Atlanta (Season 1 and 2)

This is a show I've wanted to check out for quite a bit of time. I'm a huge Donald Glover fan, I've heard fantastic things about this show, and in the time that I've been lazy and not watching it, almost everyone involved with this show have gone on to do really great things on top of this show. I won't lie and say that current events haven't affected my drive to watch this show and I hope this review doesn't seem exploitive of a moment because that is not the intention. I just think it's better late than never to watch this show, especially after watching the first and second season.

On a side note, I dove right into Season 2 immediately after I finished Season 1 so I didn't see the point in dividing it up because it has felt like a long season rather than two. Now I'll talk about the two halves of that long season but that's the reason why I decided to combine the two season's reviews.

Atlanta follows the story of Ernest "Earn" Marks (played by Donald Glover) a Princeton drop out who is homeless and ultimately just trying to make ends meet while still trying to find what he wants in his life. He sometimes lives with his sort of girlfriend and the mother of his daughter named Vanessa (played by Zazie Beetz.)

His cousin Alfred (played by Brian Tyree Henry) has begun a pretty underground rapping career under the moniker of Paper Boi. In the first episode Earn sees an opportunity to start a career in music management and offers to be Alfred's manager. Lakeith Stanfield plays Alfred's eccentric friend Darius and he's hilarious.

It doesn't feel totally honest saying that the whole plot of the show is Earn maneuvering through the music management world with his cousin. While there are episodes that focus on that, the majority of the show is just Earn, Alfred, Vanessa, and Darius maneuvering through life in ways that are sometimes comedic and sometimes very serious.

It's very hard to really explain what Atlanta is. I would say a lot of the show is Earn and his friends walking through life as black people and their experience. There are episodes dedicated to Earn and Vanessa's relationship or one of the characters going through a normal day. A whole episode in the second season about Alfred getting a haircut.

Especially the first season, I remember watching and thinking that while I don't usually just watch shows about people's lives, I became invested in Earn's story and kept watching not only because the show can be really funny, but because I care about the characters.

And then there's episodes that come out of no where that make you stop for a second and think, what was that and why isn't that the whole show? The comedy goes from average every day scenarios to really funny satirical commentary or almost horror-like and barely funny at all. If you get far enough to know what Teddy Perkins is, you'll thank me later.

Atlanta distinguishes itself by having an all black writing staff and because of that the stories and themes focus a lot on the experience of being a black person in America. There's themes within the episodes, ways that the characters interact with one another, scenarios that they find themselves into that aren't portrayed as genuinely in mainstream shows.

Part of the fun of the show for me came with reading continuous stories about Donald Glover's writing process and what inspires him and the other writers.

I would say it takes a few episodes to really get the real vibe around Atlanta and what kind of show it is. In the first two episodes you think it will be a linear story about Ern as he's trying to be Alfred's manager. But the timeline of the show is very loose, the episodes could seemingly be watched in any order, and it's more about the people rather than the overarching story.

The show is very accessible once you get that understanding, but again, it's kind of hard to explain exactly what the show is because it manages to cover so much ground.

Oddly enough, for how unique Atlanta is, it does kind of fall into the category of other FX shows (What We Do in The Shadows is another example of this) I've seen where on face value, it's not a show I would automatically watch but end up really enjoying when I finally get into it.

The performances are fantastic. I think the thing that does carry you through to the moment where you at least think you've figured this show out (which I'm not totally sure I have) is the characters, the performances, and the writing.

The show is super funny, very reflective, and just a lot different than most shows. I think because it's difficult to explain it gets overlooked by a lot of people but if you have the opportunity, I would say this is a perfect time to check out Atlanta.

But have you seen Atlanta? What do you think? What's your favorite episodes? 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 that 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!

The Wrong Missy

I will give Netflix some credit, they sure know how to make trailers. When I saw the premise for this film, I thought, Oh that's just a generic romantic comedy that I know how it's gonna end and it's probably not gonna be good. But the trailer won over not only me, but some friends and family that I didn't really expect to be won over by this film. Eventually I gave it a try.

The Wrong Missy follows the story of David Spade... I mean Tim Morris (played pretty generically by David Spade, if you've seen a David Spade performance, you've seen this one). He is middle management at a banking company and he is competing for a promotion with another manager by the name of Jess (played by Jackie Sandler).

He also recently experienced a serious break up when his fiance (played by Sarah Clarke) cheated on him. In an attempt to get back on the horse, he goes on a blind date that goes horribly with a woman by the name of Missy (played by Lauren Lapkus). Missy is obnoxious, she carries around a bowie knife, she does voices, she clearly has a drinking problem, and Tim rightly decides that this is not going to work out.

Three months later, right before a big corporate retreat to Hawaii, he meets a woman who is incredibly out of his league by the name of Melissa (played by Molly Sims). The two hit it off but she needs to catch a flight. She tells him that she'll give him her contact information.

Tim decides to make a bold move and invites Melissa to the corporate retreat, but accidentally invites Missy.

And shenanigans ensue. A romantic comedy unfolds with Tim dealing with this obnoxious woman he mistakenly invited while still trying to get the promotion at work.

What I wrote is essentially the first 15 minutes of the film. That seems like a lot but they blow past it actually pretty skillfully in the movie. For a lot of reasons, this film shouldn't work in the first fifteen minutes but for some reason it does. It is clear that the "right" Missy is out of Tim's league, and yet they do share some funny chemistry that works better than I think the film expected. The "wrong" Missy is obnoxious in a way that could be irritating but again, for the purpose for the set up, it's done really well in the set up.

And the character of Missy for the first part of the film is actually done pretty well to be an obnoxious, over the top person that nobody wants to be around. She's done almost too well.

If you've watched an romantic comedy, you can probably guess that there's a sweet underbelly to her obnoxious fascade and there's a certain turn in the movie where David Spade falls in love with her.

But that turn is horribly done in this film. Just horribly... horribly done.

Also, the way the set up was established, it built up Molly Sims character really well as someone that Tim could connect with that it doesn't make sense why he decides to fall for Missy.

The comedy in the film is pretty typical to a Happy Madison produced film. The situations are pretty over the top, Rob Schneider is in it for no reason other than to keep him employed, and at a certain point its not going to be charming anymore.

That's what happened in this film. It started off pretty grounded and started to escalate. It's raunchy but again, it started off pretty well... until about half way through the film where Missy is hypnotizing Tim's boss into thinking that he's his nana and he should give him a promotion. And that's supposed to be the charming turn where Tim decides that he likes Missy. It's all very confusing.

A couple other sides notes, everyone does a pretty good job in this film regardless of the way the movie is written. Like I said David Spade plays the same straight man character he's played for decades, Lauren Lapkus is pretty off puttingly funny almost to a fault. Sarah Clarke didn't need to be in this film. And Nick Swardsdon plays the best friend character and is criminally underutilized. There's a whole side thing where he works in HR and is screening all David Spade's emails and texts and that's actually pretty funny.

Overall, there's a lot of ways this movie could have gone. The premise is pretty decent and builds for some pretty funny comedy. But when the movie takes the typical turns, it loses a lot of steam. There's also a very unique tonal dissonance in the film where certain things are supposed to be played off as romantic, or funny, or charming, and instead they come off as weird because the character of Missy continues to be a psycho.

I think a lot of the credit goes to Lauren Lapkus in this film because she did her character almost too well. The result is a movie that starts off strong, but peeters out near the end because the characters seemed to break out of the conventional cookie cutter mold of this romantic comedy story. It does not stick the landing.

But those are my thoughts on The Wrong Missy. I have been watching a lot of TV as well as some documentaries in case any of you were wondering why its been so sparse recently. I'm hoping to get to more reviews here soon so be patient if you're still out there. In the mean time you can let me know what you thought of this film by commenting and discussing 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, I will get to them post haste. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

Thanks for reading!

Howl's Moving Castle

So I'm going to give a huge disclaimer with this film. This is the first Hayao Miyazaki film I've ever watched. I was never exposed to films like this as a kid and up until now, I hadn't had an avenue where I could easily watch them. I always heard people mention them and I know there's a following. So much that when I got HBO Max and films like this one, my interest had already been peaked and it was immediately on my list. I don't know if Moving Castle is the right film to start off with if I'm a newbie to Miyazaki, but here we go!

Howl's Moving Castle is an animated fantasy film centered on a young woman named Sophie (I watched the English dub so she was voiced by Emily Mortimer). She is a hat maker in a small town in a country at war. At the start of the film, she encounters a wizard by the name of Howl (voiced by Christian Bale). This encounter sets the plot in motion as a witch called The Witch of the Waste (voiced by Lauren Bacall) casts a spell on Sophie turning her into an old woman (voiced by Jean Simmons). Part of the curse is that she can't tell anybody what happened to her. So she leaves the comforts of her home to find a way to lift the curse and encounters the Wizard Howl's moving castle, a structure of buildings on top of each other moving throughout the countryside, powered by a fire demon named Calcifer (voiced by Billy Crystal).

Sophie takes on the position of cleaning woman in the castle and a friendship/family begins with herself, Howl, Calcifer, Howl's apprentice Markl (voiced by Josh Hutcherson), and other unique characters that they eventually meet including a bouncing scarecrow Sophie calls Turniphead.

And honestly, a lot happens in this film. The basic plot is that Sophie is trying to lift the curse as she gets to know Howl and the people living in the castle. But there's also a war going on in the country with vague sides, and influences throughout the conflict that tie directly to Howl's own demons and curses (There were some influences from the War in Iraq that Miyazaki pulled into his writing of the script so that's seen heavily in the way the story is executed).

Again, as a newbie to Miyazaki's movies, I wanna figure out what the draw is and I have to say the best parts in my opinionwere the utilization of the castle and the magic in the world. On face value, the castle is actually kind of ugly and while uniquely designed, doesn't really give the impression of the imaginative abilities it has. But once you're in it, you can see the really imaginative ideas that were implemented in this story.

I also like the world that is created. A lot of it is kept vague, especially the sides in the wars and I imagine some of that is on purpose to promote that pacifist theme of the film, but it was something I do wish they would have explored a little bit more because it had me on the hook for a lot of the film.

I think where the film falters for me is that it tries to do so much in one film that sometimes certain story elements just get glazed over or resolved in super weird ways.

For example, the starting premise of the movie is that Sophie is cursed by the Witch of the Waste and she's gotta find a way to lift that curse. Okay, simple premise.

But without giving too much away, at a certain point lifting that curse is barely a thing anymore and its not totally clear how we transitioned into a massive war with super vague sides, and a love story that feels super rushed. There's no point where the curse is on and then its off, and I could see it being connected to Sophie's self image, but I never felt like we got to know Sophie that much before the curse occurred.

I do wonder if some of it has to do with the translation and this is one of those areas where I am super ignorant to what I could be missing, but all of that isn't even getting into how confusing of a character Howl is as well as the relationship that forms between him and Sophie and other characters in the movie.

I mean at first he's a smooth confidence blonde mysterious guy grabbing women off the street but everyone thinks he eats women's hearts or something. Then he's this cowardly emo kid who turns into a weird green goo once, then he's a bird man who loses that emo streak half way through the film.

And the romance is really rushed. I get it, it's 2004 and you've got two attractive looking characters on screen, no duh they're gonna be the love interests, but it feels very rushed, especially while I'm waiting for plot points at the start of the movie like Sophie figuring out how to lift her curse still haven't been resolved.

I have no issue with putting an anti-war message in your movie, but finish your plate first before you start digging into seconds. Because of this, the movie kind of meanders at times and it isn't really clear what the end goal, especially since the characters kind of seem to forget the end goes they started with.

The second half of the movie is where things really start to spiral out of control for me and I was looking at the clock saying, how're they going to wrap this up in 12 minutes?

Overall, I think I can get some of the appeal of this film in that it is visually nice to look at and there are some really interesting and imaginative ideas that go into the world this takes place in.

I can understand if someone grew up with these films or enjoy them for the visuals and calming music and visuals.

 The magic and concepts are good, but the characters and story is kind of all over the place. Again, I'm coming at this from a very new perspective so I don't know if this movie even represents Miazaki films that well and I'd love to hear some other perspectives on it. The overall is that the film didn't do a whole lot for me. I'm definitely going to check out other Miyazaki films so I won't let this be my end all of his movies.

But those were my thoughts on Howl's Moving Castle. What did you think? As a newbie to all of this, is there something I'm missing? Tell me your thoughts 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!