August Movies Part 2: Firebrand & The Instigators

Sadly, August has lived up to its reputation for being a bit mid when it comes to new movies. If you don't want to trek to the theater and want to find something to stream on the couch, the following are two potential options, but don't get your hopes way up. Honestly, I feel like I've had an off week watching these films, so I do encourage you to check them out if you have the bandwidth and come at me in the comments about how you really loved them!

Firebrand: Directed by Karim Ainouz, and written by Henrietta and Jessica Ashworth (based off a novel by Elizabeth Fremantle), Alicia Vikander and Jude Law star as Katherine Parr and Henry VIII. Parr was his final wife, the one who "survived" if you know the mnemonic, and this movie gives us a glimpse of what she was like as Henry's regent when he was abroad fighting battles. Upon his return, he is increasingly tyrannical, and she needs to ensure she doesn't go the way of this previous wives. 

I was initially invested in this film because I thought I was getting a genuine history lesson about a woman who generally doesn’t get much press. But it turns out this is one of those dramas where you end up having to do a ton of research after to sort out what is true and what is a fictional flight of fancy. If you’re a fan of The Tudors and this period of English history, perhaps this film will scratch your itch for excellent production design and costumes. But if you’re looking for propulsive plot, this is not the film for you. 

Law and Vikander do a decent job of realizing these characters, but there’s nothing new here - Henry is still just a great big bully who likes to shag every woman around and is desperate for an heir, while Catherine is a long-suffering woman plotting to gain some power and push for Protestantism. All the reading I have done since seeing this film to learn more about Parr has been genuinely more entertaining than the film itself. If reading is not your jam, perhaps this film will give you all the information you seek, but otherwise, just head to the library. 

The Instigators: This movie is certainly never a bore, but yet somehow still manages to be thoroughly mediocre. Directed by Doug Liman, it is the quintessential streaming movie, featuring a stacked cast but never quite making the leap from formulaic to fantastic. 

Matt Damon and Casey Affleck star as Rory and Cobby (genuinely didn't know that was the character's name until writing this post), two strangers who are down on their luck, need to make some money quickly, and so agree to help in a plot to rob the mayor of Boston (played by Ron Perlman of all people) on election night. What follows is a botched robbery that spirals unendingly out of control, and as the two men go on the run, we get more of their backstory as well as peel away the many layers of corruption that have led to their current predicament.

The script is definitely fast-paced, and Hong Chau livens up the proceedings halfway through the film as Rory's therapist, who is trying to stop her client from digging himself into a deeper hole. But the movie simply failed to wholly captivate me. Maybe if I was in a theater, I would have been forced to pay attention and find more to love, but as a streaming film, it all happened in the background while I was playing Candy Crush on your phone. It doesn’t feel like it’s funny enough, slick enough, or action-packed enough: it’s just so-so and painting by the numbers and by the time you get to the end, you’re like, well OK, I guess that helped me while away two hours.

August Binges: Mr. Throwback, The Decameron, Taskmaster

I always find myself discovering a slew of new shows in the summer, free of the pressures of regular fall/spring programming. This summer has been no exception, with streaming services releasing a string of intriguing offerings. Here's a round-up of what I've been watching over the past month!

Mr. Throwback: This is a story about a man named Danny Grossman (Adam Pally), who used to be a basketball phenomenon in middle school and then had it all taken away from him and fell from grace. As a kid, NBA superstar Stephen Curry (playing himself!) was Danny's best friend, along with Kimberly (Ego Nwodim), who now run's Stephen's media company and manages his entire life for him. They fell out of touch after Danny was banned from playing middle school basketball, but 25 years later, Danny has re-entered the picture because he needs some money. He is hoping that he could leverage his friendship with Stephen to get out of trouble. But one lie snowballs into another, and what follows is a six-episode mockumentary as Danny furiously tries to maintain a giant lie, gets his ex-wife and daughter to play along, and has to deal with the naive Curry, who is willing to believe the best of everyone and the suspicious Kimberly, who can only assume the worst. It's a pretty basic sitcom with some fun cameos and jokes, but the premise does go stale pretty quickly. However, it's an insignificant time commitment and a perfectly pleasant way to while away an afternoon, so why not give it a shot?

The Decameron: Created by Kathleen Jordan, based on the 14th century short-story collection by Giovanni Boccaccio, this is a delicious little miniseries about what happens when a bunch of Italian nobles and their servants are trapped in a beautiful Italian villa outside of Florence, which they have fled to so they can avoid the plague that is raging through the city. The cast is stacked with people like Zosia Mamet, Saoirse-Monica Jackson, Tony Hale, Tanya Reynolds, Leila Farzad, Karan Gill, etc. and the entire thing has a distinctly British sensibility of heightened silliness and deeply dark humor. Every character has their own nefarious plots afoot and ambitions to get by in this plague-ridden world - some nobles are trying to make an advantageous marriage, others are trying to land a job, and meanwhile the servants are trying to decide if they need to revolt or just keep maintaining the ridiculous status quo even under these extraordinary circumstances. It's a lushly produced, extremely engaging series, just eight episodes long, and it will keep you thoroughly entertained from start to finish. Some people will die, others will thrive, but at the end of the day, I think we can all agree that this is the most oddly hilarious story about the Black Death.

Taskmaster: There have been 17 series of this game show to date, and I watched Series 5 months ago as it is widely recognized as the best series to date. Subsequently, I have now made my way through several more series, each one delighting me to no end with its absurdity and the charming relationships that develop between contestants over time. Created by Alex Horne, each series takes five comedians (usually British ones, but occasionally you'll get a Canadian or Australian thrown in there) and over the course of (usually) ten episodes, they have to do a series of "tasks" that have been set by Horne and will be judged by the Taskmaster, British comedian Greg Davies. The tasks range from the sublime to the ridiculous - they might win points for popping a balloon from the further distance away, or creating a work of art out of toilet paper. The inventiveness of the tasks is one reason to watch, but the contestants' befuddled reactions to the tasks is the main reason to watch. Sometimes they have an absolute flash of brilliance as they discover a secret loophole and complete the task perfectly, while most of the time, they blunder through in abject cluelessness, cursing Alex throughout. It is utterly joyous and one of the best ways you could spend an afternoon. Every series is available for free on YouTube, so honestly, you cannot complain you don't have a thing to watch this summer. Endless fun awaits you!

August Movies Part 1: Trap & Didi

I have kicked off August with two very different movies. One is a horror-thriller by an established writer-director who is trying to get his kid into the biz and the other is a moving and funny coming-of-age film by a first-time writer-director who shows immense promise. Which will you choose?!

Trap: Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, my first thought on leaving the theater was that this was the ultimate nepo baby film. Josh Hartnett stars as Cooper, a man who is bringing his daughter, Riley (Ariel Donoghue), to a long-anticipated concert by a pop star named Lady Raven, who is played by Saleka Night Shyamalan. Yes, she is Shyamalan’s daughter, and all the songs in this movie were written and performed by her and she proceeds to also have quite a bit of acting to do towards the end. Did her father write this movie just so she could showcase her talents? It certainly feels like it.

Setting the nepotism aside, however, Hartnett does offer up a grand performance. Because the actual premise of this film is that Cooper is a serial killer, and the police have found out he will be at this concert. The whole concert is a sting operation to get this guy, but when he discovers that plan, we get a cat-and-mouse game where he is desperately trying to outwit the police, while ensuring his young daughter is none the wiser about her dear father’s extracurricular activities.

It’s a fun premise, and Hartnett is great at being super creepy while pretending to be extremely ordinary. And Ariel Donoghue is also great as the excited teenage girl who is thrilled to see Lady Raven while being oblivious to her father’s sudden panic. But every other character in this movie feels like a weird caricature of a human, with terribly stilted dialogue and a blank affect. While it’s fun to see how Cooper evades the police, the third act of this film jumps the shark a few too many times and I was ready for it all to be over about a half hour before it mercifully ended. This movie started out strong but ended with a decided whimper. The next time Shyamalan writes a movie, I hope he can focus more on his actors and less on his daughters.

Didi: Written and directed by Sean Wang, who also directed the gorgeous Oscar-nominated short film, Nai Nai & Wai Po, this is a moving film that tells us the story of Chris Wang (Izaac Wang), a middle schooler in 2008, who is about to have a very transformative summer. We follow his adventures on AOL Instant Messenger, where he chats with his friends in lewd brospeak, and then crushes on a girl named Madi, whose MySpace page he studies obsessively in order to get an edge on how to impress her at parties. He also has to navigate testy relationships with his older sister, Vivian (Shirley Chen) who will be off to college soon, his mother, Chungsing (the incandescent Joan Chen), and his paternal grandmother, Nai Nai (the excellent Chang Li Hua, Sean Wang’s real-life Nai Nai from his short film), who lives with them. His father is absent, working in Taiwan to provide for the family, and his mother is quietly struggling to keep this family together, putting aside her own dreams to be an artist so her children can live that first-generation immigrant dream.

There’s plenty of casual Asian racism, but also just the casual cruelty that characterizes being a teenage boy (gear up for some homophobic slurs - in 2008, the teens were not as woke as they are now). Chris befriends a group of skateboarders and tried to reinvent himself as a skate filmer, but while that hobby might end up defining his life, these older friends also expose him to other things that might be slightly more problematic. 

This movie is mostly vibes, but perfectly captures a snapshot in time. For people who were American teens in this era, there will be much to recognize. Unfortunately, as is the case with most movies about the “teen experience,” I couldn’t really relate as my adolescence consisted of doing my homework, reading books, and watching TV so I could avoid my pitiful inability to make any friends at school. However, I did find myself relating a lot more to the mom, an immigrant with thwarted ambitions, who had pictured a very different life for herself upon coming to America and was now slowly crushed down by responsibility. Ah yes, the true immigrant experience. This movie has something searingly emotional to impart to almost any viewer, so head to the theater immediately to wallow in all the feels and re-live all the best and worst parts of being a thirteen-year-old. Or their parent.