Tony: Wut I Thunk

Director Matt Johnson makes some great choices here: three months (a summer) in the life on Anthony Bourdain based loosely on Kitchen Confidential.  Not Bourdain the TV star, the celebrity, the very tragic death by suicide, but just a skinny rich kid who needs to grow up.  This selectiveness is crucial to making the story universal -- because growing up is hard, and learning to love yourself is not always an easy path.  Cue falling for, and chasing, a girl to Provincetown for a summer on the shore and you've got a movie that works best by being a bit incomplete, a bit unfinished, a bit (ahem) under-baked -- always showing more than telling.  Antonio Banderas shines as Tony's reluctant, nearly Puritan mentor who oversees a kitchen pirate crew of burnouts and sex and drug addicts (1975, people).  If not an actual feel-good film, it's certainly feel-decent enough about how downright embarrassing it can be to be young and in love and aspiring to something greater in a world of dirty dishes and crappy customers who wouldn't know a true Lobster Thermidor if it landed on their head.

Five bumps of dodgy cocaine out of five!

Spiderman -- Brand New Day: Wut I Thunk

I'm a grown-ass man and I still get just a little bit excited for these damn Marvel movies (sorry, D.C.).  And guess what -- this is definitely one of the better ones.  The script really nails down the problems of being a teenage superhero constantly having to choose between a normal life with friends and a heroic one of kicking villainy in the ass.  It helps that the film doesn't offer easy answers, or even a clean conclusion to the Zendaya love interest.  It really helps that Jon Bernthal as a convincing and surprisingly warm-hearted Punisher is willing to step in and let Peter Parker know that he's got to grow up, at some point, like the rest of us do.  At two and a half hours, it's too long.  But the obvious launch of not just a new character, but a new supergroup, is shoe-horned in as delicately as possible.  And a long overdue Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon style climactic fight is more than welcome.  Enter the Spider, indeed.

Four weird girlfriend Zendayas out of five!

The Odyssey: Wut I Thunk

I think Professor Emily Wilson is essentially correct: Nolan's film takes the archetype of the crafty man of "twists and turns" and turns him into a generic Joe Action-Man.  But I guess I'm also more forgiving in other respects.  The performances are great (Leguizamo has to be an early favorite for supporting actor).  The set-pieces mostly work (Circe's Island being the best).  And sure, we could all be a lot nicer to one another.  But I'm going to stretch a bit and suggest there's another, larger message to the film: people in power and "leadership," one of the most powerful and meaningless words of our age, are toxic, corrosive forces that will lead you down a path where you might succeed, but the entirely expendable people under you will all die horribly.  That strikes me as about as zeity-geisty-2026-y as you can get.

Four underused Zendayas out of five!

Backrooms: Wut I Thunk

It's more about what's scary than it is scary.  It's more about liminal spaces than it is a liminal space in itself.  It's certainly Lynchian in a few spots, but definitely not Lynch.  And for me this whole thing, despite an interesting setup, falls apart towards the end when an imitation of a Boogie Man, certainly not a scary or even interesting Boogie Man in itself, shows up.  I couldn't stop laughing.  And it was not a comedic moment by any means.  Ultimately this is a movie idea in search of some characters and plot to hang its analog jacket on.  I'll also admit, this probably works for a lot of people who buy into it, but I tried and couldn't.

Two beige ottomans out of five!

Disclosure Day: Wut I Thunk (Minor Spoilers!)

Spielberg has admitted this is his spiritual successor to Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  Which is great, because I'll take sci-fi speculative Spielberg over dreary historically "accurate" Spielberg any day.  Throw in some of Christopher Nolan's Inception as well.  As for the meat of the film, the first half is a colossal bore.  It's a first contact story and really doesn't need the depth of explanation provided (reminiscent, of all things, of Ghostbusters and the Keymaster needing to find the Gatekeeper).  And we all already know about Roswell, New Mexico!  Americans love the conspiracy shit, they really don't need it spelled out for them!  But the film eventually hits its stride, things fall into place, and I'd say it sticks the landing pretty well.  Another problem though: the corporate bad guys are appropriately well armed and, well, bad.  But even they seem to silently admit at the end that a decades-long coverup wasn't worth it given that the alternative is peace on Earth, forever.  Ultimately, it's peak Spielberg both for better and for worse.

Three animatronic cardinals out of five!

Project Hail Mary: Wut I Thunk

The Martian Part II this is not.  Yes, the hero is a snarky nerd guy who has to science the fuck out of various math, velocity, and (here) chemistry issues to save the Earth.  But (mild spoiler, but if you've seen the trailer you already know) now he has an alien companion.  Basically, it's a buddy movie in space.  And it works very well, maybe better than it should.  A younger me would probably complain about how cheesy bits of it are.  Older me was quite satisfied to sit back and enjoy the ride.  It's 2026.  I can't blame anybody for wanting a little more grace (ahem), a little more teamwork in this life.  It mostly nails the landing too, but there's one small change from the novel that I think hurts the overall product maybe just a bit.  Still though, if you don't leave this one smiling (maybe cheering a little inside?) your heart is a lump of inert metal.  It's science.

Five bump-fists out of five!

How to Make a Killing -- Wut I Thunk

A strong premise and strong first half -- nice guy decides he does, in fact, deserve to inherit his horrible family's fortune by way of serial murder.  This film soars when it gets into just how insufferable the idle rich can be.  The second half stumbles though, loses a lot of energy, when it starts to feel a bit formulaic.  Not dark enough for a dark comedy, not quite as interesting of a love triangle as the director thinks.  Still, enough laugh-out-loud moments to carry us through and root for a murderer.

Three White Basquiats out of five!

Wuthering Heights -- Wut I Thunk

Oh my, this is one horny movie.  Over the top?  Yes.  Trashy?  Kinda!  But there's no doubt about the commitment here to really focus on the infernal power of Heathcliff and Catherine's desire -- let's face it, lust -- for each other.  If you're looking for faithfulness to the book you won't find it here, especially in the second half.  But there's something to be said for what the film actually captures.  To put it another way, this movie being ridiculous only confirms that the novel is as well.  It worked for me, but probably won't work for a lot of purists.

Four steamy carriage windows out of five!

Send Help -- Wut I Thunk

So it's Castway but two people are stranded -- a put-upon office worker and her horrible frat-bro boss.  And it's really hard to talk about it more without spoiling.  This is the definition of a movie that you should see with as little information as possible before going in.  Rachel McAdams doesn't hesitate to go full mousy and a bit gross.  Dylan O'brien plays up his assholish-ness to the hilt.  From there, we go in about five different directions with a truly brilliant script.  At the end you might not like anybody on offer here, but that's the point.  Survival is, indeed, a winner-take-all proposition.

Five conch shells out of five!

Marty Supreme: Wut I Thunk (Spoilers)

Timothy Chalamet is great as a 1950's ping-pong hustler who dreams of something greater.  The script doesn't do him favors though, as this thing is way too long.  Tyler the Creator is also great in support.  The thing this ping-pong movie needed though?  More ping-pong and fewer shootings and stabbings.  It really didn't need a body-count in general.

Three wooden, not foam, paddles out of five!

Bugonia: Wut I Thunk

This was marketed as a comedy for some reason because I guess Americans aren't as fond of films labelled "Greek Tragedy."  (Important tell: a significant plot item is named "Creon.")  Stone and Plemmons are both good on their own, but positively electric when together on the screen.  The premise of a powerful female executive who obviously must be an alien to have achieved so much works well, even when the film seems to indicate that the fantasies of the two main characters are utter crackpot nonsense.  Lanthimos goes for schtick towards the end which may keep it from ranking among his best films (The Lobster, Killing of a Sacred Deer) but still, this is among his better work.

Four ritually slaughtered oxen out of five!

One Battle After Another: Wut I Thunk

Paul Thomas Anderson channels his inner Tarantino (ultraviolence, edgy racial humor) and makes a shlubby Leonard DiCaprio his anti-hero for the ages.  There's some real humor as well.  The ICE scenes are intense, but also strangely ineffective -- if freedom is only a phone call to Benicio del Toro's dojo away, what's to worry about in the long run?  Sean Penn chews lots of scenery as the bad guy, and this might be a deal-breaker for some.

Overall, very classy with a few misses.

Four revolutionary joints out of five!

The Long Walk: Wut I Thunk

When it doesn't seem like it should work, it manages to.  When it has moments that might be capitalized on to go from good to great, it doesn't quite manage.

Mark Hamill isn't given much material to work with, so he grunts a lot.  The violence is predictably graphic, but the script also manages to bring some warmth and humor at times.

It's ultimately a movie about relationships, as strange as that might sound in such a twisted world.

Peter, the second lead, has an accent that swerves crazily between rural Alabama and Cockney London.  It's truly distracting.

The ending is safe and predictable and goes against a major sacrifice by the main character.  If only it had ended about one minute sooner it would have been something special.

Three sets of post-apocalyptic insoles out of five!

Fantastic Four: First Steps, Wut I Thunk

I'm a sucker for retro-futurism, and that's probably the best thing about this film.  No spandex, just wool!  Performances are fine except for the huge bad guy Galactus, who literally says almost nothing other than he's hungry for planets.  Johnny Storm is kind of the dumb lady's man, but a twist in the plot gives him a little more credit for having some brains.

The real question is, in 2025 are superhero movies still something worth watching?  I'd say this is an above average Marvel product, although just that.  The Silver Surfer never really looks right -- too much CGI or too little I don't know.  Natasha Lyonne is criminally underused, as is her relationship with The Thing.

Three Clobberin' Times out of five!

Warfare -- Wut I Thunk of It

I'm worried about Alex Garland.  After creating some of my favorite movies of all time (28 Days Later, Ex Machina, Annihilation, hell, I'll say it -- Men) he seems to have gone into some weird military fascination phase.  Civil War was a very terrible film that attempted to drain politics from an inherently political topic.  Now, with Warfare, we go micro instead of macro and see a highly forensic examination of a single battle during the U.S. occupation of Ramadi in Iraq.  Are my words too biased?  Because a squad of U.S. troops literally goes into an Iraqi home to take it over for a few hours to gather intelligence.  (The civilians are kept in a bedroom, including children.)

It almost works as an attempt at a "neutral" examination of combat -- the stress, the suffering, the unknown.

Garland blows this all up (ahem) in the credits, where the actual soldiers involved are brought in for cheery, jock-y, fist-bump-y photos.  This actually happened, man!

A lone Iraqi woman, the mother of the children who had been taken hostage, gets to say "Why?  Why?" but doesn't really get to speak, because she's the enemy of course, just one who got really lucky.  An expendable NPC in the true world of American military exceptionalism.

Hard to believe, but this is worse than Civil War.  Is this some kind of mid-life crisis for Garland?

Mickey 17 -- What I Thunk

Hey, it shares a major plot point with Keanu Reeves' and China Mieville's The Book of Elsewhere!  What if you could live forever?  Scratch that, what if you could die forever, as in over and over and over again?

The first half of Bong Joon-Ho's film is pretty great.  When the titular Mickey finally meets a copy of himself, things fall apart.

Robert Pattinson is good but never does seem to get his working class American accent consistent.  New characters show up out of the blue.  Mark Ruffalo as the villainous president is actually not that great.  I'm willing to be a nickel that Bong told him to "do his best Trump," and it's not a very good Trump.  The animal rights stuff isn't unwelcome, but not really integrated the way it should be either.

The ending does manage to tie the important stuff together in spite of the sloppy second half.  I liked it.  I could have waited to watch on DVD too, nothing lost.

Play 'The Candy Colored Clown!'

David Lynch has died, and the world is less strange and colorful now.

Blue Velvet is a stone cold classic.  Inland Empire may be my favorite film of his, but I can't watch it again because it left me shaken and spooked for about a week after I saw it.  And his Dune is certainly better than how it was critically reviewed on release.

Not a shabby musician either.

A Complete Unknown -- What I Thunk

The film makes some bold choices -- Alan Lomax and Peter Seeger as villains, or at least antagonists.  Joan Baez doesn't come off that well either.  But focusing on the early career of Dylan, these choices make sense by the end.

I also like how smart the film is musically.  There's a minor but great scene that explains to non-guitar players what playing in an open tuning means.

Like all biopics, the film lives or dies on whether you believe in Chalamet's depiction -- I did!

Basically, I thought it was great but I can see where others might differ.

Nosferatu -- What I Thunk

It's great.  It also has the Eggers' slow build that makes The Witch and The Lighthouse so good.

The only issue is that he's quite faithful to the book, so we already know where things are going.  The first half of the film just isn't as compelling as the second half.

Willem Dafoe is amazing, as usual.

Deadpool & Wolverine: What I Thunk

I find myself at a point in life where both my nerd tolerance and my meta-referential tolerance are both quite high.  But short of a Ph.D. in Fox versus Disney shenanigans this might not be the movie for you.  The performances are fine, the villain is iffy, but there are some laugh out loud moments amidst the carnage.

Probably a good place to stop both franchises.  Earned.  Done.  Go home Ryan Reynolds, you're drunk.