When we were in Mexico I was reading a book about cyber warfare – not your typical beach read mind you but very informative and interesting (David Sanger’s The Perfect Weapon). Among many things it discussed the Sony hack. Basically, North Korea was very mad about a Seth Rogen movie called The Interview that involved the assassination of their leader. Apparently North Koreans can’t take a joke. I mean, lots of North Americans don’t find Seth Rogen particularly funny either, but most of them don’t commit cyber crime in retaliation. They released a whole bunch of very embarrassing emails for Sony but it actually had the opposite effect. Whereas the big whigs had been debating pulling the plug on The Interview, now they HAD to release it so that the terrorists didn’t win or some such American flag-waving sentiment. So they got a theatre and VOD release and a bunch of us watched it just to see what the fuss was all about.
I rewatched it out of curiosity but found that I’d already reviewed it on this site and I was shocked to find that we’ve been at this that long (it came out in 2014) but my opinion hasn’t wavered much. It is profoundly dumb and yet if you’re a fan of Rogen’s, you will find a chance or two to chuckle. But the movie really did benefit from North Korea’s interference, spurring a marketing campaign that money couldn’t buy and Hollywood couldn’t think up.
On a Seth Rogen kick, I gave Observe and Report a second chance as well. And the truth is, I found it even harder to laugh at this one. Rogen plays mall security guard Ronnie, hopelessly in love with makeup counter girl Brandi (Anna Faris) and even more hopelessly determined to be a real cop. When a flasher starts haunting the mall, Ronnie sees it as his opportunity to shine and does not take kindly to a real detective, the surly detective Harrison (Ray Liotta), stealing his thunder.
Possibly it’s hard to genuinely laugh at Ronnie because he’s dubbed bipolar and his single-minded delusions just come off as illness. Or possibly it’s because the film has a real mean streak. But probably it’s because the script is bad and director Jody Hill didn’t have the chops to wrangle his cast and crew. The film is simply too sloppy to guess whether Hill’s script is subversive or actually deeply racist and misogynistic. I can tell you that it feels like laughter borne in ignorance and I’m just not comfortable joining in. We deserve better, and frankly, so does Ronnie.
I’ve been off Clint Eastwood, and it didn’t exactly take a lot of sleuthing to know enough to stay away from this one regardless. But now that it’s available on Netflix Sean wondered: well, how bad could it be, really?
If you ever find yourself asking that question, give yourself a quick and stinging slap in the face. Better yet, have a trusted friend administer the dose for you if you can. How bad can it be? How bad? You don’t want to know how bad. But if you do, you glutton for punishment, a quick guide to its faults:
Perhaps you know that this movie is based on the true events of a terrorist attack on a train bound for Paris. This is the story of the people who fought the terrorist and the 300 rounds of ammunition on him, and took him down, saving untold lives. That’s an enormously good thing that took place in a matter of seconds. Movies aren’t allowed to be mere seconds long, so Clintwood makes a series of choices to pad the piece. Things like: someone tried to medicate one of the heroes for ADD as a kid! How dare they? And one of them was denied his dream job because he lacked depth perception: scandalous!
Overstuffing the movie with these pathetic attempts to cast its heroes in gold only serves to dilute the actual events of the movie, the very thing that almost everyone would agree were heroic acts just reading a newspaper account of them.
Eastwood seems determined to shoe-horn religious references into the film wherever he can. Toward the end, when the heroes are tending to a gunshot victim, one True American Hero asks him if he’d like to pray and the victim shouts “No!” and his wife, clearly offended, adds “He’s not ready to go!” and their reaction to the proposed religion exactly mirrors my own internal reaction each and every time there’s an awkward attempt.
Worst of all, and it’s bad enough to be the only point on this list, is that Eastwood casts the real-life heroes to play themselves. It’s a terrible, misguided direction. I can’t imagine what Eastwood was thinking. These men deserve credit for their bravery but no one has ever accused them of being capable actors. And since Eastwood brings in Jenna Fisher and Judy Greer in the relatively minor roles of their mothers, he’s clearly not opposed to paying professionals, professionals who only make the amateurs look worse in comparison.
Guys, straight up: it’s painful to watch. I don’t want to dump on the actual guys because honestly, it’s not their fault. No one would blame them for trying to make a few bucks on their claim to fame. This is all Eastwood. He should damn well know better. And the fact that he has continued to receive funded projects post-15:17 to Paris is all the proof that white male privilege is alive and well that we need.
A notorious hacker is captured by the CIA and forced to work for them. They were dumb enough to let the key to a very important cyber program get away and now they’re vulnerable to attack. It was pretty fucking stupid. So now they’ve threatened this hacker with prison unless he agrees to fix the problem for them and he agrees, at least outwardly. Secretly, he assembles his team using the lousiest CIA agents his algorithm can find. They’re a pretty lousy bunch. Boy is this going to be fun!
Last week we were happily lying on a beach in Mexico, reading between trips to the bar. My beach reads tend to be non-traditional at best – the first couple graphic novels in a series, the follow-up to The Paris Wife which is not called but could be called The Kenyan On-Again-Off-Again Wife, and a piece of nonfiction about cyber attacks perpetrated by and anticipated by the American government. It was good enough that I passed it to Sean as soon as I was done, even though I’d already recounted most of the exciting bits to him while bobbing up and down in various bodies of water.
Anyway, that’ s the problem with books. They get you all riled up about a subject suddenly you’re watching crappy movies just to keep the high going (inspired by the same book we also watched The Interview – you may remember that the movie’s very existence got North Korea so mad that they hacked Sony and released a bunch of embarrassing emails, including one in which Angelina Jolie is called “a minimally talented spoiled brat,” one where Kevin Hart is called a “whore,” and one in which Leonardo DiCaprio (or LDC, as Brad Pitt called him at the Golden Globes on Sunday) is called “despicable.” It is still a very bad movie.)
Don’t watch this movie. Do read The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age by David E. Sanger if you have a modicum of interest. Bathing suit optional.
Swifty is an arctic fox. His cautious parents liked to dress him all in white to make sure that he always blended in with the arctic snow. Blending in is safe. Standing out is dangerous. But Swifty dreams of being seen. He’s tired of being invisible.
Unfortunately, the movie bigwigs have conspired against poor Swifty, hiring the blandest of the Avengers to voice him. That’s right: Jeremy Renner, who does not have a distinctive voice (some, meaning me, would argue he does not have a distinctive bone in his body). Not all actors can or should be reduced to just their voice: Christopher Walken for sure. Definitely Tiffany Haddish. Patton Oswalt. Sam Elliott. Maria Bamford. Not everyone can do it. If you’re hiring Jeremy Renner, you may as well hire Joe Blow, who’s a heck of a lot cheaper. Well, he’s somewhat cheaper. I can’t imagine Renner commands all that impressive of a salary. You might hire a well-known actor with a boring voice because you need a big name up on the marquis. Again, Renner isn’t exactly fitting the bill. If anyone, ANYONE, goes to the theatre especially for Renner, it’s not a kid who likes mediocre animated dog movies. But the people who made Arctic Dogs don’t cast movies based on “good reasons” or “talent” because Heidi Klum is also voicing a fox named Jade. I suppose it makes as much sense for an arctic fox to have a German accent as an American one, but nobody in the whole history of the world has accused Klum of having a face for radio. Or a voice. She has other assets, and they’re better appreciated in still photographs, or, I imagine, live in person, preferably rolling around on a white sand beach but let’s not be greedy.
Anyway, back to our pal Swifty who wants to be noticed and isn’t. He works in the arctic mail room, sorting packages but he dreams of being on the front lines where the Top Dogs, a team of husky couriers so well-known and respected they’re practically celebrities, are the ones making the deliveries. One day Swifty decides to make his big move, and he highjacks a sled to deliver a package to a secret location, perhaps persuading his curmudgeonly boss Magda (Anjelica Huston) that he’s up for the job.
Anyway, Renner turns out to be the perfect guy for the job because the movie turns out to be just as bland as the man. Had they hired, say, Robert Downey Jr. or Chris Hemsworth, we might have expected something good. Best to temper our expectations with a second (or third) tier celebrity and call it a day. The story and animation are just good enough to satisfy most little ones, but it has little else to recommend it and won’t be memorable for anyone. Is that a plus? Your kid won’t get obsessed with this movie and demand you rewatch it 14 dozen times: GUARANTEED.
I knew Cats was bad. It was unanimous and what on this big blue planet is ever unanimous? People love or they hate Rise of Skywalker. They love or they hate The Witcher. They love or they hate Henry Cavill. They love or they hate Popeye’s spicy chicken sandwich. But Cats has united us, just in time for the holidays: everybody hates Cats.
I’ve never seen Cats the musical because in my house growing up, cats (little c) were verboten. My mother was viciously attacked by one as a child and held a deep-seated fear. Although I’m not afraid of them, I’m extremely cautious and skeptical of them. Being very firmly a dog person, I’ve never seen the appeal of a cat: they’re not friendly or loving. It’s not just that they don’t return your affections, they spurn them. Sean, however, grew up in a cat house. And a Cats house as his entire family took in the show when he was a boy, although I dare say they missed the point as they named one of their cats Macavity even though he’s the villain (and all this time I thought they were being clever because Sean’s dad was a dentist. nope) and another Mistoffelees even though their cat was female whereas the Cats cat goes by Mister.
Anyway, we both knew Cats was going to be bad but I thought it might be funny-bad or entertainingly bad or even meme-able bad. Instead I just prayed for a sudden and nasty plague of feline AIDS and tried not to audibly gasp when the movie was once again not over but churning into yet another song about the exact same thing.
The movie (and very likely the show, but I haven’t seen it) is about a “group” of cats called the Jellicles. I don’t know why they’re a group or why they needed to name their group. Are they a gang? A mafia family? Do they commit hate crimes together?
One night a year they all get together to participate in a Suicide Pageant. They each sing a song, and judge Old Deuteronomy (Judi Dench) decides which one will die. Naturally I assumed Old Deuteronomy was the villain of the film, but not so. Apparently it’s a real honour to be chosen for cat-on-cat euthanasia; all the cats talk about ascending over to the Heaviside Layer like it’s the greatest thing. Which I suppose confirms what I’ve always believed about cats: they’re a miserable bunch, angry at life itself, waiting impatiently for it all to end. Which also describes a Cats audience.
Victoria, the lead cat, newly abandoned and adopted by the Jellicles, undergoes some pretty ambitious white-washing considering its actors are covered in fur. Francesca Hayward, the ballerina who plays her, is Kenyan-born and black, but you wouldn’t know it or even guess it to look at her cat. Although I suppose that’s a fairly minor insult compared to how dirty they did Jennifer Hudson, who plays Grizabella. Grizabella is a down-on-her-luck cat roundly rejected by the asshole Jellicles and by Cats director Tom Hooper who knows she’s a star but decides to bury her in a mound of garbage. Grizabella looks inexplicably terrible, which is particularly sad because when Hudson sings that one Cats song everyone knows (Memory, and damn right she sings it twice), it’s the only time the audience willingly faces the screen. But Hudson is so moved by the lyrics, she’s constantly got lines of snot running from her nose to her mouth, glistening in the movie lights, making sure we gag to the fullest extent of the law. Considering how much money was spent to digitally alter away any trace of male “bulge” you’d think a CGI swipe or two under her nose would have been wise, but no.
Cats is 7 hours long, so maybe think about bringing some knitting or a crossword or a roast beef with you to the theatre. Technically the run time is just under two hours and that’s all that will have passed outside the theatre. But inside it’s a marathon shit show. As I said before, the Cats story takes place over one fateful evening, a time conceit which usually gives a film a nice sense of urgency but in this case it feels like the movie never goes anywhere. We just stand in one spot singing about the same thing over and over until somebody dies. Literally! And there’s a slideshow of celebrity cameos – Taylor Swift, Rebel Wilson, James Corden, Ian McKellan – who show up for a song and then disappear again into the night, perhaps to form their own real-life career suicide club for having appeared in 2019’s biggest flop.
And Cats had that distinction before it was even in theatres; even the trailer creeped people out. The cats are weird human-cat hybrid. Human faces and human hands poke out of fur and CGI ears and tails twitch as though they have a life of their own. Everything in the movie is scaled up so the cats appear…well, not quite cat-sized but definitely weird. Everything about this movie is off, never mind the fact that they walk on two feet, except when they don’t. And they’re all naked and barefoot except when they’re not. A couple of them wear sneakers, one wears pants, another a sparkly jacket. Rebel Wilson’s Jennyanydots unzips her fur to reveal another fur pelt wearing a jazzy ensemble…that she’s kept hidden under her skin this whole time? Doesn’t that get hot?
Cats’ greatest sin is of course that it’s boring. It’s got one memorable song and a bunch of filler. The numbers are repetitive. The dancing is a big yawn. Cats, making its London debut in 1981, needed some updating. Perhaps the kindest thing would have been to lose the ballet in favour of something a little more modern. Nobody wants a musical overstuffed with songs that drag without moving the plot forward coupled with dance that struggles to connect with anything current or relevant.
People have hated this movie so universally that director Tom Hooper re-edited it furiously, and a new cut, with yet more CGI effects, is being rushed to theatres as we speak. But unless Star Wars is sold out, you won’t be seeing it, right? Because you value your time and money? And because Cats sits in your belly like a hairball you can’t wait to go home and hack up.
p.s. Since the only good thing about the movie is Jennifer Hudson’s 4 minutes, here she is for free on Youtube singing Memory:
Rachel (Diane Kruger) calls Thomas (Martin Freeman) and says “My father died. Again.” It’s code for: get me the hell out of here. She is the operative, he is her handler, and she worked undercover in Tehran for the Mossad where things got…sticky. Her subject, Farhad (Cas Anvar) becomes her entanglement and if things were complicated before, well, they only get more so. Is she working both sides? Have her allegiances shifted? Dude it’s hard to trust a spy. Now, years later, she’s bringing Thomas back in. But why?
And also: who cares? The truth about spy work is that it’s probably boring like 99% of the time. Lots of sitting and waiting. Reading. Researching. Waiting some more. Blending in. Not getting up to much. Waiting for the phone to ring. Movies cut that shit right out. To be fair, The Operative edits out those same things as well, gets right to the getting-the-hands-dirty in the field bits. And yet it still, amazingly, manages to be incredibly boring. Incredibly.
Neither the story nor the characters were compelling. I love Martin Freeman but despite him being as animated as this movie got, I still couldn’t muster much enthusiasm. Diane Kruger was as remarkable as a boiled potato. More than once I asked Sean how much longer this movie had left, and more than once that Netflix progress bar seemed barely to have moved.
Yuval Adler’s film is unflashy and unstylish. Calling it forgettable is an insult to films I’ve merely forgotten. This one caused a fair bit of frustration even as I forgot it. I could hardly keep my attention even half on the film, snapping it back only to be disappointed by instant boredom yet again. And then it ended. Well, not so much ended as stopped. It just stopped being a movie exactly when it seemed it might have justified its existence. But no. The thing you’ve hung in there for 2 hours for…it never materializes. And yet you’re only half mad because even if you didn’t get a satisfying ending, at least it’s over.
A billionaire who goes by the name of One (Ryan Reynolds) has assembled a team of ghosts. Six men and women, having faked their deaths and truly gone underground, operate outside of the usual channels to clean up the dirt other people can’t, or won’t.
Two (Melanie Laurent) is a CIA spook; Three (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) is the hitman; Four (Ben Hardy) is a skywalker; Five (Adria Arjona) is the doctor; the new recruit, Seven (Corey Hawkins) is a frustrated, sharp-shooting soldier fresh from Afghanistan. Together they have plans to topple a dictator. Ambitious? You betcha. Especially so early in their mission history. After all, they may be officially dead, but they’re as flawed and vulnerable as the living. The bad guys are pretty angry about their lack of hubris.
6 Underground, a new Netflix original, is directed by Michael Bay and it’s got all his hallmarks: American flags, big explosions, scantily clad women. In fact, there’s sex in this movie where no sex belongs. But it’s the car crashes that are truly nutso bananas. This is Michael Bay, unleashed, unmuzzled, unrepentant. The opening car chase alone threatens nuns, babies, AND puppies. Too much, you say? Bah. Just you wait. Now, Michael Bay didn’t write this one but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t occasionally replace dialogue with taglines. The writing is a notch above Bay’s usual tripe, and Ryan Reynolds goes a lot way toward pulling it off. Still, much of the movie is montage, and that’s normally a relief – less cringey lines uttered – though less so when it starts to feel like a wannabe Baby Driver ripoff.
“No man is more important than the mission,” says One, but some of his team disagree. And that’s kind of a big thing to disagree on, real deal breaker type stuff, and the last thing you want during a coup d’état is your little gang splintering. But that’s One’s problem, not yours. If you’re just here to see teeth splatter and brains splatter and people get multiple knife wounds by multiple knives, then this is your jam.
This is the kind of movie I wish didn’t even exist because what if you accidentally watch it? You’re a nice person. You don’t deserve that. Promise me right now that you’ll never watch this movie. Promise! It’s because I care.
Moose (John Travolta) is a rabid fan. He’s on the spectrum and not exactly sensitively portrayed; Travolta goes all in, with every tic he can fathom and a bad haircut to boot (in fact, a wig). But it’s about to get a whole lot worse.
One of his absolute favourites is horror star Hunter Dunbar (Devon Sawa). He spends money he doesn’t have on movie memorabilia and waits in line to have it signed. But when Dunbar cuts the autograph session short, Moose just about loses it. He feels there are certain entitlements between a star and his fan and when Dunbar isn’t exactly gracious about it, Moose spirals. I mean, you know you’re in a bad space when a paparazzo calls you a stalker. Or you should. But Moose just keeps escalating things, showing up at Dunbar’s house, scaling the fence onto his property even, and he doesn’t take it well when Dunbar is increasingly hostile (he’s got a young son at home). Of course, Dunbar just thinks Moose is another crazed fan. He doesn’t understand how much danger he’s in. And maybe neither does Moose.
Directed by Fred Durst (yeah, I know), the movie starts mediocre and only declines. There are a number of poor directing decisions, my least favourite probably the fantasy scenes in which Moose imagine the roles reversed, himself a generous and magnanimous movie star.
No, I’m lying. It does get worse than that. I withheld some stuff to avoid spoilers, but you’re not going to watch this thing anyway, right? You promised. Not even out of morbid curiosity should you watch. I mean, it’s not even laughably bad, or watchably bad. But I suspect the movie (or, its director) thinks it’s clever, which is intolerable and awkward and just makes the whole thing feel so much worse. We always knew, intellectually, that something had to be the worst thing on Netflix, but never before has the answer been so obvious, or definitive.
This intervention is classy as fuck. I mean, how often do you see hors d’oeuvres at these things?
Ed (Bob Saget) smelled crystal meth through his teenage son’s door and panicked. He has assembled what can only be described as a rag-tag game of misfits to confront his son and force him into rehab…IF he has a problem, which Ed is still loathe to admit. Aunt Clarice (Chery Oteri) and Uncle Mitch (Dave Foley) haven’t seen him since he was a baby. Ed’s BBF, a doctor also named Ed (Rob Corddry) will lead the way despite the fact that he’s an OB-GYN. Jeanette (Mary Lynn Rajskub) is running the whole thing, though she prefers to emphasize her girlfriend part of her credentials rather than assistant. Benjamin’s sister Amber brings a date, and a spare, and is mostly there to antagonize her father. It is unclear who put together the guest list, but the guest list was their first mistake. It was not their last.
Long story short: these people may be bigger fuckups than the kid they’re intervening, and without any moral superiority, it’s hard to sustain authority. Ya know?
Bob Saget is not a good enough actor to be allowed to direct himself (and yet here we are). I’m not saying he’s the worst part of this but…he is. He totally is. And there are a LOT of broken parts. Danny Tanner would have done a better job and – dare I say it – he would have been less corny. Saget might have one of the most recognizable faces on the shoddiest piece of work: total amateur hour. How was Full House his prime? How on earth do you go downhill from America’s Funniest Home Videos? Benjamin styles itself as a dark comedy but you know what’s problematic about that? I didn’t hear anyone laughing.
This is what we call a “Sean movie” at our house – motorcycles, explosions, heck – Will Smith. It is not a Jay movie but I go along because 1) I believe there are gems in every genre and 2) it’s okay to occasionally do things for your loved one instead of yourself. But now matter how “compromising” and “open-minded” my mood, this should by all rights be a Sean review. But here’s a dirty little secret, and let’s just keep this between you and me: remember the Toronto International Film Festival that ended 5 weeks ago? Well, I’ve written all 43 of my reviews, was finished a couple of weeks ago actually, and Sean’s still working on 2 out of 4 of his. That’s right. That’s the imbalance around here, and I’m calling you out, Sean. Get it together!
Anyway, Gemini Man. Will Smith is Henry Bogan, a top-secret super-sniper with more than 70 impressive kills, helping his government to rid the world of bad guys. But those kills are catching up with him and he’s feeling mentally ready to retire. The official IMDB description calls him an “over the hill hitman” but both Smith and his character are a mere 51 years of age, and far fitter than I am though I am two decades sprier. He’s not so much past his prime as simply too mature and experienced to take this shit lightly anymore. Anyway, no matter what he’s decided, the government isn’t about to just cut him loose. He knows too much, so to them, retirement = death. The only problem is: who on earth is fit to kill the world’s best killer?
It turns out they’ll have to use the product of a highly classified lab run by Clay Verris (Clive Owen). Verris is Henry Bogan’s former Navy Seals commander, and apparently quite an admirer. He’s been using Bogan’s DNA to make a more perfect clone, and now there’s a 23 year old version of Will Smith walking around and he’s not half as tired or dispirited as his original. He’s totally going to murder Henry Bogan right in the face.
Several times during this movie I looked over at Sean with my eyebrow cocked wildly. Sean knows this look and he knows what it means. He knows I’m holding him responsible for every single weird thing this movie does. It’s his fault. He knows and I know it and it’s gonna be a very blame-y car ride home. But to my dismay, before I could even take that first big lungful of air to start in on my diatribe, Sean spikes it with “Well that was bad.”
How dare you, sir! That movie gave you everything you could want in an explosions, motorcycle, and Will Smith movie: explosions, motorcycles, and multiple Will Smiths! Is there no appeasing this man? And if he didn’t like it, who the heck did? Not the critics, that’s for sure: it’s got a measly 26% on rotten tomatoes (just for comparison, Wild Wild West has 17%).
It seems that director Ang Lee is more concerned with making high-tech movies as complicatedly as possible and isn’t so concerned with making interesting or watchable ones. Will Smith is fine, though I’m not really convinced by the de-aging software, especially since we’re pinning him to age 23, which is when he’s at the height of his Fresh Prince fame. He wasn’t just a younger version of his currently buff self. He was skinny and gawky and hadn’t quite come into his own. Will Smith at 51 is much better looking; the gray at his temples suits him, as does bigger suit size. But no matter how fresh he is, he can’t make a convoluted script work, and I had trouble remembering I wasn’t watching Mission Impossible II – not a great sign for a movie as technologically advanced as Gemini Man to be mistaken for a movie nearly 20 years its senior. There were good parts too – the catacombs looked especially cool, and Lee’s got some interesting angles in his pocket. But mostly it just felt a bit derivative and kind of a bore, even if it is 2 Will Smiths for the price of 1.
ASSHOLES WATCHING MOVIES 