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The Mother (2023)
As if Panic Room, The Professional, And Kill Bill had a baby
Three formulas in one define this half-decent retelling of a typical mama-bear-assassin-protects-daughter, with a few (very few) twists thrown in.
Stock characters and action-film tropes abound, with several well-known plotss apparently tossed into a Cuisinart to yield the instant flick, a decent watch, with decent acting (the daughter was played by a talented newcomer). Wasn't bad for Netflix but I never would have paid to see this in a theater (my last film was in 2004 or so I think).
Jennifer Lopez is hit-or-miss in films, but this one is more in the middle. I've seen better and worse from her.
A Man Called Otto (2022)
As if Better Off Dead and About Schmidt had a baby
Tom Hanks plays the life-well-lived Otto Anderson, a man tidying up his affairs in preparation for a not-so-grateful exit when an annoyingly cheerful young family moves next door, involuntarily breathing life into the old man, who Hanks plays as belligerently indifferent rather than malicious, choosing petty battles as proxy for much larger conflicts he avoids.
By all accounts, Otto had a full, productive life, but faces the question of "now what?" and the film attempts to answer it. The job isn't bad, but the script is incredibly reductive. An interesting, sardonic, and extremely predictable watch.
Game Day (1999)
Quite possibly the worst film of all time.
Words cannot do this film justice; you really have to see for yourself.
A banal script about an unsympathetic coach finding himself in a championship game surrounded by an unlikely series of events which raises the stakes.
This had to be intentional: it i s not possible to make a film this bad by accident. It deserves a lifetime Razzie for just how bad it is, and that list includes "classics" like Sleepaway Camp (which had sequels) or The Dentist (which also had a sequel).
I'm not sure what this film was trying to prove, if anything, but it has failed miserably at its task. Anyone associated with this film will have much to answer for on Judgment Day.
Don't Look Up (2021)
Too self-important and self-aware
This film tries to be what Citizen Ruth so effortlessly was, and fails miserably.
You could see the actors bursting at the seams as they try to break through the fourth wall, perhaps to escape a screenplay loaded with stock characters and tropes, a political satire and clear allegory to COVID that stays true to itself from start to finish.
An all-star cast ensures well-acted material, but not good material to act. The story is amusing, and the execution flawless, but great scripts don't just regurgitate headlines, instead telling stories we either didn't know well or didn't know existed at all (think the Tulsa massacre of 1921).
The Queen's Gambit (2020)
Mad Men and Pawn Sacrifice Have a Stillborn
Turning Bobby Fischer into a messed-up girl and his biography into a spinoff of Mad Men is, as they say in chess, dubious at best.
As a former math/chess prodigy who grew up in Manhattan in the early 1970s, and who has chased the world chess championship in the past (not very successfully), I can relate to this series, which prides itself on its technical accuracy, yet in doing so, refutes its premise of a female chess prodigy obviously based on Bobby Fischer. While nice entertainment for serious chessplayers, who get "their" moment on Netflix, the series fails on almost every level, from poor character development to overreliance on technical accuracy to gain its indie-art credentials.
Anya Taylor-Joy (Elizabeth "Beth" Harmon") chews the scenery as though she were a Pomeranian on methamphetamines, playing a highly troubled girl who just happens to be a chess savant. More of a loner than socially awkward, and well aware of her burgeoning womanhood, the series never explores exactly how Beth saw the game, leaving her brilliance unexplored. The game is rarely more than a chore for her, a means more of proving her worth than anything she seems to enjoy. Marielle Heller (Alma Wheatley) channels her best Joan Cusack from Pleasantville as Beth's Stepmother.
The series did nail the fringe nature of the chess culture, replete with stereotypically socially awkward high-achievers for whom chess is an intellectual stepping stone, and the derailed prodigies who find an identity as international stars and entertainers, like Thomas Brodie-Sangstar's Benny Watts, the "cool" former US Champion who wouldn't impress at a frat party, or Jacob Fortune-Lloyd (D.L. Townes) as a reporter, each of whom found romantic interest in the implied-compelling female lead.
The exploration of the mind of the math/chess/music prodigy was interesting with the female-chessplayer twist, particularly how the viewer is allowed to feel and internalize what it's like to be so good at something that when you compete against the best in the world, they are as or more worried about what you will do to them than you are about what they would do to you, and a price cannot be put on this (I beat #42 ranked Anton Korobov in fifteen moves with Black in a....Queen's Gambit, so I know the feeling). While elite chessplayers are publicly humble, Beth makes it perfectly clear that she enjoys her superiority, never more so than when losing triggers the unbridled anger that only a chess champion can feel at such an insult from the world.
Bottom Line: there are people who value intelligence for its own sake, and there are those who like to hang out with smart people because it makes them seem smarter. The group that produced this series clearly falls into the latter camp, where chess is just a prop, a plot device, barely above the status to which arm wrestling was raised in Over The Top.
Léon (1994)
Disturbingly Edgy
First things first: twelve-year-old Matilda (Natalie Portman) provocatively singing "like a virgin" for her hitman father-figure (Jean Reno) is extremely discomforting to watch, as it dances to the precipice of the ultimate taboo, bringing itself back just in the nick of time. The remainder of the film, despite its plot, tells an amazing story about human connections, with newcomer Portman toying with a brilliant, experienced cast.
This is one of the best films ever made, and perhaps the best film debut ever. The relationship which is explored is not between Matilda and Leon, but rather Portman and the camera. Her later work is solid but topping this is something few, including her, could ever accomplish. How it didn't sweep the Oscars is beyond me.