A full year behind, but I’ll get caught up. 6 movies for September!
Highest 2 Lowest
Highest 2 Lowest is something of a mixed bag. It’s stylish, creative, and the first half moves forward at a fair pace. Sadly, it begins to really drag in the back half. A$AP Rocky is genuinely awful as the villain, which takes a real toll on the movie as he gets more screen time. It’s hard to care about the plot when you don’t care about any of characters.
There are places where this works, but I’d skip it.
The Naked Gun
It shouldn’t work as well as it does but The Naked Gun is a surprisingly good, wonderfully stupid comedy.
Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson work well together as the deadpan detective and femme fatale. The story… barely matters. It’s basically a bunch of setups for the mixture of visual gags and silly wordplay the series specializes in.
Far from perfect, but entertaining enough.
The Long Walk
As a kind of dystopian horror, The Long Walk really works.
Starting as a grounded but odd story, we see the substantial cast of 50 boys share stories as they take on the bizarre trial of endless walking. As ordeal continues, the mood shifts to be dislocated from time; like The Platform or Beau Was Afraid.
While the main cast are great, some of the supporting actors are a little too earnest. And yes, you’ll likely see most of what happens coming, it’s still a neat, weird light horror.
Good.
Night Always Comes
Night Always Comes is the story of a woman, already struggling and scheming to make ends meet, put beyond her means with a single night to fix it.
Vanessa Kirby is excellent as the lead, scrambling around to find a way through her situation - not exactly likeable, but understandable. Everything else is… mixed. It looks very generic. You’ve seen this low-mid budget streaming thriller before. It also ends about 5 minutes too late. The conclusion has been reached and the epilogue adds nothing.
Meh.
Honey Don’t
Honey Don’t should work a lot better than it does: Margaret Qualley as a fast-talking private investigator, Aubrey Plaza as a gruff love interest, some plot threads that end up being a shaggy dog story. It has all the makings of a modern, light detective movie, yet it fumbles.
Plaza goes a bit too melodramatic, the pacing is all over the place, and nothing really happens - which would be fine if the individual parts were entertaining.
Not worth it.
Together
Finally, Together is a body horror about a couple who, after a hiking accident, start to meld into a single person.
The movie plays it relatively lightly, mostly nailing the tone. The horror elements are creepy but not overwhelming, and the humour doesn’t turn the entire thing into a joke.
Good.
The September Winner
While there was nothing amazing, I think I’d watch Together again.