Weekly Movie Roundup

Rosaline The Fallen Sparrow The Killers
  • Rosaline doesn’t reinvent Shakespeare or anything, but it’s charming and good fun, and Kaitlyn Dever is very engaging in it.
    • The Fallen Sparrow is a really effective noir, thanks in part to a really strong performance by star John Garfield.
      • The Killers is the movie that made both Ava Gardner and Burth Lancaster movie stars, and it’s not hard to see why, with this tense and often terrific noir.
      Yes, Madam! Minor Premise The Loved One
      • Yes, Madam! is often very silly—even if it does take a pretty dark turn at the end—but it’s also a lot of fun, with great fights and stunts by Michelle Yeoh and Cynthia Rothrock.
        • Minor Premise doesn’t fully work, but that’s not for lack of trying. The film is proof you don’t need a big budget for big sci-fi ideas, but it’s much more interesting when it seems like it’s going to have deeper emotional revelations to unpack—when it seems like it’s going to have something to say about those ideas, which in the end it just kind of doesn’t.
          • The Loved One is an odd…I guess satire? Of Hollywood, of the bereavement industry… It’s a bit zany and madcap, down to all the off-kilter cameos and odd casting choices, and not every scene of it works. But it’s interesting and entertaining enough.
          Cobra The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
          • In many ways, Cobra feels like a pale ’80s imitation of the Dirty Harry movies—and I didn’t even like those.
            • The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is silly and dumb, and I’m not sure it has anything to actually say about movie stardom, or that of Nicolas Cage in particular. The movie’s also genuinely entertaining, thanks to Cage and Pedro Pascal. I mean, it’s no Paddington 2, but then what is?

            I also re-watched Platoon and The Lavender Hill Mob and enjoyed both quite a lot. I think Platoon maybe suffers a little from the voice-over narration, which can seem a little heavy-handed sometimes (or like it’s trying too hard to echo Apocalypse Now), and from the fact that so many Viet Nam war movies have imitated it in the years since.