The Grouchy Editor

Ingrid Goes West

Aubrey Plaza plays dour and damaged Ingrid, a loser from Pennsylvania who moves west to stalk her idol, an Instagram “influencer” named Taylor (Elizabeth Olsen). Ingrid uses deceit to successfully penetrate Taylor’s inner circle, and hilarity results. Uh, not really.

Ingrid Goes West aspires to be All About Eve for the social-media generation, but there’s a crucial difference. In Eve, the characters were snakes — but snakes with charm and wit. In Ingrid, the characters are snakes, but shallow and witless.

Only in the third act does the movie come to life, when Ingrid sheds her creepy stalker persona and reveals herself to be a genuine human being. Release: 2017  Grade: B

© 2010-2024 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

Promising Young Woman

The main reason to watch Promising Young Woman is Carey Mulligan, who shines as a damaged woman who goes to the dark side to avenge a friend’s gang rape and subsequent suicide. It’s a good film, but not a great one, I think because it tries too hard to juggle a serious topic with a desire to entertain. The muddled result is thought-provoking drama — but not too thought-provoking. Because, you know, that might be a downer. Release: 2020  Grade: B+

**

Nobody

With Nobody, Bob Odenkirk joins Liam Neeson and Keanu Reeves in the trendy late-career transition to that most unlikely of genres: the middle-aged man as action hero. Odenkirk plays a seemingly harmless everyman who, following a home-invasion that threatens his wife and kids, returns to his not-so-harmless roots.

What sinks the movie is its discordant tone. It begins like a Falling Down for a new generation, with Odenkirk in Michael Douglas’s role as the American white man who finds himself on the downswing of societal change. But once the big secret is revealed, Nobody goes from “take this serious” drama to a procession of violent, cartoonish set pieces — “hey, we’re just having fun here!”

Although a sequel is clearly on the minds of everyone involved with Nobody, I can only hope that Odenkirk finds something more suited to his talents. Something like Better Call Saul, maybe? Release: 2021  Grade: B

**

Insomnia

I liked the 2002 American remake of this movie, which starred Al Pacino as a cop with a checkered past who hunts a killer while battling his own demons — and a relentless midnight sun. I also enjoyed the original, with Stellan Skarsgard as the troubled cop, although the locale in the first film is northern Norway, not Alaska.

I guess a viewer’s preference might depend on which performance most intrigues: Skarsgard’s cold-as-ice inspector, or Pacino’s more emotional cop on the edge. I’ll give the nod to Norway’s version, if only because it came first. Release: 1997  Grade: B+

© 2010-2024 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

Searching

I was wary of Searching because it’s a gimmick movie. Like Unfriended and films of that ilk, the entire story is told from the perspective of a screen — computer screen, cell-phone screen, security footage, you name it. I’m not a fan of the screencast genre because, among other annoyances, I find myself triggered to “interact.” I feel like I should be clicking on buttons or highlighting text. Too much work.

But like the much-maligned found-footage genre, if the screenplay is clever and the direction is skilled, screencast movies can work. Searching succeeds because the gimmick never becomes outlandish, and the script contains several surprises and one nice twist.

Oh yeah, the plot: A widower undergoes every parent’s nightmare when his teenage daughter goes missing. Then he undergoes every technophobe’s nightmare: enduring all those screens to retrace her steps.  Release: 2018  Grade: B+

© 2010-2024 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

The Voyeurs

Here’s the thing about stupid erotic thrillers: If the movie can manage to keep me entertained, I am willing to forgive any number of gaping plot holes, ridiculous twists, and bad acting. So long as the filmmakers don’t take their movie too seriously, neither will I.

Amazon’s The Voyeurs is certainly guilty of the three cinematic sins listed above, but I kept watching for several reasons: 1)  I’m a sucker for movies that take their inspiration from Hitchcock and De Palma, and Voyeurs, in which our heroes make the mistake of spying on their sexy, intriguing neighbors, does exactly that. 2)  The twist ending is unbelievable, sure, but rather than try to hide that unfortunate fact, Voyeurs embraces it. 3)  Star Sydney Sweeney (pictured above), totally unconvincing as a respected optometrist, is utterly convincing as a woman with spectacular boobs.

And Ben Hardy, as the charismatic villain, proves that at least one member of the cast can act.  Release: 2021 Grade: B-

Natasha Liu Bordizzo, left, also gets naked.

**

The Vast of Night

Don’t go into The Vast of Night expecting Spielbergian spectacle, a la Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Do go in expecting — dare I say it? — a more realistic depiction of what a visit from space aliens might be like, should the creatures decide to drop in on a small New Mexico town in the late 1950s. Simple, straightforward, and above all, atmospheric as hell, this little film is a creepy gem. Release: 2019 Grade: A-

© 2010-2024 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle

I had low expectations for this Hollywood-machine product. Big budget, special effects, and movie stars slumming for large paychecks, I assumed. Well, what a pleasant surprise: Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is no cinematic masterpiece, but it is clever and often laugh-out-loud funny.

Kevin Hart, Dwayne Johnson, Karen Gillan and Jack Black play teens who, thanks to a magical video game, find themselves transported into a deadly race in the heart of a jungle — and into the bodies of adult avatars. (In one case, this means a teen girl inhabiting the body of a portly middle-aged male.) It’s all very silly, sure, but it’s also fast-paced and crowd-pleasing. The only drawback is a villain who is generic and bland. Release: 2017 Grade: B+

© 2010-2024 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

Contagion

For about an hour, Contagion is superb: eerily prescient, educational, and a first-rate thriller. Steven Soderbergh’s 2011 drama about a killer virus that originates in China and then spreads worldwide pushes a lot of emotional buttons, in no small part because it so accurately predicts much of what COVID 19 hath wrought. Soderbergh ratchets up the tension as health officials race to find the source of the virus and then, hopefully, to produce a vaccine.

Yet the second half of the movie is oddly anti-climactic. As the story shifts to less-than-compelling subplots involving those health officials and regular folk, the suspense peters out. Release: 2011 Grade: B

**

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

The gist: A young girl and her pals discover an old book that conjures monsters bent on avenging injustices perpetrated by the citizens of tiny Mill Valley. I realize I’m not the target audience for this movie, which could be described as Nancy Drew meets Guillermo del Toro (he’s a producer and writer). The target audience would be young teens. But still, it would be nice if Scary’s plot wasn’t so derivative and predictable. You can usually guess what’s going to happen five minutes before it does.

Also, much like its plot, the film’s politics are about as subtle as a severed toe in your stew. Every time someone passes a television (this is 1968), we are reminded just how bad “Tricky Dick” Nixon was. And the chief sin in Mill Valley seems to be a white male population that is 95 percent racist.

On the plus side, the movie does look good (I sense del Toro’s influence), the monsters are amusing, and it isn’t boring — just annoying. Release: 2019 Grade: C

© 2010-2024 grouchyeditor.com (text only)