I watched some movies my wife hasn’t seen and I have to tell someone my thoughts about them and I guess that person is you
It’s increasingly rare that I find myself up for investing 2–3 hours in a movie I don’t know if I’ll like. But I’ve worked weird hours the past couple days, which has left me with some time to catch up on some shit The Moviegoing Public saw a long damn time ago. Normally this is the kind of thing I’d just discuss with my wife, but as a result of the aforementioned weird hours, she was either too busy working or sleeping to share these experiences with me.
So that’s where you come in, apparently.
Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice
This is the movie that started my binge, and it’s a wonder that it didn’t spoil my appetite because Jesus Christ is it terrible. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a blockbuster that was so poorly conceived and executed on so many levels of the production.
There are endless problems with this movie you could pick out and complain about at length, but I’ve never felt so pulled out of a story by bad film editing. I’ve don’t really have an eye for film editing. Whenever they give out the Oscar for editing, I’m like, “Uhhh … yeaaaaah. I agree. The editing in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was fucking lit.”
But when it’s bad, you notice. And in Donna Justice (this is what I like to call it), you notice it all the dang time.
Midnight Special
I love being dropped into the middle of a complicated story and being asked to slowly piece together what’s going on in the world you’re visiting for the next two hours. Instead of clunky exposition dumps, the audience is allowed to piece clues together from observing the characters do and say things in a way that human beings actually do and say things. That’s what you get with Midnight Special, an understated, Spielbergian sci-fi thriller that hits all the right notes. (And unlike Donna Justice, it actually gives its all-star cast interesting things to do.)
Deadpool
I had some serious reservations coming into this one, as I wasn’t sure why “a superhero, but instead of a sanguine do-gooder, he’s a snarky jerk” was a movie I needed to see. But boy was I wrong. The thing about meta comedy is that you’d better have your basics down and the jokes need to land. And in Deadpool, the jokes are funny and biting, arriving at the torrential pace of Community or 30 Rock. What really makes all the laughs work, though, is that they’re buttressed by a central story that has a surprising amount of heart.
Anyway, that’s it for Connor Tells What He Thought About Some Movies He Recently Saw. See you next time.
