Remember me?

I guess I’m making it a point to write here every 2 years so here we are. Since I’m still paying for the domain and I’ve been going to the movies a lot more lately, I wanted to revive this blog/movie review dumpster fire. We have been living in LA for 4 years, have roots here now and it really feels like home…. finally. With the AMC A-List membership we are now going to the movies almost every week. It feels like we’ve seen almost every movie so far this year. 

We’ve also started a box office fantasy league with our friends which is making the year really interesting. I’m definitely going to lose but I’ll list all the movies I currently have drafted below:

• Wicked Part 1
• Horizon: An American Saga Part 1
• Bob Marley One Love
• Borderlands
• Mean Girls
• The Wild Robot
• Monkey Man
• Lord of the Rings
• Trap
• The Bee Keeper
• Ghostbusters

It goes off of box office numbers and you wouldn’t believe some of the movies that make the most money. For example the god awful movie ‘Nightswim’ made $50M and had a $15M budget. It still sits in the top 15 highest grossing films so far this year.

The last 2 movies we saw were ‘Civil War’ and ‘Monkey Man’ so I figured I would weigh in on them for this entry since they are still fresh in my mind.

Civil War (RT 81%)

Cut to the chase: Amidst a US civil war, a group of war photographers go on a mission to get to the white house to interview the president before the government is completely overthrown.

Ok wait… this got 81% on Rotten Tomatoes?! How? I really didn’t like this movie as a whole. There were parts that were good and I think there were some interesting and thought provoking themes that were depicted but by the end I was stuck wondering what the whole point was. In talking with our friends before the movie we came to the conclusion that we couldn’t think of any other war movies that were completely fictitious and not based on a real war in some way. This might be the first of its kind in that aspect… so I guess it has that going for it. 

The film follows a war photographer named Lee (played by Kirsten Dunst) and her ragtag team of reporters and a jr. photographer as they are trying to document and survive the war going on all around them. Why is there a war happening? We don’t know. Also, I just realized that never once do we see them making money or getting paid for the work they are doing or even mentioning that they do. They are just risking their lives for the art of war I guess. The movie had a lot of promise, I think civil war has gone through every American's mind at least once the past 5 years. This movie just failed to deliver in my opinion. I think it could’ve worked better if we were able to see all aspects of the war, and also know what the hell even started it. 

As far as character development, none of the characters in the film were likable. I usually love Kirsten Dunst but her character was so dull and boring it made me very uninterested in her. They were trying to push that she had PTSD and showed flashbacks from her photographing previous wars and conflicts but it was never really talked about other than the flashbacks. We were supposed to believe that she was some big famous photographer but that was all we were told- no backstory about why she was at all. I usually like my characters to have a bit more depth than that. 

The best part of the night was after the movie was over. Us and our friends usually spend a while outside the theater talking about the movie and as we were airing out our grievances a very much inebriated couple (did I mention we saw this on 4/20?) walked up to us and said “are you guys going to the movies? We just got out of Civil War and it was HORRIBLE”. We ended up stuck in a conversation with them for like 15 minutes and it was so entertaining. The guy just wanted to talk to us about how much he loves A24 and asking us if we were “cinephiles” too. This is LA, man… 

There were some interesting action scenes and the scene with Jesse Plemons was the best part of the movie (probably why they made it a big part of the trailer) but overall I would say you could skip this one and wait for it to come out to streaming. 

Monkey Man (RT 89%)

Cut to the chase: A young man living a poor life in India, fighting in an underground fight club, uses his rage to try to infiltrate the rich elite members of society and take revenge for things that happened in his past.

This was essentially marketed as an Indian version of John Wick and I would say it came close to that in a sense. I’m not usually big into action flicks but this one was pretty good. There actually wasn’t too much action really. A lot of it was build up and character development. I could see how some people might have been turned off by that seeing as the trailer was jam packed with action scenes.

Dev Patel directed and starred in the film as a man named Kid who lives in the slums of India that goes to an underground fight show every night to get beat up and make money to survive. He wears a gorilla mask while he’s in the ring (hence… “monkey man”). There is more to the mask though, it symbolizes a Hindu deity named Hanuman. They tell the story of him immediately at the beginning of the film showing Kid’s mother reading the legend to him as a young boy. We are told that Hanuman is extraordinarily strong, capable of lifting and carrying any burden for a cause. So I’m sure you can see how this shaped young Kid’s character and the messaging behind the film. 

Throughout the film we keep being shown flashbacks to his childhood, being brought up by a single mom who loved and cared for him so much. We assume some sort of trauma is causing all his suppressed rage and revenge and we aren’t actually shown the entire story until the 3rd or 4th act to the film which leaves you guessing and trying to figure out what horrible thing had happened to him that caused so much hate towards the specific members of the elite. I don’t want to spoil too much of the film but there are some really fun scenes that pay homage to great action scenes in movies. The one that stuck with me most happens during some of the final fight scenes and reminded me of the crazy 88’s scene in Kill Bill - it was so badass. 

Overall I liked this movie but I will say the montages of him learning to fight and gaining his strength were drawn out a bit and could’ve been shorter to add more action. Also, I was super disappointed for the short amount of time he actually wore the gorilla mask at the end. I thought the big climax scenes he would be fighting with it on since after all… he is the monkey man. Maybe it was supposed to represent some sort of symbolism, like him shedding his former life of him being the one getting the beating in the fight club to now being the one giving the beating. Either way, the mask was badass and I wanted to see more of him fighting in it. 

I would say to go see it but I don’t know if it’s still in theaters or not. It was a great film to see in Dolby and the sound design and soundtrack was really well done. Action movie fans will love the fight scenes and there’s enough drama that everyone else can enjoy as well.

It’s been so long since I’ve written anything for fun so this might be total shit but I want to get back on this because I really enjoy writing about movies. Even if no one is reading it. We are off to see ‘Challengers’ tonight and seeing lots of early premieres the next couple weeks so look forward to more posts coming soon! Goodbye for now.