Winter movie doldrums strike in 2024
Movies studios don’t generally save their best for January. Holiday holdovers and horror movies tend to dominate winter box office instead. Most everything else qualifies as “movies with no chance of succeeding in warmer months.”
Last year’s lengthy strikes in Hollywood seems to have created a new problem in early 2024: Fewer movies of any type to populate theaters (at least until the action-comedy “Argylle” opened this weekend). Aside from “Mean Girls,” Oscar contenders and something about a “Night Swim,” it’s been slim pickings at the multiplex. You know it’s bad when folks on social media seem more excited about the Peacock streaming premiere of 8-month-old “Oppenheimer” than the theatrical release of a Spider-Man-adjacent property (poor “Madame Web”).
Two of the season’s higher-profile movies landed on streaming rather than theaters. Neither are particularly good (one is terrible), but they might have drawn more attendance than the sixth week of “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.”
The terrible movie is “Lift,” an expensive heist thriller that stars Kevin Hart leading a team of eccentric thieves in a mid-air gold heist aboard a passenger jet. Directed by F. Gary Gray (“Straight Outta Compton,” “The Italian Job”), the movie is the latest and most forgettable attempt by Netflix to materialize a blockbuster franchise. All the supporting characters (some played by good actors like Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Vincent D’Onofrio) are reduced to single dimensions, and Hart barely seems bothered to open his eyes for the feature, let alone exude any hint of movie star charisma.
Airborne fist fights make up most of the movie’s second half, at a point where some “Ocean’s 11”-style twists would have satisfied better. Despite a reported $100 million budget, most of the special effects involving the plane barely clear the dated-low bar of that ending crash sequence in 1997’s “Air Force One.”
“Lift” has already taken its place next to “Red Notice,” “Heart of Stone” and “The Gray Man” in the Hall of Mediocrity Nobody Remembers. Still, there was a cold January afternoon a couple weeks ago when “Lift” might have provided some theatrical respite (assuming the manager remembered to turn on the heat in the auditorium).
The other higher-profile title, Hulu’s “Self-Reliance,” is a much-better (though still uneven) comedy that would have done solid business had it been given a chance in theaters (it did play in theaters for one-night-only in select markets). Written and directed by its star Jake Johnson (“New Girl”), “Self-Reliance” follows a depressed middle-aged dude named Tommy who stumbles into an opportunity to win $1 million from a dark web game show. The premise: Survive for 30 days while hunters attempt to kill him. The loophole: The hunters can only attack when he’s alone.
Thinking it’ll be easy to recruit his friends and family into hanging around him 24/7, Tommy suddenly realizes that nobody believes him. To survive, Tommy first hires a homeless man to shadow him (character actor Biff Wiff, an icon at his point for his work in the Netflix sketch series, “I Think You Should Leave).” He also eventually meets another person taking on the challenge (Anna Kendrick), though there’s reason not to completely trust her. Most notably, Tommy receives warnings about her from the show’s “contortionist, ninja” production crew. Yes, “Self-Reliance" is weird.
Johnson, as director, strings a few tense chase sequences in-between the broad humor. The movie works best when Johnson is riffing with Kendrick and Wiff, though both supporting roles lack depth. Kendrick’s character disappears for a long stretch just when “Self-Reliance” begins to find narrative momentum. Even Tommy’s motivation to play the game lacks a compelling thread.
“Self-Reliance” ultimately needs a bit more substance than simply being a comedic “Most Dangerous Game.” Still, with a likeable cast and a few occasional laughs, it’s just the kind of January diversion movie theaters need. At least it’d be better than multiple screens of “Night Swim.”
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Tyler Wilson can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com.