Happy Friday the 13th. Shabbat Shalom. “I’ve got another confession to make” is a reference to Dave Grohl’s rock star hilarity this week. Buncha takes on recent watches:
Rebel Ridge is #1!!!!! Watch it on Netflix immediately if you have not already. It is great. Aaron Pierre (fka Mid-Size Sedan), like we’ve been saying for a minute nowwwwww, is our movie star. Jeremy Saulnier rebounds and exceeds expectations. Bravo all!
Rebel Ridge is hopefully an inflection point. I remember last summer when prolific music video director Grant Singer’s debut Reptile launched, my thought was, ‘this is a totally solid Friday night movie we used to have three of every week growing up.’ That’s what I thought Netflix would deliver us at the outset of their original production journey. But alas, it’s become effectively a political meme genre unto itself, formed with a structure built on ADHD mechanics. Reptile was solid. And it did solid numbers from what I understood. Rebel Ridge, by the guy who already made two classics, is spectacular. One of, maybe even the, best movies of the year. I regret not being able to see it in a movie theater. The biking alongside the bus scene, THE line everyone is quoting, well actually two lines, and the final showdown…damn…those are high five in the cinema moments I feel deprived of never getting to have. I even hit up Paris Theatre to try to convince them to let me screen it there. To no avail. Rebel Ridge is great and #1. This is a big deal. Very reasonable budget. Quality cast, the right cast, but no attention baiting ‘stars.’ This, combined with the regime change refresher, could pose a sea change. I don’t see how Dan Lin helps smart people get smarter movies more than Scott Stuber, but maybe he’d just pivot and let someone do something. I don’t know. I hope they take the right notes here. John Boyega, who has his own Netflix deal, is junk. Rebel Ridge with John Boyega, would have been Hold the Dark, the one junky Jeremy Saulnier movie, that was a complete failure for Netflix. I’m not sure what went wrong there, because the make up of that movie sounded good. Maybe it’s that Jeffrey Wright is our best actor to rarely be in good movies. I don’t know. Maybe something happened to him that causes him to ruin good movies and love making bad movies for the last 20 years. Since he did the most bad ass scene ever stabbing himself as a demonstration of strength in Shaft, he’s had a few cool small roles, but nothing deserving of his talents. Scrolling the IMDB, Syriana, the “what wall” scene in Westworld, his voice in Last of Us 2 video game (not the horrible TV show), Bojack, a few Boardwalk Empire episodes. He’s so so good, but generally doesn’t get great roles. I saw him say in a Q&A how he hadn’t had a leading role in decades before American Fiction, which I hated so much, but happy he got the shine. Anyway, I’m not sure what went wrong with Hold the Dark. It was terrible. But Riley Keough and Alexander Skarsgard are great, so I’m not mad at that either. What I do think happened though with Rebel Ridge, is the Netflix told their guy Saulnier they had to make a movie with someone with an existing deal, who their algorithm was already peaking toward—John Boyega—and he agreed. So whether or not he wanted to make the Boyega version of Terry Richmond (which by the way, I’ve never heard the character name mentioned so much in press by all parties, so they are absolutely trying to franchise this character, I bet with a prequel of the story of his training, why he was never deployed, etc., and they can cast a younger actor and let Aaron Pierre go do his franchises), Saulnier accepted, since his last movie he did his way was a dud. But then Boyega and Saulnier clashed, because Boyega is wack af and Saulnier made f*cking Green Room and Blue Ruin and he’s a f*cking bad ass and absolutely fucks. So that fell apart. Netflix had turnover. But they already committed to this thing. Nobody cared about it because it doesn’t fall into any exec’s wheel house at that The Netflix corp. So they let it keep going and were like yeah whatever cast who ever, ok you want the guy who did like a thing with Barry Jenkins, I can say that to my direct report in the corporation meeting, ok fine that sounds sayable, great thx ta. And then Jeremy Saulnier and Aaron Pierre went and made the movie they were supposed to make and it was fucking bad ass as hell. The most bad ass movie of the year in a year when we have a George Miller Mad Max movie. MORE GOOD STUFF PLEASE!
I haven’t read the Rebel Ridge good-cop-bad-cop discourse but I imagine it’s one opinion being offended by the presence of another opinion. The movie features good cops…and…bad cops. Some cops do bad stuff. Some cops don’t do bad stuff, but don’t rebel against it. Some cops rebel openly against bad stuff. Some cops rebel secretly against bad stuff. Life. I don’t know. What are we talking about?
Also. Pretty cool that the day James Earl Jones dies, the amazing actor who follows him as young Mufasa, is #1 on Netflix and gaining his first mainstream exposure. The future is in good hands.
Beetlejuice is like a 1990s TV movie for an existing show that’s doing a jumbo episode for sweeps. One-shot celebrity appearance villains are invented to be spun out in a few scenes. Every character gets their own arc. There’s a mediocre under-cooked/budgeted musical number. None of it needs to mean anything. It’s just these characters doing stuff in this world. And we love tuning in to see them doing the stuff. Thats it. There’s nothing to it. Roll camera. Imperfect or whatever. Some will dig. Some won’t. Whatever. That’s what this Beetlejuice Beetlejuice movie is. I walked out halfway through. It was one of my least enjoyable watches I’ve ever experienced. I’d rather watch debates on IMAX. This movie did nothing with the camera or production design. It was all shot-reverse-shot and sets actually looked like Fight Club Ikea mockeries. It’s not a failure, because I know this is just Wednesday: The Movie, by another studio, but by the same people as the Netflix. None of which is a thing for me. So this is all fine. You keep your side of the fence clean, and I’ll f*cking worry about mine. You step on my f*cking lawn once though, like these f*ckers “remaking” The Burbs and I’m gonna call my brother Tom Cody with his sledge hammer.
On that note, remembrance for my favorite actor Rick Ducommun. When he died his family reached out to me, because I had written a blog post at some point in high school with top 10 Rick Ducommun roles and it was extremely in depth. They sent me some Burbs poster and it was one of the happiest moments of my life. I love Rick Ducommun and The Burbs so much and I really hope this remake goes away.
Front Room was the dullest most nothing A24 movie ever. It wasn't even stupid wacky just nothing. It had zero ending. There was no story. No anything. There’s people critiquing it more profoundly but I don’t even want to spend the time that clearly the team behind this did not. Kathryn Hunter is incredible and deserves better. At least they got it that all they had going for the movie was her, and cut together tons of her just doing stuff. Only reason it’s worth watching. Someone make a megamix cut of just her scenes and that should be the movie.
Following up the Francis Ford Coppola fake critics quotes trailer...I just learned the Marcus Aurelius quote in the movie is fake. I love it so much. Get your Megalopolis IMAX tix on sale now!!
— Sean Glass @sdotglass
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