CS Film Club II

Dream Scenario (2023)
Dream Scenario was probably one of the bigger movies from 2023 that I skipped. There’s a pretty good chance I would have gone to it if it had come out earlier in the year when pickings were more slim but it came out in the middle of November when there were a ton of other options to prioritize and it fell through the cracks. I was intrigued by the film’s concept though, which followed a guy who learns that his image has been inexplicably showing up in people’s dreams around the world, leading to him having a certain kind of viral fame. That’s a neat vaguely Charlie Kaufman-esque high concept and writer/director Kristoffer Borgli films the idea with a certain downplayed 16mm restraint that feels like a smart approach. I liked this movie but I think there are two kind of big issues holding it back. Firstly, I don’t think Nicholas Cage was right for this. The film calls for this protagonist to be this exceptionally normal and mundane person and that is what Cage is going for but I’m not sure this is something Cage can really do anymore. He kind of comes off like Cage wearing a “normal person” Halloween costume and in its own way it stands out as being as much of a an affected and unnatural performance as anything that guy does. Secondly, the film evolves in its second half to be something of a riff on the concept of “cancel culture” and I don’t think it really works as that because the character here really truly did nothing wrong, which is not the case with most of the people who find themselves on the wrong end of “cancellation.” So that bit never quite connects, but it does come close to connecting and I see what they were going for. It doesn’t ruin the movie but it holds it back a bit from really taking that next step up from “interesting” to “really good.”
*** out of Five

Monkey Man

Alright, I'm back to make Neverending feel better after my less that enthusiastic writeup of Ladyhawke.  I still stand by my decision to watch Ladyhawke since that seemed like it was more outside my comfort zone and I've been having some luck recently with movies of that nature in this film club.  I also knew that at some point I would watch Monkey Man so it's not like it was some movie that I wouldn't have gotten around to seeing at some point.  Ladyhawke on the other hand, I probably would have never watched that.  Well now here we are, watching a second film club rec solely out of guilt.  Is that a normal reason to watch a movie?  No, but as Batman told Vicki Vale in the Batcave, 'it's not exactly a normal world.' 

You can look at Monkey Man and consider it to be just another John Wick knockoff.  I would partially agree.  It's once again another revenge story but Monkey Man tries to make it more personal and deep.  I suppose that was easy to do considering Monkey Man was getting revenge for his murdered mother and destroyed village while John Wick was avenging his dead dog and getting his car back, albeit a very sweet car.  But we also explore Monkey Man failing and growing while learning more about his backstory as the movie progressed.  There was definitely an arc to his character even though his main motive was revenge.  It also kind of defused the John Wick comparisons by referencing John Wick in the movie when he's searching for guns which I thought was a nice way for Dev Patel to suggest 'yeah I know, you're going to compare this to John Wick, I get it.'  But even thought it did enough to make it stand apart, it devolved into 'that' kind of generic 2000s action movie in the third act.  Not to say that's a bad thing, it just embraced the formula that I thought it might be trying to shake off.

As a straight up entertaining movie, Monkey Man works just fine.  It knows where it's stemming from, it's aware of its influences and tries to make the characters and their backgrounds compelling enough to care.  While it doesn't reinvent the wheel it definitely puts in an effort to be an actual movie as opposed to just an action movie, something that many action movies fail to do.  While I don't think it's peak action film, it's a solid effort from Dev Patel and I think will get a solid spin or two from me if I need something to watch on an airplane.  For real, this is a great airplane movie.

B+ so says Doomsday

Fuck that. Next round, sir.

And me.

Sorry I misread. Disregard.

I'd say Breaking the Waves is a little more hopeful than Funny Games...

And what do we have here?  A 3 day weekend!

I watched mine last week, just haven't gotten around to reviewing it yet.

I watched Funny Games. Jesus Fucking Christ. Not sure when I'll get my review in as I've got a busy week ahead of me but I liked it a lot.

Bro…

Dooms hates the halloween thread so much.  You can hear the vitriol coming from his post.