Fall 2022 Movies
Nov. 11th, 2022 09:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroThor: Love and Thunder – Not a particularly good movie, but an entertaining one? The balance of goofy stuff to serious stuff didn’t work quite as well this time. The Jane plotline pissed Jethrien off. Russell Crowe’s accent as Zeus was weird, inconsistent and absolutely not Greek. I did enjoy the point where Thor realized the extent of his power and used it well (sharing the Power of Thor with the kids in the climax was the best example), but by the same token the ability of Stormbreaker to summon the bifrost was new and kinda random.
League of Super Pets - Krypto the Super-Dog is jealous that Clark has Lois in his life and needs to learn to make friends; Lex Luthor’s hyperintelligent guinea pig utilizes a new kind of kryptonite to give animals superpowers; hilarity ensues. The plot is formulaic and exactly what you’d expect; there are some witty bits and in-jokes but it’s not amazing in that regard; but boy, did they get a star-studded cast to ham it up. The Rock and Kevin Hart and doing their usual thing, of course. But Kate MacKinnon as the evil guinea pig! Keanu Reeves having a glorious time as Batman!
Luckiest Girl Alive – A woman on the cusp of the “perfect” wedding to the “perfect” man has all the trauma in her past catch up to her and she has to figure out how to deal with it and what she really wants. I’ll admit to a general weakness for Mila Kunis, despite her shaky hit rate. This is a clever but serious film, in some ways treading similar ground to Promising Young Woman, but with less movie-horror and more realistic horror, if that makes sense. Trigger warnings for graphic violence and sexual assault; but it also ends happily and in a satisfying way for the victim.
I’m Totally Fine – When her best friend and business partner dies suddenly, a woman goes out to the house they had rented for an (obviously-cancelled) celebration to clear her head...and an alien scientist appears wearing her friend’s body. Low-budget sci-fi doing what low-budget sci-fi does best: Making you think about it. (And it is indeed low-budget; there are five onscreen actors total—three of whom only get one or two scenes—and one real set, one instance of CGI, and only enough budget for one late-90s hit song. Though one of those actors is the always-delightful Guillermo from What We Do in the Shadows.) It's a mix of comedy and poignancy; a musing on grief and mourning dressed up with a sci-fi premise. Not amazing, but well-done for what it is.
Do Revenge – The good: The cast is fabulous. Veronica from Riverdale, Robin from Stranger Things, Sansa Stark (in a wonderful scene-stealing cameo), and Sarah Michelle Geller. There’s a lot of casual queerness and the movie has the overall sensibilities of a 90s teen comedy but a tongue-in-cheek awareness of that fact. Also, it has the layers of twist double-crossings that you’d expect from a high-quality spy thriller. Cons: The script is not quite up to par; there’s a lot of “kids today talk like woke Tumblr posts, right?” going on. And a bunch of the plot threads get a little overly-tangled and characters do crazy-evil things…just because teens are crazy? (Also, a major twist relies on a character forgetting an event from four years earlier, which YMMV on whether it was a “for me it was Tuesday” sort of acceptable moment or a genuine plot hole.)
Scooby-Doo (2002) - I felt the urge to rewatch this and see how well it held up and to remember how much “not for kids” stuff they managed to sneak in. It was 100% aimed at people around my age, who’d seen the various Scooby-Doo shows in re-runs all through our childhoods and who all hated Scrappy-Doo; but also went with a bunch of gross-out humor that was aimed for actual kids (and possibly intended to be shown in 3D). The cast was amazing—several of them went on to voice the characters in later cartoon adaptations—but the CGI is painfully dated. Like, low-quality greenscreening, characters obviously acting against empty air, completely incorrect lighting on cartoonish monsters, and completely inconsistent levels of realism on Scooby. (It would have been better if he always looked like a cartoon, but he sometimes looks almost like a real dog and sometimes goes super-cartoony.) So a mixed-bag bit of nostalgia I’m glad I watched but I’ll probably give another 20 years after this.
Zoey's Extraordinary Christmas - The finale/wrap-up movie following season 2 of Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist, which clearly crammed all of their major ideas that would have been season 3 into an hour and a half of movie…and actually works pretty well. Mo learns more about dating someone with kids. The family has a better resolution to Mitch’s death. (Some of the characters were clearly just there “doing their things” and would have gotten real plotlines if they had 10 hours of season to fill, but the office staff got a song and Bernadette Peters got a song and Simon got to be helpful; so it was fine. I still miss Lauren Graham.) Max and Zoey got a better handle on their relationship; Max learned an important lesson from getting to hear Heart Songs and then the powers went away; and Zoey concluded that God/Time/Fate gave her the powers because she needed to go out and interact with the world. While the series didn’t need this ending, it was a nice solid one and I’m glad they got it out there.
League of Super Pets - Krypto the Super-Dog is jealous that Clark has Lois in his life and needs to learn to make friends; Lex Luthor’s hyperintelligent guinea pig utilizes a new kind of kryptonite to give animals superpowers; hilarity ensues. The plot is formulaic and exactly what you’d expect; there are some witty bits and in-jokes but it’s not amazing in that regard; but boy, did they get a star-studded cast to ham it up. The Rock and Kevin Hart and doing their usual thing, of course. But Kate MacKinnon as the evil guinea pig! Keanu Reeves having a glorious time as Batman!
Luckiest Girl Alive – A woman on the cusp of the “perfect” wedding to the “perfect” man has all the trauma in her past catch up to her and she has to figure out how to deal with it and what she really wants. I’ll admit to a general weakness for Mila Kunis, despite her shaky hit rate. This is a clever but serious film, in some ways treading similar ground to Promising Young Woman, but with less movie-horror and more realistic horror, if that makes sense. Trigger warnings for graphic violence and sexual assault; but it also ends happily and in a satisfying way for the victim.
I’m Totally Fine – When her best friend and business partner dies suddenly, a woman goes out to the house they had rented for an (obviously-cancelled) celebration to clear her head...and an alien scientist appears wearing her friend’s body. Low-budget sci-fi doing what low-budget sci-fi does best: Making you think about it. (And it is indeed low-budget; there are five onscreen actors total—three of whom only get one or two scenes—and one real set, one instance of CGI, and only enough budget for one late-90s hit song. Though one of those actors is the always-delightful Guillermo from What We Do in the Shadows.) It's a mix of comedy and poignancy; a musing on grief and mourning dressed up with a sci-fi premise. Not amazing, but well-done for what it is.
Do Revenge – The good: The cast is fabulous. Veronica from Riverdale, Robin from Stranger Things, Sansa Stark (in a wonderful scene-stealing cameo), and Sarah Michelle Geller. There’s a lot of casual queerness and the movie has the overall sensibilities of a 90s teen comedy but a tongue-in-cheek awareness of that fact. Also, it has the layers of twist double-crossings that you’d expect from a high-quality spy thriller. Cons: The script is not quite up to par; there’s a lot of “kids today talk like woke Tumblr posts, right?” going on. And a bunch of the plot threads get a little overly-tangled and characters do crazy-evil things…just because teens are crazy? (Also, a major twist relies on a character forgetting an event from four years earlier, which YMMV on whether it was a “for me it was Tuesday” sort of acceptable moment or a genuine plot hole.)
Scooby-Doo (2002) - I felt the urge to rewatch this and see how well it held up and to remember how much “not for kids” stuff they managed to sneak in. It was 100% aimed at people around my age, who’d seen the various Scooby-Doo shows in re-runs all through our childhoods and who all hated Scrappy-Doo; but also went with a bunch of gross-out humor that was aimed for actual kids (and possibly intended to be shown in 3D). The cast was amazing—several of them went on to voice the characters in later cartoon adaptations—but the CGI is painfully dated. Like, low-quality greenscreening, characters obviously acting against empty air, completely incorrect lighting on cartoonish monsters, and completely inconsistent levels of realism on Scooby. (It would have been better if he always looked like a cartoon, but he sometimes looks almost like a real dog and sometimes goes super-cartoony.) So a mixed-bag bit of nostalgia I’m glad I watched but I’ll probably give another 20 years after this.
Zoey's Extraordinary Christmas - The finale/wrap-up movie following season 2 of Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist, which clearly crammed all of their major ideas that would have been season 3 into an hour and a half of movie…and actually works pretty well. Mo learns more about dating someone with kids. The family has a better resolution to Mitch’s death. (Some of the characters were clearly just there “doing their things” and would have gotten real plotlines if they had 10 hours of season to fill, but the office staff got a song and Bernadette Peters got a song and Simon got to be helpful; so it was fine. I still miss Lauren Graham.) Max and Zoey got a better handle on their relationship; Max learned an important lesson from getting to hear Heart Songs and then the powers went away; and Zoey concluded that God/Time/Fate gave her the powers because she needed to go out and interact with the world. While the series didn’t need this ending, it was a nice solid one and I’m glad they got it out there.
