This is the most time I’ve spent at the theater over the weekend in a long, long time. I managed a double feature one evening and then decided to ga back twice another day. Great success! The real reason is that I know a lot of other good movies are coming out in the next two weekends, so I don’t want to get behind and I want to catch them in case they get booted too quickly.
Wuthering Heights – Emerald Fennell’s films I have found are best experienced with an audience. At least that was true for Saltburn. Promising Young Woman was a fall 2020 release, so I was the only viewer in the theater at the time. But this one was really interesting. You could hear a pin drop in the more silent moments of the film. Still, other scenes that were slightly more comical in nature, or a little gross – nothing. Having never read the classic novel this movie was adapted from, I have no clue if it did it any justice at all. My friend says absolutely not, so it’s best enjoyed thinking of it as something entirely different. My most major takeaway was that all of these characters suck. I know we can all be bad people sometimes, but nothing much felt redeemable about this cast of characters doing their worst in the name of “love.”
Cold Storage – Again, another adaptation from a novel by a hugely successful screenwriter, I had no clue what this was about. I just knew that the cast was good and that was good enough for me. Some dangerous and mutating fungus has been contained in some underground governemt facility that happens to have been shut down for quite some time. Now a storage unit sits atop it, but warming climates means that the fungus’ container is unstable and threatening to kill everyone on earth. The government calls in the last guy who handled the invasive species, and he’s is adamant that this particular piece of the world needs burned to the ground if we want to survive. This was an unexpected sci-fi, horror-comedy that seems like it could be set up for a sequel if the audience is there. Maybe I should check out the book!
Crime 101 – Once again, I had absolutely no clue what the movie was about. And again, it was based off of a novella – crazy! The film centers on a meticulous thief who’s MO happens to be that he executes his heists perfectly, along with getting no one injured. After a close call on his last hit, he decides to lay low for a bit, but his “boss” wants these jobs done. There are several other characters’ lives woven throughout this central story, and they almost all eventually cross paths at some point to reach the inevitable climax. While I really liked this movie, I found that it ebbed and flowed a lot. I was fully engrossed in a lot of parts, but there were slower bits that had me questioning why it was still running. With that, it’s still a solid crime film whose nuance I appreciate a bit more than what The Rip had to offer late last month.
Solo Mio – Every bone in my body told me I should not be going to see this film. In my eyes, Kevin James has a pretty bad track record. Nor have I really heard of him doing much of anything recently. But with an almost unbelieveably high Rotten Tomatoes score, I took the risk. What I got was a pretty cute rom-com that more people probably should have been seeing this Valentine’s Day weekend over Wuthering Heights. Matt has planned the perfect wedding in Italy only to be stood up at the alter. Instead of wallowing, he stays to complete his honeymoon package in hopes of seeing his fiance again. What he gets instead are some new, unhinged friends, and perhaps the real love of his life. Him loving Ed Sheeran was an extremely random thing that played into an extremely random bit, but overall this was an enjoyable experience.