It Wasn’t So Bad

OK, so we all know January is usually the month when studios blow all their worst stuff just to get it out there and clear their calendars for the better stuff later in the year. January of 2025, though, has been a completely different story, because it’s been unusually good. Not that January is suddenly going to lose its stellar reputation; some movies that were supposed to be released in other months were held until January. Kinda makes me wonder what’s in store for 2025.

So things have been hopping lately over on Substack (including a Gilmore Girls anniversary retrospective), but here’s what placed for January. Pretty much. The last two pictures are tied because I honestly couldn’t decide between them. As usual, click the links for the reviews…

Wolf Man

I’ll be honest, I’m not a huge fan of the Wolf Man trope, although Professor Lupin is one of my favorite Harry Potter characters. There’s just not a lot of room for variation with werewolves: Some hapless individual gets unusually hairy and feral whenever there’s a full moon, tearing equally hapless individuals to pieces and maybe sending a howl or two skyward. Apart from a few differences, that’s pretty much it.

Wolf Man, on the other hand, takes things a step further by showing a werewolf transformation from the werewolf’s point of view, which gives everything a kind of Kafka-ish feel. When Christopher Abbott, who plays the title character of Blake, is bitten by a werewolf, his world suddenly goes askew and his family seems like the enemy. For the most part, anyway, because he’s not the only Wolf Man around.

While some of the special effects look a bit lame and there were aspects of the story that could have been leaned into more, Wolf Man deserves kudos for coloring outside the lines a little bit. It’s not a great film but an ambitious one.

Flight Risk

Flight Risk is kind of a wobbler, because while my review came out on February first, it’s obviously a January movie, but like everything else I saw in January it was surprisingly entertaining. When a person goes into something thinking they’re going to see Mark Wahlberg in a bad bald cap like I did, it’s clear that expectations are already pretty low.

And yes, I know it’s not a bald cap.

Mr. Wahlberg plays a pretty hard-core psycho in this movie and he really makes the viewer loathe him. He’s a great foil for Topher Grace, the hapless accountant who’s in witness protection and who has to talk fast to get Madolyn the Air Marshal to listen to him (She has her own reasons for being almost too hard-boiled). The best thing is to sit back, relax, and take this movie as it comes.

Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

Straight up, this movie is adorable. All Gromit wants is do is to work in his garden and hang out with Wallace. All Wallace wants to do is invent new tech that supposedly helps his friend and makes his life easier.

Well, imagine what happens when Wallace unveils Norbot, a cheerfully psychotic garden gnome who can carve topiaries faster than most people can say, “Go.” Naturally, Norbot goes bad, but it’s not his fault. Feathers McGraw, who’s languishing in a prison cell at the local zoo, hacks his way into Wallace’s computer and changes Norbot’s programming.

Like I said, this movie is adorable. It’s both a cautionary tale about the perils of too much technology and a return to what makes the Wallace and Gromit franchise so much fun. Nicely done, Aardman.

September 5

Based on the true story of the ABC Sports newscrew, who were initially the first to cover the terrorist attack at the 1972 Munich Olympics, September 5 is a deftly handled piece that mostly follows what happened with a documentary-like accuracy, using a mixture of archival footage and recreated shots. The actor who stood in for Jim McKay, for instance, was shot from the back until he sat down and the cameras were on him, then we see the archival footage.

While the film was partially shot in Munich at the historic locations, some bits had to be recreated, as the Olympic Village was converted into apartments the year after the Olympics. Only a remnant of the track where Steve Prefontaine ran his famous fourth-place three-mile race still exists. The pool where Mark Spitz won seven gold medals has only seen minimal changes and was used in the film. The apartment at Connellystrasse 31, where the hostages were held, is now owned by the Max Planck Institute and used to house visiting researchers, so the building was recreated in what looks like a matte painting.

I’ve been waiting to see September 5 ever since I saw the trailer a few months ago, and the way it kept getting pushed back, I wondered if it would get caught in Distribution Limbo. It’s nice that this turned out not to be the case.

Presence

Who’s seen the trailers for this movie? They make Presence out to be a super-scary experience beyond believing and unlike anything anyone has ever seen before.

Well, that last item is correct, anyway. Far from being breathtakingly scary, Presence is told from the point of view of an unnamed ghostly presence. As in, we not only see everything through the Presence’s eyes, but we float around the house we’re trapped in and observe the family who lives there. The entire movie is filmed in long tracking shots and vignettes, which is really cool and highly entertaining. The only slightly scary parts are when we see that something bad is about to happen to the family and feel helpless because we’re seeing everything through the eyes of someone who’s observing from the other side.

Presence is definitely not for everyone, but it’s one of the most unique movies I’ve seen in a long time.

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Another post is coming up on Sunday. Thanks for reading, all, and I hope you have a good weekend…

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