In The Grey - My Take (Spoilers)

 

I went into this expecting some pleasant action and eye candy. What I got was a movie that was surprisingly smart, slightly snarky, twisty, and tightly told. And entertaining. It was refreshing after the series of duds I've had lately.

I had my doubts when I saw it was a Guy Ritchie movie but I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt and two hours of my time. I'm glad I did. It has an "Ocean's Eleven" pacing at the start, right down to the on screen captions as they describe what they've done for planning. Steal from what works, right?

The woman is a lawyer who specializes in recovering large unrecoverable debts for an equity-type company. She uses not-quite-legal tactics when all other avenues have been exhausted. She's got Henry and Jake as her team (I'm not going to bother with character names), who then do all the wet work. She handles the courtroom and such.

Where does the money come from to set all this up? A very large up front payment from the equity-type company in return for her taking the job. The woman who is hiring her is slimy, as expected from an equity-type executive working her way up the building to higher ranking jobs. Needless to say the two women don't like each other.

Henry does intelligence, Jake does hands-on. The two of them have built up a strong partnership and are completely devoted to the woman lawyer. It's revealed later she got them out of a Chinese prison and they've worked for her ever since.

Between the two of them they set it up so the woman lawyer can go to the evil billionaires island to get the money, and get out. Unlike the last person who tried. They set up three different extraction scenarios and have their own team to do all the work. Of course the evil billionaire controls the island, the police, etc. plus his own private security wet work team.

As the billionaire refuses to pay, she goes after him in court and gradually starts impounding and otherwise getting injunctions against his businesses. She goes after his toys first - the private jet and yacht. Both needed to get on and off the island and meant to piss him off. It works. There's also a scene after the initial meeting where he sends a lot of goons out to kill her but they all get mowed down by her guys/team.

One interesting part here is that it's left ambiguous as to whether or not Henry and Jake are a couple. They dip into it but not enough to say for certain. They may just have worked together long enough that they have that kind of banter. I liked how they left that .. in the grey.

There's an escalation of meetings and court stuff until the evil billionaire gives in and agrees in exchange for her returning all his stuff. She agrees. They part ways. She lets the woman at the equity-type firm know the deal is done and to give him back his stuff.

Smash cut to three months(?) later and the woman lawyer is now in the desert somewhere. Exposition wise she's on the phone trying to get her payment. Both of her companions end up dead and the evil billionaire's head of security bundles her into the SUV. Before they do that she activates the tracker in her watch that she's still wearing.

This was an unexpected twist. The job was done. Normally the movie ends here. But nope. Now there's the issue of the woman lawyer at the equity-type company screwing both of them over. The evil billionaire plans on using the woman lawyer as leverage, only for her to say she also didn't get paid so she's useless for that reason. He leaves her in prison, not happy with not having her for leverage.

Now it's a prison breakout. Henry and Jake scouted the prison for the original job. All the unused equipment is still scattered around the island. They use the plans from earlier in the movie to make it happen. The bad guys are a teeny bit smart in this movie but still rely on cannon fodder for the big shootouts.

Henry and Jake don't accompany the woman when she leaves the island. They kidnap the evil billionaire, put him in a shipping container, and send him to the US.

Henry and Jake try to explain to the woman at the equity-type firm that it's in her best interests to keep her end of the bargain. Then the woman lawyer comes in and drops the big bomb of the evil billionaire turning state's evidence against the equity-type firm for making knowingly illegal loans, specifically her making them. And how the woman lawyer has talked to the bosses on those higher floors about it. She leaves and the phone rings for the woman at the equity-type firm, implying she's going to get called onto the carpet.

Anyway.

The action was tight and mostly believable until the big explosions started. Henry and Jake work well together and they played it convincingly on the screen. Their absolute devotion, and their team's absolute devotion, to the woman lawyer is a weak spot in the story but it's a small weak spot. There's good banter between Henry and Jake, and I'm a sucker for good banter. They're pretty to look at as well.

As I said I was pleasantly surprised by how much I like this movie. I will probably watch it again at home at some point when I need some mindless entertainment, and eye candy.

Obsession - My Take (Spoilers)

 

CW: Pet death, self harm

I'm going to say I'm not the right audience for this film. It's really geared towards the same audience as "Iron Lung".

As I did not like "Iron Lung", I didn't like this movie either.

The premise is a fairly standard one and it's either an official or unofficial tagline: "Be Careful What You Wish For". There's nothing wrong with the premise. It's a good premise. But if you know the premise you know the entirety of the story.

This one has the more common variant of wishing for someone to love them. This is never a good idea. Anyone who has read/watched these knows it's a bad idea and why. This follows in that track. Imposing your wish on someone else leads to them being, shall we say, conflicted.

I will say that this movie does a decent job of hauling the story through beginning to end. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

This movie concerns a group of four friends: two guys and two girls. Because I don't care enough to look up and continue to try to remember their names I'll be using placeholers.

Guy 1 likes Girl 2 and is too hesitant to tell her. He's concerned that he'll lose the friendship that they've built over the years. Guy 2 is helping/pushing him to do it, except not at their weekly bar trivia night because he likes that night and doesn't want it to get weird. Great friend, I know.

Guy 1 goes home and finds his cat dead. The poor thing got into his meds somehow and that was that. He picks up the scattered pills and puts them back in the bottle, back in the medicine cabinet. *cough cough Chekov's Gun cough* He then puts the cat in a garbage bag and scrubs the floor where it was. Lovely.

Talking to Girl 1 on the phone she tells him she dropped her crystal necklace down the drain. They're casually chatting, as friends do. He goes to the local metaphysical shop (because I honestly do think every city has at least one of them - we do) and the uninterested clerk points him to a display of crystal necklaces. While he's trying to figure out one to buy he sees a display of "One Willow Wish" for $6.99. Abandoning the crystal necklace idea he buys one.

He doesn't want to go to trivia night but also won't tell his close friend group "Hey, my cat died today and I don't feel like going out for trivia" so he goes. He tries to tell Girl 1 what he's feeling and Guy 2 confession-blocks him. Guy 2 is a bit of a dick. Girl 2 is background at this point.

Guy 1 drives Girl 1 home. He's on edge and forgets to give her the wish that he was going to do. Instead of doing that he reads the box while she's walking from the car to her house. Break to get your wish, one wish per person. He makes the fateful wish for her to love him more than anyone else in the world. Oo. Mistake.

Now we get into her working through the mental changes as the wish settles in. She's swinging between herself and what he wants. Or at least what he said. They end up at his place for a platonic night. He gets up and looks at not-Reddit to find out if the wish thing is true. He gets mixed answers. It's not-Reddit. That happens.

M'kay. I'll tighten this up. She gets more and more obsessed with him and he realizes that obsession is, quite frankly, terrifying. She harms herself a few times as she tries to get him to say that he loves her as much as she loves him, being jealous, etc. The other friends are concerned.

One scene that stands out is when he goes into work and she doesn't. She stands, staring at the door with a rather creepy smile, and it's quite obvious that she pees herself while she simply stands. When Guy 1 gets home he finds her there and she's vomited on herself for some reason. He keeps looking down, saying he'll clean up the mess, and as he takes her to the bathroom to clean up they show that she's voided from all three holes as she stood there.

Oh. And she does things with the dead cat. Because obsession.

Guy 1 calls the number on the box to find out if he can change his wish. Nope. The only way to break the wish is for him to die because the wish centers on him. He tucks that one away.

Girl 2 gets him out of the house in the middle of the night to talk to him. She tells him that Guy 2 and Girl 1 have been hooking up occasionally for the last couple of years, while Guy 2 knew Guy 1 was infatuated with her. Then Girl 2 talks around that she's more suited to him. She really is, to be fair.

Girl 1 has followed him and the predictable happens after he leaves the car.

Guy 1 goes back to the store and buys another wish, after a brief moment of not finding them where he expected. He gets one and recognizes the voice from the phone to the new clerk he's talking to. He tries to use the wish but it won't break. It really is one to a customer. He goes to Guy 2 and begs him to make a wish that Guy 1 had never made his wish. Guy 2 shows who he is by wishing for a billion dollars and money starts raining from the ceiling.

Finale! Guy 1 goes home and finds Girl 1 has done .. things to Girl 2. Guy 2 shows up in excitement about his wish and catches a bullet in the forehead for being there. Guy 1 gets away to the bathroom and tries to screw up his courage to use said gun on himself. He can't but eventually does slam down the whole bottle of pills that killed his cat. *cough cough Chekov's Gun cough*

As he's sitting there his face smooths out and he eagerly goes back to Girl 1. She's found the second wish he bought and used it, obviously to make him love her as much as she loves him (her common wailing refrain). Alas, the pills take hold. Because he's dead she's free to remember everything she did while she was under the influence of his wish. Fade to black.

Her using the wish on him was a nice touch. I'll say that.

The acting carries this movie and they do a pretty good job of it. It's not as transcendent as the reviews are trying to say. The actress for Girl 1 does carry the crazy well but she's not a "Scream Queen" as she's being dubbed. It's one movie. The characters all project what they're supposed to project.

As I said earlier, once you know the story you know how it will unfold. The ending can vary and I think they chose a good one for the pace of the movie. It does build nicely and doesn't focus too much on gross things. Too much. But honestly it's not as good as the critics want it to be. But people for whom it's targeted seem to like it.

I have a feeling there's going to be more of these two kinds of YouTube movies in the near future. The two that are out have done oddly well. So we'll see more until the format crashes.

The Sheep Detectives - My Take (Spoilers)

 

I saw this as a Screen Unseen, which was on a Sunday afternoon instead of the normal Monday Evening. Given that, the rating, and the (estimated) run time it was pretty obvious that this was going to be the movie.

First and foremost - I do not like Agatha Christie books. I just don't. There's a reason why I stated this.

The movie is very much Agatha Christie coded. That's fine since the premise is that the shepherd reads the sheep books very much in the Agatha Christie style. Given that it should be pretty obvious that I wouldn't like the movie. And I didn't like the movie.

There's lots of CGI sheep with some celebrity voice actors, who aren't really noticeable as to who they are. To me that's a slap in the face for voice actors but hey, what do I know? Except that this movie spent a lot of money on celebrities when they got no real return from them.

The bungling police officer was flat out annoying. Seriously. They swung the pendulum way too far to make him ineffective. I can suspend disbelief but this was a bridge too far. An inexperienced police officer in a small village isn't going to be doing a murder investigation without experienced help. Maybe that's just me but if I were part of that village I'd be screaming for them to get a real detective in there.

As with all Agatha Christie stories there's the cast of potential murders, etc. In this case there's also CGI sheep who are working to solve the crime. They end up dropping clues in front of the police officer's face to move the story along.

There's also a substory about discrimination but that's kind of a distraction. There's no value in it nor does it have a darn thing to do with the story itself.

Anyway. Everyone's potential motives and secrets are revealed, the police officer stumbles along the path the sheep provide, the murder is exposed after the steps they took to disguise themselves. Yippee.

It's not a bad movie. It's just not a good one for me. I didn't like much of anything about it, to be honest.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 - My Take (Spoilers)

 

Yes. I saw this the day before it officially opens because almost all movies with a Friday release date are in theaters the day before. I don't know why.

This sequel should have remained "in the works" because what they made isn't good.

The wit is as sharp as a butter knife, the movie is about 30 minutes too long, the original characters are now bargain basement caricatures of themselves, and there's thinly disguised characters who are supposed to be the Bezos. Very thinly disguised.

Andy (Anne Hathaway in one of the five movies she's in this year) is even more fumbling and clueless than she was twenty years ago. They work so hard to make her the heart of the movie that it overshoots into cringe territory.

Miranda (Meryl Streep) tries to be as acerbic as the first time around but seems more tired. They give her some character development and juicy lines but it's nothing new.

Nigel (Stanley Tucci) is the standout of this one, probably again. He's the heads-down, don't make waves same as he was before but has more of a resigned feeling, as he should after twenty years doing the same thing.

Emily (Emily Blunt) is kind of sidelined here and tries to recapture the bickering from the first one. As with the rest she didn't hit the mark.

This time around the problem is that the magazine has been trying to move into the digital era and is suffering because no one has an attention span anymore. Then the stakes rise when the owner passes away and his son wants to take things into a fresh, even more digital era. The film makes it very obvious that Miranda is old-school and, well, old so therefore her ways are bad.

Andy teams up with Emily to save the magazine from being sold, only to be double crossed because Emily's not-Bezo boyfriend is going to buy it in a secret deal so Emily can be the editor in chief. Miranda figured it all out, Andy is stunned by the obvious betrayal. One nice bit of writing has Miranda talking at Andy about betrayal and it's not actually directed at her. It was Miranda telling her she knew who was going to take the hit and who was going to do it.

Andy is back because she lost her job and was hired to be the features editor. She dug the magazine out of a scandal and then continues to desperately seek Miranda's approval. This sets up more of the same from the first movie - bitchy and/or overlooked assistants, fashion snobbery, elitism, etc. only this time it's kinda tired. It's also the cliche of the writer/editor wanting to put real journalism into a fashion magazine.

She even goes so far as to snag a coveted interview with not-Bezo's first wife, who Miranda considers the golden ring. Not-Bezo's first wife gives the interview, saying that she's going to give all the money away, etc. This does not get Andy the approval she seeks either.

Anyway.

Miranda kind of gave up when things took the hard spin but the situation with the magazine being pulled out from under her gives her a second wind. She gives Andy a list of phone numbers to call to do .. something. Andy pulls it off but they have to leave right before Miranda gives the keynote speech at their new Milan venue. Miranda has Nigel do it, realizing that he'd been wanting to advance for a long time.

Not-Bezo and Emily are lunching with the owner's son, touching on the final details of the sale. The son gets a phone call, talks financial stuff, then says the entire media branch has been sold so the magazine has been sold too.

Andy and Miranda drive and fly off, ending with a helicopter landing .. on the lawn of not-Bezo's first wife's house. She bought the media branch, ensuring that Miranda (and Andy) get to stay at their beloved magazine.

As in the first one there's a big montage of fashion designers and models, along with the magazine's fashion show. Pink gets a cameo here because they need to find music for the show and Miranda uses Nigel to kind of strong arm her into performing. She gets a full song out during the fashion show.

Oh. Forgot a major plot hole. When Andy is jumping through hoops to get that interview she gets the no-Bezo's first wife's phone number. Then when Miranda tell her to contact her again (not saying who's she's contacting on screen tho) Andy has to jump through hoops. I'd think she'd have saved that very valuable contact she made the first time and it would have been a single call. Realistic but not interesting to watch.

That's really it. There's nothing that stands out for this and it takes the shine off the original movie's impact. They push too hard on how things have changed (Miranda has a dedicated HR person to tell her when she's being politically incorrect) and not at all on how characters have changed over two decades.

Busboys - My Take (Spoilers)

 

I like David Spade, when he stays in his lane. So seeing a movie where the summary describes him as "an idiot" seems like it would fit that situation.

In short. David Spade and Theo Von were pretty good in a very bad script they wrote themselves.

Edit - After looking on IMDb I found out Theo Von has a comedy podcast. Now the rest of this makes more sense because it's another attempt at a social media personality trying to break into movies. Notice the word "trying".

The premise is that they're two perpetual underdogs who think being a waiter is the pinnacle of a career. They take jobs as busboys to work their way up to be waiters. The age difference is played out as being friends for close to two decades. Then it gets into the "trying too hard" aspect of the movie.

The second plot of them trying to do a drug deal to get money is where it gets, quite frankly, stupid. The attempts at satire regarding all the various alphabet government agencies and then how the DEA handles investigating things is terrible. The actual drug cartel/gang is terrible. They bypassed satire and moved directly into cringe.

Example - one of the alphabets that show up are a pair of well-proportioned women in bikinis with DTF hats and jackets. It was slightly amusing when they showed up for the second time and when asked why they were there they said they were in the group chat.

David and Theo really leaned into their roles and they work well together. The crew of misfits in the restaurant work well together, for the most part. It's just a terrible script that kept things from being a goofy romp.

The restaurant manager was way too close to a Chris Farley character for my liking. The role would have suited him and the actor bears a close resemblance. That made it seem like a cheap grab for the "Tommy Boy" vibe, for those who remember the way those two worked well in that movie.

I'm disappointed to see the potential they had wasted so badly.

Mother Mary - My Take (Spoilers)

 

I'm trying to remember why I wanted to see this movie and it's kind of a blank. I saw the trailer and it kinda looked interesting? I had movies left to see that week and wanted something new? The costumes in the trailer looked cool?

Anyway. I saw it.

It wasn't interesting. It was something I hadn't seen. The costumes were cool-ish. Notice I didn't say anything about the plot because I honestly have no idea what this movie was supposed to tell. I'm not being figurative here. I'm being literal.

Most of the movie is the two women yapping at each other in hostile passive aggressive stuff, weird metaphorical stuff, whiny stuff, and oddly paranormal stuff. There's flashbacks to what seems to be the events each of them experienced sharing their pain for each other? There's a metaphor in that pain being made into something beautiful?

There's a lot of Anne Hathaway in very small couture costumes. Couture in this case means the stuff on the runway that makes very little fashion sense. She sings. Her signature stage costume persona (Mother Mary) is a halo of some kind.

From what I can pick out of this the two of them were friends, maybe lovers, when MM's singing career started and the other woman was her costumer. She made the first halo, in an interesting punk style of long nails out of heavy leather. The two of them had a falling out, possibly when MM started looking at other designers for her costumes.

She's back begging for a costume from the woman, who now has a successful fashion line, because nothing anyone else does feels like it expresses who she is. I think that's the reason. Anyway. This is when the yapping happens.

The paranormal is in the form of some kind of red ghost that looks like fabric floating. It left the designer woman and went to the singer, where it currently resides. They reconcile when the designer sets a chalk circle and they have some kind of ritual to let the red ghost out of the singer. There's the mandatory lesbian sex metaphor in there as well.

The designer makes a dress out of the red ghost made material as - heh heh - red material. It's another lesbian metaphor and oddly enough the singer doesn't wear it. She goes with a concept the designer had at the beginning of entering from the lobby and tearing off her costume as she goes to the stage to show her true self.

Maybe I did get some meaning out of the thing at all but honestly it was a mess. Too much metaphor, not enough substance to hold it up.

Hokum - My Take (Spoilers)

 

This was a Scream Unseen and one I was interested in as well. I consider those a double header since I get a surprise movie and one I wanted to see for one price.

This will be a short review. This is not a good sign for how much I enjoy a movie.

We've got the moody writer. We've got the dead parents. We've got the moody writer going to Ireland to scatter their ashes. We've got his feelings towards his parents shown, quite well, by how he carefully places his mother's ashes by a tree in a picture from their honeymoon and then throwing his father's ashes off into the woods.

The moody, nihilistic writer is an absolute ass to everyone in the hotel he's staying at - the same one his parents honeymooned at. There's an attempt at foreshadowing that falls flat because the Irish accent is too thick to easily understand and the story is broken up into segments so you lose track.

There's the convenient honeymoon suite that's forever locked.

So we get a movie full of jump scares and not much else. There's no actual reason for the things that happen. The writer gets a redemption arc he doesn't deserve.

The one smart thing that happened in this movie is that the writer was desperate enough to try making a chalk circle, after initially dismissing it as superstition. He gets the chalk in a believable way too.

I was hoping that this would be a horror movie set with Irish folklore, which would be a pleasant change from the generic stuff and the American focused stuff. Instead we get shown a book cover twice about Irish folklore and a generic horror movie.

The ending makes no sense. Quite literally there's nothing that gives you any idea why things happen in the finale. Maybe that story that I didn't understand at the beginning helped? I don't know.

Anyway. If you like jump scares then this is the movie for you.