End of summer movie-watching recap
This is a long catch-up on movies I've watched since late June. As you can see, the emphasis has been on commercial fare but that's what has drawn me to theaters. These are arranged mainly in reverse chronological order, from "Angel Has Fallen" back to "Spider-Man: Far From Home."
Ready Or Not is a very violent, intermittently amusing tale of who's-going-to-die bolstered by the lead performance by Samara Weaving. She plays newlywed Grace, who has married into a wealthy family specializing in games -- including with a tradition where anyone joining the family has to play a game chosen by a mysterious object. Most of the chosen games are harmless but if you pull a card for Hide & Seek -- as Grace does -- then the game includes mayhem at expense of the hider, in this case Grace. Fortunately for her, the family members prove quite lousy at the game, and the blood being spilled belongs to them far more often than Grace herself, although she collects some nasty wounds along the way. The ineptness also fuels the movie's humor, but it could have done better with more focus on the main character; there's a passing reference to Grace growing up in foster homes which hinted at more details about her lethal determination. Instead we just end up with a lot of killing and a shot at the end that had Grace in seeming homage to John McClane in "Die Hard."
Blinded by the Light and Yesterday breaks the chronology since I saw "Yesterday" in late June, but these two films belong together. Where "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "Rocketman" underscored the power of pop music by looking at the artists (Queen and Elton John respectively), "Blinded" and "Yesterday" are about the impact of the music on fans. In their hitting the emotional connection their characters make to music, they remind the audience -- well, me, anyway -- of how that music struck them, and still does.
"Blinded," directed and co-written by Gurinda Chadha (inspired by Sarfraz Manzoor's memoir), involves a British-Pakistani student struggling in Thatcher-era, racist-laced Britain until a friend introduces him to Bruce Springsteen's music. Both the angst and the celebration in Springsteen's music speak to the young man -- even though to many Springsteen is old-hat at this time -- and the timelessness of the songs is made clear in the Trumpian overtones of the film's story. A bit obvious though it is in its father-son conflicts, the film still works admirably overall, especially when it drops out of its realism into elaborate musical numbers.
"Yesterday" takes a similar approach, sending an unsuccessful musician (Himesh Patel) into a world where the Beatles never existed, save in his own memories. And when he begins to perform Beatle songs, he becomes a huge star, with the film (written by Richard Curtis, directed by Danny Boyle) arguing that Beatle songs would strike a nerve anywhere, any time. Of course, that's a tricky case to make when you take the songs out of their original pop-culture context, so it depends on us bringing our love of the songs to the moviegoing. If you do, then it works, especially in the latter stages of the film.
Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw teams up two characters played by Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham outside the FandF universe but definitely in its style: banter, battles, lots of vehicular excess and occasional attempts at emotion. Since I've watched every FandF movie, some more than once, I was not going to shrug this one off. This also introduces a new character, Shaw's sister Hattie (Vanessa Kirby of "The Crown" and "Mission Impossible: Fallout"), who easily deserves her own movie; a super-villain played by Idris Elba, and a conclusion that offers some cultural uplift while filling in more of Hobbs's background. It's not quite as endearingly nutty as some of the FandF movies, and the Hobbs-Shaw banter gets tiresome, but it has its moments, including some meta gags (note the shout-out to Stathm in "The Italian Job").
Once Upon a Time in ... Hollywood was a tough sell here, since I think Quentin Tarantino is often more interested in showing us how much he knows about pop culture and filmmaking than he is in making a movie we can get lost in. Here, whether it's in the stunt casting, the twisting of history (as he did in "Inglourious Basterds"), or the simple showing off in scenes that go on too long, his flaws are evident. But he is immensely helped along here by the performances from Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and Margot Robbie, all of whom should get attention when awards season rolls around.
DiCaprio plays a former TV-western star whose career has been skidding; Pitt is a stuntman who is DiCaprio's driver and aide, and Robbie is the legendary Sharon Tate. The film follows the ups and downs of the two men's careers in a world where Charles Manson is lurking (and where a sequence of Pitt meeting the Manson clan is chilling) -- on its way to a gory conclusion that somehow manages to be funny, horrifying and reflective of the oddities of show business. I didn't love it, but neither did I hate it as much as I have other Tarantino; the guy is a brilliant writer-director who knows how to put together a scene, but he is also too full of himself to deserve some of the genuflection he has received.
And finally ... Spider-Man: Far From Home leads us into the post-"Avengers: Endgame" Marvel universe, where Tony Stark is dead and Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is going to have to grow up on his own. Where that growing will take us now seems to be very much up in the air because of the Sony/Disney breakup, but at least we have this movie. Parker is trying to have something of a normal life, including on a school trip to England, but he's called into service by Nick Fury and joined by another hero, Mysterioso (Jack Gyllenhaal) -- only nothing turns out quite the way it should. Disillusionment is a touchstone for Parker, again and again, and the end of the film suggests more struggles to come. This has the typical problems of a Marvel movie, including an overlong action sequence at the end, but it was satisfying in other ways, continuing the more deeply emotional approach of the later MCU films. But where, I ask again, will it go next?
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