One of the benefits that will come with the end of lockdown will be that I can go back to largely ignoring movies. The other day I found myself paging through Amazon Prime, having flashbacks to going to rent a video from Blockbuster and seeing nothing I wanted to watch and wandering the aisles until I finally settled on something that at least would pass the time inoffensively. I saw two movies this month, neither of which was worth the time spent watching.
Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile -- This is an unfocused retelling of the Ted Bundy serial killings. Supposedly from the point of view of his girlfriend/fiance who stood by him through the ordeal, or at least stood by him much longer than she should have. It is manipulative. We see her standing by him, although we are not clear on why she should have known better because we are presented with so few details of the investigation that it's made to seem like he really was possibly not guilty. Is that meant to have shown us what it looked like to her? Are we supposed to assume she looked no more deeply at it? The actions and state of mind of the woman we are focussed on is unclear, and so it ends up dramatically unsatisfying. (A final revelation at the end only serves to make this worse.) Slightly more interesting are the portrayals of the trial and the showboating characters who tried to use it as an entertainment platform. Zac Efron played Bundy and did a good job at serious acting. We are thankfully spared any portrayals of the actual murders. All in all, a fine concept, that results in nothing but a shrug.
Ad Astra -- This movie won a lot of accolades but it is actively bad. The story of an astronaut who has to follow up a lost mission to Neptune that was headed by his father because some aspect of the technology used in that mission is now causing chaos back on Earth and might destroy the solar system. As you might guess, this is about the astronaut's daddy issues. Near as I can tell it is little more than exposition from start to finish. He is brought into the mission via a briefing (exposition). He learns more from an older scientist and friend of his father who accompanies him (exposition). He learns yet more for another character he meets along the way (exposition). He finally encounters his father and they explore their feelings (exposition). The visuals are striking at times, but the science challenges your reality suspension skills. The most interesting question is how Brad Pitt decided to star in this. He is usually top notch at spotting good scripts, but this one is a real clunker.
So looking forward to not watching movies again.
