Welcome! If you came here from my Substack newsletter, here’s the full post for my four favorite first-time movie watches for this month. And if you’re just here because you read this website, please consider subscribing to Jacob’s Letter, my free Substack newsletter.
“Air”
The current trend of “capitalism biopics” — think “Flamin’ Hot,” “Tetris,” “BlackBerry,” “The Beanie Bubble” — is intriguing. They’re different from movies about products like “Barbie” or “The Super Mario Bros. Movie.” They tend to focus on the people who invented said products, yet the movies still exist as advertisements.
In the case of “Air,” about the Nike executives who closed Michael Jordan’s first Nike deal in the 1990s, the film’s openly capitalistic streak only enhances the experience. We know we’re being sold a shoe. Director Ben Affleck knows he’s selling you a shoe.
“Air” could have been a commercial with a higher pedigree. The movie is financed by Amazon, for crying out loud. But it’s made with such care for the characters and a clear love for basketball that it doesn’t matter.
Affleck steals every scene he’s in as Phil Knight. Matt Damon delivers a scorching third-act, three-pointer of a monologue as Sonny Vaccaro. Jason Bateman has a great scene talking about Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” And Viola Davis may well secure a Best Actress nom for her turn as Deloris Jackson.
But the film’s greatest strength? Getting an unknown actor to play MJ and never showing him except in highlight footage. Because “Air” knows it’s not about MJ; it’s about the shoe that makes people like me think they can play like MJ.
Available to stream on Amazon Prime.
“Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves”
Adventure is back at the movie theater!
I have only ever played one game of Dungeons & Dragons, but it was a lot of fun. I was a part of a crew of adventurers who were tasked with going out in the wild and finding cows to milk for milkshakes, only for that action to bring all the boys to the yard soldiers to our location that we had to fight off by any means necessary. (Shoutout to our dungeon master J-Rod for coming up with that one.)
The new “Dungeons & Dragons” movie, starring Chris Pine, taps into that zany, “What if I tried this?” attitude that D&D tabletop gamers have played with for decades. What’s more, it’s a fun, humorous movie that takes its world seriously above all else — there are no ironic sarcastic quips every time something happens. “D&D” believes in its world, so we can, too.
Available to buy on video on demand or physical media.
“Jason Isbell: Running With Our Eyes Closed”/”Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off”
Yes, this is a twofer. My newsletter, my rules. But I think these two documentaries are in conversation with each other. Both are from the same director, and both are, in a way, about what happens when you work hard to create a legacy with your art, but that legacy comes at the expense of your relationships with the ones you love.
“Reunions” was released in the spring of 2020, right after shelter-in-place ordinances went into effect in Dallas. That album from Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit got me through the early days of the pandemic. I remember shutting my work laptop after my shift was over at midnight and then walking over to my record player, plugging my headphones into the speakers so I wouldn’t wake Taylor up, and just playing that album from front to back before going to bed.
It’s an album about confronting the problems of life head-on (“Be afraid, be very afraid, but do it anyway,” one song goes) and about the realities of relationships. “Running With Our Eyes Closed” is a documentary directed by Sam Jones about the making of that album. It starts off as a making-of-doc and quickly becomes one of the rawest, most intimate portraits of a marriage I’ve ever seen put on screen.
Isbell and his wife, Amanda Shires, have been making music together for about a decade. That creative relationship takes center stage at the beginning when Jones films a songwriting session between the two of them and a fight over the proper usage of a preposition gets testy. Over the course of the making of the album, there will be several such moments, none of which Isbell or Shires shies away from showing.
Once the pandemic hits, the documentary becomes about how the two of them are promoting the album while in lockdown, sitting at home confronted with themselves.
It takes on a new shape of grace and acceptance of these two people who need art and need each other. It’s a beautiful documentary (with great music as well).
“Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off,” also directed by Jones, is less intense, but just as illuminating. If you’re like me and followed Hawk’s career obsessively in the ‘90s and ‘00s and never stopped playing THPS, there won’t be much new here about Hawk’s career.
What is new is the information about Hawk’s family dynamics growing up and how that affected his relationships as he got older. His skating and pursuit of excellence almost wiped out his personal life.
As another skater says in the film about how Hawk still pushes himself today:
“Can you imagine watching your dad tumble down a ramp at 56? Like, we’re grandparents. We’re grandparents falling from the sky.”
Both are available to stream on Max (but maybe not for long before David Zaslav removes more content from the site, so watch while you can).
“The Super Mario Bros. Movie”
“The Super Mario Bros. Movie” is some of the most fun I’ve had in the theater so far this year. Does it exist to sell video games? Yes. Is Chris Pratt’s Mario voice uninspired and the worst thing about this movie? Also yes.
But is this a tight 90 minutes, full of funny villain moments from Jack Black as Bowser, with a plot about the importance of brotherhood that made me call my own brother the next day? Yes, yes and ya-hooo!
Available to stream on Peacock or buy on VOD or physical media.
Jake Harris 