Finally got around to watching Free Guy, the pandemic-delayed film about a character inside a video game who realizes his world is much different than he’s always thought. So unimportant inside the game that his name is simply “Guy”, he lives inside an open world called Free City, that resembles a Grand Theft Auto-style game. Guy and the other NPC’s (non-player characters for you non gamers out there) are unaware that they are just computer characters inhabiting a world where “real people” come in and rob, steal, and blow stuff up for fun. But Guy is a little different than the other NPC’s: he has dreams of something different, specifically, finding a woman and falling in love. He gets his chance when he sees the girl of his dreams. Unfortunately for Guy, she’s not an NPC; Molotov Girl in the game is really Milly outside of it, and she’s inside Free City looking for evidence that the game is built on a platform she wrote and was stolen by Free City’s creator, code that she could use in her current lawsuit against him. When Guy approaches Molotov Girl and expresses his feelings, she at first thinks he’s just a “noob” (beginner player) and treats him as such. Little does she know that parts of her code is what is giving Guy his freedom of thought. As Guy gets attention outside the game and becomes an online celebrity (which he is unaware of), inside the game, he tries to help Molotov Girl with her mission. Extremely funny, bright and colorful as a game should be, and also unexpectedly with a lot of heart, this is a fun film with a high re-watchability factor. It doesn’t quite reach the heights of The Truman Show, another film about a person stuck inside a program with no way out, but still, a solid movie. ★★★½
Atlantis is a post-apocalyptic film out of Ukraine. As a movie, it’s about as bleak as they come. Taking place in 2025 after a war with Russia, Ukraine is left as a polluted wasteland. Sergiy and Ivan are a couple buddies working at a steel factory, and share depression and PTSD from their time in the war, shooting off guns haphazardly in the evenings. Neither is doing well mentally, leading to Ivan’s suicide in a dramatic fashion. Sergiy picks up a new job delivering water around the area, as the ground water has been contaminated from the war and is unsafe to drink. While driving one day, Sergiy comes upon Katya and her team, who goes around digging up bodies left in unmarked graves from the war, and doing their best to ID them. In these morbid times, in that harsh landscape, it’d be impossible to find any joy, yet somehow Sergiy and Katya do, in their own way. With the ever-present gray skies, muddy roads, and reminders of death everywhere, it would be easy for this film to become a dirge, but those small moments of hope give some to the viewer as well, and the whole film is shot beautifully (inasmuch as any dark film can be beautiful). ★★★½
I let my inner child out and settled in for Muppets Haunted Mansion, a short film (about an hour) currently on Disney+. As a big fan of the Muppets as a kid, I couldn’t help myself. The film centers around Gonzo and Pepe, with the other muppet characters having smaller parts. On the night of a Halloween party, Gonzo and Pepe don’t join the rest of their friends, and instead go to a haunted mansion which once belonged to Gonzo’s favorite magician, The Great MacGuffin (haha!). The magician disappeared 100 years ago and there’s a party every year in the house. Pepe is expecting an A-list crowd of celebrities, but Gonzo is there for the magic. Of course, the house really is haunted, and you have to wait and see if Gonzo and Pepe can be the first to survive the night and come out the next day. In true Muppets fashion, the film is chuck full of cameos and supporting roles from Hollywood celebs, including Darren Criss, Taraji P Henson, John Stamos, and Will Arnett (and tiny roles for a bunch more, including a don’t-blink-or-you’ll-miss-him Pat Sajak). I laughed plenty in the beginning, grew a bit bored in the middle, but emerged happy enough in the end. It’s good light-hearted fun for the family, with plenty of jokes and fourth-wall-breaking gags to satisfy all ages. ★★★
Like every boy in the 1980’s, I had my share of G.I. Joe toys and watched the cartoon. When the first movie came out 10 or so years ago, I went and saw it, and came away ashamed with how bad it was. As such, I skipped the sequel a couple years later. I was going to do the same with Snake Eyes, but despite the poor reviews, the trailer looked great, and I like the lead actor, Henry Golding. Should have stuck to my gut; Snake Eyes isn’t very good. An origin story about the character, the movie begins with a young boy watching his father killed, and then growing up to be known as Snake Eyes, a martial artist with vengeance on his mind. He is lured to work for a Yakuza boss to steal an artifact from a Japanese dojo, with the promise that the mob boss will deliver his father’s killer as payment. Would you guess that Cobra is behind it all? Unfortunately there’s no real saving grace to this dumpster fire. Outside of a few nice moments, even the fight scenes are uninspired. The dialogue is downright awful, and the plot, which I’m sure is meant to surprise, is too thin to even wow a child. Dumb, dumb, dumb. I’m swearing off these movies again. ★
Scenes from a Marriage is an HBO 5 part miniseries, a remake of the celebrated Ingmar Bergman series (which is about as perfect as they come). Normally, I avoid remakes, especially when the original is going to be impossible to match, but HBO got two good leads to give it a shot, with Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain cast in the leads. Doesn’t get much better than that, and they are amazing in this film. For just a quick set up: Jonathan and Mira have been married for years, but their marriage has gotten stale. This series starts just like the Bergman one: the couple is being interviewed, this time for a study involving gender roles, and you can tell from their answers that there isn’t much passion left in their relationship. They seem uncomfortable around each other, and give ambivalent answers to what should be easy questions. At the end of the first episode, Mira tells Jonathan that she is pregnant with their second child, and while they decide to keep it, the second episode begins with Mira having an abortion. Ostensibly this was done because a new baby would be a strain on their lives (he is a professor and the main caregiver in the house, whereas she is the breadwinner and always traveling with work), but Mira later admits that she felt if she were to have another child, she’d continue to be trapped in her marriage. When she returns from her latest work trip, she admits to an affair, and as the episodes progress, we see the couple divorce. Through it all, we see various moments of love and hate, passion and vitriol. The true inner moments of a marriage, both tender and painful, are shown equally. I won’t give away how it all ends, but if you want to see acting at its peak, I urge you to check it out. For myself, it doesn’t match Bergman’s original (how could it?), but it is damn good work and emotionally charged from beginning to end. My only quibble is that each episode begins with a “behind the scenes” look as the camera crew and production get set for the opening scene, and then you hear “Action!” to set it off. It lets the viewer know that what we are seeing isn’t real, it’s just actors on a set. Takes away some of the emotion of it for me (even if the actors certainly pull you in and make it feel real!). ★★★★½
- TV series currently watching: Marvel’s What If…?
- Book currently reading: Honeysuckle & Pain by Mark Danielewski
Jons Movie Takes 