I thought that was a TV movie?
I swear I saw paid film critics actually reviewing it at the time, which I can’t recall them ever bothering with for TV movies, but its existence has already begun to fade again, so I could simply not be remembering correctly.
KIN looks like an Amblin-ified reimagining of Laserblast.
On Netflix.
Anyone excited for AXEL? About a kid who finds a discarded robot dog and fights to keep it from the corrupt parties that created it? I liked Chappie, but was thinking I’d like it better if Chappie had no dialogue, and was a dog.
Oh and if the other protagonists weren’t a cringe inducing south African, um… “rap” duo playing at acting.
But anyway, if I had to choose one movie about a boy and his dog between ALPHA and AXEL, it’d be AXEL, because I really like robots, or something.
The lead kid in Axel is the same dude who played the oldest son in Colony, and he was BY FAR the worst thing about Colony, so no. Not looking forward to Axel.
Never watched Colony. How was that?
It was actually really good and criminally underappreciated. But that kid was fucking terrible.
My friend/Pooh entheusiast saw Christopher Robin. They thought it sucked.
I haven’t even paid attention to the question of the film itself; I’m still trying to get over how they decided to make a movie about the disillusionment of the fictional counterpart of the person who hated having his actual life overshadowed by his fictional counterpart. That’s some kind of meta-fucked.
This one might be enough for its own thread, but how about SUPPORT THE GIRLS? It seems to have gotten really good reviews, and I loved his last movie, RESULTS. That one was set in a fitness center and has one of my favorite Guy Pearce performances; this seems to be a similar workplace comedy but is at a “breastaraunt.”
Support the Girls is pretty great, I just saw it last night.
AXL looks like a fake movie poster you’d see in another movie.
SEARCHING does sound interesting based on what little I’ve heard.
Despite seeing the trailer for this when the trailer came out, I totally forgot this movie was a thing. Looked nice from the trailer, or at least nicely shot anyways. Kind of surprised I didn’t see a trailer for it after that, it’s a Bleecker Street movie, and Bleecker Street at least was running lots of ad space before stuff on YouTube.
I thought Alpha was surprisingly decent; it made me think of a Malick movie if he was more accessible.
So, about Guardians of the Galaxy 3 then …
There’s a lot been written recently about how “the romcom is back,” in no small part thanks to Netflix, so I decided to start checking out some of the bigger ones that are Netflix originals that came out over the summer. For the record, the list seems to be: SET IT UP, THE KISSING BOOTH, THE GUERNSEY POTATO PEEL PIE AND LITERARY SOCIETY, and TO ALL THE BOYS I’VE LOVED BEFORE. Because I don’t think any of these deserves or has a dedicated thread, I’ll just use this space to talk about them. (There’s also CRAZY RICH ASIANS, which has its own thread and I still need to see.)
First up was THE KISSING BOOTH, a contemporary teen romance in the vein of LOVE, SIMON and EDGE OF SEVENTEEN. The comparison I kept thinking of was EASY A, and it very clearly wants to be a modern John Hughes riff. However, it’s not as good as those movies. In fact, it’s quite bad and I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s one of those flicks where it indulges in a lot of bad ideas - chiefly the two men thinking they have a right to dictate the female lead’s sexual behavior - for 90 minutes and then thinks the girl telling them off in the last 15 makes it okay. It also doesn’t help that the “bad boy” clearly has anger issues, including one scene where he’s pretty verbally abusive to the girl he eventually sleeps with. That said, there is some cute stuff in it and it’s very pretty to look at. Joey King, probably best known around here as Gus’s daughter from Season 1 of FARGO, is quite good and if she had better material she could be a real breakout star. (It also occurs to me that we’re on the verge of a major wave of new stars post-J-Law.) I think the thing that annoyed me most about it is that she’s clearly trying to work with the material, and it just doesn’t know how to use her. I give it two stars, but it’s one of those failures that I’ll probably come back to to figure out what went wrong.
Bits of Quest For Fire and Clan of the Cave Bear, one big chunk of Never Cry Wolf. It’s pretty but also pretty predictable. I’m trying to make “Quest For Fido” happen.
The one thing I will give The Kissing Booth is how frank it is with teenage sexuality. I feel like a lot of modern teen comedies come off as fairly chaste, whereas the couple in the Kissing Booth have a bunch of sex throughout the movie, which feels a bit more realistic to the real teenage experience, rather than a kiss almost seeming taboo. Otherwise, the movie is bad - and even that element is handled much better by Blockers.
One one hand, you’re right.
On the other, I wish their approach didn’t feel like “How many times can we get Joey King to take her shirt off?”