My Time With Moviepass – A Retrospective

As I mentioned at the tail end of last week’s post, my time with Moviepass has unfortunately and finally drawn to a close with the removal of the only theater near me that supports E-Ticketing.  Given that the service has funded what has to be the lion’s share of hot (and cold) takes I’ve dropped on here, I want to take this week to dole out some high-school-yearbook-style superlatives to the 30 films I have listed in the app’s history.  If you want, you can also consider this a year in review, since I’ve had Moviepass for about 14 months now, but I make no claims about the exhaustiveness of my moviegoing over that span.  First, some statistics:

Total Movies Seen: 30 (I think – I swear I also saw Justice League using Moviepass, but it doesn’t show up in my history.  Given my Justice League experience, though, that’s probably for the best).

2018 Best Picture Nominees Seen: 3 (Lady Bird, The Shape of Water, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri)

2018 Oscar-Nominated Pictures Seen: 6 (I, Tonya, The Disaster Artist, and all of the 2018 Oscar-Nominated Animated Shorts, in addition to the three films above).

Comic-Book Movies Seen: 5 (Wonder Woman, Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, Deadpool 2)

Horror Movies Seen: 3 (IT, Hereditary, A Quiet Place)

Comedies Seen: 2 (Game Night, Blockers)

Action Movies Seen: 3 (American Assassin, Kingsman: The Golden Circle, Skyscraper)

Heist Movies Seen: 2 (Logan Lucky, Ocean’s 8).

Animated Movies Seen: 1 (Incredibles 2).

Remakes/Sequels/Franchise Films Seen: 12 (too many to list)

Documentaries: 1 (Won’t You Be My Neighbor – I really wish this number were higher).

Movies in Which Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson Fights a Skyscraper: 1 (Skyscraper).

Obviously, there are also a number of other movies that I saw that don’t really fit into any of these categories.  And now, a few superlatives:

Strongest Movie Month: It looks like there were two months during which I saw 4 movies: September 2017 (Wonder Woman, IT, American Assassin, Kingsman: The Golden Circle) and April 2018 (Love, Simon, A Quiet Place, Blockers, Avengers: Infinity War).  Timewise, the September boom was likely more a function of my newfound love for the service than anything else, and furthermore, American Assassin was very not great, whereas April 2018 had a couple of pleasant surprises (Love, Simon, Blockers) in addition to some of the year’s harder hitters (A Quiet Place, Avengers), so it’s gotta be April 2018 here.

April of this year was a great month for movies.

Weakest Movie Month: Numerically, this was a four-way tie between October 2017 (Boo! A Madea Halloween, which I only reserved a ticket for to see if the app was still working – I think the service was on the fritz in some way around this time), March 2018 (Game Night), August 2018 (BlacKkKlansman) and September 2018 (Searching).  I’m not counting August 2017, during which I only saw Logan Lucky, considering that I didn’t even have Moviepass for that whole month.  Either way, the clear winner of Weakest Movie Month has to be October 2017.

Maybe the creepiest character in any of the movies I’ve seen with Moviepass, and that includes the multiple horror movies in the mix.

Last Movie Seen: With a title that perhaps signals the rough fortunes ahead for me and Moviepass: Bad Times at the El Royale has this honor.

Take notes: if you’re stuck outside in the rain, at least you can look cool while getting soaked.

First Movie: Not really due to anything other than luck (pun intended), Logan Lucky was the film that kicked off my passionate Moviepass romance.  It was pretty good, if not strongly derivative of the Ocean’s franchise.

“I am in-car-cer-a-ted.”

Worst Movie: I’m not gonna give this to Boo! A Madea Halloween, given that I didn’t actually see it and that doesn’t seem fair.  I’m also too lazy to look up which of these movies has the worst Rotten Tomatoes score, but I also don’t really think I need to do that.  American Assassin takes this one by a healthy margin.

This poor guy – his franchise never had a chance.

Best Movie: This is a much more difficult choice.  I’m not gonna go with The Shape of Water, because I’m not a joiner, and frankly I think it’s an overrated movie as it is.  Flying in the face of serious film critics everywhere, I’m gonna go with Avengers: Infinity War instead, simply because it sticks out as the most enjoyable filmgoing experience on this list.  It’s a cinematic achievement in little more than cramming a billion characters into a movie and creating some truly bananas special effects, but it certainly lived up to the massive amounts of hype surrounding it, and had a truly jaw-dropping ending.

Three of Earth’s mightiest heroes – and Wong.

Most Unique Movie:  This is also a tight race.  Searching and A Quiet Place are the two clear finalists, but I think I’ll have to go with A Quiet Place for nerdy aspiring screenwriter reasons.

Sorry, guy.  If it makes you feel any better, your movie was probably the more impressive technical achievement.

Most Surprising Movie: In this category, the movies that stick out are Blockers, Game Night, and Won’t You Be My Neighbor, probably because they’re all films in genres that I don’t typically seek out or enjoy, but I think Won’t You Be My Neighbor takes it in the end.  Sorry, comedies – I’m not willing to cross Mr. Rogers.

Fred Rogers and his main man Daniel.

Most Underwhelming Movie: This is this post’s hot take, and I’ve nestled it at the end for those brave enough to find it.  They’re far from the worst on the list, but I have to say that I expected so much more from both The Shape of Water and Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri.  If I have to bestow this honor to only one of these films, I’d go with Shape, because the acting showcased in Three Billboards is downright incredible, but I think I overhyped both of these movies too much.  In other words, it’s my fault.

One of the many blue-green saturated shots from The Shape of Water.  Admittedly, the film’s sometimes out-of-control use of color was probably my single favorite thing about it.

For those out there doing the math, 30 movies over 14 months is a little over two a month, and given that the service cost me $9.99 a month over the duration of that time, yeah, I definitely took Moviepass for a spin financially.  The business model still makes absolutely no sense to me, but I hope somebody figures out something similarly priced (but in some way economically viable) soon.

Time to change the blog’s sidebar!

American Assassin Review

Here it comes – my first bad review.  Brace yourselves!

This past week, I went out to see American Assassin, the first of a supposed series of films based on Vince Flynn‘s novels centered around Mitch Rapp, a counterterrorism agent working for the U.S. government.  While I went in with low expectations (thanks, Rotten Tomatoes), I love a good spy thriller, and I figured such a film would have a hard time disappointing me, and while I still had fun because I generally love movies, I was definitely wrong about not being disappointed.

This movie wasn’t without its moments, I’ll give it that.  The high point without a doubt came at the start, with a beach shooting scene possessing horrifying realism and just enough graphic violence to set a gritty tone – granted, it was a tone the movie had a hard time maintaining from there, but nonetheless the opening scene is deserving of high marks.  The training sequences taking place in the early going also had their merits, driven largely by reasonably good chemistry between Michael Keaton and Dylan O’Brien.  These pieces were among the most unique, the most fun, and the easiest to watch, and (going on my own personal experience with the movie) being so sad to see them end hardly set the stage well for the rest of the movie.  Instead of escalating the action, putting Rapp and Hurley into the field caused the suspense of the premise, and worse, the chemistry of its lead actors, to fall flat.

Dylan O’Brien hopes to start a Mitch Rapp franchise with American Assassin, but it may be doomed out of the gate.

Which brings us to the cast.  As an ensemble, I’d probably give them a C+ to a B-, and it would be far lower without Keaton’s delivery of a solid performance.  O’Brien showed flashes of both charm and gravitas as Mitch Rapp, but it appears hardly enough to helm a franchise a la Matt Damon‘s Jason Bourne, or even Daniel Craig‘s latest iteration of James Bond.  CBS and Lionsgate’s reasoning behind casting the young O’Brien ahead of some other major players rumored to be in the works to play Rapp (Chris Hemsworth, Gerard Butler, etc.) makes sense, but in order for their chronology-based plan to work, their big bet on him will need to pay off down the stretch should another Rapp film occur.  Aside from Taylor Kitsch (oh, how far he has fallen), who turns in a passably convincing performance as a typically motivated hero-turned-villain with touches of Tim Riggins, the rest of the cast (looking at you, Sanaa Lathan and Shiva Negar) was more or less just white noise.

After my viewing, one thing is certain – without a presence like Michael Keaton on screen, this movie would have had little hope to begin with.

One could argue, though, that a cast can only perform as well as the script it’s transporting to the screen, and American Assassin‘s story and dialogue are about as formulaic and pedestrian as it gets.  With virtually no surprise twists in the plot to differentiate it from every decent spy thriller made in the past ten years, our attention is then negatively drawn instead to some truly laughable cut-and-paste dialogue (an “emotional” scene between O’Brien’s Rapp and Negar’s Annika deserves specific attention here), along with fully last-generation CGI, a completely pointless nudity shot, and a handful of deaths of minutes-old characters designed to build tension but instead leaving us feeling basically nothing.  Straining out of all of these ingredients reveals American Assassin for what it truly is: a nondescript vehicle for fight scenes.

The cast reading the Rotten Tomatoes Critics’ Consensus for American Assassin.

Perhaps the most grave offense of American Assassin, though, is its palpable lack of authenticity.  While the combat and fight choreography packed a decent literal and figurative punch (though nowhere near one of my most loved franchises, the Bourne saga), so much of the plot was bafflingly pockmarked with events that lacked any semblance of secrecy or tradecraft, and furthermore left me asking countless questions to the unfortunate friends sitting next to me in the theater.  Some highlights of these questions: why does a black market arms dealer have a dedicated contingent of MP protection?  If you’re truly trying to be a nameless ghostlike assassin, why in the world would you leave living witnesses who have seen your face (perhaps a misguided attempt to humanize the typically cold and lifeless Rapp)?  If you’re looking to capture a renowned counterterrorism agent and torture him for secrets, why would you kill the man he’s meeting with and alert him to your presence?  Better yet, how do you wind up catching him (an off-camera development) in the end?  While it’s clear that the filmmakers are trying to paint Rapp as a loose cannon who doesn’t play by the rules or follow orders – as if that’s at all unique, I might add – it really just comes off as irresponsibility and uninspiring bravado that no counterterrorism agent or assassin would engage in, let alone Flynn’s typically calculating version of Rapp.

Live look in at Taylor Kitsch directly after his reading of American Assassin’s script.

The final question I’ll leave you all with, though, is this: is this the new standard for a Hollywood adaptation of what’s by most accounts a successful book franchise?  Save a few characters and setpieces, the vast majority of the thematic material from the source novel didn’t even show up here, and worse, it made no improvements whatsoever in its diversion from Vince Flynn’s work – which, by the way, I didn’t particularly enjoy much in and of itself.  In a dog-eat-dog cinematic world where franchises like this one are rushed through production for fear of losing story rights, the result appears to be something I’m not so thrilled by – and something I’m not so thrilled to have spent ticket money on.