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Don't Look Up (2021)
Nice try, has its moments, but just a pretty bad movie.
The wife wanted to watch "Don't look up" as it was making the internet rounds. It showed as #1 on Netflix in Canada, so why not?
Well, as someone who was raised on a diet of satirical movies, this is for sure political satire, but it's about as subtle as being hit over the head with a snow shovel.
A giant asteroid/meteor is going to hit the earth. Government and the media don't think that's a huge deal. The main characters are either sidelined as crazy, or become wrapped up in being famous. Is the asteroid a metaphor for Covid? No, apparently it's climate change and we're all too fat dumb and happy to care.
This movie has an "all-star cast", (there's a phrase that's not quite what it used to be) but most of them get nothing to work with. Leonardo Di Caprio does what he can with his astronomy professor role, but beyond that, I mostly shrug. Timothee Chalamet actually did quite well with an insightful stoner role, but unfortunately, he was mostly window dressing and had no real impact on the plot.
In the end, this is an unfunny, not at all subtle, overlong, attempt at satire. It comes across as a diss track towards certain political leanings, but offers nothing really new or insightful. No new perspectives, no profound realizations, just whipping the dead horse for 2 hours and 18 minutes. If you don't like it, you're the problem, apparently. I resorted to an obvious time check at one point and exclaimed "How on earth are there 40 minutes left?" Hey, everyone's passion project rolls into the gutter sometimes, but could you hurry up?
Besides the few notable performances mentioned earlier, I did actually like the film's take on social media and massive technology companies. Mark Rylance did well as a probably-somewhere-on-the-spectrum technology CEO.
The best part about this movie was reading all the reviews mentioning "Idiocracy", which I managed to get in next. I've been meaning to watch that forever and finally, finally did. That was my major takeaway from the whole experience. If you don't absolutely love someone in the cast or production team, I'd rate this as a hard pass. There's a ton of better things to watch.
Last Chance U (2016)
A solid sports reality series
This was on my watch later literally forever, before I decided to jump in.
The first two seasons follow the East Mississippi Community College Lions, a junior college football team in the less than 1,000 person town of Scooba, MS, not far from the Alabama state line.
The team is a veritable powerhouse, with core players recruited from Division 1 programs, after being dismissed, or leaving of their own accord. The players are predominantly black, poor, from places you've not heard of and struggling badly with college life, particularly academics. A fair number are in Scooba because there is literally nothing to do but play Madden, go to Subway, or meet girls, which for most of them, is far less trouble than they knew before. The viewer, if paying attention, will literally want to throttle at least two players an episode.
Besides the players, two people feature prominently in each episode. Buddy Stephens, the head coach, is a "large and in charge" type, who suffers nothing and is all about two interrelated things, winning, and getting players NCAA offers, to ensure new recruits for next season, to keep winning. In the 2nd season, Stephens is somewhat upset with the way he acted during the first and resolves to better himself, although it's not clear how successful he is.
Brittany Wagner, the academic advisor, is probably the most easily liked person on the show, as she basically pushes a boulder uphill in trying to get the players to maintain the GPA they need to be NCAA eligible. It's hard work, players skip classes, don't submit assignments, argue with teachers and so on. It is literally all she can do to get some of them to take a pencil and notebook to class.....in college.....really! By the end of season 2, Wagner clearly is becoming frustrated, but never stops genuinely caring about the players she's paid to help.
The film itself is a well shot documentary, where the crew is able to keep a good handle on the drama within the team week to week. You see a team that wins, making no friends along the way, then that animus boil over, then the team pay for it for the next year and a half. By the end of season two, Wagner is planning to leave EMCC, as are both co-ordinators and a few other coaches, as Stephens' attempts at personal development don't progress very considerably and he begins to openly resent the presence of the film crew. The players mostly get their offers, some don't and one of the main players in Season 2 now stands accused of a murder. I more or less binged 2 seasons(6 and 8 episodes of around an hour each) in a week and a half. Season 3 just wrapped up shooting.....at a JC in Kansas. I'd highly recommend this and eagerly await next season.
Update:
Seasons 3 and 4 feature Independence Community College in Kansas. The production team succeeded in finding a place to pick up right where they left off. The coach has issues, so do some players, some are decent kids who are struggling hard and the whole thing boils over soon enough. I don't have the recency to be any more thorough, but it's on par with seasons 1 and 2.
Season 5 features Laney College in Oakland. The coach is a bit more mellow, the players are are a little less intense than before, but the same issues are largely present. It's a good watch as well.
Coach Carter (2005)
A passable underdog story, but not much else.
This was on my watch later for almost a year, before I was looking for a sports movie after finishing a sports reality series, I figured why not.
Samuel L. Jackson is Ken Carter, the owner of a successful sporting goods store and a former college basketball player. He is approached by his former high school coach to take the coaching job at inner-city Richmond H.S., where Carter was a 2 time All-American nearly 20 years prior. The team won just 4 games the previous season, but he decides to take on the job regardless, mostly as a favour.
A mostly predictable sports underdog story ensues. The team is run ragged in practice, sign contracts relating to academics and soon enough, the team is on a lengthy undefeated streak. Numerous side plots include Carter's son transferring to Richmond to play for him, a player and girlfriend deciding what to do about a potential baby and a player leaving the team multiple times to sell drugs.
Unexpectedly, Samuel L. Jackson is fantastic and in the end, the only thing keeping this from being rated a fair bit lower. A young Channing Tatum is literally just another player and not particularly memorable and besides Ashanti as a player's girlfriend, I couldn't tell you one other person casted in this movie.
The inevitable middle of the movie conflict erupts, the baby angle is abruptly and clumsily ended and the drug dealing player's supplier is the only person shot to death in two hours.
On the whole, Samuel L. Jackson is fantastic in this movie, more or less playing himself as a basketball coach. But, the whole script is not great, there's no real supporting performances that lead to a good scene and I thought the film ran way too long.
You may shout at the TV when Carter is about to admonish his team "I need winners off the court!", but it's not a total waste of your life either. 6/10.