Jeremy_Urquhart

"You can't usually go too wrong with Sydney Pollack" I say with some confidence before realizing that of his 20-ish feature films, I have seen 10, and so maybe one could go wrong with some of those I haven't seen. I hope not. That output makes me hope he was a quality-over-quantity kind of guy, and lots of his good movies had Robert Redford in them. One of his movies was called They Shoot Horses Don't They or something and that one had Jane Fonda in it. Fonda has been on-screen with Redford in a handful of movies, including Barefoot in the Park and one from the mid-2010s that I remember little about, except it was just okay and Bruce Dern was also in it. Dern was in Coming Home with Fonda. Where am I going. Oh yeah, Pollack went from shooting horses but not really to shooting a movie about a Horseman here.

The Electric Horseman is pretty blunt in its exploration of the times and they're a-changin', doing a revisionist Western thing as was the style at the time, like onions on belts. But at least this one is also quite funny and breezy. It has some more serious parts and ideas, but lots of this plays out like a rom-com road movie with a horse instead of a car. Also, this means that instead of a car chase, there's a sequence where Redford outpaces a bunch of police vehicles while on horseback. It's like a horse + car chase. It was definitely the film's highlight.

There were also a few funny moments, and Redford and Fonda always have good chemistry on-screen together. Other parts of The Electric Horseman dragged, but I warmed up to it as it went along. I don't think it's an essential Western and/or late 70s film, and it's probably a bit too long, but I think it's also fair to call it a tiny bit overlooked. I liked this one without loving it.

The China Syndrome is 122 minutes long, and at the 61-minute mark, someone says the title of the movie, and I wonder if there's some kind of screenplay 101 rule that says you should have such a piece of dialogue exactly halfway through your film. This is the most interesting observation about The China Syndrome that I have to offer.

As for the stuff that happens on either side of that title drop, it's not bad. It's a little like how I remember Silkwood being (it's been years), but with a slightly more detached feel, very in line with the sorts of paranoia-heavy thrillers there seemed to be a ton of during the 1970s. It seemed like a decade where everyone was on edge, but nothing ever exploded to the extent where creatives couldn't focus on what they were worried about and work those feelings into compelling stories. A perfect storm of malaise and a 1960s that still needed to be processed, rather than outright horrors on a vast scale (no world wars at least, and I guess things were more recessiony than depressiony). But I can only assume. I wasn't there.

But The China Syndrome also has that All the President's Men sort of thing going for it where I can recognize it's well-made and sort of admire its patient pacing while finding it a little uninvolving. Maybe it needs to be that way to add to the sense of things being grounded, real, and not overly cinematic, and I get that. I can admire it, but often with this style of movie, I feel at a distance. It's like, good, but maybe just a bit dry for my liking, though it does admittedly pick up a little more as far as drama goes in the final act.

Otherwise, it's hard to fault the generally efficient screenplay, strong direction, and good performances. Good movie, I just can't really get excited about it.

I feel like if I went on a date with Materialists, I'd say "it's not you, it's me" at the end of it, to try and say why I wouldn't be keen to catch up again (if Materialists, in this situation, didn't tell me something similar first, which it probably would, let's be honest). It's not really my kind of movie, but I was interested to see what Celine Song would do after Past Lives, because I think that was one of 2023's best films.

It's not quite a blank check movie, but it is a flashier production than Past Lives, owing to it having some of the more popular movie stars of this current era in it. It also feels like it's going for more of a mass-appeal kind of thing, which isn't inherently a bad thing I guess. I just feel like this was rushed a bit. I can picture Song riding the high of Past Lives and just diving into this, and maybe no one wanted to tell her "no." Or maybe no one could tell her "no," since she was credited as the producer at the start of this, on top of the writer/director (which surprised me). That almost gives the impression it was a black check movie. And I just can't shake the feeling that the writing was rushed. There's just a tediousness to the way this is written, because while every scene driving home the same couple of points isn't instantly a bad thing in a movie, it is here, when the writing just lacks a certain spark. So many scenes feel weighed down and like they drag for just a minute or so, but when every scene feels that way, it adds up and kills the pacing. Sorry to compare it to Past Lives (I mean, they're both love triangle-y and have the same director; sue me), but the slowness there added to the emotion and aching quality of it all. There isn't enough of an emotional payoff for the pacing in Materialists to feel deliberate. It just feels sluggish.

But... Song directed this really well. It's a great-looking movie, lots of shots are pulled off well, and if it didn't look so good on a big screen, I'd call Materialists the perfect airplane movie. And the performances here are all strong. Dakota Johnson feels flat at first, but I warmed up to what she was doing by the film's end, and then slapped myself mentally for realizing that "yeah, that's because of her character arc, dummy."

Any shortcomings on an acting front, I blame the screenplay more. Just can't shake the feeling it needed a rewrite or two. Materialists tackles interesting ideas regarding the modern dating scene, but doesn't explore them with enough wit, emotion, or spark. It hammers things home too forcefully and feels way too one-note, but at least it looks nice and has some good performances. It's disappointing, but not actually bad.