I love it when a movie is timely and relevant. I refer to The Social Network, the 2010 origin film about the social phenomenon of Facebook. This social media platform had been made available to the public less than four years earlier. Aaron Sorokin and David Fincher worked magic to create such a masterpiece quickly. I still maintain that The King’s Speech beating The Social Network for Best Picture was one of the biggest shams in Oscar history. It showed just how antiquated and set in their ways The Academy had become. While Craig Gillespie’s (I, Tonya, Lars and the Real Girl) Dumb Money is not entirely on the same level as The Social Network, its timely significance cannot be overlooked. Though in a completely different way, the events in Dumb Money are (to many individuals, organizations, and sectors) as impactful as to those in The Social Network.
Category Archives: 2023
BlackBerry (2023)
2023 is proving to be the year of the biopic. While each year produces at least a couple of well-produced and well-marketed movies about the dramatization of a particular person’s life (or people), 2023 has more than usual. It is a trend I see continuing into future years. With films about Michael Jordan (Air), George Foreman (Big George Foreman), J. Robert Oppenheimer (Oppenheimer), Emily Brontë (Emily), Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges (Chevalier), Napoleon Bonaparte (Napoleon), Henk Rogers (Tetris), Richard Montañez (Flamin Hot), Leonard Bernstein (Maestro), Ronald Reagan (Reagan), there is no shortage as to what’s on the table for someone in Hollywood to take a stab at. The much-anticipated Tetris felt like it would be the most significant “technology” biopic of the bench. However, I felt the film to be underwhelming and wildly ambitious (the KGB?) for a movie marketed to be about a universally cherished video game, but it often felt like it was anything except.
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)
In a summer movie season that has seen the unlikely pairing of Oppenheimer and Barbie dominate the box office, two surefire franchises have found it a bit more difficult than anticipated to generate sales. While Oppenheimer and Barbie have both faired well with critics and audiences, Christopher McQuarrie’s (The Way of the Gun, Jack Reacher) Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One has scored just as well, but whose box office revenue may have been slighted due to the Oppenheimer/Barbie dual release date two weeks after. It may have made the Mission Impossible franchise’s seventh movie out of sight, out of mind a little too quickly. Dead Reckoning Part One is a film that should be seen in the theater, which many will agree with. Saying that it is better than Oppenheimer and Barbie is an unpopular opinion but one that I believe to be true. The novelty of Oppenheimer and Barbie is undoubtedly an allure over the seventh installment of a franchise and is something I do understand and appreciate. However, as a whole, I found Dead Reckoning Part One to be far more entertaining and better executed.
Continue reading Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)
Oppenheimer (2023)
Barbieheimer, the crafty, endearing portmanteau of Barbie and Oppenheimer, the two biggest blockbusters of the summer, became mainstream weeks months before the dual-day release of each movie. Moviegoers flocked to the theaters in greater fashion than even 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick. This ultra-successful and undeniably popular film has become universally accepted as bringing people back to theaters following the COVID-19 pandemic. Some would say that it saved movie theaters entirely. As someone who sees two, three, or sometimes even more movies in the theater in any given month, and often being one of a small handful of patrons, I am in that camp.
Barbie (2023)
Sometimes when someone is describing a movie to someone who might be on the fence about it, they might say something like, “Yes, it’s a kids’ movie, but it’s made for adults. So much of the humor will go straight over a child’s head.” This rarely, if ever, works and can be a terrible tactic. Yet, here I find myself again writing a review for a movie that I knew I was not going to enjoy (though I knew I would see it regardless because of the hype, favorable review, and gnawing curiosity) under the pretense that the movie was made for me when it was not. However, that was not the half of it. With most animated films, children are likely to be entertained and understand the story, even if that story parallels an overarching story intended more to reach adults. Greta Gerwig’s (Lady Bird, Little Women) Barbie had all the shininess of Mattel’s most iconic toy and was often shot in such a simplistic way that it felt like it was perhaps aimed toward children, but this was not a kids’ movie. Its clever and ubiquitous marketing campaign seemed more interested in selling out as many theaters as possible for as long as possible before revealing its plot. It did work. The film grossed over $150 million domestically in its first three days. To the film’s credit, it was a PG-13 film, though I bought into the intrigue so much that I hadn’t even looked at the rating until I left the theater.