Knee-jerk review: "M3GAN"

1. The styling of that title... it's a little too cute, right?  Can't we just call it Megan?
2. The movie is way better than the B-movie vibe suggested by the trailer.  There are jump scares, but this is more of a creepy techno-thriller than a traditional horror movie.

3. In fact, it's a pretty sharp allegory on the dangers of letting technology babysit childern and the guilt parents feel for letting technology babysit children.
4. Seems like the murders have been toned down considerably to get that PG-13 rating.  Which certainly accounts for the rowdy teenagers in the theater where we saw it.
5. Filmmakers go out of their way to make sure the victims of Megan's murder spree - at least the first few victims - are more than deserving of their fate so as to extend audience sympathy for the robot doll as long as possible.  That's our theory anyway.  Even so, what happens to the neighbor seemed particularly cruel.
6. It will come as no shock that the door was left over to a sequel.  In fact, we counted two possible avenues for a second Megan (M3GAN) movie.
7. It's perhaps nitpicking, but the movie asks us to believe the primary coder of a successful line of robotic smart toys lives in a modest Seattle suburb.  Also that the coder looks like Allison Williams.
8. "Megan, turn off."
9. Some pretty deep themes about death and loss and the dangers of avoiding dealing with personal trauma.
10. Then again, we see someone get their ear ripped off. 
11. It's a little bit country, a little bit rock and roll.

12. The effects used to create robot doll Megan are pretty amazing.  It looks like a real girl, but not quite real enough.  The Los Angeles Times has more on the effects.
13. We have to agree that when it comes to toy collectibles, you don't play with them.  That's just common sense.
14. When a psycbo robot doll says "This is the part where you run," you should run.

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Knee-jerk review: "Babylon"

1. La La Land is one of our favorite movies, so we're interested in anything from writer-director Damien Chazelle.
2. This movie... is wild.  Some sequences (we count four or five) are brilliant gems of editing and pacing, others are shaggy go-nowhere tangents that probably should have been cut.
3. It's all way, way over the top and excessive.  That's not necessarily a criticism.  In a movie about the lawless, bacchanal vibe of early Hollywood, it makes sense to be extreme.
4. When the opening scene(!) involves an elephant's sloppy defecation on a minor character, you know you're in for a ride.
5. The most enduring impact of this movie perhaps is our interest in figuring out just how much dramatic license has been taken.  How much of this craziness really happened in 1920s Los Angeles?  What real-life Hollywood figures are these characters based on?
6. Naturally, it's the brash extrovert who gets the job, not the introverted guy who's actually doing all the work.
7. Brad Pitt is fun to watch, as usual.  He's a lot like Harrison Ford to us.  Not a lot of range.  He's just sort of always does Brad Pitt.  But it works.
8. Lot of Big Ideas here about art, especially the way popular entertainment (pop music, television, movies) is looked down upon by the "intellectuals" who prefer higher brow art.
9. There's also universally poignant moments for our characters sadly realizing they've been left behind in a changing world.  They naturally mourn for the good old days.
10. For us, it would have been stronger if it ended 15 minutes sooner.  There's a needless tag that just goes on and on, hitting the audience over the head to make a point the movie had already made in much more subtle ways.  It left a bad taste in our mouth.  Quit while you're ahead.
11. Margot Robbie is good, yes.  It's a perfect role for her.  She excels doing unhinged sexy.
12. But she's playing the most annoying movie character we've seen in a long time, a self-destructive crybaby who isn't content to just crash and burn on her own.  She makes awful choices that drag everyone else down with her.  We had a hard time with her.
13. The business with Tobey Maquire, the suitcase of cash, and a trip to that underground... whatever it was... a dungeon?... felt like it belonged in a whole other movie.  We get the need to dramatize one final scary descent into Hollywood sin, but that was a lot.
14. We've long understood that some silent movie stars couldn't make the transition to talking movies, but we never thought about the technical challenges of having to work out how capture audio.  That's the subject of one of the movie's more engaging sequences as the crew tries again and again to get through a single scene.
15. It is indeed a miraculous skill to be able to cry on cue over and over in front of dozens of bored film crew stagehands.
16. We didn't expect to see a rattlesnake.
17. It's definitely memorable.

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