A-. A thoroughly entertaining crime movie. A useful commentary on guns, and a somewhat unbelievable commentary on human nature.
I think I’m getting to the bottom of the barrel with 2022 movies. At least, critically acclaimed movies that I’m likely to also like. I’m not sure how to find the critically declaimed ones that I’ll like. Brooklyn – B-. I was entertained. It was well done for what it is, which is a dramatization of a romance novel set in the 1950s. I was not the target audience. I was shocked to find out that the screenplay was written by Nick Hornby, because absolutely nothing about this film felt like Nick Hornby. I was even more surprised that the…
Maybe going through and watching critically acclaimed movies is actually working for me. I’m mostly just plugging in the movies that are well-liked by critics into Criticker and watching anything that Criticker agrees I’ll like. This is working better than it usually does. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On: B. I’m not much of a fan of animation. Or kids’ movies. This is… maybe only sort of either? It’s live action, except that the main character is an animated shell. And while there’s nothing in this movie that’s inappropriate for kids, I’m not sure it’s a kids’ movie? It’s not…
Girl Picture (Tytöt tytöt tytöt): B+. This felt fresh, maybe because it’s Finnish. The central character is a difficult girl and she’s difficult in ways that resonate. This pretends to be a “coming of age” film, and it technically is, but these characters didn’t really feel like teenagers to me. There are really two stories that are not exactly related, and I find myself unsure why they’re interwoven. But it checks a lot of boxes for me, and I really enjoyed it. The Quiet Girl (An Cailín Ciúin): B+. We randomly watched these back-to-back, and while they are completely different movies, there…
Smoking Causes Coughing (Fumer fait tousser): B- This has a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, not because it’s fantastic, but because it can absolutely pierce the insane tolerance to the whiles of normal film that movie critics build up. The genre is listed as, “Comedy, Fantasy, Horror,” and that checks out. I think it’s technically an action hero movie, which goes against my principles, but it’s actually a series of comedy-horror vignettes which aren’t all that funny or horror-inducing but are…. thought provoking? I’d like to give it props for being only 1:15 long yet covering plenty of… something. The Man…