December movies

Jumanji: The Next Level

This is about as good as the first one. As with the first one the plot is not interesting, so when it dominates the 3rd act my interest wanes. But the actors are fun, and they get a tremendous amount of comedic mileage out of the Danny DeVito and Danny Glover impressions. And Karen Gillan is again a total snack. They also tease a 3rd movie that could be a lot of fun. 

Dark Waters

This has a good story, but I'm not sure it's at all a cinematic story. Mark Ruffalo is terrific. Anne Hathaway is way overqualified for her standard wife role. I think a documentary would have worked better. 

Richard Jewell

This is a pretty good movie for about 30 minutes. Then after the bombing sequence it just goes completely off the rails into the laziest, most repulsive bit of political propaganda Clint Eastwood has ever delivered. In his imagination, Jewell wasn't just wrongly identified as the bomber by the FBI and media, but he was deliberately targeted by them out of sheer evilness, an evilness these people continue to display even after their case falls apart. I mean, Olivia Wilde's character might as well be spouting devil horns. Everything involving her and the Jon Hamm FBI guy is preposterous. This agenda destroys the movie, and wastes some very good performances by Sam Rockwell, Kathy Bates and Paul Walter Houser as Jewell.

6 Underground

Michael Bay hasn't lost his visual touch in this Netflix movie. But among all Bay films this is probably my least favorite. After a dynamite long car chase scene that opens the film and is basically pure Bay porn, the movie becomes almost entirely incomprehensible. I did not have one clue what was taking place or why at any point in the last act. Ryan Reynolds does his thing, and the movie just looks so great that it carries you through. 

Black Christmas

Oh my god this is not just bad, it's insulting. This wholly unnecessary remake of a remake would be a failure just for its being a dull, cheap looking, unscary slasher film. But this might be the worst movie of the year due to the fact that onto this slasher movie skeleton is grafted without question the dumbest, clunkiest, most flat out insulting bit of post-#MeToo pseudo feminism bullshit imaginable. This is like a MAGAt's paranoid fantasy of what they think feminism is, though. The message this movie puts forth is that deep down all men are rapists. Every man in this movie is a misogynist pig. Oh but the movie hardly makes women look good either. Every female character is either a ditz or someone with no life outside of their activism. A good script could possibly take these issues and weave them into a smart horror movie, like Get Out did for example. But this movie has the collective intelligence of a toddler. It is stupid and reckless and hateful and just the pits.