Monday Media Musings - 9/30/19

Late Night: Not perfect, but delightful in many respects. I'll watch Emma Thompson in pretty much anything, and she did not disappoint at all. Mindy Kaling is clearly drawing on her own experiences with being the only woman and/or person of color in the room, and both the script and her performance pulled out many incisive moments. She and Emma Thompson also had excellent chemistry, and that alone could have carried the movie, but they didn't depend on that -- I liked most of the other performances, too, especially Reid Scott as the dudebro who wanted Mindy's job to go his younger brother, and then their relationship grows into one of respect, mostly due to his own personal growth. I felt like neither Mindy's character nor Emma's was forced to gently shepherd him along; instead, he figured it out by himself. I agree with most reviewers that the third act twist was neither necessary nor helpful, but in general I would recommend this one for sure.

Ad Astra: How can a movie about a daring space rescue be this boring? Normally I'm fine with Brad Pitt as an actor, but he gets nothing to work with here: a lifeless script, the science is ridiculous, he makes some decisions that no reasonable human could possibly understand, there's almost no one interesting to play off of, and there are too many closeups where he just sits there and emotes. No intentional humor, the action scenes are more ridiculous than gripping, and not even the tremendous visuals can save it. I even liked Interstellar better than this, and you don't want to get me started on all the problems I have with that. It baffles me that it's gotten such high critical praise.

Arrowverse: I'm a little more than halfway through the most recent seasons of Arrow and The Flash, and now that I'm past the crossover I think I'll stop watching Legends and Supergirl since I've only got about a week left to catch up. ( Spoilers for both shows. )