The Killer
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: David Fincher is possibly our finest working movie director. Any filmmaker whose resume includes Se7en, Zodiac, and The Game — yes, The Game; you can have Fight Club, I’ll take The Game — is top-tier to me.
But Fincher’s latest, The Killer, is an underwhelming disappointment. We learn about the life of a perfectionist assassin-for-hire played by Michael Fassbender and … well, that’s about it. A hit goes awry for our protagonist, and he spends the rest of the movie tracking down the bad guys who retaliated for his screwup by assaulting his girlfriend.
The movie is what we expect from Fincher in that it looks great, and sounds great, and it is absorbing. But the most important element, the story, is no great shakes. Release: 2023 Grade: C+
Would I watch it again? Possibly, but only to see if there is some hidden genius at work that I might have overlooked. (I doubt it.)
**
No Hard Feelings
In my misspent youth, I used to devour movies like this one as a matter of course — especially the good ones, like Risky Business starring a fresh-faced Tom Cruise.
But that was back in the sinful ‘80s and ‘90s.
I had a bad feeling about a 2023 sex comedy starring Jennifer Lawrence. I suspected it would be one of two things: watered down thanks to “MeToo,” and/or saturated with political correctness.
OK, so I was wrong. No Hard Feelings is actually a sweet, sometimes raunchy, occasionally laugh-out-loud good time. Lawrence plays a cash-strapped woman who is hired by a wealthy couple to “date” (whatever that means) their virginal son, who is seriously lacking in social skills.
Despite its 1980s-style, ballyhooed skinny-dip scene featuring a fully nude Lawrence, No Hard Feelings is less Porky’s, more John Hughes. Release: 2023 Grade: B+
Would I watch it again? Maybe. Or possibly just the skinny-dip scene.
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