Month: October 2021

I had a chance to see this at the drive-in during the earlier days of COVID. I’m glad I didn’t, because after Free Guy and Space Jam, I need a little bit of reassurance about modern filmmaking. In this indie, Sunita Mani and John Reynolds are a Brooklyn couple who take a break from technology and head to upstate New York. Unfortunately while they are gone, Earth comes under attack and they are the last to know. They also quickly realize how ill-suited they are to protect themselves when they don’t have a way to search the internet. They have great chemistry as a couple and are familiar in their moments of support and exasperation with each other. It’s really funny and the alien critters are terribly cute.  

I have never really followed professional basketball, but I can say that in terms of acting ability LeBron James is no Michael Jordan. LeBron and his son are sucked into the internet by an AI played by Don Cheadle. No one even seems to remember what made the original film fun, except the toons. For some reason, the Looney Toons remember this all happened before but no one else does. The writing is so lazy that I’m fairly certain Warner Brothers movies are indeed created using an algorithm. The film is so jammed with WB IP, you can hear the creators of Free Guy saying ‘Why didn’t we do that?’ The grand match-up in the end has so many extras dressed as characters from every WB film imaginable that I’m pretty sure they gave every cosplayer in the universe $5 to show up in whatever they could find lying around the house.

Someone in the tiny Irish village of Tulaigh Mhór has won the lottery. Unfortunately it turns out to have been Ned Devine, who died from the shock, so the entire village of 52 individuals conspires to cash in the ticket. It’s a very lovely, cozy film about friendship and community that’s both amusing and heart-felt.

Taking riffs from Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, here we have Paul Giamatti playing a fictional version of himself, an actor who has become so encumbered by the roles he has performed that he has his soul extracted. Unfortunately the soul business is connected to unscrupulous Russians and when Paul wants his soul back, it’s next to impossible to find. While having some of the humor of those other films, this is quite a bit darker and has little of the frivolity. The acting is splendid and includes David Strathairn as a soul-releasing doctor.

Based on a true story, Phoebe Cates is the title character, a young woman who is found wandering in a field in 1800s England and is thought to be an exotic princess. Local aristocrats take to her as if she were a rock star and it all is incredibly far-fetched. It’s fun watching the rich snobs copy the costumes and mannerisms of the princess. Despite any shortcomings the story may have (it’s entertaining but a bit slow), Cates is fantastic in the role. The vast majority of her scenes require her to speak gibberish, feign misunderstanding of those around her, and emoting everything else.

I’m glad I watched this film as I had never heard of the Deacons, an all-Black self-defense group formed during the days of the Civil Rights Movement. In this TV movie inspired by the real life Deacons, Forest Whitaker is a father and factory worker who is content not to make waves with regards to the white leadership at his factory and in his town until he witnesses a co-worker being brutalized for deigning to try to for something better and his daughter is terrorized for protesting. Finally enough is enough and the Deacons are formed with Forest as one of their leaders. This makes a nice companion piece to Bill Duke’s earlier TV film The Killing Floor. It seems that these are the stories that some are trying to suppress, keeping people from learning the complexities of the United States in all its failures, promises, and potential.