MEDIOCREMOVIE.CLUB
  • Reviews
  • Side Pieces
  • Shane of Thrones
  • Podcast
  • About
  • Archives
  • Game of Thrones Fantasy

Marvelous and the Black Hole

12/11/2022

0 Comments

 

A-

Directed by Kate Tsang

Staring Miya Cech and Rhea Perlman

​Review by Jon Kissel
Picture

Before embarking on her directorial debut, Kate Tsang worked on Steven Universe and Adventure Time, two Cartoon Network series that deftly used fantasy storytelling to dissect thorny emotions.  Adventure Time especially never talked down to its audience; adults failed children, leaders resorted to imperfect solutions, and the universe was unfair.  In Marvelous and the Black Hole, Tsang brings that same spirit to a coming-of-age story that places wonder and despair right next to each other while providing a star vehicle for talented actors both new and stalwart.

Read More
0 Comments

A Hero

10/19/2022

0 Comments

 

A-

Directed by Asghar Farhadi

Starring Amir Jadidi, Sahar Goldoost, and Mohsen Tanabandeh
​
​Review by Jon Kissel
Picture

I wouldn’t have pegged Asghar Farhadi as a Rick and Morty fan, but in the acclaimed Iranian director’s latest film, he’s depicted the perfect Jerry.  In Rick and Morty, Jerry is the pathetic son-in-law of a multiverse-trotting genius, a monument to weakness who aspires to mediocrity and uses pity as deftly as Rick uses his trademark portal gun.  With A Hero, the lead isn’t as loathsome as the comically inept Jerry, but the comparison cannot be missed.  Farhadi has long used the exposed cultural tripwires within Islamic Republican Iran to make his penetrating social dramas, and here, his protagonist uses some fuzzy feel-goodery to step over them.  In Farhadi’s best film in a decade, the society that makes a man pathetic can perhaps be manipulated by pathos.

Read More
0 Comments

Flee

8/16/2022

0 Comments

 

B+

Directed by Jonas Poher Rasmussen
​
​Review by Jon Kissel
Picture

The story of the last ten years, and the next hundred, has been and will be migration.  Political instability, economic privation, civil war, environmental collapse, it all conspires to push people into stable places that often contributed to or directly caused the instability that made migrants and refugees flee in the first place.  Flee is the story of one of these families torn between great powers and cast into an underground morass whose effects linger long after safety has been achieved.  Jonas Poher Rasmussen blends documentary and animation in a film that dissects all aspects of the refugee experience, from the uncertainty to the powerlessness.  People need to get more acquainted with these kinds of stories because they’re not going to stop happening.  

Read More
0 Comments

Red Rocket

8/3/2022

0 Comments

 

A

Directed by Sean Baker

Starring Simon Rex and Susanna Son
​
​Review by Jon Kissel
Picture

​For the first time in his career, preferer of amateur/non-actors Sean Baker dabbled in big-name casting with his film The Florida Project, netting Willem Dafoe an Oscar nomination in Baker’s most commercially successful film to date.  The lesson he might’ve taken was to make bigger movies with bigger stars, cast alongside whatever area natives and interesting faces he comes across along the way.  With Red Rocket, Baker does cast a lead with dozens of credits, but not exactly ones of Dafoe’s caliber.  For Simon Rex, that might change in the immediate future, because he and Baker combine to produce the best thing either has ever put their name on.  Red Rocket defiantly chases an unrepentant and charismatic narcissist down his Gulf Coast rabbit hole, bringing a porn industry slur and an exciting new talent into the mainstream.  

Read More
0 Comments

Licorice Pizza

7/20/2022

0 Comments

 

A-

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Starring Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman

​​Review by Jon Kissel
Picture

​Paul Thomas Anderson can’t stay away from the San Fernando Valley.  After a brief stint in a London fashion house, he returns to his default cinematic playground with his ninth feature, Licorice Pizza, a gauzy blend of PTA’s own childhood memories and those of his Hollywood friend, Gary Goetzman.  Pre-release impressions of Licorice Pizza looked like this was going to be the iconic director’s most autobiographical film, and while the personal touches are surely there, PTA instead shifts the primary focus to a young woman in her 20’s whose experiences of disconnectedness and aimlessness are set against those of a teenager who seems like he knows exactly what he’s doing.  Their adventures through the Valley of the 1970’s make Licorice Pizza the most shapeless of PTA’s filmography, a director already known for eschewing a linear plot.  However, who needs an A-to-B plot, or really any plot at all, when the world that’s been imagined and reconstructed is populated with so many memorable characters, all led by two of the best performances of 2021?  Licorice Pizza is safely in PTA’s mid-to-low tier, but that just means it’s merely great as opposed to an all-timer.

Read More
0 Comments

West Side Story

6/29/2022

0 Comments

 

A-

Directed by Steven Spielberg

Starring Ansel Elgort, Rachel Zegler, and Ariana DeBose
​
​Review by Jon Kissel
Picture

​Of the 70’s era film school brats, Brian De Palma, Francis Ford Coppola, and George Lucas have made their best films long in the past and have largely moved on from directing.  Martin Scorsese, meanwhile, has landed a masterpiece in each of his five decades of productivity, and is likely to stretch that record into his sixth.  Final member Steven Spielberg has shared Scorsese’s indefatigable streak, and while he’s annihilated Scorsese at the box office, the critical accolades have been drying up thanks to middling efforts like The Post, The BFG, and the loathsome Ready Player One.  However, this film school brat proves he has more to offer with West Side Story, a bravura remake of the 1961 musical and Spielberg’s best film in 15 to 20 years.  The old master can still show audiences how it’s done.

Read More
0 Comments

The French Dispatch

6/15/2022

0 Comments

 

A

Directed by Wes Anderson

Starring Bill Murray, Jeffrey Wright, and Frances McDormand
​
​Review by Jon Kissel
Picture

​Without taking a poll, I suspect that I’m in the minority of preferring Wes Anderson’s last decade of work to his previous one-and-a-half.  Moonrise Kingdom proved a much better fit for Anderson’s children who act like adults, as opposed to his adults who act like children.  The Grand Budapest Hotel became my favorite of Anderson’s films after a second viewing, a perfect blend of eccentricity and melancholy that also happened to be more thoughtful and meaningful than anything he'd done previously.  His latest, The French Dispatch, follows in Grand Budapest’s footsteps, an anthology where all the ingredients are perfectly calibrated to amuse and affect in a film that’s unmistakably Anderson’s but is completely lacking in the things that used to annoy me.  In telling the story of a magazine editor who wanted everything just so, Anderson writes another autobiographical character whose control and vision leads to something wonderful.

Read More
0 Comments

Try Harder

6/15/2022

0 Comments

 

B+

Directed by Debbie Lum

Review by Jon Kissel

Picture

​Students at San Francisco’s top-ranked Lowell High School are struggling with an amount of academic stress that looks cruel and unrecognizable.  At this viewer’s Catholic high school in southern Indiana, upperclassmen competed for parking spots, not high-stakes entry into elite universities.  In Try Harder, Debbie Lum follows several seniors as they polish their resumes and their interview skills, all while considering the elephant in the room of how their race is helping or hurting their chances for something they aren’t sure they even want.  This is a fascinating look at the next generation’s world-beaters, unless they burn out in their 20’s under 6 figures of student debt.

Read More
0 Comments

The Suicide Squad

5/11/2022

0 Comments

 

A-

Directed by James Gunn

Starring Idris Elba, Margot Robbie, and John Cena

Review by Jon Kissel

Picture

​James Gunn’s brief time away from Disney and Marvel was filled in exactly the way it should have been.  With The Suicide Squad, he made a film that, for reasons both obvious and surprising, the film industry’s leading monopoly would never have allowed.  Having demonstrated his utility with a team-up film with two Guardians of the Galaxy films, Gunn again takes on lesser-known comic book characters and makes the fifth or sixth one on the call sheet more interesting than characters who’ve appeared in half a dozen superhero films.  It’s generally not a good thing that this genre dominates the cinematic landscape, but the idea becomes more tolerable when directors like Gunn are allowed to take big and irreverent and even challenging chances like this one.

Read More
0 Comments

The Green Knight

4/6/2022

0 Comments

 

A

Directed by David Lowery

Starring Dev Patel, Alicia Vikander, and Sean Harris
​
​Review by Jon Kissel
Picture

​Dark Ages imposter syndrome takes center stage in David Lowery’s The Green Knight.  This viewer has long thought Lowery was an imposter himself, scratching my head at the overheated praise for works like his flimsy adaptation of Pete’s Dragon and his ponderous A Ghost Story.  With his adaptation of an ancient Arthurian story, Lowery finds a setting to match his mythic impulses and finally gets over the hump with something close to a masterpiece.  The Green Knight wraps its mossy arms around the ambition and the hypocrisy of medieval feudalism as its lead character tries and fails to fulfill expectations that are on his back from birth.  This epic film does that with a foot in the cold steel armor of the Christian world and another in the mysterious natural world of whatever came before.  Both feet are planted firmly in a cinematic fantasia of rasping foxes and loping giants, making The Green Knight into a package that generates awe in the moment and contemplation long after.  

Read More
0 Comments
<<Previous

    Side Pieces

    Random projects from the MMC Universe. 

    Categories

    All
    Action
    Adventure
    Author - Bryan
    Author - Drew
    Author - Jon
    Author - Phil
    Author - Sean
    Best Of 2016
    Best Of 2017
    Best Of 2018
    Best Of 2019
    Best Of 2020
    Best Of 2021
    Best Of 2022
    Best Of The Decade
    Classics
    Comedy
    Crime
    Documentary
    Drama
    Ebertfest
    Game Of Thrones
    Historical
    Horror
    Musical
    Romance
    Sci Fi
    Thriller
    TV
    Western

    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    June 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015

    RSS Feed