🎬 "Saigon, sh*t. I'm still only in Saigon."
Apocalypse Now (1979). Welcome to the 31st edition of The Reel!
Estimated reading time: 6m 8s.
After a long hiatus, a middlingly fêted IP makes its return?
With minimal interest or demand from the general public?
Featuring a tall, skinny protagonist?!
You guessed it, The Reel Avatar is back!
The strangely emotional trailer for Avatar: The Way of Water was published last week:
Scheduled for release in December this year, the latest James Cameron event movie is hilariously under-anticipated, considering, after all, it is the sequel to the highest-grossing film of all time.
If publishing 31 Reels has taught me anything, it’s that you’re only as hot as your last edition. That said, Avatar did gross $2.8 billion dollars; in the last edition of this plucky blog I misspelled “it’s” twice.
Maybe we’re not so similar after all.
Time for some reviews!
This week: Dearth of daylight, ill-achieved identities, excessive executions, and Norway.
🙄 Ugh that person is the worst.
The Worst Person in the World (2021), film, directed by Joachim Trier.
Do you like romantic comedy-dramas?
What about Norway?
What! Those are two of your favourite things?! Well boy do I have the film for you!
The Worst Person in the World is, of course, the only Norwegian rom-com I’ve ever seen.
But it also happens to be the best film I’ve watched this year.
Julie is a young medical student unsure of her career, life choices and future; Aksel is a comic book creator (ding ding ding! We like him already) fifteen years her senior. While the less said about the plot = the better, the film charts their relationship, and the struggles in their respective professional and personal lives.
This isn’t Sleepless in Seattle or Notting Hill; the humour is dark, and the drama is tragic.
(Would we expect anything less from our Scandinavian friends?)
The Worst Person in the World asks thought-provoking questions about the nature of art, ageing, and the expectations we have of ourselves and of those closest to us; all while staying funny and engaging.
Beautifully acted and pretty to watch, this is one blonde-with-blue-eyes Scandi that you won’t want to miss.
Look out for:
Speaking of art: self-expression/free speech is an interesting aside that is revisited multiple times by Aksel, and by Julie with her burgeoning writing career. Aksel’s TV appearance scene is a squirmy, topical highlight.
If you liked this:
Not exactly underrated, but Marriage Story is (imho) one of the best depictions of love at its most heart-wrenching. Also features the inexplicably sexy Adam Driver singing Sondheim (he has the face of a dashing ogre, and I envy him).
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
💩 A tale of two shitties.
The Change Up (2011), film, directed by David Dobkin.
Identity Thief (2013), film, directed by Seth Gordon.
No one does the sardonic, impatient everyman quite like Jason Bateman.
Celebrated now for his dramatic turn in Ozark, Bateman was once a teen star who got his start in the supposedly hit show Little House on the Prairie.
I’m convinced Little House… is one of those things that people pretend to know and love but no one has actually seen, like aurora borealis or Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.
Bateman has been in many average to excellent film comedies; these are two of his worst.
The Change Up is laughable, and not in the way you want. Ryan Reynolds and Batesy star as best friends whose bodies are switched after pissing in a magical urinal (no, really).
So one of them becomes a super hot guy, and the other is married with kids!
How hilarious!
I’m not going to say it’s a puerile waste of the time, efforts and money of all those involved. But it is an absolutely puerile waste of the time, efforts and money of all those involved.
The Identity Thief fares ever so slightly better, due mostly to the earnest efforts of Melissa McCarthy.
Melissa and J-Bizz have something of a change-up here themselves, when Bateman’s Sandy has his identity stolen by charming but annoying (to the audience as much as Sandy) con artist Diana.
Did you know that Melissa McCarthy was nominated for an Oscar for Bridesmaids? 😱
Alas, that was never a possibility here. Our heroine and hero do their best with weak material, but this is another one that should be confined to the dark recesses of comedy history.
Jason Bateman? More like “Hey son, wait man!” !!
As in, wait and stop making bad films!!
!!
Look out for:
Nothing is more entertaining to me than fake business talk in films. It’s always so vague and high stakes, like: “Yes, I’ll sign off on this deal, if you allow the merger to go corporate.” There is a lot of this in The Change-Up — The Big Short this ain’t.
If you liked this:
To be fair to Jayman Bayman, his is mostly a filmography to be proud of. Arrested Development is rightly lauded as 00s sitcom GOAT, and who could forget his subversive turn in Juno? 2013’s Bad Words is a (somewhat offensive) gem that slipped under the radar, and which Batezilla also directed. 👏
Ratings: The Change-Up ⭐, The Identity Thief ⭐⭐
⏩ Quickies
Short and snappy reviews for a short and snappy time:
The Northman (2022, film, dir. Robert Eggers): ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Back to Norway, boys and girls! This trippy AF, blood-curdlingly violent viking revenge epic comes from the director of 2020’s equally trippy The Lighthouse (reviewed back in the Reel no. 3). Expect gore, grunting, grimness, and a healthy dosage of Oedipus complex.
Highlander (1986, film, dir. Russell Mulcahy): ⭐⭐⭐
If you like big strong men with swords but you aren’t as a fan of vikings/viciousness, Highlander will be a bit more up your alley. Expect campness, extended monologues, dubious accents, and little to no women. Sounds like a regular Saturday night at my place! 😜
August: Osage County (2013, film, dir. John Wells): ⭐⭐⭐⭐
More heavyweights than a Bellator event, August… is a platform for Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Ewan McGregor and others to chew some scenery, spit it out, and then chew that spitted scenery again. Not perfect, but a formidable, impactful acting showcase. Also, what is Bellator?
Mystic River (2003, film, dir. Clint Westwood): ⭐⭐⭐
Hyped as a modern classic in neo-noir and murder mystery, Mystic River does not live up to expectations. Shave a good chunk off the end and we might have had a decent package. Sounds like a Saturday night at my place! 😜
📃 Quote of the Week(s)
Aksel: “I grew up in a time when culture was passed along through objects. They were interesting because... we could live among them. We could pick them up. Hold them in our hands. Compare them.”
Julie: “A bit like books?”
Aksel: “Yeah, a bit like books. That's all I have. I spent my life doing that. Collecting all that stuff, comics, books... And I just continued, even when it stopped giving me the powerful emotions I felt in my early 20s. I continued anyway. And now it's all I have left. Knowledge and memories of stupid, futile things nobody cares about.”
A morose Aksel opines about his changing relationship with art as he gets older in The Worst Person in the World.
✅ Th-th-that’s all, folks.
Thank you very much for reading!
Thank you this week to Louis “Mr. Marshmallow” Murray Brown for his suggestion of The Worst Person in the World. 🙏
If you enjoyed The Reel, I would appreciate so much if you could share it!
You can do so by clicking the button here:
Or the old screenshot and share in an Insta story is just as welcome and appreciated. 🥰
Thank you very much again, and see you next time!
Gogzibear
xxx
📅 Previous Reels:
🎬 Mar 30 - The Power of the Dog, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Licorice Pizza.
🎬 Mar 16 - The Batman, The Green Knight, The Last Duel, Eternals, Pig.
🎬 Jan 19 - Don’t Look Up, The Matrix Resurrections, Tick, Tick… Boom.
📒 Catalogue:
You can find a list of all film review scores (and opening movie lines!) here.
🎙️ Podcast:
I’ve also published 10 episodes of a film review podcast Movies (And A Rap) — you can listen on Spotify here.