Joey Magidson
Welcome back to my Home Movies! Today, the stunning success that is Spider-Man: No Way Home finally comes, well…home. Joining it this week is the magnificent A24 release C’mon C’mon, as well as a new Criterion offering. It’s a high quality, if low quantity, slate, and that’s totally fine. Read on for more…
Spider-Man: No Way Home
There’s no way around it. Spider-Man: No Way Home was exactly what audiences, not to mention theaters, needed last year. One of the most crowd-pleasing blockbusters in some time, it has stakes, surprises, and finally, justice for Andrew Garfield. It became an instantly iconic flick for a reason. This is some of what I had to say about the latest Spider-Man adventure in my rave review:
Spider-Man: No Way Home continues the strong run for Spidey in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. While not quite as utterly delightful as Spider-Man: Homecoming, it matches and often exceeds the already strong Spider-Man: Far From Home. A ton happens, with lasting impact for the MCU. While not as overtly optimistic as the prior installments, this hero’s optimism is necessary for the tests on display here. Truly, his entire life has been building up to this. An epic and high stakes Marvel adventure for the character, it’s darker and more serious than the previous two, but also big emotions and several moments that will make your jaw drop.
C’mon C’mon
Nobody feels humanity, in all of its gentle struggle, like Mike Mills. In telling his most tender tale yet, he also discovered Woody Norman, who went toe to toe with Joaquin Phoenix and may rule us all one day. C’mon C’mon fell between the cracks last year for A24, and that’s a shame, because it’s a great movie. I spoke to Mills (here) and Norman (here) about their phenomenal work, while this New York Film Festival rave review offers more of my thoughts:
C’mon C’mon is, at its core, about understanding our feelings. It may sound like a Mister Rogers type situation, but it’s not quite that. It’s more about how adults and children connect. They may be at two very different stages in life, but the needs, especially emotionally, remain surprisingly similar. How they’re expressed? Well, not so much.
Chucky: The Complete First Season (TV)
Kimi
The Novice (Interviews with Isabelle Furhman here and Lauren Hadaway here)
Walker
From The Criterion Collection: “A hallucinatory biopic that breaks all cinematic conventions, Walker, from British director Alex Cox, tells the story of nineteenth-century American adventurer William Walker (Ed Harris), who abandoned a series of careers in law, politics, journalism, and medicine to become a soldier of fortune and, for many months, the dictator of Nicaragua. Made with mad abandon and political acuity—and the support of the Sandinista army and government during the contra war—the film uses this true tale as a satirical attack on American ultrapatriotism and a freewheeling condemnation of “manifest destiny.” Featuring a powerful score by Joe Strummer and a performance of intense, repressed rage by Harris, Walker remains one of Cox’s most daring works.”
Stay tuned for more next week…
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