It was announced this week that Conan O’Brien will return to host the Academy Awards for the third year in a row. I think this is awesome as I will always be Team Coco. Plus, I don’t think there is a better option out there to host. The only other one I would want to do it is John Mulany, but he doesn’t want to do it. So it’s Conan’s to lose. On to the reviews!
Four adults navigate deception and desire when a fallen tree on New Year’s Eve triggers a chain of events that challenges their relationships and the lies they tell themselves and each other.
I wanted to like this more than I did. The cast, for the most part, is pretty solid. One married couple consists of Debs (Alexandra Daddario) and Josh (Daveed Diggs), and the other married couple is Melanie (Ashley Park) and Mitch (Josh Gad). The two couples are spending New Year’s together at a remote cabin. Debs and Mitch from what we can gather have been lifelong friends, but one morning when they go for a hike, they return to see Josh and Melanie having an affair. This event is the thing that causes the rest of the runtime to seem like it is spinning its wheels. The secret is out relatively soon after, so the rest of the time is just both couples working through their relationships, or what is left of them. That alone isn’t too bad, but what weighs it down for me is Gad. I just found him annoying and from the start he just doesn’t work with Park. Daddario and Diggs were a believable couple though. I think is definitely one you can skip as there really isn’t much here to make it worth watching. The drama isn’t very interesting, and the humor isn’t too great either.
A talented piano tuner’s meticulous skills for tuning pianos lead him to discover an unexpected aptitude for cracking safes, turning his life upside down.
We are now in the section of the year where we are starting to see more and more festival films from last year show up in theaters. This film premiered at Telluride last fall, and also showed up at Toronto. It will be in theaters at the end of the month, but I went to an early screening this week. This was such a great film. Leo Woodall is fantastic as Niki, a piano tuner who suffers from a hearing impairment that happens to make him great at his job. His mentor is Harry (Dustin Hoffman), and when he happens go to the hospital, Niki now feels the need to find the money to help pay the bills. It is at a tuning appointment that he meets Uri, the security officer at the same house Niki is. URI’s crew really are thiefs, and it turns out Niki is great at cracking safes. Outside of this iffy activity, Niki also starts a relationship with Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu), a piano prodigy preparing for a big concert that hopefully leads to an internship with a musician she idolizes. While this film is predictable for the most part (as soon as Niki gave Ruthie a certain gift, I knew where things were headed). The final 15 minutes does send things in a direction that changes things a bit, but it does cap the film on a pleasant note. The chemistry between Woodall and Liu really worked for me, and Woodall was really great in playing a character dealing with so many differing choices, and trying to keep things in control. In the end, that predicability I brought up earlier is what keeps it from the top of the rankings, but this is very much worthy of your time when this is released in a couple weeks.
After breaking the mysterious “One Wish Willow” to win his crush’s heart, a hopeless romantic finds himself getting exactly what he asked for but soon discovers that some desires come at a dark, sinister price.
There was a lot of hype for this coming out of TIFF last year. As the runner up to the People’s Choice Award for Midnight Madness at the festival (Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie won), the film was quickly acquired by Focus Features after a bidding war. Going into this, you generally know that this will be a “be careful what you wish for” tale. That undersells what this film is going for in a big way. When our main character Bear (Michael Johnston) makes his wish on a magic wishing stick he buys from a record store to have his friend Nikki (Inde Navarrette) “love him more than anything else in the world”, you probably can guess where things will be heading. What Director/Writer Curry Baker does here though is something that must be seen to believe. That is mainly to the credit of Navarrette. She obviously plays two versions of Nikki (before and after the wish), but what happens through the film is the real Nikki shows up briefly. That shows us that what we are basically watching is a hostage film. That upsetting thought aside, “Wish Nikki” does some crazy things and very quickly Bear is regretting the wish that he can’t take back. The problem is that I was left feeling no sympathy for Bear and thought of him as the antagonist of the film. I look forward to more people seeing this so I can talk about what Nikki does in the film. Navarrette is both inviting and terrifying, and switches betweenthe two on a dime. It leaves us with an upsetting time, but one that made me laugh at how uncomfortable the situations are. That is a sign that I am fully on board. I guess what keeps this from being too high in my rankings is I kind of wanted more from Bear and Nikki’s two friends we see here (also known as the only other two characters in the film). We are for the most part just with Bear and Nikki as things continue to go downhill for Bear. there isn’t a whole lot more time to get anything else story wise, and it is not a bad thing that things are not explained fully.TThe mystery behind the wish sticks remains one. The moral of this film for me is if you have one wish to make: just wish for money.
(Programming note: I will be posting a spoiler discussion of Obsession on Tuesday. In it I will be ranking how cringy Wish Nikki’s actions are, and how everything is Bear’s fault. It will be fun hopefully.)
Two sisters embark on an epic quest for revenge; confronting a charged family history that will push them to extraordinary lengths.
There was one thing that ran through my mind as I watched this film: I could see how each of scenes could have been staged in a play. There was a reason for this as this film is based on a 2018 Off-Broadway play by Aleshea Harris. This isn’t usually that big of a problem, and I’m sure this is a good adaptation, but it felt smaller to me than I think they are going for. I just wanted things to be fleshed out a bit more between the big scenes. When you make a film adaptation, it grants you the ability to add to make it a more complete thing. Now, quite a few adaptations go too far with this, and I don’t think too much need to be added here. We just don’t transition very smoothly at parts of the film, and one character seemed to have a bigger role halfway in, but disappears from the story. The cast though in what we have are very good. Our two twins are played by Kara Young and Mallory Johnson, and both are relatively new to the movie scene. Young has had success on the stage, winning Tony and Obie Awards. Johnson, on the other hand, has only had a few roles so far. They play the twins so well, with Young’s Racine being the tougher one, and Johnson’s Anaia being the quiet timid one. That difference we see comes in to play when their mother (Vivica A. Fox) tasks them with killing their father (Sterling K.Brown). Racine takes a little too much joy in this plan, and the conflict that comes up a few times is Anaia being concerned with how this is changing her sister. With a relatively small cast, and a focus on the characters, this turns in a bit of a character study masked by a revenge tale. This was a pretty good film that is unlike a lot of the films we get now.
A covert team of elite operatives are living in the shadows. When a ruthless despot steals a billion-dollar fortune, they’re sent to take it back-an impossible heist that erupts into a deadly game of strategy, deception and survival.
I find myself usually liking Guy Ritchie films more than others. However, this time it just didn’t work for me. That isn’t to say it really was any of the cast’s fault. Henry Cavill and Jake Gyllenhaal were both fine, and Eiza Gonzalez had the most to do. One issue was that I felt all three were acting at like 80% of what they were capable of. Cavill and Gylennhaal both were kind of on cruise control for the bulk of the film. It isn’t like they aren’t used to the Ritchie style of film. Cavill and Gonzalez were both in Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, and Gonzalez was in Ritchie last film, Fountain of Youth. There was a bigger problem with the script that sunk the film for me. I’ll try and explain my issue with In the Grey by comparing it with another film: Ocean’s Eleven. In a heist film like Eleven, we see the gang go over the plan, then later when they go for the heist, we see how it goes wrong and how they adjust. In Grey, when they go over the plan, we actually see them performing all the acts in real time. So what if comes off like is a book report recap for the better part of the first two acts. It of sorts saps all the intrigue of something could go wrong. Most people complain that a film is “tell not show” when they want “show not tell”. So, in this instance, it is show and tell. Not really what I want to see. Unlike a lot of Ritchie’s catelog, I don’t think I will be revisiting this one too soon.
New Star Wars next weekend means it’s an easy weekend to pick the winner.
- Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu
- Mortal Kombat II
- In the Grey
- Michael
- Obsession
Finals for the Favorites 2 Tourney take place on Tuesday, and that day is also the one where I post my Obsession spoiler thoughts. Reviews wise, I have a mystery movie tomorrow night that I think is either Backrooms or Passenger. I have Prime’s new Jack Ryan entry on Friday or Saturday, and, of yeah, new Star Wars on Thursday that I really hope feels more than what could have just been Season 4 of a Disney+ show. Feel the excitement.
Mitten Film Nerd 
Leave a comment