The Month in Theaters May 2024

Naoya Fujii. Movie Theater at Shibuya.

So, the summer movie season has begun… With a whimper. I saw fourteen movies in theaters, as well as nine otherwise, for a total of twenty-three reviews. Let’s rock this joint.

The Fall Guy

This was an incredibly good time. A+. This is currently my blockbuster of the year. Even though it will probably lose the studio money. Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt had great and believable chemistry. The stunts were awesome, although they looked ropier than they actually were, as the movie showed behind the scenes footage over the end credits of them filming most of them with real stuntmen. A love letter to the stuntman. And technically a reboot/remake of a Lee Majors show from the 1980s that was absolutely never shown in reruns when I was a kid. The twist as it were is brilliantly executed and amazingly resolved. This is one of those movies that you really should see in theaters. Check it out if it isn’t already out of theaters by the time this article goes up. The first of two blockbusters filmed in Australia this month that underperformed at the box office. And I don’t really know why for either of them. This was a very fun movie with minimal problems. It seems to end about fourteen different times, but that didn’t bother me. Definitely worth seeing.

Tarot

This one, on the other hand? Sucked ass. F. I had a feeling it would because it is a boilerplate horror movie with stupid teenagers doing stupid teenager things. And a bunch of them die because of, essentially, peer pressure. A haunted tarot card deck that kills everyone whose fortune is read with it. A profoundly dumb idea badly executed. Even a terrible idea, especially in the horror genre, can lead to a fun movie. This isn’t that. Partially due to the PG-13 rating, it lacked teeth and balls. (Ask your doctor…) And there’s a twist at the end that is smack you in the face stupid. The only two actors I recognized were the dumb character from the recent Mean Girls musical movie and the fat dude in the chair from the recent Spider-Man films. Neither are name brand as I don’t know their names and don’t care to know, but this is a Sony picture. It probably made money as it almost surely cost peanuts to shoot. The monster/creature effects were good, but were mostly in darkness or not fully in frame most of the time. The whole thing comes off cheap. This is a forgettable movie that no one will remember in ten years.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

Very fun. Probably the best in this now four movie reboot franchise other than maybe Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. I absolutely hated Rise of the Planet of the Apes and found War for the Planet of the Apes disappointing. We now know this one is definitely in a splinter reality from the original film that started it all. Never saw any of the direct sequels to that movie as everyone said they were total ass. But that first one is a bonafide certified classic with a twist so good it doesn’t ruin the movie at all if you already know it (as almost everyone on Earth does.) Only saw that for the first time a couple of years ago, after already seeing the previous three movies in this timeline. The obvious theory for this movie is that the humans are going to take the planet back. Or, at least, give it the ol’ college try. Humans, at least some of them, are still smarter than the current crop of apes. The apes speak English but are very agrarian and feel stuck in the hunter-gatherer mindset. The original film apparently took place past the year 3000, so apes had like a thousand years to develop. And even then were not as advanced as humans of the 20^th century, Dr. Zaius. This is an A to A+. The plot is a little convenient at times and rushes through the third act a little too quickly considering how slow a lot of the first two acts could be at times. Still incredibly enjoyable. Another movie to see in theaters. The CGI apes are immaculate, Sydney Sweeney.

Babes

The first of two $5 Monday mystery preview screenings this month. This one was directed by Bobby from King of the Hill, Pamela Adlon. Her directorial debut. From what I gather, the lead is from Broad City, a show I avoided because it looked awful. This comedy is loaded to the gills with bad cringe comedy with a woke bent but also on the gross out toilet humor side of things. Low-effort, which typifies adult comedy these days. And this movie, while it has some heart to it, really needed a few pass throughs on the jokes. I imagine a lot of them were adlibbed. But the jokes, like cringe comedy is known for, go on too long. There’s an extended sequence when the main character’s best friend goes into labor that is painfully unfunny. I probably would have given this movie a passing grade when I first got out of the theater, but it doesn’t earn that. F. The era of wonderful broad comedies (most of which were PG-13) that typified the ‘90s and ‘00s is, unfortunately, long gone. Wokeness has killed comedy in Hollywood to a large degree. Anything that gets a budget is made safe edgy while having so many affirmations for modern liberal and progressive sacred cows. Try being a comedy first and a political statement second. The main character is an awful human being and an Economic Kramer who somehow affords an apartment in NYC while teaching yoga out of said fourth floor walkup as a cash-only business. At least her friend and her friend’s husband appear to have high-paying jobs. She does not. Failure to launch friend in their late twenties to early thirties everyone has had experience with at one point. Such people are usually toxic. For usually obvious reasons. Immature, lacking in adult responsibility, and such. Oliver Platt was in this. With the tiniest cameo. I didn’t even get into the plot. Woman has a one-night stand on her period, deciding to allow the dude she just met to raw dog her. And she gets pregnant. And decides to keep the baby even though her paramour died of a somewhat flippantly handled accident I swore would have been a twist later (that he was alive and hiding from her.) Not a solid basis for a movie. Honestly? Dumb as a bag of hammers.

IF

Delightful for a kids’ movie but another blockbuster underperformer. It seems like almost every blockbuster this year has underperformed except the kaiju movie, maybe the ape movie, and Kung Fu Panda 4 (and maybe another movie further down this list…) Jim from The Office directs something that isn’t a horror movie starring his wife for what is essentially a rip-off of Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends (until it isn’t.) The marketing, which I saw multiple times in front of movies (because I am always habitually early to everything,) kept claiming this was an original story. Dumb. I figured out the twist from just the trailer, as did many people (including James and Maso over at The Weekly Planet, my favorite podcast.) It is stupidly obvious. But the lead character, a teenage girl, can see everyone’s imaginary friends. This is never explained in any way. The movie at no point decides to explain why she can. And the movie falters because of this. And the blatant rip-off. One of the main imaginary friends is even named Blue! As in Bloo from the Cartoon Network show they are very blatantly ripping off. Did the writer smoke a little too much of the Devil’s lettuce and pass out after eating his or her weight in junk food with Boomerang playing a marathon of that show? B. It is still charming. It went in predictable directions but the jokes and situations were fun. And the voice cast was stupendous. Ryan Reynolds and Jim from The Office (who had a small part) continue to be effortlessly charming on screen. The lead actress was very weak, though. Who can just apparently skip school with zero ramifications. As you can tell, there are a fair number of plot holes, but they didn’t bother me enough. It’s a kids’ movie. Worth showing to children. Imaginative in imagery if not in plot or setup.

The Strangers: Chapter 1

Apparently, there are two other movies in this franchise. I was not aware of the second one. I have not seen the first one either. And this movie, in all defiance of that title, is not a prequel. It takes place in current year. It is the first of a planned trilogy which was apparently already filmed back-to-back. This is a lazy movie in every definition of the word. There are almost zero kills. The situations the main character and her fiancée or whatever find themselves in are all stupid as Hell. The amount of times they could have extricated themselves from the three people in weird masks hunting them down were legion. Blatantly awful sequel bait. That ruins itself in the mid-credits, by the way. Unless the already filmed second movie starts immediately when the mid-credits tease cuts to black, but why? F. Horror schlock isn’t automatically bad. But the kills were largely without impact, and there are only two in the entire movie. The setup is lazy and teases a potential twist that never comes. The three villains are not good at their job of murder, but they get points for being creepy as Hell while also seemingly having the most silent feet of all time. So many jump scares and jump scare-lite throughout the film. It felt so much longer than it was. The biggest sin, though? At one point in the movie, the song “Nights in White Satin” by The Moody Blues is heard via a record player with closeups of the vinyl it is playing. The problem? Cream can clearly be seen on that vinyl. Now, Cream never recorded that song. I have a feeling “White Room” by Cream was the song that was intended to play during this scene but, for whatever reason, The Moody Blues ended up in the final cut. But they were so lazy they never fixed the vinyl cover in post. Or, simply put, could have never shown it from the top-down perspective to avoid this incredibly massive faux pas.

Back to Black

Amy Winehouse died too young of alcohol poisoning after a period of being sober. Why she did that the world may never know. But her life was largely uneventful. And this movie bombed hard at the box office. She had one hit in America, “Rehab.” The only song of hers I had heard intentionally before seeing this movie. The music was wonderful, just like in the Bob Marley biopic. But her life events were not very eventful. I don’t even know how much of it is accurate because the film definitely abuses the timeline so that certain events happen closer together than they actually did. But she was white trash. It is hard not to come to that conclusion based on what I know about her. I did appreciate them namedropping The Shangri-Las and then playing “Leader of the Pack.” That’s a solid classic song reference right there. Apparently, her hairdo was inspired by that girl group. OK? This is a C. Mid is the best word for it. Why do most musician biopics suck? Get on Up is the only stellar one I have seen.

Ezra

The last of two $5 Monday mystery preview screenings. This is a wonderfully heartfelt drama about a father’s love for his autistic yet brilliant son. I initially thought it was the best drama of this year, kneecapping One Life, but I’m not so sure anymore. Same rating as that, A to A+. A bunch of actors I’ve seen in other things, including Robert De Niro. The rest are mostly character actors, such as Dwight from The Office, the FBI man in the chair from Snakes on a Plane, the wife from a lot of comedies such as Neighbors and Instant Family, the main antagonist from Ghost (spoilers for a movie that came out the year I was born) who also directed the film, and Whoopi Goldberg (who is probably friends with the director.) Jimmy Kimmel even has a cameo at the end as well as Guillermo. It does everything it needed to do, but did drag at parts. I would have liked more depth into the relationship the main character has with the titular son. The chemistry is there, but a lot of their relationship is established in his standup at the beginning. Using a standup routine to give exposition is actually a wonderfully inventive method to get setup out of the way quickly. I recommend this movie. It might even still be in theaters Father’s Day weekend. It opened the weekend I’m writing this (preview screening, remember?)

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

A massive underperformer at the box office for a $160 million+ budget blockbuster. But it was awesome. A to A+ with a definite chance of moving up in the rankings. Easily in my top ten of the year, but it may not remain there. The movie it is a prequel to, Mad Max: Fury Road, has aged better than every other movie that made my top ten of that year (I wrote that top ten on the now defunct Frags and Beer website) except for Kingsman: The Secret Service. 2015 wasn’t the best year in film, but we got a few solid films out of it. This may be the best prequel ever made, but prequels, while expanding on the mythos, are rarely as good as a sequel could ever be. You know she survives to the events of this film to make it to the previous movie, that she has to lose her arm at some point (a lot like Crispin Glover in Hot Tub Time Machine,) and that all the characters from the previous movie will also survive. There are quite a lot of them in this. More than there should have been. Chris Hemsworth is playing a real dog of a bloke with a wonderfully wacky Australian accent he apparently based on his grandfather. He’s the absolute highlight of this movie. The CGI in this is more noticeable than the previous installment. Something made this movie cost so much, and it wasn’t spent fine tuning the CGI. This franchise has a lore problem. Most of the films in it could not reasonably all take place in the same timeline. The theory is that these are stories handed down so that incongruous errors between films can be handwaved away, but then this movie definitely takes place in the same universe as the last movie. Which feels like a mistake. I liked seeing Gas Town and the Bullet Farm, but I would have much rather had a sequel with essentially the same story. Chris Hemsworth could have very easily been an antagonist to challenge Furiosa’s rule of the Citadel. And, on top of that, would have allowed Mad Max to return. Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy would have been game, presumably. I honestly wonder how much better this movie would have been had the basic plot been a sequel where we get to see a broader look at the wasteland around the Citadel. We learn very little about where she came from or why it fell apart between when she left it to when she returned in the previous installment. Princess Peach/Split girl/The Witch girl/Colossus’ sister is great. I know her name, but I am too lazy to Google the exact spelling to copy and paste it here. If you haven’t noticed, I do that a lot. (Pop culture references are virtually always better.) This is definitely worth seeing in theaters, my minor gripes aside.

The Garfield Movie

Only like the third kids’ movie this year, released a week after the second one. As of this writing, it has grossed over a hundred million at the worldwide box office in a little over a week. Chris Pratt has another successful movie under his belt. Garfield is much nicer in this movie than he normally is in the Sunday funnies. But since this is clearly targeted at a demographic that may not even know how to read yet, I feel that change is justified. B. Samuel L. Jackson plays what I can only imagine is a new-ish character, Garfield’s father. Garfield’s origins probably were never covered in the comic strip. Although it has been going on forever. Not sure if they were spotlighted in the animated show I grew up with (my favorite iteration of the character,) but there is less Garfield lore around compared to Snoopy or Scooby-Doo or Courage the Cowardly Dog. I assume this movie will inevitably get a sequel where they can introduce Nermal and the rest of the gang. I think Jon’s vet girlfriend might have been in the movie for a hot second, but she is probably not his girlfriend yet. I remember they did a book series where Garfield and the associated animals all got super powers, with even his teddy bear being the Professor X archetype. I remember reading one of the books (if it even became a series) when I was a kid. I doubt they go that route, but it would make for a fun dream sequence in the next film.

Sight

This is probably Angel Studios’ second-best film that I’ve seen. I have seen four of them in theaters in less than a year. They all do the “pay it forward” thing during the end credits. They are a small studio, so I get it, but it’s becoming tacky, mate. Greg Kinnear is the only brand name actor in this, although the lead was on the Canadian sci-fi series I dropped like a lead balloon in the third season, Continuum. The true story behind this movie is insanely impressive. A Chinese immigrant to America who managed to survive the Cultural Revolution (second bit of media this year to spotlight how awful that was) to study at an American college. His entire family would eventually join him in America. A story as American as apple pie. He’s a world-renowned eye surgeon specializing in restoring sight to the blind. He’s even played music with Dolly Parton. He’s based out of Tennessee. The movie mostly does his amazing life story justice. There’s a love interest subplot that is based on his actual wife, but it feels very ham-fisted. He eventually converted to Christianity, but his faith is not made a cornerstone of the movie. It is seemingly only mentioned in the post script and when the actual doctor shows up to do the “pay it forward” thing. Something movies of this stripe, like The Shift, would normally wear on their shirtsleeve. I appreciated the restraint. A-.

I Saw the TV Glow

This one was very weird and very boring. A24 has another weird one, this time on the bad side of weird. It is very implicitly implied to be a trans allegory, as the trans flag colors are repeatedly used together throughout the film as well as certain plot elements. But it doesn’t have the balls to make that too obvious. Nor to play into it for the most part. The lead, who has been in a lot recently from Detective Pikachu to the recent Dungeons & Dragons movie, isn’t a bad actor. But he’s not a stellar one. From what the movie shows, his character appears to be asexual. Which is weird. I don’t know if the trans community has a lot of asexual members, but that seems like an odd direction to take. A love story would have made this movie better, which the plot rug pulls from us about a half an hour into the movie. He appears to be incredibly autistic in a neurotic way. Softspoken introvert who has difficulty making friends. This is the first of two movies I saw on the same day at my local indie theater (I did get some of those wonderful cookies and even a beer, as a brewery has a bar inside the theater.) I can’t in good conscience give this a passing grade. I was mostly bored throughout the runtime. And there is zero emotional payoff. The lead is constantly running away from the allegory, as in, from who he truly is. The movie never resolves this tension, giving the audience blue balls in a narrative resolution sort of way. He also turns to the camera multiple times to address the audience as well as occasional narration. It wants to say something, but the movie is so weird that what it is trying to say is muddled to Hell. F.

Hundreds of Beavers

People adored this movie. I enjoyed it but didn’t love it as much as others. It is a live-action Looney Tunes short stretched to feature length (which is its biggest problem) with a miniscule budget that shows hard. The special effects are intentionally cheap, and the movie is presented in black and white, likely to hide color grading that could not be done cheaply if this were in full color. There is even a series of Chekhov’s Guns throughout the movie that all end up pointing to the same thing, but all of that ends up amounting to only a couple of minutes of screentime. The payoff for them was bad, in other words. I would like to see this team get a bigger budget for a better written follow-up. This is a B+ to A-. Just a few things could have made this movie absolutely amazing. It needed more plot than it had. This probably could have been an amazing half hour short film. It is worth seeing for what it is, a truly unique sort of film. But maybe catch it on streaming.

In a Violent Nature

This movie was slow and methodical with some decent kills (one absolute standout that probably made up a fair bit of the movie’s budget.) Until the last fifteen minutes. This is a slasher from the third person perspective of the killer for a majority of the film. It clearly stretched its thin budget very far, but, like the last movie, this could have been an amazing and tight half hour short film instead of feature length. It either needed more money to film additional scenes to more truly fill in the mythos or more cannon fodder for the killer to take down in grisly fashion. Hell, the first kill in the film occurs off screen! The movie is loaded with jarring cuts that jump forward in time. But the kills are all mostly fun and varied. The small glimpses we get into the mythos set up a potential franchise. Shudder and IFC Films need to give the sequel a bigger budget and a better writer. The last fifteen minutes? It is basically the only time the final girl speaks at all. She runs away once she becomes the final girl. The movie should have just ended with her running away. But it decides to have a few minutes of her frantically running away until day break (it was pitch-black night when she started her frantic running away) and then a bunch of garbage that is false tension. I don’t want to spoil it, but the ending is the worst part of the movie. I really don’t know what they were trying to accomplish with that. This is still a qualified B+ to A-, since I grade horror movies on a curve, but that ending tanked the movie from an outright A rating.

EVERYTHING ELSE

I played the new Contra collab DLC for Vampire Survivors. Beat it in its entirety. I have all 261 achievements in that game. As far as Peglin is concerned, I am down to one achievement to get. Got three in the last week or so. Still waiting for the full release, which will almost surely add a few more very challenging achievements. And probably a lot more new relics or orbs. And hopefully a new zone, possibly space. Outside of that, I did not play any other video games in May. I did buy Hades for the Switch, though. Found a physical copy for $29.99 at a Wal-Mart, which is an absolute steal. I will play that at some point.

A lot of television this month, so I’m gonna try (and fail) to do this quick. I watched through both seasons of the dubbed cut of Spy x Family. Might be my new favorite anime of all time. Delightfully wholesome. I finished up X-Men ’97. Not as good as the original series, but still very good. The Magneto and Rogue stuff was gross, even if comics-based. Bishop should have kept the mullet perm. He also doesn’t show up again after the third episode for some reason. Morph was one of my childhood favorites. They messed him up. I finished The Sympathizer. Wonderful miniseries. One of the two best this year so far. I started the most recent season of The Bad Batch. It took time to get going, but it is fun. I will likely finish it in June. I also started but did not finish the most recent adaptation of Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Interesting setup. The initial marketing for this series was awful. I only checked it out because a lot of people, including James and Maso, said it was really good. Chucky season three ended really well. They seem to be cashiering the three main characters who oppose Chucky. Finally. Let Chucky do something else that doesn’t involve them for a season or two. Maybe bring back Andy for an entire season as Chucky’s main opposition. Smiling Friends returned, although I no longer have Max, so I won’t be able to catch the rest of the season for awhile. It’s as amazing as ever if not even better. The Nostalgia Critic cameo was awesome. I also discovered that Resident Alien is on Peacock, including the most recent season. Since I didn’t really watch any of the newest season, I will simply mention it here without bolding it.

The Dark Backward is another bad weird film. The plot is so thin you could spread it on a cracker. It isn’t a terrible movie because it is so very weird. But it isn’t great. C+.

The Idea of You is a rom com drama of sorts with original music because the love interest is in a boy band. Anne Hathaway is great. Her love interest has since been cast as He-Man for an upcoming project. (He needs to get jacked for that to be convincing; why they didn’t just cast John Cena is beyond me.) As far as romantic comedies go, it is better than the average one. B to B+.

This movie is a classic I have seen many times, but that my fiancée may not have seen before. Big. A+. What more can I say? One of the films that put Tom Hanks on the map as a lead actor in movies. That he quickly turned into two acting Oscars back-to-back.

I had seen this movie in parts on HBO many years ago. Finally saw it from start to finish. It’s a rom com that tries to defy the rules. The Break-Up is good but not great. B+. Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston have good chemistry and play off each other well. The rest of the supporting cast, which feels like a who’s who of comedy character actors (at the time at least,) fills out the production well.

Nuns on the Run is the greatest movie no one has ever heard of. Robbie Coltrane and Eric Idle absolutely crush it. Sister Act blatantly ripped this movie off. George Harrison produced this, and the music was done by the CHICKA CHICK-KA band from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. A+ without a doubt, my man.

A League of Their Own was not as good as I remembered it. Especially since I looked up the real story behind it. This movie has almost no relation to the truth whatsoever. They couldn’t even get permission to use the name of the guy who founded the all-female baseball league, Wrigley, who owned the Cubs at the time. It’s a fictional candy magnate instead of a chewing gum one. Tom Hanks and Geena Davis are both wonderful, as well as most of the character actors that fill out the cast. B+. A lot of the setup is very boring sports movie boilerplate.

I bought four trash cinema films at Big Lots recently. I have since watched one other so far, but this one was $2.99 on DVD (as well as two others that don’t even have a Rotten Tomatoes score.) It was a Redbox exclusive originally. I love Big Lots for being the overstock store that seems to get all of these trash cinema physical releases that the $5 bin at Wal-Mart couldn’t even save. In The Fanatic, John Travolta and the guy who gets killed on every season on Chucky (sometimes multiple times) star. The conclusion makes no sense and is another example of narrative blue balls. C. I didn’t hate it, mostly because of John Travolta nailing perfectly the introverted autistic stalker type he plays. But outside of him and the Chucky guy? The acting sucks. There thankfully are very few other characters that have more than a couple of spoken words each.

I expected this to be better. One of the first horror movies, Rosemary’s Baby was boring as Hell. And the payoff was once again terrible. That’s an awful ending. C-. I expected more from a movie that is so famous. But the less said about the absolute monster of a human being who directed this movie the better.

And that’s your lot. As it stands right now, my top five movies of the year as of this writing are, in order: Late Night with the Devil, Spy x Family Code: White, Boy Kills World, The Fall Guy, and One Life. Here’s hoping movies are so good the rest of the year that one or more of these films does not even make my top ten by the end of the year. I am at sixty-three movies in theaters as of this writing (I have already seen one movie in June, even though I am writing this on the second day of the month.)