The Fall Guy is an extremely self-aware action movie about Hannah Waddingham’s wig, and also a stunt guy who finds himself tangled in a wee bit of a murder mystery along with his director ex-girlfriend.

I really try not to watch movies I think I’m not going to like, seeing as how I prefer to come in with enthusiastic analysis rather than criticism. I probably would have skipped this one if I’d looked up the director first, since I haven’t liked David Leitch movies in the past either. I should have suspected I simply wouldn’t like it because I’m really tired of Ryan Gosling’s Kendoll schtick.

Anyway, obviously I didn’t love it, but I think it’s a harmless movie with its heart in the right place (highlighting the stunt teams who don’t usually get nearly enough regard). But I’m going to resist the urge to write an essay about why this isn’t really a good romance, or a plot with any tension, or dialogue-related complaints; it is HARMLESS and I don’t need to go off.

Instead, let me tell you who I think will enjoy this movie:

– If you like it when you don’t feel like things might actually go wrong, and you know nobody’s ever in peril, I think you’ll like it. The action scenes are so stunt-focused and well forecast as such that it’s obvious these are just exciting tricks, like you might see at a theme park. I can see folks really loving that. It’s exciting! Good stunts are always impressive. What’s not to love there?

– Are you enjoying Ryan Gosling’s whole schtick? This movie is all of that. In fact, every actor seems to be trying to meet Ryan Gosling on that level, and they’re kind of doing his whole cadence and semi-naturalistic talking-over-each-other affable chattering.

– You know that genre where Hollywood really loves Hollywood and just makes loving movies about itself? If you like that, you’ll loooove this.

– How about self-referential humor? Where (an incredibly sexy) Winston Duke cites the action scenes he’s copying while engaging in those fights? Doing split-screen while debating if split screens are any good? Random cameos?

– If you like dogs biting crotches, this movie delivers on your behalf.

I was mostly rubbed the wrong way by this, but I really don’t see any reason it didn’t perform better at the box office. It’s extremely inoffensive and a sort of fun-oriented experience movie. I really, really thought of stunt shows at theme parks while watching it. That’s not my kind of thing. Is it yours? Then you’d probably love it. Have fun y’all.

(image source: Universal Pictures)

In The Dark Knight, a chaotic new villain disrupts the status quo of Gotham’s corrupt underbelly, driving the entire city to the brink of madness. And he does it in a very fashionable purple suit with a green vest.

This movie is, in my esteem, the best of the Christopher Nolan Batman movies. The Bat is my favorite caped (anti)hero; I have a very long-lasting, very personal fondness for any and all Batman adaptations. For a few years when these movies came out, I would say that Nolan Bat was my favorite. Nowadays, it simply does not rank.

Obviously The Dark Knight hasn’t changed. I’ve changed. I was twenty-years-old in 2008, and Nolan Bat hit me hard. It hit the culture hard! I was trying to explain to my young teen how the impact of the film was absolutely seismic — which had them raising an eyebrow, because they were so bored by the movie, they almost fell asleep. Sometimes they woke up because I burst out laughing, like when I saw the Batmobile again. Least penisy Batmobile? Yes. But does anyone else think it looks like the fantasy version of a Cybertruck? I bet Bale Bruce would have bought a Cybertruck.

Nolan did a killer job hitting American culture at the right moment. At the time, the idea of all phones being surveillance devices was still kinda science fiction. We were only a few years out from 9/11, the Bush II era was sunsetting, and the discourse around terrorism was intense. Some degree of jingoism was more standard (at least, where I was back then) because of a patriotic desire to cohere against external threats, and I more readily believed in “a hero we need, but don’t deserve.” This version of the Joker is more terrorist-like in his strategies. He is chaotic evil, unpredictable, unknowable, the way that many white Americans regarded our enemies of the time.

It’s striking how much of this feels simultaneously cynical and naive. Do you really think Gotham’s cops would be horrified at Batman brutalizing the Joker in an interrogation room? Highly doubtful.

There’s nothing more 2008 than the limited palette and brutalism. This was an era where we sucked all the color out of movies, ashamed of the excesses of the 90s, and not yet arriving in the nostalgic neons of the later 10s. Really, the whole thing feels ashamed: despite being an *absurdly* gravelly Batman with *ridiculously* militaristic attitudes, the self-seriousness of Nolan Bat is doing the absolute most to distance itself from campy comic book *everything*. Several key characters seem fabricated just so he won’t have to deal with the burden of comic book lore.

In retrospect, it’s laughable. Like a parody of itself. But I can’t deny it hit perfectly at the time! Every good moment in the movie remains constantly memed, even by a generation that hasn’t necessarily sat through the laborious plodding plot of the movie itself. So many quotes have become the blood in our cultural veins. Yet I have reached a point where I feel Nolan Bat is best experienced in memes, plucking out the good bits and leaving behind everything that’s so monotone visually and dynamically.

I guess I’m tired of Nolan’s style nowadays, too. I used to say he was my favorite auteur. Now I’m so frustrated by his muddy dialogue, buried under the rest of the audio, that I can’t even appreciate the way his movies are edited to great scores like a 2.5-hour long cinematic music video. His inability to write a woman with dimension drives me nuts.

The action scenes are still pretty sweet, though.

One other thing that hasn’t changed is how utterly delightful Heath Ledger’s Joker feels. My kid perked up whenever Joker was Jokering around, and I did too. Against the wooden blocky backdrop of Batman, here we got a funny and deliberate and pitch-perfectly sinister Joker. He’s so colorful by comparison. His suit is colorful, his Bugs Bunny-like cross dressing is colorful, and his “yeah, I guess I’ll shoot this guy too” gestures are colorful. As a Millennial, I can’t let mention of Ledger pass without pining for the future career we never got to see from him. I’m still devastated.

I can recognize this movie was so good in its time and also that it’s not good for me in this time. I can imagine lots of people still loving it: great score, solid performances, great action (when you get to it), a very cohesive aesthetic (surely others are still into that). But my definitive Batman these days is absolutely Batman Returns (deliciously goth as it is) and this one left me feeling extremely beige.

(image credit: Warner Bros. Pictures)

Happy Gilmore is a classic Adam Sandler comedy about an unsuccessful hockey player who turns to golf to save his grandmother’s house. He’s a really bad temperamental match for golf. His fiery moods mean he holds a record for being the only high school hockey player who took off his skate to stab someone. Golf is not sure what to make of a low-class, swearing, punching kind of player.

Yet he has an outstanding slap shot, and he can drive golf balls unimaginable distances. This draws the attention of a golf legend named Chubbs, who urges him to play and hopes to cultivate Happy’s career. Once Happy realizes he can earn enough money to buy his Grandma’s house, he’s not interested in the sustained career part; he just wants to go whack balls until he can get a few oversized checks about it.

Naturally we need a snooty, upper-class heel to serve as Happy’s foil. Here we get a hysterical Shooter McGavin. He believes he “deserves” the win on the tour where Happy butts in. Shooter’s paid his dues and played for his entire life. It’s his turn! But he’s such a dick, he earns Happy’s ire in return. While Happy gets better at golf, Shooter gets worse as a human being, and eventually they meet in the middle.

This is the perfect comedy for, say, a thirteen-year-old audience. It’s a family movie because everyone can laugh and have fun with it. But really, it’s mostly for the young teens. That’s where the titular character’s emotional development stands. Happy’s priorities are also mostly on par (lol) with thirteen-year-olds: taking care of your adorable grandma, punching people who make you angry, and proving everybody wrong.

Don’t come here looking for sophisticated jokes; this is the kind of flick where you’re meant to laugh because it’s just so dang *silly*. I could rattle off jokes for a while. “You’re gonna die, clown!” “The price is wrong, bitch!” “You suck! Jackass!” Truly nothing that’s funny out of context. But in context, with the actors’ delivery, and the generally goofy atmosphere, it’s a complete crack-up.

Although the movie is quite dated now (we’re approaching 30 years), Happy Gilmore is fair timeless. As an example: They textually say his show is The Price is Right, so when Bob Barker says “the price is wrong” and punches Happy, we get the reference regardless. And there is nothing funnier than watching a younger adult like Happy get his ass handed to him by an old man, even if you don’t have pleasant daytime TV associations with Bob Barker.

With a well-structured screenplay that has a few cute surprises and a short runtime for the attention span minimalists, I think Happy Gilmore’s going to remain a classic for generations.

I always want to rate Tron: Legacy better than I feel it deserves. When I’m watching it, I’m overwhelmingly bored. The conversations drag on for so long. The dialogue is too uninspired to justify this. The worldbuilding is intriguing, but shallow.

Yet characters-inside-computers is among my favorite things ever (see also: Reboot and The Animatrix). The aesthetic is excellent—I want to live somewhere that looks like this. The costumes are so cool. Whenever I think about T:L, those are the things I think about. The lengthy slow conversation scenes simply don’t stick in my mind. So I kinda love it when I’m not watching it and melt into the floor out of boredom when I do.

This also is one of my favorite movie scores of all time. Truly, Daft Punk did 90% of the heavy lifting here. This movie could have been vastly worse and the score would have made it watchable. It’s almost not worth remarking on the movie attached to the score. The work might be Daft Punk’s magnum opus, whereas the movie is incredibly middling work.

I could even forgive the horrid de-aging CGI if they just did more fighting. Please! Let the stunt people cook! More light bikes!

Part of what frustrates me about T:L is that other things are *so* good too. Michael Sheen as Zuse is an absolute gas. I want to be a queer-coded villain dancing to Daft Punk while the betrayed heroes get their arms chopped off. The action scenes are a delirious delight, and if they’d just had 50% more action and 50% less talking, it would probably be a 5* movie.

Yet being very close to greatness still managed to land Tron: Legacy squarely into a very boring place.

It is interesting to note that I used to think of this as a bad movie. I no longer do. Mostly because recent Disney movies have reset the bar on being bad and boring on a whole new level: cynical, nonsensical, and often feeling cheap despite bloated budgets. I mean, I hadn’t seen all the live action Renaissance Disney remakes yet. But this feels genuinely heartfelt. They were tackling a difficult project with real gusto, and it just didn’t turn out. The CGI looks aged but not cheap. (Even the bad de-aging CGI looks expensive.)

Somehow this movie is a two-star “love.” It’s bad. I want to skip most of it. I’m obsessed with it. I could make this my entire life.

(image credit: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)

Even Luca Guadagigno can’t make me want to watch a sports movie. My reaction to Challengers says a lot more about me and my personal tastes than it says about the movie itself: Just like a terrible, dreadful movie can push all my buttons so I love it (like Repo! The Genetic Opera), a great movie can push all my “ugh” buttons in a way that leaves me cold.

I like women. I get really bored with men. The rising female tennis star is one of the three leads in this movie; unfortunately, the movie isn’t quite as interested in Tashi as it is in Tashi’s sports-related ambitions and make-two-boys-kiss ambitions.

The boys really want to kiss, but they need an excuse. Tashi wants them to take tennis and boy-kissing more seriously and mashes them together until that happens. I know! It sounds great. Evidently, based on others’ reviews, most people think this is absolutely great.

The sports aesthetic and sheer amount of gay male-gaze testosterone sweating off the screen just made me want it to end.

(Aside from when Zendaya is in her underwear.)

I got real Machiavellian asexual vibes from Tashi, which is theoretically cool, but again — all the sports and testosterone. The way she manipulates should be cool! But it’s all about men! Making men do things. I just don’t care that much. The men are very sexual. There are dongs. There’s so many rippling abdominals. So many men sweating in locker rooms and saunas while having boy drama. It’s just…nothing I’m interested in.

But boy, can I respect it. Luca Guadagigno is still a really good director. Although I wasn’t convinced by the chemistry of Art and Patrick initially, the story made up for it. And I do enjoy the *idea* of everything that’s happening. But when something is so much about male desire, exerted in all the wrong directions (according to Tashi), I just cannot get into it.

Something about the sweaty pulsing score by Trent Reznor et al, which sounds like it should play in a gays-only gym, made this feel soapier. I caught myself thinking about May December again. May December was more overtly soapier and trashier though, whereas Challengers is glossy enough to be a Gatorade ad (sans Gatorade).

I totally see why so many people like it; I thought it was fine and also wanted it to stop. This one just call to me the way that Luca Guadagigno’s sapphic answer to Call Me By Your Name did. (Yes, I’m talking about Suspiria.) (In Guadagigno movies, twinks sweat for each other; sapphics gush blood. I know which I prefer more clearly than ever.)

(image credit: Amazon MGM Studios)

Paranormal Activity is a simple movie taking place in a Los Angeles house, where a het couple has moved after their last place burned down. They think the woman, Katie, is haunted. The man, Micah, buys a camera to document it, and his footage is the movie we see.

This is another fun found-footage horror film that wouldn’t exist without The Blair Witch Project. This one was fairly seismic on its own scale. The production company did their best to make Paranormal Activity look ambiguously real-ish in a similar way. Traditional credits are eschewed for thanking the families of the main characters, for instance. The whole thing is shot like it’s really some douchebag boyfriend intruding on his traumatized girlfriend’s progressive demon possession.

I was the exact right age for this when it came out — nineteen years old and quite similar in appearance to Katie — but I thought this was wildly boring interspersed with semi-boring (but spooky) tension. I had no interest in the daytime scenes, and I totally missed the delight of the escalation. Rewatching this now, I’m not sure how I felt that way! I’d say I was sleeping through it, but I remember every scene.

It’s actually a very competently executed movie, all things considered. The best way to watch this — like many horror movies — is in a rowdy group with Strong Opinions. That means shouting when you see the demon has broken the picture glass directly over Micah’s face, throwing things at Micah when he’s put himself in-frame, and shrieking with delight when the bed covers move. You need to feed off one another’s energy. Paranormal Activity understands that horror is a group watch activity, and it feeds into it. The quiet that descends once they arrive at a new night, encouraging you to look closely for details like shadows, is just this side of masterful low-budget film making.

Plus, watching it now feels like a time capsule to 2006. I’m sure Katie and I both were dressed entirely by Old Navy. Every one of my richer friends’ houses looks like this McMansion they movie into. It’s Western American whiteness in a nutshell. I think even the demons are pretty much to be expected — whomst among us isn’t a Catholic being chased by demons, really?

The Real Horror Is Heterosexuality, in many ways. However unsafe Katie feels being stalked by a demon that set fire to her last home — and has been following her since childhood — she also feels unsafe with Micah, who doesn’t respect her. He doesn’t listen to anything he says. He tries to use the camera to film her in intimate times. Micah’s disrespect is, in many ways, necessary to the conceit of the film; if he were not so obsessed with his camera, we would not have all this footage.

This is one of many movies where I find myself asking whether men actually like women, especially the ones they’re in relationships with. Most interactions between them are overtly hostile before the demon even ramps up its activity. The thing is, it feels authentic. I have known so many couples like Micah and Katie. It’s not a challenge to suspend disbelief.

And if there’s anything to make you feel less secure when you’re being hunted by a demon, it’s knowing that nothing you say or do will change the behavior of your companion. That he will absolutely provoke the demon with a Ouija board. He will act like his masculinity is any defense and dismiss every concern. He won’t even be convinced it’s *actually* paranormal until the last fifteen minutes. It’s got that slippery, out-of-control feeling of a nightmare.

The ending is perfect for the setup. Wholesome, one might say!

It’s not really a great movie, but it’s not trying to be. Paranormal Activity is schlocky fun. It’s good for a sleepover or Halloween watch party. Remember to bring the Ouija board! Just don’t leave it unsupervised.

(image credit: Paramount Pictures)

In Moon, Sam Bell is an astronaut solely responsible for mining helium3 from the titular Moon. But after a crash checking on one of the harvesters, he discovers another version of himself.

Everything I find worth discussing in the review demands basically full spoilers. It’s a simple story. You shouldn’t read this review until you watch the movie.

Spoilers ahead!

This is a surprisingly sweet, lightweight science fiction movie about corporations, cloning, and acceptance. The lunar mining corporation cloned the one original astronaut, Sam Bell, and kept hundreds (or more) of him in stock so they’d never need to train another. Each Sam works for three years. The clones are not designed to survive beyond this point. They degrade in the last month of the contract rapidly.

Whether using clones is *actually* an effective cost-control measure isn’t clear, nor does it seem to be important. Simply digging out the facilities to store all those clones would be humongously expensive. I have to think Sam Bell was a uniquely good choice for solo work on the lunar surface; the relative ease with which he handles the surprises of the story suggest he’s way more emotionally rugged than I am. So maybe they just wanted to keep the perfect guy as long as possible.

I think it’s safe to say that’s all meant to be symbolic more than anything.

Moon doesn’t spend much time grappling with the corporate morality on-screen. That said, the distinctiveness and humanity of each clone is likely meant to imply this choice is wrong.

The director and writer, Duncan Jones, could have chosen to go somewhere a lot more psychological with this. Marital troubles due to Alpha Sam’s personality flaws are only ever touched upon. Once we’ve learned the full truth of Sam1 and Sam2’s roles in the mining operation, there isn’t much time spent processing the enormity of their limited lives. Minor clashes between Sam1 and Sam2 are resolved with some annoyance and self-struggling, but it doesn’t reach the level of real conflict. I think I’d be interested in the version of this movie where the push-and-pull between the two Sams makes them develop into a better version of Sam overall.

But that’s not the story Moon is telling. These things are placed just out of reach of the story.

Instead, it’s a cozy narrative told in a sparse environment with only one real actor ever on screen; Sam Rockwell’s charisma is effective for keeping us entertained the whole time. He does well depicting all the facets of himself. In a way, this narrow lens feels like it belongs on a stage more than it belongs on the movie screen. I can easily imagine the 00s retrofuturistic moon base as a set. Is Broadway listening to me? (No.)

The outcome is a warmly sad story to watch, though — if only because of how tenderly Sam and Gertie, the robot employed in Sam’s care, come to tend one another. Gertie’s an asset of the corporation as much as Sam. It’s complicit in gaslighting the clones throughout the course of their three-year contract. But once the veil is lifted for Sam1 and Sam2, Gertie becomes an accomplice to them, seeking to provide the best care possible: Gertie gives them answers and passwords and anything else they need to live their fullest little clone lives.

As Sam1 degrades, Sam2 goes from treating him with irritation to sweetness. He tries to keep him warm and comfortable. He seeks a way to help Sam1 get to Earth, until realizing that won’t work. Watching Sam2 try to keep a hat on Sam1, shivering from organ failure, is the most bittersweet display of compassion. Obviously each of these clones doesn’t deserve the false semi-life that has been foisted upon them, though the movie doesn’t make too much drama about it, either.

A soul seems to be implicit in the clone Sams. When Sam1 begins degrading, he hallucinates his adult daughter-on-Earth repeatedly, which is someone he could only envision if he had some kind of connectivity to his Earthbound family. Sam2 also prays when he first gets into a pod intending to escape. These are spiritual men. Knowing they were manufactured as adults doesn’t change anything.

Ultimately, the clones empower themselves to choose their own fates. Sam1 accepts the end of his contract (and life) to spare two other clones premature death; Sam2 finds his way to Earth to live a life. Travel, maybe. Meet the daughter Alpha Sam fathered on Earth.

While I find that the simplicity of the story leaves me with more question than answers, science fiction is often at its best when it leaves you thinking, and Moon is one of the best. It’s aged well in fifteen years. I think it will remain timeless in its way, and leave generations of cinemaphiles asking questions about humanity.

(image credit: Sony Pictures Classics)