A Seattle moviegoing lifestyle magazine
It’s hard not to sympathize with the environmental activists turned ecoterrorists at the heart of the potent new movie How to Blow Up a Pipeline. Eight young persons have so much justified rage from the cruelties of American capitalism that they find the best course of action to blow up an oil pipeline in West Texas. This movie is a meticulously planned scheme about how the photogenic gang of eight plans to commit their act of terrorism.
You don’t become the most dominant athlete (not basketball player) of your era without creating an incredible story along the way. The story of how Michael Jordan became the most marketable sports superstar before his rookie NBA season began is told in the new movie Air. If there’s anything Ben Affleck and screenwriter Alex Convery know, it’s that the story of Michael Jordan is best told the less Michael Jordan talks.
The new Super Mario Bros. Movie is extremely cool to watch. The movie is fast-paced and the animation is seamless and the colors are vibrant, like playing a video game on an enormous TV. As it should be. A lot of money went into making this movie look cool. I wish for all of the money spent on the animation and top-tier voice talent, we got a better story. I’m not sure that matters, though.
A Good Person, the newest movie from Zach Braff: director and writer, is melodrama through and through, for better or worse. It’s often manipulative, cloying, overly sentimental, and it leans heavily on cliche. It’s also saved by excellent performances by two leads.
At any given point throughout the almost-two hour run time, I don’t think I could satisfactorily explain what exactly is going on. It’s a taut, fast-paced heist movie, but it can be hard to follow at times. I also don’t care. Last time Guy Ritchie and Jason Statham teamed up, in 2021, I wrote, “I’m a simple man and sometimes I just need to watch Jason Statham beat the shit out of some bad guys. Ya know?” Nothing has changed: I got what I wanted then, and I’m getting what I want now.
It’s an unlikely (and quite disturbing) story and now it’s the starting point for a new movie, called, appropriately enough, Cocaine Bear. The plot of this movie (uhh) bears little resemblance to the history, and that’s kind of the point. It’s a meme movie, not a biopic, and every generation gets the Snakes on a Plane it deserves.
The first time I saw a trailer for the new movie 80 for Brady, about four of the world’s most cherished legendary actresses scheming to watch Tom Brady in the Super Bowl, I thought it was a blatant example of elder abuse. If anyone has earned the right not to play Tom Brady fans, it’s Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, Rita Moreno, and Sally Field. Yet somehow here we are.
I think everyone knows someone who could be called a “creature of habit,” someone who finds comfort in a daily routine, eating the same meals, doing the same chores, like clockwork. But I don’t think many people know someone like Area Man Otto Anderson.
Looking back at the movies that were released since January 1, I can’t say that I saw every movie that was on my to-watch list (and I’m still trying to get in as many as I can before midnight on 12/31) but I think there were some definite highlights. These are ten films that I loved for one reason or another. The forceful showing of speaking truth to power in Argentina, 1985, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, and Holy Spider. The action sequences in The Batman and Everything Everywhere All at Once. The exploding farts of Jackass Forever. Of all of the years in movie history, 2022 was definitely one of them.
Michael Showalter’s Spoiler Alert is a feat of filmmaking. It’s a melodrama starring the actor responsible for one of the most cloying TV characters in my lifetime, and it operates in a genre prone to audience manipulation and overwhelming sentimentality, and it offers few (if any) surprises. Yet, somehow, I actually really, really enjoyed it.
