Reaction Shots

Sometimes a movie just knows what it is and what it wants to do and the team behind it are on-board/in-sync enough to make it happen. I was the only person in the theater and part of me was sorry there weren’t other people around to laugh with but the other part of me was extremely glad to laugh my ass off with impunity. And volume.  Josh Ruben and the writing team (Philip Murphy, Christopher Landon, and Michael Kennedy) wrote a solid rom-com set in a serial killer slasher flick that, well, just made me happy. Don’t get me wrong. I love a good rom-com; I really do. But as I’ve opined lately, it’s an oft-flabby genre and if there’s one development I’ve gotten behind, it’s the rom-com/horror mash-up.  Granted that this isn’t a new development; you could argue that the genre mix has been around since My Bloody Valentine (1982), but it’s been in the past few years, maybe decade, that we encounter more of these little marvels. One of my favorite films from last year, Lisa Frankens...

  Brady Corbet’s opus is a strong flick within certain parameters. It is an expertly crafted, epic bit of filmmaking. There is historical sweep, beautifully executed moments of intimacy, and grand themes about capitalism, art, and humanity. I wanted to really like this film. I really did. There’s much in it worth pondering; it’s just that the film is too organized, too aware of itself, and while it is one big swing, a large part of the problem is that you feel like you’re being shown just how big a swing it is. In some ways, The Brutalist is more about filmmaking itself - and perhaps even about this film in particular - than it is about the man at the center of the film, Lázló Tóth (Adrien Brody in yet another career-defining role…that’s so banal, his career is very well defined, and this is a way of saying that he’s predictably outstanding).  In many ways The Brutalist feels like it is supposed to be Corbet’s   Tár . However, where Field's film laid a groundwork for gett...

This is a silly, silly movie. There’s so much goodwill surrounding Ke Huy Quan and the whole wast is so game, that it’s relatively easy to forgive how silly it is. How silly is it? It wants to be an action-packed rom-com centered on a realtor who has a sordid, violent past, and is populated with hit men who write poetry and try to guide their partners through navigating break-ups. It’s a start and stop proposition, as well. When it leans into its Looney Toons set-ups and pacing, the film fires on all cylinders, but as fine as Ariana DeBose and Ke Huy Quan are, there’s a halting element when they get together. The voiceovers don’t help, either. Also, Marvin’s gangster brought Alvin (Daniel Wu) is so cookie-cutter, that there is no sense of threat; the stakes are undercut by the fun of the mayhem and the comedic high notes, of which there are several. A set-piece where Marshawn Lynch (once again showing off killer comic chops) and André Erikson show up to pressure Marvin into revealing R...

….but it does start out like one. Here’s spoiler-free description but I promise some spoilers are coming later. I’ll use a big space and hash-tags and fair warning when we get there. Josh and Iris are two twenty-somethings going away for a weekend with Josh’s friends at a lakeside “cabin”, so Josh’s friend Sergey calls it; call it what it is, a big house. We’ve seen in flashback Josh and Iris’s meet-cute, we know that Iris is insecure around his friends and is convinced that his pal, Sergey’s girlfriend Kat, hates her. In addition to Sergey and Kat, there’s also Eli and Patrick and while everyone is decent to Iris, Kat does make her antipathy known. Will Iris win Kat over? Will hijinks among the couples ensue? Will there be a major conflict, break-up, and get back together series with Josh and Iris? Well, of course, silly!!! Iris has a secret, though, and so for that matter, does everyone! It’s a fun romp chockfull of laughter, romance, and sexy time!  And lots of bodies and blood ...