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Bad Monkey (2024)
This sort of thing has been done better
Bad Monkey falls into a subgenre I generally really enjoy - the breezy crime comedy with an irreverent hero. Psyche, The Finder or the first season of The Glades are good examples.
Bad Monkey aims for the same thing, but in the first episode it just is never funny enough, engaging enough, or clever enough to keep my interest.
Vince Vaughn is only adequate as the protagonist. The narrator is good, but the narration is odd, in that the show's writers keep apologizing for fairly standard storytelling approaches. The most interesting characters are several sexy women, but they seem to be peripheral, so you need to like the rather Vaughn and the blandly likeable L. Scott Caldwell.
The mystery is like a million other mysteries, but while a show like The Glades gives you a different mystery each week, it seems Bad Monkey is offering one generic mystery for the entire season.
Nothing about this is bad. Little about it is particularly good. I can't recommend it.
Genius (2017)
stories of interesting people
Overall, this bio series is well produced and acted. Some people have argued about what counts as a genius, but these are all people who changed the world, so I'm okay with their interpretation of the concept.
I've been watching these seasons out of order. I really liked the first episode of the first season but then I got distracted and never watched the rest, only tuning in again for season 3, which was overall a more effective portrayal of Aretha Franklin than the movie that came out a little later.
The MLK/Malcolm X season was also riveting and effecting, and Griffin Matthews's portrayal of Bayard Rustin was fantastic - he was better than the actor in the movie Rustin.
Picasso was well done but the time hoping didn't work. The movie ran on two tracks maybe 30 years apart, but there didn't seem to be any compelling reason in the narrative and it was just annoying. Also, Picasso, is loathsome. But still, very good acting and production.
One episode left of Picasso and then *finally* I'll finish up Einstein.
Inside Out 2 (2024)
clever, hilarious sequel, but I have a quibble
I loved Inside Out, and I love the sequel almost as much. This time around, the little girl is less little, a hockey wiz enjoying her best life until puberty hits her and she does what kids hitting puberty do - go psycho.
This involves the arrival of a number of new emotions which compete to power with the emotions from the first movie. Things get out of hand, there is a lot of arguing, one begins to wonder if it's true that people only have one positive emotion in the head competing against tons of negative ones (probably) and, like the first movie, you get two great, dual track stories, one of the girl, one of the emotions in her head.
But one thing bugs me - anxiety.
Anxiety in this film is very strategic, and I'm not sure that's what anxiety is. I feel they need two emotions, anxiety and ... cunning? Planning? (I know those aren't emotions, but there's got to be something that would work) that would work together to cause what happens in the movie. I just don't believe anxiety is that ... calculating.
At least not for me. But still, amazing movie.
Robot Dreams (2023)
A bittersweet love letter to NYC
This movie, written by a Spanish director, is one of the best portrayals I've ever seen of New York (he spent time there).
I mean, yes, this is a charming story about friendship and loss and it's funny and touching and imaginative and pleasant and incredibly original and blah blah blah, and if you weren't around in New York in the 80s you're not going to recognize how well it caught a million little details. But I was around, so I spent the whole movie thinking - "oh wow, it's that thing! I remember that thing!"
It's also a movie that really sticks with you, because it just really takes you on a *journey*.
Recommended even if you're not a New Yorker, but if you are and you haven't seen this yet, you absolutely have to.
Futurama: The One Amigo (2024)
yes, the premise is ridiculously dates, but it's also terrible from a sci-fi standpoint
As everyone is noting, centering an episode of anything around NFTs in 2024 is ludicrous. Especially since many of us believed from the first weeks that NFTs were a hyped up flash in the pan that could never get past the ludicrousness of the concept.
But the other issue is that this episode only makes sense if NFTs were just reinvented in the year 3000. Because otherwise, how could no one understand how the blockchain works? At this point the blockchain would be old technology, like the steam engine. You wouldn't have to have kids explain it to you.
In its younger, smarter days, Futurama, if they had done something like this at all, would have created an NFT-like system and perhaps tossed in a joke about the collapse of NFTs in the 21st century.
The main writer of this episode appears to be someone who's been with the series since the start, so I think this represents the way old people become so out of touch they are no longer funny. I saw it with people like Bob Hope when I was a kid.
The other story thread, about Mexico, is not bad. Not great, but not bad. But overall, this is a huge embarassment for the series.
30 Monedas (2020)
Mixed bag first season, amazing second season
The first episode of 30 Coins was incredible, an action horror story that kept me enthralled, as a priest, a mayor, and a veterinarian battle evil.
The next few episodes weren't nearly as good, but they were enjoyable, with the priest and the vet keeping your attention more than the white bread mayor and his complaining wife lost it.
But as the series went on in its increasingly convoluted way, I began to get bored. By the final episodes, I was thinking I might not bother watching season 2 at all.
But I was curious enough to look in at the first episode of that second season and I was instantly hooked. Haruka was a terrific character who added a little cosmopolitan style. The season story was more straightforward and held the momentum much better. The mayor's wife because a far more interesting character.
While season 1 completely lost me by the end, season 2 has me wishing for season 3. I understand the show was cancelled but I've heard the creator is still trying to find a way to make it happen. Fingers crossed he does.
The Merry Widow (1934)
sparkling
Driven principally by the brilliant direction of Ernst Lubitsch and the charm and chemistry of Chevalier and MacDonald, this musical waltzes along through its silly story.
The real story of the film isn't the plot, but the underlying cat and mouse romance as Chevalier attempts to seduce MacDonald while she attempts to tame him.
Lubitsch is a master of froth, and this is him at his frothiest. The movie is remarkably visually engaging. I often tend to look up things on my phone or fold some laundry while watching movies on TV, but that's really impossible here - every second has something in the frame you need to see, whether it's clever visual gags like MacDonald's closets or just Chevalier working a room, with women swaying towards him as he hops over banisters to get to them. It's the work of a director who started out in silent movies and intimately understands the power of visual storytelling.
It's also a musical from the days before musicals were codified by MGM. Lubitsch approaches song and dance the way he approaches everything other aspect of the movie - as a way to create visual engagement while revealing character. The musical elements tend to flow in and out instead of dividing neatly into song/story/song/story as they do in many Hollywood musicals.
That integrated approach does preclude, for the most part, the amazing set pieces of other musicals, but there is a stunning waltz orgy near the end where waltzing dancers seem to multiply until they fill the screen.
This is a must-see.
Murder in the Private Car (1934)
entertaining mess
This jumbled oddity involves a goofy "crime deflector" protecting a long-lost heiress.
There are a lot of issues. The deflector idea is intriguing but it's not unclear how Mr. Scott figures out the things he does while very clear that most of the time he's an idiot who fails in his appointed role. It's also hard to believe his romance with the much younger Georgia.
The character of Ruth also makes zero sense, when she learns something awful about the man who raised her it doesn't phase her, and early dangerous encounters flow off her like water on a duck.
But while the filming borders on inept, the movie is enjoyably humorous, the main characters seem to be having some fun, and there is a surprisingly suspenseful runaway trail sequence that could have appeared in a much better movie.
If you like old comedy-mysteries, this isn't the best, but it's not the worst.
Murder at Glen Athol (1936)
bad movie with one great performance
I almost gave up on this no-budget whodunit in the first 10 minutes. It was dull, flat, blandly staged and indifferently acted. Then Iris Adrian breezed into the room as a flirtatious gold digger who might as well have been wearing a neon sign saying "trouble."
Adrian's scenes were genuinely engaging, and if she'd had more screen time that alone could have made this movie worth watching. But she doesn't have that many scenes, and the dull script and convoluted, shapeless mystery had nothing else to recommend it.
By the way - this movie has two titles "Murder at Glen Athol" and "The Criminal Within" and neither makes much sense. No one ever talks about glen Athol and the criminal within doesn't make any sense in the context of the movie - they were clearly just trying to come up with a title that would intrigue people.
Anyway, in spite of Adrian's performance I can't recommend this movie.
Sweet Tooth: Out of the Deep Woods (2021)
has potential, but also has concerning flaws
The premise of this series gets sketched out pretty quickly. Deadly virus, mysterious hybrid births, chaos, a man and his hybrid son. It's a solid premise filmed in an engagine manner.
BUT ... this first episode has an intrusive and completely unnecessary narrator. He basically describes things you're seeing. He rarely tells you anything you can't figure out on your own, and never tells you anything a better script couldn't have show instead of told.
A small example: The narrator says the source of the hybrids, is a mystery everyone will obsess over. 1 minute later we hear a collage of TV broadcasters, one of whom says, everyone is puzzling over the source of the hybrid. He uses almost the exact same words as the narrator. So what was the point?
Even when not using the narrator, the episode leans very heavily on exposition.
To me, this suggests that the series' makers either aren't confident in their ability to show instead of tell or they aren't confident in their audience's ability to understand what they're watching.
Still, the kid star is likable, as is Nonso Anozie, the episode looks good, and the premise has a lot of promise.
So I'm going to watch a few more episodes and see how they are. But I don't know if this series will ultimately be one I stick with or not.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)
unpleasant and unengaging prequel to a much better movie
Mad Max: Fury Road was easily the best of the Mad Max Movies, with amazing action and just enough moments of genuine feeling to keep it from feeling like a hollow exercise in mayhem.
Furiousa, on the other hand, a prequel about the title character, is for the most part a hallow exercise in mayhem.
Some exciting early action soon devolves into an unendingly sadistic portrayl of Furiousa's horrific childhood. Furiousa is tossed here and there, her only goal to just survive. There is a lot of action, but there's no reason to care about any of it, because both sides are terrible and Furiousa is just trying not to die.
The movie is over halfway done before Furiousa takes agency, and at this point the movie improves, since there is some reason to root for some people over others. But even though one cheers for Furiousa because of her terrible life, you don't really cheer for her because you care specifically about her. He's spent most of the movie not talking, her face often hidden (and later covered in war paint that masks her expression), making her little more than a generic victim of war.
Still, for most of the last hour, the movie is fairly entertaining. But then there's the final confrontation, and my god that goes on forever. What should have been a couple of minutes is dragged out to 15.
The movie ends more of less where Mad Max begins, so the two movies together do give a pretty detailed bio of Furiousa if you want it. But we didn't learn anything necessary, or insightful, or that wasn't suggested in some way in the economical story moments of Fury Road.
If you want sadism and empty spectacle, you might like this. But for me this is the weakest of all the Mad Max films, and I regret wasting 2 1/2 hours on it.
Words and Music (1948)
Mickey Rooney and a few good numbers can't save this mess
At first glance, Words and Music looks like it will be terrible, as the remarkably bland Tom Drake talks to the camera as Richard Rodgers.
At second glance, the film looks like it will be lots of fun, as Mickey Rooney barrels into it as the chaotic and brusquely charming Lorenz Hart.
The pair's early songwriting struggles and success play out well, and the first big musical number gets a lot of fun out of a song I've never heard of, Mountain Greenery.
Unfortunately, the movie decides to be more showcase for songs than actual story. The actual bio takes a backseat to a mixed bag of musical numbers. And even when they're good, like Thou Swell or the brilliantly danced (by Gene Kelly and Vera-Ellen) but silly Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, they just come across as a bunch of random songs that make one wonder why they bothered with a story at all.
As for the dram, well, Drake's guy-narrating-a-school-film-on-the-constitution delivery drags the narrative down with every appearance and Rooney finds himself trapped in a fictionalized version of Hart's life that he can't find a way out of. Rooney does his best (it's the only time I've been that impressed with him) but is let down by a skeletal script and lackluster direction.
Even by the standards of Hollywood songwriter biopics, this is bad. In spite of Rooney's performance, I don't recommend it.
The Changeling (2023)
Fascinating start, completely goes off the rails by the end
It's hard to even know what this series is, exactly, for quite a few episodes. Is it supernatural? Is it about mental instability? What exactly is it? It's halfway through before that's clear.
But even while it keeps you guess, it keeps you interested, because it's such a wild ride and the performances are great.
And then right at the end, it complete falls apart. The penultimate episode is tedious and has almost zero to do with the series.
Now you would think that was because they didn't have enough to make up the full 8 episodes and were tossing in filler. But apparently not, because the final episode is rushed and short. It's not as bad as the previous episode, but it also doesn't wrap things up - they were hoping for a 2nd season - and at the same time it doesn't really make you want to watch more. It just makes you wish they'd given us a satisfactory ending, which they definitely did not.
It's a shame. Most of this was really engrossing, but the ending has to be considered an unforced error.
Three Little Words (1950)
A serviceable vehicle for some great musical numbers
Kalmer and Ruby wrote songs. They sat in a room, and they wrote songs, and they were hits. Which is great, but not that interesting. And while this film does make some attempt to act like there's some tension, and squabbling, the movie can't really make itself anything more than a song about two guys who made their living hanging out and writing songs.
So as a light-hearted biographical drama, Three Little Words is pretty useless.
But it does offer an excuse to turn some of those songs into musical numbers, and some of them are really incredible. The best is Astaire and Vera-Ellen as domestic dancers - they were two of Hollywood's best dancers and it is always wondrous to see them together. Other top numbers are Vera-Ellen and a bunch of guys, Astaire and a cane, and a very amusing performance of I Wanna Be Loved By You mimed by Debbie Reynolds to the song's originator, Helen Kane.
In between dance numbers, Skelton does some light physical comedy, there are mild jokes, and there are women calmly dealing with idiot men. But the movie keeps getting dumber and dumber in spite of its likable cast, with the laste 15 minutes being genuinely painful to watch.
This isn't atypical of Astaire films - he made a million formulaic moves with great dance numbers but only a few genuinely good movies (The Band Wagon, of course, alongside Easter Parade and Top Hat).
So if you want to see a typical Astaire musical with typically brilliant dancing, you should watch this. Or you could just find the dance numbers online and skip the movie altogether. Your call.
The Bear: Tomorrow (2024)
like watching sauce dry
In the third season of Twin Peaks, there was an episode that begins with an endless slow motion shot of a bomb exploding, then nonsense happens for the rest of the hour. I thought of it while watching the Bear's season 3 opener because, like that TP episode, it was painfully slow, did nothing to further the story, was horribly pretentious, could be removed from the series altogether without losing anything of value, and was rhapsodized over by some people who claimed it was a brilliant work of art.
The episode is simply an hour-long montage of scenes, most wordless, that are a mix of moments from Carmy's life, either scenes from his days in NYC, of moments in the past 2 years, and very occasionally of something happening in the present day, all while a painfully repetitive minimalist score drones on.
And then it ends.
This is what you can get away with if you're popular enough. You can do something that, if it was someone's first experience of a show would also be their last.
The Bear has pushed the envelope before, though more successfully, so for now I'm assuming this is not a sign that the series has lost it but simply a sign that the showrunner feels free to indulge himself. But if I turn out to be wrong I will certainly stop watching the series.
The Nevers: I'll Be Seeing You (2023)
disappointing
The second half of The Nevers only season was, for the most part, still excellent. But there were some issues, with some strange character turns and some rather perplexing sequences. But still, for the most part it was still quite exciting and entertaining.
But the final episode was deeply flawed. It wasn't just that it was so dispiriting, although honestly I wish it weren't even if it *didn't* turn out to be the series ender (not the maker's fault - they thought they were coming back, not knowing HBO was on the verge of massacring a lot of its best shows.
But there were issues beyond that, many coming from some of the odder plot decisions of previous episodes in which some characters seemed to have surprising character alterations and the galanthi seemed to become less explicable as it became visually clearer.
Some of the finale was just dumb, like the unlikely sense of security the touched developed after everything that had happened before. Some of it was frustrating. And some of it was riveting (Amy Manson was in particularly good form).
It wasn't a terrible episode, but it was a bad note to go out on. Bye-bye Nevers.
Doctor Who (2023)
Great "first" season, for the most part
Not everyone liked the way this season started out, but I loved it from the beginning, by which I mean Space Babies.
This is exactly the series I remember from the first reboot season in 2005 - silly and cheesy and imaginative and funny and charming and well acted. Davies has just gone back there, and I LOVE IT.
So much of this season is so clever and original and fun. Some episodes are truly brilliant - Dot and Bubble, 73 Yards, Space Babies (I know I'm in the minority here, but I stand by it).
Ncuti Gatwa is a fun Doctor. So far I wouldn't rank him with Eccleston or Tennant but he's as good as any of the rest. And Millie Gibson is terrific as the latest spunky young girl companion - she's not doing anything new, but she's doing the basics as well as anyone.
I don't love everything about the series. Gatwa's mood shifts from "let's party" to "I'm still relieving my trauma" are head spinning and rather annoying, and the season finale was a slight letdown. But overall this is as good as the final (terribly underrated) Whitaker season.
Doctor Who: Rogue (2024)
The DTF Doctor Who
This episode was a fun period piece, mixing Bridgerton and bounty hunters, with a lot of fun gowns and mocking of the upper class. But it's also a very weird episode.
First off, the Doctor's view of romance has really ... evolved. In the Rose years it was all, "no, we mustn't, the most I can give you are longing looks." In the River years it was - "Wait, I'm married? How on earth did that happen? Well, I guess if it's already happened I'll have to accept it." And now it's "hey, you up?" It's not really what I would expect of the doctor. I mean, yes, he's always a little different, but this seems to be a big, surprising push.
And while I don't want to get into spoilers, his reactions at the end also don't jibe with the Doctor we know. The Doctor is "never say die." Tell me the Doctor is throwing orgies in the Tardis and I'll say, "well, that's unexpected, but okay." Tell me the Doctor is like, "well, that's how the cookie crumbles" and I'm like, "whaaaaaaaa?"
Right now the most popular user review here lists 6 or so ways in which the Doctor seems off of Doctor norms. I agree with all of them.
But it was still a fun episode.
Doctor Who: Empire of Death (2024)
good for the most part, but disappointing
The second-half of the season finale begins with all the intensity of the excellent first half. It's chaotic and absorbing and things go from bad to worse to worse to OMG!
There's a solid explanation of Susan Triad, and some really clever ideas. Even the parts that don't make that much sense (that bit on the planet) are engaging.
The series continues with its theme of a guilt-ridden, PTSD Doctor, which I could do with a lot less of, and they punted on a mystery I was hoping they'd answer, but I wouldn't call either of those irredeemable.
But then there's the resolution to the mystery that's been building up all season and it's ... not good. I mean, conceptually I can see and appreciate what they're going for, and I feel that if they elaborated on that concept and gave it more context and history I might say, okay, I get that.
But then I guess they wouldn't have time for the incredibly annoying weepy-heartwarming nonsense that went on forever (by which I mean 10 or 15 minutes) at the end.
I wasn't disappointed enough by the worst of this episode to ignore how of it was genuinely fun , but the last part of the season 1 finale was undeniably a letdown.
The Belle of New York (1952)
A handful of good dance numbers in an abysmal script
Apparently there are Fred Astaire movies I've never seen, and this is one of them, and it's quite bad.
Astaire plays a spoiled louse who has left a series of women at the altar. So when her fervently pursues do-gooder Vera-Ellen, I wasn't really cheering for him to get her. He should not be allowed to date women at all.
Still, Vera-Ellen is believable as the girl everyone loves and a bunch of Hollywood vets keep things light. Astaire's first dance number is forgettable, but the second one, in which love causes him to float to the top of the Washington Square Arch, is lots of fun. And the first two numbers he does with Vera-Ellen are really remarkable - often the choreography asks less of Astaire's partners, because he does some difficult stuff, But Vera-Ellen matches him move for move with remarkable skill and ease.
But the script is just such a mess. For one thing, that floating business isn't just a fanciful moment, like Astaire dancing on the ceiling, but a continual fantasy theme in a script that has absolutely no other fantasy elements in it, which is just so bizarre. Keenan Wynn plays a friend/partner/something of Astaire's but it's never exactly clear what he is or does or has to do with anything.
And after 3 great dance numbers in a row, even the dance goes downhill, with a tedious wedding-photo medley dance followed by a forgettable Vera-Ellen solo that is only notable for the follow-up version of the song and dance by Alice Pierce, who gives a really good comic performance in a really bad movie.
There's one last good Astaire number (on sand) amidst a hugely irritating and idiotic scene, and an ending that suggests nothing expresses love more than screaming at each other, and yet I've only scratched the surface of how incoherent and downright objectionable this script is.
My advice - skip the movie but see if you can find the Astaire/Vera-Ellen dances on youtube or somewhere.
The Black Cat (1941)
a real mixed bag
In this combination murder-mystery/estate sale comedy, it's unclear that the cast agreed on what kind of movie they were making. Some, like Alan Ladd and Basil Rathbone played it straight. Meanwhile, Hugh Herbert as the "comedy relief" played everything as broadly as possible (it was a very stupid, annoying role).
The best bet seems to have been to split the difference. Broderick Crawford was reasonably successful in a light but not especially funny performance. And Gale Sondergaard was the MVP, playing her part with an overwrought version of her Rebecca character that just shaded into parody.
The script is weak, the performances are mixed, the cinematography is excellent, there's one memorable in-joke, and it's all quite missable.
Dickens of London (1976)
Great for the first half, a bit mixed for the rest
Dickens of London tells Dickens life story, up to a point. Each episode begins with an elderly Dickens doing a speaking tour of America before flashing back to his younger days.
The series starts with his childhood, and it is portrayed as wonderfully Dickensian and full of odd characters, most notably his father, who is excellently played by Roy Dotrice, who also plays elderly Dickens and, later in the show, no-longer-young Dickens (he's less charming in that role).
At the start, the series is very entertaining and engaging. But somewhere along the way, as Dickens turned into a rather vain and obnoxious adult, the charm drained out a bit. The Dickensian quality of England also faded - increasingly, Dickens seemed to just hand out with rather ordinary people.
In the latter half, episodes vary in quality. Some episodes, like Magic, are a real slog, but a few, like the fanciful Nightmare, are quite entertaining. The series final is an oddity that seems a peculiar way to end the series.
I watched this series when it first came out but never saw the end, and used to joke that because of that I had no idea if Dickens ever died. But it turned out the series doesn't follow his life all the way through, almost as though they were hoping there'd be enough interest for a sequel.
I hunted this series down because I always regretted not seeing the last of it, but in retrospect, I'd probably seen most of what was worth seeing.
Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019)
somewhat entertaining, with a 75% good cast
I've seen one F&F movie, Fast Five, which is said to be the best of the lot, and thought it was awful. So I normally wouldn't watch a movie with Fast & Furious in the title. But the movies David Leitch made before and after this one - Deadpool 2, Bullet Train, The Fall Guy - were all terrifically entertaining, so I thought I'd take a look.
The movie begins with a superpowered bad guy stopped from stealing something but a super-determined good guy. Bad guy frames good guy, the world is in danger, and two characters from the F&F franchise are told to work together even though they hate each other but somehow they work together (this part was not well explained - they run around in split screen, there's violence, they yell in unison, and then they're on board?).
Of the four principles, 3 - Idris Elba as unstoppable bad guy, Vanessa Kirby as tough good guy, and Dwayne Johnsons as a franchise spin-off - are terrific.
Then there's the other franchise spin-off guy, the charmless Jason Statham. How is this guy an action star? It's not just that he doesn't have acting ability - lots of action stars can't act. It's that he lacks presence and star power. For me, he was a constant nagging irritation.
Outside of that, well, the movie has some solid action and moves quickly. On the other hand, it never has much momentum. At one point I thought "are we near the end" and checked and it was the midpoint.
Much of this is dumb and unpersuasive, but much of it is also funny and exciting. There are moments, like a fight between Johnson and Kirby (great chemistry between those two), or a wild set piece with a helicopter, that are really pretty entertaining. But other times the movie drags. And while it's mean to keep harping on it, Statham's character has a connection with the characters of Elba and Kirby but because he can't act you don't feel any real sense that he has a history with either of them.
I'm not saying Statham sunk this movie. I'm not honestly sure if replacing him with someone better would raise my rating from a 6 to a 7. But he definitely didn't help matters.
I wouldn't say this movie was worth my time, but if you're looking for a watchable action time waster, you could do worse (i.e. Fast Five).
Bullet Train (2022)
wild, funny, and ingenious
In Bullet Train, Brad Pitt is a genial criminal who's been working on himself in therapy and needs to steal a briefcase on a train that has an inexplicable number of professional killers on board. This leads to a series of crazy fights and weird plot twists.
Brad Pitt is terrifically funny as Ladybug (almost everyone here has a codename or alias). He's a shambling, charming, everyman who just happens to be terrifically good at fighting. The rest of the cast is also marvelous, including Joey King as an innocent-presenting psychopath and Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Brian Tyree Henry as bantering killers.
One thing I don't see anyone talking about in the user reviews is the ingenious construction. Even though it's true that much of this can be picked apart, from minute to minute the way it unfolds, and the clever throughlines like that water bottle, have a lovely intricacy to it. Everything fits together neatly, at least until you start thinking about it after.
The other thing about this movie is that it is a contemplation of fate. Everyone in the film talks about fate and luck (Ladybug talks about his bad luck, King's character Prince talks about her good luck). I wouldn't say the movie's philosophy of fate is especially consistent, but that may be because the movie is more concerned with how fate is perceived than what it actually is.
(Director David Leitch's follow-up movie, The Fall Guy, talks about wrapping the central thesis of a film in the tasty bacon of action scenes, and this movie appears to be exactly that.)
So come for the action, vibe on the goofy philosophizing, observe the construction, take note of the plot holes, and have a good time.
Highly recommended.
The Fall Guy (2024)
Comedy, romance, and action - in that order
After watching the trailer, I was expecting an action picture with a little romantic comedy thrown in at odd moments. But while it would be an overstatement to say this is a romantic comedy with some action thrown in, it wouldn't be off by all that much.
The movie is about a stuntman whose back, career, and romance, are all broken in one moment. Then he's asked to return to work on his lost love's big sci-fi epic.
For the first half hour the movie is almost entirely a romantic comedy with a background of behind-the-scenes filmmaking, as the two leads, Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, banter in amusing but heartfelt ways. The chemistry of these two is terrific, and you're pulling them from the start.
When we start getting action, it's imaginative (especially that striking fight in the club), funny, and still tied very much to the romance. No matter how much is going on, the movie always makes sure to tie back to its love story.
The second half of the movie is more pure comedy action, with most of the actual story crammed in, although even then it never lets the romance out of its sight.
The movie is very funny and very charming. The action sequences are lively and fun. The cast is terrific. The behind-the-scenes stuff feels authentic (director David Leitch used to do stunts).
I was a little torn between giving this movie an 8 or a 9. I feel like if I take a step back then objectively it's not *really* a 9, but it was just so much freaking fun that I can't help myself.
Highly recommended.