The Friday High Five

On Multi-Dimensional Spiders, Basketball, and Masked Men

Buena Vista Pictures

Every Friday I share 5 things that brought me joy this week. Also, high fives are inherently cool, and I think we can all agree Friday is the bestest day. Hence the Friday High Five. 🙏🏻

This week’s unrequited high five comes from Air Bud, which I have never seen because it looks stupid.

The hardest thing about this weekly newsletter is finding a new high five to use as the header image and jumping off point. You wouldn’t think that would be the case. Apparently people don’t usually high five in movies. Who knew?

I’ve taken to googling ‘high five in movies’ and looking for anything remotely familiar or interesting. I may need to rethink the central conceit of this Friday thing.

Anyway, have a great weekend! High five!

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5 Things I Enjoyed This Week:

• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

• The Book of Basketball

• Ocean’s 11

• The Mask of Zorro

• Predator

You’ll perhaps notice a strong movie theme this week. My daughter was in Florida as part of a High School band trip to Orlando. She did not, for some inexplicable reason, want her dad to chaperone. I think she’s afraid of making her friends jealous. Not every dad beatboxes Vanilla Ice’s ‘Having a Roni’. (That’s an absolutely true story.)

Anyway. My son loves watching movies, so pretty much any time his sister is gone, he suggests movie night. Fine, twist my arm.

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Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Sony

The long overdue (thanks Covid) sequel to the incredible Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is just as colorful and vivacious as the original. It’s not quite as good, and it’s incomplete—spoiler warning, but it literally ends with ‘to be continued', which is just bad storytelling. The film also leans heavily into displays that border on psychedelic and detract from the story. But that’s just, like, my opinion, man.

Frankly, I was just relieved to see a good movie. We used to go to the movies at least once a month, pre-Covid. We’ve been maybe 4 times in the past year. It’s been a quantity issue—there wasn’t much I considered worth seeing in the theater—but also a quality one. I’m still a bit crushed at how awful Thor: Love and Thunder was, and how meh Doctor Strange 2 was.

I’m weird in that I don’t like doing traditional film reviews, which is sort of the default expectation for someone writing about pop culture. I’m a ponderer, or a slow thinker, if you wanna be crude. I’m the anti-hot take. My mode is generally to rewatch something a ton and see what surfaces. But here’s an abridged review: funny, heartwarming, mind-bending, incomplete. B+

If you want a more traditional, spoiler-free review, check out this one from talented cinephile Simon Dillon.

The Book of Basketball

I mentioned a couple weeks back that I picked up this Bill Simmons book at the library. It’s basically a 600-page ranking of NBA players, which sounds freaking boring. However, that’s not the case at all.

Simmons is probably the funniest sportswriter we’ve ever had. He blends sports and pop culture in a way that is amusing and eminently readable. He’s also rather verbose. One of the initial concepts I had for All the Fanfare was ‘if Bill Simmons wrote Wait But Why’ but I thought that might be trimming my desired demographic too close to the quick. The Venn Diagram of people who read Simmons’ Page 2 on ESPN and also frequent Wait But Why is probably hella small.

I picked up Simmons’ book primarily for research purposes, to see what lessons I could glean for my own exhaustive analysis of Point Break, the product of which will be a book of its own (though not 600 pages!). Imagine my surprise to discover the book is absolutely riveting. I can’t wait to read it every night, and don’t wanna put it down (who needs sleep?). Even as a fan of Simmons, I’m honestly shocked.

Ocean’s 11

I don’t know if this is the best heist movie, but it’s certainly the most entertaining one (with apologies to Fast Five). It gets so much mileage out of just letting us be voyeurs as George Clooney and Brad Pitt hang out in a casino. I’m not really convinced either of them are really acting in this movie. And like, I’m a straight dude and all, but why is Pitt eating food so watchable? Eating is kinda gross when you think about the mechanics. But Pitt makes it look so damn cool, which means he’s either one of the greatest actors of his generation or one of the raddest.

The Mask of Zorro

Sony Pictures

We were discussing watching the newish X-Men films, starting with First Class, which my son had yet to see. But then he said a funny thing: “I don’t really want to watch a superhero movie.” I’ve previously written about how I am over the genre, but when a teenage boy who reads comics and owns action figures and plays videogames—e.g. THE demographic for this stuff—says he’s out, you’ve definitely overstayed your welcome.

Which is how we ended up watching this 90s gem. It actually reminds me a lot of the first Pirates of the Caribbean—a fun and funny swashbuckling adventure with flintlock pistols and heaving bosoms. Also, Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones in their prime are ridiculously beautiful. It’s one of those things you know, but sort of forget until you rewatch something like this.

Predator

I’m in the midst of a thorough rewatch of Predator for my next big column. Thorough means pausing ever 2-3 minutes to jot down interesting thoughts or observations, based on what’s occurring on screen. The main theory I’m grappling with right now: is Predator a good bad movie? It’s iconic, and all that, but when you peal away the nostalgia and look past the bursting biceps, some of it is, dare I say, stupid.

We need go no further than the main character. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays Dutch, an American special ops soldier. Let me reframe that: we have an Austrian—with a notable accent!—playing an American named Dutch. He’s a Major, but somehow can decide which missions his team does and does not take. I’ve never been in the military but I’m pretty sure the chain of command is not optional. Dutch leads a rescue team and clarifies several times that they are not killers. Meanwhile, Jesse “The Body” Ventura carries around a Gatling gun.

Stupid or not, I love this movie.

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