Let's Talk Movies #36 - 2020 - Yep it is a new decade

Spaceballs 2 Teaser


Rick Moranis is coming back :)
 
At my other favorite site (about basketball) one of the posters eat, drinks, lives movies. In fact he earns his living as a location scout and celebrated his film winning best picture last March. He left this post about this movie which has piqued my interest:

Don't watch the trailer. Don't read anything on it. See it blind. One of my top films I've seen of the year: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/exit_8_2025
 
I saw Michael today - and I'm seeing that the difference between the critics and "normies" reviews are huge at Rotten Tomatoes. Did I like it THAT much? EH, not quite. Because we are still in its opening weekend, I will put my review in spoiler.

Do you love musical biopics? Are you a Michael Jackson fan? Then you will like this film. If your feelings about Michael Jackson are negative from the later controversial/unusual stuff, then you'll probably want to skip this.

I overall give Michael a 7.4/10. This film covers the Michael Jackson's story from The Jackson Five in the late 1960s to him becoming a solo artist to the Bad album in 1987.

What's good:
1) Jaafar Jackson did a superb job of showing and performing as his uncle. It looks like Jaafar did actually sing during the filming but Michael's voice is definitely dubbed in for the final product.
2) Coleman Domingo is probably the only actor who could portray Joseph Jackson and how villainous he was towards what Michael really wanted in his music career.
3) If you were a huge fan of Michael Jackson's music in the late 1970s to early 1990s, the film did a pretty good job of connecting to those feelings from that music.
4) I watched this film in Dolby format at my local AMC. I highly recommend it - especially if you want to enjoy the music part of this film.

What's MEH/bad:
1) Let's be honest: This probably always would have been an awkward story to show in a film.
2) So......Joseph Jackson was horrifically abusive. But the film only showed Michael's reactions to him as only being either sad or scared. Really? He was never angry?
3) So.....we are getting another film? That's what the final card showed. 🤔
4) Bubbles. 🐒 There's a bit too much about Bubbles. If they were going to include the animals, I would have liked to seen more of the giraffe 🦒 and the llama 🦙.
5) I think the film tried to blatantly show you A LOT about how Michael became what many people later considered as odd (His childlike demeanor, the plastic surgeries). I will admit that the connections shown got awkward to watch.
6) There's WAY too many references to Michael to being a life long fan of Peter Pan and the Neverland story.
7) There's a surprising amount of LaToya in this film. But no Janet? Really? I thought Michael and Janet were really close.
 
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I am going to a special screening of the Devil Wears Prada on Wednesday night. Get a special gift pack. I will wear a Stella McCartney dress just because it is the only major fashion designer item of clothing that I own and if they do a red carpet I can at least be ready for the interview.
 
I did not see the B.O. for Michael coming at all. Unfortunately this means we are in for more of this type of movies.
 
I just saw Project Hail Mary tonight and thought it was fantastic. It’s been out for awhile so I hope I don’t need spoilers for this, but I did not see that ending coming and loved it. And my favorite line in the film was when the alien vessel sent the cylinder slower to Ryan Gosling’s character the second time and he says, “Oh, they think I’m dumb.” :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
 
I did not see the B.O. for Michael coming at all. Unfortunately this means we are in for more of this type of movies.

Michael Jackson is still a worldwide music icon, whose songs remain beloved despite how troubled/disturbing his life was behind the scenes. And he died tragically young, before any of the allegations surrounding him were definitively proven to be true (or untrue). I'm actually not surprised at all about how well the movie is doing.
 
I did not see the B.O. for Michael coming at all. Unfortunately this means we are in for more of this type of movies.

Michael Jackson is still a worldwide music icon, whose songs remain beloved despite how troubled/disturbing his life was behind the scenes. And he died tragically young, before any of the allegations surrounding him were definitively proven to be true (or untrue). I'm actually not surprised at all about how well the movie is doing.

For music biopic reference, Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) made $910M and Elvis (2022) made $288M.

I think how Michael does in this upcoming week and the second week drop off % will be very telling.

When I saw Michael at noon last Friday, the theater was surprisingly full for that time. And there was a lot of positive reactions to hearing the songs and definite “buying into” how horrific Joseph Jackson was portrayed.

If the final “his story continues……” card is correct and we get a second film, I admit that I’m 🤔 😬 about how they are going to show the rest of Michael Jackson’s story. As a child of the 80s, I definitely remember the nostalgia of his music but also being uncomfortable about him from the mid 90s to his death - especially the abuse allegations, his marriages to Lisa Marie Presley and Debbie Rowe, the 2003 Martin Bashir interview, and the 2005 trial.
 

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