Jojo Rabbit

Jojo Rabbit is one of those movies that I knew I was going to like and I knew that I likely wasn't going to see in theaters and I knew I was going to write this review and say I regret not seeing in the theaters. I love Taika Waititi, the premise seems hilarious and I went in with high expectations. Jojo Rabbit did not disappoint. 

Jojo Rabbit follows the story of a young boy by the name of Johannes "Jojo" (played by Roman Griffin Davis). He is growing up in the tail end of World War 2 in Nazi Germany, where Germany is losing the war, but Jojo remains steadfastly loyal to the Third Reich despite being a small kid without a violent bone in his body. He also happens to have Adolf Hitler (played by Taika Waititi) as his imaginary friend. I understand how this might give some people pause, but when you watch the movie, you understand what Hitler comes to represent and the comedic efforts of Waititi make him a very effective part of this movie.

After an accident, Jojo is left scarred and limping at home with his mother Rosie (played by Scarlett Johansson), and he gets a job putting up propaganda and gathering scrap for the war effort. But he soon figures out that his mother has been hiding a Jewish girl named Elsa (played by Thomasin McKenzie) in the walls of their house. Jojo is torn by his loyalty to the Nazi ideology and the desire to protect his mother from any kind of harm, so he begrudgingly keeps the secret of Elsa's hiding and decides to use it as an opportunity to learn more about Jews, at first in a way to defeat them, but later out of a friendship that blooms between the two of them. 

So there's a lot there. It should be noted that the movie is very satirical in nature and comes in with the understanding that Nazism is bad. Nonetheless, the movie takes some risks. Sam Rockwell, Afie Allen, and Rebel Wilson all play Nazis and the good thing is, they're played off as fools for the most part, but you also have a whole environment where we're supposed to be relating with characters who consider themselves Nazis. 

The movie only lightly grazes the real horrors of the Holocaust, persecution of Jews and others affected by Nazi Germany, and instead focuses on the smaller, but more personal interactions of a young boy experiencing it all.

While a lot of the movie is satire, the reason this movie resonates with me is the sincerity it has with the interactions between Jojo and his mother, and his interactions with Elsa. 

That familial relationship hits to the core and it's what makes the movie meaningful. Johansson is just too damn charming in this film and Griffin and McKenzie crush it, especially since they carry much of the film. 

The movie is also really, really funny, but also hits a lot of emotional chords. If you're prone to crying in emotional films, you better bring the tissue box because this one is gonna get you. 

I think some of the weaker parts were when they were focusing on Rockwell, Allen, and Wilson. I am starting to understand the underground love for Sam Rockwell and he really crushes it in this film, but again, those three are mainly played as the fools and the movie probably could have done a little bit less with them. 

There's just a lot that is really charming about this movie. And even the weaker parts still got a laugh out of me now and again. 

The messaging behind the film is pretty relevant for today when it highlights the different opinions and belief we all have and how those opinions, or worse prejudices, can be crystalized into ideology when we lose track of the humanity of one another. 

The difficult thing about my last two reviews is that I watched two really good movies, this and I, Tonya. It's frankly hard to really criticize these two movies that I had a lot of fun watching. 

I highly recommend watching Jojo Rabbit. 

But what did you think? Comment and Discuss below! I obviously need some help finding what's wrong with this film. You can also send your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog. 

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I, Tonya

 

The story of Tonya Harding was never really one that was very interesting to me. Not to age myself, but I was a little young to understand the story when it happened in real life and as the movie sort of alludes to, she fell into obscurity after the whole ordeal. However, since the movie came out in 2017, I have heard enough people really praise this movie, especially people I wouldn't expect to be really into a movie about figure skating. So I thought I'd give it a try. 

As mentioned already and should be pretty obvious, I, Tonya is a semi-biographical story, based on conflicting interviews, of Tonya Harding (played by Margot Robbie). If you're like me, you may be going into this story with no inclination of who Tonya Harding is or what her background is but the movie does a pretty good job at placing her in the middle of a working class, poor family and consistently trying to shed that perception. 

Tonya grows up with her abusive mother (played by Allison Janey) who pushes her into skating and forces her to be the best. Eventually she grows up, meets, and eventually marries Jeff Gillooly (played by Sebastian Stan) who is also abusive towards her. Her escape becomes skating, but she struggles with the perception of being "white trash" or not wholesome enough to be very successful, showing the politics of the skating world other than focusing on the talent. 

This of course all leads up to "the incident" where a man assaults Tonya's rival Nancy Kerrigan with a baton, breaking her leg, and with ties back to Jeff and Tonya. The movie dives pretty deep into that and its fascinating because the movie is presented in somewhat of a mockumentary form where present-day Tonya and Jeff, as well as other characters are giving their accounts of what happened and it's not totally clear who was involved and at what level. 

The movie as a whole is very self aware and is paired with narration and testimony from Tonya, from Jeff, from her mother, from all these other characters providing a cast of unreliable story tellers. 

The focus is less on totally determining the people behind the assault, and more focusing on the life of this uniquely talented woman born in the wrong neighborhood, and raised in the wrong family for the talent that she had. 

I think some of the best comparisons I can draw in this movie is that the toxic relationships happening in white working class environments remind you of something out of a Stephen King horror story. I think there's something about the real-ness of the ways in which people can inflict trauma on one another that is both spooky and real to us that you are able to see in Stephen King novels and I, Tonya taps into that. It's not a horror movie by any means, but it has that uneasiness about it paired with dark comedy. 

I think the other comparison would be the ways in which this movie reminds me of something like Fargo where its focusing on true crime in unorthodox places. The culture of figure skating is not what you'd expect to be in the center of assault charges and conspiracy, but it some how manages to be in a super interesting way. 

It should go without saying that the performances in this movie are very good. I have yet to find a performance from Margot Robbie that I disliked and the rest of the cast is right there with her. Sebastian Stan draws a really weird line of being an absolute scumbag and someone you relate to, and there's a reason Allison Janey won an Oscar for this performance because she's just a weird but compelling character throughout. 

I've seen some criticisms that the movie paints Harding as a victim and doesn't exactly tell a whole lot of truth in the film. While I understand that criticism, I would say that the movie disclaims at the beginning that the narrators of this film are unreliable and contradictory. If you're going into this movie to gain all the facts of the case, this is not going to be an objective story at all. 

But I would argue that's not really the point. I would imagine there's a podcast out there about the facts of the case. But I, Tonya provides a real unsettling, uniquely told dark comedy on a person I didn't know too much about. 

I became interested in this film when a podcaster said that that this was a movie he has watched multiple times and he loved it a lot. Everyone has their preferences so I'm not bashing him, I guess I'd be interested to see how this movie holds up a second time, especially considering I wasn't particularly interested in the topic before I saw the movie and still am not super interested in after seeing it. 

It's a good movie, no doubt about it. I just don't know how interested I am in watching it again. I know that the first time I saw it I really enjoyed it and I kind of forgot about it until I needed to finish this review. 

But you will have to let me know what you think. Overall, I really liked I, Tonya and would say that it's a pretty easy movie to pick up and watch almost casually. I will give credit where its due, a lot of movies that are going for awards feel like events for me and I just want something casual to watch. I, Tonya is like watching a really good, and funny, episode of a true crime show. Great performances from the actors involved and a great example of unreliable narrators telling an interesting story. 

Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog. 

Thanks for reading!

Bodyguard

So I'm only getting to Bodyguard now because while it looked interesting when it first came out, I heard some pretty mediocre reviews of it. With Netflix its kind of a waiting game for me to determine if a series is really worth checking out or just something to waste time on a weekend. Bodyguard honestly is somewhere in between. 

Bodyguard follows the story of David Budd (played by Richard Madden), a Sergeant in the London

Police Protective Services and a war veteran. After an act of heroism, he is assigned on the protective detail (think secret service) of Great Britain's Home Secretary Julia Montague (played by Keeley Hawes).

The relationship between the two begins tense and is only exacerbated by Montague's hard line on counter-terrorism and borderline surveilance state policies becoming very personal to David's personal troubles coping with his military experience. On face value, the premise is an interesting look at the dichotomy between David's professional committments versus is own personal opinions of Montague's policies. But like most of these Homeland/24/Jack Ryan-like shows, the plot unravels a huge conspiracy with leaks, terrorists, and political intrigue. 

Right off the bat, there was something a little weird about Bodyguard. I was interested on how you make a character like David Budd, the attractive strong jawed white male government agent action hero, interesting as he's been done a million times before. Bodyguard really emphasises the fact that he's clearly got PTSD and he's not all there, but the reality is, he doesn't have much of a personality right off the bat. 

To give some credit to the show's first episode, the first 15 minutes are pretty great as David finds a

suicide bomber on a train he's on with his kids. He's able to build rapport with the bomber, talk her out of it, and save everyone on board. It's intense, but it's also contrary to the typical national security storylines where everything is dealt with gun play. The exchange in the start of the show made me think there was something deeper to this character and I'll give all the credit to Richard Madden for nailing this first segment. 

The problems come later when he's actually doing his protective detail job and beyond because all that personality and charm goes out the window when he's supposed to be this stoic almost robotic figure. Seriously when he's on the job, I akin him to Arnold Schwartzenegger in the Terminator movies. He's very professional, he's looking for these potential threats and all you have to do is add a red tinted robot view scanning for threats to complete the package. But then this is also offset by moments where he's supposed to come off as unhinged and dealing with his PTSD. 

Again, there was something you could have done with this where you really leverage this professional who's really good at his job with the unhinged war torn Veteran trying to come to grips with his lacking faith in his country. But the show didn't do that. It wanted to keep the likeable duty bound action hero in tact for future seasons and you can do two of the three, but not all three. 

My difficult relationship with this show is made more difficult by how the show largely is two in one with the first half examining that character study of a war torn veteran divided by his duty and his personal beliefs in the first half then a conspiracy in the second half. All of that comes down to Keeley Hawes as Julia Montague. 

Thinking about it now, Hawes is definitely the best part of the show. While David Budd could have been a complex character, Julia Montague is incredibly complex and you're never really sure where she stands and if she's using people for her own political benefit or if she's sincere. 

The first half of the season mainly focuses on dichotomy between Budd and Montague, and while I wish that could have been fleshed out more throughout the entire season, I do think it is good. 

My issues comes more in the second half of the season where they start to dive more into the conspiracy going on behind the scenes. This is where the show starts to feel a little bit more like a typical 24/Jack Ryan type show with terrorists, criminal elements, government plots, etc, all coming to a finale that is fine, but nothing that hasn't been done before. Any kind of question of David Budd's mental state or loyalty goes out the window and it just becomes action hero versus the bad guys. Again, not bad, it just didn't fit with the rest of the narrative that was provided prior. 

And again, it's just kind of weird. Maybe it's a British thing, but the style of the show feels too artsy for what it ended up accomplishing. The show at the end of the day doesn't feel like its saying much but it does have random artistic choices that don't feel consistent. If they wanted to do a straight up British version of Jack Ryan, okay, do that. But don't throw in these artsy angles and try to cram deep ideas into it. Accept what you are, or try to be what you want to be.

The show is only 6 episodes and I don't think it allowed plot points to really marinate very much. The last two episodes feel very bloated and while it's interesting, it feels overly convoluted in a way to get to a suspenseful conclusion and again, all the complex ideas presented in the first half go out the window. 

At the end of the day, I can sort of see what Bodyguard might have been trying to accomplish. The characters are performed well even though they're not written to the conclusions they set up. The plot starts off as complex but ultimately reverts back to the same old same old. And the style, while unique, doesn't fit with the end, somewhat shallow, result. At the end of the day you end up with another suspenseful action drama that you might get with a 24 or Jack Ryan, just British. Which is fine. If you're like me and need an injection of action in your life, Bodyguard might be for you. There's some intense scenes, ridiculous conspiracies, and fun intrigue, but you're not gonna get much beyond that. 

It's not particularly deep or saying anything of note. I have heard that it's been confirmed for a second season and I am pretty apathetic to that idea. I don't see myself watching it immediately after it releases and it'll probably end up being the same situation I did with the first season, it'll be something I check out when the hype is over. It wasn't a complete waste, just nothing more than something to fill up a weekend. 

But those are my thoughts on Bodyguard? What did you think? Do you think they can up the ante with the second season? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as requests for films and TV shows I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog. 

Thanks for reading!

VEEP (Seasons 5-7)

So I think I knew that VEEP eventually evolved beyond a show about the first female Vice President of the United States and she would, in one way or another eventually be the actual President, I guess I just didn't know how it was going to end and I will say, the last three seasons of VEEP really don't go any which way you think they're going to go. With very few exceptions, the show continues to shake up the fate of the characters, the premise, and just the stakes to the point that even though the finale kind of came out of nowhere for me (I'll talk about Season 7 in a little bit more in depth later), it built up so well that the ending felt perfectly landed. 

My first review was of the first four seasons of VEEP, this one will conclude my thoughts on the series as a whole giving my honest opinion of what I liked, what I didn't, and why. 

Much of the fourth season was Selina Meyer (played by Julia Louis Dreyfus) adjusting to the role of President while running to legitimize herself as an elected President. Season 5 picks up after the election is a tie and there needs to be a tie breaker vote in the House of Representatives. 

I think the draw of Season 5 is this is where she really starts to take the gloves off. The show is by no means a rosy picture of politics, but Season 5 is where VEEP distinguishes itself as a dark comedy, not just a ridiculous satire. There are a lot of moments that are funny, but ultimately very dark. It's also where things start to go off the rails a little bit, but in a good way. Some unthinkable things start to happen and it's really, really entertaining. 

I will say a theme among all three of these seasons with maybe the exception of Season 7 is the idea that while Seasons 1-4 were largely this cast of characters failing upwards, Seasons 5 and 6 definitely feel like they're just failing. 

Vox did a review of Season 6 where they essentially say its a smaller, meaner version of the previous seasons and I would agree with that. 

Without getting into too many spoilers. Season 6 is all about cementing a legacy but it also just feels a little smaller. With that being said, Season 6 arguably has some of the best performances from Julia Louis Dreyfus and explores some elements of DC politics that aren't as out front. 

There is an episode where she's doing a lot of back door dealing with a Qataris Prince (played by Usman Ally) which is a lot of fun. There are a couple episodes where you dive into Selina's backstory and why she is the way she is. 

I think of the three seasons I'm examining, Season 6 is definitely the weaker of the seasons because it lacks the clearest goal and feels more meandering than the other two. The 

Season 7 on the other hand is where things get realigned and it comes crashing towards a really brutal but hilarious end. 

While Season 6 was probably the season that took me the longest to get through, likely finishing it in two weeks, Season 7 I blew through in two days. 

Everyone is alligned towards the goal of the 2020 (I think) election and while the fast pace of the season might be due to the fact that it has less episodes, it is just a lot of fun. 

Part of the appeal of this show is the applications of these specific character types in a slew of situations. I mentioned in the previous review that Jonah Ryan (played by Timothy Simmons) is easily my favorite character in the show and he only continues to be the horrible person he is, but they expand him more and more as he goes along. The same goes for the other characters. Reid Scott plays Dan Egan and he shows the side of Cable News and how they cover politics. Anna Chlumsky continues to play the uptight campaign manager type who is toxically loyal to Selina despite being being treated horribly. 

A really great element of the show is how nothing is done on accident and everything almost certainly comes back around. Even little details have their impacts and it gets baked in with Arrested Development style in-humor. The show only gets more absurd but in a way that isn't really that absurd in relation to the world of politics. It's a brilliantly smart show and I was laughing in almost every episode, even the ones I didn't really like or remember that well. 

I mentioned this a little bit already, but I think the characters of the show get a little bit old when it feels like they're meandering back into similar situations they've been in in the past. 

At many points in these seasons, they're scattered doing different things, working different jobs in a way to show how incestuous life on the beltway can be, but I think these characters are funnier when they're together. 

My issue is more that these characters are mostly caricatures showing different aspects of the DC life. They're funny, but when they meander into the same scenarios over and over and over again with no change, it does feel a little repetetive. A good example is Selina's daughter Catherine (played by Sarah Sutherland). She's a really funny character and she sort of changes, but there seemed to be a couple of points that should have just cut the ties between Selina and her family and that never really happens. It's only exacerbated by the meandering moments and I think if they had done away with Season 6, or paired it down to be the first half of Season 7, it would have felt just a tad more succinct. 

On a side note, Sam Richardson is a delight in this show because he's one of the only characters who is legitimately a good person and they do his character so much justice that it's hilarious. 

The truth is, any "criticisms" I have of this show are pretty minor considering that it is a hilariously poignant show. There are hopeful shows about politics and then there are dark shows about Politics. If House of Cards is the dark dreary version of the West Wing, then VEEP is the dark dreary, and more popular version of Spin City. 

I do definitely recommend it if you haven't checked it out. For how much it feels like an HBO show, it is an easy watch. One criticism I have of HBO is that their shows, while great in quality, often feel very dense and not easy to watch unless you're totally invested. VEEP manages to be somewhere in between HBO deep and a casual watch. Obviously if you're totally invested you're going to pick up on the in jokes and facial reactions, but you can gather what's going on and really enjoy the wacky ride these truly horrible people are on. 

But those are my thoughts on VEEP (season 5-7). What did you think? What seasons of VEEP do you prefer? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films and TV shows I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog. 

Thanks for Reading!

House of Saddam (HBO Miniseries)

So this was a miniseries that I had been interested in since it aired in 2008. I never came around to watch it and every time I would get access to HBO, I'd always see it and think to myself, Why haven't I watched that yet? There's nothing really special about the current world we live in or what's going on that this applies to, but I figured it might be a good time to finally watch House of Saddam and figure out what my personal fuss over the past 12 years has been.

It's a four part mini series. I will break the review into four sections where I talk about what each one covers and what I liked and didn't like about each, but for the most part, I'm viewing this sort of as a 4 hour movie that I am watching in pieces because despite what I thought going into quarantine, I don't have much interest in watching 3-4 hour long movies (even The Irishmen).

It should be noted that because I have a little bit of a nerdy history side, I was pairing my watching of this show with the Wikipedia of Saddam Hussein and the history of Iraq. It should be noted that the viewing did sort of need some context to understand the events of the show, especially if you're like me and you don't know the history of Iraq very well.

Part 1

House of Saddam begins in 1979. Saddam Hussein (played by Yigal Naor) is the Vice President of Iraq and in the first 10-15 minutes of the show forces the resignation of the current President and installs his own control over Iraq.

His seizure of power does not remain peaceful for long as he begins to execute those opposed to his Presidency and even those in favor of it to show his power.

This starts off the reign of Saddam Hussein and it is one of unchecked power and dictatorship. The first part covers the war in Iran in 1980 as well as the relationships between Hussein and his family and officials within his government. The relationships center around this power dynamic where Saddam is at the top and people come in and out of usefulness to him. 

For example, Said Taghmaoui plays Saddam's half brother Barzan Ibrahim and while he supports Saddam's rise to power, that relationship sours pretty quickly after Ibrahim is unable to carry out all of Saddam's wishes  to the letter. He is quickly replaced by Hussein Kamel (played by Amr Waked) who marries Saddam's daughter and starts a rivalry for Saddam's affections with his sons in the following parts. 

Another notable performances are that of Shohreh Aghdashloo who plays Saddam's first wife and she provides an interesting look into the political structure of Iraq all the way up to the 2000s where political appointments were really dependent on who you were related to. 

Part 2 and Part 3

As we move into the second part, it focuses on Hussein at his "peak" where he's been in power for a while and the he's deciding the foreign policy that essentially makes him a piraha on the national stage. Part three focuses on Hussein after the first Gulf War but actually hones more than ever on the relationships and betrayals happening within the "house of Saddam"

I do find the show to be interesting the fact that its presented as this sort of Macbethian/House of Cards style (although the American House of Cards had yet to air) to it, with multiple political factions forming within the people surrounding Saddam and reacting to his tyranical rule. Again, the role of who is in Saddam's depends on who says they will do his crazy wishes and full his unhinged nature. But the problem with that is that Hussein was known to be a delusional figure and his view of himself and Iraq were just that, delusions. The whole series can be broken down to a new figure each hour saying Saddam are you sure that crazy idea you have is a good idea? And Saddam saying, Of course it is, it is for the glory of Iraq or some nonsense. 

It should be clear that my issue with this show isn't so much about Yigal Naor's performance. He has a great voice and he plays the character really well. 

It's more that Saddam Hussein is not a very complicated character even though they try to make him one. The show is bound by historical accuracy and instead of making him a compelling character, it's bound by how history actually unfolded. 

The third part of this show was honestly the slowest episode even though it probably had some of the more interesting political intrigue. At this point Hussein Kamal has really fallen out of favor and he flees Iraq to help the CIA overthrow Saddam. But again, the show is handcuffed by historical events that a lot of the tension that is built up between characters is really lost because while Kamal has feuds with Saddam's unhinged son (played by Philip Arditti), it wasn't that son that ended up killing Kamal in the end. Maybe I shouldn't have had the wikipedia page up while I was watching the show because it kind of took the tension out of all of it when I knew that a lot of these people died when Coalition troops entered Iraq in 2003. 

Part 4

Part 4 mainly takes place after the 2003 invasion and Saddam is evading capture. I think this episode worked better because they start off with a disclaimer that not much is known about the time after the invasion but before his capture, so they are able to take a little more liberties with the details surrounding this time. 

Again, the episode feels very much the same because it's just him delusionally thinking that he's going to come back to power all the way up to the point where he's captured, but at least this episode had a change of setting and some suspense about when he was actually going to be pulled up from that iconic hole in the ground. 

I do think though that this episode could have been reformatted to be about the legal case against Saddam ending in his execution in 2006. The show largely skips that and ends with a text box that says he was executed. I don't know if it was a budgetary thing or if the show thought it would be more valuable to spend a lot of time with Saddam fishing with a random kid outside of his hideout, but hey that's why I don't make miniseries. 

It should be noted that this show is about 12 years old. While HBO had some good production value back then, House of Saddam feels very limited in the story its trying to tell and some of the intrigue it was supposed to provide. While action is clearly not the focus, it's pretty clunky when it happens and it feels like the whole show is kind of holding back some of the gruesome-ness for the sake of promoting the political intrigue, but the intrigue also feels held back by history and not taking too many liberties. 

Overall, I think there were parts of this that could have been cut and the whole thing probably could have been made into a 2 and a half or 3 hour long movie. While the episodes are only an hour long, they just crawl and I had a hard time getting through the whole thing. 

At the end of the day I'm glad I can say that I finished the miniseries, but I can't say I recommend it. There are a lot of political dramas out there and while House of Saddam does show that drama from the perspective of a middle eastern dictator, I can't say it's up there among the products that HBO has produced. 

But those are my thoughts on House of Saddam. What did you think? Has anybody else seen this show since 2008? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog. 

Thanks for reading!

Palm Springs

I'm always a little wary when I see a movie (or TV show) say that they're doing the whole Groundhogs Day time loop story. I'm not opposed to it, I've said it before and I'll say it again, Groundhogs Day doesn't have a patent on that kind of story and we continue to see it done well, but I need something new to be brought to the table. Although I do have to give props to the person who thought releasing this in the middle of a pandemic and a lot of people are self confining themselves to home and starting to feel like their lives are groundhogs days, well done.

Palm Springs follows the story Nyles and Sarah (played by Andy Sandberg and Cristin Milioti). Sarah is the maid of honor at her sisters wedding in Palm Beach and Nyles is the boyfriend of one of the bridesmaids. The two meet and hit it off pretty well. However things go awry when a mysterious man attacks Nyles and Sarah follows Nyles into a mysterious cave.

In Groundhogs Day, Edge of Tomorrow, and Russian Doll fashion, Sarah is sent to the start of that day and only her and Nyles are cognizant of the fact that they're in one of those "time loop situations you may have heard about". It does not matter what they do, how many times they die, every time the two of them fall asleep, they wake up the same morning on November 8th the morning of Sarah's sister's wedding.

So like I said, I'm not opposed to the time loop situation story being reused, but I want to see something new. For example, Edge of Tomorrow made the loop the result of an alien tactic in the middle of a science fiction futuristic war. Russian Doll took the premise into TV form and put an emphasis on death. Palm Springs is probably the closest to Groundhogs Day in premise but there are a few differences that make it stand apart.

It takes a little bit from Russian Doll by having two people in the loop instead of just one, but the difference is that one has been doing the loop for far longer than the other one. At the start of the movie, Nyles has been in the loop so long that he can't remember what he did for a job prior to going into the loop. He's gone through all the phases of the time loop situation where he's no longer trying to get out of it and has just accepted his fate.

Sarah instead is at the beginning of her journey. The movie even winks at the premise of Groundhogs Day by going straight to the point of the story where the characters try to do good deeds to get out of the loop and it falls back into their face. So the meat of the movie is actually at the point where Sarah sort of accepts where she's at at the two just kind of hang out. Which sounds boring but it does feed into the fact that this is much more of a romantic comedy than a comedy.

And this works because Cristin Milioti and Andy Sandberg play off one another pretty well. Some of the most fun was when these two are just having fun and getting to know one another really well.

There's also a really fun element of the character of Roy that is introduced early on.

JK Simmons plays Roy, another guy at the wedding who Nyles brings into the time loop after a night of partying and is an example of someone else at a different stage of that time loop personal journey, but instead periodically comes to Palm Spring to let out anger at the guy who put him in a time loop for the rest of his life.

He's not as involved in the story as I wish he was, but he does play an important part in giving the film a sort of realistic edge. There's a point where Nyles says the pain is real and while they always wake up being a bad person in a time loop still would have an effect on someone and it's something they have to carry with them. 

For as much as this movie is a comedy, and I found myself laughing a lot, it does find itself getting very serious at times and it took me off guard. 

The movie seems like it's pretty low budget and it relies a lot on the acting of Milioti and Sandberg.

Which again, I don't have a huge problem with, they're good actors and they work well together. But when you have a premise that starts off really silly, two actors that I've seen mostly in comedies doing some relatively serious acting, it definitely threw me off.

The movie's third act is good... ish. The second act is mainly them goofing off and having a good time together whereas the third act kind of devolves into stereotypical rom com formula. It's by no means bad, but there were a few conventions and characters hurdles that seemed a little just a little too conventional for a story that starts off no where near conventional.

If you have Hulu, it's definitely one to check out because its probably one of the better original movies I've seen in a little bit. Movies being released directly to streaming services is probably going to be a trend we're going to see more of with the pandemic still making theatrical releases less common and I imagine we'll start to see the quality start to improve. For this part, Palm Springs is a good movie that clips along, clocking at about 90 minutes. If a movie can be concise like this one can, I'm all for it.

But those are my thoughts on Palm Springs. What did you think? What has been your favorite original film thrown on a streaming service as of late? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

Thanks for Reading!

Space Force (Season 1)

I like most people was very excited for the release of Space Force on Netflix from the minute it was announced. Politics aside, the concept of making a 6th branch of the military focused on space has a lot of comedic elements to it that could be really funny if executed correctly. And I think we all thought that we were in good hands with Steve Carrell not only starring but producing it with his The Office partner Greg Daniels.

The end result is a pretty mixed bag...

Space Force follows the story of General Mark Naird (played by Steve Carrell). Upon receiving a long awaited promotion, he is tasked with heading the newest branch of the military Space Force.

The briefest summary would be that the show is a work place comedy set a year into his tenure as head of space force as he and his chief scientist Dr. Adrian Mallory (played by John Malkovich) strive to put "boots on the moon". Naird has to maneuver the unique cast of characters employed under him while also dealing with an unorthodox family situation with his teenage daughter (played by Diana Silvers) rebelling and his wife (played by Lisa Kudrow) in prison.

It would be an understatement to say that the show is ambitious and attempts to cover a lot of ground in what is seemingly just a workplace comedy. I think a lot of people thought, due to the ridiculousness of the plot, that this show would have a similar cynical humor to that of the Office. The main joke at the crux of this show is how ridiculous the idea of a space force is at this moment in history. By all accounts, this show is a ripe set up to be a parody with a lot of underhanded commentary about the current administration and the ridiculousness of the current administration.

And yet it's all pushed off balance by an unexpected attempt at sincerity to it all.

Everything from the colors, the over the top nature of everything going on in this show, and the cast scream of parody. Ben Schwartz playing the Space Force PR guy, John Malkovich and Carrell in their respective role, all of these characters seem more like caricatures, and yet there are sincere attempts to humanize them and get the audience invested in the personal lives of these people.

What's more, starting with the first episode the show tries to get the audience to see the scientific achievement and American-ness of exploration in space. And honestly a part of it is done effectively.

A lot of that is due to the solidness of the cast, even when they're utilized in counter productive ways.

I've been watching a lot of Steve Carrell lately these days and I do have to say that it doesn't matter what he's in, he is a solid actor as well as a solid comedic force. It is an understatement to say that he carries this show.

But the show is helped by the rest of the cast as well and the dynamics that are built throughout the show, even if they feel kind of hamfisted in there. A great example is the relationship between Dr. Mallory and General Naird. At first I was unsure if I was going to like the two but by the end I really did enjoy the contrast between the two.

While Ben Schwartz is just criminally underutilized in this show, he still manages to absolutely crush it later on in the season. Jimmy Yang, Tawny Newsome, Don Lake, all end up being really funny characters. That cast isn't the problem, it's how they're used.

The characters are overall pretty unevenly focused on throughout the show. There are also characters who you don't realize are going to be recurring characters because their exposure is so sporatic. You don't realize that these are recurring characters until you've seen them a couple times and realize that they're the same people from before.

Furthermore, it often feels like when they were writing the episodes they had all the characters on a cork board and determined how they were going to write the episode based on which characters hadn't had a pairing yet. Certain episodes feel like they just paired two characters together and said, "let's see what happens with these two".

And then you get to the weird situation that is General Naird's family.

I'll talk about the good first, but honestly there isn't a whole lot of good here.

When Lisa Kudrow is allowed to be Lisa Kudrow, she's hilarious...

End of good stuff...

That being said the whole subplot of her being in prison feels out of nowhere and just unnecessary. And they do the same thing with her that they do with the premise of the show. A ridiculous situation like a general's wife driven to commit an unknown crime that puts her in jail for 40+ years is a pretty ridiculous situation, so trying to humanize it and give us "touching" moments between her and Steve Carrell just feels weird and off putting.

Also, his daughter is by far the worst written character in the show. I have no qualms with Diana Silvers, I'm blaming the writers because they didn't give anything for this young actress to work with. Most of the time when she's on screen I am bored, and her character just comes off as pretentious. Of all the things this show tries to accomplish, an angsty teenage girl subplot feels very awkward.

I think the biggest problem with the show is that it aired without having a clear vision of what it wanted to be.

Is the show a commentary on current events? Is it a heartfelt comedy? Is it a comedy of errors? Is it awkward comedy? I honestly don't know and I don't think they do either.

I heard that the show was renewed for a second season and I'm kind of lukewarm on that idea.

I know that Carrell's awkward humor in the first season of The Office needed an episode to marinate and really figure out what it was going to be. Maybe that's what Space Force needs, it needed a mulligan season to get the ball rolling.

And I think this show could work. There were a lot of jokes that had me laughing pretty hard. I also found some of the military and political humor really unique (though there might be some who don't get it). I think the biggest problem is that it doesn't know what concept, character, or even joke to spend the right amount of time on. I've already spoken a little bit about the characters uneven utilization, but the jokes are kind of the crux of whether this show was going to land.

There's a lot of concepts that make really funny jokes in this show, for example a monkey that is in a satelite. It's a really funny idea, dipped in historical accuracy. Why not poke fun at a concept like space travel that hasn't had that much exploration from a creative stand point?

But when it gets extrapolated into an entire episode, it kind of loses the humor. Sometimes it comes back around because it gets so stupid its funny again, but most time its just kind of exhausting. And the same goes for a lot of the plotlines, character arcs, and even smaller jokes. There's just something off about the way a lot of these story elements were executed and instead of really enjoying watching Space Force, I was just tired.

There's just enough in there to make me come back when a second season drops on Netflix, but it will only be to see if the first season was just a fluke.

I think a lot of people wanted this show to be good. I know I did. I'm still holding out hope that it could be. The ingredients are all there, I think there just needs to be a reshuffle of how they're being utilized.

Overall, I have to agree with the prevailing opinion that Space Force leaves a lot to be desired. I can't say the entire experience was unenjoyable, but I can't recommend it right now. I really hope I come back in a review of the second season and say that it's good and you should give it a chance, but if you haven't watched it right now, maybe wait and see if the second season is able to avoid the failure to launch that Season 1 was. (I had to throw in one space joke...)

But those are my thoughts on Space Force Season 1. What did you think? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films or TV shows I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

Thanks for reading!

Da 5 Bloods

So I don't usually do reviews for documentaries, at least not yet. But I felt it was relevant (and really wanted to note) that I watched the 10 part docuseries by Ken Burns on the Vietnam War prior to watching this movie. I highly recommend that movie in order to get a really in depth look into the Vietnam War, and you'll also understand some of the historical references they make in this film.

Da 5 Bloods follows the story of a group of Vietnam veterans returning to Vietnam in the present day to search for the remains of their fallen squad leader (played by Chadwick Boseman).

But the group is also going to recover a trove of gold they had buried during their time there.

The group is made up of four older black men. There's Otis, the medic (played by Clarke Peters), Paul, a harsh conservative man with pretty bad PTSD (played by Delroy Lindo), and Eddie and Melvin (played by Norm Lewis and Isiah Witlock Jr respectively) honestly they're a little harder to describe. Along with them is also Paul's son David (played by Jonathan Majors) who has a troubled relationship with his father.

Along the way they meet a slew of characters including a woman who Otis fathered a child with back during Vietnam (played by Le Y Lan), the fixer they are looking to move the gold through (played by Jean Russo), as well as a group of young people in Vietnam removing mines from the jungle.

The story is driven by the relationship between the core cast and them not only processing what happened to them in Vietnam in relation with the treatment of people of color not only in and during Vietnam, but in America and since Vietnam. Most notably, Delroy Lindo delivers a dynamite performance as an unreliably intense member of the group. He had the closest relationship with their squad leader and wants his remains to be found, but there's also an aspect throughout the group of "gold sickness" that... sort of works...

The first thing to know about this movie is that it follows the same stylistic choices you might see in other Spike Lee films.In fact some of the same effects and camera manipulation that was used in BlackkkKlansman is used in Da 5 Bloods. But there's other things worth mentioning that are kind of interesting. The movie jumps back and forth (honestly kind of infrequently) between the present and the time the men had in Vietnam. But instead of deaging the men or recasting them as younger people, you instead see a bunch of old guys running around the jungle with Chadwick Boseman. Or late in the film there's a scene where Delroy Lindo talks straight to camera in a really awesome soliloquy.

Overall the stylistic choices a bit of a mixed bag. The sound track contributes, creating this seemingly epic backdrop for a really interesting story. At the same time, some of the stylistic choices lead to gaps in the story. There's actually a part where one of the characters is captured off screen after having a really touching moment and I had to rewind to make sure I didn't miss anything. I didn't, it was just a little disjointed at times and I'm not sure if all of it was stylistic.

Which is odd because the movie is probably about a half hour too long. Prior to watching it, I heard someone say pretty succinctly that Da 5 Bloods felt like Netflix gave Spike Lee a blank check to make a movie and Lee wrote and shot everything off his first draft. And I would agree with that.

The whole story seems overly fleshed out in some areas like the character of Paul and his relationship with David, or the group's remembrance of their fallen squad leader, which was really good, while also feeling too thin on other areas like Eddie and Melvin's characters, or the random deminers they find, or the dynamics of Jean Russo's organization, or the build up of the "gold sickness".

At a certain point in the movie, somebody warns Otis that gold makes people go crazy, and it puts it in the mind of the audience that these guys are going to get greedy over the gold, but it doesn't really build very well. Yeah they have disagreements about people's shares, but the "money is the root of all evil" discussion happens very randomly and kind of out of no where. Maybe I was too used to the reasonableness I saw in Longshot earlier yesterday, but the "gold sickness" felt very unnecessary, especially when they inject other forces to create barriers for these guys to get home with no problem.

The movie is also kind of hamstringed by Spike Lee throwing in unorganic history lesson tidbits seemingly out of nowhere. For a lot of the movie the dialogue is really organic and while some of the main characters aren't as fleshed out as others, the chemistry between these guys is really good. Then all of a sudden a character out of nowhere will add a piece of black history really out of nowhere accompanied by historical pictures and facts thrown on screen. Maybe it's because I just watched the Ken Burns documentary and knew a lot of the facts they throw up on screen, but it feels very exposition-y for being facts that don't fully contribute to the story of these guys directly. I remember Lee doing that in BlackkKlansman but I also remember it feeling a lot more organic, while this felt disjointed with what is a really unique and intriguing story.

I've said it a couple of times, the performances in this movie are really good but Delroy Lindo stands out immensely. Again, the "gold sickness" was odd, but I felt with Lindo's character, it was more than that and he was definitely the character who was most developed.

Jonathan Majors also stood out. I'm glad he's continuing to get work, especially after what I saw from him in The Last Black Man in San Francisco.

Overall, I think the things that really carry this movie is the story. Four black Vets going back to Vietnam to recover their fallen brother's remains and gold is a really unique and harrowing story. I think I just wish there had been a couple of refinements. It's Spike Lee so you have to expect some current political commentary but while BlackkKlansman seemed to be a direct response to Charlottesville, this movie was likely in the can before it could be directly targetted as a response to the killing of George Floyd. And I think the broad message of black empowerment that Lee has in his films would have worked, especially considering the unique historical backdrop of this story, but the references to Trump, BLM, and other current events felt more scattershot and unrefined in this movie.

Overall, I liked Da 5 Bloods. It never felt too long, it just felt unrefined both on run time and use of style. I really enjoyed the characters, I just would have liked to learn more about the ones surrounding Delroy Lindo and Jonathan Majors. The story and the performances carry this movie through a lot of my critiques and if you're looking for something pretty unique as well as want to learn some history (and don't want to spend a long time watching 10 hour and a half long episodes of Ken Burn's Vietnam War docuseries) I do recommend Da 5 Bloods.

But those are my thoughts on Da 5 Bloods. What did you think? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for future films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

Thanks for reading!

Longshot

We live in a pretty politically divisive time. So political romantic comedies are an interesting genre that has to be done with a lot of care or else it'll just fall flat. In the case of Longshot, it was kind of a mixed bag of formulaic romantic comedy tropes, mixed with some unique writing and storytelling, both of which both works and doesn't work.

Longshot follows the story of Fred Flarsky (played by Seth Rogen) a journalist who quits his job after the website he writes for is acquired by a big corporate conglomerate owned by a man named Parker Wembley (played very well by Andy Serkis that I didn't recognize him until half way through the movie and only when he was in a very well lit room).

On the other side of the movie, you have Secretary of State Charolette Fields (played by Charlize Theron), a rising star embarking on a run for President when the current President (played by Bob Odenkirk) reveals that he's not running for a second term.

As per usual in these romantic comedies, through a comedy of errors they run across one another and realize that they know each other from childhood. Fields hires Flarsky as a speech writer and as they get to know each other more and more, they begin an unlikely friendship that blossoms into an even unlikelier romantic relationship.

While the movie follows some of the same formulas of any generic romantic comedy, there were two things that really kept me engaged in this movie.

The first is the surprising chemistry between Rogen and Theron. Just like in real life, Theron is portrayed in this movie as this elegant goddess-like figure and rightfully juxtaposed to Rogen who is not an elegant figure on so many levels. And yet this relationship ends up working really well because not only do they vibe well together, they take the time to really build up the relationship. They don't fall right into the sack with one another, there's a pretty good montage of the two getting to know one another. It might not be as long of a period within the movie than I thought, but their transition from aquaintances to lovers is very smooth.

The other thing that works is that while there are a lot of formualic moments in this movie, the movie refuses to take on the annoying tropes you'd expect from a romantic comedy where the relationship needs to be kept secret.

Alexander Skarsgard plays the Prime Minister of Canada and is a pretty thinly veiled analogy to current Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The media in the movie speculate that Skarsgard and Theron's characters are romantically invovled and in a paint by numbers script, he'd either be an anatagonist or someone that Rogen's character is jealous of.

But instead, the movie barely has an antagonist at all and everyone acts almost too reasonable for there to be a real conflict at a certain point. The movie trucks along pretty well without a real "villain" until the last third where Serkis's character is developed as a minor foil to the relationship.

The third act of the movie is really where the quality goes down a little bit. It's not horrible, but it does highlight the far fetched nature of the movie as a whole. And to be fair, I don't know a single romantic comedy that doesn't have the third act falling out routine. The thing I appreciate about this film is the reasonableness of everyone and understanding the reality that they live in, but at the same time in order for their to be a happy ending you kind of have to suspend any kind of disbelief that even the movie sort of sets up.

My one double edged critique of this film is the criminal underutilization of O'Shea Jackson Jr and frankly the supporting characters in general.

Jackson is a great example because he basically steals every scene he's in. I get that you need to focus these movies on the two leads, but Jackson, June Diane Raphael, and Andy Serkis were all phenomenal actors who were just under utilized in this film. I haven't seen Straight Outta Compton, but one big take away that I heard about it was that Jackson was phenomenal in it. This might not be the introduction that highlights his talents as much as it could, but he is exemplary of the fantastic cast this movie has, even if its not utilized to the greatest extent.

Longshot reminds me that I don't watch movies to find the perfect film but instead just to be entertained, examine the different kinds of films, and in a sense find some escapism.

The dialogue in the film can be pretty on the nose both in its character development and political "commentary" but this movie is by no means a hugely political movie. The political nature of the movie serves more as a backdrop for a pretty serviceable romantic comedy. If you're looking for an overly smart political movie, you're probably not going to find it here.

Charlize Theron is not only a goddess living among us, she's really funny, especially paired up with Seth Rogen. The movie made me laugh despite being pretty predictable, and every once in a while you need a feel good film.

So while Longshot is by no means a perfect movie, I'd say it's definitely worth checking out if you have the opportunity. It bucks some of the conventions of normal romantic comedies, and gives us pretty great performances from everyone involved.

But those are my thoughts on Longshot. What did you think? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

Thanks for reading!