Hi everyone! I hope you are having a nice summer and I certainly hope you are enjoying summer movies more than I am. I don’t know what’s wrong with me lately but I have just not been enjoying what Hollywood has been offering. I liked Inside Out 2, Hit Man and a few indies but not much more than that. Hopefully July will be better but sometimes we as critics go through rough patches but they are usually followed by good stretches where we like everything. Fingers crossed.

Today I have 5 reviews and all 5 I didn’t enjoy much 🙁  Like I said it happens sometimes. All I can do is be honest and hope you understand.

THE BIKERIDERS-

Probably my favorite of the 5 is The Bikeriders from director Jeff Nichols. He has a lot of style in his filmmaking and brings out mostly good performances from his actors. I just wish the screenplay was on that level. Austin Butler and Tom Hardy put in compelling work as members of a motorcycle gang in 1960s Illinois. Mike Faist is completely wasted as a journalist writing about the gang but it’s more a movie about a series of incidents than an actual story. Various rivalries are revealed and bloody fights happen but there’s no narrative thrust to the events so it all feels taxing and repetitive after a while.

Also I thought Jodie Comer was miscast in the role. You can tell that she is British trying to do midwestern and the whole performance felt like a caricature not an authentic woman I was interested in. This was especially obvious when compared to Butler and because she was the narrator of the piece. The Bikeriders is nicely shot and like I said, there are some good performances but it all feels forgettable in the end.

Frown Worthy

HORIZON: AN AMERICAN SAGA-

Kevin Costner’s new project Horizon: An American Saga was always going to be a tough sell for me. I’m not the biggest western fan and multi-part epic saga western didn’t have much to intrigue me. Still, it was filmed here in Utah and when somebody self-finances a project like this I like to at least give it a shot. Unfortunately my misgivings were correct and this feels more self-indulgent than impressive. Despite being 3 hours Horizon feels fractured, stuffed with unlikable characters I didn’t care about or want to know more about and no desire to see what is going to happen in Chapter 2.

It’s too bad because the film starts out strong with a raid on the settlement that is visceral and captivating but it keeps switching stories before the audience can become attached to a narrative or set of characters. I was joking on twitter that this is similar to rom-coms like Valentines Day that tells so many stories but none of them could hold a movie on their own or are interesting to the audience. I guess at least Utah looks nice so there’s that but it’s all surprisingly forgettable for a saga.

Frown Worthy

KINDS OF KINDNESS-

Certain filmmakers make their reputation on being edgy and challenging and if left unchecked can end up producing the most pretentious self-indulgent films that become unbearable. This is certainly the case for supposed auteur Yorgos Lanthimos. I’ve never been a big fan of his style but his latest Kinds of Kindness pushed me over the edge. I can’t think of when I’ve had a more miserable time at the theater and for what? You’ve got me with what he’s trying to say.

The film has 3 featurettes- all 3 with the same cast including Emma Stone and Jesse Plemmons. Lanthimos manages to convince his actors to do anything no matter how ridiculous or exploitative but he forgets to make it matter or palatable. The first short is the best with the third being morally confusing in I guess an attempt at satire. Emma Stone’s character in that one is drugged and raped by her husband and she is made to feel the bad one for abandoning her daughter. It’s a problem when satire is asked to do so much heavy lifting to make a moral work in a story. Also all 3 stories have cannibalism and cults which feels so try-hard if you ask me.

Like I said, the whole experience is unbearable and I couldn’t wait for it to be over.

Frown Worthy

THE IMAGINARY-

In a way I feel sorry for the folks at Studio Ponoc. They started as a follow-up to Studio Ghibli- made from former animators of the illustrious studio. The problem is no animated studio can really compete with Ghibli especially when Miyazaki has started making movies. In fact, he just won an Oscar for his latest The Boy and the Heron. Unfortunately you can feel this rivalry rand failure to compete with in Ponoc’s latest film The Imaginary. While it does have some pleasing animation the story and characters feel completely derivative and lacking in originality.

It’s so strange that there have been 3 movies this year about imaginary friends and none of them have been good. The idea in this one is a young girl has an imaginary friend who get separated from his child and needs to be rescued. We’ve seen this time and again in everything from If to Monsters Inc to Inside Out. It all feels played out and bland. Nobody will remember this movie as it oddly lacks imagination about imaginary friends… Weird how that keeps happening?

Frown Worthy

DESPICABLE ME 4-

Finally we have the latest from Illumination’s money franchise Despicable Me 4. I don’t know if they have just worn me down but I actually liked the last Minions movie Minions: Rise of Gru. In particular a scene where the minions fly a plane is peak minions and may be the best moment of the entire franchise. Now we have the 6th film in the franchise and there are some laughs. I think minions are best when they capture a silent movie comedy- the broader and sillier the better. That’s why the scene when they are flying the plane is so funny- it’s silly where the regular Minions movie tried too hard to be shocking, full of lewd humor. It was not for me.

This latest entry has its moments that made me chuckle. For example a scene where the villain tries to get a credit card reader to accept his card at the gas station is very funny. I also enjoyed a repeated gag where one of the minions is stuck in a vending machine and can’t get out. The girls are also cute as always and this time they have a new baby brother in the mix who was cute and provided some laughs with the awkward Gru trying to watch over him.

Still, the screenplay needs far more of these moments and less of tedious subplots that aren’t funny or engaging. For example, we think we are getting the main villain plot with a cockroach man but the movie moves away from this story for a long section about Poppy and her heist on the school. We also get subplots with Lucy trying to learn how to color hair with disastrous consequences. It’s just all over the place and not consistently funny enough to work.

Also the reunion at the end I suppose is sentimental for fans but it seemed a little much to ask us to wain nostalgia for Scarlet Overkill and  other unmemorable previous villains. Despicable Me 4 isn’t the worst of the franchise but it also isn’t very satisfying or funny enough.

Frown Worthy

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