October Movie Roundup

Way behind on reviews since I subscribed to Regal Unlimited, so here’s a quick recap of what I watched in October.

Ad Astra

I love some slow-paced, thoughtful sci-fi, and this movie is very slow-paced and quite thoughtful. So why didn’t I love it? Part of the problem is the lack of any emotional connection. Brad Pitt’s morose character’s quest to find his missing dad (Tommy Lee Jones), who may or may not have gone Sam Neill in Event Horizon crazy, should have struck a chord, but I found it hard to care, especially when Pitt does stuff like break into a shuttle during launch and fucking kill every single person on board. Okay, it was mostly an accident but still, he shouldn’t even have been there!

The film is nice to look at and there are some great zero-g action scenes (one involving a psychotic baboon that has to be seen to be believed) but ultimately it’s an interesting disappointment.

Joker

There has been a lot of controversy about this movie glorifying toxic masculinity, but for the most part the Joker in this movie is no more sympathetic or likeable than any of the other Joker incarnations we’ve seen. He’s just a little sadder, but still goes full psycho by the end. As everyone knows by now, this movie is a love letter to late 70s/early 80s Scorsese, and anyone who’s seen Taxi Driver or The King of Comedy can see most of the story beats coming a mile away (Robert DeNiro even shows up for an extended cameo). Joaquin Phoenix fully commits to his role as Arthur Fleck, the man who would be Joker, and it’s his performance that holds the film together even as the gratuitous violence and questionable treatment of mental illness threaten to derail it. As unpleasant as the film is in parts, it’s at least offering a different take on the comic book genre, and if it gets us any closer to DC making a non-canon Batman movie where Michael Keaton returns to the role then I’m all for it.

Zombieland: Doubletap

Belated comedy sequels are pretty hit and miss. Anchorman 2 was an okay follow up that didn’t match the brilliance of the original, while Zoolander 2 was forgotten almost as soon as it came out and the less said about Dumb and Dumber To the better. Zombieland: Doubletap, actually turns out to be one of the better ones. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but then neither did the original, which was pretty much Hollywood’s answer to Shaun of the Dead. This one continues the references to the Edgar Wright movie, even ripping off the gag where the heroes meet their doppelgangers. Some of the humour in the sequel does seem dated (calling back as it does to that far off “pre-woke” era of 2009) but it does pretty much everything you want a Zombieland movie to do and the returning cast seem happy to be there so I don’t begrudge them playing around in this sandbox one more time.

The Addams Family

I wasn’t expecting much from this movie based on the reviews, but it’s a perfectly enjoyable animated version of Charles Addams’ cartoons. The voice cast perfectly capture the characters and the plot is true to the spirit of what has come before. Addams Family Values probably remains the high mark for feature length Addams movies, but this is not far behind, though it’s a shame we never got to see the Tim Burton version (but maybe that would have been too on brand).

Countdown

Okay, I was pissed at this movie going in because a clock that tells you when you’re going to die was actually an idea I came up with years ago. In the movie it’s an app, and this is obviously a horror movie whereas my version was sci-fi, so by the end I wasn’t too mad. The movie is fairly enjoyable, though it does over rely on jump scares a little (I didn’t spill my popcorn at one point, honest). Worth a watch for horror fans with low expectations.

The Lighthouse

Now this is one weird fucking movie. Like David Lynch shaking his head in disbelief weird. The basic plot is Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe are apprentice and master lighthouse keepers stationed at a remote location. The black and white cinematography and cropped aspect ratio add to a sense of dread and claustrophobia that builds throughout the film before unleashing the full Lovecraftian horror by the end. This is definitely not a pleasant film to watch, but the two brilliant lead performances ensure that you can’t look away, no matter how weird and disturbing it gets.