#2,399: Suburbicon

Rounders - ★★★½☆
Card games are cool. A little crime is cool. Check out these cool guys doing cool things they can’t leave alone because of their powerful addictions.

But really, I liked this. It has a 90s feel and structure to it that’s so comfortable and familiar that it was almost soothing.

American Anarchist - ★½☆☆☆
This was a good idea for a documentary, but if this story had been a submission to, say, a magazine, someone whose business is telling stories, it would have been killed when it turned out they had no story. But when you’re pot-committed, when your business is telling just this one particular story, you’re just going to go ahead and make it anyway. Luckily the filmmakers weren’t so completely starved for content as to decide the movie was actually about themselves, but they clearly ran out of steam before hitting feature-length.

Suburbicon - ★★★☆☆
I was pretty worried about this one because they rented a particular billboard on Wilshire that movies only rent when they think they’ve got a bomb on their hands. And they went with the deceptive trailer to boot. I’m thankful for that though because I had no idea about what was going on at the start of the movie. It was surprising and fun.

I think I liked everything everyone else hated. I was on board with both the Hitchcockian Matt Damon-centered story and the literally tangentially-related story of his neighbors. I would have liked more of that, even.

This movie is going to be lodged deep in the pile of movies that nobody will remember a year from now. Did you know they made an all-star remake of the Magnificent Seven last year?