Category: now in theatres

Jay’s Take: Ford v Ferrari

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Christian Bale & Matt Damon at Le Mans 2019: Artist’s Representation

Let me set the scene: you’ve had a shitty week and you want to escape. You haven’t seen a movie in theaters for a while and the January “dumping ground” of unmarketable trash is overflowing with sub-tier titles to get your tiddies hard from the thought of the camp value. You convince your wife to go with you to a double-feature (but nothing subtitled, so you still haven’t seen Parasite). What do double-features in my family mean to me? It means sneaking-in from one movie to another. It doesn’t mean LEAVING THE THEATER to re-up only to have to come back in and pay for the second ticket. You need to be prepared: bring edibles; make sure you’ve gone to the bathroom; and go on a day when the ticket-taker wicket isn’t set up at the West Wing entrance where your two movies are going to be (the apps let you check your theater number now too). We had it all worked out: Ford v Ferrari was at 12:15 and ended at 15:00; Dolittle started at 15:00; and the theaters were side-by-side. Dolittle is really what we wanted to see but the timing wasn’t working: sometimes the second movie starts right away, and sometimes the gap between them is too long. This sounded like it would have worked like a dream. THANKS GOD. And then I had to piss. And Ford v Ferrari is not a short movie. A good movie, but not short. So I held my pee. And what happens as I leave the theater? They have the wicket set up at the end of the hallway, AFTER the men’s bathroom. Granted it was “Cheap Tuesday” but usually they have the L-shaped divider set up and it wasn’t there this time. The women’s bathroom doesn’t have any security: it’s halfway down the hall. And the East Wing of the theater doesn’t have the wicket set up after the bathroom! So I had two choices: either pee into my water bottle that I sneaked McDonald’s ice tea into and try to remember not to drink from it for the next two-hour movie (because we couldn’t get any snacks from concession either because of where it was located; that’s why my wife brought her purse the size of a knapsack) or pee like a normal person and skip the second movie. So we skipped the second movie.

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Jay’s Take: Hobbs & Shaw

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Everyone seems to remember watching Tokyo Drift, but don’t actually remember what happened in it, or what happened to Lucas Black’s career after he tried taking over for Diesel (maybe there WILL be a Sling Blade 2?). Whatever transpired behind the scenes, someone in a suit decided then that the whole format of the series had to change. Removed almost-entirely was the car culture and racing that was the original trilogy’s bread-and-butter; the original cast was brought back and references to “family” and “sticking together” were amped to 11; and every action scene seemed like it had to outdo the one before it. So birthed the “new generation” of F+F movies with the fourth one in 2009, BRILLIANTLY titled Fast & Furious, and the series stayed relatively consistent for a while. With the fifth (Fast Five) and sixth (Fast & Furious 6) movies in 2011 and 2013 respectively they stuck to Lin’s formula; brought back popular characters from the first three movies and shoehorned them together; and strung them all along in a shared-universe plot. 6 also introduced our titular team to Dwayne Johnson’s hard-as-nails cop Luke Hobbs and Jason Statham’s bad-guy-turned-good Deckard Shaw.

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Jay’s Take: The Lion King 2019

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I saw this on the 19th and have really been dragging my ass to post something about it. What is there to say? Can anything be said? Is it worth it to say it? Disney is beyond criticism at this juncture. Because really, why is it necessary to remake these movies with little more then updated window dressing, a modern celebrity roster, and minor tweaks that will date the movie twenty years from now even more then the twenty-year-plus old original? Other then to sucker a new generation of young parents to buy their obnoxious children more useless merch? No I did not like The Lion King remake. It was ghastly watching the opening sequence remade with CGI and its edgy, realistic tone. No more pomp during the musical numbers: that wouldn’t happen (kitties are colorblind, remember!). No visions from the heavens: just cloud formations that are up to interpretation. And no metaphysical displacement from Rafiki: he gets his news from, literally, shit. It wasn’t fun. It felt like the Jon Favreau who I’ve known since Swingers had finally given his virgin asshole to the train of lizard people waiting for him in the Disney boardroom.

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Jay’s Take: Men in Black 4

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Ah, the drive-in experience! Something I never got to do as a kid, something I never choose to do as an adult. We drive a 2016 Mazda CX-5 that has to be the biggest piece of shit on four wheels and completely unsuited to sitting idle for more then 20-minutes without whining that it hasn’t got enough attention (that and the brakes, and the transmission, and the suspension, and the mileage, and the warranty, etcetera etcetera). But when we do go, we only have one within 100 km or so of our house, since you know it’s old-fashioned enough to drive an hour to get there but not enough to not trend like crazy when something like Avengers comes out. Oh my god have you been to the drive-in lately? There’s still a drive-in? What’s a drive-in? Tonight there was no Avengers. There was, however, Men in Black 4 and Annabelle 3. Oh joy! All I could think about when sitting in the lot was how long it had left before the property became condos.

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