About as wholesome and idealistic as the story of a lobbyist sleeping with the president could be. I always love listening to a Sorkin-written screenplay.
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The American President (1995)
Category: Legacy
A rare movie I actively hate. Misogynistic and pointless, kind of filthy but never fun, terribly directed. I was ready to at least enjoy the romcom bits of the best friends falling for each other… but even the love triangle is botched. Avoid.
A pleasant studio-era romcom set at Christmas with some interesting class stuff going on. The romantic tension is pretty light, but the farce and comedy stuff is breezy fun. And they all end up caroling together in the end. Hooray!
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Parasite (2019)
The sequence from the the old housekeeper ringing the doorbell to the Kims escaping in the rain is one of the single greatest, most physically precise, set pieces I have ever seen.
A great ensemble mystery with some great performances and a thoughtful core of social commentary.
I feel like I have an infinite appetite for ’80s romantic comedies starring John Cusack. I want to travel the multiverse collecting all of the John Cusack 80s romcoms I can.
This one is pretty solid, with good control of its tone and characters, occasionally funny, and appealing chemistry between Cusack and Daphne Zuniga. And it’s also a road trip movie, because why the hell not. Good fun.
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Everybody Wants Some!! (2016)
I want to be in every scene in this movie. A rare movie I’ve seen 4+ times… and liked more every time. I’m increasingly convinced it’s the hangout masterpiece of the 21st century.
Yikes. For starters, you have a really rough, entirely predictable teen romantic comedy that wants to be fun like Animal House, but is just a chaotic mess. The romance portions are maybe passable, but if so, only barely. (I do like Lori Laughlin here.)
Where it nosedives into catastrophe is the other half of the film, where an entirely misguided romantic farce involving the teens’ parents is thrown into the mix. It’s baffling, but not in a fun way. Just a total misfire.
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Some Kind of Wonderful (1987)
For whatever reason I am a total sucker for teen dramedies where supposedly platonic best friends have romantic sparks. I’m determined to watch every one of them.
This John Hughes-penned (but not -directed) example of the form is a pretty solid one, but one that stumbles over itself in the ending with some plot points and bits of dialogue that don’t make sense. Also Eric Stoltz is a total piece of plain white toast this entire movie. Flat and bland.
Nov 2020 update:
Rewatched to record for a podcast. There is exactly one great character/performance (Watts), then a bunch of clunkers. Enjoyable and very much up my alley, but still marred by some weird, head-scratching plot and character points in the third act.
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The Founder (2016)
The McDonald’s founding story segment generates almost all of the goodwill this movie earns. Keaton is also kind of fun if not very nuanced. The script is a catastrophe, though.