Massive Movie Nights Post
Fletches, Nolans, RRR, and Shane Black
My schedule this term has been an absolute nightmare, which has forced me to spend a bunch of weekend time on class prep and/or grading, taking away the time I would normally use to recap movie-watching with the kids. So this is an absolutely gigantic edition of the usual “This Week in Movie Nights” covering basically an entire month worth of media consumption.
Confess, Fletch:
When I heard there was a Fletch reboot in the works, I thought “Well, that seems unnecessary…” so I was very surprised to hear it getting generally positive reviews. So we fired it up, and it was lightweight but charming; Jon Hamm is very good in the title role, still funny but less of a dick than Chevy Chase. I’d be perfectly happy to watch more of this.
Fletch:
The reboot went over well, so we jumped back in time for the original. I was never quite as into this as some of my friends were, but there are just endless quotes from this imprinted on my memory— “It’s me, Dr. Rosenpenis…” “I’ll have a steak sandwich and… a steak sandwich.” “It’s all ball bearings these days.” “Charge it to the Underhills.” “Six foot nine with the Afro.” And so on.
This is absolute peak Chevy Chase. It’s a little less zany than I thought I remembered— the goofy costumes were a smaller part than they are in memory— but very good. Also, Chase is clearly an enormous prick, it’s just that for a while there, everybody thought he was acting.
RRR:
This is another unlikely movie that I had heard good things about, though the length was a little daunting. I thought of it again when Ursula Vernon was live-tweeting it and one of the tweets was something like “So, our hero just threw a leopard in the face of a bad guy? Who was then impaled by a passing deer?”
We fired it up, and it is delightfully deranged. Great fun, highly recommended. Note, though, that for some reason the default on Netflix seems to be the Portuguese dub; make sure to change it to Hindi with subtitles; it’s much less disorienting.
Christopher Nolan’s Batman Trilogy (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises):
This was split over two weekends, but I’m lumping them together because none of them have distinctive title cards, so there’s no point in putting up three images. The Pip specifically asked about The Dark Knight, because even ten-year-olds have heard about Heath Ledger’s Joker, but on learning it was the second movie, insisted we start at the beginning.
These all hold up reasonably well, with the usual caveat about superhero movies that are relatively dark, which is not to all tastes. I find this approach vastly preferable to Marvel’s, so I like these fine. None of the villain plots make all that much sense, but that’s par for the genre. The clear highlight of these is The Dark Knight, mostly because of Ledger; Batman Begins is as good an origin-story movie as you’re likely to get, but it has some of the weaknesses of that form (though Batman’s origin story is at least interesting, unlike many others), and The Dark Knight Rises is a little overstuffed.
Parental highlight of the trilogy was when Harvey Dent says “You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain” and SteelyKid said “That’s a quote from something, isn’t it?” And I replied, “Yes, it’s a quote from this movie…” (The Pip did the same thing later, when Alfred said “Some men just want to watch the world burn,” though he denies it…)
The Nice Guys:
This is a Shane Black movie from 2016 with Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling as idiot detectives. I was going to push for The Big Lebowski, but The Pip asked to scroll a service, and this came up in my Netflix recommendations. I didn’t remember there being as much nudity and adult content in this as there is (whoops), but it is exceedingly Shane Black in the tone and dialogue, and I’m a total sucker for that. It went over pretty well, other than the nudity, so I may try for Kiss Kiss Bang Bang next weekend…
So, that’s what I’ve been watching with the kids. Here’s the traditional button:
And if you want to quote lines from any of these, the comments will be open:
What is it with Americans and nudity? :)
Your kids have internet... don't worry, they got porn at their fingertips... :)
But if you're worried about The Nice Guys being a little too adult, then Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is definitely worse. You might remember the plot centers on incest/pedophilia...