Last month was a good month for first-time watches for me; the only things I rewatched were for the podcast (new episodes out now! Click that link or the one below to listen) and it was really hard to narrow it all down to four movies.
(Honorable mentions: “Turn Every Page,” “Pearl,” “The Wedding Singer,” “Cocaine Bear.”)
In other news, I wrote some more for work and Book & Film Globe last month. Those links can be found here:
Netflix’s password crackdown is solving a problem that doesn’t exist
‘Sleepin’ all day, stayin’ up all night’: Yellowcard is bringing ‘Ocean Avenue’ tour to Texas
Stephen Graham Jones’ ‘Dont Fear the Reaper’ is a new slasher classic
And with that, on to the movies!
“Knock at the Cabin”
M. Night Shyamalan’s movies have always been about faith in some way or another. Sometimes that’s made explicit through the characters, like in “Wide Awake” or “Signs.” Other times, faith is the underlying theme tying together movies like “The Sixth Sense” or “The Village” or his “Unbreakable” superhero trilogy.
With “Knock at the Cabin,” adapted from Paul Tremblay’s novel of the same name, Shyamalan forgoes his usual “twist” formula to focus on a movie that’s all about faith and the things people will do in the name of what they believe, for better and for worse.
Dave Bautista shines as the leader of a modern-day Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Jonathan Groff and Ben Aldridge are great as a couple who are diametrically opposed in terms of faith, and Rupert Grint even puts in a great performance. But it’s Shyamalan and cinematographers Jarin Blaschke and Lowell A. Meyer who steal the show. Not a frame of this movie is wasted, and this is the most assured a Shyamalan film has looked in a long time, with all kinds of interesting framing choices and camera movements.
After “Split,” “The Visit,” “Glass” and “Old,” Shyamalan is back, baybee!
In theaters now.
“M3GAN”
The trailer for this movie went viral when it dropped late last year. By all accounts, it looked like a prime January release: A short, genre movie that seemed cheeky (peep that Jan. 6 release date), heavy on the fun, and light on the scares.
And yes, that’s exactly what this is, with a deeper twist. “M3GAN” is a killer creepy doll movie with a lot of violence, but it’s also darkly funny and outright silly in some parts. But while it gleefully relishes in all of the trappings of a genre film, it also tucks some thought-provoking questions in there — and they’re not the questions you would think.
Horror films always reflect the fears of the time they were made. It would be easy for “M3GAN” to take the “these damn kids and their iPad screentime” route, but it doesn’t do that. Instead, it’s more concerned with the root of that iPad screentime, which is really a symptom instead of a cause. What happens when we outsource parenting to an iPad? What happens when we try to outsource grief or get someone else to process our emotions for us? “M3GAN” asks all of that, all while a creepy AI doll glances while wielding a knife.
Available to stream on Peacock.
“The Rocketeer”
This movie has it all. Adventure! Planes! Rockets! Mobsters! Nazis getting punched! Jan from “The Office” singing at a cocktail party! Heroism! Stunts!
I feel like I saw this about 21 years too late. Young Jake would have eaten this up. It’s so much fun and full of adventure that I probably would have broken the VHS from watching it so much.
Alas, I watched it for the first time this month as an adult, and guess what? It’s still charming as all get-out. A fantastic throwback to the adventure series of old. Plus Timothy Dalton chewing that scenery as a villain, Jennifer Connelly being Jennifer Connelly, and mobster Paul Sorvino telling off a Nazi. Perfection. Marvel really knew what they were doing when they got Joe Johnston to direct Captain America, which is a direct descendant of this movie.
Available to stream on Disney+.
“Strange World”
Speaking of adventure films, “Strange World” is a throwback animated adventure in the tradition of “Treasure Planet” and “Atlantis: The Lost Empire.” Also like those films, it flopped hard at the box office (interestingly, almost 20 years to the day that “Treasure Planet” did the same).
I love both of those movies, so I was primed to like “Strange World” a lot. And I did, even though the story feels a bit like the first draft of a screenplay. There’s no real “villain” here, unless you count intergenerational trauma (the main antagonist for most Disney/Pixar movies since “Frozen”). And one would think that if Disney was so desperate to cater to the young boy demographic, it would have marketed this film — all about pulp adventure and fathers and sons — better than it did. Alas, it arrived over Thanksgiving weekend without so much as a peep.
But despite all of that, I can’t stop thinking about the truly inventive visuals and the bright color palette and the youthful sense of wonder and exploration in the whole movie. I watched “The Rocketeer” right after I watched this and yearned for more earnest adventure films like them.
Available to stream on Disney+.
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This newsletter is written by me and edited by my favorite person, Taylor Tompkins. Views expressed here are my own and don’t reflect the opinions of my employer.
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