This year’s SXSW occurred this past week, and there were some films in that festival that I am looking forward to. On the Oscar front, A Real Pain, Civil War, and Sing Sing were all part of the festival. Monkey Man and The Fall Guy both had their world premieres there this past week, and both had great reviews coming out of their showings. Y2K also had its premiere and that one sounds promising. Being a Michigander, I am bummed we don’t really have a festival like that. Yes, we have the Freep Film Festival, but that is mainly for documentaries and very small independent films. Detroit is close to the halfway point between Chicago and Toronto, and they are both a 4-hour drive away. I’ll eventually go to TIFF one day, but my plans this October is to go to the Chicago International Film Festival. It’s their 60th annual festival, so I guess it’s a good year to go to it for the first time. It possibly be my first chance to watch A Real Pain too. That’s seven months away though. There is still work to do now. On to the reviews!
I grew to despise the trailer for this one. I have a post elaborating that feeling coming on the 27th. I really was sure it gave away most of the film. After seeing the film, I was mostly correct. There are many 4 scenes in the film not shown in some way in the trailer. I’ll elaborate more in a post in two weeks because if I do it here, we are in spoiler territory. Lionsgate might not care about that, but I do.
As for the film, it was better than I thought it would be. The dog is the best part of the film, but if you are expecting to see him in the majority of the runtime, don’t. Wahlberg is the star here, so it’s his story with an adorable dog joining the party in act two. My big issue with this one was editing, or the lack thereof at some points. This thing is longer that it needs to be, and it’s already around 100 minutes. Do we really need to see every member go down the zip line one at a time. I know something is going to happen with Wahlberg, and he is going last. Maybe we cut showing the second member go down. Another area that stuck out was at a transition area. Wahlberg is sitting down checking on Arthur. One member walks over, sits down, talks to Mark, gets up walks away. As soon as he is out of frame, another member does the same thing. None of them discussed anything personal. Why not have them already near each other to cut out a few minutes? I know I’m being nit picky. For a normal person, I think this movie will be well liked. It was just average for me.
Every year there is a film I completely miss the boat on. Two years ago, it was The Outfit. Last year, it was Beau is Afraid. It appears I discovered this year’s version. I just didn’t mesh with this one. Stewart and O’Brian were pretty good in this, and Harris was kind of doing his own thing. It’s the story I had a problem with. In the first half, the film just kind of spins its wheels. You get the littlest of info piece by piece, and while that isn’t a bad thing, it has to lead to something worthwhile. In this one, it really doesn’t. Something happens at the mid point that completely changes the flow of the movie, and sends the storyline for O’Brien’s character into a nosedive. The last 20 minutes just landed with a thud to me. Again though, I’m on the other end of opinions on this. On Letterboxd, there are around 30,400 reviews for this film. 94% of those have a review score of 3/5 or better. I’m in the 6% daring to be different I guess.
This was the second half of a double feature I made with Love Lies Bleeding. Going into today, I expected this one to be the one liked less. This one surprised me a little. It was a nice, clever movie that didn’t take itself too seriously, and that in itself made it more enjoyable. The chemistry Smith and Bogan had was really believable, and Smith’s realization declaration near the end was a nice culmination to something you know that character has had building up inside the whole time. Also, why isn’t David Alan Grier in more things? His calm, wise mentor character really made this film work. This film isn’t out to change the world, but it’s an enjoyable hour and a half.
It’s pretty easy this week to guess the weekend winner for this upcoming weekend. After a few weeks of sand worms and pandas having control, the Ghostbusters make their return. Dune: Part 2 and Kung Fu Panda 4 should still make a decent amount, but between those three movies, they will blot out the sun for their competitors.
1. Ghostbuster: Frozen Empire
2. Oppenheimer
3. Kung Fu Panda 4
4. Arthur the King
5. Cabrini
Next week is the first 4 movie week since the beginning of February. It might be the last one for the foreseeable future. Of those 4 though, it’s only one in the theater. The other three will be from the comforts of la casa. Two on Prime and one on Netflix. Hopefully they are good. Streaming movies are a crapshoot lately. Also, later this afternoon is when I’ll be posting the bracket for the Box Office Classic. Until then, enjoy your day.
Mitten Film Nerd 
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