Throwback Thursday- Panic Room and Pacific Rim (Kidnap and Dark Tower)

We got three big ones coming out this week, the first Friday in August. August is usually not…let’s call it a great time for movies. For instance, last year featured Suicide Squad (made a ton of cash but not what we’d call good) and Nine Lives (that movie where Kevin Spacey becomes a cat). That said, two of these three have me at least cautiously excited: Kathryn Bigelow’s Detroit and The Dark Tower which adapts some portion of Stephen King’s incredible Gunslinger saga. Kidnap looks like a pretty typical August dump off, but I’m open to being surprise.

My reborn series Beholding Bigelow takes care of Detroit by reviewing an early Bigelow effort Blue Steel.

To handle Kidnap, we look back at another woman/women in peril story where the woman/women don’t bother to fight for a knight in shining armor while Dark Tower’s flashback takes us back to Idris Elba’s last effort at being the lead in a franchise film.

"Just let me tell you about Gajje, man!" (frenchtoastsunday.com)

PANIC ROOM

Looking back on an earlier Flashback review, I softened a little bit on this film. I still stand by most it, but I think I just enjoyed the experience of watching it more this time. I was able to ignore some of the stylistic excesses Fincher engages in—the gas traveling through a pipeline, which I bring up all the time, for instance—to focus more on the performances including Jodie Foster’s well-realized and increasingly wild mom, the seemingly noble but ultimately self-interested Forest Whitaker, and the truly scary “real” villain Dwight Yoakam. Still a very flawed Fincher offering, but I’m glad I revisited it.

What I wear to work. (hbo.com)

PACIFIC RIM

People LOVE Pacific Rim. People are thrilled with the idea of a sequel coming. Cannot wait for it!

In this case, I am not people.

Rim is fine. Fine. I like Idris Elba’s blown out speech moment (“…we cancel the Apocalypse!” etc) and the effects that don’t get too blanketed in darkness, rain, or both. But Hunnam continues to be a black hole onscreen—excepting Undeclared and, from what I hear, The Lost City of Z—and the movie sags whenever it turns to him carrying it and it does that fairly often.

It’s neat, I guess, but I have never fallen for it like others have. Sorry.