Last week, I watched a half dozen movies.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
It doesn’t exactly build a better Mousetrap, but SEE HOW THEY RUN is silly and playful almost-deconstruction of the whodunnit. The cast is obviously having a lot of fun with the material.
Even by the somewhat lax standards of the day, when a car crash could pass for high comedy and racist or homophobic jokes were as casual as could be, FREEBIE AND THE BEAN is pretty dreadful. Chaotic and confusing, baffling even, with wild and messy swings in tone and not a likable, realistic, or even amusing character anywhere in sight.
CONFESS, FLETCH is a lot of fun, and John Hamm is good in the role. Sure, I’d watch another one of these, if they ever actually get to continue the series. (They do a little last-minute leg-work to set up Fletch’s Fortune, a book I didn’t much like but could see them updating well.)
I’m not sure WEIRD: THE AL YANKOVIC STORY ever truly rises above the level of bit, but it’s a funny bit, and it does take it to some incredibly absurd and silly levels, thanks to an incredibly game cast.
THE UNFORGIVEN is too long, and the complicated things it wants to say about Native Americans and racism are themselves complicated by no Native Americans actually being in the cast. (And there’s a weird, kind of off-putting romance thread running through the story.) But there are good things about the movie, particularly Lancaster and Hepburn’s performances.
CAUSEWAY is a slow and quiet movie about the weight of trauma, and I liked it a lot. Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry are both very good in it.