Movie Time 2.0: TT mini reviews

[Issun]

Beau is Afraid is a weird-ass movie. It's basically a nightmare about what if your anxiety came true with heaping helpings of paranoia and abuse. It's darkly funny if you like watching a hapless chump get completely screwed by a kafkaesque surreal world.

It definitely hits close to home if you've got serious anxiety issues (hello!). I really liked it, though. It's my second favorite Aster film after Midsommar (Hereditary is probably better than Beau but while it is an incredible film up to the last 5 minutes or so, it didn't hit as hard for me as his other two films).

 

[Johnny Unusual]

Rewatching Romancing the Stone and Jewel of the Nile and Romancing isn't quite as good as I remember. Both are not great at portraying non-whites; in the first movie they are either background or criminals of some flavour and Jewel they are basically cartoonishly violent. This is to say, it's all very 80s. The set pieces aren't super great but at least Douglas and Turner have charm in the first one. The second one they are struggling there due to the script, which I feel like has a good starting point ("Hey, how do we deal with it when the heat of the moment cools down and are just living day to day") but it doesn't result in a good movie, sadly. Watchable enough. DeVito is trying so, so hard.

 

[Sarcasmorator]

Also made for a fun boardgame.

Real expensive to find now though

 

[Neo Skimbleshanks]

Stress Positions

 

[Issun]

Love Lies Bleeding is a banger of a crime thriller. Think True Romance except with butch lesbians, bodybuilding, surrealism, and epically bad 80s hair.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Boy Kills World is pretty much a two hour long fight scene, and that’s kind of exhausting even if you *don’t* have a headache before sitting down to it.

Despite that handicap, I really enjoyed it!

It was far less goofy than the trailer lead me to believe (jokes basically disappear by the midway point), but the whole movie works on Beat Em Up logic, complete with henchmen wearing gradually darker outfits to indicate how much more dangerous they are, and a suite of mini and level bosses.

If you want to see a jacked-as-all-hell Bill Skarsgard played by Archer and some kinda confusing internal logic, run, don’t walk, to your nearest movie theater and say “Make mine “Boy””!

 

[Issun]

Apparently lesbian crime films are The Big Thing for 2024, because Drive-Away Dolls is also one of those. It's less of a taut thriller than Love Lies Bleeding and more Ethan Coen flaunting that he's the one what does all the weird stuff. It gets a little in over it's head in being wacky but the cast carries it and the two leads have great chemistry. The film is also very sweet underneath all the violence and strangeness.

In the end, it's fun and it's only 84 minutes, which is refreshing when everything needs to be three hours long nowadays.

 

[Johnny Unusual]

I feel like a decade ago I decided to watch About Last Night... and I didn't like it. I decided to try again and I still don't. David Mamet dialogue goes a long way but from the jump I just don't care about the leads. I don't even actively dislike them, I'm just deeply indifferent and so when it switches to them sniping at each other, I become annoyed. It's not a tragedy of two characters who are unpracticed in being in a real relationship, it's just two bland people who become jerks (definitely moreso Rob Lowe). I think the ideas are somewhat well observed and Jim Belushi, a man I rarely say positive stuff about, is going for it with his character but I really feel like every other scene punctuated with a montage with an uplifting song about love messes with the intent of the text. This probably works better on stage, really.

 

[Paul le Fou]

Jodorowsky's Dune is a really interesting peek into a potential move adaptation of Dune that would have been absolutely fucking bonkers. If anything it makes me wish someone would pick up the book and animate it now. Also makes me want to track down Jodorowsky & Moebius's Incal comic.