Favorite First Watches of February 2024
The return of J.Law, swashbuckling galore, cell phone tech breaks bad, Margot Robbie does yet another Jersey accent for some reason, and James Caan steals big diamonds
Thanks to my two-week trip to South India by way of two long layovers in London, I managed to basically skip February, but not before getting COVID for a second time just two days after I finally got over my jet lag. Here I was all excited—and extremely well-rested thanks to the jet lag—to get back into a good routine at the gym and work and then BAM! You’re positive for COVID, bitch! The universe does love to humble us, doesn’t it?
Anyway, not only did I watch a lot of movies on planes, but thanks to having COVID, I also wound up watching a lot of movies on my couch to finish out the month. And yet, this was a relatively light month for new favorite first watches (possibly because I wound up re-watching a lot of stuff I’ve already seen).
In terms of watching movies on planes, my criteria is mainly:
Length - the longer the better for looooong flights (I had two 11 hour flights during my trip so if I wasn’t going to sleep, I needed to eat up a lot of time)
Mindlessness/Sunday Afternoon staple - if it has the vibe of a movie I’d stumble across on TV on a Sunday afternoon that I’d probably not pay $15 to see in a theater, it’s perfect plane fare
Starring revered actors over the age of 60 - As someone who watched 80 For Brady on a recent flight the way I’m sure the filmmakers intended, if I see your film stars a bunch of older women hooting and hollering their way through plotlines and dialogue that is vastly beneath their dignity/talents, it is an instant watch for me
Indies I’ve been meaning to watch - planes are a great time to catch up on smaller films I just haven’t made time for yet for various reasons
Comfort re-watches - I will always watch a Nancy Meyers movie on a plane if you keep one in rotation (usually it is my fave Something’s Gotta Give or The Holiday but lately I’ve been seeing The Intern and It’s Complicated pop up more). Ditto Steel Magnolias, Notting Hill, and Ocean’s Eleven (which is a perfect movie to watch anytime really)
Here’s my quick list of what I recently watched on my various flights: No Hard Feelings, Steel Magnolias, Godfather Part II, Gosford Park (hadn’t seen this in years and it was wild to see how much Julian Fellowes recycled from it for Downton Abbey), The Prestige, and Blackberry.
A few of these I’ll cover below. Let’s get to it.
No Hard Feelings (2023, dir. Stupnitsky)
This was neither as funny or as raunchy as I was hoping. At risk of sounding like a Boomer, I do have to wonder whether it is genuinely possible anymore—or at least in this current moment—to make an actual raunchy movie given the growing prudishness of younger generations (at least online) and their penchant for labeling anything older than 2010 “problematic” without a second thought. I’m not going to argue that a lot of the raunchy comedies of the 80s and 90s weren’t misogynistic, often homophobic, and problematic in other ways, but there were a slew of raunchy but sweet comedies that got made in the last 40 years (The Sweetest Thing, Bridesmaids, and Risky Business come to mind among others) that have both more genuine sexual content and comedy than a lot of what the studios have put out in recent years, including this movie. I actually appreciate that No Hard Feelings tries to address the generational divides between Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z in various ways but it never goes far enough. Jennifer Lawrence is having fun as are Laura Benanti and Matthew Broderick as overly protective parents who try to get their son laid before college. Andrew Barth Feldman could probably play a role like this in his sleep, I imagine, but he has a nice chemistry with Lawrence. I enjoyed this for what it was but it was all a little too in the middle for what the marketing promised. But it’s a great plane movie!
No Hard Feelings is available to stream on Netflix.
The Three Musketeers (2011, dir. Anderson)
For my tastes, there are no “bad” Three Musketeers movies, just less good ones. This one, directed by Resident Evil impresario Paul W.S. Anderson, is kind of insane from start to finish, but I found myself kind of hooting and hollering throughout once I gave myself over to it. In terms of faithfulness to Dumas’ novel, this one definitely takes a lot of creative liberties (an entire fight scene between hot air balloon ships! Milady basically reenacting Catherine Zeta-Jones’ sexy slithering through lasers in Entrapment!) and the editing is maybe a little too much like superhero movies with quick cuts that don’t let us see the sword fighting at length. Still, everyone is clearly having a ball, and they all look GORGEOUS thanks to the costume and production design. This one is a perfect Sunday afternoon matinee.
The Three Musketeers is available to stream on Amazon Prime.
BlackBerry (2023, dir. Johnson)
Maybe the best of the recent bunch of films about the invention of various once popular games or devices. Sure, it has people in silly wigs and bald caps, but that only kind of lends to its hilarity. BlackBerry has less in common with The Social Network than it does some of the less serious episodes of the late, great Halt & Catch Fire where our techy protagonists are only slightly ahead of the tech curve only to get eclipsed by the very next revolutionary thing (in the case of BlackBerry, it’s the iPhone). This is a movie that keeps things moving as breezily as someone clacking away on the keys of their BlackBerry with an unbelievable turn by It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s Glenn Howerton. It’s the kind of performance that begs the question, why isn’t this guy getting cast in more dramatic work? This is the kind of movie I can see myself re-watching any time it’s on TV. Very entertaining and unpretentious in the best way.
BlackBerry is available to stream on AMC+ and Hulu.
Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn (2020, dir. Yan)
I haven’t really kept up much with superhero fare in the last few years and especially not with the DC side (which always seems to be in a perpetual mess for various reasons). I’ve only caught parts of Suicide Squad (the bad one) on TV, so I can’t say I knew much about Margot Robbie’s portrayal of Harley Quinn beyond a few minutes of screen time and bad dialogue. Thank god Birds of Prey exists to be a bright, colorful, fun panacea for all that muddy-looking stuff DC has been putting out. Robbie is chewing scenery, but in a way that’s totally appropriate for a comic book adaptation. This one actually has the kind of zany energy that’s been missing from most comic book movies since probably Raimi’s Spider-man trilogy; everything and everyone is totally over-the-top from Robbie’s vaguely New Jersey accent (someone please investigate why she loves doing this accent so much!) to Ewan McGregor’s sleazy villain to a sequence of shots making a bacon-egg-and-cheese look more beautiful than it has any right to. It was nice to watch a genre movie—especially a comic book one—where I didn’t need to have seen 10 other movies to understand the characters or story. Hollywood needs to remember the power of standalone films again!
Birds of Prey is available to stream on HBO Max and Netflix.
Thief (1981, dir. Mann)
Michael Mann’s debut feature about a professional diamond thief (played with firecracker rage by James Caan) trying to go legitimate sets the blueprint for the director’s rain-slicked neo-noir filmography to come. The nighttime streets of Chicago have never looked quite so beautiful as they do here while Caan’s Frank cruises down them going from job to job. Backed by a synth-heavy score from Tangerine Dream, Thief has a real shagginess I can appreciate and a cool vibe, but I’m just not entirely sure Mann’s work is for me. I never quite connect with his thieves and con artists; there’s a distance I can’t quite bridge. Still, his work is always intriguing and stylish even when it feels a little cold to me. Caan’s performance is more than worth a watch.
Thief is available to stream on Tubi.
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