Good Morning.
If you’ve followed this newsletter or my writing here at all, you know that I kind of use a quote from the legendary screenwriter William Goldman as a kind of personal and professional credo. “Nobody knows anything.” As a credo, I don’t mean that in a pejorative or insubordinate sense. I mean it in an honest acknowledgement that goes for myself too. No one really knows what they are doing and certainly nobody truly knows what’s going to work with audiences.
Last summer I was reading The Big Picture, which is a collection of William Goldman’s columns from New York magazine and Premiere magazine in the 1990s. Basically, Goldman wrote a series of columns looking at the summer blockbusters, the Oscar race, and the Oscar results and what they told us about the state of the movie industry.
What I’m going to do below won’t really be that: It’ll just be my thoughts on some of the major releases of this summer. At the end of last year, I got kinda into Letterboxd. I’d rate and write little reviews of all the movies I watched. I’ve tailed off a bit this spring and summer since I moved from New York City, but I figured maybe I should try my hand at putting some of my commentary into this space.
When you look back at the movies that have come out so far, it's actually been a pretty strong season! I’d have to compare it to each summer of the last 10-15 years to see how it stacks up, but you have a nice mixture of releases. In any case, I’ve had a good time at the movies.
Here we’ll cover the movies in order of chronological release. Note: I haven’t seen Asteroid City, but that would also ideally be on this list.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
These movies aren’t really made for me, but my girlfriend loves them and I know they’re well-done movies so I go to see them. I thought the animation in this one was better than the first. The visuals for The Spot, the movie’s ostensible villain, were incredibly inventive.
But I was most impressed with the fact that the voice acting somehow surpassed the first installment. When you have Oscar Isaac chewing up dialogue the way he does in this movie, you know you’re in a good spot. But Shea Wigham as Spider-Gwen’s father was the performance that stole the movie for me.
These movies don’t really make me feel anything, but I do enjoy watching them. I kind of liked Puss and Boots: The Last Wish better though.
Past Lives
The sleeper movie of the summer. It’s made about $10.5 million at the box office so far. A quick Google couldn’t reveal its production budget so I don’t know if its doing well or not financially. But based on the buzz even if it loses money it has to be good for A24.
I’ve always loved Greta Lee and she and Teo Yoo were phenomenal in this movie. The concept of in-yeon is something I believe in fully. There are people I’ve met and been in love with for both short and long periods of time that I felt were my soul mates in this life. But, perhaps, that feeling was only a manifestation of the fact that I recognized them from a different or previous life.
My girlfriend told me she cried at the end of the movie. Not only because it was bittersweet but because we just moved away from New York and it made her homesick for a summer night in the city. Not that she missed it necessarily, but that a certain chapter of our life together was over. I told her New York is a shit hole and we should be glad we left that ruined city.
Just kidding. I nodded, said I had cried too, and that I completely understood.
No Hard Feelings
I might be biased, since I’m from Long Island and No Hard Feelings took place in Montauk, but I kind of had a better time at this movie than I did at Barbie. There wasn’t a lot to think about in No Hard Feelings. It was what it needed to be: a better than average studio comedy for adults. There were good jokes, some slightly racy scenes, and classic physical comedy bits.
I realized that I’d missed Jennifer Lawrence as a movie star when I was watching the terrible movie Don’t Look Up. Truly just an awful movie. She was buried in Don’t Look Up except for the sequence when she meets Timothy Chalamet’s skateboard character (god, that movie is bad). But it gave you a glimpse of what Jennifer Lawrence can bring to a role. She’s beautiful but she’s grounded and warm—a little bit sarcastic and tough.
She played all those notes in No Hard Feelings. To me, she’s kind of like a mix of Goldie Hawn and peak Melanie Griffith. And I hope she’ll do more comedies like this (if there are many more) and less Serious Dramas or Commentaries with Serious Directors and more good dramas with good directors. No Hard Feelings has grossed $85 million worldwide on a $45 million budget so maybe that’s good enough for her to keep getting chances to make solid studio movies built around her. Or maybe I’m just too naive.
But the real revelation for me was Andrew Barth Feldman. His timing was impeccable and the performance of Hall & Oates’s “Maneater” at the restaurant was one of those moments that comes out of nowhere but you remember for a long time.
Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny
I was torn on this one. On one hand, it made me sad that they felt the need to do another Indiana Jones movie. But on the other hand, this was a solid Indiana Jones movie and I’m not going to turn my nose up.
Harrison Ford was somehow still effective and believable as Indy even if what Indy could still do at his advanced age was completely unbelievable. Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s screen presence brought a nice change of pace to the female counterpart for Indy. Anthony Banderas was randomly in the movie and then died. Still don’t really get that. And Mads Mikkelson just brings the goods. Man, Another Round was a great movie, wasn’t it? Just watched it again. I think about that move all the time.
When this movie ended, I felt that pang of melancholy I always feel at the end of Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. That feeling that something is ending or over and things will never be the same. After I saw this movie, I went to a tiki bar and the fake skulls on the wall reminded me of Indiana Jones. And then I wanted to watch Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade again because it is by far my favorite Indy movie. And then I started thinking that maybe I needed to rewatch Temple of Doom since it'd been awhile. But, of course, then I’d also have to rewatch Raiders.
I guess this is why they made another one even though nobody asked them to.
Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part I
This movie wasn’t really coherent at all. And I was glad to hear that Andy Greenwald and Chris Ryan agreed with me on that. The characters don’t have any real motivation and you’re never quite sure why they’re doing the things they’re doing or why any of it really even matters or if you’re supposed to remember some line of backstory from another movie. I’ve seen four of the seven Mission Impossible movies and I don’t feel like I need to see the ones I haven’t seen. If that makes sense.
But none of that really matters when you’re watching well choreographed chase and fight scenes in quick succession and Tom Cruise is doing insane stunts so his obituary can read: “He died doing what he loved—entertaining people at the movies.”
Barbie
My girlfriend and I talked a lot about this movie after we saw it. And just know that I think having this movie be a major blockbuster and earn over $1 billion is only a good thing for the world.
I thought it was pretty good! Not anything amazing or anything, but pretty good! Set design was fantastic. Greta Gerwig’s vision for the film was impressive, considering she was using a doll as source material. And shouts to her for bringing back “Push” by Matchbox 20—I’d forgotten that one. Margot Robbie is underrated as an actress. When Barbie cried near the very end and I felt myself tearing up I said to myself, “Holy shit, this woman is making me tear up because she is dredging up very real feelings out of a doll who in this movie is like barely a character.” Ryan Gosling clearly is a comedic genius and was tapping into some next level shit for this movie. Every gesture, vocal tic, just any movement he did had me dying. And “I’m Just Ken” the song and that entire sequence was truly inspired.
It was a great time at the movies! But I don’t know if I’ll think about it that much. I’ll probably listen to “I’m Just Ken.” If people are obsessed with this and if it becomes Zoolander for a generation younger than me, that’s fucking awesome. I had a lot of good times repeating Zoolander jokes. I hope people do the same thing for Barbie. I just didn’t love it.
People will sit in boardrooms trying to figure out how to make even more money with even more toy movies but this is it—this is the peak. You’re not going to come close to this movie because you’re not going to nail the casting every time, you’re not going to get those performances, and you’re not going to have every intangible go in the director’s favor the way it did with this movie. But we’re about to see what it’s like when people who make decisions think toy movies are what audiences want.
Oppenheimer
I cried twice during this movie.
Once, when the bomb exploded during the Trinity Test portion. Not for any other reason than it was kind of crippling to watch the moment the weapon that could destroy the world be put on display and conveyed in a work of fiction. I sat in my seat and all I could do was feel terrible about everything. About the kinds of lives everyone in the world—and especially the people of Nagasaki and Hiroshima—have had to live since the advent of the atomic bomb.
The other time I cried was when I saw Robert Downey Jr. on screen and acting. Not just being Tony Stark (which is obviously also enjoyable in its own way, but it wasn’t this) but actually inhabiting a fully human character. It had been a very long time.
The acting is obviously great across the board and I thought the way Nolan visualized Oppenheimer’s consciousness was maybe the closest I’ve seen to the literary device of stream of consciousness articulated in a film. (I will say that I haven’t seen Tree of Life and I’m sure lots of other movies I haven’t seen have tried to do this as well.) But overall I left the movie admiring it more than loving it, which are different things. If anything, maybe Oppenheimer will get people reading more history books. I really know nothing about Einstein other than what I.Q. taught me.