Mid-September Movie Round-Up: Vengeance, Three Thousand Years of Longing, Honk For Jesus. Save Your Soul., Pinnochio

It's official, there are too many movies. So this month, you're gonna get a real hodgepodge of reviews of all the things I've been watching in theaters and on demand. Settle in for a mish mash of genres, settings, and actors - it's gonna be a bumpy ride!

Vengeance: Written and directed by B. J. Novak, who also stars, this is a story about Ben, a New York podcaster who flies down to Texas for the funeral of a girl he was "hanging out" with in that wonderfully noncommittal fashion shared by the straight men of NYC. The family of the dead woman mistakenly believed that he was her serious boyfriend, and he, in search of a good subject for a podcast, lets them continue to think that. The woman's brother, Ty (Boyd Holbrook), is convinced she was murdered, and that the official verdict of death by overdose is a cover-up. Ben doesn't believe him, but still thinks the story is worth pursuing as a treatise on America. He meets the people around this sleepy Texan town, spouts some aphorisms about the South, and is generally a pretentious dimwit. But then things take a turn...maybe that murder theory wasn't so wild after all?

This movie is...fine. It is wonderfully satirical about podcasters and pretentious coastal elites trying to stereotype Texans, and is also excellent at painting a scathing portrait of a very particular kind of white cis-het man. The opening scene literally consists of Ben and John Mayer (yes, THE John Mayer) talking about their inability to commit and the nameless women they are currently pursuing. The movie is funny, but then it also tries to have some sort of deeper meaning, and that's where it fails. If the tone of the film had been light throughout, it would have been a much more worthy watch, but as it currently stands, it's a good streaming film for when you need to while away some time on the couch.

Three Thousand Years of Longing: Somewhere, there's a director's cut of this film that hopefully does a better job of expressing what George Miller (who also co-wrote the movie with Augusta Gore, basing the script on a short story by A. S. Byatt) wanted to say. Unfortunately, what I saw in the theatre was some sort of sad One Thousand and One Nights adaptation that quickly fizzled out. 

Tilda Swinton stars as Alithea, a narratologist (someone who studies stories from across the world - I want that job) who picks up an old glass bottle in Istanbul and opens it to find a Djinn (Idris Elba). Naturally, he offers her three wishes, but she has read all the stories and knows there are always consequences and tricks in making any magical wishes. The Djinn, desperate to convince her to make her wishes, proceeds to tell her the story of how he came to be in this bottle, a story that spans many masters, love affairs, and tales of heartbreak. His tales are whimsical, with great production and costume design, but there’s also way too much gratuitous female nudity and general fetishizing of Arabian lore that made me squirm. And when the Djinn finally finishes his tale, the movie takes an abrupt turn with Alithea getting to play more of a central part. But her character is vastly underwritten and her motivations are somewhat pathetic; it is a waste to relegate an actress like Tilda Swinton to such a nothing role. Overall, this movie could have been something, but it got too consumed with the aesthetics and completely lost the plot. Scheherazade is rolling over in her grave. 

Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul. Written and directed by Adamma Ebo, this movie is a solid comedy that then veers into drama but without giving you too much whiplash. It is anchored by two great performances from Regina Hall and Sterling K. Brown as First Lady Trinitie Childs and her husband, Pastor Lee-Curtis Childs who led a Southern Baptist megachurch until a scandal forced them to shut down. A year later, they now have a documentary film crew following them around to showcase the weeks leading up to their grand re-opening. The Childs are decked out in amazing get-ups (shoutout to the film’s costume designer, Lorraine Coppin, who does a great deep dive here about the film's fashions) and praising the Lord, but as the film progresses, it becomes clear that their marriage is struggling, they have competition for their congregation, and the Pastor’s pride is about to goeth before a fall.

The script does a beautiful job of eking out the nature of the scandal that befell the Childs. It took three revelations before I was fully up to speed on what exactly Pastor Childs had done, and I appreciated that slow burn alongside all the silliness of watching this man strut his stuff for the camera crew. But speaking of slow burns, Regina Hall is magnificent as the long-suffering wife of a great man, a woman who is trying her best to support this peacock of a husband who has dragged her name through the mud. The mounting anger and resentment is delicious to behold and I loved watching how it all played out at the very end. I do think the script could have been a bit tighter with some snappier dialogue and less emphasis on the Pastor’s speechifying. But for a debut movie, Adamma Ebo knocked it out of the park, and I look forward to seeing what she brings us in future films.

Pinocchio: Listen. The less said about this movie, the better. I was bored, it was on Disney+, it starred Tom Hanks as Geppetto, I thought how bad could it be?! Well, turns out, pretty bad. I can’t remember if I’ve ever seen the original 1940 animated movie apart from assorted clips, but I cannot fathom why Disney would choose this for a live-action remake, though it does make sense why they didn’t bother releasing it in theaters. I assume Tom Hanks wanted something to show his grandkids, but otherwise, this movie is a bust. The animation is beautifully done and showcases the strides we've made at integrating animation into these live-action remakes, but this is a story no one was clamoring for. There’s no consistency in terms of when characters are humans or when they are arbitrarily talking animals, and there’s no fun modernization of this tale to make it feel worthy of an adaptation, apart from maybe a commentary on people’s obsession with becoming famous? The only lesson I learnt from this movie was that it’s bad to tell lies, so here’s the truth. This movie does not need to exist, and you do not need to watch it. Yeesh.