Special Feature: Shane's 10 Most Anticipated Movies

It's time for my enormously popular "Most Anticipated Movies" list, something I know a lot of you have been waiting for. This is way too long, and I would recommend you skim it or just look at the pictures. If there's anything I'm missing that you think I should know about, leave me a comment and enlighten me. 

There are a bunch of movies on last-year's list that I still haven't been able to watch: Svankmajer's Insects, which has actually been mentioned in three of these in a row now; Tickled, a documentary about competitive tickling; Flooding with Love for the Kid, a one-man remake of Rambo; Kuso; Replica, a James Nguyen movie; Neil Breen's last movie, Pass Thru; She's Allergic to Cats; The Brand New Testament, a Jaco Van Dormael flick; Sylvain Chomet's The Thousand Miles, a cartoon about a long-distance car race; and Aki Kaurismaki's last movie. 

These aren't really in any particular order. 

The Happytime Murders, Won’t You Be My Neighbor, and Abruptio

Three movies, all having something to do with puppets. If you know anything at all about me, you know that I love puppets of all kinds. Most intriguing to me would be The Happytime Murders, a film directed by Bryan Henson, the offspring of Jim Henson. He’s done some TV work, but this is the first feature film from Henson since Muppet Treasure Island and Muppet Christmas Carol, and those were over twenty years ago. The plot of this one has to do with puppets from an 80’s television show being murdered one by one. Melissa McCarthy in it, but that isn’t enough to scare me away.

Won’t You Be My Neighbor is a Mr. Rogers biopic. I like him, and I’m sure the Neighborhood of Make-Believe has to be involved. I doubt there will be a Henrietta Pussycat sex scene, but a guy can dream, right?

And Abruptio is about a poor fellow who wakes up with a bomb strapped to his neck and finds himself in a situation where he has to do awful things or be blown to smithereens. That doesn’t sound like anything, but all of the characters are apparently lifelike latex puppets which puts me right back on board. Oh, and Sid Haig is also in it. He, as you know, is a lifelike latex puppet. We might have to wait until 2019 for this one.

The Other Side of the Wind

I didn’t even realize that Orson Welles was working on a new film, so this is surprising news.

Welles is dead apparently, but this was a mockumentary he was working on in the first half of the 70s. It’s about the making of a film (and apparently lampoons Antonioni) and is hopefully as much fun as F is for Fake. Peter Bogdanovich, who was in the film, claims that Welles made him promise on his deathbed that he’d finish the film. That sounds sketchy to me. There’s a long and labyrinthine legal history of this film that you can read about on Wikipedia if you want, but it seems as if a cut was shown to a handful of people including Tarantino, Rian Johnson, and Crispin Glover. I am a little troubled that this might be coming out on Netflix because they do not have the best track record. Of course, they’ve never released an Orson Welles movie before. Welles wouldn’t even know what Netflix is, but I doubt he’d like it very much because of all the Adam Sandler movies they release.

The Old Man and the Gun

There are several factors attracting me to this one. It’s based on the true story of a guy who escaped from prison about twenty times and who, at the age of 80 or something, decided to pull off one last heist. He’s played by Robert Redford who says this is his last performance. It’s directed by David Lowery who directed one of my favorites from last year--A Ghost Story--so there might be a scene where Redford eats an entire pie. And Tom Waits is in it, his first movie role since Seven Psychopaths. Maybe they’ll give him a bunny.

An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn

As a fan of The Greasy Strangler, I’ll obviously get excited for Jim Hosking’s next feature even though he looks like the guy pictured above. This sounds like it might be a bit more conventional, and it’s got a cast filled with performers people have actually heard of--Jemaine Clement, Aubrey Plaza, Maria Bamford, Emile Hirsh, Craig Robinson. Still, Strangler was so idiosyncratic that it’s hard to believe this comedy will be conventional. Hopefully, this will take place in that same sort of world he created in Strangler that sort of resembles ours but isn’t quite ours and filled with characters who are sort of like real people but not quite like real people. If so, I won’t even complain if there aren’t characters covered head-to-toe in lard.

Au Poste

The only information I can find about this movie is a really detailed plot synopsis on imdb. It reads, “Police officer’s [sic] at a station must solve a murder case.” That doesn’t sound like much at all, but I’m ready to follow Quentin Dupieux anywhere after Reality, Wrong, Rubber, and Wrong Cops. His particular brand of absurdism is right up my alley, and nobody’s making movies quite like these. This one will be in French, and that means I’ll get to practice my reading, too.

Deadpool 2

It won’t seem as fresh as the first one, but I’m willing to see what Ryan Reynolds and company do with this character next. Odds are, it won’t be as entertaining as the marketing campaign or even the brilliant opening credit sequence of the first movie, but with John Wick and Atomic Blonde director David Leitch at the helm, at least the action scenes might be good. There’s a good chance I’m sick to death of superhero movies, but that doesn’t stop me from seeing them all. I’m looking forward to this one way more than the Avengers movie, Venom, Ant-Man and the Wasp, or Aquaman.

You Were Never Really Here

Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot

Mary Magdalene

The Sisters Brothers

Joaquin Phoenix has been on some kind of role, odd since he retired from acting to become a rapper a few years back. He is not only really really good in every role he’s in but he also always seems to choose interesting projects. I’m not sure if all of these are interesting projects. He’s Jesus in one of them. That’s probably the Mary Magdalene one. He’s a troubled hammer-wielding hitman in You Were Never Really Here, a movie directed by Lynne Ramsey, the woman who did We Need to Talk about Kevin and Ratcatcher. Both of those are really good movies. In Gus Van Sant’s Don’t Worry. . ., he plays a quadriplegic who becomes a cartoonist, a film based on the memoir of John Callahan. And The Sisters Brothers, which seems like it’s missing punctuation, is a Western, and he plays one of the titular Sisters Brothers who chases around Jake Gyllenhaal. That movie’s also got John C. Reilly and Rutger Hauer in it. So at least three Joaquin Phoenix movies look interesting, and being the only actor to play both Jesus and the Joker in movies is pretty special.

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote

Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise that Terry Gilliam wasn’t able to get this thing off the ground twenty years ago because now Johnny Depp is nowhere to be found on the cast list. Instead, it’s got the ubiquitous Adam Driver. I haven’t exactly liked anything Gilliam’s done since Tideland, and I’m not sure if I liked that one or was just fascinated by it. So maybe I’ve not liked anything he’s done since Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and that was released twenty years ago! But one can hope this passion project of his turns out to be some kind of return to form. I want to go opening night so that I can stand up during the opening credits and high-five everybody around me while screaming, “He finally did it! Way to go, Terry!” I haven’t seen Lost in La Mancha in over ten years, so it might be time to give that documentary another spin before seeing this one.

Mandy, Wendy

Two movie titles with a five-letter female name ending in a y, both overdue follow-ups to very good movies.

One apeshit Nicolas Cage performance per year is all I really ask for, and I already got that with Mom and Dad. This one promises an apeshit Nicolas Cage performance, one where he brandishes a chainsaw to battle motorcycle-riding demons summoned by some sort of religious cult. Hell yeah! Most intriguing, however, is that this is directed by Panos Cosmatos, his follow-up to 2010’s strange and beautiful Beyond the Black Rainbow.

Wendy is directed by Benh Zeitlin whose last movie was Beasts of the Southern Wild, and it seems to cover similar themes. It’s got a kid in it and has been described as a “psychotic adventure” and as “totally bonkers,” the kinds of descriptors that get me excited.

The Beach Bum

Seems like it’s been a while since Harmony Korine, a director with whom I really have a love/hate relationship with, came out with Spring Breakers, a movie that I seemed to like a lot more than everybody but my brother. This one’s about an aging stoner named Moondog played by Matthew McConaughey, a guy whose name I still can’t spell despite running a highly successful movie blog for over ten years. This movie, if it was just your everyday Hollywood comedy, would likely be a disaster. It still might be a total disaster, but with Korine, it will at least not be boring.

Unsane

Soderbergh came out of retirement to make movies with stupid titles. I didn’t care for Logan Lucky, the redneck heist movie that came out last year, even though it featured the ubiquitous Adam Driver. This one has my attention though. First, it’s Soderbergh’s first venture into the horror genre. As it takes place in a mental institution, I’m willing to bet it’s more psychological horror than jump scares and screechy violin noises. Second, it was filmed on iPhones, like Tangerine. I was wondering why Soderbergh decided to come out of retirement if he was only going to make movies as pedestrian as Logan Lucky. Maybe he was shaking some rust off with that one and feels more comfortable dicking around with something a little more unique. This comes out soon, by the way, and is getting mixed reviews.

Isle of Dogs

Even that poster makes me happy! I was going to leave things off that were coming out in March, but I couldn’t help it with this one since Wes Anderson is probably my favorite director and stop-animation is my favorite medium and dogs are my fifth favorite domesticated animal. I’ve seen the previews for this on the big screen a handful of times, and I end up with a giant smile on my face. Afterward, I’ve turned to the person next to me (or behind me) and said, “I’m totally seeing that son of a bitch!” and attempting a whoop or two. I was thrown out of the theater once and told to “Sit my ass down” another time. If I was planning on taking my own life, this would be the #3 reason why I wouldn't end up doing it.

Mary Poppins Returns

Boy, oh, boy. I’m getting hard just thinking about this one. I’m not sure I can see this one in a theater because there’s a strong possibility I’ll end up arrested after a Paul Reubens fiasco. I’m going to have to take Jen along to make sure I behave myself, I guess. If Disney sticks with the same feel as the P. L. Travers books, which are slightly surreal and filled with fantastic events and some darkly-shaded humor, this follow-up to one of the hottest movies ever made could be great. And I know Travers would have been thrilled that this sequel was finally being made. Fifty-four years is a long time between sequels, isn’t it? And people thought that the time between Blade Runners was huge.

Solo: A Star Wars Story

Solo could also have been the title to a movie about my sex life in high school. Hi-yooo!

I’m getting Wookiee and Lando action, and that’s probably going to be enough to make the trip to the theater worth it. It’ll be hard to know if I really need a Han Solo solo movie in my life until I see this, and I’m starting to get to the point where I think one Star Wars movie per year might be too much Star Wars. At least it’s not seven Star Wars movies a year though. Right, Marvel? Ron Howard isn’t the director I would have picked for this thing, and with the troubled production, there’s a lot to be fearful about. But it’s a Star Wars movie, so I’ll get to go to the theater and feel like I’m 8 years old again which is better than going to the theater and feeling like I’m 44.

The Favourite

Well, Yorgos Lanthimos’s next movie is a bawdy period piece from early 18th Century England. That’s doesn’t really sound like Lanthimos territory to me and I’m not sure how I feel about having to put that “u” in “favourite,” but he hasn’t given me a reason to doubt him yet. Rachel Weisz is in it and promises that it’s still got that Lanthimosian uniqueness and tone and will be darkly funny. She also compared it to All About Eve. Anything Lanthimos decides to make will be worth including on a list like this. He's the only Greek director I can name and therefore my favorite one. Or favourite one.

Annette

Holy Motors is wonderful enough for me to be excited about Leos Carax’s next project. But this sounds intriguing anyway. It’s a musical with songs by Sparks, and it’s got the ubiquitous Adam Driver in it. I don’t really care what it’s about, but it’s about a comedian whose wife, an opera singer, dies. Hopefully, Michelle Williams plays the wife and dies early on and isn’t seen again after the first five minutes of the movie. Michelle Williams is just as ubiquitous as Adam Driver, so it was inevitable that they'd end up in the same movie together.

First Man

Damien Chazelle is on a freakin’ roll, and even though I understand people’s gripes with Whiplash and La La Land, I just can’t wait to see what he does with an old-school Hollywood musical sci-fi biopic about Louis Armstrong going to the moon. I might be confused by the details of this one actually, but after that one-two Chazelle punch (and Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench ain’t bad either), I’m ready to see whatever this guy does next. Apparently this isn’t a musical at all, and it’s about a different Armstrong. I’m curious to see what Chazelle can do with something that has nothing to do with music. I wonder if it's still going to somehow be musical without being a musical or having an actor everybody hates pretend to play the drums while a bald guy curses at him. And by the way, I would love to see a musical about Neil Armstrong and the first moon landing.

The House That Jack Built

The only natural place to go for Lars von Trier after the Nymphomaniacs is violence since sex and violence go hand in hand. I’m not sure the world needs another movie about a serial killer, but this is von Trier we’re talking about, and I just don’t see him giving us the same sort of serial killer movie we’ve seen before. Of course, the titular killer sees his crimes as works of art, and that’s not exactly an original idea either. “Jack” is played by Matt Dillon who probably hasn’t had a good movie since playing Trip Murphy in Herbie Fully Loaded, and Uma Thurman, my favorite Uma, is also in this. I think I’ve almost talked myself out of being excited about this movie, but von Trier is, according to von Trier, the greatest director alive.

Best F(r)iends (two volumes)

Tommy Wiseau and Greg Sestero, after becoming household names thanks to Franco, are reuniting onscreen for what looks to be a strange movie. Or movies since it’s being released in two separate volumes a couple of months apart. Sestero wrote this based on a road trip he took with Wiseau somewhere around 2003. Wiseau, before he plays the Joker, is a quirky mortician in this one. And let’s be honest--Wiseau could play any character at all in something that looks like the most excruciatingly awful movie ever made, and I’m still going to be interested in seeing it. But a quirky mortician in a movie that looks like it’s going to be a little bit of strange fun will end up very high on my list! The first installment of this comes out right at the end of March.

Other movies I’m excited about:

Bad Times at El Royale, Drew Goddard’s long-awaited follow-up to Cabin in the Woods

Under the Silver Lake, David Robert Mitchell’s follow-up to It Follows, one of the more interesting horror movies of the last half decade

I Think We’re Alone Now, in which Dinklage plays a misanthrope who’s happy to be the last man in the world until Elle Fanning comes along

Where’s You Go, Bernadette?, another Linklater movie

The Incredibles 2: More Incredibler, a Pixar sequel that actually doesn’t seem like a terrible idea

Susperia, a remake from the Call Me by Your Name guy, something that might actually end up as pretty as the original Dario Argento flick

Black Klansman, a Spike Lee joint that I can’t put on a “most anticipated” list because I haven’t even bothered to see most of his other joints

Widows, an all-female heist movie directed by Steve McQueen

Leave No Trace, the tardy encore to Debra Granik’s Winter Bone

The Art of Self-Defense, a Jesse Eisenberg movie

The Women of Marwen, which I’d have no interest in because there’s already a documentary (Marwencol) that covers the subject well enough but similar feelings before seeing Zemeckis’s The Walk was surprisingly enjoyable so this could be as well

Mission: Impossible--Fallout, but only because of the title’s punctuation and the possibility that this could finally be the movie where we get to see Tom Cruise die on screen during a stunt mishap

Wildlife, because Paul Dano seems to pick interesting projects and has worked with some very talented directors and I’d like to see what he does in his directorial debut

At Eternity’s Gate, because Dafoe is playing Van Gogh

If Beale Street Could Talk, Barry Jenkins’ next movie based on a James Baldwin book

The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, which I’d have no interest in at all except the trailer looks really beautiful and Morgan Freeman gets to wear an eyepatch

Slice, a horror-comedy that manages to combine Chance the Rapper, pizza delivery, and werewolves

Ip Man 4, even though only the odd-numbered Ip Mans have been any good

Backseat, because the cast looks fun (Sam Rockwell as George W. Bush) and I want to see Dick Cheney shoot people on the big screen

Birds of Passage, because Ciro Guerra’s Embrace of the Serpent was really good

Rampage and Skyscraper, and that’s because The Rock is a force to be reckoned with

The Florida Project

2017 movie

Rating: 17/20

Plot: In the shadow of Cinderella's Castle (or is Snow White's Castle in Disney World?), the hidden homeless spend a summer in a magical motel.

Baker didn't shoot this movie on an iphone (not all of it anyway), so it's got a different look from Tangerine. And that look is stunningly beautiful. Baker shot this in a gaudy, cheapo tourist area with Magic Castle and Future Land motels painted garishly. There's this artificial magic all around, and it's sharply contrasted with the situations these characters are in. The constant taking-off and landing of a sightseeing helicopter, touristy gift shops, Mickey Mouse's fireworks splashed across the sky at one point, snack places in the shape of giant oranges. They're all visual reminders that we're dealing with the have-nots in an area that the haves like to come and spend their money.

And it would all be pretty depressing if it wasn't for a couple of things. First is Baker's eye and his use of color in this movie. So many shots in this are just gorgeous, all that capitalistic vulgarity and luridness. Pictures in this movie are worth thousands of words as the backdrops represent so many unspoken ideas. Shots of the kids walking past that aforementioned building shaped like a giant orange. A magical shot of Dafoe lighting a cigarette at dusk as the lights of the motel suddenly flicker on. A rainbow arcing over the lavender (Note: I don't know if this is the right color word or not, and my wife will not help me.) motel. It's possible that rainbow was CGI, but I'm going to die knowing that it was a happy accident instead. I just loved the look of this movie, and if you take away the stories and the characters' situations and those characters' interactions, the visuals Baker gives us might have been capable of creating emotions in me all by themselves. There's an impossible amount of everyday magic in each shot.

What this really has in common with Tangerine is that it shows the director's ability to empathize and really connect with the movie's human subjects, people who are kind of on the fringes of society. I didn't always like what these characters were doing. With the kids, it was general mischief making--spitting on cars, trespassing, light arson. Sharing the questionable decision-making of the adults would get into spoiler territory. But despite not liking what the characters do or how they treat each other in this movie, I found it impossible to dislike them. In fact--and I'm aware that this is going to sound cheesy even before I type it--I really fell in love with these characters and kind of miss them. At the very least, I really want to know what happened to them after the movie and know whether they're all OK or not. I know they're characters in a movie and not real people in a documentary because I'm not a child, but Baker does this remarkable thing where he has created a group of characters who will, for me at least, exist outside of the movie. They're as real as movie people can get, and there are certain joys and certain sadnesses that come from that. Baker's not really even making a statement about the "hidden homeless" here; he's just giving these people who a lot of Americans either don't know about or don't want to think about a voice.

I've got to say that I'm stunned by the acting in this movie. I had concerns because I knew going in that the majority of the movie would focus on these children, and if they were typical child actors, that could make the whole thing almost unwatchable. The kids in this were delightful as these resilient little human beings. I was touched by their performances, and I have no idea how Baker did it. I assume tons of footage was shot of these kids just playing in these different locations with the best bits edited together. But there was just something so soothing and refreshing about watching these kids--Brooklyn Pierce, just so perfectly a little kid; Valeria Cotto; Aiden Malik; Christopher Rivera--transforming what could be portrayed as the most dismal situation in the world as something magical and joyous. These kids, like Dafoe's character's loving paint job, are capable of bringing color into this bleak world. The kids in this recall the performances in Beasts of the Southern Wild or Little Fugitive in how they manage to be like real kids and not kids trying very hard to be real kids in a feature film.

Baker, by the way, says he was influenced by The Little Rascals. I'm guessing that's the television show and not the movie that was made that has a Donald Trump cameo.

The adults are more hit and miss. I don't think all of them are professional actors and actresses. The one big Hollywood name is Dafoe, and he's great. He is probably more fun when he's playing a character who isn't very human, but here, he gives this perfectly subdued and nuanced performance as a guy who is limited in his heroism and tortured by his role as a patriarch. You don't get much backstory with Dafoe's Bobby, but you know a backstory is there.

There's one moment in this that suddenly has music, and that's when it occurred to me that the rest of this movie doesn't have music. It was startling to discover that, and I thought about it later. The music of the movie really is provided by the naturalistic dialogue with these kids and the colors of the film. It's musical without any music at all, and I think it's a better movie for it.

I teared up throughout the movie as I thought about the futures of these kids and how they lived so well in the present. And by the end of the movie, I was bawling, just a complete mess. However, I thought it was one of the most beautiful movies I've seen in a long time and inserted it into my top-five for 2017, a very strong year for movies. I wish it had been nominated for Best Picture.

Oh and that line about the tree? The topless woman by the pool? The heroic expelling of a creepy pedophile? God, I feel like I could watch this again and write about it all day. I loved this movie so much!

Fifty Shades Freed

2018 climax

Rating: 6/20

Plot: These boring people get married, but their honeymoon is coitus interruptus'd when a figure from their past pops back into their lives. Following that, a whole bunch of other things happen, some which involve ass slapping and/or bondage.

Since I'm such a rebel, I almost always sneak in a water bottle with water, tea, or an alcoholic beverage when I go to the theater. I know what you're thinking. Man, this guy's a total bad ass! For the completion of the Fifty Shades franchise--and God, I hope this really is the end of this thing--my plan was to take my laptop, sit in the back row of a likely-near-empty theater, and type out an A-Go-Go entry as I watch. I had done the same with the other two, and I really didn't see the point in watching this thing without doing a Movies-A-Go-Go entry. (Note: That's where I watch a movie and type out my stream-of-conscious thoughts for my blog post.) I wasn't sure if the movie people would want me to take a Chromebook in there and didn't really feel like having a conversation, so I shoved it down the front of my pants and got it in that way. Yeah, I know. Total bad-assery.

When I walked in, there was a couple already in the theater. And--you guessed it--they were in the back row. So I just had to be a guy watching the completion of this steamily stupid all by himself and hiding his erection with a closed Chromebook instead of a professional movie blogger furiously typing away blistering criticism and reflective notes on a film.

I could have easily opened up the computer and typed away though. The couple behind me wouldn't shut up. I almost turned around and gave them a stink eye, but they wouldn't have been able to see it. They'd just see that guy who wears his bathrobe to the movie theater turning around.

It would have given them a story though, one that is arguably better than the story arc of this trilogy. "Yeah, we were making fun of that Fifty Shades movie and this guy in a bathrobe who kept sneaking drinks from a water bottle like anybody would actually see him or care turned around because we were distracting him from enjoying this stupid movie. You know he would have started Pee-Weeing himself if we weren't in there."

A tagline for this is a clever pun about not missing the climax. Do you get that? I think the main problem with these movies--other than the sloppy storytelling, the terrible acting and writing, the lack of chemistry with the leads, sex scenes that are more depressing than they are arousing, painful soundtrack choices, general shallowness--is that they are movies filled with too many climaxes. The sheer amount of traumatic or at the very least exciting events that happen with these characters in what doesn't seem like all that much time boggles the mind. At the beginning of this one, they get married, and I'm not sure about the women these books and movies were created for, but I'm shaking my head and thinking, "No! These two should not be getting married right now!" Early arguments about whether Anastasia should be topless on a beach and whether or not they should have children help prove that these two--a spoiled manchild with some severe psychological issues and a women who has the intellectual prowess of your typical Disney princess (the early ones)--A) have not really taken the time to think things through, B) know about as much about each other as the audience learns through the movies' weak characterization, C) are very likely not emotionally compatible, BDSM) are probably not even sexually compatible, and E) should never have gotten married.

The movie's events, just like in the other two, are kind of a blur. And we're probably in spoiler territory here, so you should stop reading now if you're planning on seeing this. Actually, you probably never should have started reading, and just like me, a middle-aged man in a bathrobe watching this movie, you should probably start questioning your decision-making. There's helicopter crash revelations, attempted abductions, suspected infidelities, explosions, surprise pregnancies, blackmail, thrilling car chases, and renditions of Paul McCartney songs on the piano. It's a lot of excitement for a pair of honeymooners, isn't it? But just like what this movie does with sex, it manages to make it all very dull. You come out the other side of this thing not caring about the characters at all and wondering what the hell was supposed to be learned from the whole thing.

What is learned from the whole thing probably isn't good. I'd have to devote a bit more brainpower to figure that out, and I feel like I've devoted enough time and energy to the Fifty Shades franchise. I'm done. And a little embarrassed.

I really need to wash this bathrobe, by the way.

Everybody Wants Some!!

2017 comedy

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A baseball team enjoys their time together in the weekend leading up to the first day of their college fall semester.

Look at those exclamation marks! Linklater's ballsy! I mean, sure something like Boyhood could be considered ballsy, but is it ballsier than going to studio executives and saying, "I don't want just want exclamation mark at the end of my movie title. I demand two!! I'm getting two exclamation marks or I'm walkin'!!"

I bet he was inspired by DeCoteau with A Talking Cat?!? or Neil Breen with I Am Here. . . .Now.

Curious, I just looked it up to see if it has a name. It's apparently called "multiple exclamation marks," which is disappointing. I mean, a question mark and an exclamation mark together is called an interrobang. So that gets a cool name, but two exclamation marks is just "multiple exclamation marks." I don't know if two question marks on either side of an exclamation mark has a name, and I'm not going to look it up because I know I'll be bummed to find out that it isn't called a DeCoteau. And if a four-period ellipsis is not called a Breen, I will stop using all punctuation marks entirely as a form of protest.

That title led me to believe that I'd get some Gucci Crew II on the soundtrack, but this takes place in the first year of the 80s or last year of the 70s depending on who you ask and how pretentious they are. You do get some hip hop, however, and I'm not sure how believable it is that a group of white college students and one black student in Texas are going to know every word of "Rapper's Delight." Stick around during the credits, by the way, because the actors get a chance to rap again, and it's delightful.

I've never felt whiter than I do right now, by the way. I just referenced people rapping and called it delightful.

That "Rapper's Delight" song comes early in the movie, a sing-a-long while the characters are riding in a car and checking out girls or something. So that's not a spoiler. Actually, I'm not sure there's anything I can say that would spoil this because there's really not a plot. It's a series of non-sequitur sequences that blend together to characterize this crew. Individually, they aren't well-defined characters. They're like a little more than a dozen guys who all live in the same house and sort of become one goofy character. They're raunchy and obnoxious, the type of people I don't think I'd want to be around in a public place for too long, but at the same time, I kind of wanted to be one of these guys and engaging with other guys (and gals in late-70s jeans) the way they were.

Linklater really has a way of creating this nostalgia even though I never had any experiences like these characters and don't even really believe that these characters could actually exist. Well, at least they couldn't all exist in the same time and place like this. It's really a neat trick he does as a writer/director.

One character says, "We came for a good time, not a long time." That's a perfect description of the whole thing. The movie and its characters exist in a very specific time and place, one that can never exist again. And although I can see some people being annoyed by their antics and unrealistic banter or underwhelmed because of the film's lack of depth, I think it's at least a pretty good time.

I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore

2017 Netflix original movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: After a depressed nurse's house is robbed, she and a new friend with his own Chinese star start their own investigation and end up way over their heads.

Daring and unpredictable with a whole lot of Coen-esque hijinks and a gnarled sense of humor, this movie has parts that fit in perfectly with what 2017 was all about, at least in America. A lack of awareness of both the self and others and a sickening apathy have pervaded American soils, and although it's been happening for a while, it really seemed to emerge in 2017. The main character Ruth, played with a nice mix of stoicism/resolve and fear/disgust, is seen at the beginning of the movie running various errands and running into all these situations (people cutting in line or spoiling the plots of books she's reading, for example) that show a world inhabited by people who just don't give a damn about their fellow human beings.

That intensifies when Ruth is robbed, and it intensifies even more once we meet the trio of crooks who robbed her. They're a little filthier and less polite than Coen criminals, but they've got that same sort of nihilism and helplessness and apathy that shows what happens to a world of people when God goes on vacation for a hundred years or so. Each of this slimy trinity is creepy in his or her own way, more so because their relationships with each other are only vaguely hinted at or not explained at all. One of them, played by Devon Graye because I'm guessing that DJ Qualls wasn't available, was especially menacing, especially when he pulls off this slow-motion smile in a mirror. The first time we see him, he's performing an act that puts Home Alone's Wet Bandits to shame. Jane Levy and David Yow play the other two low-budget criminals, the latter especially effective as the patriarch of the crew. They prove that you don't have to be especially skilled, have any resources whatsoever, or even an idea that is any good to bring a little chaos and bloodshed into the world.

It's a chilling thought.

Those guys--especially Yow--become cartoonishly monstrous at the end, contrasting sharply with the protagonist who seems like she could be a real person. Elijah Wood, Ruth's sidekick in this whole thing, is a walking hyperbole, but although the comic and more desperately sad parts of his personality don't really ever feel real, it's still a fun character. He gets a great action moment when he shows off his ninja skills.

I'm not sure it all adds up to anything but the well-paced and breezy sort of ugliness is entertaining enough. It's not the Coens, but I think it's capable of scratching that sort of itch and is one of the better Netflix features.

The title is from a great song (hymn? folk song?) done by the Carter Family and others. I'm singing it now, and if you heard it, you'd be moved.

Bad Movie Club: Terror in Beverly Hills

1989 action movie

Bad Movie Rating: 3/5 (Josh: 2/5; Fred: no rating)

Rating: 5/20

Plot: The president's daughter is kidnapped in Beverly Hills by Middle Eastern terrorists, and only Hack Stone can save her! Hack Stone!

Frank Stallone may be the "star" of this, but he really wasn't in it all that much. I guess this was a troubled production (not having film for the camera, etc.), and Stallone stopped showing up until they agreed to pay him every morning for his work. So he's missing from a large chunk of this movie. Not that it matters all that much because he's interchangeable with any C-level action star from the late-1980s. Any hack could have been Hack Stone.

That's right--his name was Hack Stone in this.

The real star of the movie--and somebody who could not have been replaced--is the great Cameron Mitchell as a surly police chief. You know this type of character from countless B-movies that you've seen. He finds any excuse to yell and curse, throws down phone receivers instead of hanging them up, and snarls a lot. A lot of his lines seems improvised to me, and he really stands out in a movie that desperately needed somebody to stand out.

Pacing was a problem in this one. It takes forever for this one to find a plot. We start with the terrorists on their home turf and then follow them to the airport and to America, seemingly in real time. They lackadaisically scheme and then finally carry out this kidnapping. The kidnapping and ensuing car chase depended on a whole lot of people being terrible at their jobs, and then they're shut up in some sort of defunct bean storage facility for the rest of the movie, one that is easy to find because they traveled via white limousine there. It seems like a no-win situation to me. Normally, I would root for the terrorists when the good guy is a Stallone, but I couldn't support this kind of buffoonery.

There are two great death scenes in this. One is the main bad guy--oh c'mon, did you really think the bad guys were surviving this movie with Hack Stone coming after them?--who makes a baffling decision after a really dull bit of fisticuffs and then is disposed of in what has to be considered overkill. The other is during this ten minutes of movie where the sound is all screwed up and only the dialogue can be heard. Now that might just be an Amazon issue. But a barking dog, the music, the gunshots. It was all very muffled while the dialogue could still be heard, probably unfortunately. Anyway, a character is shot, makes a barely-audible splash in some sort of fountain, and then is shot several times

Watch this for the great Cameron Mitchell performance and the gratuitous nudity.

Hey, wait a second. Cameron? Mitchell? That's the gay couple on Modern Family. Somebody must have been a fan.

Lots of Pepsi product placement. I hope they didn't pay for it.

Early Man

2017 animated feature

Rating: 12/20

Plot: The Bronze Age collides with the Stone Age, and a soccer match ensues.

Despite my love for everything Aardman Animations has ever done, I wasn't all that excited going into this one. Cavemen had already been done with The Croods, and the second preview I saw made it seem like the type of movie that has been written again and again. Nevertheless, I kept the faith. And if I had just gone into this wanting the clever stop-motion animation, the terrible puns, the grotesque human caricatures, the anthropomorphized animals, and the slightly-askew humor that you can expect with Aardman, I would have been pleased.

But the storytelling is so derivative here. The beats are predictable. As soon as one character is introduced, you know exactly how that character will factor into the story later. As soon as one character is being underrated, you know exactly what character will end up doing later. As soon as one bit of dialogue is shared, you know exactly how the end of the big climactic soccer match will go.

Is it a spoiler to tell you that everything in a movie is predictable? It probably is. I apologize.

These Aardman movies work when they throw the unexpected at you. Their blend of charming animated characters and unpredictability work so well in Chicken Run, Wallace and Gromit, and the Shaun the Sheep movie. Here, there are still a few laughs and a few likable characters and a few really beautiful animated sequences that put a smile on my face. But that unpredictability is completely gone and replaced with something almost offensively generic.

There were only five people in the theater with me for this one, and they were all adults. One couple, a lonely person, another lonely person, and me.

Black Panther

2018 superhero movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Power struggles in the African nation of Wakanda as T'Challa inherits the throne after his father's passing. Meanwhile, Wakanda struggles with its isolationism.

My plans were to see a less-crowded Early Man, but the theater was having technical difficulties and canceled the last showing of that. Then, I bought a ticket for Fifty Shades Freed, but the movie had already started. So I ended up watching this instead. I had planned on seeing it a few days later.

During the previews, I was overcome with this feeling that somebody was going to come in with a gun and shoot up the movie theater. I was in the last row and felt better after realizing that if a gunman did come in, I could drop to the floor, scoot to the end of the row, and squeeze myself behind the seats to hide. Nobody ended up coming in to shoot everybody though. You probably would have heard about it on the news had that happened.

I realize the importance of this movie to the black community, and I liked the messages below the surface of this movie. The surface, unfortunately, was the same kind of tired Marvel superhero movie stuff that we've seen many many times before. Sketchy CGI fight scenes, flashy action sequences, uninspired storytelling. The black community deserves a better superhero movie than this just like women deserved a better superhero movie than Wonder Woman. Bizarre action set pieces distract from some pretty good performances, and pedestrian storytelling can't distract from a hero who just isn't all that engaging.

I really wanted to like this movie, and I did enjoy pieces of it. I liked the role women played in the story, and I liked that almost every important character was black. I liked the look on kids' faces when watching a cool spaceship. I liked a lot of the costumes and music.

I did not like seeing Stan Lee again. I'm really tired of these cameos. This one wasn't as dopey as others, but it was still pretty dopey.

I enjoyed how this is Marvel's Bond movie. These individual superhero stories all get their own sub-genres, and I kind of hoped this one wouldn't be blaxploitation. It's totally not! It's a Bond movie, and that's pretty cool.

The theater was packed. I haven't looked at weekend box office numbers for this, but I know it did very well. I'm thrilled about that, and I was happy to see how happy people were when leaving the theater. Their experiences, both in everyday life and with this movie, are different than mine.

I chuckled when looking for a poster image to steal for this blog entry and finding this one of Martin Freeman:

I thought for sure it was a fake poster, but apparently, it's real. 

Edit: I've let this one marinate a bit. Based on a few different things, I've decided that I liked this better than I thought I did.

First, is Michael B. Jordan's villain. A lot of what I didn't like about this was how Marvelized it was. And I didn't really think the villain was all that engaging. However, I now like that character because of how non-Marvel he was. Killmonger (cool name, too) is driven by things that are very real, and I think that adds real depth and emotion to the whole thing.

Another theme emerged as I was thinking about this, too. A lot of this has to do with things being hidden. Hidden powers, hidden technologies, entire hidden civilizations. And as the story progresses, the importance of storytelling and things not staying hidden becomes important.