Thighs Wide Shut

Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw
Built To Fast
Official Site | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 137 min

8 Fast 8 Furious was a disaster.  Sure, it was fast, and yeah, it was furious, but it ended up being 1 fast and 1 furious way too many for my tastes.  Bringing Dwayne Johnson into the fold changed the dynamic of the franchise for the worse (but perhaps for box office best).  Fast & Furious is no longer about hot cars, hot chicks, and the meatheads who drive and ride both.  It’s now about solving global terrorism… with cars?  WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY FAST & FURIOUSSESS!!!!

So what to do?  Apparently the right thing – Dwayne Johnson doesn’t need the world of Fast & Furious, and we don’t need him there either.  So use the F&F letterhead and team him up with his rival and let the hi & lowjinks ensue.

Welcome to Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw!

It’s got the F&F attitude, but none of the Vin Diesel battitude!  And it turns bad guy Jason Statham into a good guy!  And he gets to make fun of The Rock the entire time!  And he has a sister – Vanessa Kirby – who roxxxx!!

And the movie is very self-reflexive!  It knows how dumb it is and plays that up!  Cliché upon cliché is clichéd, and it works!

But this movie is 137 minutes too long.  Yes, the whole thing is unnecessary.  After some big fight between our three heroes and the bad guy (Idris Elba), I was like – that’s a good place to end.  I’ve seen enuff.  I’ve enjoyed this dumb aplenty.  We don’t need to continue on, and have more scenes of talking and strategizing and plotting, just to set up another big fight.  But it went on, and it turned into Whale Rider or something, and then we’re introduced to a character related to one of our characters, and then I got really upset

Spoiler alert…

I got upset cause we’re introduced to The Rock’s screen mom, who lives in Samoa, a place the Rock’s character hasn’t been back to in 9ever cause of some pointless beef he has with his brother.  And in a movie where nothing is believable, I actually had a problem in believing this was in-character for the Rock’s character.  The Rock’s character is a big family man.  They always make it a huge point about how he loves his daughter and stresses the importance of family.  So if that is the case, why would he never see his mama?  And hold back his daughter from meeting and getting to know her grammy?  This makes no sense.  It makes no sense especially since the beef the Rock’s character had with his brother is squashed in all of about 8 seconds.  All that estrangement for nothing.  The Rock’s character made his mother sad for ages, and withheld gladness from his daughter as well.  That’s too slow, too curious

Next time, less family, more feud.  And pile on even more clichés!

Verdictgo: dumb, but fun, so I guess… Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Hobbs throbs at a theater near jews and white nationalists 

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Red Letter Media – their commentary is usually better than any of the movies they are commenting on. bless them always and forever

Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood
Squeaky Foam
Official Site | Trailers & Mo
R | 165 min

It took Quentin Tarantino 10 tries to figure out the perfect time, place and artifice to put on display all of his cinematic hopes, dreams, knowledge and references into one spectacular bundle.  His Manson Family drenched love poem to late 60s Los Angeles –  Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood – is the pinnacle of his career, and is 7/8ths great.  It’s that final 1/8th of the flick that throws all those fantastically creative juices running on all cylinders up until that point right down the toilet.  In a way, it’s a totally wasted opportunity 

No spoiler alerts here, but history is history.  Fact is fact.  You can stretch the truth, but you cannot just change history.  QT rewrites history how he sees fit, and in Hollywood‘s case, it’s un-fit for society.  The history he rewrites may be OK for those who know what actually happened.  But for those who don’t, it’s a disservice.  I declare Helter Skelter on the ending!  I’d also say see Helter Skelter, but you’d need a DVD player to see it (it’s not streaming)

This movie was well on its way to being his JFK, or his Zodiac.  This was going to be the best film to explore the Manson Family AND Sharon Tate, from both sides.  Instead, QT gotta do what QT gotta do, and QT always has to go over the top, when it was not even remotely required

Q, if you wand to play with your dolls in the valley however you see fit, why not just change all the names and make everything thickly veiled, like Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master?  Then you would be truly free to do whatever you want!  (without any backlash or dismissing by me!)

Hollywood works like one giant Simpsons episode written by Tarantino.  Throwbacks, nods, and winks ooze everywhere, and each one of the allusions caught is fun for those who can pick up on them.  But the fun will eventually turn grim.  You know and see where it’s all going, and you want it to actually go in the direction you believe it’s going in.  And when it doesn’t, I just wanted that ending to go away.  Truth trumps made up stuff

Verdictgo: 7/8ths is still great, so Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Hollywood is in the spotlight a theater near jews and white nationalists 

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The [Midsommar] food was styled by Zoe Hegedus, a chef from Hungary (where the movie was filmed), who made a point of not making it look new Nordic style, but similarly wanted ‘a lot of Scandanavian cooking techniques’ to preserve the food. It was, she says, ‘Important to stay rustic and raw, really raw.’ [zoe_hegedus|NYMag]