BLOGTOWN

Annapurna Pictures

The love-you-to-death friendship between Molly and Amy is the heart of director Olivia Wilde and writers Susanna Fogel, Emily Halpern, Sarah Haskins, and Katie Silberman's movie, and major credit is due to Dever and Feldstein for crushing that chemistry. They’re lifted up by a brilliant supporting cast of fellow teen misfits (including Billie Lourd, who steals every scene she barreled through) and fuckup grownups (Jason Sudeikis, Jessica Williams, and Mike O’Brien) who round out a laugh-inducing, cry-inducing, and utterly relatable high-school universe that I both wanted to inhabit and also gave me PTSD.

I had a hard time writing this review, because it stirred up so many Big Teen Feelings—and then somebody walked by my desk wearing the same deodorant my high school boyfriend wore, and I fully reverted into my teen self and had to take a break to listen to the Getup Kids for a solid 20 minutes before attempting to resume my 2019, 36-year-old existence. But I can’t. This movie really got in there. I never want to go back to high school, but I sure wish I'd been able to watch Booksmart in high school.

The author's EXCELLENT rendering of what Cinetopia's Progress Ridge 14 theater might look like under AMC ownership. Google Maps/AMC

Earlier this week, we reported on the closure of all three Portland-area Cinetopia theaters. (A fourth Cinetopia, located in Kansas City, has also closed.) The report summarizes the legal disputes between Cinetopia and the gargantuan AMC Theatres chain. AMC is currently the biggest movie exhibitor in the country, with more than 650 theaters in the US, but until now it has not had a presence in the Portland area, whose movie screens are dominated by AMC's closest competitors, the Regal Entertainment Group Cinemark Theatres.

Disney

Disney's live-action remake of 1992’s Aladdin is a loud, obnoxious concoction of demographic targeting, corporation-backed nostalgia pandering, and ugly CGI. It has all the urgency of a (very expensive) piece of community theater and all the artistry of a quarterly earnings report. It’s entirely devoid of personality, which is kind of impressive, considering Guy Ritchie directed it (his presence is entirely undetectable except for a few weird Sherlock Holmes-esque action sequences). And it features a big blue Will Smith as a big blue rapping genie.

Yet this ungainly, garish thing is not as detestable as these ingredients would lead you to believe. Mind you, it’s not good—lord, it is not that—but this Aladdin is like a messy, smelly dog that belongs to somebody you don’t like very much. You’re not overjoyed when it jumps up and slobbers on your face or sheds on your couch, and its witless barking is truly deafening (sweet Christ, this movie is so loud). But you’re not going to hold any of that against the dog. It’s a dog. It just wants to be loved.