Shortcomings (2023)

Shortcomings is another random movie I found under the romance category on Netflix. This movie made me wished I planned the movies I watch more.

Ben (Justin H. Min) is a manager at a failing movie theater. He is unhappy with his life, including his relationship with Miko (Ally Maki). When Miko moves to New York City for a three-month internship and his best friend, Alice (Sherry Cola), goes to New York City for a new girlfriend, Ben doesn’t know what to do with himself. Thinking that white women are the ideal, he tries to date one of his employees, Autumn (Tavi Gevinson). When that fails, he tries to date Sasha (Debby Ryan). When that also fails, he follows Miko and Alice to New York City, only to find that they have both found better lives there.

So…I think I know what the movie was trying to say. I think it was mostly about internal hatred and racism and how that effects your relationship with others. Because if that isn’t what this was about, Ben is a complete and total asshole. I mean, he’s a jerk either way but if he hates himself so much, it is a little more understandable. Unfortunately, we don’t really get any internal dialogue from him. All we have to go on are his actions, which, in case you haven’t gotten it yet, all suck. He is a terrible person.

However, you can have a good movie with a terrible lead character. It isn’t unheard of. But I’m not sure this is a good movie. It’s not a bad movie. It just feels like it’s missing something. If we knew a little more about what was happening inside Ben’s head, it might give us a little more insight as to why he is so awful to people he’s supposed to love. I understand that this movie is aimed at an Asian American audience. I am not their target audience. And maybe that is why I feel so confused about Ben’s intentions.

Rating: B-

Romance With A Twist (2024)

Unsurprisingly, Hallmark has some romance movies to get us ready for Valentine’s Day this year. And it’s starting with Romance With A Twist.

Luna (Jocelyn Hudon) was a dancer before life cancelled her plans. Now she works for her family’s construction company. As acts are getting ready for the town’s new arts festival, aerialist Bennett (Olivier Renaud) is suddenly without a partner. Bennett’s sister, Gabby (Candice Lidstone) suggests Luna. Begrudgingly Bennett agrees to train the former dancer to use aerial silks. But will she be able to learn them in time for their show at the festival?

Going into this, I fully expected the half-hearted attempts at reality that we get with the Christmas movies. However, I found out that Renaud was actually a circus perform and Hudon was actually a ballet dancer. Yes, Hallmark has cast actors that really have the same skillset as their characters! It definitely gave the movie a more realistic feel.

While the acting and the stunts were very good, the script was a little thin. We didn’t quite get to see Luna and Bennett falling in love. Luna seemed to have a bit of a crush on Bennett, presumably because she saw his rippling muscles, but we never get the sense that Bennett enjoys being in Luna’s company. He spends a lot of the movie almost brooding about random stupid things.

Despite that, I enjoyed the movie. Moreso for the aerial silks, which I do wish they used more. Of all of the Hallmark-esque romance movies I have watched, this is one of the better ones.

Rating: B+

Beautiful Disaster (2023)

I have this weird sort of fascination with the Sprouse twins. Mostly because I can never remember which is which and they seem to pick strange roles to play. I kinda remember thinking I wanted to watch Beautiful Disaster when it came out but then I immediately forgot about it. Thankfully, streaming exists.

Abby (Virginia Gardner) was raised to be an amazing poker player. She runs away from Las Vegas and her father to go to college, moving in with her friend, America (Libe Barer). The first night Abby is there, Mer takes her to a secret underground fight club where Abby meets Travis (Dylan Sprouse), one of the fighters. They have an instant connection but Abby is adamant about not getting into a relationship with him. However, the two make a bet at Travis’ next fight. If he wins, Abby has to live with him for a month. Of course, he wins. Toward the end of the month, Abby gets a desperate call from her father needing her to come back to Las Vegas to win $100,000 to get him out of trouble. She leaves without saying anything to anyone. Travis finds out and follows her to Vegas, where he agrees to another fight in order to win the money.

If you couldn’t tell by this description, Beautiful Disaster is all over the place. The will-they-won’t-they in the beginning was actually kinda interesting. It was a little annoying that Travis was so perfect. We never see him lose a fight; with the exception of one time, we never see him do anything terribly bad (I’m not counting amateur underground fighting as bad); and he is frequently an attentive and ideal boyfriend. The movie wants us to think he’s a “bad boy” because he fights but he is completely the opposite.

And that is where the majority of the movie lies. With their budding relationship. The whole ‘Abby saves her father’ plot takes up about a half hour, maybe 45 minutes, of the movie. It was almost like an afterthought. “Oh right, Abby is supposed to be this badass poker player. We should have her play poker more.” But then we don’t actually see her play poker. We see her distract the other players and pretend to be dumb at the game. Neither of those skills makes her an elite poker player. I wish they just spent the rest of the movie on their relationship and left this part out. Especially since there is a sequel that came out a few weeks ago. They could have put all of the poker stuff in there. It probably would have made this movie better.

Rating: B-

Happiness For Beginners

If you ever get bored, open Netflix, go to the categories section in the main menu, and pick a random category to see what they offer you. It’s wild what they list some movies as. For example, here is Happiness For Beginners, listed as a romcom but with very little romance or comedy.

Helen (Ellie Kemper) is a schoolteacher who is having a bit of a life crisis. To get herself back on track, she signs up for a hiking trip on the Appalachain Trail. Little did she know that her younger brother’s best friend, Jake (Luke Grimes), is also on the trip. Can Helen find herself again? And will she find love on the way?

For a movie about hiking and camping and the wilderness, this was so boring. We’re supposed to read into Jake’s longing glances at Helen but, to be honest, she is kind of a bitch to him. She yells at him a lot…until she has to take charge of her sub-group after one of the members gets injured. Oh, and she finds out about Jake’s disability. A lot of the plot happens in conversations so we don’t actually see things happening. I did find out that the movie is based on a book…maybe that is why there is so much talking and so little hiking done.

At the end, I’m not really left caring about any of these characters. I didn’t care when someone got hurt. I didn’t care when Helen suddenly took charge. I didn’t care when Jake dropped his big disability bombshell. I wish I could say that I recommended Happiness because the actors are actually good. But they aren’t given anything to work with. Their cardboard characters could have been dropped anywhere and this would have been exactly the same. I’m sad this wasn’t better.

Rating: C

Love At First Sight (2023)

Man, the beginning of the year is a bit of a bummer movie-wise. I want to be talking about the newest romcoms but there isn’t a lot that has come out yet. At least I have all of the 2023 movies to go through. Like Netflix’s Love At First Sight, which came out in September.

Hadley (Haley Lu Richardson) is a 20-year old woman traveling to London for her father’s wedding. When she misses her flight, she meets Oliver (Ben Hardy), a 22-year old British Yale student who is traveling to London for his mother’s memorial party. The two end up sitting next to each other for the six hour flight. They fall in love and try to reconnect once they have landed.

When I saw how slowly this movie began, I dreaded having to sit through it for 90 minutes. Thankfully, the pace does pick up once they get on the plane. This is based on a book, which I have not read, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that is where the slower pace comes from. In a book, you can go through a person’s history in a fascinating way. In a movie, when you have a third-party narrator telling you about a person’s history, it doesn’t have quite the same kick.

I am happy to say that once we got through the “who are these people” parts, Love At First Sight turned into a cute romcom. I liked watching Hadley and Oliver interacting with each other more than with other people. They seemed a little too self-centered when they weren’t together. And I would have liked it if the ending gave us more than just additional narration telling us what happens to them after the movie ends. A montage of pictures would have been nice. Despite all of that, the movie was decent. Probably not worth more than one watch though.

Rating: B

The Out-Laws (2023)

As a fan of The Vampire Diaries, I’m always interested when Nina Dobrev shows up in a movie. The last one I saw her in was 2021’s Christmas movie, Love Hard. And with Adam Devine and Pierce Brosnan in The Out-Laws, I was definitely interested in checking it out.

Bank manager Owen (Devine) and yoga instructor Parker (Dobrev) are about to get married. Parker’s parents, Billy (Brosnan) and Lilly (Ellen Barkin), have been absent from her life but they have finally emailed her to say they will be attending the wedding. Shortly after they arrive, Owen’s bank is robbed by the Ghost Bandits. Owen is pretty sure Parker’s parents are the Bandits but before he can completely confirm his suspicious, Parker is kidnapped by Billy and Lilly’s former bank robbing partner, Rehan (Poorna Jagannathan). Rehan demands five million dollars or she will kill Parker. Desperate to save his future wife, Owen helps Billy and Lilly rob banks to save her.

The plot of the movie was obvious from the title. As soon as I saw that Owen was a bank manager, I knew Parker’s parents were going to rob him. The only thing I didn’t know was that Parker wasn’t in on it. I expected there to be a twist that she had been setting him up the entire time but, no, she was actually completely innocent. Which was nice. I liked that they didn’t turn Owen’s pure love for her into something that would break his heart. No, this is just a story of a man who loves a woman so much that he would do anything for her. And parents who are kinda crappy.

I did enjoy The Out-Laws a lot. It helps that I don’t mind Adam Devine’s acting. I’m sure he gets on a lot of people’s nerves but I find him charming. And he is a really good comic actor. There isn’t a ton of comedy here but all of it does fall on Devine’s shoulders. And he handles it well. I would definitely say this is one to check out.

Rating: B

Good Grief ( 2024)

So I decided to do a February romcom/romance movie thing. I turned on Netflix and went to their romance movies and found Daniel Levy’s new movie, Good Grief. Since I generally enjoy his work, I popped it on. I don’t think this is how I wanted to start the month of romance.

Marc (Daniel Levy) is living the good life with his husband, Oliver (Luke Evans). A year after Oliver died in a car accident, Marc opens a card from him confessing that he found someone else in Paris, where Marc discovered that Oliver had secretly been renting an apartment. Determined to find out more, Marc travels to Paris with his best friends, Thomas (Himesh Patel) and Sophie (Ruth Negga). The three of them come to terms with the difficulties each of them have faced in their personal lives.

This was a really sad movie. I mean, I should have known it from the title but I didn’t expect it to be this sad. It is entirely about Marc’s transition through the stages of grief and accepting that, while he loved Oliver and Oliver loved him, his husband was not the person Marc thought he was. At the same time, we have secondary plots with Sophie having commitment (and maybe alcoholism) issues and Thomas being afraid of not being enough for his boyfriends (and maybe still being in love with Marc since they previously dated).

Don’t get me wrong. Good Grief isn’t a bad movie. It is very well done. But if you aren’t in the right mindset to watch three very broken people learn how to better themselves, it might not be for you. I’m glad I watched it, I’m just not sure it should have been the first movie of February.

Rating: B

Godzilla Minus One (2023)

My husband is a big fan of Godzilla. Whenever a new film hits the theaters, we are there to see it. We first saw Godzilla Minus One when it came out in theaters in early December. We saw it a second time when they released the black and white version earlier this month. But this time we got to see it in 4DX.

Near the end of World War II, kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) diverts his plan to an outpost on Odo Island, pretending that there is a mechanical failure. That night, the island is attacked by a giant sea monster the locals call Godzilla. Everyone except lead mechanic Sosaku Tachibana (Munetaka Aoki) and Shikishima are killed. Ashamed of his cowardice, Shikishima returns home to Tokyo, only to find his parents died in an air raid. He meets Noriko Oishi (Minami Hamabe), a young woman who is caring for an orphaned baby named Akiko. Knowing that they need money to keep Akiko alive, he takes a job detonating mines in the ocean around Japan. When he finds a much larger and more powerful Godzilla is on the way to attack Japan, he teams up with other veterans from the war to defeat the monster.

There are quite a few Godzilla movies that mostly focus on the monster. (I’m pretty sure most of those are American-produced versions.) Minus One is an extremely emotional story about the effects of war and survivor’s guilt and doing what is necessary in order to survive. While I know these are somewhat common themes in the Japanese-produced Godzilla movies, I have never seen one this emotional. We really get to see Shikishima break down over his perceived failures as a man. And Noriko’s anguish at not being able to help someone she loves overcome what the war has done to him. Seeing all of this in color was already amazing and beautiful. Seeing it in black and white was very different. Somehow it made everything feel more important or more heartbreaking. I didn’t think I could enjoy this movie more, but the black and white version proved me wrong.

Rating: A

Destroy All Neighbors (2024)

My husband is a pretty big fan of horror movies. Personally, I prefer comedies. Horror-comedies like Destroy All Neighbors is a perfect middle point for both of us to watch and maybe enjoy.

William (Jonah Ray) has been struggling for the past three years to finish his prog rock album. Things keep getting in his way like his day job as an audio engineer or needing the right speakers or the neighbors making too much noise. When a new neighbor named Vlad (Alex Winter) moves in next door and starts making tons of noise, William is hesitant to confront him about it. Finally getting up the courage to ask Vlad to turn the volume down, William accidentally kills the man. And his prog rock idol. And another neighbor. But to William, they aren’t really dead. They are just another step on the road to prog rock godliness.

While Destroy All Neighbors isn’t as funny as Tucker & Dale vs Evil, it is a fun time. The comedy lies with the weird things Vlad says and the utter insanity of prog rock itself. Maybe not knowing if William was going insane or if the undead were actually real was supposed to be funny. But I don’t think there were any points where I actually laughed out loud, only chuckled a bit. Instead, the horror part takes a bigger foothold in the movie. There is quite a bit of blood and there is a sort of gory running joke.

Did I enjoy it? Yes. Would I watch it again? Probably not. I wish it had a little more comedy but that’s OK. I know not every horror comedy was meant for me.

Rating: C

May December (2023)

May December came out when I was deep in the holiday movie reviews. I actually thought this came out earlier this month instead of the beginning of last month. Christmas movies will do that to you.

Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman) is an actress shadowing Gracie (Julianne Moore), who is the subject of her next movie. When Gracie was 36, she began a love affair with 13-year old Joe (Charles Melton). She gave birth to their first child, Honor (Piper Curda), in prison. When Elizabeth visits, the married couple is preparing to celebrate the high school graduation of their twins, Mary (Elizabeth Yu), and Charlie (Gabriel Chung).

This is such a difficult movie. It’s loosely based on the true story of Mary Kay Letourneau, a 34-year old teacher who started a sexual relationship with her 12-year old student. They did, indeed, get married and have children, both of which were born in prison (during different prison terms). So it’s already a little icky to watch. However, what makes it more difficult is that it seems like Elizabeth is trying to actually become Gracie, not just figure out who she is in order to portray her on screen. And it’s weird that THAT freaked me out more than the actual pedophilic relationship.

But was it a good movie? It’s honestly hard for me to say. I didn’t hate it but I spent a LOT of time trying to figure out Elizabeth’s motives and whether she really was an actor or some sort of weird stalker. It wasn’t a waste of time or anything like that. I think I would have liked a different ending though. Something a little more….substantial.

Rating: B