This week five new movies released into the theaters. FIVE! That is way too large of a number, and they were all decent. There is no reason why these movies could not have been spread out more. There were some real bad weeks at the movies in late Summer that would have been boosted by these films. Now they have no choice but to cannibalize each other. So none of them will end up making too much money because they will be fighting each other. Most people will not be going to see multiple movies in the theaters, most people probably will not even go to see one, if we are being honest, but there is some stuff worth seeing this weekend, and it covers a large swath of interests. So here are some descriptions of the ones I saw in the order that I saw them.
Bones and All: 3 Stars
Maren is a high school girl, who lives with her dad, but she has an itch that needs to be scratched, and it is one that if scratched, her and her dad must flee their homes and come up with new identities. In their new town, Maren does this again, she goes over to a friend’s house, and she bites her finger, and as the finger is being pulled from her mouth, the skin comes off like a sword being unsheathed. This is one time too many for her father. So once they get to a new house, he gets her settled in, leaves her money, a tape, and her birth certificate, and he leaves her to fend for herself. Maren decides to start to ride the bus around, and when she is in a small town, a man, Sully, approaches her in the night, and he says that he could smell her from half a mile away. Sully takes her back to a house, and he explains to her the powers she has as a cannibal. They have the ability to smell each other, and they can smell when a person is about to die. It is basically a super sense.
Sully makes Maren uncomfortable, so she flees while he is showering, and when she makes it to a new town, she meets Lee, another cannibal, and they start to travel and feed together, while doing this they also fall in love. They both have complicated family relationships. Lee has a troubled past with his family and is blamed for his father’s death, and Maren never met her mom. So her and Lee go in search of her mother. One of the things that is learned along the way is that the cannibal trait is passed down from a parent.
One of the most interesting take aways from this movie is how they look at cannibalism. It is somewhere between an addiction and a disability, but now with things like alcoholism being looked at as a disease, it would be safe to say that it falls into both categories. These people craved the taste of flesh and blood, but they could survive without it, but they could feel it when they had gone a long time without feeding. It was also interesting that it was something that was passed down by generation, which is also something that happens with alcoholism. In this film, it could also have been looked at as symbolic of the passing down of trauma. Both Lee and Maren grew up in rough households that were caused by the parents who were the cannibals. It was also the story of two young adults who are totally ostracized trying to find their way in the world. It reminded me of Doctor Sleep. Where people have the shining, but some feed off the shining, so they eat the shining out of others.
Devotion: 3.5 Stars
Jesse Brown was a black man in the Navy, who was a pilot, that joined in World War II, but he was still around when the Korean War started, and he was called into duty again. He had a crew that he was going with to fight. Initially they were not that tight knit of a group, but like any crew of people who go through stressful and life-threatening situations together, and those that spend almost every day together, their bond grew tight. They looked out for each other and stood up for each other. The first half of the movie took place in Rhode Island for their training, and it set up the background for the crew, especially Jesse. It showed his family, and it also showed the flourishing of him and Tom’s relationships, his wingman.
It is hard not to compare this movie to Top Gun Maverick, they came out within half a year of each other, and they did have some serious similarities. They are both movies about pilots, obviously, and there is a strong focus on the bond of bringing a crew together through trials and tribulations, Maverick does it through double attack football, whereas Devotion does it through partying in France and having Jesse’s back when he faces racism, so it is a little more serious. Also, both plots involved the crashing of a plane in enemy territory in the snow and having someone go back and try to save them. Sadly, one of these films ends in sadness and will choke you up, the other not so much. A good movie, the two hours go by quick. The action sequences are not as great as they are in Maverick, which is to be expected, but the story is more resonant.
The Fabelmans: 4.5 Stars
Sammy is a little kid, when he goes to see his first movie around 1950, and he immediately falls in love with what he saw. For Christmas, he got a train, and he started to replicate what he saw, and then he got a video camera, and started to record it, and from then on, he was in love with making movies. His father was a tech genius, and his mother was an artistic genius, and both clearly had strong influences on how he made his work. Sadly, his parent’s relationship was not without its hiccups. At one point his parents separate, and this leads to some serious turmoil in the house. Some of the martial troubles were due to the family moving twice, and the other part was due to some extramarital stuff. All of that was happening while Sam was also going to school, where he was facing normal adolescent problems as well. In Arizona, he fit in well with a group of friends, and they helped him make movies, but when he moved to California, it was not as easy to make friends. Some of the guys there kept seeking him out to bully him, but he makes a senior movie for them, and that helps to raise his status in the school, but it does not matter much because then he leaves for college and to find a movie making job.
This was the best Thanksgiving movie of the bunch. It has a tone that vacillates from serious to lighthearted, and when it does, it hits those moments well. The movie delves into some serious family drama, and it does it in an effective way. This is based on Spielberg’s life, and in his real life, his mother fell in love with another man, but when his mother and father split up, his father took all the blame, and so the kids were mad at him instead of the mother. This was also how it played out in the film to a certain extent.
It was amazing to see Sam’s mind at work as a kid, and to see how his ideas and execution grew as he got older. He was incredibly inventive, but he was also artistic. It would be very easy to see the Oscar’s rewarding this film. They get criticisms for being self-congratulatory and giving a movie an award that is centered around movie making best picture would fall into this category. One criticism I heard was that in the movie, Spielberg was basically calling himself a genius and being self-congratulatory on his own life, but I feel like if you are one of the greatest directors of all time, you should be allowed to make a movie about how great you are and show others how you got there and maybe inspire them as well!
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery: 4 Stars
In this murder mystery, Benoit Blanc is called in to solve a case that has not occurred yet. There is a murder mystery party occurring for fun, but when the hypothetical turns real, everything changes. Miles Bron is a new money technical genius, and he is worried that someone is coming after his money. Duke gets killed, and shortly after that, Andi is shot, but who did it? Can Blanc figure it out again, and can he find out the motive behind the killer?
This sequel is close to as good as the original. I think it falls a little short of the first, but it could all be dependent on the person. The original is about old money, and it has a different set design and cast, that I personally find more appealing, whereas the new one is about new money, and has different key players. Personally, I enjoyed the first one more, in main part due to the cast. They meshed better to me, not to say that the new cast was bad, but it just did not quite rise to the occasion of the original, but it was close. Also this movie is only out for one week in the theaters, so if you are reading this when it comes out, you only have like one more day to go and see it in theaters, but I highly suggest doing so. Our theater was packed, and the movie was filled with laughter, and people whispering to each other trying to figure out different clues. A perfect movie going experience, much better than waiting for it to come to Netflix at Christmas.
Strange World: 3 Stars
Jaeger is an adventurer, and he is trying to find what lies beyond the mountains that surround his home. He has gone on many an expedition trying to find out what is out there, but he has continued to fail. Searcher, his son, has become old enough to go on the expeditions, and on one of the trips, Searcher finds an interesting new plant, so him and the others on the journey decide to turn back and bring back the plant home, but Jaeger continues on and never returns.
Searcher used the new plant as a power source, and he completely changed the village that they were living in, and he made it more modern. There is a problem though, the plant has started to suffer. The village needs to find solve the problem before their source of energy is gone for good. So Searcher and his family: his wife, Meridian, and son, Ethan, join some of the leaders of the town on a scientific expedition to solve the mystery of the dying plants. As they go, they find a way to enter the Earth, and they continue to follow the roots, which convene in one area deep within the Earth that is filled with magical creatures different from anything that exists in the world above. Once there, they realize that the roots are hurting the Earth, and something needs to be done.
There are two key themes in this film. One is a very common theme in Disney movies now, and that is chasing your own dreams, the recent movies have focused on parents who place their own hopes and dreams upon their children, and the children do not want to follow their parents’ dream. So the parents come off poorly in this movie. Jaeger, Searcher’s dad, is offended when Searcher wants to go and be a farmer, and then Searcher does not learn from his past initially, and he gets upset when Ethan, his son, wants to be an explorer and not a farmer. Parents just need to encourage their children to follow their dreams and encourage them to forge whatever path they want.
The other theme was more environmental. The plant that Searcher brought back was very helpful for their village, but they were solely reliant on it, almost like the world is now on fossil fuels. So when a problem occurred, they needed to find the solution, but they found out that the plant was actually hurting the Earth, and to save the Earth, they needed to fight off the plant. It focused on working harmoniously with the planet. There are no enemies on the Earth, people just need to find a way to work harmoniously with everything. This point was relayed when they were playing a trading card game, and Jaeger and Searcher kept trying to fight the scary animals, but Ethan was trying to tell them, if they found a way to work with the animals instead, everything would be better. They took a complex environmental problem, and they made it pretty simple to understand, if the children can make the connection. It would be a good movie to watch in middle school life science.
Of the five movies that came out this week, I would highly recommend watching The Fabelmans and Glass Onion. Both are fun watches. Glass Onion produces more laughs, whereas The Fabelmans produces more wonder. They are great stories, and both are good watches to do with the family. So I highly recommend checking them out.
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