The Week That Was - June 23, 2024

Jackie Brown, con men, and a world in which there can still be good Marvel and Star Wars stuff?

Yesterday was the day of the year designated to celebrate my better half’s time spent on this plane, so we had some fun with the fam over the weekend. I’m so lucky to have had Jack in my life for [insert amount of time that adequately represents the time spent together while not outing her age] years, and that I found someone who not only suffers but seems to generally kind of like my nonsense is probably the thing holding me together. Happy birfdei, Jack.

It helped distract from the terrifying prospect of the furthering destabilization of the Middle East at the apparent behest of a madman starting wars with all of his neighbors (to make no mention of the genocide that continues to be carried out) whenever it looks like he might be called to account for his myriad misdeeds being enabled and bolstered by our tax dollars and politicians (who seem all too willing to be dragged into another inherently odious and unjustifiable war) on both sides of the aisle who are equal parts deranged and on the take, all of which is made much, much worse by the lunatic who tore up a deal with the country now being painted as a bad actor by the actual bad actors in these war games that seem to have us teetering on the precipice of a war that no rational person wants. A bad world continues to get worse.

Just to knock out some housekeeping after that mini-rant:

• I was on Movie Night Extravaganza this past week, where we discussed Jackie Brown. You should watch or listen if you haven’t done so already.

• We also just launched Season 3 of the Unkind Rewind, with Gabe Joyner of SVU Pod: Especially Heinous being our first guest of the new season. This is a fun Qs and Tease ep with her where we eventually dive into her history with a ‘90s flick that all three of us remembered having a fondness for but of which I, at the very least, had next to no recollection. Watch or listen here, and the film for the Main Event can still be streamed on Amazon Prime through the end of June.

But I watched some stuff, so…

TV

Andor (Season 1) - I’d been leery to watch this because of how completely fatigued I am with all things Star Wars. I didn’t particularly like Rogue One the first and only time I saw it, which only made me less inclined to watch this show, but Rogue One is far from the worst installment in the Star Wars universe of which I haven’t unabashedly liked anything in decades. Andor starts a little slow, but it’s the most adult and grounded thing playing in this sandbox that I can recall. This is a show for these times, a full-throated antifascist exploration of how a revolution is fomented in the face of an overwhelming opponent. This is the opening chapter, and I think it adeptly lays the groundwork for how the Rebel Alliance would have begun to form while seeing how the oppressive thumb of the Empire holds down and exploits its citizens.

Tony Gilroy, who wrote Rogue One—but also wrote the first four Bourne movies (directing Legacy), Michael Clayton (which he directed), and The Cutting Edge—does a much better job of centering a lead who has tons of agency here in the titular Cassian Andor, played with expected élan by Diego Luna. It’s also not bogged down in all the wizard hokum as my Munch My Benson co-host Adam pointed out in a text convo. The first season is fairly strong, and there were moments in the last three episodes where I was genuinely moved, which I don’t think I could say about a Star Wars property since the original trilogy. Disney+

Film

Jackie Brown (1997) - I actually reviewed this in earnest at Letterboxd because of my appearance on Movie Night Extravaganza. I decided that in an effort to add value to the podcast, I’d read the book between viewings, which was pretty fascinating to the screenwriting side of my brain. I was constantly shocked at how much Tarantino adhered to Elmore Leonard’s work while reading the book. His changes made total sense to me, though some of the QT-signature flair didn’t work as well as it might have for me 15 or 20 years ago. This is still his best work, and Robert Forster and Pam Grier are incredible, making anyone watching wonder what was wrong with Hollywood that they didn’t get much more run at the peak of their powers. VOD

Absolution (2024) - What I presumed would be yet another forgettable late-period Liam Neeson geezer pleasing action flick was pretty much that. It was a little more interesting than I’d figured it would be, but it’s far from interesting enough for me to recommend, unless you’re really wanting to see Liam Neeson play what amounts to “what if Rocky never got a real shot, got CTE, and became a deadbeat dad only to try to make things right like 20 years later?” Hulu, Kanopy

Thunderbolts* (2025) - I think it’s probably been since Avengers: Endgame or maybe WandaVision that I loved an MCU release without reservation. Of the films, none of Phase IV (Black Widow through Wakanda Forever) worked for me, and in Phase V, I at least enjoyed The Marvels and Deadpool & Wolverine, even if I did so with some qualms. This is the last film of Phase V, and it’s the first Marvel film I can say I fully enjoyed in six years now. I wasn’t left wanting or wondering why they bothered or lamenting that this was a shell of previous installments.

The rag-tag band of New Avengers came together in a more entertaining way than their predecessors did, and I honestly think what they did with the villain this time around was the most interesting thing they’ve done with a villain since at least Erik Killmonger and maybe in the entire history of the MCU. I don’t want to get too far into the weeds since this is still in some theaters, but the big bad resonated with me in ways comic book villainy doesn’t tend to.

I also think Jake Schreier—whose work I mostly know from music videos for Francis & the Lights, HAIM, and Chance the Rapper but who also directed Robot & Frank and Paper Towns—makes a smart decision in grounding much more of the action in the practical realm, largely eschewing CGI for stunts, giving us a movie that feels more real than so many of its predecessors in this universe, something that will also help it age better than most of its peers, which look like trash two or three years later. The cast of Miss Flo, David Harbour, Sebastian Stan, Lewis Pullman, Wyatt Russell, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus afford themselves well, with Pugh and Pullman standing out the most. In theaters

Out Come the Wolves (2024) - This is a taut low-budget thriller in the woods, pitting a Kyle, a Nolan, and eventually a with-child Sophie, who probably shouldn’t have had either a Kyle or a Nolan in her life, against a pack of wolves who’ve ambled into an area they’ve not been in decades. Missy Peregrym is the only cast member I really knew (past Damon Runyan’s six-episode guest spot as Coach Carson on Degrassi, of course), and I only know her from having been in the room while FBI was on the television. This is just three actors and some wolves in the Canadian woods. It works in the way those well-planned isolated thrillers can work, and I like watching stuff that plays against some limitations to see how I might execute my own ideas. Hulu, AMC+, Plex

Bad Actor: A Hollywood Ponzi Scheme (2024) - Another scam doc. I watch a ton of docs either about cults or scammers. The cult members or marks tend to share a lot of the same traits, so there’s probably something to interrogate within my psyche wondering why I need to watch this stuff—surely something about gleaning superiority from watching these “dumb people” buying into a line of bull that I’d never fall for… It’s crazy that this no-talent actor was able to steal $650M from people. Hulu, Plex