All new movies! That’s right, everything this weekend was new! How exciting!
Women Talking – One of the very few best picture nominees I have left to watch, I had to squeeze Women Talking in on Thursday before it left my local cinema by the weekend. I’m so glad I did! The story is kind of wild to me how recent the setting is. Now, it’s more recent in this fictional form than the real life events the story was inspired by, but even that was the early 2000s! It’s just crazy to me how these people live, and it’s especially jarring how backwards life for women is. The women on this religious colony were drugged, raped, and beaten, then led to believe they were making it up or it was the work of ghosts or demons. When they finally did something about it, they then had to decide whether they would stay and forgive, stay and fight, or leave. Luckily, the majority was not with the first option, so the rest of the meeting was spent debating between the latter two. Very emotional and at times frustrating. I felt silly learning that the book this film was based on was from Miriam Toews, whose deeply sad novel and movie, All My Puny Sorrows, I checked out last year. I should have known it was going to be good!
Magic Mike’s Last Dance – Holy cow was this boring. My sister put it best: “I fell asleep during a movie about strippers!” Long story short, Mike had a rough go post-stripping thanks to the pandemic, but gets pulled back into it by some recently divorced, uber-rich lady. There were lots of too long dance sequences and virtually no plot! She wants him to create a strip show at a theater she won in the divorce, and by the end I realize all they’ve done is recreate the live version you can see in Vegas or London. Not that original in my opinion. I know most people probably haven’t been to those live shows, but I have. Twice. Aside from the boring content, Channing Tatum and Salma Hayek have almost no chemistry whatsoever. Don’t waste your time, ladies.
Armageddon Time – Somehow, this movie didn’t have me sobbing near the end of it. It’s a childhood story, where Paul spends more time drawing than being engaged in schoolwork, he goofs around and gets in trouble with an African-American student named Johnny, and has a deep connection with his maternal grandfather. Paul persists in saying he wants to be an artist, which his grandfather encourages while his parents put him down for. That’s not so unusual for the 80s setting where this story is taking place. Nor is it unusual for Johnny to still be treated so poorly by almost everyone he encounters. The two attempt a run for it, but it doesn’t turn out well for either of them. Those parts were interesting, but the most compelling bits for me involved Paul’s interactions with his grandpa, who reminded me a lot of my own grandpas. I miss them deeply, but I took joy in watching Anthony Hopkins bring a little bit of them onto the screen for me.
Your Place or Mine – Given that it was the weekend before Valentine’s day, I thought it was only fitting that I tried to watch an actual rom-com. This one was fine, but will likely be completely forgotten in a few months. That’s kind of sad given it’s got Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher as the leads, but it is what it is, I guess. They play long-term best friends who hooked up one time back in the day. Given that they talk to each other daily, it’s funny how much personal stuff they actually keep from each other. This is found out of course when he offers to stay with her son in LA while she finishes up a class in NYC where he lives. There are some detours along the way, but of course they find their way back to each other. This whole thing, besides the big kiss scene, is sound tracked by The Cars, so I think they missed an opportunity there. All in all, nothing new here, but pleasant enough.