At this point, "Screenlife" is basically just, well, life
So why shouldn't we be watching movies that take place entirely on devices?
“It’s hard to imagine that the fear of offending is stronger than the fear of pain.
But you know what? It is.”
So I did have some stuff I wanted to talk about this week, but it’s already late so I’ll be saving them for future editions.
But I will go ahead and get this over with…
I was wrong.
While Avatar: The Way of Water won’t make as much as the original (it’s still a lot - already the sixth highest grossing movie ever), it definitely won’t come out of its theatrical release considered any sort of disappointment. I am immensely curious to see how the rest of the series will play out in terms of audience reception, what with three more sequels planned and their releases planned to be much closer together (relative to the original and Way of Water). Which maaaaybe ends up hurting them as there’s less of a hype build? But come on, at this point, why should I even consider questioning it? Because gahl-darnit, Cameron did it again.
Extra Credit Movie(s):
The Son - You might’ve heard of this one, because Hugh Jackman has been getting a lot of praise for his acting as father to a severely troubled and depressed son who comes to live with him after Jackman’s ex-wife (played by Laura Dern) no longer knows what to do. What you haven’t heard about, unfortunately, are a ton of great reviews. As it’s getting slagged a bit for being melodramatic, and even sometimes cruel to audiences, in it’s portrayal of a very tough situation, even if critics have commended French director Florian Zeller - who also directed 2020’s Oscar nominated The Father - for taking on a difficult topic so directly. But if you’re keen on seeing all of “the year’s best performances,” and you’re a bit of a masochist1, you might want to give this one a look. Opening “nationwide” in theaters this weekend2.
Jung_E - it’s a Korean sci-fi movie about a “super soldier” and her daughter - same director as Train to Busan if that means something to you. No reviews, but feel like if you’ve been down with the Korean content vibe vibe lately, you might wanna take a look. Streaming on Netflix this weekend.
There’s a real solid chance you spend a crap ton of time on your electronic devices - “too much” time as your therapist might call it3. So why don’t you give yourself, and your smartphone, a break and spend two hours watching someone else on their internet-connected doohickeys.
Seems like a weird sell.
And yet, it’s become a decently successful sub-genre in cinema. One that has come to be known as “Screenlife,” coined by director / producer Timur Bekmambetov who helped make the first box office hit in the style, 2014’s Unfriended.
You could say Screenlife is almost the exact opposite of the modern aspirational nomad lifestyle that is #Vanlife. See, in one you spend hours retouching photos on VSCO, editing your Vlog on your laptop, FaceTiming your parents telling them you’re ok and what you’ve been up to each week. And the other you don’t need a $100,000 tricked out Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van for4.
😃
Bad jokes aside, it is kind of true that the two are not that different after all. Because at this stage in civilization, screens kind of are life to a certain extent, no matter where you’re located on this planet. In that they are a very real way in which we experience and communicate about the world. Which I actually think is a-ok!
So it should follow we’d feel comfortable watching a daughter (Storm Reid) take her search and rescue efforts to the internet after her mom (Nia Long) doesn’t come home after taking a vacation with a new boo. A search which will reveal SHOCKING discoveries and introduce GASP INDUCING twists.
If this rough outline feels vaguely familiar, it should. Because Missing is an anthology-esque sequel to 2018’s Searching, which starred John Cho trying to find his lost daughter. Whereas Unfriended was maybe a bit of a horror “trick” movie, Searching was considered by critics to be a legitimately solid movie, with good characters and even better acting (namely Cho).
Reviews say Missing may be lacking an emotional lynchpin as strong as Cho, but they say the movie (and Reid to a large extent) does well enough to keep you invested. But what you’re really coming for is to watch a mystery movie a la Agatha Christie, just one that happens to be set on a Macbook screen. 💻
Out: Friday
Where: Theaters
1 hr 51 mins | PG-13 | 🍅: 79%
Jesse Eisenberg wrote and directed his first movie. He doesn’t star in it, but from critics’ accounts, it most definitely feels like Jesse Eisenberg wrote and directed it (because, again, he did). But what exactly does a Jesse Eisenberg movie feel like? Well, how about some narcissistic characters whose self-obsession blinds them to the impact they’re having on those around them? Check. Maybe add in some veiled, but not unobvious cutting commentary on an aspect of modern culture. Uh huh. Add in a dash of melancholic foreboding, indicating that things probably aren’t going to be wrapped up nice and tidy. And there you have it! Or maybe it should I say… and there you have it? Because to be fair to Eisenberg, this is his first movie, and even if he’s known for playing anxiety-ridden neurotic characters, those are just characters. Doesn’t mean all his movies will be of the same ilk.
But at least for his opening act he created people that you can imagine playing opposite him in a movie - a mother (Julianne Moore) and son (Finn Wolfhard) who could use a bit of outside perspective, with the mother virtue signaling harder than your neighbor who keeps telling you, even after you’ve asked them 75 times not to, about how they repurpose their own urine and a son who thinks all that matters in life is getting followers to watch his livestreams, leaving him without much to discuss when he falls for a girl who’s more into Karl Marx than TikTok.
For some the film dissects the act of trying to be a “good person” quite poignantly, but there are others, and not a small portion mind you, that left the movie feeling like the emotional disembowelment handed them a metaphorically splayed open frog, guts exposed, but with no clear indication of what was what. So maybe more than many, the MPGs on this one may vary.
Out: Friday
Where: Limited Theaters
1 hr 28 mins | R | 🍅: 66%
I liked the numbered list last week. Let’s do a sequel.
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. Hey Margaret!
Your Place or Mine. Um, how ‘bout neither.
Somebody I Used to Know. In fact, not a Gotye documentary.
Marlowe. Liam Neeson decides to go full noir.
Polite Society. Sisterly love and badass action. Ok!
Sharper. Apparently everybody wants in on that rich people fightin’ tip.
meant more the emotional torture angle than the terrible movie angle
quotes because the studio has been cagey about the actual theatrical count. Have a feeling it’s going to be far more limited than a normal broad release due to the critical reception
Or is that just mine?
sick burn bro