I feel like this is pretty on brand for me at this point, but the movie selections this weekend were random. Let’s see what made the cut.
Nope – I mean, obviously I was going to see Jordan Peele’s latest cinematic offering. Was it my favorite of his films? Nope. There’s a somewhat bitter sibling relationship on an old horse farm in the middle of the desert when they start seeing some weird stuff in the sky. That, and their horses keep disappearing. It doesn’t help that a strange, but local, amusement park seems to be making things worse. It was all a little unsettling, which I enjoyed, but the last thirty minutes or so was just kind of disappointing to me. It seems like I’m alone in that thought, but I said what I said. As usual, there were some great underlying themes throughout the film, so you can be sure to be satisfied in that regard.
The Gray Man – On the opposite end of things, for as much hate as this Russo brothers action film has been getting, I actually quite liked it. Yes, a lot of elements were rushed, shaky, and straight up copies of the most popular action franchises, but the cast was enough to smooth those over for me. Ryan Gosling plays Six, a former criminal turned CIA asset who’s really, really good at his job. Too good, actually. That means the new head of the CIA wants Six dead. Especially since he’s got some serious dirt on him. Luckily Six recruits the help of another stellar agent played by Ana de Armas, but they are up against a true sociopath named Lloyd played by a mustachioed Chris Evans. I’d say Evans looked like he was having the most fun on this film, but it was a fun, fast-paced ride for me, as well.
Power Rangers – After I posted Dacre Montgomery’s fan art this past Friday and told everyone to go watch Power Rangers, I really wanted to watch it again. So I did. I thought they did a pretty good job establishing how this group of teens became the Rangers and also the struggle of becoming an actual team. Of course, there’s not much time given that Rita is pretty close to destroying the planet. What shocked me watching this again was totally forgetting that Bryan Cranston and Bill Hader were involved with this on top of Elizabeth Banks! I’m kind of shocked this movie didn’t take off. Maybe it was poor timing. In this second viewing, I really liked it and would love to see this group play the Power Rangers again.
Spree – At this point I think it’s kind of obvious that I’m not over the fourth season of Stranger Things, so I’m filling that void with other projects from my favorite cast members. Thus, like Power Rangers, I decided to give the Joe Keery led Spree another shot. In summation: still not for me. There’s something about the style of how this was shot that I just don’t connect well with. Yes, Keery did an awesome job of playing some unhinged, social media obsessed guy, but that’s just not enough. I did like how exaggerated everything was, and I’m sure the very obvious message of this movie did probably manage to go over some people’s heads. And that’s really sad. Anyways, I tried and you can too if the found footage style is your jam.