Weekly Movie Roundup

Windfall All Quiet on the Western Front> What Lies Beneath
  • There’s a tight little thriller with some nice character moments and awkward comedy in Windfall, but it never entirely comes together. The movie has good performances, but it never quite shakes its staginess, or the feeling of being a movie made during lockdown, with those limitations.
    • All Quiet on the Western Front is a lot more bloody and visceral than the 1930 adaptation—there’s more than a little Come and See peppered throughout this version—but both are equally concerned with the brutality of war, how it’s not a thing waged by nations but a thing done to soldiers. It’s unflinchingly honest and incredibly effective.
      • You almost have to admire What Lies Beneath for how absurd it’s willing to get, and for the camera tricks that I’m sure are no less technically impressive than any Robert Zemeckis has ever committed to screen. But there’s not much fun to be had in that absurdity, or its execution. It would be easier to pine for a time when Hollywood made big-budget adult thrillers like this if this one was actually any good.
      Ambulance We Have a Ghost The Naked Spur
      • Michael Bay’s Ambulance is often entertaining, with a pretty fun Jake Gyllenhaal performance, but I was constantly reminded while watching it of this Every Frame a Painting video deconstructing his style. When everything in your movie is spectacle, eventually none of it is spectacular. Ambulance is a thrill-ride, but it’s an exhausting one by the very end.
        • We Have a Ghost has its moments, but it overstays its welcome and is mostly a disappointment, especially given how much fun I’ve had with director Christopher Landon’s previous movies.
          • The Naked Spur has a lot of really great performances, not least by a devilish Robert Ryan.
          Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master

          I also re-watched The World According to Garp, which might seem a little random—and is a film adaptation that I haven’t seen in a very long time—but which has for whatever reason been rattling around in my memory bank for a little while now. It’s not a perfect movie, or even a perfect adaptation of the novel, but I remain rather fond of it.