Season 37 is officially underway, and I’ll say this much: I’m already more encouraged than I was at this point last season. We’ve got a gigantic family blockbuster carrying the box office, an actual grown-up thriller that respects its audience, and only one film that left me wondering whether the filmmakers ever figured out what movie they were making. Here's The Roundup....
DEADLINE
Thank God for grown-up movies. Seriously. Deadline is exactly the kind of film LRF doesn’t make often enough: smart adults in rooms talking about consequential things, with actual tension coming from information, deadlines, competing interests, and whether anyone can prove what they think they know. Tony Gilroy was obviously a natural fit for this material, and the ensemble is loaded with actors who can make dialogue feel like action. George Clooney, Rebecca Hall, Mark Duplass, John Goodman, Stephen Root — this is a cast built for a movie where people actually have to hold the screen without explosions happening behind them.
And apparently LRF can make political thrillers after all. The studio hasn’t spent much time in this genre, but Deadline makes a pretty convincing argument that maybe it should. You don’t need superheroes or serial killers to create suspense. Sometimes you just need smart people chasing a dangerous story.
POKÉMON
I’m going to admit something immediately: I don’t know Pokémon. I know Pikachu. I know there are approximately eleven billion other creatures. Beyond that, you’re asking the wrong guy. And maybe that actually makes me a useful test audience. Because I enjoyed this movie. Pokémon managed to build a strange, colorful world filled with creatures and terminology I had almost no familiarity with without ever making me feel completely lost. More importantly, it actually felt like a genuine family movie — something kids can get excited about without making every adult in the theater stare desperately at the exit.
There’s adventure, humor, spectacle, and enough personality in the Pokémon themselves that you understand pretty quickly why this franchise has lasted for decades. I still couldn’t name half the things I just watched. But I had fun watching them. That counts.
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BOX OFFICE
Well, Season 37 certainly didn’t ease into things financially. Let’s be clear: this is mostly the Pokémon show. That movie did the overwhelming majority of the heavy lifting, but when one film makes that much money, nobody in accounting is going to complain about how the workload was distributed.
After spending most of Season 36 watching major successes repeatedly get undermined by expensive bombs, it’s refreshing to see the studio open a season with this much breathing room. Deadline chipped in a profit as well, which certainly helps. But Pokémon basically walked into Round 1, dumped a truckload of money onto LRF’s doorstep, and said, “You’re welcome.” There are worse ways to begin a season.
THE PASSAGEWAY
I’m not entirely sure The Passageway knew what The Passageway was. Horror? Mystery? Thriller? Apparently the answer was “all three,” except it never committed strongly enough to any of them for the combination to become interesting. That’s the problem.
There’s nothing wrong with blending genres — some of the best movies ever made do exactly that. But each element still has to contribute something. Here, the horror wasn’t particularly frightening, the mystery never became especially compelling, and the thriller elements struggled because I wasn’t terribly invested in discovering what happened next. Then you get to the actual story, which somehow feels simultaneously complicated and underwritten. That's an impressive trick. Mostly, I spent the movie waiting for everything to finally click into place. It never did.
Great poster, though.
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RAMI MALEK
I’ve tried. I really have. I just don’t see Rami Malek as a leading man. Obviously, Bohemian Rhapsody was enormous, and Malek won every award imaginable playing Freddie Mercury. Nobody can take that away from him. But at some point, I think we have to separate “starred in a massively successful movie” from “is a movie star.” Those aren't necessarily the same thing.
Malek has an unusual screen presence, which can absolutely work in the right supporting role or with a particularly strange character. What I don’t see is the kind of natural charisma that makes me want to follow him through an entire movie simply because he’s the guy at the center of it. The Passageway needed somebody capable of pulling the audience through a confusing story. Malek never did that for me. Maybe Bohemian Rhapsody was the perfect storm: famous music, famous subject, huge built-in audience, and a transformative performance. Because outside of Freddie Mercury? I remain unconvinced.
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I hate to admit this, but.... I don't have enough to complain about. What the hell am I supposed to do with that? This was a pretty solid opening round. Pokémon was a massive hit. Deadline was good. Even the one movie I didn't particularly like, The Passageway, at least gave me a terrific poster to look at.
Usually by the end of Round 1 I've got a list of grievances long enough to fill this column twice. That's not the case so far. That's obviously great news for LRF. It's slightly more concerning for my continued employment.
