Week of Dec 11th – Pure Imagination?

This week’s review recap includes the December 15th weekend. Between this weekend and next weekend, the studios dropped so many films into theaters. There are 8 films going wide, and 7 of those are next week. One film you won’t see here is The Zone of Interest, which frustrates me to no end. If you looked at my Google search history, the most common search you will see is “Zone of Interest showtimes near me”. Apparently, Metro Detroit isn’t on the limited release location list for that one. Thought for sure Ann Arbor would get it. Anyway, on to the reviews.

#102 – Screen Unseen – The Boys in the Boat

I’m now 3-3 on guessing the mystery movies. The Boys in the Boat is about the 1936 US Olympic Rowing crew. This one really isn’t a mystery in terms of the plot. You can easily guess what is going to happen throughout the whole film. That being said, the rowing sequences are fantastic. Knowing before the race starts who will win does not make the race any less gripping. If you think I’m spoiling the movie, it’s a true story from 87 years ago. Plus, they competed in one of the most famous Olympics, in Berlin in front of Hitler.

Now, for what didn’t work for me. First, the soundtrack is awful. It makes the film sound like a made for TV movie. I don’t need fun, peppy music right before a race for an Olympic spot. The other thing I didn’t care for was the main character, which is kind of a big deal. Callum Turner’s character is just sullen through the whole film, and there really is no charisma or chemistry between him and anyone else, especially his love interest. Their scenes together are just so awkward as she is so cheerful and open, and there he is just staring and saying one word answers. I’m not saying it is all Turner’s fault. He wasn’t the Director telling him how to play the character. That is on Clooney. 3.5 out 5 Huskies

#103 – The Iron Claw

I’ve been holding on to secret for a while now that I just started telling people. I like watching wrestling. I know the thing about it we aren’t supposed to say out loud. I just like the storylines and how the people who attend matches are so in every time. When I got home from Boys in the Boat on Monday, I turned on Monday Night Raw. I say all this to say that I knew the story of the Van Erich family before I went into this movie, so I knew what I was getting into. As the film plays out, you really begin to believe what Efron’s Kevin believes in his heart: The family is cursed. To say this film is a downer is an understatement, but sometimes we need films like this. Sure, this is a wrestling biopic. Dusty Rhodes is brought up, the Sheik shows up briefly at the beginning, and Ric Flair is part of the story towords the end.

What really makes this a special one though is the cast. As each new tragedy hits the family, you can just feel them slowly fall apart. Nobody more than Kevin, who at the beginning is telling his future wife how much his brothers mean to him. Efron’s emotional tailspin stands in contrast to McCallany’s patriarchal detachment. Those two have a powerful sequence at the end of the film that you really are just waiting for as things get worse and worse. The rest of the cast is just excellent here. Lily James’s Pam tries to be a light for Kevin, Jeremy Allen White is the brother who gets his big moment stolen from him, sometimes by his own action, and Harris Dickinson continues to pick the right projects to show up in. This will most likely not show up in awards circles this season, but it certainly finds a spot towards the top of my personal rankings. 4.5 out of 5 Title Belts

#104 – Wonka

Willy Wonka has appeared in many ways. First, there was the excellent 1964 book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, followed up in 1973 by the less great Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. On the stage, we have a sometimes twisted musical that last toured here in Detroit in February 2020 (the delightful time before the world exploded). Most importantly here, he has appeared three times on screen. First in 1971 played by Gene Wilder, who many view as the one, true Wonka. Then in 2005, Johnny Depp played him and it alienated the fan base (I still think that movie was pretty good though). Now we get his origin story as Timothée Chalamet takes his shot at portraying the world’s greatest chocolate maker.

One way the 71 original is better than the 05 remake is that the Wilder version is full blown musical, with some truly iconic songs. Our new film that comes out this weekend is also a musical, something the trailers only barely hint at. While there are a couple good songs in here, including a not that bad version of Pure Imagination, no song in this one is ever going to compare to any of the ones in the 1971 musical. For Wonka himself, Chalamet does play him well as a youthful, hopeful Wonka just beginning his chocolate empire. While this film ignores the 2005 version, there are some pretty obvious references to the original. If this version is to really become the Wilder Wonka, there isn’t any evidence of that in this one. There is probably 40 years between this Wonka and Wilder, so there is plenty of time for him to be betrayed, cynical, and plan a kids torture chamber, oops, I mean factory tour. Overall, this is a good family movie that isn’t going convert the 1971 cult, but this one might be more open for kids now than the 1971 would be. 3 out of 5 Chocolatiers

#105 – Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget

Aardman really only has two main franchises. There is Shaun the Sheep and the iconic Wallace and Gromit. However there was one movie released that was outside of those two and was extremely popular. That was Chicken Run (sorry Flushed Away fans). 23 years later, its sequel hits Netflix. In this one, Rocky and Ginger have a daughter, Molly, who yearns to see what is outside of the island they now call home. She gets picked up by a chicken processing plant, and an escape/rescue mission is needed. We aren’t breaking new ground here, but who really needed it to to be honest. I get why Gibson wasn’t asked to return to voice Rocky, but he just sounds like a completely different character with Zachary Levi voicing him. Ginger is voiced by someone else too (Thandie Newton for Julia Sawalha), but that wasn’t nearly as noticeable to me.

The story itself didn’t really pick up for me until Act 2 when they get To Fun-Land Farms. There the movie really shines. The “evil scheme” by the farmers was clever, and makes what could be a very dark topic warm and friendly for kids. With this being on Netflix rather than in Theaters, this could be a movie that parents grow to hate as it might be played on repeat. After you watch the film, be sure to watch the making of featurette. It really shows how much effort goes into a stop-motion film. I’ll get more into those kind of films in a post I will reveal on Wednesday. This movie was just a delightful one that has the possibility to be the movie for kids now that the original one was my generation over two decades ago. 4 out of 5 Dipping Sauces

#106 – The Family Plan

So far this week, it been nothing but good movies, but hey can’t all be winners. This one was tough one to sit through. Whalberg is usually good in comedy and action movies, but this one isn’t really one of them. The movie is a road trip movie that wants to be an actions movie too, but the parts of the movie are so far apart from each other. I think the point of the movie is the importance of family, but then Dan goes back to hiding his old life as an assassin. Instead, this is just Dan learning what his kids really want in life. It isn’t really interesting. This seems like a movie that gets released in the January dump month, not the week before Christmas. There are certainly worst movies to watch right now, but there are also better ones. 2.5 out of 5 New Identities

#107 – Maestro

What a good way to end the week. This film is Bradley Cooper’s second film he has directed. The first was A Star is Born in 2018, and since this new one isn’t a remake, it’s a little more interesting. In this one, he is telling the story of composer Leonard Bernstein. Cooper stars as Bernstein, and he is joined in this one by Carey Mulligan as Felicia Montealegre. Both Cooper and Mulligan are in the Oscar discussion for this film.

They are in those discussions for a good reason. Both Cooper and Mulligan are fantastic in this. It’s hard though to pick out who the film is centering on. At certain points it’s on Felicia, then we are back over to Leonard. The best sequences in this are when they are together, just the two of them. Cooper really knew when to place those moments to pace out the film. Something else that really worked was when we were shown Leonard in his composure role. Still though, there is just something missing here that I just can’t place after one viewing. It could be that I wanted to see more of Leonard composing, or it could be I wanted to see a little more of Felicia’s life apart from Bernstein. Even with those quibbles, this was still a really well done second film for Cooper, and it will be interesting to see what does for #3. 4 out of 5 Compositions

Next week brings us into Christmas weekend, and my last chance to watch the non-blockbusters before I go up to my parents house for two weeks. Up there, the theaters stick to the bigger releases usually. Hoping Poor Things or Zone of Interest shows up around here this upcoming week.