Driven (2018)

Director: Nick Hamm

Cast: Jason Sudeikis, Lee Pace, Judy Greer, Michael Cudlitz

Have I Seen it Before: Never. In one of my Apple TV movie buying sprees, this one came across my radar, and I was probably more than a little helpless against its pitch.

Did I Like It: This is easily one of the top 4 films ever releaased that relied upon the Delorean Motor Car for a vital part of its plot.

Har. Har. Har.

It’s a reasonably entertaining deep dive into a story that—over forty years later—is even a bit of a one-line footnote in the making of time machines of note, but it isn’t reaching for much more than that. Sudekis is playing a slightly scuzzier version of his Ted Lasso personae, and Lee Pace is more than a little bit playing his character from Halt and Catch Fire, except with a grey wig. It’s a semi-amusing little trifle that you enjoy while wtching, but have no trouble understanding why it has become mostly forgotten in the years since.

I’m a little surprised that a film so dependent on the car with the gull-wing door, we never see one throughout the vast majority of of the runtime. Even John Delorean (Pace) himself is never seen driving one, as if he knew something we all expected way back when. Only at the end do we see someone—Sudekis, in one of the film’s less likely pontifications on what we know about the DeLorean sting operation—behind the wheel of the DMC-12, and even then it is played for something of joke, driving home the point that the car never really worked that well. Had this film somehow come before those other films that made the car famous, Zemeckis and Co. might have opted for some other totem for their time travel.

Come to think of it, the fact that this, a Universal production, managed to avoid any references to those other films is something of a marvel of restraint.

And now that I’ve gone this whole review without bringing it up, all I want to do is watch those three.

Halloween Kills (2021)

Director: David Gordon Green

Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Andi Matichak, Will Patton

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. Two new movies in such a short amount of time. What an embarrassment of riches. I caught the movie on Peacock because a) Still not entirely sure who would be breathing on me in a movie theater, so if there’s another option, why not go for it and b) I can take a watch through the shockingly good Saved by the Bell relaunch.

Wasn’t thinking one of my reviews of the Halloween movies would include a reference to Saved by the Bell, but here we are…

Did I Like It: Hawkins (Patton) lives! Is that enough for a review? Probably not. I so enjoyed that character, and was injured by his apparent death in the last film, I’m willing to give the whole affair a pass.

As a sequel to Green’s Halloween (2018), it is probably safe to say that this film isn’t the same uniformly satisfying experience. I think that, largely, is fueling some of the negative reaction* to the film. Characters are introduced (in many cases, reintroduced) at a lightning pace, and disposed of nearly as quickly. Jamie Lee Curtis—such a vital, essential presence in the last film—is relegated to a hospital bed for the runtime, echoing some of the stranger decisions in Halloween II (1981). I don’t buy for a moment that the men who live in the Myers house now are somehow the only people in town who weren’t aware (or suspected, or were ready to form a mob because) Myers was on a rampage again. The film is perhaps a bit too obsessed with the mythology of the character that I can’t help but get the sinking feeling the next film will commit that most odious sin and try to explain Myers.

The shape (if you’ll forgive the expression) of this trilogy is incomplete, and so this film might end up being remembered as something of a fundamental mess, or perhaps just a victim of the middle-trilogy syndrome. I get the sense that Green and Company have some very specific ideas for what the forthcoming Halloween Ends will look like, and this movie is largely a clearing house from the last film, when it isn’t obsessed with setting the table for the next.

But there are plenty of things to like about the film. The flashbacks to 1978 (a sequence which was attempted for the last movie, but cut for budgetary reason) are great fun, and only add to the hero that is Sheriff Hawkins. When the film finally unleashes in its final minutes, it does so in a rather surprising fashion. A Carpenter score is a Carpenter score, and you can never go wrong with it.

Ultimately, any review really must exist in context. Anyone who hates this movie is either so weighed down by unreasonable expectations, determined to react to every movie in bad faith, or has not watched any of the other films recently. I watched all of them in the last week, and it’s clear this is one of the better films to feature Michael Audrey Myers, just not the best.

*Interesting note. Peacock posts the current Rotten Tomatoes score on the HUD when the movie is paused or just starting to play. The film’s score went up a whole percent while we watched the vanity cards. I’ve never seen the consensus change (to very nearly fresh, no less) as I started watching a film.