Movie Reviews: Nobody 2 / Videoheaven
This week I got to review a narrative sequel and a documentary:
The 2021 action movie Nobody was a surprise hit. If anyone could make this action movie about a regular "nobody" suburban family man who gets sucked back into his former life as an assassin work, it was star / producer Bob Odenkirk. He is one of my favorite actors working today. He has had such an extraordinary trajectory: comedy writer for SNL, performer and cast member on The Ben Stiller Show and Mr. Show, to more serious acting in Breaking Bad / Better Call Saul, Nebraska, Fargo, and the short-lived TV show Lucky Hank. In 2023 I got to cover his Hasty Pudding Man of the Year ceremony at Harvard University! But Nobody was surprisingly good and Odenkirk kept it funny and entertaining. I named it one of my Best Movies of 2021. Now Odenkirk is back as both star and producer in the sequel Nobody 2 arriving today.
In the first movie Hutch (Odenkirk) was introduced as a mundane office worker who secretly was a former government assassin. We also learned about his father David (Christopher Lloyd), a retired FBI agent, and his brother Harry (RZA), as well as his wife Becca (Connie Nielsen) and their two kids Brady (Gage Munroe) and Sammy (Paisley Cadorath). They are all back for the sequel. Hutch just wants a break and with everyone caught up in their work, school and activities, a family vacation is just what they need. They decide to go back to the old vacation spot Hutch went to as a child in the hopes of making new memories, even bringing David along. But while trying to just get away, go to the theme park, arcade and eat at the local hot dog stand, trouble finds Hutch including Wyatt (John Ortiz), a corrupt theme park manager, Abel (Colin Hanks), the town sheriff, and Lendina (Sharon Stone) the czar behind the shady bootlegging in town.
The thing with this movie is there's loads of action movie tropes, i.e. one man takes on a whole army with his bare hands. And the idea of a family on vacation and the Dad getting sucked into his criminal ways is something we've seen a lot in the past, i.e. The Sopranos episode where Tony takes Meadow to look at colleges and gets distracted by an old acquaintance. And some of the acting is so beyond over the top (I don't know how Sharon Stone said some of her lines without laughing). But you just need to go with it and enjoy the ride! If you question the logic or try to punch holes in it, the whole thing will fall apart, but with Odenkirk carrying the film you know you're in entertaining and often funny hands! And BTW there were quite a few laughs and you'll want to see this with an audience. In a Summer filled with sequels, reboots and remakes, you can do a lot worse than this one!
It seems like the further we've gotten from the heyday or video rental stores (i.e. the 80s and 90s when there was at least a store in every town) the more nostalgic we've gotten. It was a simpler time before we were able to access any movie you wanted without leaving your home. I, myself, was a clerk at Video Horizons in Bedford, MA from the mid-90s to the early 00s. From the standpoint of 2025, the act of leaving your house to go to a store, browse the walls and aisles, pay to rent something, bring it home and watch it, then bring it back seems like a bygone era. But there have been some hold-outs including Scarecrow Video, the last Blockbuster store, and (until recently) Video Visions, which I made a documentary short film about. Director Alex Ross Perry has often sung the praises of video store culture, notably being a interviewee in the book I Lost It at the Video Store (great book BTW). ARP has been working in both narrative films (Her Smell being his best) and documentary (most recently with Pavements) but for over 10 years he has very quietly been working away on this documentary Videoheaven loosely based on the 2014 book Videoland: Movie Culture at the American Video Store. The film has been slowly opening throughout the U.S.. including this Sun. at The Brattle in Cambridge.
Maya Hawke narrates along with a comprehensive deep dive into the role video stores have played in cinema culture by looking at how video stores have been depicted in movies, TV shows and pop culture as a whole. This is a highly academic approach to the subject and I wouldn't be surprised if someday this was used by a university in a college film course about the impact of video stores on society (the equivalency of a class about rotary phones for college students today). It is a very unique way to look at video stores solely from the standpoint of how they were depicted in pop culture (no interviewees, no newly shot footage, no archival footage of actual stores - just movie and TV clips of scenes at video stores). There is also some fascinating segments in the editing, i.e. actors who appeared in multiple video store scenes like David Spade, the way a store could be used for awkward humor, the way clerks were often depicted as obnoxious cinematic elitists or slackers who couldn't work anywhere else, and the retroactive commentary of corporate stores vs. independent stores. As someone who worked at a video store and took part in its history, made a documentary about a video store and even filmed my own movie at the store I worked at before and after store hours (To Be John Woo if you're curious), I ate up everything about Videoheaven. But I do need to say - beyond people like me, I don't know if there's a mass audience for a 3 hour doc about video stores in pop culture. I think maybe a better approach would've been to do it similar to Ted Demme and Richard LaGravenese's 70s cinema doc A Decade Under the Influence, where they had a theatrical release and then a 3-part cable and DVD release that expanded on that theatrical version. I applaud ARP for going so deep into this subject and the amount of time he worked on this (10 years while also making other films is no small feat), but maybe it could've been tightened. As I'm writing this, it reminds me of the conversations and movie arguments I used to have with my fellow video store clerks, so thank you for that ARP!
For info on this Sunday's Brattle's screening
