Gloria Steinem is 86 years old; I wonder how she feels about getting the biopic treatment while she’s still alive. She was a leader for the American feminist movement in the 60s and 70s. She is a journalist, activist, and the co-founder of Ms. magazine.
At least four actors portray Steinem in the various stages of her life, including Julianne Moore and Alicia Vikander. Director Julie Taymor clearly wants to impress us with a litany of Steinem’s experiences, influences, and achievements. There are a lot. So many they start to lose their power, they start to feel less real. Which is counter-productive to the goal of celebrating Steinem’s life. Reduced to a mere character, we never get a complete sense of who Gloria is as a person, Taymor gets trapped in an achievement-oriented cycle that feels more like separate segments in a shared universe than a narrative running like a river through a single life.
Individually, a lot of these chunks work. The talent is there, and the story-telling is inventive. Unfortunately, Taymor’s flair as a director doesn’t seem suited to Gloria’s no-nonsense attitude. There is almost certainly an interesting story here, I’m just not sure this script ever had a firm grip on it, despite Taymor’s accumulation of gifted actors and clever staging. It feels more invested in painting a fuller picture of history than it serves Steinem’s particular place within it.
Crawl is a horror movie available on Amazon Prime in which a young woman named Haley (Kaya Scodelario) attempts to save her father during a hurricane but ends up trapped with him in a flooding house filled not just with water, but also alligators.
I’m not normally one to blame the victim, but people in horror movies routinely make terrible decisions while we yell pointlessly but with increasingly frustrated indignation at the screen. Let’s discuss (spoilers ahead):
She lives in Florida, a state notorious for both its devastating hurricanes and its aggressive alligators. It’s also got terrible traffic, too many tourists, abhorrent gun laws, irresponsible gun owners, impossibly fat roaches, a sinkhole epidemic, and, oh yeah, Floridians.
She flouts all good cell phone etiquette by accepting a video call from her sister in a change room where not only are innocent bystanders unknowingly getting naked on camera, but Haley is knowingly doing so as well. Said sister guilts her into checking in on their father.
She should have cut her deadbeat dad out of her life years ago.
She drives toward a category 5 hurricane.
A nice guy at a checkpoint tells her to turn around, but not only does she break the rules and not comply, she pretends to listen and asks him to risk his life checking on her dad (Barry Pepper) too.
She goes into the crawlspace underneath her childhood home (nothing good has ever happened or ever will in a crawlspace).
She goes into a stinky, rat-infested crawlspace that EVEN HER DOG WILL NOT GO INTO.
She finds her father bleeding and unconscious and instead of thinking ‘this is a job for qualified paramedics’, she grabs a disgusting tarp and decides to drag his mangled body through a space so overwhelmingly dirty it already consumed her flip flops.
When she learns the hard way that a very large and apparently very hungry alligator has made the crawlspace her new home, she does not alter her plan one bit.
She fails to use her father’s body as bait or as a distraction. The man is dead weight but likely at least a 30 minute meal for even an above-average gator. Sprinkle him with salt and RUN!
She assumes there is only the one alligator.
She is holding a working cell phone, punches in the 911, but doesn’t immediately press send because there’s no real urgency, plenty of time to look around first. Right?
She thinks she has an advantage over alligators because she can swim.
Instead of warning away innocent passerby, she selfishly beckons them toward the danger and then fails to take advantage as they inevitably become gator happy meals. But she does pat down what’s left of their corpses for useful items.
She thinks this is a good time to talk about their father-daughter issues.
She constantly reaches for her father’s gator-mangled arm with her own gator-mangled arm. USE YOUR OTHER ARM, HALEY.
She practically sends the alligators an invitation to dinner the way she flaunts her skinny white limbs, splashing about in the water like she’s an appetizing snack. By the back half of the movie, even I was salivating!
When she was in the shower stall with the alligator trying to ram its way in, she was terrified. Now that the gator’s in the shower and she’s outside, she thinks she’s safe.
She attempts to save her dog, which is basically amending the dinner invitation to say “Look, now we’re a three course meal!”
She’s very injudicious with a crowbar. That last inch of air pocket where your father’s lips are gasping for their last few breaths is probably not the best place to ram your metal rod. Unless your anger has finally overcome you, in which case just leave him to drown, no need to disfigure him too.
She fails to realize that the dad-sized hole she just opened up is also a gator-sized hole.
I’m being mean because I can’t help it. Also because creature features make it so easy. But even I must admit that as far as horror movies go, this one’s pretty decent. It’s a strange way to strengthen a father-daughter bond, but sure. It could happen. Is it a bit ridiculous? Of course. But no more ridiculous than clowns in a sewer or little girls in VHS tapes or snakes on a plane. Director Alexandre Aja manages to balance the claustrophobia of rising water with the random terror of gnashing teeth. The CGI is excellent. Scodelario and Pepper are 100% game. Crawl gleefully brings the senseless violence and turns an entire hurricane’s worth of water red tearing its victims apart limb by limb.
Duncan (Lewis Gribben), Dean (Rian Gordon) and DJ Beatroot (Viraj Juneja) know they have failed pretty spectacularly in their high school careers to have earned this punishment: the Duke of Edinburgh Award. They would have rather been expelled but instead they’ve been “volunteered” for the expedition portion of the award, which is apparently a real thing. Their teacher, Mr. Carlyle (Jonathan Aris), is dropping them off in the Scottish Highlands with only a map and…well, only a map, really. I take it they were supposed to have come prepared in some way but the only one who is marginally prepared is the fourth fellow who I haven’t mentioned yet, a home-schooled chap named Ian (Samuel Bottomley) who’s looking to pad out his resume. To be honest, though, not one of them notices the quantity of MISSING posters behind them as they pose for a farewell photo.
I saw this on Amazon Prime and knew that I’d seen some reviews of it lately, so I pointed it out to Sean, with some trepidation. I thought it was a horror movie. You know me and horror movies! But in a nice surprise, Amazon Prime politely told me it was a comedy adventure. Click!
Then the movie went on to rather rudely clear that up right quick: I was right the first time. I’m always right. But luckily it’s a horror movie the way Shaun of the Dead is a horror movie. Yeah, there’s some crazy killing going on, but it’s actually comedy, which goes a long way in diluting the heebie jeebies.
Turns out, them there hills are haunted with…The Duke of Edinburgh himself??? Well, he’s armed with a rifle and he’s pretty intent on hunting and killing his prey. Meanwhile, the chaos this little expedition is causing has completely confused the podunk little police force, and their inept little officers are now out to find a terrorist pedo urban gang of zombies.
This movie turned out to be the best kind of surprise. Even though it is indeed a horror movie, it’s a comedy-horror, and the rarest breed of those: an actually funny comedy horror. It doesn’t have lofty goals, it seeks only to entertain us, and thanks to a wonderful ensemble cast and a cute script that keeps finding fresh directions to veer off into, it doesn’t matter that the film has no compass. We’re off grid here, and it’s a total utter delight.
Grace is the mysterious new girl in school who limps along with a cane and nearly stole the school newspaper editing job right from the stranglehold position Henry’s been leveraging throughout his entire high school career. Of course he can’t resist her. She’s broken. He wants to fix her, in that grand tradition of teenage boys the world over. Haha, only kidding. Only books and movies think teenage boys lust after loner girls. In real life I’m pretty sure it’s the outgoing cheerleader types, the girls who do most of the work for them.
But then again, Henry (Austin Abrams) is not your typical leading man. Millennials redefined masculinity, and our leading men have reflected the change – think Adam Driver, Paul Dano, Domhnall Gleeson, Dev Patel, Robert Pattinson, Ezra Miller – men who have pushed back against the beer swilling, no feelings having, sexism propagating pigs Hollywood has excused for years. Millennial men ask for consent. They manscape. They try. They like your friends and meet your mother and declare their intentions on IG. Think of 21 Jump Street when Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum first meet Dave Franco’s character. Hill and Tatum are likely borderline millennials themselves, but in this movie, Franco engendered the new man: he cared. He held hands. He waited until you were ready. And now we have Henry, a Generation Z leading man – in fact, a Gen Z leading person, because Gen Z is progressive and inclusive and they know that gender’s a social construct and not tied to a binary system their grandparents were content to force themselves into. Gen Z is diverse and aware; they’re digital natives used to personalized content but not fond of labels. They’re also overwhelmed and lonely. They’re moving away from traditional notions of beauty (well, at least for men) – yesterday’s hunks were broad, buff, and weren’t content with just a 6 pack but had upgraded to an 8 pack. Gen Z’s leading men, like Tom Holland, Finn Wolfhard, and indeed Austin Abrams have leaner, rangier physiques. Even comparatively fit Noah Centineo was body-shamed on Insta for not having abs – though people were quick to come to his defense. Abrams has a mopey, droopy-haired, anemic look about him, handsome in a hurt kind of way, like Kurt Cobain if you’ll allow the reference to – ew – Generation X.
So maybe kids these days really are turned on by chicks with mobility issues and a preternatural affinity for disaffected solitude. At any rate, Henry cannot resist. He’s smitten. But Grace (Lili Reinhart) truly is the walking wounded, and she’s got more ghosts than a teenage boy, even a very sensitive, very vulnerable one, is equipped to deal with.
Even given that I am bad with titles, it still took me a minute to figure out that I’ve read this book, and fairly recently too. It’s a fairly forgettable work of YA and is equally forgettable as a film. Tragic teenage love stories are a well-worn genre and even if Gen Z’s cardigans are slim-cut and their haircuts gender neutral, their love stories still follow the tried and true emotional roller-coaster we’ve all been through. Young love is still young love. Abrams and Reinhart have as much chemistry as their hearts promised in the title. Director Richard Tanne takes the trauma of teenage heartbreak very seriously, as does everyone who’s ever had one. Maybe a little too seriously – the film is coated in apathy and despair, leaving little room for growth or agency or change. I don’t feel we get to know the characters very well, and I was disappointed Henry’s friends get such short shrift in the film compared to the novel. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the film, it just relies too heavily on all the old cliches and fails to stir up much beyond sympathy, which gets tiring after a while. Check out Chemical Hearts if you’re a fan of these actors, or are in need of a genre fix, but otherwise, this movie is missable.
Remember when you were a kid and your mother told you that fairy tales weren’t real? That there wasn’t going to be a prince who gave you shoes and diamonds and whisked you off to a castle? Luckily Kate Middleton’s mother never told her that. Instead, she held Kate back a year so that she’d wind up in Prince William’s year at University, and the rest is history. Megan Markle took a more circuitous route, but she too wound up with a tiara in the end. The odds are against you, but it does happen. What our mothers should have been warning us about is the false promise of a Hallmark Christmas movie.
While a very few princes do exist, and do make princesses out of commoners, how many lawyers exist who meet a woman in a food court and then draw up a contract so they can fake date each other? None, and I should know: I’ve eaten a lot of soup in a lot of food courts.
And yet this is exactly what happens when Elise (Jaime King) grabs her favourite wonton soup and gets harassed by some mall Christmas carolers. Lawyer/Christmasphobe Nick (Luke Macfarlane) rushes to her aid, posing as her fake boyfriend to protect her from the unwanted holiday serenade. Nick had only moments before been lamenting his rotten luck in life – technically he’s up for partnership at his law firm, but the firm is both family-oriented and Christmas-obsessed, so his ambitions are bound to be thwarted. UNLESS. Unless he quickly draws up a contract obliging Elise to attend work functions with him, posing as his long-term, super serious girlfriend, and in exchange, he’ll pose as her significant other around her office too, where co-owns a travel agency with her sleazy ex-husband (Lochlyn Munro) who is constantly parading around the girlfriend he left her for.
I’m not sure what kind of national law firm of DIVORCE ATTORNEYS refuses to promote single people; lawyers are usually pretty aware how quickly such illegal discrimination would bring about some pretty hefty lawsuits. But they also impose strict Christmas rules (which, last I checked, is a christian holiday), including a mandatory party where the employees are forced to pay for new, symbolic ornaments (which you can find at your nearest Hallmark store, fyi) to trim their boss’s personal tree in their off hours at a party where women are not allowed to wear pants. I SWEAR TO GOD THIS IS ALL TRUE.
Does Elise wake up and realize she’s a little too old to inflate her self esteem with a fake boyfriend? Does Nick realize he could sue his company for millions and start his own Christmas-hating firm with the settlement? No. Instead, they feel bad for lying to “such nice people” and break the contract – not to mention each other’s hearts – and go back to being depressed around the holidays.
Does it make sense? No. Is it realistic? Of course not. But it’s comforting and familiar and I can guarantee you there’s a happy ending with your name on it.
Phil is a cliche who probably doesn’t exist in real life: he’s obsessed with his phone, he writes listicles for a living, he’s incapable of human interaction and would rather spend the night watching videos online than spending time with (or heck even making) friends.
Do Phils really exist? I suppose there’s a grain of truth in there somewhere: some people are overly attached to their phones, and overly desperate for likes on social media. But most people manage to have phones AND human friends. Our phones give us directions to where we want to go, they tell us who’s celebrating a birthday, and what bill needs to be paid. They help us call a car, and order lunch, and share a recipe. They remind us how to spell ‘accommodate’ and when our period is due, or overdue. They connect us to our adorable nephews who haven’t stopped growing just because they’re in quarantine. They keep us entertained on planes, they keep us up to date on elections, and they provide a near infinite supply of puppy pictures. All on one pocket sized device! So yeah, I’m not down on phones, or on young people for using them. I’m not sure who benefits for perpetuating the myth that only young people are obnoxious about their phones, but it’s patently untrue. Moms were the first to adopt cell phones, so they could stay in constant contact with their children. Moms are basically the only people who still use phones for calling people (ew!). Dads invented the belt holster so you could show off your love of wearable electronics (before they were technically wearable) while also accidentally broadcasting what a huge douche you are. When someone is blocking your view of the Mona Lisa by taking pictures with their iPad, 9 out of 10 times it’s a baby boomer. Elbowed in the eye by someone ineptly using a selfie stick? Boomer. Someone talking on their cell in the public bathroom stall next to yours? Most likely a boomer. Cell phone ringing during a Broadway performance? Definitely a boomer. And yet: Phil. Phil (Adam Devine) just can’t be separated from his phone. So yeah, he’s totally panicked when he literally runs into Cate (Alexandra Shipp) one day, destroying his phone in the process. Without a thought for the woman who may also be injured, he races his broken phone to the nearest ER cell phone store where employee Denice (Wanda Sykes) breaks the bad news: it’s not going to make it. You’d think that by the speed with which he rushed the thing to urgent care he’d be quite upset, but not only are cell phones replaceable, constant upgrades are a way to signal status. Behold the new phone!
This phone is unlike other phones. Its operating system is feisty. Call her Jexi. She sounds suspiciously like Rose Byrne, and she knows everything there is to know about Phil, since he’s documented it obsessively in the cloud. Not only does Jexi know everything, she has opinions about it. And she starts steering his life in the direction she believes is best.
Imagine if HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey and Sam (Scarlett Johansson) from Her had an AI baby and named her Jexi. Jexi is strangely alluring for someone who doesn’t have a body. She’s no Ava (Alicia Vikander) from Ex Machina. She’s more like your craziest, most jealous, most stalkery ex, only Jexi has access to your dating profiles, your porn collection, your work contacts, and your dick pics.
Even though the 2020 movie season is experiencing extreme drought, I scrolled right by this rental for many months. I’m not much of an Adam Devine fan and though desperate times call for desperate measures, I held out hope that I’d not hit my bottom quite yet. But don’t despair. This viewing wasn’t motivated by desperation so much as it now being able to stream on Amazon Prime (so, free for me, since I have an account). But even free was too high of a cost – what’s worse than an unfunny comedy? An unfunny comedy that makes you wish you’d just watched Her instead. Or Ex Machina. An unfunny comedy that makes you wish you’d watched any other AI movie, or even any other unfunny comedy that didn’t get your hopes up just as you resigned yourself to it. Because while it was Adam Devine’s smug pug face keeping me away this whole time, actually clicking on it revealed castmates like Sykes, Byrne, and Michael Pena, all of whom led me to believe this might not have been as bad as I’d feared and then it was WORSE. Arghghghghg.
This movie is for a very, very small demographic: baby boomers lacking in senses of both humour and irony who will suffer through unfunny comedies just to feel superior to young people as they scroll through Facebook, clicking on all the COVID clickbait conspiracies planted by Russia as if they aren’t the ones who used screens as babysitters in the first place. Ahem.
Photographer Holly Logan (Jana Kramer) returns to her hometown of Gulfport, Mississippi for Christmas. The town is still recovering from a devastating hurricane five years ago and is resurrecting their traditional holiday light show for the first time since it struck. It’s going to take quite a production to make up for lost time and boost town morale, so Holly volunteers to pitch in, but soon regrets it when she discovers the festival is run by her high school sweetheart, Mike (Wes Brown). Now Holly must spend the next few days with the man who broke her heart when he didn’t follow her to college as planned.
The past decade has perhaps changed Mike: he’s stable, he’s sweet, he volunteers, and he takes care of his nephew Jack. Does he have a job? Who knows! Between those crinkly blue eyes and his acoustic guitar, who cares? Holly’s widowed mother Caroline (Faith Ford) is certainly on board, pushing the two together at every opportunity, even though she herself continues to rebuff the charms of a certain Mr. Maguire (Richard Karn).
With the magic of Christmas wafting through the air and a few silly misunderstandings quickly out of the way, there’s plenty of room for Mike and Holly to fall in love.
Kramer and Brown have the bland kind of appeal which I suppose allows almost anyone to imagine themselves in their shoes. Faith Ford and Richard Karn add a certain 90s vibe to the whole proceeding (you may remember Ford as Corky on Murphy Brown, and Karn as Al on Home Improvement), and you might wish we could see a fuller secondary love story from these second-timers. (Fun fact: my mother’s husband retired this summer, and his kids paid Richard Karn to send him best wishes over the internet in a pre-recorded video – apparently that’s a thing you can do).
This is a Lifetime movie rather than a Hallmark movie, and I know there are devoted camps to both, so if that’s a difference-maker to you, be forewarned (the only real difference that I can discern is that Hallmark always makes you wait until the very last scene for the couple’s first and only kiss, while Lifetime makes you wait only the first 90 minutes (counting commercials) and then maybe sneaks in another one or two (pecks, closed mouths, no tongues) before the film wraps up in the exact same way a Hallmark one does. These movies don’t literally end on a heart-shaped dissolve, but they don’t have to – you can feel it. It is heavy like a hard cheese, and that, my friends, is no coincidence. Peace out.
Samantha (Emilie Ullerup) is switching gears – she’s just finished submitting photos for a Boston newspaper’s Christmas insert which could lead to a job offer, but now she’s on her way to her family’s Cape Cod summer escape which she’s avoided ever since her mother’s death 13 years ago. There are lots of painful memories to navigate but also a happy occasion to celebrate – her father Lee’s Christmas Eve wedding to Helen. Sam has just a few days to meet her future stepmother, act as a maid of honour, and help her father decide whether they should sell their vacation home, but her time is even further constrained when she learns she has to resubmit new photos for the insert.
Luckily her childhood friend Mike (Josh Kelly) has been acting as the summer home’s property manager and is on hand fixing a pesky leak just in time to volunteer as her own personal Christmas concierge, whisking her to all the local sights that might make for a winning festive photo. You might not be surprised to learn that Sam and Mike’s past friendship verged on the romantic before they agreed the timing wasn’t great. Now that they’re spending such quality time in each other’s company again, sparks are reigniting, but neither wants to start a relationship that might prevent the other from pursuing their dreams. Conundrum!
Don’t worry guys. This is a Christmas romance, where love always prevails. In fact, you’ll never really doubt that it does. Added bonus: you get two love stories for the price of one, as Lee and Helen celebrate their second chance at love while love blooms among the poinsettias for Samantha and Mike. Yes, there will be bells. And ice skating, Christmas cookies, even Santa on a boat, which is the one unique thing this movie has going for it
After so many disappointing sequels, I had given up hope that there would ever be another good Terminator film. So I skipped Terminator: Dark Fate in theatres last year, figuring that there were far “better” movies that I would want to drag Jay to in the coming months, rather than another convoluted time travel story of undoing a life-changing apocalypse. Judging from the paltry box office numbers for Dark Fate, I was not the only one who stayed away.
Since then, of course, a life-changing event of a different sort has occurred. With theatres being shuttered for four months and counting due to the pandemic, Jay and I have seen most of what’s available, especially lately when new digital releases have slowed to a trickle. Even as we were running out of movies and Dark Fate kept begging us to rent it for 99 cents, I passed repeatedly. But when it popped up for free on Amazon Prime this week, I figured I’d give it a shot, and Jay was on board.
Jay remained on board for less than five minutes. I hadn’t even gotten to the end of my Terminator 2 recap when gave up on the movie and the franchise. I pressed on alone, hoping for the movie to not suck. And if the bar is not sucking, Dark Fate can be considered a success. But shouldn’t the bar be a lot higher?
Dark Fate is likely to be the last of the series (though I thought that before) because it has shown that Terminator has nothing new to offer. It may be that the series feels stuck in the past because the original Judgment Day came and went almost 23 years ago without incident. But the real problem is that the series hasn’t evolved at all in response. The new apocalyptic futures provided by the franchise’s ever-changing timeline have just been copies of the original Terminator’s bone-filled landscape, and neither the villains nor the action have come close to any part of the consistently brilliant T2.
Dark Fate was wise to ignore all the other entries since T2 but despite its best efforts it ends up sharing their fate. Dark Fate is not a bad movie but since it doesn’t offer anything new, this franchise still is stuck in the past. In the end, Dark Fate made me wish I had asked Jay to watch T2 last night instead. I bet she would have lasted longer than five minutes with that one.
Mara (Sarah Hyland) and Jake (Tyler Jesse Williams) are not normally the commitment types, but ever since they met they are astounding friends and relatives with their continued, healthy relationship. That’s not like them! Except together, maybe it is. Everything’s going smoothly until the wedding invitations start arriving…and don’t stop! Everyone’s had a year like this, the year when all your friends seemed to get married at once. When every other weekend was earmarked for a bridal shower or a stag and doe or a bachelor party or a say yes to the dress excursion or a wedding favour boot camp, or the weddings themselves of course, which may also include welcome cocktails, rehearsal dinners, and morning-after brunches. Weddings can suck up your time almost as quickly as your money once you factor in travel, time off, outfits, hair, shoes, hotel, plus shower and wedding gifts, and that’s if you’re NOT in the wedding party, which may require you to shell out for tux rentals, professional makeup application, even out of town trips for lavish bachelorettes. It’s a lot. Ad then there’s the toll it will take on your own relationship.
If you’ve ever gone to a wedding with a new partner as your +1, you know it’s a gamble. It means introducing them to your family – your whole family – before you may be ready. And it’s a lot of pressure to put on a new boyfriend or girlfriend, meeting everyone like that, sitting with them, trying to remember names, fielding questions about marriage and kids that are totally inappropriate, dealing with drunk uncles while trying to remain polite, navigating family photos when you’re not really part of the family. Total nightmare. But it can be equally hard, and perhaps worse, when you’ve been in a relationship for a while, have perhaps attended more than a few of these family events together. Now the pressure is on to declare when it will be “your turn.” Relatives of all kinds will think it’s their right to ask you deeply personal questions. Ever felt pinned to the spot by the question “When are you going to propose?” Instant anxiety, and of course your partner is looking on, with hungry eyes, or disinterested ones, and either way it’s uncomfortable. Or perhaps you’ve gotten “Isn’t your clock ticking?” because of course your womb is aunt Susan’s business and of course you should be made to declare your thoughts on fertility and family planning in public.
These are the kinds of things Mara and Jake will encounter during their Wedding Year. Brothers, sisters, cousins, friends. It’s a lot of forced joy and a big shiny spotlight on the state of your relationship. So even though they go into wedding season strong, all the love that’s in the air is going to feel sweltering, even suffocating by the end. Can their relationship possibly withstand the pressure?
This movie is not a great movie. It’s as bland as the food they normally serve at these banquet functions – inoffensive and totally forgettable. It’s a perfectly acceptable way to pass some time – just be careful who you watch it with 😉
Since then, of course, a life-changing event of a different sort has occurred. With theatres being shuttered for four months and counting due to the pandemic, Jay and I have seen most of what’s available, especially lately when new digital releases have slowed to a trickle. Even as we were running out of movies and Dark Fate kept begging us to rent it for 99 cents, I passed repeatedly. But when it popped up for free on Amazon Prime this week, I figured I’d give it a shot, and Jay was on board.
ASSHOLES WATCHING MOVIES 