Streaming Roulette (Oct 21st-27th): A school for Good and Evil in the woods

A weekly series in which we survey new-to-streaming titles (on various services) freezing the scroll bar at random and sharing what comes up. 

So you're saying -- I can't believe I'm actually saying this -- if Sophie were to kiss her true love...

THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD AND EVIL (2022) on Netflix
Came to this one with high hopes given that Paul Feig often makes blissfully funny and stylish movies (Spy, Bridesmaids, A Simple Favor) and the source material (yes, I've read it) is great fun...

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Review: Last Christmas

by Chris Feil

A sure signal of the coming holiday season at the movies is the arrival of unpretentious lighter fare like Last Christmas. This year’s offering falls in line with the easy charms of such previous entries as The Holiday and Almost Christmas, but also arrives with a somewhat affably strange lump of ingredients. Inspired by the Wham! song and packed with a slew of George Michael songs, the Paul Feig-directed film is co-written by Emma Thompson (with Bryony Kimmings and Greg Wise) and offers up timely context within a classic romcom structure. It’s a sugar high of a movie that remains grounded in some substance, not exactly tidy but satisfyingly more than meets the eye.

Emilia Clarke plays the disillusioned would-be singer and Yugoslavian immigrant Kate, couch-hopping between friends that she quickly burns out with carelessness and working in a Christmas-themed giftshop. She avoids her family, particularly her domineering mother (also played by Thompson), and is increasingly testing the patience of her demanding but doting boss (Michelle Yeoh). Kate’s self-destructiveness comes after a serious illness has left her not with renewed gratitude, but with a diminished sense of self she has internalized into constant misbehavior. But her main challenger in the struggle comes when a charming man on a bike named Tom (Henry Golding) wanders in and out of her life.

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"Rough Night" and the State of Comedy

by Eric Blume

My assignment for TFE was a review of the movie Rough Night. But since I was not raised in a barn, nor raised by wolves, my mother once told me if you can’t find something nice to say, don’t say anything at all. So we’ll keep it short on Rough Night itself.  It’s actually depressing how bad this movie is, a twist on a rather good mainstream movie called Very Bad Things, back in the Cameron Diaz days of 1998.  That Peter Berg film had a bit of an edge as it followed several guy friends on a bachelor party who find themselves in a dead hooker situation.  Rough Night is the distaff version of this tale, but the inept script, bad performances, and bland direction make it a tough sit.  The film’s five actresses (Scarlett Johansson, Kate McKinnon, Zoe Kravitz, Jillian Bell, and Ilana Glazer) are winning, talented ladies and deserved a far better vehicle.

Sitting through Rough Night your mind may wander, as did mine, to the state of mainstream comedy in the cinema these days...

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The Furniture: The Shrieking Color Scheme of Ghostbusters

"The Furniture" is our weekly series on Production Design. Here's Daniel Walber on Ghostbusters, just out on DVD and Blu-Ray

Paul Feig movies tend to be about comic excess. There’s always a nearly too much humor jammed in, not infrequently with the side effect of a bloated running time. To be fair, there would be more time for Melissa McCarthy and Leslie Jones to adlib about dancing if Ghostbusters weren’t also required to have a number of standard narrative beats, but that’s Hollywood.

The point is that Ghostbusters, like Spy, displays a remarkable dedication to extravagant nonsense. Its excessive approach, pushing every joke as far as it can go, is also true of its design. Production designer Jefferson Sage, Oscar-winning set decorator Leslie A. Pope (Seabiscuit) and the rest of the design team provide a a unifying absurdity in both color and texture that keeps Ghostbusters on a collision course with comedy...

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Ranking the Ghostbusters Orginal Star Cameos

Murtada here. It’s been a full 3 days since Ghostbusters has been released. The reviews, including Nathaniel’s, are respectable but not euphoric. Same with the the box office. It could’ve been much worse. The Ghostbros still won’t shut up, so let’s rank how their so called childhood heroes, did this time around.

Ghostbusters tried to blend nostalgia with a new story and characters, the same way that Star Wars did successfully last year with The Force Awakens. While I liked the movie and thought it was the best blockbuster released this lackluster summer season, I would say that its nostalgia blend was not successful. All of the original cast - except for Rick Moranis and Harold Ramis - came back for at least one scene each. But most of the cameos were extraneous to the plot and could’ve easily been cut. The actors’ commitment also left a lot to be desired.

Let the ranking begin! 

SPOILERS ahead, proceed with caution...

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