I watched 9 movies last week:
- Albert Brooks is a very smart and funny man, and Albert Brooks: Defending My Life is an amiable stroll through his life and career. It’s sometimes a little strange who director Rob Reiner decides to talk to—why so much Jonah Hill, for instance? and did they even try to get Lorne Michaels or anyone else involved with the early days of Saturday Night Live?—but if you like Brooks’ movies and comedies, this is well worth a look.
- Jodie Foster’s commitment to her role in Nell is admirable, but the rest of the movie is a lot less so, with its tired “wild child shows us what it’s really like to be alive” storyline.
- The Killer is well crafted and a lot of fun, even if it does feel like little more than a genre exercise for David Fincher.
- I can’t pretend like Rambo III is a quiet and contemplative movie…except that it almost is, at least compared to the previous film in the series. It’s a little slow and boring at times, which surprisingly works in its favor. It’s not as thoughtful or as well made as the original First Blood, but I enjoyed it a lot more than First Blood Part II.
- Barbie is incredibly winning, vibrant and silly and clever and biting. It is in many ways a love letter to the toy line, making a real case for why an aspirational female doll remains important, but it also takes real shots at the culture and corporation that has mass-produced and marketed that aspiration. It’s not a scathing indictment of Mattel by any means, but it’s also not uncritical of them. The movie has a lot to say, and it speaks with such an inventive visual style, but it never once loses its sense of simple fun.
- It’s Pat: The Movie is more than a little dated in its jokes about gender, but what’s interesting about it—indeed, the only interesting thing about the movie—is that it’s not deeply offensive or weirdly backward. Pat isn’t being mocked for not being easily idenifiable as cisgender, despite the jokes. As Kevin Thomas wrote in his LA Times review, the movie “offers a simple message of self-acceptance, asserting that what counts is who you are rather than what your gender may or may not be. The trouble is that its telling is truly terrible…” The trouble is, Pat is an obnoxious and unpleasant character, full-stop, and the movie around that character isn’t ever funny.
- Blue Beetle feels very familiar, and it’s more than a little too long, but there are a lot of fun things to like about it. It’s hard not to imagine another strand of DC’s crumbled multiverse where this was a more successful entry.
- Clark Gable and Myrna Loy are well paired in Too Hot to Handle, but it’s not a particularly good movie, even before it devolves into a half-baked plot filled with racist caricatures and jungle witch doctors.
- I’m not sure that Rustin does the man, or the historic March on Washington, the full justice it deserves. But it’s a very compelling watch, and Colman Domingo is outstanding in the title role.
I also re-watched The Brood. In his original review, Roger Ebert asked, “Are there really people who want to see reprehensible trash like this?” Which, you know, seems kind of harsh. It’s not my favorite David Cronenberg movie—by his own admission, it’s fairly humorless, and more than anything you’re left with the thought that his own divorce must have been extremely unpleasant—but it grapples with some uncomfortable emotions in interesting and unsettling ways.
