Mediocre Movie Club Movie Reviews

Long Shot

1/22/2020

C+
2.40

The secretary of state begins a romance with a schlub from her childhood.

Directed by Jonathan Levine
Starring Charlize Theron and Seth Rogen
Review by Jon Kissel

While romantic comedies are in the midst of a comeback thanks to Netflix’s finely tuned algorithm, Long Shot aims its genre attempt at the world of politics at a time when no script can match the absurdity of the real world. The film not only asks the viewer to imagine something like a return to governmental normalcy, but it also proposes Charlize Theron and Seth Rogen as a credible couple. These are big requests, one of which the film pretends doesn’t exist and the other it constantly interrogates. Jonathan Levine, a deft director who knows his way around the line between drama and comedy, accomplishes some of what he needed to with Long Shot, a film that entertains but doesn’t elevate.

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Zodiac

1/15/2020

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B+
3.33

Journalists and detectives obsess over solving the mysterious Zodiac murders in 60's and 70's California.

Directed by David Fincher
Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, and Robert Downey Jr
Review by Jon Kissel

Americans get worked up over strange things. Back before the days when the president demanded every ounce of attention and the media was happy to give it to him, we’ve lost our collective shit over Harambe and Cecil, Casey Anthony and Jon-Benet Ramsey. David Fincher remembers being a kid during a period of war and social unrest that makes today look quaint, and his California community choosing to go a little bit nuts over an early serial killer who attempted to kill seven people and was tragically successful for five of them. The Zodiac killer sucks up some amount of air during his active period, but for most, it fades and becomes a thing that happens, fodder for an opening paragraph in an amateur movie review and not much more. For others, this becomes a defining event in their lives for reasons they can’t explain and those meticulous, obsessive individuals, not unlike Fincher himself, are the people he chooses to follow in Zodiac, an epic-length investigation of a mostly meaningless event that’s only grown more relevant with the explosion of true-crime material in the 13 years since its release.

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Hail Satan?

1/8/2020

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B+
3.33

The Satanic Temple's origins, goals, and growth are explored.

Directed by Penny Lane
Review by Jon Kissel

Someone’s going to make a great legal thriller one day about the Satanic Panic, wherein delirious fears of devil worship combined with quack psychology and a gullible justice system to send people to jail on made-up charges. No one’s done it yet on the feature level, though there’s been strong Satanic Panic-adjacent documentaries like the ones about the West Memphis Three. Pre-Hail Satan, director Penny Lane’s first impulse was to make just such a documentary, but the devoted and earnest outcasts of the Satanic Temple caught her attention instead. The resulting effort is perhaps the first evangelizing documentary, or at least the first one that’s ever worked on me. Hail Satan presents such an inspiring vision of countering credulousness and theocracy that I wonder if this is the same feeling morons experience when they babble in pieced-together baby talk, or, as they would say, speak in tongues. Based on the transgressive thrill the film gives me every time someone says Hail Satan, I think the church might’ve just gained a convert.

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Long Shot

C+
2.40

Zodiac

B+
3.33

Hail Satan?

B+
3.33

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Long Shot

C+​2.40

Zodiac

B+3.33

Hail Satan?

B+​3.33

Authors

Categories

Archives

C+
2.40

B+
3.33

B+
3.33