As much as I love watching and
reviewing movies, I can’t see every single thing that’s out there. To fix this,
I’ve put together a group of mini reviews of films that, for whatever reason,
I didn’t see or write about the first time around. Maybe I had no interest in seeing
it in theaters, maybe it wasn’t playing anywhere near me and I had to wait for
the blu-ray, or I didn’t have enough to say about it to warrant a full review.
Either way, this little compilation is basically my way of making up for lost time.
Split
Here’s a sentence I never
thought I’d ever get to type; the new M. Night Shyamalan movie is actually
pretty good. I know that sounds like a loaded phrase since everything he’s made
since Signs (which, let’s face it,
hasn’t aged well) has been such a pretentious cavalcade of hot garbage that
it’s easy to forget that he was once touted as the next Steven Spielberg, and
while Split is far from a perfect
movie, it’s easily the best thing that Shyamalan has made since Unbreakable. Three girls are kidnapped
by a man named Kevin (James McAvoy) with dissociative identity disorder who has
23 distinct personalities living inside him who are planning to sacrifice them
to a dormant 24th personality called “The Beast” who is fighting for
complete dominance of Kevin’s body. This ties in with Kevin’s therapist’s
(Betty Buckley) theory that people who suffer from severe trauma can unlock
hidden potential that manifests itself physically, which is also demonstrated by
the heightened survival instincts of one of the kidnapping victims (Anya Taylor-Joy),
who was molested by her uncle when she was young. What I think makes Split work so well is that it’s a movie
that allows Shyamalan to work with his strengths, but the script is just
restrained enough to rein in his more unsavory impulses. There are good
performances all around, but the MVP award hands down goes to McAvoy. McAvoy
has been one of the most underrated actors in Hollywood for about a decade now,
and this is probably his best performance to date, with him able to add flavor
to each personality and switch back and forth between them without a hitch.
That said, the movie does suffer from a few uniquely Shyamalan-esque problems,
namely obtuse camera-work that I’m sure Shyamalan thinks is brilliant but comes
off as awkward, inconsistent pacing and tonal shifts, and some cringe-worthy
dialogue; problems that don’t necessarily kneecap the viewing experience, but
do hold a good movie back from greatness. There’s also a twist which I dare not
spoil here, but let’s just say it only really makes sense if you’ve seen other
M. Night Shyamalan movies. Let’s just hope he can keep this goodness streak up.
7/10
The Founder
It’s kind of funny how every
movie about McDonald’s is all about what a horrible company it is. Super-Size Me was all about how
unhealthy their food is, Fast Food Nation
goes into all its business practices, and now The Founder is here to tell you how much of a dick its first CEO was.
Which is a shame because whether you love it or hate it, McDonald’s has a fascinating
history, so much so that I’m amazed it’s taken them this long to make a movie about
it. But then again, since the fast food conglomerate was built by a man who got
to the top by screwing everyone over, it doesn’t really surprise me that it
did. The man in question is Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton), an ambitious, struggling
milkshake machine salesman who stumbles across a burger joint run by the
McDonald brothers (Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch), who devised an
ingenious system for preparing food in mere seconds. Kroc is infatuated with
this restaurant and insists on franchising the business. The brothers turn his
offer down, deciding to keep their dignity and not wanting to repeat past
failures, so Kroc goes ahead and build the franchise himself, turning it into a
national empire and throwing the brothers under the bus in the process. While
the elevator pitch could basically be summed up as “It’s like The Social Network, but it’s about
McDonald’s instead of Facebook,” there’s still a lot to be liked about this
movie. Michael Keaton is absolutely magnetic in this role; ambitious to a
fault, never takes no for an answer, and completely ruthless; traits that make
for a great businessman, but not a very decent human being. It doesn’t paint
the company in a flattering light, but I can’t imagine it will do anything to
its reputation that Super-Size Me and
Fast Food Nation haven’t done already.
But The Founder isn’t interested in
the company’s effects on the world, but rather showing the story of its
creation as the ultimate example of the American dream, for better or for
worse. Also, I will never get used to seeing Nick Offerman without facial hair.
7/10
Beauty and the Beast
I’ve never really been
on-board with the recent string of live-action remakes of Disney movies, but up
until now they’ve had few unique twists that make them stand out. Beauty and the Beast doesn’t work for me
because A. the original is about the closest thing to perfection that Disney
has ever made and is widely considered the best thing to come out of the renaissance
period, and B. Disney must realize that too because this new version is a virtual
beat-for-beat retread of the original. Well, that’s not entirely true. They
added a few songs, incorporated some elements from the stage musical and even add
a few nods to the original fairytale and the 1947 Jean Cocteau version, but the
changes are so small and insignificant that they don’t really justify its
existence. I did like some of the changes like making Gaston a more menacing
villain, having the townspeople occasionally question his judgment instead of
acting like a bunch of sycophants, and answering questions like how old the
Beast is exactly and clearing out the geography between the castle and the
village. But there are some things that just don’t work out, and not just in
comparison to the original. For one, Emma Watson is a good actress but not a
very skilled singer. (In fact, I could swear that she was auto-tuned in some
parts.) The CG done for the inanimate object characters is nice but clearly not
on the same plain as the live-action bits, and most of the character designs
dip pretty deep into the uncanny valley. The Beast has the opposite problem. The
motion capture and CGI doesn’t make him beastly enough, so his gradual
sophistication becomes less noticeable through the acting. There’s nothing they
do with him that they can’t easily do with makeup and prosthetics. As for the
whole controversy about Lefou being gay, it’s kind of there but it’s all just
him making moon eyes at Gaston and innuendos so subtle that they’re easy to
miss unless you’re actively looking for them. Personally, I think we should put
more effort into original LGBT characters instead of retroactively applying it
to old ones, but points to Disney for being progressive. At the end of the day,
I can’t figure out who this movie is for. The original version is infinitely
better and easy to get ahold of, and even if you do want to see a live action
version of this story, there’s still the Broadway play and even the Jean
Cocteau version. (Seriously, it’s the best version of this story that you’ve
probably never seen.) The new Beauty and
the Beast is pretty and well made, but overall pointless.
5/10
Raw
This is one of the few movies
on this list that I got to see during its initial release, but didn’t get to
write a full review of before it was out of theaters. Fun fact: I saw this on the
same day I saw Your Name., and in
between showings I went to a soul food restaurant down the street and got some
chicken wings for dinner. In retrospect, that probably wasn’t the wisest idea
considering that this was a movie all about cannibalism. A girl who was raised
as a vegetarian goes to veterinary school and is forced to eat a rabbit’s
kidney as part of a sadistic hazing ritual. After this inciting incident, her
craving for flesh grows stronger and stronger, eventually turning into full-on
cannibalism, a situation made even more complicated when she discovers that her
sister has the same affliction. Raw
is hands down the most fucked up movie I’ve seen since The Neon Demon, and has more than a little in common with it. Both
are sleazy coming-of-age stories about young girls on the onset of womanhood entering
a field with a decadent underbelly, both have gorgeous cinematography that
emphasize (the no pun intended) rawness of its subject, and both feature
shocking, horrifying acts that are either deep and symbolic or shock value
schlock depending on who you ask. I’ve heard varying interpretations about what
the cannibalism is supposed to represent, from eating disorders to love itself
to even a feminist twist on the ownership of one’s body through the consumption
of others. That said, it does have a pretty twisted sense of humor. There’s
just something very striking about seeing a petite girl gnawing on a severed
finger like a chicken wing. That said, if you want something vile and
disgusting to tickle your brain, this should satisfy your hunger.
8/10
Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie
I saw this more out of
nostalgia than anything else. I was a huge fan of the books when I was a kid and
the trailers looked like it was keeping with the spirit of the books, and sure
enough, they did it justice. The story follows two best friends (Kevin Hart and
Thomas Middleditch) who hypnotize their principle (Ed Helms) into thinking he’s
a superhero after they find out he plans to put them in separate classes, right
as they’re confronted by a mad scientist (Nick Kroll) who wants to rid the
world of laughter because no one will stop laughing at his name. This movie is
pretty dumb, but the writers realize that being dumb is its strongest asset. It’s
well aware of who its target demographic is and what they find funny, and they
take full advantage of it. The books were always pretty silly and juvenile, but
if you were expecting anything else from a movie where a guy in his underwear
fights a man named Professor Poopypants who operates a giant robotic toilet,
then you’re beyond help, my friend. The animation is a nice fusion of 2D and
digital animation akin to that of The
Peanuts Movie, intersected some hilarious shifts in style, including a live
action segment involving sock puppets, and a battle that’s interrupted because
they ran out of money and used it to pay tribute to one of the book’s most
famous gimmicks. Beyond that, there’s not much else to say about. It’s exactly
what it says on the tin, so you should be able to gauge whether you’ll love or
hate it pretty easily. The kids will definitely love it, though.
7/10
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