Hey. How are you?
How about we talk movies for a few minutes.
THE QUOTE š¬ š¬
āShit. I know shitās bad right now. With all the starving bullshit. And the dust storms. And we running out of french fries and burrito coverings.ā
hint: not quite as funny anymore when itās a potential reality
THINK THOUGHTS š
Hi friend. I have a few movies you might want to check out this weekend if youāre looking for a distraction.
Or if youāre feelinā those āletās make an ass print in my couch by not movingā kinda vibes, thatās cool too. If it is the case, might I suggest you peruse a back issue of WIT+ and find something thatās now streaming, fits your āsituationā and allows you to get comfy and enter another reality for a while?
Either way, as always, appreciate you and your beautiful eyeballs.
š
NEWSY BITS š¾
Tom Cruise in Early Talks for āDays of Thunderā Sequel - makes lots of sense after the success Top Gun: Maverick had, but letās be clear, Days of Thunder was / is no Top Gun. At the box office or culturally.- Variety
Amazon Adds AI-Generated Recaps to Prime Video Offerings - just text for now (and only shows), but video seems like a foregone conclusion(?), even if I would guess a bit father away. But probably not that much farther. - Hollywood Reporter
Daniel Craig Wants Netflix to Put āKnives Out 3ā in Theaters for More Than Just One Week: āHopefully, They Will Push It Out a Bitā - interesting because this is a common theme. Filmmakers and talent who work with Netflix want movies to go theaters, but they also want Netflixās money (or simply that the movie gets made at all). Will this desire fade as streaming continues to become the dominate way to watch or will there be significant enough pushback Netflix has to capitulate to the makers. TBD! - Variety
EXTRA CREDIT MOVIE(S) š
Small Things Like These - Cillian Murphy apparently canāt not kill it while acting, so weāre supplied with another performance that could get him nominated for another Oscar. He plays a man living a relatively simple life in 80ās Ireland that gets a bit blown up when he sees something happen he canāt look away from (literally and metaphorically) at the local convent. The reviews say itās an overall pretty great watch, but you come for the command Murphy has for his character. Playing in Limited Theaters Friday
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever - itās a Xmas pageant where even the unruly kids get to participate, but itās also a bit of proselytizing. Which isnāt new for the studio behind Pageant, Kingdom Story Company, but reviews say the movie accomplishes the key goal of being entertaining first. Playing in Theaters Friday
Christmas Eve in Millerās Point - like a holiday set version of Dazed and Confused where youāre following family members rather than punk high school kids. That is to say, less of a plot and more a pursuit of that feeling of Christmas chaos. The reviews say you kind of just fall into its vibe and itās enveloping enough you very well could make viewing it one of your new traditions. Playing in Limited Theaters Friday
NOTABLE NEW RELEASE(S) š & šŗ
Anora
Iād argue the proliferation of the phrase āsex work is workā is a very good thing because it forces people to reframe what is far too often maligned.
But it almost feels like the expression has become a bit of throwaway line, not because itās untrue, but because itās easy to say, but harder to actually support. I.e. it can get bandied about by those who say they believe and understand the notions behind it - that sex workers are doing a job, theyāre choosing to do it1 and that that choice is ok - but too often thereās an inevitable ābut,ā that will still diminish the workers.
Obviously the conversation is much larger than weāre able to fit in this blurb. Plus, I am not a sex worker, so Iām already getting out of my depth. But I bring all that up because Anora writer / director Sean Baker has stated one of his goals in making four movies in a row centering on sex workers is to tell their stories and get rid of the stigma that exists. To essentially just show them as other humans doinā their version of this thing we call life.
āI became friends with [sex workers] and realized there were a million stories from that world. If there is one intention with all of these films, I would say itās by telling human stories, by telling stories that are hopefully universal,ā he said. āItās helping remove the stigma thatās been applied to this livelihood, thatās always been applied to this livelihood.ā - Sean Baker on his films centering on sex workers
Thatās no small task with most peopleās views on sex, and yet, he seems to be doing a fairly good job of it. While his previous movies, Tangerine, The Florida Project, and Red Rocket have been lauded (in part of casting people from the community), Anora is hitting another level. It already won the Palme dāOr at the Cannes film festival this summer and is probably the leading contender for Best Picture at the Oscars at this point.
The movie follows Anora, aka Ani, who works at a strip club in NYC, but becomes involved with a young Russian dude who has very (very) rich parents. When they first meet thereās an effervescence between them, and even if its fun - even cute - to watch, you can feel a sense of inevitably. It gives things a real nice tension and unsure of how itāll play out. Plus, this is a movie, so stuff obviously canāt stay perfect forever...
And thereās a reason the movie is titled Anora, because she is the movie and Mikey Madison is Anora. The rest of the cast is pretty perfect too, but thereās a reason Madison is getting Oscar love as well.
I was actually able to catch this one before writing the blurb (note: the movie has been out in theaters in larger cities for the past couple weeks, but goes wide on Friday, hence why Iām highlighting it now) and can concur with critics who think it has this perfect comedic tone that never becomes silly, and still allows the movie to feel very real in the emotional sense.
And while itās one opinion, there was this piece from Risdon Roberts, a sex worker who discussed how she thought it portrayed the realities - good for the most part.
āMovies will continue to be made about us, just as people will continue to be fascinated by us, because what we do to pay our bills spits in the face of dominant cultural ideas about gender roles, work, sex, and love. In a world where the police still call murdered sex workers nonhumans and politicians weaponize our livelihoods for votes, what I appreciate most about Anora is that Ani is an authentic hustler, with all the moral gray area that comes with the job, and she still remains someone we root forā - Risdon Roberts on Anoraās portrayal of her profession
But ultimately, with all the emphasis on the sex work aspect, youāre likely going to come out of Anora thinking about the same kinds of things you do with most movies. Human things.
Out: Friday
Where: Theaters
Details: 2 hrs 29 mins | R | š : 97%
Heretic
When thereās a glint in someoneās eye, how are you to know whether it means that person is about to charm the pants off you, or slowly saw your legs off?
You kinda canāt, not truly, because you know donāt know what types of synapses are firing behind those light reflecting orbs.
But there are cheats we can access. For example, if youāre talking Hugh Grant in an acting role, you basically just have to check if itās 2017 or later. Because if it is, heād have entered what the internet (i.e. Reddit) likes to call his āvillain phase.ā Whereas for much of his career, heād used his... (not saying it editor: come oooon, say it. nope editors: donāt be lame ok, fiiiine) ā¦rizz (editor: omg, I canāt believe you said it, youāre such a lame old dude, lol) to make audiences swoon as he got the girl again and again, he has now, quite literally, lived long enough to see himself become the villain.
Which sounds like itās just fine by the British thespian, as he says the āMr. Stuttery Blinkyā dude was never his thing in the first place. He was just acting of course.
But that *ahem* charisma, will still help keep you entertained during a movie that sounds like it could be very boring without it, see: a man traps two Mormon missionaries in his house so he can mansplain religion to them.
For some men, itās not enough to be right ā they need other people to be wrong, and Grant finds a palpable religious ecstasy in becoming a human manifestation of the āBen Shapiro DESTROYS āBarbieā Movie for 43 Minutesā headline construction. - from the IndieWire review of Heretic
And for some even crazier men, they also need to send their (literally) captive audience deeper into a house that has been setup to (also literally) test their faith.
But writers / directors Scott Beck and Brian Woods, who are known for writing A Quiet Place, have apparently shown that they can do dialogue too. With critics saying Grant is able to take their words and tease them into tension over a very strong first half. But while it stays compelling, ultimately the discourse is not likely to make you come out questioning where you stand on whether youāll spend eternity in hell for that one thing you did that one time (you know what it is!).
Out: Friday
Where: Theaters
Details: 1 hr 50 mins | R | š : 94%
THE WEEKLY TRAILER PLAYLIST āÆ
Presence - Steven Soderbergh (Oceanās 11,12,13) makes a ghost story, but not quite a horror movie?
Red Eyes - Iām not saying a studio exec saw the heart eyes emoji and was like, āthis should be a movie!,ā but Iām not not saying that.
The Night Before Christmas in Wonderland - doesnāt look like itāll achieve the crossover success of The Nightmare Before Christmas, but someone thought mashing together Alice in Wonderland and Santa Claus was worth it.
The End - the amount of post-apocalyptic movies has reached the point where if (when?) humans do destroy the earth, people could likely fill a solid chunk of their time watching the end of humanity binging an exhaustive post-ap playlist.
Waltzing with Brando - the internet went all internetāyā for this photo (same one as below) of Billy Zane (Titanic bad guy!) looking like an AI version of Marlon Brando in The Godfather.
of course any work, sex related or not, under duress or force is not ok.