Proud citizens of Gotham, here it is, everything you’ve been waiting for. And two reviews!
Downton Abbey
Gathering, collating, and deep-mining our every online whim is big-dollar business. The smartest folks around are no longer plopping men on the moon or building nuclear bombs. Today, they’re coding new and exotic ways to monetize our impulses and whims — to figure out the secret truth of What We Actually Want.
And they’re flat out of luck when it comes to Downton Abbey, probably the easiest slam-dunk home-run of audience profiling in history. Anyone buying a ticket for this TV series refresher-cum-sendoff knows precisely what they want, and Julian Fellowes knows it too. So it’s no surprise that Downton Abbey hits familiar chord progressions of opulent sets, natty costumes, sensible chuckles, and warm-hearted wrap ups. It’s a recipe that works, and it’s more or less unchanged.
To good effect, honestly. I had wondered whether this big-screen outing — set several years after the show, so following the characters almost in real time — might put on a 2019-esque mantle and take aim at, well, much of anything: #metoo, nationalism, racism, or the lowest-hanging fruit, white privilege and the traditional service industry. It does not, and that’s probably a good thing. Downton Abbey always was an escapist confection, and to sprinkle the dust of Righteous Indignation would simply spoil our cheat day.
I was never a full-on devotee, but I did watch a season or two of the show what feels like a very long time ago. Armed with these unimpeachable bona fides, I conclude that fans of the show will love this movie. Whatever you liked about that, you’ll like about this. (If your memory of the series is as hazy as mine was, fear not: The movie opens with a shockingly thorough catch-up montage.)
Silver screen reboots of once-popular shows can be hit and miss. This one isn’t. You know what you like and so do they — so my relatively uncontroversial verdict is…
Haus Verdict: If you want to see this, then by George, you simply must see this!
Downton Abbey opens tomorrow, September 20.
Hustlers
Wow. Hustlers is a fantastic movie.
I confess I knew next to nothing about this going in, save that it was a J-Lo vehicle and had something to with strip clubs. But Maid in Manhattan this ain’t. Constance Wu, Jennifer Lopez, and a truly excellent supporting cast deliver a fantastic caper flick with dashes of Widows, Magic Mike, and The Big Short.
In brief: When exotic dancers are hit particularly hard by the 2008 financial crisis, they devise a not-so-legal way to shake down their unsympathetic Wall Street clientele for buckets of filthy lucre. A Robin Hood tale it isn’t — the main beneficiary of their newfound largesse appears to be Neiman Marcus — but it’s based on a true story and offers a surprisingly nuanced, emotionally resonant tale of friendship, makeshift family, and so on. It’s not schmaltzy, just honest. It follows the same basic arc as many other riches-through-transgression stories (think Blow, Lord of War, American Made, and countless others), but with an all-female cast, a surprisingly upbeat worldview, and plenty of glitter and glam to throw the grit into sharp relief. It’s well paced, well shot, and nicely lit. Constance Wu plays pretty much the polar opposite of her prim Rachel Chu of Crazy Rich Asians. Between this and the absolutely epic Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, it’s a great year for watch-till-you-drop movies. I would go on, but I’m too busy buying tickets to see this one again.
In short, your intrepid Haus must take a short hiatus from his professed life mission of keeping the girls off the pole and the boys off the pipe. This is a film about strippers, yes, but it’s also one of the best movies of the year.
Haus Verdict: Fabulous, and absolute standout and a must see. Make it rain (popcorn).
Hustlers is playing now; it opened last Friday, September 13.
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