However, word got around that a member of our family might not be around much longer, and that this may well be the last Thanksgiving of its kind, as it was his home in which he'd hosted the annual get-together. Given that, most everyone is going, including ourselves, which means that I will be gone for the next few days, and won't have much, if any computer access. That, in turn, means I won't be able to do the last few Thanksgiving thrillers I had planned.
TBH, only two out of three of my proposed selections were properly Thanksgiving-related, and one of those is more of a comedy than a thriller, so it's probably just as well. Besides, what would Thanksgiving be without a few leftovers? I might end up doing one of them after the holiday- probably the one that's not strictly Thanksgiving-related, for obvious reasons- but I think I'll hold off on the other ones until next year, given that I didn't have that many to choose from in the first place.
In the meantime, here's a quick look at some of the stuff I've been watching that isn't holiday-related. See you on the other side of Thanksgiving, and try not to kill those MAGA hat-wearing relatives that keep insisting our current president is legitimate, in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary! 😈
I'm a sucker for a teen comedy, but it's been a hot minute since the last really good one, which was probably either The Duff or The Edge of Seventeen, whichever came last. Well, there's a new modern-day classic teen flick in town, and it's a great one: Booksmart. I don't always pay attention to hype, but this is the rare film to actually live up to it, completely earning its reputation as one of the good ones.
Actress Olivia Wilde (TV's The O.C. & House), makes her film directing debut here, from a first-rate script by four very funny ladies: Emily Halpern (TV's Good Girls, Black-ish), Sarah Haskins (ditto), Susanna Fogel (who wrote and directed the underrated The Spy Who Dumped Me) and Katie Silberman (Isn't It Romantic, Hot Pursuit).
Usually, when I see over two names listed as scriptwriters, I get a little nervous, as it typically means the script went through a lot of rewrites and ended up being a film written by committee- as in Hollywood got a little TOO involved- but not so here. If anything, it plays like certain people were assigned to certain aspects of the story, to make sure they were all up to snuff.
And indeed they are. The fantastic end result is the rare teen movie to come at things from completely different angles that one might not expect. For instance, the two leads are hardly your typical ones- in addition to both being female, a rarity unto itself in Hollywood, they're also, as the title implies, very intelligent, down-to-earth ladies. What they aren't is very self-aware. On a certain level, they're well aware that they don't really fit in, and that everyone thinks they're dorks, but what they don't realize is that they're at least partially to blame for that assessment.
In other words, in judging everyone else over the course of high school for the last four years, they've neglected to realize that they weren't fitting in not because they were nerds, but because they never even bothered to put forth the effort in the first place, never dreaming they ever would if they had tried.
When one of the girls discovers that, after putting her social life on the back-burner in favor of getting good grades, and thus, getting into the best schools, that it was all for naught, as seemingly EVERYONE, from the jocks to the stoners managed to get into a high-end school, all the while still maintaining a proper social life and, you know, having fun every once in a while, she has a meltdown and is determined to make up for lost time in one crazy night. That's basically it, plot-wise. But sometimes, that's all you need.
The end result is basically a female Superbad, but way smarter than that, as the title implies. It's refreshing to have two likable female leads, sure, but it's even more refreshing to have them be enormously flawed as these two are. By relegating themselves to their own little bubble, they've missed out on all the fun, and their misguided attempts to regain some of what they've lost is a great ride, with lots of quirky rest stops along the way, from a dorky rich kid's lonely yacht party to a murder-mystery soiree thrown by the drama outcasts, and finally, the big bash thrown by the most popular kids in school.
It's funny, fresh and exceptionally well-written, thus ensuring it will be one you want to revisit many times over the years to come, like all the best movies of this sort. In other words, it's a hang-out film, with people you actually want to hang out with for about 105 minutes. I especially loved how almost everybody had unexpected layers, and how they proved that there was more going on beneath the surface than one might think.
The leads, Kaitlyn Deaver (TV's Last Man Standing) and Beanie Feldstein (aka Jonah Hill's sister, from Lady Bird) are both great, and the lesser-known actors backing them up are just as good, with great scene-stealing turns from two pinch hitters, Jessica Williams (of 2 Dope Queens fame) as a hip teacher that not as together as she seems, just like the rest of the characters here; and Carrie Fisher's daughter, Billie Lourd (TV's Scream Queens, American Horror Story), who randomly pops up, Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook-style, to wreak amusing havoc wherever she goes.
This one will almost certainly make my Best of 2019 list, and quite possibly, my Best Teen Comedies of All-Time list to boot. (I'm currently revising and expanding that list for publication here at some point in 2020.) It's just that good. If you check out but one movie on this particular list that you haven't seen, make it this one. 😉
From teen dreams to teen screams, this Y/A adaption is yet another entry in the Dystopian teen subgenre first popularized in earnest by The Hunger Games series. I had planned to skip it, quite frankly, until I saw a fantastic indie called The Hate U Give not too long ago (for more on that one, see here), which featured a remarkable turn from actress Amandla Stenberg, herself a vet of THG- she was the ill-fated Rue in the first film. Stenberg is front and center in The Darkest Minds, which I chose to watch purely on the strength of her performance in Hate.
TBH, the film is a bit of a hodgepodge of Dystopian Y/A book and TV/film tropes- a little Hunger Games here, a little X-Men: First Class/The Gifted there and a smidge of the Divergent series and The Fifth Wave for good measure. So, to that end, it's not anything you haven't seen before and better. However, as I inferred, Stenberg is a really strong presence and she's the main focus of the film, so if you like her, you'll probably like this.
The story is basically this: a weird disease wipes out a good 90% of the world's children- take that, Hunger Games- and leaves what few that remain imbued with various superpowers of varied levels of danger to the rest of the world. Naturally, adults promptly flip out and place the majority of them in camps (hard not to see the parallels there, even though the book this was based on came before current events), where they imprison most of them and outright kill the ones they find the most dangerous, aka the "Oranges." They use the next levels down, the "Reds," to help keep the others in line- it's not really explained how they manage to control them.
After the prologue skips ahead several years, only two Oranges are left: Ruby (Stenberg) and Clancy (Patrick Gibson, The Tudors, The OA), the President's son, who is said to be "cured," but working with the government. With help from a renegade outfit known as "The League," a group of adults that help train children to fight and stand up for themselves against the adults that would force them into the aforementioned camps, Ruby is able to escape her camp before she is to be put to death and goes on the run.
When she has reason to believe that the League may not exactly be on the up and up, either, she runs away from them as well and teams up with a group of fellow runaway teens, led by Liam (Harris Dickinson, FX's Trust, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil), who are seeking safe haven with yet another group, "East River," led by the mysterious "Slip Kid," where kids are allowed to live as they please out in the open. But are they any more trustworthy than the other groups?
You can probably figure that out for yourself long before the big reveal, but suffice it to say that there's not a lot here that's unpredictable on the whole. It's watchable, to be sure, and Stenberg remains a formidable presence here- if not quite as riveting as she was in Hate- and she is nonetheless worth the price of admission: which for me was a free rental, so admittedly not much- but nothing I regretted spending my time on, overall, either.
So, yeah, nothing you haven't seen before, but well-executed and ably directed by female former animation director Jennifer Yuh Nelson, of the Kung Fu Panda series fame, so points for making it as well-done as this sort of thing can be. It's also not as gloomy as these things tend to be, at least once you get past the opening set-up, probably as a direct result of Nelson's colorful background in animation. She also story-boarded the entire film herself, which is rarely done these days.
Like I said, nothing earth-shattering, but worth the cost of a rental, I suppose. I wouldn't hold my breath for a sequel on this one, though, even though it's based on a series of successful books, as it tanked at the box office, big time, showing that maybe everyone's had enough of this sort of thing as well- we get enough child abuse from the current administration, no need to go and see more at the movies. 😝
Next up is the latest from acclaimed director Brian De Palma, of Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Scarface and The Untouchables fame. Since 1996's benchmark Mission Impossible, which launched a series that continues to this day, De Palma's work has admittedly been hit or miss, but I suppose you could say that about his entire career, really. For every bona fide classic, there's several others that are, at best a bit middling (Snake Eyes, Passion) or, at worst, total misfires (The Bonfires of the Vanities, Mission to Mars).
You can file Domino under the middling category- it's not bad, and certainly watchable, but nothing you haven't seen before, much like the aforementioned The Darkest Minds. It revolves around a Danish policeman (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Game of Thrones), who finds himself immersed in a terrorist plot after his partner is mortally wounded as a result of a dumb move on his part- leaving his gun at home.
Determined to catch the escaped terrorist who did it, he teams up with Alex (Carice van Houten, also of Thrones), who also has her reasons for revenge, to bring the terrorist down, while eventually realizing that there are much higher stakes involved than they initially realized- and an even scarier terrorist at work with much more nefarious plans than the one they're after.
So, what we have here is basically a condensed version of something you might see on the shows Homeland or Jack Ryan. At a mere ninety minutes- actually closer to about 80, if you discount the credits, it certainly doesn't overstay its welcome, but it also doesn't bring much new to the table, either. It's well-acted and executed, but predictable and kind of by-the-numbers, which is disconcerting, given De Palma's involvement.
Also, that score, by longtime De Palma associate Pino Donaggio is hella overbearing to an almost laughable degree, such as when De Palma highlights the proverbial "Chekhov's Gun"- here an actual gun- that sets the ill-fated events into motion. Even an idiot would get the significance of that moment the way it's filmed, but Donaggio really hammers it home in such a ludicrous way with his score, it had me thinking of the "Dramatic Chipmunk" for the first time in ages. (Okay, it's actually a prairie dog, but you know what I mean and if not: click here.)
Don't get me wrong, I love a lot of Donaggio's work (his score for Carrie is especially great), but yeah- this is not one of his finest hours, that's for sure. Or one of De Palma's, for that matter. A passable time-waster at best, but recommended for De Palma completists and hardcore GOT fans only. Otherwise, you've seen a lot better elsewhere. Better luck next time, guys. 😔
We end with a double dose of animation in the sequel department: Toy Story 4 and The Secret Life of Pets 2. The Toy Story franchise is rather remarkable in the sense that it's only gotten better in time, with each successive sequel seemingly topping its predecessor. Would the fourth time be the charm, in this case? Well, yes and no.
On the one hand, the level of creativity and inspiration remains exemplary, with several Rube Goldberg-esque scenes being particularly attention-grabbing, while the overall arching sentiment is as loving and sweetly melancholy and heart-tugging as ever. Here, it's the one-two-punch combination of "if you lack a friend, make one for yourself"- the main little girl who owns the toys isn't allowed to bring them to school, so she creates one from scratch, which subsequently becomes her favorite- and, the idea of what happens to the toys that don't have an owner to love them: do they take the high road and make the best of things, or do they turn to the dark side?
We see examples of the latter all over the movie: there's once-favored toy, Woody (Tom Hanks), who's found himself relegated to the closet, watching on in envy as his latest owner, Bonnie, opts to play with the other toys over himself; Bo Peep (Annie Potts), who was donated to charity years before, much to her crush Woody's dismay, who made a choice to stick with Andy rather than go with her; and the genuinely creepy Gabby Gabby (Christina Hendricks), who has grown wicked as a result of her voice box going dead, which has resulted in no one wanting to buy her from the antiques store in which she resides, much to her resentment.
Meanwhile, in terms of the former, Woody takes upon himself to take new "friend" Forky (Tony Hale) under his wing and teach him about the life of a toy, which he is not always inclined to follow. Indeed, Forky, which is literally a spork with some pipe cleaners glued to it, has an inner debate about whether he is "trash" (literally, as in he was meant to be used once, then thrown away) or a toy, since Bonnie transformed him into such by virtue of her imagination. In his struggles, Forky constantly tries to throw himself into the garbage rather than go along with all this toy business.
Eventually, Forky succeeds in escaping, which, in turn, leads Woody to go after him, with the two ending up in said antiques store and going up against Gabby Gabby and her nefarious ventriloquist dummies/guard dogs, which give Slappy from Goosebumps a run for the money in the creep-out department. In order to defeat her, Woody must, of course, get the help of his toy friends, as well as the unexpected return of old love, Bo Peep, who has been living on the outskirts of humanity for years since Woody last saw her, as she was never adopted.
In addition to Forky and Gabby, there's also some other new faces, notably Ducky (Keegan-Michael Key) and Bunny (Jordan Peele)- aka Key & Peele- who provide the lion's share of laughs in this new entry in the much-beloved franchise. Keanu Reeves, as the Canadian Evil Knievel knock-off Duke Caboom, is also pretty amusing, and don't miss the bonus feature about the cast and crew's affection for actual toys, in which Reeves utters the immortal line: "I lego'd alone." (Insert "Sad Keanu" meme here, lol.)
The end result is, at the very least, on par with the original, if perhaps a step down from the last two entries. This is the first entry that seems a bit hollow, at least in comparison to what came before. It just lacks the gut punch that hits you right in the feels of the last two movies. Still, the series remains remarkably consistent, and, as ever, manages to pull on the heartstrings as much as it makes you laugh. If you love this series and haven't seen this one yet, you won't be disappointed by what you find here, that's for sure...but it could be better.
As for Secret Life of Pets 2, it's basically more of the same from the original, but also remains a charmer, thanks in no small part to the endearing cast, in particular, the talents of Kevin Hart as Snowball, the rabbit and would-be superhero, and Jenny Slate as the adorable Gidget, a Pomeranian. Incredibly, the movie managed to recruit no less than the legendary Harrison Ford to voice a new character, Rooster, a sheepdog who teaches Max (Patton Oswalt) the virtues of farm life and how to be a real hero.
Meanwhile, the main plot revolves around the gang trying to help free an abused tiger cub from the circus. They succeed, but then the ringmaster, Sergei (Nick Kroll), gives chase, determined to get the cub back and get revenge on the wily pets that got the best of him, with the help of some scary wolves. In the meantime, the gang stashes the cub for safekeeping at their apartment building as they fight off Sergei and his thugs.
The film is perfectly fine and has its moments- Hart's rendition of, of all things, Desiigner's "Panda," had me howling with laughter, for instance- but, despite some early efforts at an emotional core, it's just not as high caliber as Disney's efforts, much less Pixar's. As such, it's a passable time-waster, but little else. Still, I could admittedly go another round with this particular crew, so I'm not complaining. Just don't go in expecting anything beyond a silly, fun trifle and you'll be content.
Well, that about does it for this installment of movie reviews- join me on the other side of Thanksgiving weekend for some more reviews, and a preview of what's to come for the rest of the year. As ever, thanks for reading!
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