One Battle After Another: I punted on writing a full One Battle After Another review last week and honestly, I'm glad that I did. It would've been difficult to articulate the biggest issues I had with the film without delving heavily into spoilers in a lengthier review and I had no interest in tapdancing around them with a few vague paragraphs that didn't really say much of anything useful. I'll just leave at this: One Battle After Another is a good movie that has some electrifying sequences, strong performances (Key supporting players Benicio del Toro and Regina Hall steal the show with their often hilarious degree of calmness under pressure and quiet pain respectively) and wisely portrays white nationalists as the bumbling, insecure babies that they are, but the scattershot first act and not at allbuying the actions of Chase Infinti's character in the film's final scene caused it to fall short of greatness in my eyes. Feel free to taunt me in March when it wins Best Picture and at least a half dozen more awards at the Oscars.
Grade: B
The Smashing Machine: Using the 2002 HBO documentary of the same name as inspiration, Benny Safdie's The Smashing Machine wants to make the viewer feel like they are in the room with MMA legend Mark Kerr as he becomes a multi-time champion, battles an opioid addiction and eventually, makes his return to fighting after getting sober over a 4-year period from 1997-2000. Safdie achieves this by deploying mostly handheld camerawork, a sound mix that feels more like live theater than a movie and trusting his cast led by Dwayne Johnson as Kerr and Emily Blunt as Kerr's longtime partner Dawn Staples to step into the dark, painful places these people were at during these times. This visceral intimacy Safdie provides is a great idea that works very well at times thanks to how well Johnson and Blunt embody their character's individual struggles that were made worse by the toxicity of their codependent yet often loveless relationship. Ironically, the documentary-esque approach that powers the best parts of the movie also ends up being its Achillies heel as it's so deliberately fragmented in its presentation that these characters and Kerr's journey is never developed enough for it to pack the significant emotional punch that Safdie is aiming for. Despite its mixed bag execution, Safdie deserves credit for trusting Johnson to take on his first dramatic role in over a decade at a time in his career when nobody else would've given him such an opportunity and having the courage to take a big swing that is unlike anything else in his filmography for his first solo directorial effort.
Grade: B-
Bone Lake: While Bone Lake definitely could've dove further into the dumpster, it's still a surprisingly stylish exercise in sex, violence and deceit that smartly ratchets up the trash level until it reaches a bloody fever pitch in its banger of a final act. More purehearted vintage camp genre features like this on the big screen please.
Grade: B
Play Dirty: Shane Black's comeback vehicle feels even less like one of his movies than The Predator did. There's quite a few choppily edited, CGI-fueled action sequences, the dialogue is very light on sharp zingersm and the tone is much more in line with modern Hollywood action comedies than the noir-inspired dark comedic buddy movies he's best known for directing. Remarkably, Play Dirty is able to harness a goofy energy through its preposterous, somewhat convoluted heist-meets-revenge narrative and committed performances from Mark Wahlberg as the stoic, principled killer thief Parker, LaKeith Stanfield as Parker's theater-obsessed partner-in-crime Grofield and Rosa Salazar as a morally ambiguous thief that Parker and Grofield reluctantly team with for a life-changing score in New York City that keeps things relatively engaging no matter how messy or silly it gets.
Grade: B-
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