This Week in Cinema, I Learned…Jun 2-8 2024
Written by Cameron Geiser
Welcome to This Week in Cinema, a yearlong film criticism project wherein I will be watching a new film that I haven't seen every single day.
Folks, we're here. It's finally Summer and this first week of the sweaty cinema season has arrived, very much like a certain Wizard. I'm quite pleased with this first week of the summer movie season, it has a lot of the elements of summer that I consider essential. From Baseball and summer camp to big dumb comedies fueled by Star power with a sprinkling of conspiracy thrillers, compelling dramas, and big cheesy blockbusters. I'm not even upset about the stupid comedy this week, it may not have been for me but hey, not every movie can be a winner. And, as somebody who couldn't care less about football, baseball, or even most of the Olympics, my third rewatch of the year is my favorite sports film of all time, and it stars Robert Redford. This is my wheelhouse; blockbusters, spectacle, intense and meaningful dramas, and compelling calls to adventure- welcome to my comfort quarter of the year. Oh, and the main thing I learned this week was that Brian De Palma continued to make great films after the 1980s and that I should look into more of his work post The Bonfire of the Vanities. Which, by the way, is the subject of a nonfiction book titled The Devil's Candy: The Anatomy Of A Hollywood Fiasco by Julie Salamon and I highly recommend that if you're looking for a beach read about misguided Hollywood excess in the late 1980s.
June 2nd
Blindspotting (2018)
4.5/5
Talk about your unexpected sleepers! I had heard good things about this film when it released, but unfortunately never got around to seeing it until now, and I’m very glad to have given it a chance. Blindspotting is the rare combination of buddy comedy and societal critique that blends in matters both explosive and intimate. The story follows Collin (Daveed Diggs) and Miles (Rafael Casal), with Collin being released from prison in the opening of the film and then fast forwarding to the last three days of his probation. Collin and Miles both work at a moving company in Oakland California and as Collin navigates the final three days of probation the situations he and Miles get into seem tailor made to put him back in prison.
Miles and Collin balance each other out in a number of ways but it is first and foremost a friendship of fire and ice. Miles is the volatile yet overtly loyal one while Collin is the calm and collected one who begins to see how his best friend might not be the healthiest relationship in his life. The script, performances, and cinematography were impressive and startlingly charming. The script covers many topics including gentrification, gun ownership, racial profiling in policing, the absurdity of being black in America and how reality shapes around those assumptions and biases. Blindspotting was shockingly good, a damn fine film, and I hope to encourage more than a few of you to check it out.
June 3rd
The Natural (1984)
5/5
This is my third rewatch of the year so far, and it’s also my favorite sports film of all time. I’m probably just biased from my father taking me to a number of baseball games as a spectator in my youth, but aside from ice hockey, it’s one of the only sports to capture my attention while at a game. Now, I’m not really into baseball all that much, or movies about baseball at the end of the day, but this one hits home real hard for me. I think part of it boils down to the mythic nature utilized in depicting Robert Redford’s character, Roy Hobbs. Hobbs is your typical white knight character archetype, but his conviction is where the real magic comes into play. In his youth, Roy witnessed his father die under the old tree in the backyard and when lightning struck the tree that night he took the opportunity to make a baseball bat from it.
Later when trying to get into the major leagues of Baseball he outdoes Babe Ruth for a group of travelers and ends up being shot to keep his natural talents off the field. Sixteen years later he returns to the lowest rung of the major leagues in a down and out team called The New York Knights. Once given a chance he takes up the bat and stuns the crowds. From there it's a series of ups and down relating to his relationships with women and finding out that he has a son. The Natural also has one of my all time favorite film scores. Maybe the horns and trumpets are emotional manipulation, but I'll be damned if it doesn't get me every time. I highly encourage giving this one a watch.
June 4th
Daddy's Home (2015)
2.5/5
Will Ferrell's comedies, as previously noted, are very hit or miss for me. His pairings with other actors can occasionally yield comedic gold, like in Stepbrothers, A Night at the Roxbury, or more relevant to this conversation, The Other Guys. Much like with the recent Holmes & Watson, Daddy's Home was a disappointment. Brad (Will Ferrell) is the bland yet ever supportive stepfather to Sara's (Linda Cardellini) children, but finds his role smothered and strained when their biological father, Dusty (Mark Whalberg) comes back into their lives. Sporting leather jackets, riding a motorcycle, and generally being the toxic masculinity stereotype- Dusty generally stirs things up in the family dynamic. Some of the jokes are alright, but much of it falls flat. The fact that my biggest laugh came from Thomas Haden Church as Brad's boss at the radio station (because he had this ridiculous hairdo and mustache that made him look like a Geraldo Rivera look-alike) should say a lot about the comedy as a whole.
June 5th
Sideways (2004)
3.5/5
Given that The Holdovers was my favorite movie of last year, it was only a matter of time before I got to the last pairing of Alexander Payne and Paul Giamatti with the wine adjacent dramedy Sideways. While my expectations may have been a little high going into this one, it’s still a pretty good time. Ironically Thomas Haden Church was in two movies in a row this week (unintentionally) but I have to admit I preferred his character in the last film more, even though it was an objectively worse film. It’s definitely my own bias coming into play, but his character, Jack, is just an immoral sexual animal who's desperate for “One last sexual conquest” one week before getting married. Paul Giamatti’s character is a grumpy unsuccessful writer who only wants to drink good wine, eat good food, and play some quality golf with his friend. As the days go by things get increasingly more tense as the two get wrapped up in two waitresses' lives. Lies, betrayal, and some good drama and comedy later and you have yourself a fine film overall. I look forward to diving into more of Alexander Payne's work as the year goes on.
June 6th
Snake Eyes (1998)
4/5
No, this isn't the G.I. Joe spinoff film, this is cinema. Brian De Palma is a fascinating filmmaker. His oeuvre is wild and wide ranging with films like Carrie, Blow Out (my favorite De Palma film), Scarface, Body Double, The Untouchables, Mission: Impossible, and Dressed to Kill to name a few. With the disaster that was The Bonfire of The Vanities (again, I highly encourage giving The Devil's Candy a read) De Palma rebounded in the 90s with a few really solid hits like the first Mission: Impossible movie a couple years prior to this film's release. Snake Eyes was one I never knew about and only added it to the list as it was a Nic Cage movie from the 1990s that I didn't know about until now.
In fact my interest tripled during the opening credits when I realized that this was one of De Palma's films. Snake Eyes is a conspiracy thriller surrounding a high profile boxing match in Atlantic City where a powerful politician is mysteriously shot dead during the height of the match. It just so happens that erratic Atlantic City Detective Rick Santoro (Nicolas Cage) was sitting front row for the killing and immediately puts himself at the forefront of the crime scene. Rick's best friend Commander Kevin Dunne (Gary Sinise) is the head of security for the Senator thus the two attempt to solve the case through their divergent methods.
What I loved about Snake Eyes was, in order, the (inventive) cinematography, the screenplay, revisiting the same scenes and events with new information or from different angles, and the tension/pacing. Obviously Nic Cage entertains here, he's not quite as insane as his Face/Off performance from the year prior, but this character is closer to his Castor Troy character than any other Nic Cage performance I have seen so far. I really dug this film, it reminded me to look further into Brian De Palma's career. Which led me to his IMDB page where I learned that his upcoming film is called Catch and Kill and it sounds exactly like the heyday of his filmmaking in the 1980s. I, for one, am looking forward to seeing it as the description is “a horror film set in Hollywood and featuring a predatory movie mogul”- That's all I needed to hear.
June 7th
Crocodile Dundee (1986)
3/5
Having seen the cover of Crocodile Dundee in video stores and blockbusters since childhood, it was time to finally check this one out. Well, it's alright. It's a very simple film, it reminded me a lot of Coming to America in the structure of the story with regard to characters being plucked from the great outdoors and dropped into New York City. Based on a real life story of a man in Australia surviving a crocodile attack and subsequent weeks out in the dangerous wilds of the outback, here fictional NYC journalist Sue Charlton (Linda Kozlowski) reads about these exploits and decides to interview the wild man in Australia. She travels out to the remote area Dundee (Paul Hogan) was known to operate in and eventually tracks him down in a small town pub. Sue convinces Dundee to take her to the spot of the accident for her story and he agrees.
There are a few moments of fun to be had in this portion of the film but it's all fairly predictable stuff. Though I did laugh out loud when Dundee uses a comically accurate Kangaroo fursuit to shoot back at poachers making them believe the animals were fighting violence with violence. Was it stupid? Yeah, kinda, but it got me. The second half is when Sue brings him to Manhattan to finish the story. There's the usual half baked romance with the awful self absorbed male rival for Dundee, but I'll allow it as we get Gus the Limousine driver (Reginald VelJohnson) using the rear TV antenna as a boomerang to stop a fight late in the third act. It's worth a watch, but with lowered expectations you can have a good time with it.
June 8th
Theater Camp (2023)
4/5
This one was an absolute delight. As somebody that worked every semester of College at the on-campus Theater, I am very aware of the culture of “Theater Kids”. They are delightful weirdos that are full of sass, vigor, cynicism, and blinding optimism at times. This film captures that essence incredibly well. Somewhere between Wet Hot American Summer and Moonrise Kingdom lies this film in a tale of community and passion. Every year at the Adirond-ACTS Theater Camp children and young adults interested in the performance arts come to be out in nature while crafting stageplays of famous shows with an original production written and directed by the camp teachers. This year however everything is thrown off course when the founder of the camp, Joan (Amy Sedaris) has a seizure and falls into a coma amid intense financial desperation for the camp. Therefore when her adult son Troy (Jimmy Tatro), a crypto bro with zero media literacy is brought in to run the camp in the interim, everyone is understandably on edge regarding the camp's future. If you enjoy films with a focus on big-hearted misfits and underdogs, give this one a watch.
Cameron Geiser is an avid consumer of films and books about filmmakers. He'll watch any film at least once, and can usually be spotted at the annual Traverse City Film Festival in Northern Michigan. He also writes about film over at www.spacecortezwrites.com.