How much cheese can you handle?
🧀🧀🧀🧀🧀🧀🧀🧀
“ I always wished I was an orphan.
Most of my favorite characters are.
I had mentally committed to writing a fairly in-depth piece about my reactions to this interview with A.O. Scott, the (now former) co-head of film criticism at The New York Times on why he decided to leave his post after 23 years. Buuuuut while I did already jot down some thoughts (and notes! I took notes!), I got a bit caught up with the four(!!) features this week and want to give myself more time to create something fully thought out for y’all. So without setting expectations high (editor’s note: people having high expectations? for you? pppffffttt | writer: uh, rude) and without exactly promising the above for next week, I’ll just say I’d be surprised if some of my ramblings on reviews, criticism and moviegoing at large aren’t sitting in your inbox next Wednesday night. Too-da-loo until then.
NEWSY BITS 👾
Netflix Pulls Plug On Nancy Meyers’ New Project Over Budget Issue [on the surface this sounds super insider-y, the kind of stuff I normally wouldn’t pass along, but I think it’s worth noting as it denotes an already in progress shift for Netflix in what they’re deciding to make, and not make. Early on in their original content phase they often threw “limitless” money at creators - especially big ones like Nancy Meyers who hasn’t made a movie in a while. Now? Still plenty of money, but with restrictions. All a calculation and a guess, but denotes The Flix is being a bit more exacting in their decision making] - Deadline
EXTRA CREDIT MOVIE(S) 📝
Assassin - it’s the last movie Bruce Willis will star in. 😢 I’m not suggesting you watch it. I’m just putting it here to mark the end of Willis’ career. A sort of in-life memorial milestone of sorts. Sucks (putting it mildly) about his diagnosis. Don’t bother with reviews, they’re bound to be terrible. Streaming on VOD this Friday.
Space Oddity - an ok enough looking YA romance / sci-fi-lite movie that I’m surprised isn’t on a streaming. Has a few reviews that are split between, “yeah, it’s cute!” and “doesn’t quite come together, even if it tries fairly hard to.” Playing in Theaters this Friday.
If you told some 80’s kid who was tossin’ dice in their parent’s basement that in the not too terribly distant future their devotion to a fantasy game born out of other-dom and wish fulfillment would not only go mainstream, but become almost cool. Well I’m pretty sure they’d tell you you just logged a natural 1 on your prediction roll.
And yet, here we are. Call it the nerd revolution or shifting cultural acceptance to allow people to do whatever they enjoy without reproach (what a crazy idea), but Dungeons and Dragons is firmly ensconced in popular culture. And to be clear, it’s obviously been around for a long while - almost 50 years! - but over the last I don’t know, ten?, twenty years?, has grown into something even the “popular kids” who bullied that 80’s teen would be participating in.
There’s a strong possibility that the rise of the game is in part due to people who used to play coming of age and holding positions of power in media. For example, one half of the co-directing team of Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is John Francis Daley who not only played the game on the show Freaks and Geeks, but in his real life too. But there’s also the proliferation of superhero movies which has helped turned geek to chic (editor’s note: 🤮 | writer: whaaaaatever) and that’s maybe an even more relevant fact here, because this movie looks and sounds like a cousin to the wildly successful and well liked Thor: Ragnarok. Hell, Paramount even went so far as to copy Marvel by using a Led Zeppelin track as the musical cue for their trailer. But the admiration doesn’t stop there as Honor Among Thieves trends far more towards a comedy than a dramatic fantasy a la Lord of the Rings, again just like Ragnarok. Which is probably the right move considering how much hate the self-serious first attempt at making a mainstream DnD brought upon itself.
But finding that sweet spot can be hard1! So I created a nice little scale showing where a movie like this should hit for mainstream profitability. I call it The Serious Scale (editor's note: super scientific bro | writer: can you just like, stop already??)
See, on the X-axis is how self serious the movie is and on the Y-axis you have how cheesy the movie is. Super-uber-duper-serious? High risk of Wisconsin’s finest. Think Twilight. Not serious at all and you basically have zero stakes which leaves you with no cheese and thus no reason to care. And we all like at least a little cheese (discounting the lactose intolerant amongst of course). Btw, don’t think about this scale for more than 12 seconds because it quickly falls apart. But you get the point (maybe??).
And gosh darn it, Daley and his co-director Jonathan Goldstein, along with a game cast headed up by Chris Pine and Michelle Rodriguez (not to mention another heel turn by Hugh Grant) seem to have nailed it as reviews are almost universally into the movie, whether they’re DnD OG’s or total n00bs.
And as someone who, like many others, got into the Dungeoning and the Dragoning during “the bullshit,” this all tracks because the game itself is often quite goofy - you can literally do whatever you want. E.g. I once tied my co-adventurer’s shoe laces together and he accidentally fell down a 300 foot shaft (oops), dragging me with him and the only way I saved us was rolling a natural 20 to cast a fly spell (I said “almost” cool).
So this sort of self-referential playful tone does actually work for me as a player. But obviously I’m nothing compared to the twenty year campaigners. Though as mentioned, Paramount is clearly going for the sweet spot to reach the broadest audience possible.
“Revelling in its own ridiculousness but finding an emotional core too, this is a wildly entertaining high-fantasy-meets-low comedy. It will leave you prancing your way out of the cinema, lute or no.” - from the Empire review of Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
Out: Thursday
Where: Theaters
2 hrs 14 mins | PG-13 | 🍅: 90%
Making a movie about the video game Tetris sounds like a challenge gone awry. “Oh, so you don’t think I can make a legitimate film about that stupidly addictive diversion where all you do is rotate blocks to make lines, the game that launched the GameBoy into millions of tiny hands across the world but still never gets its due as one of the great video games of all time? Watch me motherfucker.”
I mean, I certainly never predicted I’d be writing an overview for a movie about the game, one which has an almost innocuous omnipresence - both in time and reach. And yet, like all good superheros, Tetris has an origin story. Or rather that “innocuous omnipresence“ does. Because this is not a story about the creation of the game, nor the game itself (a The Super Mario Bros. Movie sort of take this very much isn’t), but instead a tale of how the game was birthed into the cultural consciousness 👶.
But if you want to make your movie “legitimate,” it certainly helps to have a solid actor at the helm. And Taron Egerton, who came to prominence via the Kingsman franchise and has recently gotten into more varied stuff (see: Black Bird and Rocketman), has show himself to be just that. But it also helps to have car chases, a buncha shady commies and some pixelated video game like flourishes!
And by most accounts, the filmmaking team succeeded in taking a potentially very dry story and mixing in just enough verve and panache to turn it into something mostly interesting. Mostly. Because while critics are generally favorable it doesn’t look it like completely nails the tone, getting bogged down here and there after a fairly kinetic start. But if you’re looking for a better than expected, and far more comedic, story about a game you’ve probably spent dozens if not hundreds of hours playing, Tetris is your movie. And your game.
It’s even rated R, which like, is kinda weird since it’s about a less than G-rated video game. But then again, most people who played Tetris vehemently are like, old now, so it’s fine. 👀
Side note: would you rather watch people play Tetris the game than watch Tetris the movie? You can do that.
Out: Now / Friday
Where: Limited Theaters / Apple TV +
1 hr 58 mins | R | 🍅: 77%
I’m not gonna tell you this is likely to be an “easy” watch. There’s a solid chance this is a film where many people may have to goad themselves a little to go see / hit play on. Not because it’s bad, but because it’s apparently quite good at what it does - which is create an intimate portrayal of people sometimes struggling, sometimes persevering through their specific life situations as well as the changing world around them.
But it also looks like the kind of movie where after watching there’s a good chance you’ll have a thought, or a feeling, you didn’t have before. Or maybe you’ll just appreciate its commitment to what it is. Because by all accounts, A Thousand and One is a story that is very self-assured in it’s identity. Not unlike main character Inez, who…
“Onscreen almost every moment, she’s the energetic, extroverted personality whose abrasive, combative flaws are difficult to tell from her abrasive, combative virtues.” - from the Variety review of A Thousand and One
Or maybe you’ll come away appreciating the acting of Teyana Taylor, who in her first major film role (as Inez), is getting incredibly positive reviews of a mother who after being released from prison, (technically) kidnaps her son - as he has become a ward state - and raises him, trying to provide under incredibly difficult circumstances.
But whatever it is that gets you to watch, it sounds like you’ll be thankful you did.
Out: Friday
Where: Theaters
1 hr 57 mins | R | 🍅: 97%
No matter what you think of Adam Sandler (fan 🙋♂️, even if I haven’t watched a large portion of his catalogue) I feel like he deserves credit for naming a movie “Murder Mystery.” He’s basically saying, “I’ll leave all that not-even-that-subtle allegorical stuff to Rian Johnson (director of the Knives Out movies). I’m gonna name my shit exactly what it is.”
Which is just the stripped-of-pretense attitude people seem to enjoy about Sandler. Sure, he can bust out a great dramatic performance with the best of them, but it’s his comedy which has made him Adam Sandler, so when you see him and Jennifer Aniston on a poster with the aforementioned title and a tidy little “2” placed right after, it’s an easy vibe check for most people. Add in the fact he doesn’t bloat his movies with extended runtimes (this plays for 90 mins exactly) and you get the affable time-killer plenty of people are looking for.
So, is that what you are looking for? 🧐
Out: Friday
Where: Netflix
1 hr 30 mins | PG-13 | 🍅: TBD
Can I get a…
…lil bit of pastel…
…with a lil bit of earth wind and fire2…
…in my tiny little Biosphere?
Which Thor: Love and Thunder found out quite painfully