With an eye toward some films this month, the past week was quiet but has me hopeful for what’s to come. I won’t be seeing It: Chapter Two in theaters because I can only handle this kind of stuff at home. But I’m looking forward to seeing Ad Astra and am hoping to use my Regal Unlimited to check out Hustlers for the lols and likely The Goldfinch as it has a lot of actors that I like and want to see. Plus, the trailer has been around forever and it feels like it needs to be seen.
What I did take in this week was a bit light. The big one was the 2018 Overlord film. The initial trailer had me excited (even if it wasn’t a Cloverfield tie-in) because expanding on WWII films is what I want. I enjoy a lot of WWII films in general, but adding in a horror element, or something supernatural, would definitely be welcome since it gives you more avenues to explore. The film has a pretty good rating in general but didn’t land well at the box office – it was gone quicker than I expected locally as it was out of our 16-screen theater in two weeks – but I enjoyed the heck out of it. It’s fairly standard formula but it’s got a strong execution and eye for design and there’s very little in the “why were they stupid doing that?” moments to it, which was a huge boost. Jovan Adepo definitely makes for an intriguing lead here and his expressiveness is fantastic in really making you feel what his character is going through. And I really liked what Mathilde Ollivier brought to the project even if it was a kind of token female role. Her career is at an early stage but I suspect I may see her in a lot of French TV or film productions in the years to come. This definitely leans into some dark material with experiments and the like but it plays small and intriguing. It’s not horror in the traditional sense but a good WWII action film with a layer of horror on top of it.
I’d picked up An American in Paris months ago but got sidetracked after the first ten minutes or so and never made it back until this week. I continue to love the opening sequence with how masterful Kelly is here in blending so many things through dance in a tight scene, but also for the minimalist approach to living that’s appealing. The film came as Kelly’s star was really becoming something and it did huge when it came out in 1951 with eight Academy Award noms, winning six. Older musicals can be tough for a lot of people, myself included, but it’s Kelly’s charisma that worked for me in going through it among others. That it was Leslie Caron’s first film is pretty amazing and she’s a delight in this throughout even as it highlights many of the social norms of the day. It’s a film I’m unlikely to revisit outside of snippets here and there in the years to come but it’s one that I’m really glad I got to see.
This week did have me picking up a few things through the old iTunes sale side. This is where I get to make up for missed things during my MoviePass dead time when I couldn’t hit the theater. One of those was the Detective Pikachu film, which we’ll do a regular review for once I get the chance to watch it. I’m a sucker for a concept like this and everything about it just looked like it would work right. I also got a copy of The Long Shot as we continue to see more varied if familiar projects out of Seth Rogen. I like what he’s doing as a producer with TV shows but something like this feels like he’s continuing to move forward with the film side. The other thing I got was one I was waiting for on the real cheap as it’s not going to be a regular revisit was Dunkirk. I enjoy the hell out of Nolan’s films but I find them to not be background films I can have on regularly as they command all of my attention.