Popcorn Perspectives with Danny Minton
Week of April 20, 2020
The Gentlemen
Rated R for violence, language throughout, sexual references and drug content
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 74%
Available on Disc and Streaming
The extremely versatile writer/director Guy Ritchie (Sherlock Holmes, Aladdin) is back to his British gangster film roots with this new highly stylistic crime thriller/comedy about an American Marijuana kingpin in London (Matthew McConaughey) who wishes to cash out his business. But this sale triggers all sorts of vile plots from the people of the London underworld. With a great script and Ritchie’s unique style of filmmaking, the movie proves to be a hilarious dark comedy with lots of surprises and unexpected enjoyment. But what really makes this film shine are the juicy characters, played by a terrific cast. With Charlie Hunnam, Colin Farrell, Hugh Grant and others you’ll instantly recognize, all who fully inhabit their weird little violent world, you tend to get lost in the urban jungle, dying to see who will get it next and in what crazy manner. This is definitely one of the bright spots of 2020 so far. A-
Underwater
Rated PG-13 for sci-fi action and terror, and for brief strong language
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 48%
Available on Disc and Streaming
This Alien knockoff starring Kristen Stewart and Vincent Cassel follows a group of underwater researchers who uncover scary monsters after an earthquake damages their deepwater laboratory. The plot of a small group of people stuck in a small space far from home with creatures trying to get them is still quite popular. Dozens of films have attempted to recreate this scenario, from 1989’s Leviathan to 2017’s Life. But even the decent ones still have a tough time capturing an audience, and this new one definitely busted a pipe. Here the actors are good enough and take the material seriously, but the movie comes across as too dark yet insufficiently scary, with too many been there, done that moments throughout. And while the budget was fairly high, the creature effects were surprisingly underwhelming. It’s one saving grace is that it is PG-13, so fairly benign for teenage audiences. C-
Like a Boss
Rated R for language, crude sexual material, and drug use
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 21%
Available on Disc and Streaming
This new raunch-com stars Tiffany Haddish and Rose Byrne as two BFF’s whose friendship is put to the test as they prepare to sell their cosmetics company to a giant corporation run by Salma Hayek. Haddish is hit and miss with me, but Byrne is usually rock solid, providing an anchor to the comedic material she attaches herself to. But in this misfire, hardly a thing is funny, believable or enjoyable. The raunch doesn’t provide any humor and only seems to serve as shock value or possibly just a way to elevate the movie to an R rating, which might have hurt it. By the end, this feels like a group of amateurs got lucky with an A cast and didn’t know what to do with them. D-