Mini-Movie Reviews and Black List Picks For 2024
Here’s my mini-movie reviews that I’ve posted in various places in 2024. Some minor spoilers.
Joker: Folie à Deux
It is different to the first movie. It’s largely – I wouldn’t call it a courtroom drama – but spends a fair amount of time on his trial for the murders from the first movie. I would say it doesn’t have the momentum and tension that the first movie did. It’s hard to make a boldly original sequel to a boldly original movie. The musical aspect could have pushed it there, or leaning a little more into the shared psychosis aspects as per the movie’s title, but I don’t think they pulled it off.
Rebel Moon Part One and Two
I persevered through the director’s cut of the Rebel Moon two parter, which I think can be succinctly described thus: Adolescent fan-fiction.
Road House vs Road House
1989 original vs the 2024 remake
I watched the two movies fairly close together and I have to admit I enjoyed the more recent version more. Perhaps it’s just that the older some movies get the more cringey the cringey parts get, and by the time 2059 remake rolls around I’ll be cringing harder at this version.
Both leads bring their respective charisma and talent to the roles. Both films distracted me out of the movie in different ways. The 1989 character was suppose to be this Zen guru that practices tai chi across the river from the big bad guy – and smokes like a chimney. Seriously felt like he lit up in every other scene. In the 2024 movie the big bad guy’s idiot son insists on getting a straight razor shave on a rocking boat on rough waves, and then gets pissy about the predicable result. Different things will break different viewers suspension of disbelief, these are two examples of what broke mine.
The latter movie knows not to take itself too seriously though, and that might help it hold up to the test of time. On that note, some viewers will (and from other reviews, did) absolutely hate the Knox character. From the previews I thought I would be a hater too but while I didn’t especially love him, I thought he fit in with the over-the-top nature of the film. Future roles will reveal if the actor in his debut role was going for so bad it’s funny or was just so bad.
The latter movie had less melodrama, but also less development of rapport between characters. In the earlier movie Patrick’s Dalton character can be seen training the staff somewhat on how to handle confrontation, and you see the road house itself change from seedy bar to a more upmarket venue. Jake’s Dalton’s advice was more, “Step away from the knife then punch ’em in the face.” Oh, and they drove a boat through the road house.
So, YMMV.
Executive Decision (1996)
This was an answer I gave to a quiz on the best Steven Seagal movie. Big spoiler in the first sentence so be warned.
1996’s Executive Decision has my vote as being the best Steven Seagal movie – mainly because his character is killed about twenty minutes in. At the time I would often meet up with my cousin on the train, commuting to our respective workplaces. When I mentioned I’d seen Executive Decision the previous night, she very excitedly asked, “How was it? I really like Steven Seagal movies!”
It took me a beat to realise she was not being ironic, but I then went on to really talk up the movie, “even though I don’t usually like Seagal’s movies that much.” Really spruiked it.
That weekend she dragged a bunch of her friends to see it, citing my positive review to convince them. Sure enough, twenty minutes in she was going, “What happened?” and her friends were laughing their collective butt’s off. She didn’t speak to me for a few weeks but eventually conceded it wasn’t a bad action movie.
Black List Picks
The Black List for 2024 has landed. This year, they also voted on what novels they would like to see adapted into film or television.
So first scripts that appealed to me, followed by nominated books.
Scripts
Playdate
Marie Østerbye
When taking her daughter to a playdate at a new friend’s house, Alice suddenly comes face to face with her childhood bully, Katrine. An evening of seemingly polite dinner conversation and catching up turns into a night of psychological warfare as the two women reveal the scars of the past and the wounds of the present while their two young daughters play mind games of their own.
The 13th Hour
Anna Klassen
When a group of teenagers repair an old clock with a mysterious 13th numeral, they are granted an extra hour where their actions have no consequence.
Fragments
Jake Moses
After a tragic accident, a young nurse finds herself blacklisted and out of work until she’s approached by a detective with a unique job offer – become the caretaker for a murder suspect who may be faking his Alzheimer’s diagnosis.
Toluca Lake
Mark Fleming
When Gavin discovers the girl of his dreams is actually a persistent hallucination caused by a rapidly growing brain tumour, he’s forced to question what’s real, what really matters, and what’s the best way to end things with someone that’s slowly – or not-so-slowly killing him.
Howl
Madison Vanderberg
All hell breaks loose when a famous – but notoriously troubled – actor announces on a talk show that in less than an hour, he’ll turn into a werewolf… all on live TV.
Books
Great Circle
Maggie Shipstead
After being rescued as infants from a sinking ocean liner in 1914, Marian and Jamie Graves are raised by their dissolute uncle in Missoula, Montana. There, after encountering a pair of barnstorming pilots passing through town in beat-up biplanes, Marian commences her lifelong love affair with flight. At fourteen she drops out of school and finds an unexpected and dangerous patron in a wealthy bootlegger who provides a plane and subsidizes her lessons, an arrangement that will haunt her for the rest of her life, even as it allows her to fulfil her destiny: circumnavigating the globe by flying over the North and South Poles.
A century later, Hadley Baxter is cast to play Marian in a film that centres on Marian’s disappearance in Antarctica. Vibrant, canny, disgusted with the claustrophobia of Hollywood, Hadley is eager to redefine herself after a romantic film franchise has imprisoned her in the grip of cult celebrity. Her immersion into the character of Marian unfolds, thrillingly, alongside Marian’s own story, as the two women’s fates, and their hunger for self-determination in vastly different geographies and times, collide.
Klara and the Sun
Kazuo Ishiguro
Here is the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behaviour of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her.
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