All the new stuff this week! Some of it good, and some of it not so good (as is typical).
The Batman – It feels like a lifetime has passed since news of this new iteration of Batman was brought up. Robert Pattinson has been doing some amazing work, so I knew he could deliver an outstanding performance as the caped crusader. And I was right. What had me more excited about this installment was the villains he was facing off against this time. I think there’s been too much Joker in the last handful of years, and as a fan of Gotham, I was excited to see that Riddler and Penguin would be the main baddies this time around. Paul Dano is fantastic and Colin Farrell is legitimately unrecognizable as Penguin. Farrell was particularly fun to watch as an unhinged and sassy bad guy. I can tell if another film gets made in this universe that he’ll get his real time to shine next time. I know the fear that this movie being almost three hours meant that it was going to drag, but I didn’t find that to be the case. For the first two hours at least. The third hour slowed down a little bit, but nothing less important happened. With all that being said, I walked away from the theater happy I watched it, but found it almost immediately forgettable. Still a great experience, just not one that will stick with me I think.
The Weekend Away – Woof. Netflix more and more is dumping Lifetime quality films onto their platform. I was a little bit surprised given that this was based off a popular novel and Leighton Meester was leading, but the dialogue in this thing was rough. As was the action. Meester plays Beth who meets up with her friend in Croatia for a weekend getaway. She’s just had a baby and it sounds like her relationship is on the rocks, so she lets loose a little bit at the club. The next morning though, her friend is missing and she can’t remember anything else about the evening. Most of what happens next is her meeting up with a bunch of different shady guys, all of which she initially trusts, until she can’t trust them anymore. Yeesh. Some of the revelations are interesting, but it’s kind of funny that Beth’s surprised she’s a suspect in her friend’s murder. Pretty bad, so skip it.
Fresh – I have been amped to watch this again since seeing it only a little over a month ago at Sundance. Lucky for everyone else, you didn’t have to wait that long! In this clever and disturbing thriller, Daisy Edgar Jones plays Noa, and woman who falls for a really charming and handsome man named Steve (Sebastian Stan) that she met at the grocery store. You’d like to think that she’s been on enough bad dates that she can see the red flags when he asks her to go on a trip after only knowing him a handful of dates! But nooooo, she let’s him take her to a cabin with no cell service and it’s all downhill from there. If you’re squeamish I suppose you might want to skip out on this, but it’s truly brilliant. As a fan of Hannibal, this is right up my alley.