The Heartbreak Kid (2007)

  I don't know about love, but this movie blows.

Eddie (Ben Stiller) is desperate to find someone to settle down with, so when he meets-cute with Lila (Malin Akerman), he rushes into a whirlwind marriage.  On the drive from San Francisco to Cabo, the bloom of romance begins to fade for Eddie as he discovers all of Lila's annoying habits and worrying past.    Complicating matters, Eddie also meets Miranda (Michelle Monaghan) at the same resort.  Eddie is sure Miranda is perfect for him and if he can just get rid of Lila and those pesky wedding vows, he'd be free to pursue her.  But Miranda's cousin (Danny McBride) is suspicious of Eddie and will do whatever he can to keep them apart.

This is the most irritating movie.  I'm not a Ben Stiller fan on the best of days and he is obnoxious here.  Eddie is meant to be sympathetic, I think, but that defied my suspension of disbelief.  The side characters are one-note, crude caricatures.  There is no development for them or for the main characters, so at least they are consistent.  The good news is that by fast-forwarding through all the parts I found annoying, I was able to watch the whole thing in under 45 minutes.

Why was I watching it at all, you might well ask.  This is one of the movies I added to my queue when Christy moved out and I was trying to watch all our combined movie collection.  That was in 2012.  

Yep.  I am still trying to get to movies I added a decade ago.  

It's streaming on HBO Max and if you are a fan of the Farrelly Brothers' other work, it might be worth it for you.  It was not for me.

Sing Street (2016)

  Oh look, a coming-of-age tale about a straight white boy.  Who could have imagined?

Conor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) decides to put a band together to impress Mary (Lucy Boynton), an aspiring model.  He discovers that trying to find an identity for the band also helps him find his own personal identity outside of it, and songwriting is a great tool to help one deal with an oppressive school, bullies, and tensions at home.  

It's not the worst coming-of-age story I've seen.  The music is not half-bad, and Boynton is easily a star in the making.  Special shout-out to Mark McKenna who played the poly-instrumentalist and rabbit enthusiast Eamon.  Otherwise, this is pretty much a paint-by-numbers kind of film.  If you have pre-teens that are musically inclined, it might be worth it.  It's currently streaming on Tubi.

Stormy Weather (1943)

  Content warning: minstrel shows, blackface

Bill Williamson (Bill Robinson) returns from WWI to New York City to present a medal to a fallen comrade's sister, Selina Rogers (Lena Horne).  He finds that she's a celebrated singer but turns down her offer to get him a job.  He finds work on a riverboat and soon enough he is soft-shoe tapping in a Memphis bar with the Fats Waller band.  Selina and her manager/boyfriend, Chick Bailey (Emmett Wallace) visit the same bar to hire Fats Waller, and Selina offers Bill a job again, over Chick's objections.  Chick puts Bill in the lowest role of the show, refusing to let him dance, until Bill has enough and upstages Chick during his big number.  Bill and Selina run off together to start their own show but their relationship founders when Bill pressures Selina to quit and become a housewife and mother.  Ten years later, Bill agrees to host a respective, led by Cab Calloway, featuring Katherine Dunham, and the Nicholas Brothers.

As a musical, this is not very good.  It feels dated in speech and the acting performances are stilted.    The script was written by two white men based on an adaptation by another white man of a story written by two other white men and directed by a white man.  As a celebration of Black talent, however, it is marvelous.  Fats Waller in particular stole every scene he was in while the Nicholas Brothers are wonderful closers.  The dance sequences are excellent, even if the songs are only so-so.  The cast deserved better than what they were handed.

It is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel but only until 30 April, so you'd better hurry.

Pride (2014)

  Finally, a movie I can rave about!

In 1984, British coal workers went on strike to protest Margaret Thatcher's austerity measures.  In London, gay rights activist Mark Ashton (Ben Schnetzer) begins raising money to support the striking workers, reasoning that they are facing the same government backlash.  Only one group of miners, a union out of Wales, accepts the donations, sending a representative, Dai (Paddy Considine), to meet with the Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners group.  An unlikely partnership is born.

Okay, so this is absolutely the cutest movie to ever rip your feelings out and stomp on them.  And it's a true story.  Everybody involved is great; I can't even pick a favorite.  It's streaming on Amazon, which adds a delicious level of irony to the whole thing.  It's fantastic and you should watch it.

About Time (2013)

  This was okay, as rom-coms go.  It was very gentle British humor.

When Tim (Domhnall Gleeson) turns 21, his father (Bill Nighy) tells him that the men of their family have a special talent:  they can travel to any point in their own timeline and relive a moment or make changes.  Tim is skeptical but after trying it out, he finds that it's true.  Things are going along, his life seems charmed, and he meets Mary (Rachel McAdams), an American working for a publishing company.  He gets her number and everything looks like roses, until he has to rewind the evening to keep his flatmate's (Tom Hollander) newest play from going down in flames.  He realizes that he erased the timeline with Mary's number and must contrive a series of events to meet her for the first time again.

Like I said, it's cute.  Gleeson and McAdams are performing at around 10% of their potential here and it works.  There's no melodrama or needless conflict and the time travel is kept more as a metaphor for the ephemeral quality of life than as a major plot device.  It's a nice movie to put on if you don't feel well and want something light.  It was streaming on Netflix but I think it actually came off on the 15th of this month.  I'm sure it'll be back, though.

American Reunion (2012)

  It will surprise none of you to learn that I do not get the American Pie series.  I don't find it funny and the fact that so many people related to it that it became a pop culture touchstone is baffling to me.  Never let it be said, however, that I shy away from things just because I don't find them funny.  It was on the server, I had never seen it, and instead of just immediately deleting it, I gave it a shot.

I still didn't like it.

Jim (Jason Biggs) is happily married to Michelle (Alyson Hannigan) but definitely feels frustrated they don't have time for each other because they are busy taking care of their small child.  When he gets a notice about his 10-year high school reunion, he sees it as an opportunity to relive a more carefree time with his three best friends, and Stifler (Seann William Scott).  Amidst various hijinks, the five dudes come to terms with their lives by confronting the choices they've made.

If you were a fan of the series, this is probably a nice piece of nostalgia.  The entire original cast returns, storylines get wrapped up, and the exact same jokes are rehashed.  For anyone else, there is nothing here for you that hasn't been done repeatedly in other films.  I erased it from my server but it's streaming on Peacock if you have the premium tier.  

Genius Loci (2014)

  I thought this was the Oscar nominated short from last year, but it is not.  That is apparently an animated film with the same name.  This is a short documentary about the restoration of the Olivetti showroom in Piazza San Marco, Venice, Italy.  Which happened in the 1950s.  But was recently re-opened after some flooding shut down the square.  So watch it if you're interested in architecture?  

It does seem like a really nice space but it did not align with any of my particular interests.  Experts spend a lot of time talking about the designer, Carlo Scarpa, but it comes off as pretentious art school posturing.  It just feels like a lot to talk about a store that sells typewriters.  Anyway, it's streaming on Kanopy.

Nick of Time (1995)

  This movie was straight garbage.  Like someone took a decent early 90s thriller and left it in the microwave.  

Gene Watson (Johnny Depp) is returning to Los Angeles with his small daughter (Courtney Chase) when they are forced into a van by a man (Christopher Walken) and woman (Roma Maffia) claiming to be FBI agents.  Once in the van, Gene is told that he has 90 minutes to go to a nearby hotel and kill the Governor (Marsha Mason) at her re-election fundraiser or his daughter will be killed.  

It's supposed to be "everyman rises to hero under pressure" but in the dumbest way possible.  Nothing about this makes any sense and every character makes the worst possible choice at any given moment.  There's no suspense because you already know Gene doesn't have the balls to shoot an innocent woman.  He barely confronted some asshole hassling his toddler at the train station and that dude was on Rollerblades.  The fact that they dragged this movie out for 90 minutes is the real crime here.  I fast-forwarded through about two-thirds of it and still felt like I spent a lifetime watching it.  It's on Paramount+ so you can avoid it more efficiently.  

Yes-People (2020)

  This animated short comes from Iceland and follows a building full of people as they go about their day with all their little interpersonal connections and misfires.  The only word spoken in the film is Yes, hence the title.  It's cute but I struggled to like it.  There just wasn't enough going on for me.  It's currently streaming on Kanopy and is a brisk eight minutes long.

White Eye (2020)

  This was one of last year's crop of Oscar shorts.  

Omer (Daniel Gad) finally finds his stolen bike locked outside of a butcher shop.  The cops are useless, and he can't find anyone willing to cut the bike's lock.  Omer waits around, getting progressively angrier, until the bike's new owner comes out.  Yunes (Dawit Tekelaeb) bought the bike from a guy at the bus station and it's his only means of getting his daughter to kindergarten.  Omer must decide how far he is willing to go to get his bike back when it could mean that Yunes is deported.

If you want to watch a depressing ass story about poverty and bicycles, The Bicycle Thief is streaming on HBO Max.  White Eye is the Reader's Digest version, clocking in at just under half an hour, conveniently also on HBO Max.

99 Homes (2014)

  I didn't like this movie but I found it hard to articulate why to myself.  I think it comes down to the ending, which feels very soft.  I think it needed to be either much more hopeful or much more tragic.

Construction worker Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield) lost his home to foreclosure thanks to ruthless real estate broker, Rick Carver (Michael Shannon).  Desperate for cash, Nash takes a job for Carver, working his way up the ladder to become Carver's right-hand man.  What began as a means to an end --getting his family home back-- becomes muddled as Nash's association with Carver's unscrupulous business dealings becomes routine.  

There's nothing really wrong with the film.  I just didn't feel like it stuck the landing.  That's probably why it's streaming for free on Tubi and not one of the premium streamers.  If you like Garfield or Shannon, it's worth watching for their performances and Laura Dern has never turned in poor work.  Otherwise, I'd say keep looking.  There's so much content out there.  No point wasting time on half-measures.

Lost Horizon (1937)

  Woof.  There is a lot of racism packed into this celluloid.

While escaping from incipit war in Manchuria, the plane containing new British Foreign Secretary Bob Conway (Ronald Colman) and four other passengers is hijacked and taken to the Himalayas.  But before they can decide who to eat first (my money was on the annoying paleontologist (Edward Everett Horton)), they are rescued by a mysterious monk (H. B. Warner) and taken to Shangri-La, a magical land of perpetual spring where all ailments are cured and there is peace.  Also where everyone speaks English and there's still a servant class of natives.  Bob finds himself instantly at home, helped by the presence of Sondra (Jane Wyatt) who was rescued as an infant and grew up in the monastery, but his brother, George (John Howard), smells a rat.  George doesn't believe any of the utopia's propaganda and wants to go back to England, where he can continue to live off his older brother's name and fortune.  Bob has to choose between his life as a diplomat and remote seclusion with the woman he loves.

The White Savior narrative is strong with this one.  The film is based on the novel of the same name, written by James Hilton in 1933.  Hilton got the idea from a travelogue written by two priests he found in the British Museum.  It also closely resembles Thomas More's Utopia in its description of how the monastery handles its basic needs.  I didn't read Hilton's book, but I did read the Wikipedia synopsis and while there were a few liberties taken, the sense of it remains the same.  In both versions, the Himalayan oasis of tranquility and goodwill was founded by a Catholic priest and exists to save peak Western culture against the inevitable collapse of society.  

And that's just the most obvious Yikes in this!  There's also the colonialist condescension of the white passengers towards the Asian servants, food, and clothing, George's flat-out racism, and the depiction of the Tibetan porters (played by Indigenous Americans) and Russian Shangri-La resident, Maria (played by Mexican-American actress Margo), as callous, amoral liars.  

Why is this movie still celebrated, you ask?  Well, if you've ever heard the words Shangri-La, you have James Hilton to thank.  He made it up.  It was hugely popular and became the first mass-market paperback.  FDR liked it so much, he named the presidential retreat after it (later renamed Camp David).  Marvel Comics used it as a basis for Iron Fist's K'un L'un and DC turned it into Nanda Parbat.  Movie's still super racist, though.

Lost Horizon was restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive and Sony in 1998, after scouring archives for full, unedited prints.  About seven minutes of the film are still lost, but a full soundtrack was found and the missing scenes were added using stills from the production.  It's not perfect, but it's damn good work.  This is the version that is currently streaming on Criterion.  It's an interesting film if you are into restoration, old movies, or Hollywood history.  

The Robe (1953)

  Getting a head start on Easter over here.  

A Roman tribune (Richard Burton) and his slave (Victor Mature) run afoul of the emperor (Michael Rennie) and are sent to the province of Jerusalem to put down a slave uprising.  After crucifying the leader, the tribune experiences untold amounts of guilt, leading him to believe the dead man's robe had been cursed and the only way to save his deteriorating mental health is to find his former slave and burn the robe.  

Honestly, this is one of the worst movies about the Passion I've ever seen.  Burton is playing a drunken sot and looks like he leaned too hard into method acting for it, he has no chemistry with lead actress Jean Simmons, the dialogue is wooden, costumes are generic, action scenes are laughably bad, and the whole thing is almost two and a half hours long when 90 minutes might have been a generous amount of time.  Mature is the only actor treating it seriously and Rennie is the only one having fun with it.  

I thought the timeline was off since I've never heard Caligula mentioned in the same breath as Jesus but it's plausible Burton's tribune spent four years combing the desert for Mature.  Still feels weird, though.

It's streaming on the Criterion Channel though only God knows why.

Jackie (2016)

  If you liked Spencer, you might want to check out the director's previous work here.  

Content warning: gore

Jackie Kennedy (Natalie Portman) agrees to give an interview with a reporter (Billy Crudup) about her experiences in the wake of President Kennedy's (Caspar Phillipson) assassination.  She details the events leading up to the funeral, decisions that would shape the final moments of his presidency and cement an enduring legacy.  

Pablo Larraín has an immense talent in bringing performances out of his lead actresses.  So far it has resulted in a bunch of film festival nominations and awards but no real recognition from the Academy.  He is absolutely one to watch, however.  

Jackie is currently streaming for free on IMDb TV, a service running on Amazon.  A word of caution, however.  IMDb TV is one if the worst free streamers.  They don't warn you about commercial interruption, they don't try to find unobtrusive places to break --it literally cut off in the middle of a word several times-- and all their commercials are for themselves, which seems really dumb considering they are a free service.  If it had been on any other platform, I would have switched.  Jackie is really good and it might be worth it to you, but only you know that.

Sunshine (2007)

  Content warning:  suicide

Okay, so I had tried to watch this a couple of years ago when it was on Hulu but it stressed me out so bad I had to stop.  Space is bad and no one should go there.  Space and the ocean.  Nothing good happens in either one.

The crew of the Icarus II have a giant bomb that they have to deploy into the sun in order to kickstart it and keep Earth from freezing to death.  On course for a slingshot around Mercury, they discover a distress beacon from Icarus I, the previous attempt which had failed with no warning and no word about the crew or the payload.  Physicist Robert Capra (Cillian Murphy) makes the decision to change course and grab the bomb from Icarus I on the assumption that two are better than one.  Everything goes wrong from there.  Cabin fever, sabotage, guilt, suicide, resentment, and the morbid math of "how much oxygen can we have if there are a couple fewer breathers" all combine into 90 of the tensest moments I've ever spent in my life.

This isn't technically a horror movie, though it does have horror elements.  I would classify it as a thriller but it certainly makes a case for the sun being an eldritch horror.  Anyway, you should watch it if you like being terrified of space or if you like Rose Byrne, Chris Evans, Michelle Yeoh, Benedict Wong, Mark Strong, and Hiroyuki Sanada.  Pretty people trapped in space and turning on one another.  Mmmm.  Eat your heart out, Agatha Christie.  

According to my phone, this is currently streaming on Paramount+ but I got it on disc from Netflix.