Alex's 2024 Cinema Corner: Week of January 8th

Before you read I know the question you all have... "am I on the right website?". "Rouge Eye SPORTS having an article about cinema?".

I assure you, there has been no typo in your search or no issue in your hyperlink.

Although sports has always been the main focus of this brand and honestly, my life, movies/television has become another massive passion in the past year or so. In 2023, I dove right into the world of cinema and was able to reach a deeper appreciation like I've never had before. It was a whole new avenue of enjoyment for me and allowed me to connect with a lot of new people. I'm glad I picked up this interest again and I plan on continuing it even more in 2024.

As I bounced around ideas for new content in the new year, I always kept going to a column about this passion. Although I have a few places I am able to discuss my thoughts on what I have been watching(and we'll get into that more in a bit), I felt a weekly column recapping what I've watched in the past seven days would be a fun idea.

'Alex's Weekly 2024 Cinema Corner' will consist of my thoughts on every bit of movie and television I watched in the past week, what I'm currently in the middle of watching(if anything) and some short thoughts on some movie news from the past seven days.

That's the rough plan for now, but I can see that changing depending on the week. If I didn't watch as much in a week or there's little movie news, there may be an avenue to showcase something I've previously watched or spotlight an actor that I'm really enjoying right now. This will develop week-by-week depending on a load of factors and what the people reading this respond well to.

I hope this can not only reach the cinema fans that happen to follow this account for sports, but also the people who are in a phase of their life where they do not engage as much in film/television and want to get back into it again.

As I was hinting at earlier, I do have two rating apps that allow me to keep up with what I watch. My letterboxd account is aps12359 and my serializd account is alexschlerf. These will have every movie or TV show I've rated, ever, and also some lists beyond the ones I share here. Feel free to follow and keep up the discussion past this article! As always, comments on this article and on Twitter/X are open if you want to peacefully debate about anything I say!

Lastly, just please don't get mad if I don't rate your favorite movie five stars or don't talk about a bit of news that you read from the past week. The beauty of cinema is that everyone can enjoy certain aspects in different ways; the reason why we don't all have the exact same opinion on everything. This is MY column, meaning it will end up leaning towards the movies/TV shows that are on my list and the movie news that appeals to me the most. Let's just all have fun.

Since this is the first of hopefully many, here's a look at where my Top 10 movies all time list stands:

I'm sure there will be a week where I discuss this at length but in the meantime, let's get into what I watched this week!

January 8th, 2024: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom(Directed by Stephen Spielberg)

Credit: Disney Plus

Rating: 4.5/5 Stars

I started off last week by beginning to watch all the Indiana Jones movies for the first time. I know that may raise some eyebrows by itself, but again I was very out on the movie watching game until recently. After watching Indy 5 in theaters last year, I put the whole previous four on my watchlist so I could finally watch these iconic films. I watched Raiders of the Lost Ark, which is regarded by most as the best of the five, last week which is why it doesn't end up making it into this column. Anyway, Temple of Doom was absolutely fantastic. The music and storytelling are what you would expect from a John Williams/Stephen Spieberg/George Lucas trio and I thought the actual story was way more enticing then the previous film. Short Round, played by Ke Huy Quan, was a delight of an add to the cast and his chemistry with Harrison Ford is palpable. Sometimes it's the case that these exposition-heavy children in adventure movies can be poorly written and feel lasso'd into the story, but that was not the case at all here. Short Round had an actual important role in the film and his love for Indy was amazing. I'm surprised there isn't as much love for this movie because I had such a great time with it.

January 10th, 2024: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade(Directed by Steven Spielberg)

Credit: IMDb

Rating: 4/5 Stars

You have to really commend the filmmakers for continuing to adapt good stories in a franchise that has so many similar tropes in each film. You kinda know what you are gonna get from this one, but it still finds ways to reinvent itself. This is especially showcased through the relationship between Indiana Jones and his father, played by the legendary Sean Connery. Although the relationship is as complicated as possible at every turn, you can still see the influence and love shared between the two. Connery does a fantastic job of portraying this complicated father figure who rarely seems shocked at these intense situations he finds himself in the film. This had a lot more unintentional comedy then all the others, with the two Jones' trying to escape from being tied up a particular highlight. This got very close to a 4.5 star but I'm not sure its quite on the level of Temple of Doom.

January 10th, 2024: Echo(Miniseries, Directed by Sydney Freeland)

Credit: DiscussingFilm

Rating: 2.5/5 Stars

Going to start this off with two "disclaimers". First, there will be spoilers in this review so if you haven't seen Echo (or frankly, the Daredevil Netflix series) just bookmark this and come back when you are finished. Second, I have been a massive Marvel comic book and cinema watcher for my entire life, one could say it's the genre I gravitate towards the most.

However, I can be fair when Marvel slips up and I was relatively disappointed after I finished Echo. After seeing the trailer and hearing off the return of Daredevil/Kingpin, I was very excited to binge this show the night it came out. I did just that and the experience of being able to watch all five episodes in one sitting was enjoyable; the show not as much as I hoped. Unfortunately, this show falls to the same problem of almost every MCU Disney+ show so far... these shows have to be longer than five or six episodes. The five episode format, in Echo's case, makes the final conclusion feel incredibly rushed and the show overall feel way too formulaic. It starts off great, gets slow in the middle and ends with a rushed finale that frankly makes little sense. I honestly feel for the writers and filmmakers. There is a really good story in here somewhere, but the creators of the show have no way to tell it correctly when locked into this miniseries format.

There's a lot of great stuff in this show: Alaqua Cox is amazing as Maya Lopez/Echo, Vincent D'Onofrio steals the show as Kingpin like he always does and the way they were able to connect to the Choctaw heritage was amazing. All the scenes with Cox and D'Onofrio were so well written, showcasing the relationship between the two in a way that just scratches the surface on how interesting or complex it is. Not to mention, Charlie Cox's Daredevil is only in the show for a couple minutes but his wonderful adaptation of the character is felt and it gives me great hope for the future of Matt Murdock in the MCU. Also credit to Marvel for making the easy choice and making the Netflix Daredevil show canon. It's one of my favorite comic book projects ever and Kingpin explaining the story of how he killed his father worked really well with the tone of the show at the time(them revisiting it in the final conflict, conversely, felt forced and was a very poorly written scene). Can't wait to see more from this side of the MCU.

I think the issues all go back to my original point, but there are some very strange character choices here. Tantoo Cardinal's "Chula", in particular, was one of the more poorly written characters I've ever seen in a Marvel project. No offense to the actor herself who does well with what they give her, but the way she does a complete 180 from episode four to five had me really scratching my head when the show concluded. I think they are trying to make you feel sympathetic for her character but the way she's written portrays the exact opposite. They should've either minimized her role or had her as sort of a springboard for Maya ahead of the final showdown, something they attempt to do but don't execute well at all. Additionally, Devery Jacobs' "Bonnie" was completely underused and it made any real scenes she had feel unimportant. I feel like that childhood relationship between Bonnie and Maya could've been explored so much deeper. Besides a couple throw away scenes in the middle of action sequences, you find it hard to feel bad for either character when there are bad moments between them as friends. There's just a lot of characters in this show that are meant to be something more but end up just kinda being there in the end.

For me, Echo is currently ranked at #9 out of 12 MCU shows so far(that list can be explored at a later date). Considering how excited I was for this show, it ended up being a real disappointment. I feel like a lot of the outside concerns about this show coming in were about how they could form a story around a less popular character in Echo. But Echo herself is not at all the problem with this project; in fact, Cox's portrayal of a character with multiple disabilities is probably the best part. I'm very excited to see how she molds into the future street level conflicts in the MCU, hopefully along with Kingpin/Daredevil/Spider-Man/Punisher and more. But as I have repeated multiple times, all the problems with the writing and certain story aspects all lead back to the miniseries format.

Echo is good on multiple different occasions but could've been amazing and leads to another larger discussion about the formatting of these new marvel shows.

January 11th, 2024: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull(Directed by Steven Spielberg)

Credit: Looper

Rating: 2/5 Stars

One thing you'll learn is that I try very hard to not look at the reviews of films before I watch them, especially older ones, so I can get a fair opinion and not be influenced by anyone else. However, I had remembered hearing previously that this film was particularly the worst rated of all the Indiana Jones projects. Even knowing that, I went into this with an open mind and after watching the first 30 minutes or so thought "what is everyone talking about... this film is as great as the others!". Then the rest of the film happened. I mean, what are we doing here? Indiana Jones should never be involved with the supernatural, let alone to this level. There were multiple different times where I was just left completely speechless with the events that occurred in this film. I understand that Indy movies are supposed to be silly and unrealistic, but the main characters had genuine superpowers at points. This fact peaked when Shia LaBeouf's character suddenly finds himself stuck in the middle of a jungle, then magically swings from branch to branch all the way back to the car that Indy and his former lover Marion is. Shortly after, Marion drives their car off a cliff and somehow they are saved by a super stretchy branch that could find itself into the next Fantastic Four movie. Don't even get me started on the insanity of Professor Oxley and the skull itself. The movie tries to save face at the end by giving us a wholesome moment, with Indiana and Marion getting married with the classic theme playing as we close. Unfortunately, I don't give the movie any points for this five minutes after a literal ALIEN shows up randomly. There's really not a lot of good in here and it's kind of wild this was going to be the last installment until Dial of Destiny came out last year. Rough way to end the week of movie's for me.

After I've now seen all 5 Indiana Jones films, here's how I would rank them:

1. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

2. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

3. Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark

4. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

5. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Even with some blips along the way, overall an enjoyable quartet of movies to watch over a short span. Just another in the long line of iconic Harrison Ford roles. What a fantastic actor.

January 8th-January 12th, 2024: The Bear Season 2 (Directed by Cristopher Storer)

Credit: Hulu

Rating: 5/5 Stars

Again...spoilers ahead for this review.

My goodness, what an unbelievably good show. I previously gave Season One 4.5/5 stars, thoroughly enjoying it but didn't think it was perfect. This season was and I had absolutely zero doubts about what rating it was going to receive.

The show just hits all the right notes. I'll be frank: I had never seen Jeremy Allen White, Ayo Edebiri or Ebon Moss-Bachrach in any other project before this one. But man, what an amazing trio of actors. Moss-Bachrach in particular is just amazing in this season. Episode 7 allows him to really shine, letting him find his "purpose" that he had questioning many times over the course over the show so far. By the finale, it's incredible to just take a step back and see how far he's come from the guy in Season 1 that didn't really do anything at the restaurant. On opening night, not only does he do a fantastic job as front of house but he's able to dictate the entire kitchen by the end. The complicated relationship between Sydney and Carmen is elevated supremely by the acting of both Allen White and Edebiri. Both are incredibly deserving of the Golden Globe awards they received a week ago. There's a lot of good in this season but the journey's these three characters go on is probably the best part. More on the Sydney-Carmen dynamic in a second.

I also love has this season put faith in the side characters we came to love so much in Season 1. Although the fellow chefs were on screen a lot in the first season, we never really dove into their characters much. But in Season 2, we really dive into these characters and all of them shine on their own. Marcus, played by Lionel Boyce, goes to Coppenhagen on a journey of self improvement and deals with the weight of his mother who has fallen ill. Tina, played by Liza Colón-Zayas, learns to embrace her passion after going back to cooking school in a tune-up session as the restaurant is being built. Nataile or "Sugar", played by Abby Elliott, decides to fully embrace the restaurant after seeing how much it really matters to Carmen. Like previously stated, the show really banks on these amazing actors and how much they made them really feel like crucial parts of the show in the prior season.

This show has won best casting at a couple awards shows already and it's really not hard to see how after watching season 2. Episode 6 is basically an acting clinic: Bob Odenkirk, Jon Bernthal, Jamie Lee Curtis, John Mulaney and others have short stints in the season but come together to form one of the best episodes in the show so far. What I love about this show is that they don't just cast these big names just for the sake of it. They actually serve a real purpose to the story every time. Olivia Coleman has one scene in the entire show, but her conversation with Richie is one of the most genuine moments in the whole show and makes everything click for him. Will Poulter only appears for occasional scenes in the Marcus focused episode, but his character is able to inspire the pastry chef by just being honest with him. These actors weren't cast for their big names, they were cast for the impact they can make in such a short amount of time in screen.

As this season started to develop, I was slightly worried about the new addition of Molly Gordon's character, Claire. I thought the idea of Carmen connecting with a girl he had previously liked could've been a good big picture moment for him, but I was concerned that they were forcing a love plot in a show that doesn't really need it. However, it ends up working because of the great chemistry between the two actors. Claire ended up pushing Carmen in a direction he didn't think he could reach and it was one of the reasons this season was so charming. The idea of love in this season was definitely more profound than the last. I actually enjoyed it because of how they were able to make it subtle, but still impactful. Marcus clearly develops feelings for Sydney as the season goes on and I like how they just mold it into the final two episodes without making it a major plot point. I feel the reaction of both characters in the aftermath of that, as Marcus probably could have asked at a better time and Sydney could've reacted in a better way. Maybe that will all end up working out in the episodes to come(Season 3 has been green lit and is probably going to release in 2024), but it really feels like Sydney and Carmen is the relationship we are headed to. As much as they have their differences, it was hinted at a larger rate as the season developed and the two actors just have immense chemistry. It was kind of just in the back of my mind until the final episode of the season where the two have that moment under the table and I realized how enjoyable it is just to see them interact happily instead of screaming at each other in the kitchen. Not sure if it'll be followed through on, but all the Marcus/Sydney/Carmen stuff was written really well and I can't wait to see how it continues in the next season.

Overall, this show is great on every level you can think of. Hard for a show with only two seasons to reach any kind of 'favorite shows' list for me, but if they keep this up over multiple season I see no reason it couldn't get there(we'll go over my favorite show list at a later date). Big round of applause to everyone involved and I cannot wait for more!

Onto the film news section...

This past Tuesday was J.K Simmons birthday! Simmons is one of my favorite actors out there and I really commend the fact that he's been able to interject into basically every genre of film or television. It's been a thing in this industry, especially more recently, for the acting skills of an actor to be shot down when they agree to do a superhero project. But Simmons has done everything and has been good in everything. For the superhero genre: a generation of Spider-Man films, a short cameo in Justice League and his title role in Invincible. But past that he's been in so many great and creative films like Whiplash, La La Land and Burn After Reading. I'm sure there's a lot more, those are just some of my favorites. Can't wait to see more Oscar worthy performances in the future from the 69 year old!

Late in the night on Thursday it was reported that the Top Gun franchise would return with another installment soon. This news was somewhat surprising for me at first, but then I remembered how popular Top Gun: Maverick was. It released as one of the first large movies out of the pandemic and reached 1.496 billion at the box office, currently at #12 in the list of highest grossing movies of all time. There is no real reason for them to not make another if the demand is there and Tom Cruise is willing to return. I'm not totally sure what the story could be, but the same report said Miles Teller and Glenn Powell are scheduled to return as well so I'm assuming it's going to a continuation of the last film. That's somewhat interesting considering although the original Top Gun and Top Gun: Maverick had it's obvious connections, they were mostly standalone movies besides certain characters returning. I guess the fact that those movies were multiple decades apart and the gap between 2-3 will probably only be a half decade is definitely a part of that. I enjoyed both Top Gun movies so I'm excited to see how this one develops!

I haven't really looked into the response to this news, but I'm assuming there's some pushback because of the sentiment of "how many streaming services do I need to buy nowadays?". That's totally fair and I feel the weight of that a lot when I'm switching between services depending on which show or movie I'm watching. Oppenheimer has already won plenty of awards and is undoubtably one of the most popular movies of 2023, so it's streaming debut being on Peacock is certainly interesting. This is partly due to streaming rights and who produced the film, but anyway, my point is that I'm actually a fan of this competition between streaming services. I imagine that 5-10 years ago, when streaming services were really starting to gain popularity, there was a very low chance Oppenheimer would hit any streaming platform. But now that Peacock exists, my 2nd favorite movie of 2023 and the likely Best Picture winner at the Oscars is going to be able to be seen by loads of people. Bravo Peacock and whoever else was involved for getting this done.

Madame Web has been a heavily discussed topic of comic book Twitter this week, mostly due to various images leaking of the suits that will be featured in the film. There's been plenty of leaks that have made the rounds this week but this was the most clear look we've gotten so far. I'd love to hear others opinions and I've been scrolling through stuff on Twitter a lot this week, but after everything I've seen these suits are feeling...meh. Don't get me wrong, they aren't as bad as others are saying and I think that Isabella Merced's(far left) in particular is actually looking very good. But let's flash back to just June 2023 and the amazing film that was Spider-Man Across the Spider Verse. Think of how creative and bright all the suits in that movie were! You can stop on any frame from the Spider Society scenes and see how detailed the filmmakers went into staying true to the versatility of the spider-suits. The reason I bring that up now is because whenever I see all these new looks at these Madame Web suits, they just feel cheap and bland. This project in general feels like it lacks the passion and creativeness of any good project connected to Spider-Man. But that's a larger discussion for another day. For these suits, I'm definitely not the biggest fan right now but maybe they'll look a lot better in action on the big screen February 14th.

To finish, here's the film and television projects that I are next on my list.

Next Movie On My List: They Cloned Tyrone

Next TV Show On My List: Welcome to Wrexham Season 2

See you next Sunday!