The Hero
Crit
Just what an old guy needs: a movie about an old dude (Sam Elliott, older than me, much older! Well, older) confronting death with sex (with a woman less than half his age [Laura Prepon, whom we know as Alex in Orange Is the New Black]), drugs (weed, Molly, shrooms), and rock & roll (and country).
Oh, and meanwhile he's trying to make up for 34 years of neglect of his daughter (Krysten Ritter--oh, right: Jessica Jones!), who, unsurprisingly, isn't in a forgiving mood. Fortunately, I confronted my lousy parenting when I was still relatively young and healthy, and my once-neglected daughter is now my best friend.
Elliott is Elliott, and that's a lot, but that's about it here.
War for the Planet of the Apes
Crit
The tunnel graffiti "Ape-pocalypse now" plagiarizes my post for Kong: Skull Island and can be read as an acknowledgment that Woody Harrelson's character, "the Colonel," and every shaved-head-caressing element of Harrelson's performance, ape Brando's same-rank Kurtz in Francis Ford Coppola's nearly great Vietnam War film.
I dunno, maybe this film is nearly great, too--it certainly looks great and wants to be great--but if so, I was too distracted by the larceny to appreciate it. Oh, and by another bit of much less advisable theft: Steve Zahn's groveling appropriation, as Bad Ape, of Jar Jar Binks. Less offensive was the ripoff--well, let's call this one an hommage--to Deuteronomy, where (spoiler alert!) God tells Moses he may only glimpse the Promised Land, not live to enter it.
This is my front-runner, I think, for most overrated film of the year.
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