4 Favorites: March 2023
Two action films, a screaming good time and a drama about becoming a better person
Welcome back to the 4 Favorites series! Been a bit busy this month.
I started another newsletter series, Panning For Gold, all about Best Picture winners throughout history; made it through some more episodes of the Friends at Dusk podcast (we’re up to “The Dark Knight Rises” in Christopher Nolan’s filmography); and got to cover another concert for work (BJ Barham at the Magnolia Motor Lounge in Fort Worth).
For Book & Film Globe, I also wrote this article about how The Rock went from one of the most exciting new screen actors of his day to just another boring, brand-oriented celebrity.
But now, as Vin Diesel says … THE MOVIES:
“John Wick: Chapter 4”
“John Wick: Chapter 4” gets rid of the previous chapter’s unnecessary naming convention and doubles down on its explanation of lore to be Mr. Wick’s bloodiest (and longest) outing yet. Keanu Reeves returns as the assassin you really, really don’t want to cross.
This time, he’s prepared to sacrifice his life to get out from under the control of the High Table, the super-secret assassin organization he swore fealty to years ago.
I love how real the fights are here, even when the concepts border on Looney Tunes (indeed, there are several homages to Bugs, and his silent film ancestors Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin in this movie). It looks like Reeves really is doing most of his own stunts.
And these action setpieces just keep upping the ante on themselves, culminating in a final scene that highlights this entire series’ obsession with rules and the consequences for those who break those rules.
Crazy that this all started with some Russian mobsters who killed the wrong man’s puppy.
In theaters now.
“RRR”
People who see “RRR” are prone to hyperbole. “BEST MOVIE EVER” and “LIFE-CHANGING” are some of the biggest buzzwords thrown around on review sites like Letterboxd.
And the thing is: They’re right. The only thing better than watching this movie for the first time is seeing someone else watch it for the first time.
“RRR” is what the “Fast and Furious” franchise wants to be, a series of escalating action setpieces that just. keep. topping one another, on top of a great story about revolution and male friendship set during 1920s India.
I had heard all the platitudes and read all the great reviews, but it wasn’t until I saw a special screening of “RRR” at the Texas Theatre that I fully understood the hype. This movie is three hours long, has a killer soundtrack, and at one point features its two main characters piggybacking on each other while one holds a rifle in each hand and shoots British colonizers. It is maximalist cinema in the best way, and I want everyone to see it as soon as possible.
Available to stream on Netflix (watch the Hindi subtitled version and not the English dub), but if you can find a special screening in your area, watch it in a theater.
“Scream VI”
I highlighted “Scream," the 2022 “requel” to the Scream franchise, in this series last year. This year’s continuation of the new iteration of the franchise is helmed yet again by Radio Silence, the directing collective responsible for “Ready or Not” and “V/H/S.”
This time, we leave Woodsboro and head to New York City, as Tara, Sam, Chad and Mindy go to college out of state to try and escape the trauma of the Ghostface killings. But Ghostface always finds you; that’s what happens in a Scream movie.
Would I have liked a bit more focus on New York as a location? Sure. Would I have loved it if Hayden Panettiere’s return as Kirby was a bit more substantial? Absolutely. And I also don’t think it quite gets there with the horror movie commentary it thinks it’s making. I was hoping for more about how crazy the fan memorabilia-collecting community has become, but alas.
This was still a great time at the movies for a franchise that I love. Plus, we got Dermot Mulroney and Josh Segarra in the franchise now. Always good to see them pop up in a movie.
In theaters now.
“To Leslie”
I went into this not expecting to like it too much, prepared for poverty porn and West Texas pity from some Hollywood people who have never been to Texas. I was sobbing by the end.
Andrea Riseborough stars as Leslie, a West Texas woman who wins the lottery when she’s young and promises to provide a better life for her and her son. She then proceeds to piss it all away on booze until she promises to go to rehab and get clean, once and for all. That’s where we find her at the beginning of the film.
For about 20 minutes, “To Leslie” is the kind of movie I feared it would be: Lots of yelling, lots of plot points about will she or won’t she drink, lots of scenes of Leslie making one wrong decision after another.
But then it switches into a love story, after Marc Maron’s motel manager sees a kindred spirit in Leslie and offers her a job.
Riseborough is so, so good here, never letting Leslie devolve into a caricature. Maron might be the best he’s ever been onscreen, affecting a Southern lilt and channeling all of his hours of talking about grief and loss and addiction on his “WTF” podcast to paint a portrait of a man who “don’t like to get one pulled over on him” but knows to celebrate goodness when he sees it.
This is a simple tale of humanity, of someone swimming out of the depths of despair one day at a time. The closest thing I can think of to describe this is a modern-day John Prine song. Leslie is the Angel who flies from West Texas.
Available to rent or purchase on video on demand.
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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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