The Lost City (2022)

Type of movie: Cheesy.

Am I proud that I watched it? No.

Name drop: Bullock, Tatum, Radcliffe, Pitt.

A romance novelist jaded by her own career (she abandoned academia to achieve schlocky commercial appeal) must don a skimpy pink jumpsuit and appear as her own fictional heroine onstage--and beside the beefy model who poses for the bookjackets as the fictional heroine’s love interest--at the behest of a publisher eager to promote her latest steam-thriller. This, i.e. scene one, marks the start of the bit: Sandra Bullock (the novelist) is as disgusted by the gimmick as Channing Tatum (the model) is dramatically committed to it, and she is soon pushed to breaking-point by an audience frenzy-whipped by her muscly co-star.

Then she gets kidnapped by Daniel Radcliffe (an evil billionaire) who believes she can help him locate the Crown of Fire, an ancient piece of treasure from an until-now (gasp!) lost city deep in the Atlantic, where she--still bedazzled in pink--is promptly whisked, leaving the model, who pines for her, no choice but to be the action hero he was in no way born to be. That’s how they end up traipsing around a tropical island on the run from some baddies, struggling to enact the roles of the romance adventure novel characters that have made their respective careers.

The only one who really understands the assignment (complete, slap-the-sky irony) is Brad Pitt, whose appearance as a freelance guerrilla tactical man is the all-too-brief high-point of the movie: Bullock somehow seems neither like a bestselling author (she can’t seem to read people, even an audience of her own fans) nor like a closet academic (her “intellectual gravity” comes off summarily like sourness), while Tatum’s good-guy schtick misses potential laughs because of its genuine edge, which accommodates some idea that he is a serious heartthrob hopeful--but the word “serious” has no business anywhere near this script.

The whole thing is dodgy, sure, but also fun. It’s wonderful to see A-listers doing camp cinema: I mean, if Indiana Jones can off a few Nazis while nicking ancient artefacts to a soundtrack of expensive orchestral flourishes, why can’t a treasure-crazed Daniel Radcliffe try to entomb a romance novelist and her beau in the stone ruins of a lost tribal city?

Ticket to Paradise (2022)

Type of movie: Romcom.

Does watching it make you dumber? No comment.

Name drop: Clooney, Roberts.

A happily divorced couple must travel to Bali to attend (or annihilate) the wedding of their daughter, who has gotten engaged to a local seaweed farmer she met weeks prior on holiday. These parents--George Clooney and Julia Roberts--arrive hot-headed and determined to do some kibosh-putting, but things get complicated. If they aren’t careful, they might start to question themselves: is their daughter making the same mistake they did, or was the mistake they made perhaps not even a--

Okay, the arc is predictable enough, and the script should be rushed to the hospital, but our lead cast bring more gravity than the movie really deserves and it becomes fun and halfway compelling as a result. Almost every line suffers from cuteness but in Clooney’s voice--that of astronauts and heist-organisers--they tinge with a mild irony that makes him intensely likeable (“Our daughter’s going to marry a guy she just met, in Bali. Millions of miles away from home.”) Roberts is pulling off something similar.

The Balinese in the film are inevitably portrayed as traditional to the stilted extreme, and cringe does occur--but it falls short of outright racism and if you’re watching under conditions of beer and extreme weekday fatigue (recommended) you might be too tired to care.

No Hard Feelings (2023)

Type of movie: Light-but-legit drama. It’s also very funny.

Mislaid quote: “I’ve had sex with a guy to get out of playing Settlers of Catan.”

Name drop: Lawrence, Broderick.

We inch closer to dramatic worth with No Hard Feelings, which--compared to the last two movies--presents some modest reflections on the world it portrays, although condensing the plot to one sentence is still a fun way to make it sound atrocious: a 30-something woman, faced with money problems, is hired by two rich two parents to date (and really boink) their shy 19-year-old son before he leaves for Princeton.

But the script imbues both woman and boy with credibly deployed personalities that, severally, reject the premise of this ploy, such that she (Jennifer Lawrence) regards it as something dull and he, upon catching wind, as something idiotic. Mercifully, then, the characters are too interesting to feel indignance, rage or (on his part) sexual excitement at the setup, and it becomes a mere relationship-enabling device (otherwise you wouldn’t have Lawrence crashing the dog shelter where her mark volunteers to hit boldly--and badly--on him) that matures into a tension bomb ready to blow when he finds out.

Without losing the ultimate feel of cinematic cuteness, the characters respectively cut away from the mainstream gender-based behaviours you would expect to emanate from such a plot--additionally, some class politics are digested in the background--all of which, together with Lawrence’s presence (the boy, played by Andrew Barth Feldman, does well too) keeps the film out of flickdom and firmly in weird-funny-drama world.