9-11-26 - Movie critic Jake Dietz on Uprising, Practical Magic 2, and more!

0:00be a new team now joining us in studio our favorite Friday guest every single Friday at eight twenty a.m. It is our resident movie critic Jake Deets, Jake glad to have you back. How are we doing? Well, doing well. Last week was the start of college football this week. It's NFL football. So I'm excited. My chiefs play on Monday night. So I'm excited to see him beat the Broncos. Maybe hopefully. Hey, we are the home of the Denver Broncos here. I know. So you watch out. I know. I know. I hear the ads as I'm listening and I think, dang it. It's all right. But I'm wearing my chief shirt. There we go. It looks nice. Yeah. It's even got barbecue sauce bottles on there. I'm not going to lie. You and Andy Reed rocking the same shirt. Well, you know, I like if I could emulate any coach, Andy Reed's not a bad one to choose. I agree. If I get a mustache like his, got to grow that thing out. Yeah. I can't. I've tried. I'd love to see it. Yeah. Well, I would too.

1:02Some of these movies coming up this weekend. Yeah. Interesting. I'm curious to see what you think about a couple of these. Do you want to start with the uprising or do you want to start with practical magic, too? Which one? We can start with the uprising. Let's do it. Yeah. So the uprising is a historical movie. It is an epic telling of the story of the peasants revolt or the peasants uprising of 1381 in England, which I'm sure you're all familiar with. Everybody remembers that. Very familiar. Yeah. Yeah. It's taught a lot in English schools, actually, but not one that I think we're super familiar with here. But this is basically one of the first times that it was an organized rebellion and effort by peasants to go against the crown and against the government in England. And they were basically looking to abolish Serfdom, which was a form of slavery at the time. Basically, they were tied to the land and tied the Lord of the land. And they were tax heavily on

2:07the earnings that they made. And you know, times were rough in 1381. This is like 20 years or 10 years or something like right after the plague. So half the population has been wiped out. And they basically end up getting to London, petitioning the king to get all of this. And this is the story of how that happens. And it's interesting. The directors created a fictional character named Plowman. He just goes by the name of what he does. And that's Andrew Garfield's character. And they wanted to do that because the real leaders of the revolt are in the movie. And that's what Tyler and John Bull. And they were the two that actually kind of led this action in London. And they didn't want to tell it from the point of you of the two leaders. They wanted it to be a common man, just someone that was there and witnessed it. Which I think was an interesting choice. And I think it works well. Andrew Garfield

3:13is great in this role as Plowman. And I, this is the first time that this story has been dramatized and put on the big screen. And I thought they did a really, really great job. 90, this is 95% a really great historical epic. And it's worth seeing because it's a story that we're not familiar with here on this side of the pond. But it is a story worth knowing. It is one of those stories that, you know, if this doesn't happen in 1381, we don't get to the Revolutionary War in 1776. This is one of those things that lead to that. This idea that we have these kinds of rights. So interesting. So specifically, is this a little bit of a slower movie? Is there a lot of action in this one? Where, where do we land in terms of like how engaged it keeps you? Yeah. So this is where I struggled a little bit with the movie is the pacing. Okay. It has moments

4:18where it is just go, go, go. As the movie starts, they get right into the action, which I appreciated drew me right in. But then it gets really slow and it drags when it gets slow. And all of the momentum that you get from all of the action scenes that are happening just stops dead in its tracks. And it's hard for it to get going again when the action picks up again. So it's just really an even pacing. And the thing is when you're watching a movie that's got a lot of action, you've got to have moments where you can stop and breathe for a second and pause. It just felt like they didn't just stop and pause for a minute. They like put on the brakes, put it in park, put the like awning out in your camper and like camped for a couple minutes. And as a result, the movie, it's like two hours and 10 minutes, two hours, eight minutes long. And it could have been about a half hour shorter and it would have been fine. So we're talking like breaking bads when Skylar is pregnant

5:22just type of slow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What do you like for that over there? That's like that's a good comparison. It's not bad. It was just, I just wasn't expecting that one. Look, I've got limited knowledge that I can pull from and I'll always go back on what I know. Yeah. Storytelling is the same across all genres. See? So it works. See? I point exactly. Overall, grade. What did you think about the movie? So this movie would have been an A except the pacing was a little bit off. Okay. And also they forced a tie in with Robinhood. And that really bothered me. In the marketing, they said, they said, this is the rise of the legend of Robinhood. And at the end, they put this little scene that really hints at it being Robinhood. And if they had left that out, I would have been fine with it. This happens 200 years after the first stories of Robinhood start coming out. This has nothing to do with Robinhood. This is a real event. Robinhood is a fictional folk hero. Everything about Robinhood is fiction

6:27and not real. This is a real thing that is important that we need to know is real. Don't tie it to the fictional mythological Robinhood. If they had left that out of the marketing and out of the movie at all, this probably would have been an A if they tightened up the pacing as well, but I gave it a B. Okay. All right. It's not bad. No, it's not bad. And Andrew Barfield is fantastic in this. And we need him in more movies. So let's move on to the practical magic too. And your review on that then. This was an interesting movie. I am not familiar with practical magic. I mean, I'm familiar with magic, but not practical magic, you know, literally. Literally. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I do a lot of magic on the side. It's not real practical. No, it's magic that you couldn't use in everyday life. It's just like, why would you need to know how to do that? Right. A magic. So, uh, good. That's not bad. Yeah. Like, caretops. No, no, no, no. No, no. I don't want to be like, caretops. We don't have time to even

7:31go into that. Yeah. No, no. That's not magic at all. You've got a flight to catch. I can't talk about why I don't want to be caretop. Uh, but no, this was a fun movie. Uh, it is, it is a weird mix of lots of different genres because you do have kind of the fantasy aspect they are witches. They do magic and they do like real magic in it. And they're also like, this is one of those buddy movies where like, they're sisters and their family and they've always got each other's backs and they go through heartache and heartbreak. The synopsis or the main part of the story is these sisters, the Owen sisters and the Owen's women, if they fall in love with someone, that person is then cursed and will die. So they try to avoid falling in love. And Sally, who's played by Sandra Bullock, she has two daughters and has two husbands who

8:36have both died. So she did not do well in the not falling in love department. And she has decided to keep it secret from her daughters that they are witches. And in the story, they find out that they're witches because one of them falls in love with a guy who's like the perfect guy apparently. Like he is too perfect. I would say like if he had been in the movie more instead of going into a coma within like the first half hour, you would think there was something like something devious going on. He's that perfect. Yeah, that's some red flags. Yeah, yeah. Like I'd be concerned if he's dating my daughter like, I'm about, he's the Ick. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, but he gets, you know, he gets hit by a car, gets in a coma. And that's when the two daughters find out that they're witches and they have this curse and they have to find a way to try to break the curse. So it's one part, this kind of fantasy drama, one part kind of family comedy. So it's

9:43a lot of different things, but it works well. Nicole Kidman does okay. Sandra Bullock is really the heart of the movie. I think she is one of the greatest physical comedians that we have that very underrated. She's very good at playing that awkward character that is always bumping into things, tripping over things. And there's a lot of that in this. And she just does that role really well. But it's good. It's a movie that has a lot of heart. The dialogue at times, I felt like these are seasoned veteran actresses. You've got Diane Weist. You've got soccer Channing, Nicole Kidman, Sandra Bullock, and they are being fed lines that sound like they came from the Disney channels Wizards of Waverly Place. And like I was going to go there on this one. I was going to kind of make the comparison and I'm glad you brought that up. Yeah. And it sounded like that quality. And I just felt like they deserve better than that. So I had issues with some of the dialogue. And

10:45the story is kind of winding and kind of meandering. It doesn't really make a lot of sense at times. It eventually gets where it's going. But I think even the story was surprised when it got to the point of the story. This is another one that was over two hours long that really should have been about 90 minutes. We need to start making it cool to end the movie at the climax of the movie. And then have a short end after that. You know, like I think back to Goonies. Like when they get rescued from the pirate ship and the whole battle thing is over. That's like the end of the movie. That's where we need to end movies today. You know what? I think it was the Batman movie where he's riding away on the bike. Uh huh. That was with the Nirvana playing as it goes away. I can't remember which one that that was the Batman. The Batman. Okay. That one ruined it for everybody. I think that's really for my memory is where it started and it made it kind of cool to make this long ending to a movie. And since then we've we've lost the plot. I

11:51I would say it probably happened. That's a good example. I think it happened with Return of the King. And I love the Lord of the Rings movies. They are my favorite movies. But the Return of the King had about 10 different endings where it faded to black. And then it came up and they had another thing happening that it faded to black. Yeah. But we've got to make it cool again to just end the movie where it needs to end. And this one felt like it dragged on a little bit. But it's fun. It's cheesy. I gave it a C plus. Okay. Fans of this movie will love it. I can tell you at the movie theater. I talked to the guy at the concession stand. His name was Buford not really but he was telling me that everybody was there to see practical magic too. And nobody was there to see the uprising. In fact, when I mentioned the uprising, he said, what? So that's going to be the big one this weekend is practical magic too. And there's a lot of fans of the original that came out like 30 years ago. So all right. There you have it. He is Jake Deets our resident movie

12:53critic Jake before we let you go. Remind everybody where they can find all of your critiques, all of your stuff that you put out. Jake Deets.com is where you can find all of my written stuff. And then movies that make us as our podcast with Tracy and Val. And then at Real Jake Deets is where I'm at on social media. Always appreciate you jumping in here with us. Enjoy your weekend. Okay. You too. Thank you.