Next Goal Wins: For fans of sports comedies about underdog misfit teams that feature silly jokes, an emotional core that isn't necessarily coming from a sincere place and no surprises whatsoever, Next Goal Wins will most likely get the job done. Director/co-writer Taika Waititi is a good fit for this lightweight story about the historically awful American Samoan Men's National Team as they aim to turn things around for the 2014 World Cup Qualifiers by hiring embattled international soccer veteran Thomas Rongen (Michael Fassbender-who does pretty well playing a short-tempered, visibly disengaged drunk who slowly warms up to his new team) as their new head coach that allows him to showcase the warm, tight-knit community of American Samoa for the world while also getting the opportunity to stage a string of amusing situational comedy bits and effectively mock the white savior tropes that are often a part of the sports movie genre. The handling of key supporting character Jaiyah Saelua (Kaimana)-a defender on the team who is in the process of transitioning into a woman-is clumsy, if not full-blown insensitive at times and definitely won't sit well with some members of the trans community and their loved ones, but aside from that misstep, it's exactly the fun, funny and somewhat sweet little movie that Waititi wanted it to be.
Grade: B
Thanksgiving: Son of a bitch, Eli Roth really pulled it off! Every ounce of the fake trailer's sadistic B-slasher spirit has been transferred into the feature adaptation/expansion that is full of memorable kills, gnarly practical gore and the brand of giddy dark humor that Roth has long flashed in his work but never gave the proper amount of attention to. As long as the sequels continued to be this depraved, hilarious and entertaining, I'd be all-in on Thanksgiving turning into the next slasher franchise.
Grade: B+
Saltburn: Emerald Fennell could've made just about anything she wanted after winning the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Promising Young Woman and she opted to make a piece of triumphant camp excess in Saltburn. In other news, I'm pretty confident I've now become a lifetime fan of Emerald Fennell.
It takes a little bit for Saltburn's ridiculous web to be woven, but once it does, woo baby, does it become a blast. There isn't enough sex or violence on display for Saltburn to rival the God-tier gonzo goodness of 90's erotic thrillers like Wild Things and Basic Instinct, but it's the closest anything has come to replicating their brand of trashy, intoxicating campiness in the 21st Century. Every provocation, revelation and plot twist Fennell throws down pulls Saltburn deeper down into the gutter and it only becomes more appealing with each new deposit of stinky, silly shit. By the time the big final reveal comes around and the context of nearly every previous scene gets dramatically shifted, I couldn't stop chuckling at the beautifully warped beast that Fennell had created. All six of the lead performances (Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant, Archie Madekwe, Allison Oliver) are perfectly in sync with Fennell's vision, the script is roaringly funny and Linus Sandgren's cinematography conveys the trashy opulent aesthetic of this movie so perfectly that I'm already starting to get upset that he won't win an Oscar. May Fennell be blessed with the opportunity to continue to run wild in Hollywood for years to come.
Grade: B+
Napoleon: This latest spin of the always unpredictable Ridley Scott Wheel of Quality yields mixed results. The portrayal of Napoleon Bonaparte as a manbaby tyrant with a comically fragile ego is inspired, most of the battle sequences (the Austerlitz sequence is particularly awe-inspiring) are expertly staged and every scene between Napoleon (Joaquin Phoenix) and his longtime wife/#1 hater Josephine (Vanessa Kirby) is a compelling soap opera exchange that highlights their ridiculous, contempt-and-jealously-filled relationship. Unfortunately, Napoleon runs into a similar set of problems as Scott's previous film House of Gucci as its tone clunkily shifts between the farcical and stoic at the drop of a hat and the 157-minute runtime simultaneously feels too long and too short as it struggles to justify its 2.5+ hour running time while also leaving nearly every element of its story underdeveloped. Could Scott's upcoming 4-hour director's cut presumably solve some of these problems? Yes, but quite frankly, I'm not sure I have the heart to sit through this again to find out the answer.
Grade: B-
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