Platonic brings rom-com fun to Apple TV+, and my 13 favorite Seth Rogen movies

Platonic continues Apple TV+’s recent attempt to seemingly restart the long festering genre of rom-com TV.

I have little evidence to back that up other than the exceptional recent season 1 of Shrinking. But Platonic’s opening season has recently wrapped and it’s almost as good.

Created by Francesca Delbanco and Nicholas Stoller (who has worked on an excellent string of productions that include Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Get Him to the Greek, Neighbors, and The Muppets), the show is about former best friends played by the hard-not-to-love pair Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne, who reconnect in mid life. They aren’t particularly good for each other, as each episode brings new high jinx that don’t exactly help their progression into mature adulthood.

Rogen is what drew me to Platonic, but I really like Byrne too. 

4 out of 5 stars

On a tangent, here’s my 13 favorite Seth Rogen movies:

13. This is the End (2013)

12. The Interview (2014)

11. Pineapple Express (2008)

10. Funny People (2009)

09. You, Me, and Dupree (2006)

08. Sausage Party (2016)

07. Neighbors (2014)

06. Superbad (2007)

05. Step Brothers (2008)

04. Knocked Up (2007)

03. The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005)

02. Donnie Darko (2001)

01. Anchorman (2004)

Pretty impressive resume!

Catching Up With a Slew of HBO Movie Releases

Probably the reason my blog has been on a bit of a sabbatical lately is because I now have HBO for the first time in my life. I've been catching up on movies, including:

Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck: The former Nirvana leader's life is told for the first time with the blessing of his family. Having access to the notebooks and audio and video recordings contained within supply a portrait that further humanizes Kurt and makes us more fully understand the hurt within his chronically pained stomach and from the betrayals he felt from family members and Courtney Love throughout his life. The animated cuts from his notebooks and from Charlotte's Web-like cartoon vignettes are powerful. An essential rock doc.
***** out of ***** stars

We're the Millers and The Interview: Two totally dumb comedies that shouldn't work but somehow do, quite enjoyably.
Both *** out of ***** stars


Nightcrawler: I really liked this creepy L.A. noir starring a scrawny Jake Gyllenhaal as a nowhere man who gets the sudden idea to become a paparazzi. His jerky ways cause all kinds of unnecessary pain.
****1/2 out of ***** stars

Birdman: Not nearly as good as Boyhood (which should have won bets picture instead of this), but still a tale of an actor once known for playing a superhero (the always-great Michael Keaton) who is losing his mind in a bit of a pretentious take on the power and aura of celebrity. Good in a way that it will probably be worth revisiting as a potential classic a few years after its release, ala films like Fight Club or The Big Lebowski.
**** out of ***** stars

Neighbors: Not as good as the other Seth Rogen comedy on this list, but still pretty funny as a latter day Animal House knockoff.
*** out of ***** stars

A Million Ways to Die in the West: This modern-day take on Blazing Saddles tries a little too hard for laughs. While its silliness works a lot of the time, it's vulgarity actually makes it a little less endearing. Charlize Theron is likable but Seth MacFarlane is a very poor man's Billy Crystal, or perhaps Donnie Osmond. By the time the big gunfight scene arrives at the end, it's tough to have much invested, especially during Neil Patrick Harris' poop scene.
*1/2 out of ***** stars

Danny McBride Saves the World in This Is the End

It's been a while since I've watched Danny McBride's HBO masterpiece Eastbound and Down, so the new film, This Is the End, turned out to be a real treat for me.

McBride steals the show in a show with lots of comic actors who could have done so. Seth Rogen, James Franco, Craig Robinson, Jonah Hill, and Jay Baruchel each have their moments, even if they have less-consistent barrages of funny lines than McBride.

Nobody is as funny as him, the uninvited outcast of a party being held at the real Franco's house when, all of a sudden, the world ends for most of the people on the planet. That is, except for these boneheads, who take self-deprecation and celebrity egocentricity to a new level.

Many of these actors were in the very-good Pineapple Express, and This Is the End turns out to be a bit of a sequel, with several inside jokes and a storyline based on that movie about Rogen and Franco on a wild drug trip.

The wacky, world-ending premise surprisingly doesn't take anything away from the movie, which is satisfying, often hilarious (most often thanks to McBride), and even probably a bit better than Pineapple Express.

A nice little summer 2013 surprise.

***1/2 out of ***** stars

Joseph Gordon-Levitt Fills Up My Time With a Mixed Bag of Movie Moments

Somehow the last two movies I've seen have been vehicles for former 3rd Rock From the Sun child star Joseph Gordon-Levitt -- 2010's Hesher and 2011's 50/50.

Everything about 50/50 should make it no better than a Lifetime movie about living with cancer. Gordon-Levitt plays a young worker at NPR who pals around with Seth Rogen and has a jerky girlfriend. When he discovers he has the disease, he is befriended by some fellow patients at the hospital. The performances  rise far above a TV melodrama, and make the movie at least worth watching.

Hesher is just weird. And slow. And pretty offensive. I guess the filmmakers were trying to show that loss can be a devastating thing. The ending (along with the middle and end) are just really ridiculous, meandering, heavy, and none of the sad-sack characters are too worthy of sympathy. Gordon-Levitt plays some sort of troubled but prophet-like Metallica-type longhair. We never really find out much about why he is the way he is. I can't think of a good reason that Natalie Portman (who co-produced it) and Rainn Wilson got involved.

It seems, at least with 50/50, that Gordon-Levitt has gotten back on track after the Hesher misstep. He was putting together a halfway decent little run before that, with Inception and (500) Days of Summer.

50/50
*** out of ***** stars

Hesher
* out of ***** stars