Movie Review: Hooking Up (R – 104 minutes)

 

My theater is open, but there are not any new releases that struck my fancy, so I checked out Hooking Up on Hulu. 

Hooking Up is a dramedy that covers the story of Darla and Bailey.  Darla is a sex addict recently justifiably fired from her job as a sex columnist at a magazine and attending required counseling sessions that are held in a local high school.  Bailey is recovering from testicular cancer and has just been diagnosed with a second round of it while attending cancer support counseling at the same high school. He’s recently separated from his high school sweetheart and handling that very poorly – to the point of stalking her.  Darla gets the idea from her sessions to revisit all the locations that she had sex. She convinces Bailey to go with her, and they set off on a road trip from Atlanta to Dallas, screwing in all her previous screwing locations. Hijinks sort of ensue.

The cast is great and they do a wonderful job with the roles they have. The chemistry between the two leads is wonderful and I would love to see some of the outtakes. The story is one of redemption and how these two characters who are at their respective rock bottoms help each other pull up to find new chances.  In a normal year, I may have had more patience for the movie, but I think I am craving lighter fare lately.  Both characters are so completely screwed up, it’s hard to like them. Yes, once we meet Darla’s mother, we understand where some of her issues come from.  However, she was so horrible in the beginning, for me that wasn’t enough to redeem her.  Once we meet Bailey’s family, we see why he felt so unsupported and was clingy with Liz, his ex. I would have preferred this movie either lean hard into the comedy, or completely commit to the drama. Walking the line between both is very difficult.

As I mentioned, the cast is great.  Brittany Snow plays Darla as unhinged and uncaring in the beginning.  She had convinced herself that her lifestyle was necessary for her job without really noticing the affect it was having on that job and her relationships. Through her adventures with Bailey, she learns to acknowledge and get help for her own issues, leading to the ability to heal.

Sam Richardson is a gem of a performer and gives Bailey such layered depression that the comic moments felt uncomfortable.  Eventually, he learns to stand up for himself, become who he wants to be as opposed to the demands of friends and family, and accepts that he can be more than just his cancer.

The rest of the cast is really just elevated cameos, which is good, because they support the story while letting Snow and Richardson earn the spotlight. Anna Akana as Liz gets the most to do, which is oscillate between angry and supportive-smothering. Amy Pietz plays Darla’s mother Betty, and Jordana Brewster plays her boss Tanya.  Vivica A. Fox pops in as Bailey’s mother.

Overall, the movie is well-executed and the performances are good. Again, the chemistry between Richardson and Snow is fantastic - they truly seem to be having fun. I didn’t care for the story, but if you enjoy a good dramedy with earned redemption from some tough-to-love folks, this will be right up your alley.

5 out of 10

Movie Review: Tenet (PG13 -150 minutes)

 

My local theater has reopened with a whole bunch of extra safety precautions in place and so I saw Tenet on the big screen. As much as I hate to admit it, Christopher Nolan was correct: Tenet should be seen in a theater.  I happened to be alone for my viewing and I found myself wishing the theater was more full.  It would have been interesting to watch this with a crowd – not complaining, that’s still not safe – just observing.

Tenet introduces us to The Protagonist as he works as an international spy. The movie begins with him helping stop a terrorist hostage situation in Moscow. While there, he witnesses something odd when being fired upon by the villains.  He doesn’t quite make it out, and just as he thinks he’s been killed, he’s actually rescued (but not before getting some teeth yanked out) and recruited for another top-secret mission with only the word “tenet” as his way in.  He travels from location to location, eventually learning that Russian Andrei Sator has some terrible plans for the world and a mysterious organization is working to stop those plans. 

Honestly, that’s about all I will say about it.  You definitely should see it.  It feels like a throwback to early Christopher Nolan work, most notably Memento, a movie that managed to run forwards and backwards. I don’t believe I am spoiling anything by mentioning that this movie has some forward and backward in it.  Not necessarily time travel, but time inversion. If you want to travel back 10 days, you need to reverse through 10 days.  Confusing, but also fascinating, and apparently based on some real entropy physics.  Nolan loves a non-linear story, and this one is linear with non-linear bits.  There are very few CGI effects for a movie with inverted time sequences. Nolan had the actors shoot scenes moving backwards to do as much practically as possible and I think it made a difference in the final product.  The action set pieces including a massive car chase and plane crashing into a hanger are all done practically.  The cast includes some Nolan regulars and some new additions.

John David Washington is exceptional as the lead of this movie and I am suddenly ready to hand him his own action franchise. He is calm, cool, collected, and manages to let almost nothing rattle him, even inverted bullets. He is absolutely a leading man and I cannot wait to see what he does next. Also – weird observation, I was really intrigued by his talent to hold an espresso cup and saucer in one hand.

Here’s something I never thought I would say, after watching this, I can understand how Robert Pattinson got the new Batman.  Don’t get me wrong, as much as I love Batman, I think the character deserves a bit of a rest, give us a few years to breathe before forcing another one at us (unless of course you make a Batman Beyond with an old Keaton-Wayne and JGL Mcginnis).  Pattinson is a slick assistant spy named Neil in this piece, seemingly prepared for almost any situation.  He is capable in the action sequences and even more with his partnership with the Protagonist.

Elizabeth Debicki and her incredibly long neck provide the female lead as Kat – a woman trapped in a relationship with Kenneth Branagh’s villainous Sator.  I hated her character at first, because the whole ‘trapped in marriage with this horrible man because they have a son’ is really tired. She manages to make it work and steps into her own by the end. 

I did not know that Aaron Taylor-Johnson was in this and it took me a few minutes to recognize him. He’s pretty great as the standard action guy leading a team that has been recruited by whatever mysterious benefactor and organization has recruited the Protagonist. Dimple Kapadia enters her first Western movie to play a arms-dealer/helpful friend who points our team in the right direction. And yes, since it’s a Nolan movie, Michael Caine pops up briefly.

Honestly, I wasn’t sure what I thought when I left the theater, but the more I think about the movie, the more I like it.  It’s not perfect and certainly uneven, and I figured out the who just before the reveal, which I don’t mind.  But the action is spectacular, the cast is great, and the story interesting.  It may be worth seeing a second time to catch all the little added bits I missed the first time around. For example, the color red indicates regular movement and blue indicates inverted movement.

8 out of 10 – and possible getting higher.

Side note, a Sator Square is a five by five square of different palindromes that when turned various ways, the words still read the same. Each word features in the movie Tenet in different places.  The earliest dated Sator Square was found in the ruins of Pompeii.