How is TV Club going for everyone?
Cobra Kai actually had me excited for a couple of days. It fell into predictable patterns, but that's kinda what we want from 80s sports movies, right? A week ago, I felt like I was going to write a long, dumb post about Cobra Kai, what I really liked about it. I didn't write it. Now I won't write it because the moment is past and it turns out that I think Cobra Kai is pretty stupid. But it was stupid, highly binge-able fun for a couple of days. I was glad to watch it. My biggest gripe with the show is actually how "conservative" it is in its portrayal of high school life. The artificiality of American public school settings should not be normative for anyone. The entire system is an anomaly in the history of education. The Karate Kid tropes depend upon this social structure. True wisdom would be opting out of this system altogether rather than survival tactics of lunch room brawling.
Movies? Not so much.
Two days ago, I got out of work early and decided to see the first movie that was playing at Regal. I went to the 3:15pm showing of Deadpool 2. I could have waited another 15 minutes to see Solo, but I was impatient. I got there at 3:20 and seeing a movie that just started meant that I got to skip some of the 30 minutes of crappy previews.
I mostly hated the first Deadpool. Guess what? I mostly hated the second Deadpool. I almost walked out a few times in the first 30 minutes or so. Once the film hit its central X-Force section, though, I was entertained. I enjoyed the "lucky" Domino sequence in the middle of the film. All of the self-aware and crude humor? It fell flat for me. I rarely laughed. That said, I was amused by the live-electric-wires-up-the-butt gag. Finally, despite all of Deadpool's obvious pandering to the naughty crowd, the film ends up stealing heavily from the Christian tradition and insisting on self-sacrificial love over all. I don't think that the film overall is worth watching, there are too many fatal flaws to recommend it, but if someone is going to watch this stupid movie anyhow (and the box office suggests they are), well, I guess I'm okay with the final themes that hit hard at the end.
My only other theater experience was Gemini. I confess that my picks for the month weren't so good. No theaters were showing them for more than a week. Nobody cared. The truth is that I don't even care. Gemini has a slow build in which character relationships are built up, then a pretty decent "Wrong Man" middle, followed by a disappointing (and retrospectively obvious and stupid) resolution. It looks great. I think that where it failed for me is that I just don't care about L.A. or celebrity culture. The mystery wasn't so great and the cultural commentary was pretty weak.
At home....
The Blue Dahlia. It's got a few great lines. The fistfight at the safe house is better than any action staging/editing of any contemporary Hollywood film.
Thirst Street. The new Nathan Silver film. This is Silver's most ambitious film to date. I think that it's also where he loses me. There is a lot to like in the camerawork and in the acting, in the awkwardness of the story beats, but I think that in the end, it all feels too staged, too much of a performance piece to impress Silver's friends.
The Truman Show. This one has only grown in my estimation. It's better now than it was in '98. I don't even say that because I think that it is "profound" or "relevant," but only because it's still so effortless to watch, a joyous entertainment.