Before you read this week’s reviews, I would like to get back up in my soapbox for a moment. I have one cardinal rule for watching a movie at the theater. No talking. I’m not talking about whispering a quick note to someone. We all do that. I’m talking about openly talking. I say all this as that came into play when I saw The Accountant 2 on Saturday night. I generally avoid Friday and Saturday night showtimes like the plague, but blame the Tiger game Saturday for forcing my plans. On my immediate left I had a couple where the lady was intermittently talking, and to my right two seats over was an other couple where the lady would just not shut up. Reading subtitles, guessing what was happening next, telling the fella next what was happening when I’m confident he didn’t need it. Now, I know what you are thinking: why didn’t you just move? I sit 99% of the time in the middle of the row when I go to the theater, so that would have caused me to inconvenient quite a few people. So I just sat there putting up with the unwanted commentary track. I will share my favorite quote from the talking lady on the left. Right about when the film entered the third act, she said this: “This theater is really quiet”. That is the point. We aren’t in your living room. This end’s this week’s edition of Whining about Nonsense. On to the reviews!
After back to back incorrect guesses on Screen Unseens, I finally got back in the win column with this one. This film premiered back in January at Sundance, and was originally scheduled to be released in February. However, the LA fires destroyed the Isiah Saxon (the Director)’s home. So, we get it now, and it was worth the wait. From the jump, it feels like this film was plucked right out of the 80’s and dropped in theaters now. The score and production place you right into the fun, family film. The film utilizes matte paintings to set the landscape and tone. plot revolves around the island of Carpathia. On this island there are humans, and there are creatures known as the Ochi, monkey like creatures that are feared and hunted by the humans. Our main character Yuri later discovers a hurt baby Ochi, and decides to bring it back to it’s family. Yuli is played wonderfully by Helena Zengel, who was also in 2020’s News of the World. Joining her in the film are only three significant characters. There is Finn Wolfhard as her adopted brother, Emily Watson as her long lost mother, and her father played by Willem Dafoe. Dafoe’s Maxim is the character who gets the most room to change in the film as when we first meet him he is the trainer of a group of boys who are hunting the Ochi, and over the course of the film, he begins to soften. The Ochi are also interesting in this. As they are brought to life through puppetry and animatronics mainly, that really adds to how the film looks. This was a very enjoyable 90 minutes and should play very well with children as there isn’t very much scary stuff in here and nobody is real peril. Just a film that while predictable, is a very nice, pleasant time.
This was a simple, but very pleasant film to watch. The plot is very easy to go over. A man on remote Wallis Island hires his favorite folk duo to perform on the island. The duo though has long broken up and at least one side doesn’t know this is a reunion. Our folk duo McGwyer Mortimer is made up of Herb McGwyer (Tom Basden) and Nell Mortimer (Carey Mulligan). Of the two, Herb is the one the film focuses more on. Nell’s husband disappears from the story shortly after he is introduced, and Nell’s character only seems to be there to make Herb’s story work out to the film’s natural conclusion. Herb might be the one we are supposed to follow along, but the real star of this one Tim Key’s Charles. Charles is a well meaning goofball who never knows when to not talk, but that is part of his charm. You can tell there is a meaning behind him hiring the former duo, and we do get pieces of that reason. The film though does what I think i the right thing by leaving things not fully revealed. All we need to know about what all of this means to Charles is the look on his face during a certain song towards the film. Key is really good in this. At a pretty quick 99 minutes, this doesn’t wear out it’s welcome, and is a very nice time.
In 2016, we got an interesting action thriller called The Accountant. In it, Ben Affleck played a man named Christian Wolf, a former military, autistic accountant who uncooks the books for some unsavory parties. It was fine. Not really screaming for a sequel, but 9 year a later, here we are. All of our main characters (except Anna Kendrick) are back, and while this film felt like a natural continuation of the story, it just did Mr work for me as much as the original. It’s partly that I though my we saw too much of Bernthal’s Braxton. With him being Christian’s assassin little brother, his bigger time in this made the film more of a buddy cop film, and that wasn’t what I really wanted. The action sequences were good, but there were only a couple of them, and after the need came out this is going to be a trilogy, the tension of losing one of the brothers wasn’t there. This was just a disappointing (to me) sequel that I will probably forget about it in a week.
This isn’t hard. MCU movies have never not won their opening weekend. We can talk about their week 2’s next week. Thunderbolts* might not open huge, but it should go higher than Brave New World did. Counter programming is The Surfer, but I don’t even see that cracking the top 5.
- Thunderbolts*
- Sinners
- A Minecraft Movie
- The Accountant 2
- The King of Kings
One last one April for me, and it is the long delayed Havoc on Netflix. Then, Thursday night is Thunderbolts*, and I have been beating the drum that it will be good. We will find out if I have to eat crow. I feel bad for the people around me when the reason for the “*” at the end of the title is because the real title is the Dark Avengers.
Mitten Film Nerd 
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