Coyote Cinema: Booksmart and John Wick Parabellum
This time you get a twofer! Double billing! Woo!
Booksmart takes the "Last Day of High School Coming of Age" formula, but now with girls! The class valedictorian and her sidekick discover, to their horror, that they spent all their time in high school studying and have to fit four years of partying into the one night before graduation. This film avoids humiliation porn for the most part, which I found to be a delightful tack against genre conventions. All the characters are fleshed out, even that one dorky guy who is a dork. Billie Lourd as supporting actor Gigi is an absolute treasure, and quite possibly a little bit magic. I loved the leads, my heart broke when theirs did, and their delight was mine. No, *you're* too beautiful!
I'd have to say this one is five wags out of five, with popcorn and a gallon of Coke.
And then there's the whiplash of going into the next auditorium to see
John Wick 3: Parabellum
I feel like I should have rewatched John Wick 2: Antebellum before seeing this, and that may have answered some of my 'why?' questions. But probably not "Why does John Wick go to what appears to be a third-story walk up public library of guns, take two pistols apart, reassemble them to make a third pistol, and then load a single bullet into it before the firefight he's been running from catches up to him?" Or "Why are New York Yakuza forbidden to use guns?" Eight ninjas on motorbikes are chasing JW on his motorbike, and they all have to drive up into melee range in order to swing a short sword at him. I may be misremembering, but I recall being impressed by the violence in the original film being brutal and feeling *real*. In this film it's still brutal but it's cartoonish. Mark Dacascos is great as Wick's biggest fan, Asia Kate Dillon is cool and badass as the Adjudicator, and I almost didn't recognize Good Place's Derek as the Tick Tock Man. The choreography was as good as expected, and now includes dog-fu, but all in all it just felt over the top and emotionally uninvolving. Wick spends fifteen minutes having the shit kicked out of him by minions as the boss monster taunts him, always one floor above him. And I thought "Oh cool, they're going to show how he comes out on top despite being all beat up!" But no, he fought just about the same as he had up to that point. Not even Ian Fucking McShane could save this one.
Three wags.
This entry was originally posted at https://cyrano.dreamwidth.org/1256998.html. Please comment there using OpenID or a Dreamwidth account or here if it please you. Comment! Comment comment comment. I looooooove comments.
Booksmart takes the "Last Day of High School Coming of Age" formula, but now with girls! The class valedictorian and her sidekick discover, to their horror, that they spent all their time in high school studying and have to fit four years of partying into the one night before graduation. This film avoids humiliation porn for the most part, which I found to be a delightful tack against genre conventions. All the characters are fleshed out, even that one dorky guy who is a dork. Billie Lourd as supporting actor Gigi is an absolute treasure, and quite possibly a little bit magic. I loved the leads, my heart broke when theirs did, and their delight was mine. No, *you're* too beautiful!
I'd have to say this one is five wags out of five, with popcorn and a gallon of Coke.
And then there's the whiplash of going into the next auditorium to see
John Wick 3: Parabellum
I feel like I should have rewatched John Wick 2: Antebellum before seeing this, and that may have answered some of my 'why?' questions. But probably not "Why does John Wick go to what appears to be a third-story walk up public library of guns, take two pistols apart, reassemble them to make a third pistol, and then load a single bullet into it before the firefight he's been running from catches up to him?" Or "Why are New York Yakuza forbidden to use guns?" Eight ninjas on motorbikes are chasing JW on his motorbike, and they all have to drive up into melee range in order to swing a short sword at him. I may be misremembering, but I recall being impressed by the violence in the original film being brutal and feeling *real*. In this film it's still brutal but it's cartoonish. Mark Dacascos is great as Wick's biggest fan, Asia Kate Dillon is cool and badass as the Adjudicator, and I almost didn't recognize Good Place's Derek as the Tick Tock Man. The choreography was as good as expected, and now includes dog-fu, but all in all it just felt over the top and emotionally uninvolving. Wick spends fifteen minutes having the shit kicked out of him by minions as the boss monster taunts him, always one floor above him. And I thought "Oh cool, they're going to show how he comes out on top despite being all beat up!" But no, he fought just about the same as he had up to that point. Not even Ian Fucking McShane could save this one.
Three wags.
This entry was originally posted at https://cyrano.dreamwidth.org/1256998.html. Please comment there using OpenID or a Dreamwidth account or here if it please you. Comment! Comment comment comment. I looooooove comments.