So it’s been a crazy summer. It’s been a crazy year. Etcetera. We’ve seen a fair amount of movies that we haven’t yet reviewed, and part of it is that we keep just forgetting to write reviews because we get back late or we have other things to do or we’re just tired all the time or when we think about it it’ when we don’t have time to do it or who the hell knows. But also, I realized that part of it is that we’ve genuinely enjoyed most of the movies we haven’t posted reviews of but we aren’t overflowing with insightful comments about them. So… here. We’re just going to go through each movie and say some stuff. Sorry, guys.
The Favourite
So this is a movie about horrible people treating each other horribly. It’s about women who are queer, but they’re horrible people, and the other people around them are also horrible. It’s a period piece where nothing is pretty and in fact a lot of things are kind of yucky or grotesque. Olivia Coleman completely and 100% deserved her Oscar, but she’s not a likable character in the slightest. No one is. But then again, it’s sort of refreshing watching a movie where everyone, women and men alike, are just aggressively bad people, and they all face some consequences for that in one way or another.
Us
Jordan Peele should be allowed to keep making whatever media he wants to make, and I’m not usually one for horror but I love his horror. Us is an odd movie, and one that demands at least a couple of rewatches because you’ll definitely miss some of the clues the first time around. It does a lot with a very simple concept: what would you do if the people invading your home weren’t after your stuff, but they were after you? How do you escape if the intruders know exactly how you think and look exactly like you? It leaves some questions unanswered at the end of the movie, which I think makes it more powerful, but this will no doubt frustrate some viewers. Still, even if the ending is too much for you, it’s a visually interesting movie with some incredible performances (Lupita Nyong’o and Winston Duke definitely deserve awards for this movie).
Mary Queen of Scots
We rented this movie, admittedly, and it was alright. This was probably the least flattering portrayal of Elizabeth I I’ve ever seen. Margot Robbie and Saoirse Ronan give good performances. Also there was an internet kerfuffle when Gemma Chan was cast as Bess of Hardwick and racists got really mad about HISTORICAL ACCURACY!!11!!!!1!!! (She is in the movie for about ten minutes total and does nothing but stand by Elizabeth I and give her sad longing looks, so you do feel pretty bad for the poor little lesbian.) But this movie is mostly worth mentioning because of the scene where David Tennant, playing a Scottish Protestant clergyman, shouts “WHUUUUUUUUURES” in reference to female monarchs. (He means “whores,” which isn’t funny, but his accent makes it hilarious.)
Booksmart
This movie is so good! It’s earnest and sweet and despite the inevitable “best friends engage in dramatic social activity, come to conflict with each other, seem to have a falling out, and reconcile” plot it doesn’t induce the usual cringe that that does (at least for me). Also, Kaitlyn Dever’s (remember, Kaitlyn Dever, who I adore from Justified and Short Term 12 and and and) character is a little lesbian who actually successfully engages in positive lesbian activity, and Beanie Feldstein (who was in Lady Bird, among other things) is a lesbian in real life, so this is a very gay-positive movie. Billie Lourd is absolutely incredible in this movie, playing the protagonists’ indecipherably weird classmate (at one point she even makes an Almost Famous reference, which sent me over the moon, let me tell you). There is a significant issue with the movie, though: there’s a subplot with a young-ish “cool” teacher, who’s supposed to be maybe in her late 20s-early 30s, who helps out our two lead characters in their quest to get to a party…and then hangs around said party and ends up sleeping with one of her students. The student is stated to be older than 18, because he’s been held back, and it kind of feels like the movie is excusing it because of that. But nope! It is still gross, weird, and inappropriate for this teacher to be sleeping with one of her students! That’s the biggest problem with the script and it honestly feels like that subplot was accidentally left in there from an earlier draft. Other than that, though, it’s a really delightful comedy, and Olivia Wilde is clearly better at making directing choices than acting choices.
Always Be My Maybe
This movie was hyped up a lot on Twitter, as it’s an Asian American romcom and we don’t see a lot of those in the US. Ali Wong and Randall Park star as childhood friends who boned once, had a falling out, and then didn’t see anything of each other for twenty years until Wong returns to her hometown to begin setting up her new restaurant. From there, it’s pretty standard romcom fare, but created by Asian Americans, which really does make a difference to this story. I liked Crazy Rich Asians a lot, but this romance feels more real to me. I’d definitely recommend it even if you’re not usually a romcom fan, I think there’s enough here that most people will be charmed. (Also, Keanu Reeves is in it and he’s incredible as usual.)
Men In Black International
This movie is serviceable. It’s exactly what you expect from a Men in Black movie. It’s fine. The real reasons to see this movie are Tessa Thompson and Chris Hemsworth, who are flipping delightful together and apart per usual. Thompson’s character M is pretty much the reason for the plot to happen, which is pretty cool. She’s written in a way that reads pretty clearly as neurodivergent and queer for anyone who recognizes that: she’s obsessed with aliens, she’s wary about letting people in but she is good at forming bonds with people once she trusts them, and she makes connections and notices things that most people wouldn’t notice. Also, part of the conflict is resolved because she’s good at making friends when she wants to. M and Hemsworth’s character, H, have a great vibe that could or could not be romantic, and at the end of the movie they’re implied to still be working together but you can read it as totally platonic if you want to.
Spider-Man: Far From Home
This movie is fun! It’s less fun if you think about it for a minute, because it’s about a bunch of teenagers being put into very dangerous situations, and also nostalgia for a billionaire capitalist who was an asshole, but still. Tom Holland is great as both Spider-Man and Peter Parker, which has never happened before in a live action movie, and Zendaya is the best MJ. (Zendaya’s MJ is also pretty aggressively coded as neurodivergent. It’s been a good time for that.) This movie also did a fun thing with its villain Mysterio/Quentin Beck (Jake Gyllenhaal), and by fun I mean “pointedly topical.” He says in no uncertain terms that the goal of his villain team is to (well, to get back at Tony Stark, which is a pretty solid mood, and) engineer events to suit his agenda. To change the narrative. To create fake situations that will make people need help that specifically he can provide so he can be a hero. To unite people in fear so he can more easily take advantage of them and make them lift him up. Uh, that sounding familiar yet?
Little Woods
This was the debut film of Nia DaCosta, whose career I will be really interested to follow based on this movie. It’s a quiet movie, more atmospheric than anything, and the story is mainly about two sisters doing their best to get by when everything is going wrong. Ollie (Tessa Thompson) is trying to escape her hometown, after having been on probation for illegally crossing the Canadian border while transporting drugs. Her probation is almost up, and she’s hoping to move now that her adopted mother has passed away, but her sister Deb (Lily James) is making that difficult. Deb finds out she’s unexpectedly pregnant, days after the bank announces that their childhood home is being foreclosed on, and Ollie has to find a way to help her get to Canada for an abortion and get the money to save their house. The movie is mostly just characters interacting with each other, and that might sound boring, but it’s the kind of slow, quiet storytelling I really like.
Fast Color
I wanted to get to the theater for this, but it was only able to get to about 10 theaters in total. Still, I think this is my favorite movie of 2019. It stars Gugu Mbatha-Raw as a woman named Ruth, who is living in a future dystopia where it hasn’t rained in years and water has to be carefully rationed. The viewer is slowly shown what’s going on with her: all we know at the beginning is that she’s on the run and sometimes she has seizures, during which bad things happen. The story is about three generations of black women with superpowers, but it’s also about survival, resilience, and the ways in which we learn to protect ourselves and the people we love when we know we could cause them harm. I really wish this had been wider release, because I think it’s so important and honestly one of the best superhero movies I’ve ever seen.
Hobbs & Shaw
Was this our most anticipated movie of 2019? Maybe. Have we been clapping our hands like giddy children every time we so much as see a poster for it? Maybe. Are we aware that this is a complete nonsense movie full of nonsense? Yes, which is the answer for why we answer affirmatively to the first two questions. After The Fate of the Furious, we pretty much signed our hearts over to this franchise and any of its related presentations, and this movie lived up to our (technically low) expectations and then some. Hobbs & Shaw follows the adventures of Luke Hobbs (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) and Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) as they try to stop a crazy cybernetically-enhanced criminal named… Brixton Lore (Idris Elba). He’s like a ton of bricks, get it? They’re also joined by, and in fact their adventure is necessitated by, Deckard’s sister Hattie (Vanessa Kirby). Anyway, it’s what you want and expect. A lot of vehicular mayhem ensues, a lot of other action mayhem ensues, there are explosions and a lot of far-fetched weaponry is used, Helen Mirren reappears as the Shaw matriarch and Eiza Gonzalez cameos as the leader of a criminal girl gang (and where’s that movie?) and Ryan Reynolds cameos as a CIA agent who thinks he’s bros with Hobbs and also wants to tell you his Game of Thrones opinions (I’m not even kidding about this). The final showdown takes place in Samoa and Hobbs’ family of Samoan car designers offers a beatdown with their collection of ancestral weapons and also their swank cars. It’s a perfect storm of nonsense and beauty.
–your fangirl heroines.
partlydrawn 