It’s the most nostalgic movie I’ve seen. And what is the nostalgia for? The movie is set before I was born in a state I’ve never even visited. Focusing primarily on jocks, a group I never joined. Suffering a hazing ritual I’ve never known to exist. Yet...I’ve felt that joy busting out of school on the last day. I’ve felt that awareness when you walk away from one part of your life into another in an almost conscious decision, like…
This is the kind of movie I wish I saw forty years ago, so it could be as formative in my life of movies as it should be.
It’s my first Errol Flynn, so please forgive me for not realizing that he and Glen Powell share cinematic DNA.
The romance is sweet, there are plenty of great set pieces, and the overall setting was a lot of fun. But I really disliked many elements, as well.
The humor just didn’t land. The characters were constantly winking.
And some of this is pretty brutal: the way Marty is hung, and the way Tanner speaks to Clara at the dance, the way Marty kisses a sleeping Jennifer. All of it conflicts with the overall light tone.
Lines like “Well, Doc,…
It gets the poker 80% right, which is better than any other poker movie (including Rounders).
Primary among the other 20%: too much trash talk at the table; collusion at the final table of the World Series is not likely to fly; no way a player reaches out into the muck and flips another player's cards.
Still, it was great to see Vegas; great to see so many poker players; and great to see a movie get it mostly right. It features a great soundtrack, too!
Unfortunately, the drama is somewhat dull and it's not very visually interesting.
Earlier this year, I watched The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything, two films I'd say deserve the pejorative label, "Oscar bait." This past week, I've watched Atonement and Quiz Show, two films that I have to assume when they were released were also accused of being Oscar bait. As it turns out, Oscar used to only fall for high-quality bait.
What I love is that at the time, in 1994, when I first saw this in theaters, I…
