The Month in Theaters And Streaming For February 2022

Photo by Rennett Stowe from USA, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Eight movies in theaters in February, with an additional seven movies on streaming or otherwise, but three were movies I have already previously discussed, for a total of twelve total reviews. Shorter this month due to watching a bunch of television shows. Finally finished Cold Case, on the last day of the month. Peacemaker ended really well. And I finally got to watch the most recent season of Rick and Morty. Binged that in one day. So good.

Moonfall

This movie was just OK. The effects were cool, but the message was muddled and the acting, outside of John Bradley, was mostly just phoned in. And there are large chunks of this movie that just seem like filler. This is a C- to C at best. Just not much I can say. Theater filler to wait out the better stuff that came later.

Marry Me

Another movie with John Bradley in it, oddly enough. He’s given almost nothing to do in this movie, though. This basic romantic comedy would have little going for it if it didn’t have some pretty decent music from Jennifer Lopez. When she’s singing. The other singer in this movie is not my cup of tea. It’s a C from me, dawg. Basically, any actor other than JLo could have been in any other role in this movie. No one really stood out other than her. Owen Wilson just sort of does the basic male love interest stuff that almost any actor his age could have done. And the humor is filled with groanworthy lines.

Death on the Nile

This was so much better than Murder on the Orient Express. The best murder mysteries are ones with clues that can be followed if the viewer or reader is perceptive enough. I will say that the solution to this one was rather obvious, but it is leagues better than the garbage solution in the other one. I give this a B to B+. Knives Out is still the best murder mystery movie that isn’t explicitly a horror movie in the last several years, but this one is serviceable due to the excellent acting and direction. And the cinematography is gorgeous.

Jackass Forever

Sometimes, you just want to watch a bunch of idiots injure themselves in creative ways. I have never seen any of the previous movies or even the show, but I went to see this out of morbid curiosity. This gets a B. It’s not gonna blow your mind, but it may turn your stomach. A dumb fun time. Which is all it set out to be, so it succeeded.

Uncharted

This movie blows. It has only gotten worse the more I’ve thought about it. Tom Holland is not a good Nathan Drake. And that’s coming from someone who has never played any of the games (only watched a Tobuscus Let’s Play of the third one.) Mark Wahlberg is not a good Sully either. The main villain is randomly killed going into the third act. The best actor in the piece who had actually interesting character motivations was then replaced by someone who just cares about money. The final chase sequence, as it were, was fun, but that doesn’t make up for the awful stuff that preceded it. The plot has been done before better in the games and other games of its type and other movies. This movie does not justify its existence, outside of the fact that it made money. We’re getting a sequel to this, unfortunately. An F. And just about the dumbest product placement since the Power Rangers reboot. Unspeakably out of place in the setting. That took some balls, I will say.

Studio 666

Movie of the month goes to this ridiculous horror comedy written by Dave Grohl and starring all the members of the Foo Fighters. A+ without a doubt. I had never listened to a Foo Fighters song intentionally before seeing this movie. Dave Grohl looks to me like a burned-out hippie McLovin’. I have since purchased their greatest hits album on iTunes. It’s great. I really wanted to see this again, but The Batman kicked this one’s showtimes in the teeth the following weekend, unfortunately. It’s like Troma got a bigger budget and roped in all the members of the Foo Fighters. None of them are terrible actors even, but, of course, they’re not given that much to strain their likely low acting stat. I want, neigh demand, more!

Belfast

I knew virtually nothing about late 1960s Ireland going into this. I knew economic problems were very bad in the 1980s due to the IRA and movies like The Iron Lady and Sing Street, so when the transition from modern day in color Belfast to 1960s black and white Belfast happens in the movie, I thought I was in for a downhome family drama comedy. Less than five minutes later, Jesus Christ… The trailer left all of that out. Just a huge shock. I learned a decent bit of history I just did not know. I would compare this movie to Jojo Rabbit, but with less comedy. It focuses mostly on a child faced with a very difficult set of circumstances in a very non-ideal setting that he nonetheless loves because it’s all he’s ever known. So, yeah, Jojo Rabbit. This is another A+.

Cyrano

Another A+. I did not expect to love this movie as much as I did. I also didn’t realize it was a musical, having never seen an adaptation of this story other than the Steve Martin comedy Roxanne, which in turn likely got its title from The Police song, which consequently got its name from the adaptation that surrounds all of this. Confusing? Maybe. Peter Dinklage proves once again his dramatic acting chops when he is allowed to dramatically rant. Or monologue, as it is more colloquially known. Of the songs, “Wherever I Fall” had me in tears. And the titular actor from Luce (seriously, watch that movie,) almost unrecognizable as a naïve lovelorn idiot, proves he has range. Man, I want him in a superhero property, so he goes fully mainstream. This movie and the previous one, as technically 2021 movies, knock Here Today and Luca out of my top ten movies of 2021 list rather easily.

ALL OTHER MOVIES

I watched three movies I’ve already talked about. Nobody, Werewolves Within, and Queenpins, all showing them to at least one person who hadn’t seen the movies before. They all held up, as if that was in any doubt. That leaves four movies to talk about.

The Visit is the movie that finally brought M. Night back from the brink. He financed it by taking out a big loan against his own home. He managed to get right into it at the right time. Around the time Jason Blum was making a name for himself with low budget horror movies, of both the regular teenage date night kind and the elevated horror he’d become famous for. The writing and acting are very M. Night, especially the gangsta rapping ten-year-old boy (which is in this movie for some reason,) but the tension, horror, and twist are all excellent. And I didn’t even notice an M. Night cameo. This gets a solid B.

This movie just isn’t great. Hillbilly Elegy gets a C. I will never see it again. The acting is fine, but everything the movie is trying to do, which the one below this one will also try and fail at, is dumb. I do not feel empathy for the addict mother that nearly ruined the author’s life and why should I? This is just rose-colored glasses masquerading as a drama.

The Glass Castle gets the same grade as the last one, a C. The acting is better, but somehow, we’re given an even worse parental figure to feel empathy for. The father (and the enabling mother) is just awful. Nothing he does positively can make up for how terrible he is and the circumstances he willfully puts his kids into. CPA needed to be called on his ass even harder than the mother in the last movie. Beyond that, as another memoir made into a movie like the last one, it makes a big point of saying the author is wasting her life as a gossip columnist. In real life, she not only stuck with being a gossip columnist, but she also wrote at least one or two books about the subject. It’s very weird narrative license to take knowing the history. And, while she did end up divorcing in real life around the same time depicted in the movie, the man she’s married to in this movie did not exist. Probably because the real dude refused to allow his name to be used, as they make the fake guy look like such a douche for no real reason since he is reduced to an extreme background role. It’s clear she’s unhappy in her marriage, but we’re never given a reason why outside of him being a hungry finance guy in NYC trying to get a big fish client every so often and using her in fancy expense account restaurant dinners as a form of marketing. Scummy to a degree, sure, but that’s the game when you need clients.

To conclude the last new movie, I watched outside of theaters this month, we go out on a poor note. The Exorcist just wasn’t that good. Maybe if the exorcism scenes, which comprise most of the last half to last third of the movie, hadn’t been parodied to death, I’d have felt they were fresher. Since I had somehow missed this movie before now, I was just bored waiting for the infamous scenes and lines to show up. The first half of this movie is a slog of poorly constructed “setting the stage” drip drips that today would have been cut down to twenty minutes instead of what felt like three hours. Even the first two movies in The Conjuring franchise didn’t overcook the grenade this much. Just get on with it! A C to C+ at best.

This ended up being a much better month in movies than I was expecting. I hope March keeps up the momentum. The Batman sure started things off well, but that’s getting ahead of myself. Until next time, peeps.