Three Movies, 24 Hours: A Recap
My take on Indiana Jones, No Hard Feelings and Asteroid City.
Barbenheimer is coming.
Nine days from now, July’s most anticipated films — Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer — will be released into theaters simultaneously. Each cost an estimated $100 million to make and boasts a ton of prestige and commercial marketing power. The media coverage surrounding Barbie, however, is far more intense, emitting a ubiquitous hot pink vapor that will soon hang in the air like a teen’s Bath and Body Works fragrance mist circa 1999. For months already, Warner Brothers has paced out a steady drip of meme-able images and catchphrases (“Do you guys ever think about dying?”), sneak peaks and Vogue photoshoots that spotlight a pitch-perfect Margot Robbie as the iconic doll experiencing an existential crisis and an extremely game Ryan Gosling as we literally have never seen him before. The studio thought it was pulling off an ingenious stroke of counter-programming by deciding to release its girly picture on the same day that rival Universal unleashes Oppenheimer, a biographical thriller about the physicist who helped create nuclear weapons (lighthearted material!). But nobody, not even psychic Allison DuBois, could’ve predicted the enthusiasm from cinephiles who want to see both films — and back-to-back. These are people who love movies. These are my people. Will I join them on July 21? I’m a firm YES for Barbie and a MAYBE on Oppenheimer. Together, the phenomenon of Barbenheimer — a clever, viral portmanteau invented by the internet — is too big to ignore and primed to dominate the cultural conversation even further, at least if you’re Extremely Online. I am, but I’m also not: I regularly use only one social media app (Instagram), and I like to put down my phone for long stretches every now and then. Earlier this week, I found myself with an inordinate amount of free time and silenced my notifications to catch three non-Barbie movies in under 24 hours, before they leave theaters for good. Here are my hottest bite-sized takes:
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny: On Sunday night, I accompanied my husband and father-in-law to the Alamo Drafthouse in San Francisco to see the man, the myth, the living legend Harrison Ford back on the big screen, playing my favorite action hero of all time. Like many ’80s kids, I grew up with Indiana Jones and can’t remember life without him. The globe-trotting archeologist was the most handsome man I’d ever seen, with wry humor and a relatable fear of snakes. The Dial of Destiny revisits an aging Dr. Jones in 1969; he’s a professor at Hunter College in New York City and separated from his wife following their son’s death. He is going through the motions, teaching bored students, a shell of his former self. Enter Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), Indy’s resourceful and ridiculously charismatic goddaughter who shows up, causes trouble, and leads him on a wild ride that kicks off with a horse in a subway tunnel and ends with a jaw-dropping plot twist I never saw coming. At 80 years old, Ford has still got it — and it’s a rare treat to see him back in the saddle again, back where he belongs: Not in a museum but at the multiplex. This wistful, stirring final installment of a time-honored franchise was everything we wanted it to be, and more.
No Hard Feelings: The next morning at 11 a.m., I went crazy and ordered a Starbucks drip coffee one size larger than I’m used to and bought a single ticket to watch a sex comedy starring Jennifer Lawrence. When I tell you that I was the only person in theater 5 at the AMC Metreon. No regrets! Anyway: If you laugh out loud, alone in the dark, and no one was there to witness the laughter, did it ever really happen? I’m here to tell you that, yes, it did. No Hard Feelings, written and directed by Gene Stupnitsky, an ex-scribe for The Office, has been a moderate box-office hit thanks to the star wattage of Lawrence, whose impeccable comic timing and dramatic chops confirm anew that she is one of the finest actors of her generation. She takes a deeply unsavory character — a 32-year-old woman paid to date a rich couple’s unsuspecting 19-year-old son — and puts her through the ringer, balancing cringe and pathos to fill in the gray areas of a complicated, rudderless soul. It turns out that the 19-year-old (Andrew Barth Feldman) and his peers possess more maturity than she does; the unlikely bond he and Lawrence develop neutralizes the Ick Factor packaged by the movie’s savvy marketers. The final sequence, with Bob Seger’s “You’ll Accomp’ny Me” providing the soundtrack, made my heart swell. Related: J-Law’s enduring friendship with raunch queen Amy Schumer makes total sense now! (I wonder if Schumer was a silent adviser.)
Asteroid City: Afterward, I hopped in a Lyft and headed to the Marina Theater for the 2 p.m. screening of the new Wes Anderson. I went in cold, having avoided reading reviews beforehand. I didn’t want critical opinion to potentially tarnish my enjoyment of a film that I knew I would like, precisely because of the very things that make Anderson the filmmaker that he is — one with a singular voice and visual style, who’s inspired countless interior decorators, TikTok creators and beyond. In Asteroid City, Anderson takes his cues from Looney Tunes, specifically the Road Runner cartoon, to paint another feast for the senses, this outing centered on a Mid-century “Junior Stargazer” convention in a scenic Western desert town. No plot? No problem! The effect is at once exuberant and pretentious, playful yet serious, each shot a frame-worthy work of art; in one scene, Anderson, delighting himself and his fans in the process, reveals a vending machine that serves martinis. The auteur’s actors fully embrace his whimsical vision: Scarlet Johansson gives Old Hollywood ennui; Steve Carell chipper hospitality; Tilda Swinton restrained yearning; Tom Hanks world-weary wisdom, and Jake Ryan wide-eyed awkwardness as a teen inventor who witnesses an otherworldly occurrence. I enjoyed it all just as I knew that I would. And now I want to redecorate my home.
*Also, I resolve to experience more movies in the theater! See you at Barbenheimer?