February movie reviews

In theaters:

WONKA

One of the few bona-fide hits of this winter. Wonka is a fairly charming movie, with a few catchy songs, and fun performances (best of all Hugh Grant). 

ORIGIN

I had very high hopes for this film, which ambitiously tackles racism across many generations, positing that discrimination is more about caste than race. Seriously, they say "caste" every 2 minutes. The film is a disappointment though, focusing way too much on the writing of the very book the film is based off of. 

ARGYLLE

I saw the trailer for this at basically every film for about 4 months. I grew to loathe it. The actual movie, made on a bloated $200 million budget, is a sporadically fun spy romp, with a few fun performances and a couple decent twists. It's hampered by a poorly cast Bryce Dallas Howard, who simply cannot pull off some of the later twists (though she looks damn good after her mid-movie makeover). 

LISA FRANKENSTEIN

I really enjoyed this one, a film practically engineered specifically to be a cult classic. It nails its late 80s style, with a plot like if Heathers were directed by Tim Burton. Kathryn Newton is a lot of fun. The movie gets a lot of laughs. 

MADAME WEB

So, this one quickly achieved meme status for a variety of reasons, and you don't have to go far to find someone telling you it is one of the worst movies ever. Well, look, it isn't THAT bad. It's certainly better than Morbius, but it isn't good either. A film full of baffling creative decisions, like casting a trio of budding young starlets (Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, Celeste O'Connor) whose characters we are told will be superheroes one day. But we only see that in visions. The villain is an all time worst. Dakota Johnson's detached deadpan performance is completely wrong for this. A few references to the greater Spiderman world can't come close to saving this one. 

LAND OF BAD

Went in totally cold on this, and mostly enjoyed it. It's a pretty routine military action thriller, with Liam Hemsworth behind enemy lines and relying on a remote drone pilot (a really good Russell Crowe) to get him home. But the film has some good tense action, and man I really enjoyed Crowe here. There's literally a long scene of him grocery shopping that is delightful.

BOB MARLEY: ONE LOVE

The other movie I saw the trailer for relentlessly over the last several months. This biopic has caught on as a hit. It mostly just plays the typical biopic beats though. Very little here is novel, and you don't really learn much about Marley. I also found a great deal of the dialogue here very hard to understand. Yeah it's authentic, but whole scenes go by where I could barely make out half of what was being said. But the music and the excellent performance by Kingsley Ben-Adir carry you through. 

DRIVE AWAY DOLLS

Ethan Coen went solo to direct this one, a crime caper that definitely has some Coen-y vibes to it. I wanted to like it more than I did. The laughs are not that plentiful, and some of the plot feels like quirk for quirk's sake. But the cast is a lot of fun. Margaret Qualley is a budding superstar. Geraldine Viswanathan is terrific. Beanie Feldstein is really funny as usual. 

PERFECT DAYS

Nominated for best international feature at the Oscars, from Japan, this is just a simple film following a man who cleans toilets (Japan has nice public bathrooms, damn!) and just goes about his quiet, mundane life. He goes to work, he listens to music, he reads a book, etc. You would think this would be boring as hell, but no, it's really a soothing, peaceful film to watch. 

Everything else:

DEAL OF THE CENTURY

A weird early 80s comedy (I guess) with Chevy Chase as an arms dealer. The film aims for satire, but nothing in it really works at all. I can see why it quickly faded into obscurity. 

AMMONITE

Ugh, another one of those slow, boring, super serious period dramas. This one even has two excellent actresses in Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan, and they have a love affair, and it's STILL interminable to get through.