Mid July Movie Reviews (Blood & Gold, Asteroid City, The Patriot)

As we pass the middle of the month, let’s take a look back at three movies I’ve watched recently – one that was a little better than expected, one a little worse, and one that’s exactly the type of movie you’d want to watch when celebrating America’s birthday. 

Blood & Gold (2023)

Netflix, 100 minutes

Blood & Gold is the second movie I’ve seen over the past couple of months that centers around Nazis trying to get gold, after watching Sisu in early June. This is probably the more enjoyable of the two films, albeit only slightly. While Sisu has more of a grindhouse-violent action feel, Blood & Gold adopts a more 2020s-violent action movie style. It works mostly well, and is an entertaining hour and forty minutes of carnage, which is about the most you could expect from a movie titled Blood & Gold that’s free to stream if you have a Netflix account.

I’ve seen some reviewers compare Blood & Gold to Quinten Tarantino’s masterpiece, Inglorious Basterds, and while both involve Nazis, I don’t really think the two films are really similar beyond that point. Sure, there are a lot of characters in Blood & Gold (a staple of many a Tarantino movie), but while Inglorious Basterds is fantastically written and acted, Blood & Gold is more concerned with just having a good (and bloody) time.

As far as depth or achieving great quality in any area (direction, script, acting, etc.) goes, Blood & Gold doesn’t really succeed. Much of the film falls into the category of “fine,” though it is still largely enjoyable and never boring. If you’re looking for a violent action flick to occupy some time, you could do a lot worse than this one. Just don’t expect too much.

Grade: 7/10

Asteroid City (2023)

Focus Features, 105 minutes

Wes Anderson movies have always been hit or miss for me. I’ve really enjoyed some of his films (like The Grand Budapest Hotel), but others I haven’t connected with at all (like The French Dispatch). Sadly, Asteroid City falls largely into the second category, and is mostly another swing and a miss from Anderson.

Asteroid City is what happens when a writer-director-producer has too much success and isn’t really checked or challenged when it comes to the film he or she is creating. It’s the same thing that I felt happened with Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, another mess of a movie where I felt like if someone had told the person at the helm “no” or challenged them at all, the result could’ve been a better motion picture.

Asteroid City feels a lot like Anderson had a lot of little ideas for skits or characters, and then sort of tied them together with an overarching plot about an alien landing in a desert town where a group of quirky kids are receiving awards for silly inventions. Except the film is not really just about that since it’s also about a play, called “Asteroid City,” that is being produced with the characters we see in the movie actually being actors who are acting in the play. Don’t worry if that’s confusing, the important part is that it’s all very quirky (and most of it doesn’t work). What we’re left with is a grand total of zero actually interesting characters, none of whom we care about too much.

There are still some cute moments in Asteroid City, and I chuckled a few times, but as a whole the movie, which is extremely pretentious feeling, doesn’t work. Die-hard Wes Anderson fans will likely still appreciate Asteroid City, as will those who are simply happy at watching a different type of film. As for me, someone who usually likes Anderson’s unique aesthetic, I just hope that his next movie is better.

Grade: 4/10

The Patriot (2000)

Columbia Pictures, 165 minutes

I’m not sure there’s a better way to celebrate July 4th than watching The Patriot, an epic historical war film starring Mel Gibson. I hadn’t seen The Patriot in probably a decade, but it was better than I expected, and it holds up far better than you might expect it to if you also haven’t seen it in years.

Storywise, we follow the fictional hero, Benjamin Martin (who apparently was based a little bit on four different men). Martin, played by Gibson, is reluctant to fight with the colonists against the British, but is drawn into the war when one of his sons is murdered by a sadistic British officer. The movie is basically everything you could want in an late 90s/early 2000s epic about the Revolutionary War that stars Mel Gibson. They really don’t make these types of film mainly these days – it seems like now most of the action movies we get are superhero movies, or at the very least, part of some sort of franchise.

Gibson is at the top of his game in The Patriot, and he really did excel in these types of roles. Heath Ledger co-stars as one of Gibson’s sons, and he’s solid in the movie. I think he became a better actor in some of his later roles, but he still decent here, even if he can’t quite compete with the action hero charisma of Gibson.

The movie is, of course, a little cheesy at parts, but that comes with the territory. It’s also too long. A tighter version of The Patriot at around two hours in length would really be great. Still, this is an entertaining blockbuster, and one that I’ll likely revisit in a couple of years on another Fourth of July.

Grade: 8.5/10