olympia
I'm not sure why #HauntedMansion was an August movie instead of an October one, but I liked it! It's kooky and sweet, and a surprising meditation on grief? Plus, LaKeith Stanfield and the rest of the cast are OUTSTANDING.
Ben (as played by Stanfield) is a theoretical physicist who was on the verge of a breakthrough with something that can visually capture quantum something-or-other when he fell in love with a tour guide in New Orleans. Sadly, she died and he took over her gig, basically, listlessly showing folks around supposedly haunted landmarks.
Meanwhile! Gabbie (Rosario Dawson) and her son Travis (Chase W Dillon) have inherited/obtained a gigantic spooky mansion that is definitely, DEFINITELY haunted. Besides the fact that they can't afford to live anywhere else, once you've stepped into said mansion, the hauntings will follow you. You can't un-haunt yourself! In desperation, she hires a bunch of people--a priest who supposedly excels in exorcism (Owen Wilson), a medium (Tiffany Haddish), and a local history expert (Danny DeVito) to help her figure out the situation.
Father Kent (Wilson) having heard of Ben's work in quantum something-or-other, figures out this means dude has an effective GHOST CAMERA and pulls him into the job.
Hijinks ensue. It's nonsense, but it's fun nonsense.
Spy Kids, 10 August 2023, streamed via Hoopla
I'd never watched any of the Spy Kids movies before, but ended up doing so because The Big Picture made it part of one of their podcasts. This was a good time!
In case you're not familiar with the franchise, Antonio Banderas and Carla Gugino are extremely hot spies who decided to get married. OBVIOUSLY their kids eventually get involved in their spy shenanigans.
The cast of this film is STACKED. Who plays the extremely weird villains? Alan Cumming and Tony Shaloub! Who are the extremely quirky henchpeople? Teri Hatcher and Robert Patrick! Who are the other spies on the family? Cheech Marin and Danny Trejo!
Anyway, the plot of this movie involves spies being kidnapped and genetically altered to star in a freaky children's show, so, uh.
Will I watch the rest of these movies someday? I don't know. Hit me up if you think it's a good idea!
Oppenheimer, 11 August 2023, Century Olympia
All the common wisdom indicated that for Barbenheimer, you should start with the deep dark based-on-a-true-story, then end with the satirical confectionery treat. Sounds about right to me!
Y'know, this is one of those massive casts that sort of make doing summary reviews difficult. Yeah, Emily Blunt is probably gonna get a Supporting Actress nom because, for some reason, "The Wife" role in biopics always seem to get those noms--not that she's not good! It's just that, y'know. The trend bothers. But look at all these other people who ripped into this movie with gusto! I don't even have time to talk about them all! I mean, everybody keeps saying RDJ is gonna get a Supporting Actor nom and maybe be frontrunner, BUT WHO EVEN KNOWS. (My vote would go to Alden Ehrenreich, mostly because #JusticeForSolo, but who am I to predict these things?)
Oh, I do want to take a moment to mention Florence Pugh, who went all out in sex scenes that I guess were controversial? I mean, let's decide whether, SPOILER ALERT, Oppenheimer saying, "I am become death," while his mistress is riding him is tacky or not, but whatevs, amirite?
Also, hats off to the guy who played Einstein, because I don't even know how one would begin to approach that role anymore. And the meeting between Oppenheimer and Einstein is a key scene that is played for some mystery that I think works quite well.
While Nolan is better known for the mindfuckery in his films (which I detailed in my responses to three of them), I kind of like that the pin that he puts on this particular movie is just that, hey! We're all doomed, okay? Good talk.
Barbie, 12 August 2023, Century Olympia
This film is DELIGHTFUL. Just silly and bright and loving all at once. It is a goofy hug of a movie and it wants to embrace us all.
So yeah, Barbie land is a bright pink dream world where everything is how kids who played with Barbies imagined it to be. The food is pretend, the denizens are peaceful, and even though they all know boys and girls are supposed to date, nobody actually knows what happens after that. But also, women can do anything and everything they want to do, and everybody is SO HAPPY about it and it's TOTALLY NORMAL.
Then one day, our titular Barbie--that is, "standard" Barbie, the one that's blonde and beautiful and doesn't have any specific career to which she aspires--starts to wonder what death is. Then she develops cellulite and falls off her Dream House instead floating, and her imaginary shower is ice cold. Whoever's imagining her life in the real world is having some issues.
So Barbie decides to go find out what's up. Her Ken tags along and after a nonsensical trip across I don't even know, they end up in Venice Beach. And here's the thing: Barbie is still Barbie. She's still a dreamer and she's still an endless pulsar of positivity.
They sneak into Mattel HQ (I KNOW) and Barbie meets Gloria, a staffer who is struggling to connect with her daughter Sasha, and has been daydreaming emo versions of Barbie while at work.
Unfortunately, while Barbie's on a journey of self-discovery, Ken wanders into Century City and discovers the patriarchy exists. And LET ME TELL YOU, he cannot WAIT to spread the good news back in Barbie World.
When Barbie returns to Barbie World, well, toxic masculinity is all the rage. (My biggest laugh in #Barbie was legit when “Push” came on the radio.)
I legit don't even know what to say to folks who think that the feminist themes of #Barbie are already obvious to society at large and thus speaking them aloud is a waste of time.
I am so glad this movie made more than a billion dollars. It deserves all of that and let's not talk about the capitalism for now.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, 13 August 2023, Century Olympia
Continuing the string of film needle-drop lulz, #TMNT had a “Go Ninja Go” snippet that had me CACKLING.
The thing that makes this film different from other TMNT stories is pretty simple: These are kids. Like, actual teenagers, being voiced by teenagers, acting like teenagers. Young ones, even. They're adorable!
Splinter (Jackie Chan) is badass, but he's also SO WORRIED about his tiny precious babies and just wants to protect them from everything, forever. (Yo, brown kids from immigrant communities, it is TOO REAL.) April is also a teenager, but also an aspiring journalist who does not have time for boys her age (YOU GO GIRL) and perhaps anxiety vomits whenever she's actually live on camera. She's the greatest.
So the villains of the piece are Supafly (who is, SURPRISE, a fly) and a bunch of other mutants. See, the dude who created the ooooooze that made Splinter and Our Turtles had been doing a ton of experiments. Eventually, the mutants ganged together and decided if the world was going to hate and fear them, well, fine. They should.
In the end, good triumphs over less good, etc. But seriously, this movie is SO FUN.
How to Blow Up a Pipeline, 14 August 2023, streamed via Amazon Video
OH MAN, this movie is a tick-tocker of a thriller, let me tell you.
How to Blow Up a Pipeline is spun out from a nonfiction book of the same name that, while allegedly (I haven't read it) does NOT give actual instructions on how to do the thing, IS a thrumming bit of anarchist, anti-capitalist, pro-environmental pumping up of the jams. And how does that become a narrative? Why, by telling us about the target audience of said manifesto!
AH, THE YOUTH. The core group are a bunch of bright-eyed idealists, because that's how it always starts. (But they have tangible grievances; one of them is dying from the chemical toxins of a plant in her hometown.) Over time, they pull in some amusing drug-loving ACTUAL anarchists, a family whose land is being threatened by eminent domain, and a Native guy who's seen industry destroy the edges of his own community.
They have a tipsy debate about whether they're terrorists or revolutionaries--textbook college first-year debate, which, given the age of most of the cast, is pretty on-point. A more interesting discussion is earlier in their timeline, when they has out the actual plan, and it's pointed out the amount of oil they're aiming to, uh, divert, isn't anything more than a typical oil spill.
So, like, terrorists or revolutionaries? YMMV, but I will say that, hey, if you enjoy the "let's get a team together" feel of a heist movie, this movie is pretty much just like that, but without the slick and the glitz.
Seriously, I loved it.
Undisclosed Work in Progress (preview), 18 August 2023, streamed via Netflix
So I watched a work-in-progress film as part of the Netflix Preview Club! Kind of neat: We watch a thing and then fill out surveys. However, we can't actually talk about them, because they might not be the final cut. So, uh. Yeah.
Blue Beetle, 19 August 2023, Century Olympia
#BlueBeetle is friggin' DELIGHTFUL and I want to watch all the adventures of
the Reyes family fighting imperialism with retro-alien technology.
The primary story of Blue Beetle is a pretty standard origin story: Jaime Reyes is a recent college graduate who comes home, accidentally bonds with an alien symbiote AI technology, and becomes a superhero just in time to fend off the rapacious (white, imperialist, capitalist) industrialist who coveted the power for herself.
What makes this unique, of course, is the cultural and familial specificity of it all, including off-hand references and in-jokes. The first spotlight on a Latinx superhero! And his entire family, because THAT'S how Brown folks roll, okay? And his rich soon-to-be-girlfriend whose father, the original Blue Beetle, disappeared under mysterious circumstances! (Okay, maybe Jenny isn't quite as unique as the rest of them.)
Jenny on the left, sister Milagro on the right.
Then there are the touches of colonial/imperial history. The major example is the primary antagonist, Carapax, who is explicitly identified as being a student/victim of the School of the Americas. There is also, however, is the wild implication that Abuela Reyes was actually a Mexican revolutionary? And you know what, I'm down for it.
All in all, this was a really fun movie! I'm glad it's considered part of the new iteration of the DCEU, whatever they ended up calling it. Hopefully we'll see Jaime and his family again soon.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter, 20 August 2023, Century Olympia
#TheLastVoyageOfTheDemeter is beautifully constructed. Great as horror, great as litfic.
This film is drawn from Bram Stoker's Dracula--particularly, an idyll where Dracula paid a ship to ferry him from Transylvania to London. They're paid extra to go fast, but they don't know what their cargo is.
At the start of the journey, everything seems to be fine. Like, maybe the ship's animals are mysteriously slaughtered, and the crew start slowly disappearing, one by one. But everything's probably fine?
In the novel, we learn what happened in hindsight, reading excerpts from the captain's log. In the film, we naturally get a little more insight into the crew, through the eyes of the captain's grandson Toby, the doctor-turned-crew-for-hire Clemens, and Anna, one of the snacks Dracula packed in a coffin who gets discovered partway through the journey.
In the novel, SPOILER ALERT, the ship shows up on the shores of England empty of everyone except a large angry dog.
I enjoyed this movie SO MUCH.
Meg 2: The Trench, 21 August 2023, Century Olympia
Love that the message of #Meg2TheTrench is that there's only one trustworthy white person out there, and that is Jason Statham. Everyone else? Well.
I kind of like the continuity they have set up in this film. We don't have all the major players, particularly the love interest (?) of Statham's from the first film. Instead, we've got her daughter (and I find it legitimately unclear whether or not Statham is her actual father, I'm SERIOUS what is going on) and brother.
Our villain is, once again, a billionaire industrialist whose SECRET UNDERWATER MINING OPERATION accidentally lets a plume of hot water down through a cold water layer, which RELEASES THE MEGA SHARKS.
Most of the film is then devoted to Our Heroes trying to get the vacationing islanders to safer areas (in addition to MEGA SHARKS there are also WEIRD GIANT REPTILES). It's a pretty fun disaster movie, if you're into this sort of thing.
Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story, 27 August 2023, Century Olympia
#GranTurismo is a solid, spectacular romp of a sports film. Like, the folks in my theatre burst into applause multiple times. Super fun.
Jann (Archie Madekwe) is a working-class British kid who is incredibly good at the video game Gran Turismo, but not sure what else he wants to do with his life. Danny (Orlando Bloom) is a Nissan marketing executive who's trying to figure out a way to get The Youths interested in Nissan as a brand. And honestly, his idea is kind of genius: He decides to host a competition where top-ranking GT players get the chance to train in actual racecars.
The academy is run by Jack (David Harbour), who is very reluctant to train a bunch of scrawny gamers, but hey! A job's a job. Naturally, Jann makes it through and starts racing professionally. His archrival, somehow, is Capa (Josha Stradowski, Rand from Wheel of Time), whose fancy gold racecar inspired me to say, "Oooooooooh" aloud in the theatre when it first appeared.
Did I mention Jann's father is played by Djimon Hounsou and his mother is played by Ginger Freakin' Spice?
This movie is SOLID and I dig it. Recommend!
Golda, 29 August 2023, Century Olympia
I had heard nothing about this movie, but one weekend it appeared on my local theatre's showtimes and it stars Dame Helen Mirren, so.
This is largely set in 1973, when Golda Meir is Prime Minister of Israel, juggling the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War against Egypt (mostly, kind of) as well as her own treatments for cancer. She sneaks through the morgue of a hospital to get checked in; over the course of the movie, the space goes from practically empty to overflowing into the hallways.
The film shows sharp division amongst the war council, though generally with a preference towards hawkishness. It is also EXTREMELY weird to see Liev Schreiber playing a put-upon Henry Kissinger.
Yeah, it's weird to talk about this right now.
ANYWAY. Next up, September and October!
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