Friday Snapshot - February 7
A new look at Chinatown; The Jesus Rolls; Come To Daddy; The Lodge; Birds of Prey
It’s Friday, February 7, 2020, and here’s where we are…
I’m officially starting the countdown to the switchover to paid posts. This is the last free Friday Snapshot. I’ve got a couple more things for you next week, and then I’m flipping the switch. I’m excited. Are you excited? It’s been a month since we kicked off this new publishing venture, and it’s been a great month on my end. I’ve been having more fun than I’ve had in years writing and talking to you guys.
This is going to be the rubber-meets-the-road moment, though, because I only get to have this fun if you guys show up. So I hope there are a whole bunch of you reading this moment, and that you’ll be here next Friday as well, and in the meantime, I’m just going to write with that same joy that’s been driving me all month.
Lots to cover today. There’s a new book on shelves and three new films available to you today, and I’ve got thoughts on all of them, as well as a warning about something that’s coming soon. Let’s kick it off with the book…
The Big Goodbye
I churn through books. It’s not a brag. It’s not a good thing or a bad thing. It just is. I read voraciously, and I always have a few books going, and I have always been that way, literally as long as I can remember.
My parents used to tell the story about the day I was three, and my dad came home from work, and I announced that I was going to read the newspaper. They both laughed, and then I sat down and read the entire front page of the newspaper to them. I blame Sesame Street. God bless Jim Henson. I’ve been reading since before I have conscious memories, and so books are part of the fabric of my entire life. I read fiction. Non-fiction. “Serious” work. Trash. Whatever I can get my hands on, basically.
Some weeks, I read a lot of stuff that makes no impression. Some weeks, I get lucky and everything’s fun. This week was one of those delightful weeks where everything on the Kindle was great, and one book in particular just checked every single box for me. Sam Wasson’s The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood is a winner from cover to cover, an impeccably-researched look at how this film was not just a flashpoint in the careers of the various players involved, but also emblematic of that remarkable run of films that made Paramount such a cultural titan in the late ’60s and early ‘70s.
The material early in the book depicting Roman Polanski’s happy married life is rough, and Wasson never shies away from showing just how long a shadow was cast over Polanski’s life by tragedy. The details about his life in Poland and his family’s loss in the Holocaust are vivid and horrible, and the way Wasson paints the moment when Roman got the news about the murders in Los Angeles is haunting. I’ve always said that I can’t understand making the moral choices Polanski made, choices which Wasson details without any apology or excuse later in the book, but I am equally incapable of really understanding the emotional horror that was his life. Nothing excuses the sexual misconduct he’s committed repeatedly, but I can’t begin to imagine living with the things he was carrying after the death of his wife and child. To be chased by loss for your entire life like that colors everything, I’m sure, and it’s the combination of that precise kind of cynical and broken that Polanski brought to the table.
Add that to the intricate ambition of Robert Towne’s script and the movie star swagger that Jack Nicholson was embracing completely and the somewhat-deserved hubris of Robert Evans thinking art and commerce could be the same thing and that combination makes Chinatown what it is. Wasson follows each of those strands carefully, and it’s fascinating to detail all the various forces at play in this film that I’ve grown up watching and loving. I know that Jack Nicholson and Angelica Huston were longtime lovers, but I never really thought about what that meant regarding John Huston and Nicholson’s work together in this film. Now I’ll never be able to watch the film without connecting those dots again.
I don’t want to give up too much of what Wasson’s done here, because you should read it for yourself. I will say that I am shocked and surprised by the material about Edward Taylor, who I’d never heard of before reading this book. Who is Edward Taylor? Well, that’s a complicated question. He sounds to me like the co-author of Chinatown. And Shampoo. And many other Robert Towne screenplays. But clearly Robert Towne does not consider the work that Edward Taylor did worthy of being called a co-author. I really don’t know how to feel about any of it. It doesn’t shock me that people take credit for things that aren’t fully theirs, but Robert Towne is one of those guys whose work has been sold to me on an almost mythological level. He’s the guy who came in and fixed The Godfather, after all.
Only… it sounds like Edward Taylor was part of that, too. And everything else that has ever defined the Robert Towne myth.
The other thing that really floored me was a single moment, and in some ways, it’s a moment that seems impossible, too perfect to be real. Howard Koch Jr. talks about being on-set for the iconic moment where they shot “she’s my sister/she’s my daughter,” and it’s a harrowing few pages as they talk about the way Dunaway and Nicholson worked out the physical altercation. Clearly, they had a real rapport on the film, and even when Polanski and Dunaway couldn’t talk to each other, Nicholson and Dunaway always kept the communication open. So there’s this intense thing happening on the Chinatown stage, this thing that basically brings the entire film together, this moment they’ve been struggling to figure out, and they are bringing it to life in this bold and personal way, and then Koch walks outside onto the lot, and one soundstage over, they’re shooting the movie premiere from The Day of the Locust, which was basically pushed into production by Frank Yablans out of spite because he fucking hated Robert Evans and wanted to make a 1930’s movie that was better than Chinatown so that Daddy Charlie Bludhorn would love him better. And then a few stages over from that, Pacino’s shooting the Senate hearings from Godfather Part II. All on the same day.
Those three sequences are so amazing, so iconic, so utterly of their moment, and to think they were all being shot on that same day, and that when lunch was called, Koch walked Nicholson and Dunaway and John Schlesinger and Francis Coppola and Al Pacino and Roman Polanski all walk down the street to the Paramount commissary. That’s insane. That’s like the ending of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but for ‘70s movie nerds. Movie history doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s painted over everything that came before, layered into history and often created in a context that only becomes clear later, and those times and places where it all intersects or collides… that is magic to me. I remember standing on a soundstage in Elstree one time, at the edge of an opening in the floor, and the guy I was with got the strangest smile on his face.
“Do you know what they shot in here? Right where you’re standing?”
“Nope.”
He looked down into the pit next to us, a recessed area that could be closed off if you wanted. “Two lines of dialogue. I love you. I know.”
Oh. Shit. That’s right. Empire Strikes Back, man. I was standing at the spot where they dropped Han into the carbonite. And as soon as he said that, I got chills, and I was nearly knocked flat by the emotion of having something as ephemeral as Star Wars made tangible. I couldn’t help but remember the stories about how The Shining was shooting on the lot at the same time as Empire, and no matter how old I get, or how many sets I’ve been to, or how many studio lots I’ve visited, this stuff always gets me. And Wasson gets it. He gets what makes it all great, and what we’ve lost along the way.
Pick the book up. Seriously.
Come To Daddy
My earliest personal memory of Elijah Wood was a breakfast that took place the Monday after Elijah and Sean Astin got back from New Zealand after the first round of shooting on Lord of the Rings. It was a breakfast that New Line set up, and it was just me, Elijah, Sean, and Harry Knowles. Since then, I’ve gotten to know Elijah from his time in Austin on the film festival scene, and I have nothing but respect for the man he’s become and the artist he has consistently been. One of the things I love most about him is how he’s used the commercial clout he earned as the star of one of the biggest trilogies of all time to build a career that is largely driven by small, strange genre films.
One of the people that has been a huge presence in that same festival scene the entire time that I’ve known Elijah is Ant Timpson, a New Zealander who I first met at LAX while standing in line for a flight to Austin for the very first Butt-Numb-A-Thon. Ant’s done some of everything in the industry, and for most of the last 20 years, I feel like I’ve seen him everywhere, all the time. It can be exciting to see someone make the jump to directing their first feature after all this time, but scary because you’ve known them for so long, and you hope you’ll like the work, especially since it stars someone else you know who you like. I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t press play with crossed fingers here.
It feels weird to say it’s a “relief” to see that someone’s a genuinely good filmmaker, but that’s exactly how I feel about this one. From the moment it starts, this film is in control. Come To Daddy is a crazy little thriller, and I chose all three of those words carefully. It’s not a horror movie, but it is masterful in the way it both builds and sustains suspense. It is impossible to predict because it doesn’t seem to be built on any particular model. A young man (Elijah Wood) gets a letter from his long-lost father asking him to come for a visit, and when he does, he stumbles into a situation that he genuinely cannot imagine ahead of time. It’s small-scale, very personal, but from the moment Stephen McHattie opens that door and the two of them lock eyes, there’s always something going on, some strange, dark game being played, and it only gets darker and stranger as it goes.
I spent the first fifteen minutes of the film trying to get ahead of it and guess what was going to happen, but I quickly realized I was being ridiculous. That’s not the kind of film it is. Once it gets going, it feels like a different film every fifteen minutes, and that’s not an easy thing to pull off. It helps that Elijah gives such a dedicated central performance. He’s put through the wringer here, and it’s hard not to compare that to the performance that Daniel Radcliffe gives in the upcoming Guns Akimbo. I love movies where you basically turn your lead character to pulp by the end, and Elijah’s work here makes every incredible turn feel credible. He’s great at reacting to things, and, sure, a big part of it are those giant saucer eyes of his, but it’s more than that. He’s got one of those faces that broadcasts what he’s thinking, and much of this film is about watching the fantasy version of his father that he’d carried around in his head fall away as he grapples with the radically different and disappointing reality.
Timpson shows enormous promise here as a director. This is controlled, carefully built, and fully satisfying on its terms, and it feels like the work of someone who has more films than this under their belt. Do yourself a favor if you’re interested, though… stay away from anything that discusses plot. It is a film that wants to entertain you, and the less you know about the methods it might employ, the better.
The Lodge
Some horror films want to entertain you.
Some horror films want to actually hurt you.
Goodnight, Mommy, the first feature film from Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz, was a brutal experience, one that blindsided me when I saw it at Fantastic Fest. I should have known what I was in for based on how excited Tim League was before the screening. As a programmer, he has always had an appetite for films that flirt with real darkness, and I’ve had some of the most punishing experiences of my viewing life at events that he put together. That film was about the mother of twin nine-year-old boys who takes them to a remote lake house so she can recover from radical cosmetic surgery. From the beginning, what you’re being told isn’t quite right, and the entire film is built on a foundation of fog. When it eventually lays out the truth of what you’re watching, it’s devastating and sad and awful and it broke my heart. Horror that goes for the emotional jugular is the kind that sticks to me the longest, and involving children in horror is a shortcut to having that kind of impact on me. There’s something so primal and wrong about violating what should be the safest and most nurturing bonds there are between parent and child, and any time you successfully pick at those social structures, it is upsetting.
Fiala and Franz are back at it with The Lodge, and the film wastes no time setting several plates spinning. We meet Richard (Richard Armitage), who is separated from Laura (Alicia Silverstone), the mother of his two kids, Aidan (Jaeden Martell) and Mia (Lia McHugh). He’s in a new relationship, and he’s hoping to marry Grace (Riley Keough), and when he tells Laura about his plans, she responds by blowing her head off. The dynamic between Grace and the kids is rancid from the start because they blame her for the death of their mother, but when Richard decides they should all spend Christmas together in a remote winter cabin (Fiala and Franz sure do like remote locations), that’s just the start of things. The kids uncover unsettling secrets about their new stepmother-to-be. She suspects that the kids may have genuine ill intent for her. And reality starts to get wobbly real fast for all involved. One of the things that obviously scares Fiala and Franz deeply is the way belief drives us, and the way belief can be violently, dangerously wrong. Much of the horror in Goodnight, Mommy comes from this feeling that the twins get that this woman who no longer looks like their mother might actually be a different person. Once that belief takes hold, it corrupts everything. The same is true here. Grace’s childhood was built around religious extremism, and it’s like a switch in her, just waiting for Aidan and Mia to start poking at it, ready to get flipped. Faith can kill you in the films that Fiala and Franz make, and the stronger your faith is, the more dangerous it is. Faith gives you the courage to do things you might not otherwise do, and misguided faith can make monsters of even the most innocent and well-meaning.
In the end, The Lodge is smaller than it initially seems, and sadder, and it is upsetting because of how personal and ugly it gets. The film’s final shot will stick with me for a while, every time a headline comes on about a domestic tragedy that seems impossible to comprehend from the outside. Bad choices and ugly feelings combine and compound into something permanent and horrible, and all we can do is watch the characters take one inevitable step after another. Some people call a film like this a slow burn, but it doesn’t feel slow to me. Every bit of this dread is expertly calibrated, and I suspect once Fiala and Franz are finished as filmmakers, their entire filmography will be one long well-crafted scar left on every viewer willing to take the journey with them.
The Jesus Rolls
Nope. No, thank you.
I don’t have any problem with the idea of spinning off a character from a film into a whole different film, especially when the actor who played that character feels so strongly about the spinoff that they end up writing and directing it. That sounds like a recipe for something potentially special, and I’m certainly open to the idea. In fact, as you’ll see in the piece below this, it can pay off beautifully when it works.
But The Jesus Rolls is a painful sit, even at less than 90 minutes. It is, as has been widely reported, more of a remake of Going Places, the 1974 French film, than anything else, and if you asked me to explain why Turturro felt the need to use Jesus Quintana specifically for that, I would come up empty. One of the strangest things about it is how quickly the film negates one of the few details we know about Jesus, presumably because Turturro realized it might be hard to craft a freewheeling buddy comedy around a convicted pedophile. The film opens with Jesus getting out of jail, and in the conversation with the parole board, the truth about his sex offender status comes out. See, he’s not a pedophile. It’s a misunderstanding. He was just taking a piss in a public restroom, and there was a kid at the next urinal, and the kid happened to notice that Jesus has a gigantic dick, and they started talking about it, as you do, and the kid’s dad happened to overhear from the stall where he was sitting, and he got all worked up for no reason. It could happen to anyone… RIGHT?!
Not only is it strange that you immediately erase one of the few tangible details we know about the character, but you also make sure to let us know that the character has a giant dick because that’s super-important. That one moment speaks volumes to what you can expect from the rest of The Jesus Rolls, a film that mistakes the insistent repeating of certain lines from The Big Lebowski with having a sense of humor or crafting interesting dialogue. I feel like we’re supposed to cheer and applaud when Jesus mentions putting a gun up someone’s ass so he can “pull the trigger till it goes click” or when he repeats any of the lines he delivered in Lebowski, but that’s not the way it works. I don’t need to spend almost two hours with three feeble-minded horny character sketches just so I can hear dialogue I already heard in a more interesting context. That’s not interesting or fun or informative or illuminating. At least in Going Places, the characters had the excuse that they were young and stupid and still figuring things out. If you haven’t seen that film, it is a fairly extreme example of the freedom of the ‘70s cutting loose on film, sexually graphic and cheerfully misogynistic and not particularly artful. It’s a big rude fart of a movie, and it feels like Turturro wanted to make something with that same rowdy spirit. It’s as dispiriting and irritating as watching Todd Phillips cosplay King of Comedy in clown make-up. I get it. I loved the ‘70s, too, fellas. But the answer isn’t to literally step into the films we like and then stand there contributing nothing. Going Places doesn’t work when you’re dealing with people in their forties and fifties, on the wrong end of life, acting this same way. They all just come across as soft-skulled and childish and entirely focused on their naughty parts to the exclusion of normal human behavior.
Bobby Cannavale plays Petey, who is best friends with Jesus, and who hooks up with him after Jesus gets out of prison. They end up on a sort of endless road trip with Marie, played by Audrey Tautou, who has sex with both of them. Frequently. She’s never had an orgasm, and much of the film is dedicated to making that happen for her, but with lots of digressions along the way. Other partners in the sexual square-dance include Susan Sarandon and Pete Davidson, and yes, I am aware how deeply strange this entire sentence is, thank you very much. None of it’s hot, none of it is funny, none of it offers up any kind of trenchant observation on sexual relationships. It is like a parody of what someone who hates independent films thinks all independent films are like, and it mystifies me. I don’t get how this is the thing that Turturro spent all this time and energy bringing to life. It feels so arbitrary, the use of Jesus Quintana, that I wonder if he thought it would make the film easier to sell, and if so, what planet he’s on. The Big Lebowski is a true cult sensation. It is a film that landed with a wet thud at the test screening I went to, that baffled the mainstream when it was released, and that simply refused to go away. It grew organically, but it has remained a cult film. It was never a hit, and it’s not something that the money guys understand or give a shit about it. Money guys don’t care about cult hits. They don’t care about the long tail on a film like The Big Lebowski, the way something grows and takes on a life of its own. They care about box office and algorithms, and so I can’t imagine using Jesus Quintana made this any easier to finance or release. At least if that was the case, I would understand why he insisted.
If anything, I would think fans of The Big Lebowski will walk away from this insulted and annoyed, the comparison between the two films doing Turturro no favors. More than anything, that’s what really stings here. It’s going to be hard to watch his scenes in Lebowski in the future now without thinking of this fucking drag. He managed to stink up that film by association now, which is no small trick. Don’t get fooled by what they’re selling you. This is an embarrassment, and if you really love Lebowski, you’d be better served by pretending this never happened.
Birds of Prey
Now, see, here’s a spin-off I can support. Sometimes it’s simple. Sometimes we just like watching an actor play a part.
I might as well let Warner Bros. know it now, in case they’re still wondering. Yes. If you make a movie with Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, I’m going to show up. I’m going to watch her play that part any time she wants to play that part. I’m on board. Ticket sold.
Knowing that, I’m glad they made Birds of Prey with the team they did, because it’s a big fat step in the right direction. I enjoyed the absolute nonsensical chaos of David Ayer’s Suicide Squad while also acknowledging that it is a montage in search of a movie, largely built around a performance that is better than it needs to be. That entire thing is cut like the introductory cut-scene in a fighting game. It’s too much, and it never really lets us get close to any of the characters, which is a shame because Margot Robbie was already throwing heat at Harley in that film. It was one of those absolutely perfect matches of actor and material, and it made it even more frustrating to see how wrong the Joker was opposite her. Not to be crude, but Jared Leto’s Joker is definitely a bottom to Robbie’s Harley. She is pure raw carnal power in that first film, and a statement she made recently about how she spends that film dressed the way she thinks the Joker wants her to dress, and this film dressing the way Harley wants to dress, suggests that she’s been making all the right choices since the start even when Suicide Squad wasn’t. She’s been playing Harley the right way. She believes in Harley, and she’s in full ownership of the role now.
If you’re a big fan of the Birds of Prey comic, you might actually be the most critical audience here, and I’m not sure how superfans will react. I read a lot of comics, and I’ve read plenty of Birds of Prey over the years, but I can’t claim I’m an expert on every version of the team. I know that Oracle, aka Barbara Gordon, the former Batgirl, is a core key player in most versions of the comic, and there’s not even a hint of her in the film. That will no doubt disappoint some fans, but if you’re willing to approach this as a film that remixes various elements of Birds of Prey using Harley Quinn as a focal point, it’s a real pleasure. It is very much its own thing, and it feels like it was made by people who really enjoy the dynamics that drive Birds of Prey, and they wanted to lay the groundwork for a whole series of team movies in the future. And having seen this first film, I want to see more from the team now. They’ve earned it because the way they’ve mixed and matched various ideas and incarnations of these characters feels fresh and whole-heartedly sincere.
Sincerity goes a long way for me when you’re playing material this heightened and ridiculous. Everyone in the film is on the same page, and that’s a testament to just how carefully Cathy Yan approached this. There’s more going on here than just super-charged candy colors and smart-assed sass, although there’s plenty of both. This is a film about women who have been marginalized, disregarded, mistreated, and ignored, and as a group, they find themselves having to lean on one another to survive. It is delivered with a brash fuck-you attitude that is earned. Of course these women feel this way. Ewan McGregor plays a very specific and spectacular asshole, and finding the right villain for this film was key to making it work as a movie. Not as an adaptation. Not as the end-all-be-all statement on the series. But as a movie. This film is about self-definition, and every character in the film is reaching as the film begins.
You’ve got Harley, who has reached the end of her relationship with The Joker. She’s waking up to the idea that what they had was sick and broken, and that she’s got to build a better Harley, but she’s also broken enough that she’s not really sure how to do that. You’ve got Dinah Lance (Jurnee Smollett-Bell), determined not to be defined by either her mother’s legacy or her particular abilities, but unsure how to define herself as a result. You’ve got Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez), constantly undervalued and undermined as a cop, tired of watching the mediocre men around her flourish and thrive. You’ve got Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a mysterious figure who has built herself a new identity from the ashes of tragedy, a familiar theme in Gotham, who is still trying on this new persona, still figuring out exactly how well it fits. And you’ve got Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco), this little girl whose pathological need to steal everything and everything lands her in the middle of the family she’s been looking for.
All of them find themselves running up against Roman Sionis (McGregor), who is exactly the kind of low-level wannabe who you see superheroes dispatch in the first few pages of a comic before moving on to the real threat. He wants to be terrifying. He wants to be smooth. He wants to be powerful. He wants to be feared. He wants to be respected. And he will destroy whatever reminds him of all the ways he falls short of those goals. Roman has no self-control at all, and when he does finally put on the Black Mask that also gives him his bad guy name, it’s almost like a self-soothing device for a tantrum. He’s finally pushed so far that he’s going to have to do terrible violent awful things, and he can’t let anyone see his face while he does them. My guess is it’s because of the smile he’s got on his face under that mask, because this is the real Roman. Having to control himself and act like a real person, that’s the struggle.
He’s not the only one who finally releases his final form in the third act. While the film is definitely built around Harley, when everyone lets their freak flags fly, it is an absurd amount of fun. Smollett-Bell is just as game as Robbie for the big physical stuff, and the way Yan shoots and stages the action, you can see how much of it is actually performed by the actors. It’s rough, it’s up-close, and it is beautifully designed. Each of the action sequences has its own style and flavor, and each one of them is built as a sequence, not just a bunch of chaotic sound and fury, and the final stretch is a joyous release as each character comes into focus, and as they lift each other up. Rosie Perez looks like she’s having the time of her life, as does Chris Messina, who offers up a truly disturbing take on Victor Zsasz, overtly sexual and far more threatening than his boss. My vote for MVP has changed a few times since I saw the film, but I think, in the end, I’m giving it to Winstead, who is both deeply funny and also startling in the action scenes. She makes some great weird choices as Huntress, and there’s something touching about watching this fucking oddball figure out how she fits into this very strange new team that assembles. I didn’t know Smollett-Bell’s work well before this, and she makes a huge impression here, but Winstead surprised me even because I thought I knew what she was capable of, and I was clearly wrong.
The film gets stronger as it goes, and it feels like something that was built and rebuilt a few times while trying to get it right. That’s fine, though. That’s the way it should work. It’s a big sleek finished package, a lot of bang for the buck. Christina Hodson’s script might not get the praise it deserves, but she’s pulled together a lot of source material here and found a simple, clean thematic way to make something that is both giddy fun and slyly weighty. Matthew Libatique’s photography is a constant pleasure, and a cheeky challenge to other filmmakers who work on comic book movies. This is pop art, after all, and part of the fun is that pop. Birds of Prey will poke you in the eye, lick your face, spank you hard enough to leave a mark, and make you ask for more.
Next Week
I’ve got the Saturday Free-For-All tomorrow, another piece for you guys on Sunday, and then two more pieces next week, and that’s it. That’s the end of the free stuff. You’ve got seven days to decide if you’re having enough fun to pay a very nominal fee to keep getting these newsletters, and I’m hoping you’ve enjoyed this month as much as I have. You guys have shown up, and you’ve e-mailed me, and you’ve e-mailed the newsletter to friends, and I appreciate it. I’m just getting warmed up, and I look forward to what we’re going to do together.
As always, any titles in bold were particularly enjoyed.
And, yeah, it was a very good week in books.
THIS WEEK’S BOOKS: Rumble Tumble by Joe R. Lansdale; Frozen Hell by John W. Campbell Jr.; The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood by Sam Wasson; The Weird Accordion To Al by Nathan Rabin
THIS WEEK’S COMICS: Darth Vader #1; Immortal Hulk: Great Power #1; Captain America: The End #1; Batman #88; Marauders #7; DC’s Crimes of Passion #1
THIS WEEK’S TV: Big Mouth S3 E3, E4; Ozark S1 E2 - E4; Shrill S2 E1, E2; Curb Your Enthusiasm S10 E3; Avenue 5 S1 E3; Harley Quinn S1 E10; Picard S1 E2; Columbo S3 E6; Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet S1 E1-E4; McMillion$ S1 E1; Married At First Sight S10 E6; Michelle Wolf: Joke Show; Lodge 49 S1 E1, E2; Brooklyn Nine-Nine S7 E1, E2
THIS WEEK’S GAMING: Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey
THIS WEEK’S MOVIES: Mikey and Nicky; Johnny Handsome; Prisoners; The Current War (director’s cut); John Carter; 21 Bridges; The Bad and the Beautiful; I Need You To Kill; The Jesus Rolls; The Super Cops; Casino Royale (2006); The Lodge; The Bad News Bears (1976); A Force of One
Image courtesy Paramount Home Video
Image courtesy Saban Films
Image courtesy Neon
Image courtesy Screen Media
Image courtesy Warner Bros Pictures
I was kinda iffy on Birds of Prey, especially because this really should've been called Gotham City Sirens, even if it's not Ayer's film, because the Birds of Prey are a specific team in DC Comics. Also, the marketing never really seemed to click for me. But early reviews are good, and if you liked it Drew, that's good enough for me to go out to a matinee. At the very least, it seems like it'll be a fun 2 hours at the theater, and really, that's all I want. I'm an easy mark.
For example: I loved the first Transformers film. Maybe that's my bar: I don't care if you're a kinda dumb popcorn flick where Bumblebee pisses on John Turturro (speaking of) who by the way is having a blast hamming it up in the movie. I don't even care if you messed up the designs. Make me smile and happy for a couple of hours, throw in an invested Shia LaBeouf performance, and I'm good. Below that bar is Transformers The Fallen, which is a garbage movie that doesn't exist as far as I'm concerned.
I know, weird tangent. Apologies. I was just thinking about how much I liked the first Transformers movie today, and I'm okay totally owning that.
Jurnee Smollett-Bell was amazing on WGN's prematurely-cancelled Underground (I think one can binge it on Hulu). Not surprised about her doing the "big physical stuff" well because of what I saw on Underground. She adds another reason to see Birds of Prey.