Getting back into the movie swing of things continues to prove difficult but I have a week with four films coming up that I want to see in theaters and that’ll get me to make it to a couple of them. I’m intent on seeing Joker to form my own opinion but I had zero interest in being part of the opening weekend crowd. This coming week has three things that I’ll get good use from my Regal Unlimited card with as Gemini Man, Jexi, and The Addams Family opens. Plus, next Sunday is the weekend showing of the 40th-anniversary Alien event, a film I’ve never seen on the big screen.
So, what did I get to watch this week? I got two films in and felt pretty good about it. The arrival of Spider-Man: Far From Home was great to revisit, especially since my youngest daughter didn’t make it out to see it this summer. She’s a big Tom Holland fan and of Spidey so this was great to share with her and to see it through her for the first time. I really enjoyed this film a lot as it blended a lot of different things in it and I didn’t mind all the Iron Man stuff either because it made a lot of sense with Peter’s missing father thing and the way he’s looking for that father figure, enough so that Happy even became a possible one.
The thing that I’ve been enjoying with the MCU films compared to past attempts at bringing Marvel properties to life is that they really do find the right kind of adaptation. Mysterio has long been a favorite character of mine because of his costume and they managed to find a way to incorporate the fishbowl while also letting him be a master liar and storyteller to set the stage for the scam he’s pulling. There are a lot of moving parts in the film but it’s just a seamless mix of European Vacation and superheroes with teenagers in the mix that I adored it. Hell, I’m even finally starting to come around on Zendaya as an actress overall and as MJ.
While plundering the thousands of DVDs that I have and looking for background films to enjoy, one that surfaced is a box office bomb that I have some amusement with, Pushing Tin. The 1999 film puts John Cusack up against Billy Bob Thornton with Angelina Jolie and Cate Blanchett in the mix. It’s a comedy/drama piece that involves a good bit of cheating and repercussions along with the craziness that kind of defined Thornton off-screen at the time. Slide in the appeal of Jolie at this time as her career was really gaining traction and the fun that I always find in a Cusack movie, this one hits a lot of sweet spots. It’s a kind of mean movie at times in how it handles things and you want to smack most of the characters because they’re so morally problematic, but there’s a realness to them at times as well.
It has a great supporting cast that works in the air traffic controllers place and watching the sequences there makes for a pretty engaging time. It’d been forever since I saw it and forgot that Blanchett was in it so I really enjoyed going back to this time before she was really well-known and pre-Lord of the Rings. This film is pretty lowly regarded critically and it only did $8 million on a $33 million budget in theaters but I’ve got a soft spot for it.
