Suicide Squad (2016)

This is an epic mess of a movie.

Basically, a bunch of criminals are being taken out of prison to do the bidding of Amanda Waller who is… um… I’m not sure. Some lady with the power to make a task force, I guess? Drama is manufactured by withholding information from us and the Squad about who, exactly, they’re rescuing in their initial mission (spoiler: it’s Waller), but that’s just silly. Why not just tell us/them who they’re going for? They’re gonna do it regardless -- they don’t have a CHOICE.

I have lots of questions about the story (e.g. why let the squad dress themselves for combat instead of giving them -- you know -- protective gear) but I don’t really care about the answers. There were just too many characters I didn’t know and a convoluted plot that’s never really explained. It's almost shocking how incompetent this movie is. And Leto’s Joker is just the cherry made of shit on top of it all. Gah.

D

Tony Robbins: I Am Not Your Guru (2016)

Tony Robbins has always struck me as a televangelist-type dude. When I happen upon him, I generally roll my eyes. He comes across as a magnetic dude spouting self-help platitudes. But Gary heard him interviewed on a podcast and found him to be interesting enough to want to watch this doc streaming on Netflix.

Having grown up in church, attending revivals and emotional weeks at Bible camp culminating in BIG DECISIONS, this felt extremely familiar to me. There’s a frenzy of anticipation and a readiness to ride the wave. Skepticism gets checked at the door and breakthroughs happen by the minute. It’s so expected that your life will change at one of these days-long seminars that one of the later sessions covered here is all about forcing a personal breakthrough if you’re one of the few who haven’t had one yet.

The problem with documenting something like this is that you can’t really know what it’s like to be in it. I wasn’t feeling the energy. I hadn’t ponied up the $5k attendance fee. I wasn’t baring my soul with strangers.  I could only be a voyeur. So, when Tony spoke, my reaction was, “well… maybe? But maybe not?” instead of “YES TONY. RIGHT AWAY TONY. YOU’VE CHANGED MY LIFE TONY.” All this movie did for me was change my perspective on the man Tony Robbins. I believe he’s sincere. I believe he has a gift for knowing what people need from him. But I also believe that for 99% of the people who attend this conference, the feelings fade and the decisions made while there fade right along with them. It’s like promising to stop masturbating on the last day of camp: yep -- definitely following through with that... for a few days.

B-

I Love You Phillip Morris (2010)

Fascinating tale of the real-live Steven Russell (Jim Carrey) who pulled off several cons -- most because he was attempting to either keep his boyfriend in a life of luxury or get back to his boyfriend.

It’s such a wild story about a guy who is no doubt a genius, that I was supremely entertained despite the presence of Carrey, who usually annoys me nearly as much as Adam Sandler does.

B+

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)

Humanity is down to the smallest fraction and the apes are living peacefully with Ceasar in charge. But then a small team of humans stumble into ape paradise on their way to the nearby power-giving dam and things do not go well.

One of those “if they would just talk first instead of REACT, things would probably be fine” movies. But, of course, the same applies in the real world and reaction wins out far too often. Entertaining enough to insure we'll watch the third in the series, but a step below the first film.

B-

Lloyd & Hill (2003)

Lloyd is a detective or DCI or whatever they call them in England. Hill is a new addition to the team, but they worked together/were attracted to each other back then, but Lloyd quashed it because he was married. Now Hill's married and Lloyd's interested...

But there’s a case to solve. A schoolgirl has been strangled with her school tights. Could it be the flirty hot teacher with no alibi? Or is he just one of those too-obvious red herrings like in most episodes of Law & Order? And, hey, is this anywhere near as good as a random episode of L&O? The answers are, respectively: no, yes, and absolutely not.

C-

Indignation (2016)

Straight-A kid from a Jewish family gets a scholarship to college, thereby avoiding the Korean war draft. He proceeds to get involved with a WASPy girl who gives first-date blowjobs and speaks like a filmstrip example of proper diction. It’s basically an Atonement rip-off with no method of ingress -- there wasn’t a single character for whom I cared. They were all up their own butts and boring as hell.

F

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)

Predictable but still effective genesis story for those smart apes we met way back when. The special effects sometimes got in the way (that way-too-smooth/bendy doll movement is distracting for me), but in all it works. Looking forward to seeing the following films.

B

The Invisible Guest (2017)

Man accused of killing his girlfriend is on house arrest and meets with a witness prep expert to go over his testimony. We see his tale in flashback -- sometimes shifting to comply with the expert’s pressure.

A satisfyingly cerebral suspense story.

B+

Dunkirk (2017)

Subtitles wouldn't have simply been nice, they were downright necessary. The accents and the heavy background noise of artillery, ocean waves, and engines combined to make it impossible to make out the dialogue most of the time. It also didn’t seem as though the three differently-moving timelines (week/day/hour) were worth the confusion it caused -- especially since the very first one we’re fed is “Mole - 1 week.” Since I had zero idea what “Mole” was (turns out it’s the pier the departing soldiers use to board boats), it was easy to kind of ignore the information.

Gary made the point that the timelines and difficulty in making out the dialogue meant that it was near impossible to connect to the characters, which also made it hard to care about their fates. I also found the lack of blood to be a bit of a cheat. I don’t crave gore, but I prefer honesty to sterilization.

C+

A Damsel in Distress (1937)

Famed dancer Jerry Halliday (Astaire), tired of women who chase after him, is intrigued by a rich girl who jumps into his cab to escape her manservant. There’s dancing, singing, and a hilarious segment set at the fair involving moving floors and distortion mirrors. The delightful Gracie Allen made me giggle dozens of times with her silliness.

The one drawback is Joan Fontaine as the love interest. She's a bit of a personality void and can barely dance, but it would take more than a boring love interest to really hurt this romp as Astaire, Burns, and Allen are banging on all cylinders.

B

Keanu (2016)

A kitten shows up on the doorstep of a brokenhearted stoner, giving him purpose. When the cat goes missing after a break-in, the guy and his square cousin go in search of it. Too bad the thieves are a scary group of dealers and the kitten’s previous owners (BAMFs who laid waste to a warehouse full of people) are also interested in getting the cat back.

The good? Kitties are cute.

C-

The Founder (2016)

Ray Kroc is a travelling salesman hustling his latest “next big thing” when he hears about a restaurant across the country that is doing unheard-of levels of business. When he shows up at the place, the line is long but moving fast and he’s immediately entranced. He sees dollar signs and convinces the owners to trust him with franchising.

It’s told fairly well and we were never bored, but I wish we’d gotten a little deeper into Kroc’s psyche. He didn’t seem like an asshole, but he was definitely ruthless when it came to the McDonald’s brand. He wouldn’t let his wife have a piece of it and he barely let the McDonalds have a piece either. Why was he so greedy about it when he didn't seem to be greedy in other areas?

B

Doctor Strange (2016)

Gifted surgeon gets in a crash which makes hands useless for surgery, so he chases every possible fix until he winds up in Kathmandu with a group of mystics. But they know their stuff.

I found this to be the most entertaining Marvel movie yet. Strange is just the right amount of dry humor: it doesn’t overtake the script, but it injects some fun. Both Gary and I had a great time with this.

B+

42 (2013)

Story of Jackie Robinson going to work for the Dodgers and the genteel racism he encountered. This was Disneyfied to the extreme -- yes, there was a bucketload of the n-word, but I never felt as though Robinson was in danger and I’ll bet the reality of the situation was far different.

At first, Jackie was persona non grata. But by late season fellow players are putting their arms around him publicly and asking him to join them in the showers (in a scene played for awkward comic relief). It was just so square that I believe even Ron Howard would have thought it was a tad too tame.

C-

In Order of Disappearance (2016)

Well, “disappearance” is rather overstating the situation since only a handful of the people would’ve ever been classified as missing -- the other dozen plus people are just dead. But that’d be a more unwieldy title, I guess.

Stellan Skarsgard is Nils, “citizen of the year” in his Norwegian town for being the tireless snowplow driver connecting his community to the rest of civilization. His son is killed by gangsters when they believe he’s involved in the theft of their cocaine and Nils isn’t having it. So he finds out the name of the supplier then finds out the name of the guy above the supplier and then the guy above that dude and on up, leaving bodies as he goes.

The only thing wrong with the movie is that it's one-note. The small moments, like the Serbian mob acting like children playing in the snow and a kidnapper scrounging around for something to use as a bedtime story for his young charge and settling on a brochure for snowblowing equipment, nudge the film toward thumbs-up territory.

B