The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent: A comedy about the work and public persona of Nicolas Cage turning to be reasonably restrained is a bit of an unpleasant surprise. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is more of a broad buddy movie that just happens to feature Cage playing a somewhat heightened version of himself and a steady volume of references to his movies. To be clear, this approach does have its share of positives. The plot is a clever melding of the character-driven work that the real Cage is drawn to most and the big, dumb action movies that made him a household name in the 90's, the buddy dynamic between Cage and Pedro Pascal is delightful and its reverence for the craft of moviemaking and Cage himself is surprisingly heartwarming. The problem is that most of its best moments occur when it's poking fun at the over-the-top screen persona of Cage. There's a loopy energy and meta wit behind these scenes that makes the comedy feel truer to the spirit of the Cage we often see on screen and it's kind of a bummer that we'll never get to see the version of this film that had more frenzied magic behind it.
Grade: B
The Northman: Leave it to Robert Eggers to turn both the Viking and revenge genres completely on their heads. Eggers turns a very basic premise (an Icelandic Viking prince vows to take back the kingdom that was stolen from him by his treacherous uncle who killed his father in cold blood and free his mother-who he kept as his bride-from his clutches) into a primal surrealist beast of a movie that effortlessly combines agonizing period detail with fantastical elements that align with the Vikings spiritual beliefs. Every battle sequence is an in-your-face marvel where every ounce of brutality is felt, this terrific ensemble cast (particularly Alexander Skarsgard, Nicole Kidman and Anya Taylor-Joy) beautifully convey the plights of their tortured yet fiercely determined characters with their impassioned performances and the breathtaking cinematography from Eggers' longtime DP Jarin Blaschke captures the harshness, mysticism and majesty that ruled over these people and the land they inhabited. The inclusion of a not particularly convincing romantic subplot and a slightly overlong runtime is enough to put this below The Lighthouse in my Eggers power rankings, but it's still a great flick that proves big budgets and major studio backing can't dull the bold singularity of Eggers' creative vision.
Grade: B+
Crush: There's something refreshing about seeing a high school romantic comedy where the sexuality and gender identity of the lesbian, bisexual and non-binary characters that prominently populate the story is treated as a normal, mundane thing. Nobody is in the closet or being ostracized by their family, friends or teachers because they're gay or don't confirm to a set of gender pronouns, they're just average high school kids dealing with average high school problems. It's got to be nice (particularly for young people) in the LGBTQIA+ community to watch a movie where people are just accepted for who they are without having to go through a marathon of pain and intolerance to get to that comfortable place.
Aside from that positive representation, Crush is just a pretty standard issue teen romcom that fits snugly into a streaming service's catalog of merely competent original titles. The one-liners hit at a passable rate, there's some real heart behind the relationships (both romantic and platonic) that are depicted here, and the happy ending comes in the form of an effectively cheesy, absurdly contrived encounter that of course takes place in front of a massive crowd of people who break out into applause when the obligatory reconciliatory kiss finally happens. Watching pleasant, relatively funny people find love and get one step closer to figuring who they really are as they creep towards adulthood is a pleasant enough way to spend 90 minutes, particularly at this regressive, garbage period in human history where lighthearted entertainment serves as an especially welcome escape.
Grade: B-
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