I like to overthink things people think.

In This Week's Edition: The Beatles Cinematic Universe approaches | a Coen brother gets horny | movie soup for the spiritual soul

Feb 22, 2024

THE QUOTE 🎬 💬

“They invade our space and we fall back. They assimilate entire worlds and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn here!”

hint: from the best movie in the series that itself is based on one of the best TV series ever made

THINK THOUGHTS 💭

Contrary to critics, the average moviegoer really liked Bob Marley: One Love. Not only has it made a solid chunk of money already ($52 million from it’s opening last Wednesday through last Sunday), but the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes was 92% favorable compared to reviewers’ 42%. Big difference!

But like I mentioned in the film’s overview, it may have been enough for a lot of people to have a decent enough story whilst listening to a slew of bangers. But I wonder if there isn’t just a tad more to it. See, I imagine most One Love viewers know of Bob, from his music and some shit they overheard from that stoner they knew in college, but don’t actually know him. And after checking out the movie in theaters, they came away with the vibe experience they were expecting, but also this sense of having learned something - damn, did you know he escaped an assassination attempt?? Or that he came up with the hook for Three Little Birds just by singing to his kids in the car? Crazy right?! For lack of a better thought let’s call it “takeaway capital” and sometimes I think it overrides everything else, leaving viewers feeling more satisfied than they otherwise might if they evaluated a movie purely on craft (great direction, tight storytelling), as a critic more often would1.

I recently had that happen with the movie The Disappearance of Shere Hite, a documentary on feminist researcher Shere Hite, who in the 1970’s blew up the world of sex research by surveying women about their experience with sex and orgasms. I think the movie itself is done quite well, with a mix of talking heads, old TV appearances and personal notes from Hite read by Dakota Johnson. But if I’m being honest, I think the main reason I came away liking the movie was for the revelations - damn, she surveyed 3,000 woman through the mail?! She was on Oprah with an entirely male audience questioning her?? Intense. How did I not know about her book if it’s the 30th bestselling book of all time!? It’s these little morsels that satiate and are perfect for sharing in post viewing conversation.

I’m not saying this applies to each and every film of course, and hell, I’m certainly engaging with a bit of conjecture with regards to One Love, seeing as I don’t know each and every attendees thoughts (though a quick scan of the RT fan comments seems to give this some credence), but it just feels like that kinda situation.

It’s probably why biopics endure, a bit of entertainment with a dash of education - even if it’s a pretty low bar to use the term “education” here. And it’s obviously not simple enough that studios can create a formula for hits (otherwise they would’ve by now). You still have to have the right components - a compelling subject, the right takeaways etc. But One Love clearly fit the description.

And I know a lot of people probably don’t care to overthink why they liked / disliked about a movie, but that’s ok, because I can do it for them.

Once a movie marketer, always a movie marketer? 🙃

PS are excited about Dune: Part Two? Cool, get even more stoked. Reviews were released early, and they’re very good.

NEWSY MEDIA BITS 👾

Sam Mendes to Direct Four Beatles Films (Full Article): people are already jokingly(?) calling it the ”BCU" (Beatles Cinematic Universe). Mendes, who made a couple Bond movies, American Beauty, 1917 and others, will make a movie from each Beatles’ perspective. All members, or their families, have approved the project and the band’s music rights have been ok’d too (kiiiinda necessary). - The New York Times

YouTube dominates TV streaming in US, per Nielsen’s latest report (Full Article): YouTube accounts for 8.6% of all viewing on TV’s, with Netflix next at 7.9%. YouTube has held this spot for an entire year now. Interesting because I imagine lots of people think of the service as an “online” one, meaning it’s for phones and tablets, but it shows how well the company has done at migrating to (and apparently dominating) a traditional platform. - TechCrunch

EXTRA CREDIT MOVIE(S) 📝

Mea Culpa - Drah-mah. It’s Tyler Perry doing a hyped up Lifetime movie about a defense attorney (Kelly Rowland) getting *ahem* involved with her accused(!) murderer client (Trevante Rhodes from Moonlight). I mean, the main character’s first name is Mea, so that’s what we’re dealing with. Although to be fair, it’s pronounced “mee-ah.” You already know you don’t need any reviews friend. Streaming on Netflix Friday

NOTABLE NEW RELEASES 🎟 & 📺

Drive-Away Dolls

We should probably start with the fact that Drive-Away Dolls is a Coen brothers movie.

Now, if your eyesight is similar to my partner’s 🤓2, you might’ve missed that the “s” was struck through at the end there, so let me clarify that there’s only one Coen sibling involved here, Ethan. It’s his first narrative feature without his brother Joel3, who’s own solo venture was the artsy The Tragedy of MacBeth. Ethan decided to take a different tact and make a movie that’s “a little trashy”. Not my words, but those of Coen’s Dolls filmmaking partner and wife Tricia Cooke. Coen himself might use the word “stupid” to describe the movie, because he did. And they both refer to the film as “Drive-Away Dykes” (note: Cooke is queer and came up w/ the script idea fwiw) as that was the original title, but they couldn’t call it that ultimately because of “the squares at the studio.”

Lest you think these are denigrations, let me be clear, they’re very much not. The duo’s intentions were to make something a little sleazy, a bit uncouth. Fuck it, right? There are plenty of (a) serious (man) movies in the word, so why not make a road-trip-caper about a couple of lesbian friends - one, a horned up fast-talker (Margaret Qualley) and the other, a more strait-laced kinda gal that prefers to keep her pants on while devouring a book(Geraldine Viswanathan) - who end up stuck with the wrong rental car, leaving them toting a suitcase which carries a mysterious item that brings the women all sorts of trouble and adventure.

If you’re gettin’ Big Lebowski vibes here, same friend, same. But apparently Cooke came up with the idea before The Dude existed, influenced by her times in lesbian bars and the friends she made during that part of her life. Which makes Qualley’s character Jamie, who is modeled after a particular buddy of Cooke’s, even more believable and quite righteous (as in, surfer righteous), seeing Variety describes her as…

“a queer libertine dynamo — a woman who will fuck anything that moves, yet the beauty of Qualley’s performance is that she somehow makes Jamie’s horniness seem a form of enlightenment. Why not?, she seems to be saying. There’s all this beauty in the world; how could she, or anyone else, pass it up?”

Plus, it doesn’t hurt that the movie is set in 1999, so her liberated tendencies might hit a bit harder on account of the fact she doesn’t have any snippets of the latest sex and relationship podcasts streaming across her TikTok and Instagram accounts telling her “how to do polyamory right.” Though don’t think Viswanathan’s more subdued character won’t make an impact, as critics loved her dry wit and strong sense of self.

But it figures this kind of thing wouldn’t work for everyone, and it didn’t, though the bulk of critics were down with it. But when the filmmakers are saying their influences for the flick are John Waters and Russ Myers (who made Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!), you should probably expect a bit of unrestrained B-movie-ness that’ll turn some people off, and others right the hell on. 🥵

Watch the Trailer Here

Out: Friday

Where: Theaters

Details: 1 hr 24 mins | R | 🍅: 72%

Ordinary Angels

Schmaltz. Say it out-loud with me. Sshhhhhmaaaaaaltssss. It’s both fun to say and kinda sounds like food, doesn’t it? But alas, it’s not something for which you can look up a recipe on Epicurious, but instead a word that accurately describes the tone I’m getting from Ordinary Angels.

But even if you can’t masticate Angels, you still might enjoy it if you’re hungry for a different kind of meal, one that feeds your spiritual soul (ya know, if you believe in that sorta thing). The recipe basically amounts to an upscale Hallmark movie - one part part Oscar winning actor (Hilary Swank) as a messy do-gooder, one part recently popular hulk of a man switching to tender father role (Alan Ritchson from the TV version of Reacher), which are then mixed to form a duo, after a bit of reticence from father, and then combined with two parts effort to save a very sick little girl and tossed into the oven at 425° for two hours. Does it help to have a side of a true story? It usually never hurts!

And sure, the dressing to be served on top might be a little bit o’ Christianity, but seems like it’ll be served on the side so you can pour on as much as you like.

Watch the Trailer Here

Out: Friday

Where: Theaters

Details: 1 hr 56 mins | PG | 🍅: 82%

Movies are better with (good) company.