February movie reviews

In theaters:

KNOCK AT THE CABIN

This one goes in the good Shyamalan pile. The trailer unwisely gave away whether or not this "apocalypse" threat driving the story is real or not, but there is still a great deal of suspense and some fine performances, particularly from a never better Dave Bautista. 

 

INFINITY POOL

God I am so tired of these movies that just put inexplicable, bizarre crap up onscreen and we are just supposed to automatically accept it as brilliant art because reasons. Even with a hallucinogenic orgy involving Mia Goth this movie is a crushing bore. The "plot" if you can call it that involves rich people cloning themselves, only to kill the clones for sport. But it's just a pretense for the director (David Cronenberg's kid) to show a collection of gross images. I hate this shit. See you in December high on the 10 worst list. 

WOMEN TALKING

Well, this is an accurate title. It pretty much is just a film with a bunch of women having conversations with each other. But that's okay when those women include such terrific actresses. And not just the bigger names like Rooney Mara and the fantastic Jessie Buckley, but all the way down to actresses whose names I still don't know. I also know this was good because I was in a terrible mood when I saw it and it still drew me in. 

TRIANGLE OF SADNESS

Nominated for best picture, this is another of 2022's trend of satires about rich people being horrible. But where Glass Onion couched that in a super fun comedic mystery, and The Menu in more of a suspenseful dark comedy, Triangle of Sadness just beats you over the head with its one thing to say: "Wow, look at how disgusting rich people are." Still, I found the first two acts of this to be reasonably entertaining. Act two in particular aboard a yacht goes to some levels of grotesque absurdity that you can't help but laugh. But then there is that final act, where some of the cast is stranded on an island, and this just....won't....end. Until the credits roll with one of those annoying endings that isn't an ending. The fact that this got the best picture nod over the other 2 rich people suck movies is a travesty. 

COCAINE BEAR

The hope was that this would be a genuinely fun movie, and not just a lazy movie coasting on its silly title and premise. But like pretty much every one of these would-be cult movies, when the movie itself is too self aware the fun is lost. At its best, Cocaine Bear evokes a lost 80s cheesefest (it even takes place then), and there are a couple amusing sequences, but there is too little of the bear and too much of the rather boring collection of human characters. It certainly has the oddest "in loving memory of" credit in the history of film. 

A MAN CALLED OTTO

Wow was this one undersold by its marketing. The trailers hard sold this as Tom Hanks being a funny grump, with a bunch of scenes of him with the cat and the little kids. That stuff IS here, but this is film is much sadder and more emotional. Hanks has his best role in quite a while here and he nails it. 

Everything else:

SCHOOL TIES

With Brendan Fraser possibly winning an Oscar soon, I wanted to check out his first big dramatic role, in this film set in the 50s where Fraser is a prep school kid hiding his Jewish heritage. The film is pretty solid drama, but it is most notable for how many soon to be stars were in this, many right at the start of their careers. This thing has Fraser, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Chris O'Donnell and Cole Hauser. All are excellent. 

HOUSE PARTY (2023)

Jesus, what was the point? Not that House Party is some sacred text, but why go through the trouble of a reboot (remake? Not even sure what this is supposed to be) if you were just going to chuck everything that made the original (and at least parts of 2 and 3) work? This one gives us two absolutely charisma-free leads, and has them throw a party at LeBron James house. So relatable. James produced this and appears. With this and Space Jam 2 he clearly has no clue how to move into movies. Nothing in the movie is funny. One of the lead guys keeps saying "bro" every third word, which annoyed the fuck out of me. The filmmakers knew they had nothing, so we just get a collection of cameos (nice seeing Mya at least). And then there is a third act detour into a ridiculous storyline involving the illuminati. Uh, this was supposed to be a House Party movie. Go join Infinity Pool on the worst list. 

BLONDE

Ana de Armas got nominated for best actress for playing Marilyn Monroe in this very impressionistic, not very truthful biopic. It's a strange movie, since according to the movie her life was nonstop misery and torture, usually at the hands of men. The film gets very repetitive, and the last 45 minutes or so are a chore to get through (NO reason this needs to be 2 1/2 hours). Armas is excellent though, and at least carries the film to the finish line.