Mitten Film Nerd

Week of November 17th

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It’s been a minute since my last review post. Here is the lightning round recap to catch things up.

  • After the Hunt – 2.5/5
  • It Was Just an Accident (CIFF) – 4/5
  • Frankenstein (CIFF) – 4.5/5
  • Shelby Oaks – 2.5/5
  • Rental Family (CIFF) – 4.5/5
  • Is This Thing On (CIFF) – 3.5/5
  • Bugonia – 4/5
  • Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere – 3.5/5
  • A House of Dynamite – 3.5/5
  • Blue Moon – 3/5
  • Christy – 3.5/5
  • Ballad of a Small Player – 3/5
  • Anniversary – 3.5/5
  • Predator: Badlands – 3/5
  • Die My Love – 2.5/5
  • Nuremberg – 3.5/5
  • Eternity – 4/5
  • The Running Man – 4/5
  • Playdate – 3/5
  • Keeper – 3/5
  • Now You See Me, Now You Don’t – 3/5

Now that we are caught back up, hat brings us to this week. On to the reviews!

2022’s Sisu never seemed like a film that would get a sequel. Yes, it was a critical darling (94% on RT), but it only brought in a worldwide total of $14.3 million. Here we are though. In this follow-up, we see Aatami is now being hunted down by the Soviet Red Army officer who killed his family in the war. What we have over the 90 minute runtime is Stephan Lang’s Igor Draganov’s hellbent quest to finish what he started and end the “man who refuses to die”. This one is as gnarly as the original, and for the most part it works. Jorma Tommila is great again as Aatami, as is Lang. My problem is the sane I have with so many films. Basically everything is in the trailer, and the trailer played before a lot of films. I’m left in the same place I was 4 years ago: I am just not sure where they can go with another sequel. If we only get two films in this franchise, I would be fine with that.

What to say about this one. The premise is simple. As an undercover team (led by Dave Bautista) are hunting down a Mexican cartel, the team’s children decide to begin robbing said cartel, with the leader of that group being Bautista’s son (played by Jack Champion). I was ready for this one to be over by the midway point. I saw the third act twist coming as soon as the character in question got more than three lines. I have a habit of asking people as I leave the theater what they thought of the film. I do this to see how far off I am coming right off watching. The guy I asked after this one said it was the dumbest movie he has seen in years. I don’t think it is that bad, but if you put any real thought into what is going on, you come to the thought if this really happened in real life, everyone is dead in 20 minutes. So, don’t think hard. Just try to enjoy it.

I really enjoyed Part One last year. I thought it was an excellent adaptation of the stage musical, an a wonderful exception to the recent trend of movie musicals being mediocre to bad. The free market agreed. Part One grossed $759 million worldwide. So, to say there was anticipation for Part Two was high would be an understatement. There was a secret though that those in the know knew about Act 2 of the musical: it is the weirder, weaker half. That brings us to For Good, and unfortunately, that thought about the stage production is also true for the film adaptation. There were a couple songs I liked in this. “For Good” is just as good as “Defying Gravity” and “Wizard and I” to me, and I liked “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished”. I didn’t really either of the new songs that I’m sure are only here so the film can grab an Oscar nom for best original song. It is not the film’s fault that Boq and Fiyero are largely absent, but I could have used more Ethan Slater and Jonathan Bailey here. For as much as I felt let down by this, Erivo and Grande are both excellent in this half too. I feel like people who don’t know about what goes down in Act 2 might have a harder time here. For people like me who liked the second act of the stage production, there is just a feeling of disappointment that the feeling I had last year just never really showed up this time. That wasn’t true for everyone in my theater though. I heard and saw the people crying towards the end. I see this again Thanksgiving night with my family, so maybe I’ll be more open to it now knowing what to expect.

This film is based on the 2011 novella, by Denis Johnson, and in it we follow the life of Robert Grainier from his youth as an orphan, to his quiet adulthood working on railroads and logging. It highlights his experiences with loss, love, the challenging world, and the natural world. Director Clint Bentley has put together here a beautiful if not unforgiving film about how life works for so many of us. Joel Edgerton is fantastic as Grainier, and the supporting cast really works as well. Felicity Jones and William H Macy turn in the best performances I have seen them have in a few years. The secret MVP of the film is Will Patton as the narration. It was such a great idea to have a narrator guide us through this story. It would have been so much more clunky and stilted if the characters had to stop and explain their feelings during parts of the film. Patton comes off as someone telling you a story, and it works so well. There is so much more I want to say about this one, but to tell you why I think Edgerton is so good in this would give away what happens at the mid point, and what sends this film into a much more introspective place. Good thing it is on Netflix right now. You can watch it right away. That might be the only time I say it’s good it’s on Netflix and on in a theater.

Now for the opposite path of Netflix to the theater. I try to watch the Netflix releases in the theater if they are available before they hit the service because I think they should be seen in the theater format. It’s why I sought out Frankenstein and Wake Up Dead Man in Chicago. Jay Kelly was also in Chicago, but it didn’t fit my schedule, so I managed to see it during it’s brief theatrical run before it hits Netflix next Friday. Jay Kelly is Noah Baumbach’s new feature, and it follows a friendship between a famous actor (George Clooney) and his manager (Adam Sandler) as they travel through Europe and reflect on their life choices, relationships, and legacies. The reason for the European road trip is Kelly’s youngest daughter is on holiday their before she goes off to college and out of his life. While Kelly is the main focus, I think it is Sandler’s Ron who has the most character movement. He is the everyman person we can relate to the most in this world of rich and famous, and it is him that we see realize what rally has been going on over the last 30 years. Clooney is very good here, but he is basically playing an exaggerated version of himself. Others that show up here are Laura Dern as Jay’s publicist, Billy Crudup as and old friend, Jim Broadbent as an old director friend, and Riley Keough as Jay’s eldest daughter. This film might be divisive to those who have no time for the people of Hollywood, but what we have here is a story of what happens when you focus on something so much, you ignore everything that matters. You are left wondering if it was really worth it. We get a sense the Kelly comes up with an answer to that towards the end, but it doesn’t really matter. We all know what the answer is. Thankfully, the time I spent watching this film wasn’t a waste of time.

Wicked: For Good broke almost a three month slump of underwhelming results in the Box Office last week. Now, it is Zootopia 2’s time to do the same. 

  1. Zootopia 2
  2. Wicked: For Good
  3. Now You See Me, Now You Don’t
  4. Predator: Badlands
  5. The Running Man

The end on the month is upon us, and it’s holiday week. That means it is a thin week on the books for me. Only new one right now is Zootopia with the kids on Black Friday. I guess I’ll see what else pops up this week.

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