tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31662975071747171222024-03-18T00:41:28.124-05:001001plusThe story of one man's odyssey of watching every movie ever contained in the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die" series.<p></p>SJHoneywellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13550007053995112090noreply@blogger.comBlogger3924125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3166297507174717122.post-6730216553739539052024-03-17T23:33:00.003-05:002024-03-17T23:33:53.575-05:00Osage, Can You SeeFilm: <I>Killers of the Flower Moon</i> <br/>
Format: Streaming video from Apple TV on basement television. <p>
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My latest quarter in school ended Friday and my grades are due tomorrow, but I finished them this morning. It seemed like a good time to knock out the longest movie on my list, Martin Scorsese’s latest magnum opus <I>Killers of the Flower Moon</I>. I went into this expecting something like a mystery. Turns out that that’s not the case; <I>Killers of the Flower Moon</i> is a gangster movie. It’s just a gangster movie that takes place in 1920s Oklahoma, involves the Osage people, and is about oil. Still, it’s very much a gangster movie. <p>
After World War I, Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) shows up in Oklahoma at the behest of his uncle, William King Hale (Robert De Niro). King Hale runs a ranch, aided by Ernest’s brother Byron (Scott Shepherd). The ranch is in Osage country, and in previous years, oil was discovered on Osage land, making the people fabulously wealthy. And this is the problem—the Osage have the oil rights, but because they are native, they don’t have any real power. And so they start dying, and their deaths are not investigated. <a name='more'></a><p>
What we learn early on is that King Hale appears to be a friend to the Osage. He speaks their language and is friendly with many of them. The truth, though is that many of the deaths in the area have been done at the behest of King Hale, all in an effort to acquire the headrights of the oil. A part of this involves Ernest marrying into the Osage tribe. Ernest accomplishes this by marrying Mollie (Lily Gladstone), and while the romance between them seems legitimate, it’s one that is destined for problems, since King Hale wants her oil rights. This is evident when among the various deaths in the Osage community are her sisters, mother, and her brother-in-law. <p>
At times, Ernest seems tangentially connected to all of this, but there are times when he is much more directly involved. Mollie and the Osage hire a private investigator to get to the bottom of Mollie’s sister Anna’s (Cara Jade Myers) murder. We see the private investigator beaten to death, and then eventually we see that it was done by Byron and Ernest. So, even if Ernest loves his wife, he’s actively conspiring against her. <p>
Eventually things spiral out of control to the point where the new Bureau of Investigation sends out an agent (Jesse Plemmons) to look int the murders. And this is where everything starts to unravel for Ernest, King Hale, and the others, especially when Mollie finds out that her sickness that nearly kills her comes from the tainted insulin that she has been given. <P>
It's not a shock that Martin Scorsese can get anyone he wants for any film that he is making. <I>Killers of the Flower Moon</i> has a number of cameo performances or minor parts. These include John Lithgow, Brendan Fraser, Elden Henson, Larry Fessenden, Barry Corbin, and even Jack White. It’s a reality that not a lot of directors could manage to pull off. <p>
This is a hard movie because it’s a cruel movie. I went into this almost entirely cold, knowing only that it was about the murders of some native people. I genuinely expected that this was going to be a film where DiCaprio was playing the guy trying to figure out what was happening, not the guy committing the crimes. It turns the film from the murder mystery I thought it was going to be into a dark portrait of a man pulled in terrible directions by his obligations to family, both in the person of his uncle and that of his wife, and not really knowing where his loyalties should lie. <p>
This is, of course, not simply a movie about the murders of the Osage people. It’s a story of racism, and the reality that the people of the time genuinely didn’t care what happened to the native people. The fact that the Osage had oil money undoubtedly caused a great deal of resentment, and that is what is played out in front of us. This is on the surface about money and oil, but the racism runs deeper here and pervades the entire story. Nowhere is this more evident than the fact that they can’t even collect their money without a legal guardian, since many of the Osage people were simple declared incompetent by virtue of being Osage. <p>
Scorsese, of course, is a master of his craft, and the reason <I>Killers of the Flower Moon</I> works as well as it does is because it is a gangster movie, and Scorsese’s gangster sensibilities are brought to bear on the tale. It’s easy to imagine scenes from this being lifted almost word for word from <I>Goodfellas</i>, and you can almost feel the presence of Nicky Santoro from <I>Casino</i> getting whacked in a cornfield in the background. <p>
It’s Lily Gladstone who is the most interesting to me here. Gladstone plays Mollie with minimal dialogue and with not a great deal of facial expression, but there are rivers running deep in her. This might be the hardest thing to do as an actor—show that kind of depth of emotion without actually showing it overtly. Is her nomination category fraud that should have been a supporting role? Perhaps, although she’s certainly one of the three main players here. De Niro is great, but of course he is. There is a sort of elfin menace to him in this, someone who would happily see you live or die depending on whether or not he took an insurance policy out on you. As for Leo DiCaprio, the dental appliance he was fitted with does a lot of work for him. It distorts his face in strange ways, and the man looks as uncomfortable as he should in this morally blackened role. <p>
Is it too long? Possibly. Honestly, it might have worked better as a miniseries. <p>
Why to watch <i>Killers of the Flower Moon</i>: It’s an infuriating story for the right reasons. <br/>
Why not to watch: Honestly, this probably should have been a miniseries. <p>SJHoneywellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13550007053995112090noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3166297507174717122.post-56194426651406572112024-03-14T23:45:00.004-05:002024-03-15T08:03:04.465-05:00Christmas BreakdownFilm: <I>The Holdovers</i> <br/>
Format: Streaming video from Peacock on rockin’ flatscreen. <p>
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As my current quarter winds down, I’ve decided I need to start hitting the Oscar movies from the latest year rather than just thinking about it. There are a bunch I still can’t find (yet), but it’s worth knocking a few out. There are a few I’m looking forward to, but I figured I would start with <I>The Holdovers</I>, only because I got a late start tonight and I didn’t have time for anything much longer. This is one I’ve been wanting to watch since it showed up on Peacock, and tonight I finally got the chance. <p>
<I>The Holdovers</i> takes place at the end of 1970 in the environs of Barton Academy, a New England boarding school for the scions of wealthy families. As the year winds to a close, the school takes a two-week break and most of the students go home to family. Five students are left behind—there were supposed to be only four, but the fifth, Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), gets a last minute call from his mother, who wants a proper honeymoon with her new husband. The teacher being left in charge is Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti). The only other person left at the school is Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), the school’s cook, who has just lost her son in Vietnam. <a name='more'></a><p>
A few days into the winter break, one of the other holdovers has his father show up with a helicopter. Three of the others have their parents contacted, and all go off for a ski vacation. Angus’s mother cannot be reached, though, which leaves him stuck with Mr. Hunham, which is a fate worse than death for a teenaged kid. Hunham is a pedant and a vicious teacher, the sort of person who is the worst nightmare for the average kid. For the privileged sons of the wealthy, Hunham appears to be one of the few teachers who relishes holding them to account. In fact, he is stuck babysitting specifically because he refused to pass a senator’s son, who subsequently lost his acceptance to college. Hunham also has a medical condition that causes him to smell a bit like fish, has a lazy eye, and is at least a mild alcoholic. <p>
What follows is exactly what you expect it’s going to be. It’s the same movie you’ve seen with any odd couple forced to spend time with each other, including <I>The Odd Couple</I>. This is much closer in many ways to films like <I>Scent of a Woman</i>, though, at least in terms of how the story works. Much of this is about a child of privilege whose life is not a bed of money and stock options that it might seem from the outside bonding with a teacher whom no one really likes, and who is the target of all of his students’ (and most of his colleagues’) vitriol. Naturally, the two build a sort of grudging respect for each other over the two weeks, culminating in a trip to Boston. <P>
Any movie that takes place in a boarding school is going to call up a few comparisons. The immediate thought is something like <I>Dead Poets Society</i> or <I>The Emperors Club</I>, although in both cases, those stories are about a beloved teacher rather than the guy who everyone seems to hate. This is a much smaller movie in that regard, about this relationship as well as the connection the two of them make with Mary and her recent loss. All three of them are terribly lonely for different reasons, and all of them are looking for ways to deal with that loneliness. <P>
There’s not a great deal of plot to <I>The Holdovers</i>, but there doesn’t really need to be. This is a character-driven movie, and all we really care about are Paul Hunham, Angus, and Mary and how they are going to get to the end of the film. The plot, such as it is, is more a series of events that connects the three of them and helps them understand each other and themselves a little better. <P>
The casting is exquisite. Dominic Sessa debuts in this film, and he’s a natural on camera—he’s entirely believable as an angry kid who has gotten everything he’s ever wanted aside from the attention and approval of his parents. Paul Giamatti is always good, or almost always good in everything he does—this is the sort of role that is designed for him. There are similarities in a lot of ways to his character in <I>Sideways</I> as well as to Harvey Pekar from <I>American Splendor</i>. But it’s Da’Vine Joy Randolph who grounds the entire film. There is a sense early on that Angus and Paul don’t fight actively as a way to protect her—she is the emotional glue that holds them all together. Randolph kills this role. <P>
The reality is that you have absolutely seen this movie before and you almost certainly won’t care about that. While the story cribs pretty hard from movies that are centered in this genre, it cribs from them in the right way. What a joy. <P>
Why to watch <i>The Holdovers</i>: This is the right way to do a story you’ve seen before. <br/>
Why not to watch: As good as it is, you’ve seen this before. <p>SJHoneywellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13550007053995112090noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3166297507174717122.post-12064783828799764692024-03-13T22:09:00.002-05:002024-03-13T22:09:17.069-05:00Boris the SpiderFilm: <I>Tarantula</i> <br/>
Format: Internet video on Fire! <p>
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There’s an entire genre of giant monster movies, many of which appeared on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Movies like <I>The Killer Shrews, The Deadly Mantis, The Giant Leeches, The Giant Gila Monster</i> and more were all over the 1950s. <I>Them!</i> is one of the original greats, taking a normal creature and growing it to gigantic proportions. Even humans got into the act with <I>The Amazing Colossal Man</I> and <I>Attack of the 50-Foot Woman</I>. <I>Tarantula</I> is naturally in the same vein, and the monster in this case is not a surprise. <P>
It’s also worth noting that <I>Tarantula</i> feature the talents of one John Agar in the main role. Agar originally made what bones he had playing second fiddle to John Wayne in films like <I>She Wore a Yellow Ribbon</I> and <I>Sands of Iwo Jima</I> and by being married to Shirley Temple for a few years. On his own, as a leading man, Agar was typically in B-movies, often as a scientist who knew everything and, more often than anything else, spouted a bunch of nonsense. Bluntly, most of his movies were terrible, or at least dumb. It’s hard to take someone seriously when the sweet spot of his career includes films like <I>The Mole People</i> and <I>Attack of the Puppet People</i>. <a name='more'></a><p>
We’re going to start with a hugely deformed man faceplanting in the desert. This will lead us to our introduction to Dr. Matt Hastings (Agar). It was evidently in Agar’s contract that he had to be Joe Cool and not only know all of the science stuff but be the epitome of 1950s manliness and action-ready. What this means for us is that we’re going to be introduced to him as he flies himself into a remote Arizona airport in a small plane. See? He’s not only a doctor; he’s also a pilot. <p>
We learn that the dead man in the desert is Eric Jacobs, a man Matt knew in passing. Importantly, he is the partner of one Professor Gerald Deemer (Leo G. Carroll), who is doing unknown research out in the desert. Deemer says that Eric Jacobs died of acromegaly, which is what killed John Merrick, and that his symptoms developed over four days, which is essentially impossible for a genetic condition like acromegaly. <p>
It turns out that Deemer is working on a formula to greatly increase the size of animals as a way to prepare for a world with as many as 3.5 billion people (one of the fun things about science fiction films from this era are the doom pronouncements like this one). In his lab, he has giant mice and rats, a giant guinea pig, and, of course, a giant tarantula. This serum works at increasing animals size, but has negative and fatal effects on humans, like causing rapid cases of, you guessed it, acromegaly. We also discover that Deemer has an assistant named Lund (Eddie Parker), who also has signs of acromegaly, and in a fit of rage, injects the professor with his serum. In the ensuing battle, Lund dies, a fire starts, and naturally the tarantula escapes. <P>
We’re also going to need a love interest. This comes in the form of Stephanie “Steve” Clayton (Mara Corday). She arrives in the area as the new research assistant for Eric Jacobs, who you may remember, died at the start of the film. Professor Deemer decides to take her on despite the fact that everything is pretty much his fault, including the giant tarantula that no one knows about. However, they are aware of the bones of cattle suddenly littering the desert, as well as the sudden rash of missing people. <p>
The giant tarantula doesn’t actually show up much until the third act, and then it’s there all the time. We also get a little educational film about tarantulas in the middle, mainly to set up what it would be like to have a giant one (and it’s Godzilla-sized huge) attacking us. It’s very clear that the tarantula is more or less projected over the characters—it’s fuzzy and out of focus most of the time, but this was also made in 1955, so you can’t really expect a lot in terms of visual effects. <p>
Honestly, it’s not a terrible creature feature. A giant spider is a pretty good scary monster, and as someone who is at least mildly arachnophobic, it’s a very good monster despite how cheesy the movie is and how cheesy John Agar is in front of the camera. It’s about what you expect, including the ending that comes thanks to the U.S. military. <p>
It's also worth noting that the cast is filled with Jack Arnold regulars like Agar and Nestor Paiva, who plays the sheriff. This is not close to Arnold’s best work, considering the man did <I>Creature from the Black Lagoon</I> and <I>The Incredible Shrinking Man</I>. That said, this is at least fun and watchable. <p>
Why to watch <i>Tarantula</i>: Because SCIENCE! <br/>
Why not to watch: As dumb as it is, if you’re an arachnophobe, it’s upsetting. <p>SJHoneywellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13550007053995112090noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3166297507174717122.post-918884248871990262024-03-09T23:31:00.005-06:002024-03-11T13:49:39.510-05:00May Thy Knife Chip and ShatterFilm: <I>Dune: Part Two</i> <br/>
Format: AMC Market Square 10 <p>
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I was doing very well keeping up with a pace of 400 movies on the year, and then this past week happened. Work was an absolute beast this last week and among other things included a presentation to about three dozen people who, at least in part, are higher up in the food chain than I am. It was terrifying, and in the busiest week of my quarter, I lost about a full day preparing for it. I try to be done working by noon on Friday each week, and yesterday, I worked past 8pm. So, as a treat, I went to see <I>Dune Part Two</i> tonight with my wife’s cousin Jon. <P>
I don’t go to the theater that often. In fact, I think you can probably count the number of movies I have seen in the theater since <I>Dune Part One</I> on one hand. Regardless, because of my bizarre connection to the <I>Dune</i>-iverse, I knew I was going to see this when it came out, albeit a week or so after it opened. I’ve been looking forward to this since last year, when the release date was moved from November of last year to this March. <a name='more'></a><p>
<I>Dune: Part Two</I> requires a lot of buy in to understand, and for people less versed in the story, it’s probably a very good idea to watch the first movie a few days before encountering the second one. A big part of this is the depth of the source material. The story takes place in the year 10,191, and for anyone familiar with the source material, there is a real sense that Frank Herbert knew more than the rough strokes of what happened in the 8,000-plus years between now and when we take up the tale of Paul Atreides. <p>
It's also a difficult film to discuss in terms of narrative without heavily referencing the first film, diving deeply into the way the <I>Dune</I>-iverse works, and definitely spoiling a lot of what came before. I don’t want to do that, so I’m not going to spend a lot of time on plot outside of the roughest strokes. In this distant future, the galaxy is essentially a feudal system with an emperor, great houses, and lesser houses. The economy runs on the spice, called Melange, which can only be found on the world of Arrakis, a desert planet. For years, the wildly evil House Harkonnen has controlled Arrakis, but in a strange twist, the Emperor has given control of the world to their enemies, House Atreides. It’s all a ruse, though; it was a play to get rid of the popular Duke Leto Atreides, and ultimately to restore the Harkonnen to their profitable colony. <P>
In all of this the ducal heir Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet) and his mother Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) escape into the desert where they encounter the Fremen, the native population. This is essentially where we pick up. A large part of this film is about Paul’s relationship with the Fremen and the slow realization in the Fremen that Paul is the fulfillment of prophecy and will lead the Fremen to reclaim their planet from the Harkonnen and will eventually engage in a jihad that kills billions and flies across the entire galaxy. <p>
There’s some new cast this time, as well as larger roles for a number of people. Paul’s biggest fan Stilgar (Javier Bardem) is in this a lot more this time, as is Paul’s love interest Chani (Zendaya). We also get a sort of secondary love interest in Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh), daughter of Emperor Shaddam IV (Christopher Walken). The leader of the Harkonnen is still Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård), and Arrakis is still ruled by Beast Rabban (Dave Bautista), but this time, we’re going to be introduced to the Harkonnen heir, Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler). <P>
So let’s talk about what’s right. The biggest things <I>Dune: Part Two</I> gets right is the scale of everything. This is a huge world, and the power that is represented by the forces at play are truly monstrous. Because of this, the things in the world are huge—massive structures and ships. We do not skimp on any of this. It’s beautifully shot and acted—despite its March release, I think we’re going to be hearing a lot about this come Oscar time next year—expect a lot of nominations—Best Picture, Director, Actor (Chalamet), Supporting Actress (Zendaya), Cinematography, and more. There’s a lot here that’s right. <p>
And yet…<p>
As someone who truly loves the book, I’m disappointed with how much has changed. This isn’t just things, like Princess Alia not being born yet in the film despite her being extremely important in the last few chapters of the book. This isn’t about the fact that in the book, Paul and Chani have a son named Leto who is killed in a Harkonnen raid when he’s a year or two old. It’s not the lack of bringing Thufir Hawat back; ignoring the presence of Harah, Jamis’s wife who becomes effectively a “wife” of Paul when he kills Jamis; or the inclusion of Count Fenring. There are major plot differences between the book and this movie, specifically in how Chani reacts to everything that is happening. I won’t spoil it, but I will say that the movie version of Chani is 180 degrees different from the book version of the character. <p>
Because of this, I’m a little disappointed. It seems weird to say it, but the David Lynch version of <I>Dune</i> is a lot more connected to the book in a very real way than this version, and that seems strange to me. <p>
Why to watch <i>Dune: Part Two</i>: It builds off the first movie perfectly. <br/>
Why not to watch: A lot of these characters are vastly different from their literary origin. <p>SJHoneywellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13550007053995112090noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3166297507174717122.post-37075239719003461752024-03-03T10:10:00.006-06:002024-03-03T10:50:54.803-06:00What I've Caught Up With, February 2024 Part 2I caught up a lot on television in February as well. I finally finished 30 Rock, and I also finally go through the end of The Blacklist (because I had to wait for it to show up on NetFlix streaming). I've been watching Archer lately, which is wildly inappropriate but also ridiculously funny. Let's see where March goes. <a name='more'></a> <P>
<B>What I’ve Caught Up With, February, 2024 Part 2:</b> <br/>
Film: Baby Face (1933) <br/>
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A short pre-Code romp, <I>Baby Face</i> tells the story of Lily Powers (Barbara Stanwyck) who rather blatantly sleeps her way to the top, a film that literally could not have been made a year later under the Hays Code. Lily’s career starts with her father, who runs a gin joint, prostituting her until he kicks her out and dies when his still explodes. She and her friend Chico (Theresa Harris) go to New York where Lily more or less sleeps her way through her career. The ending only makes sense for the time in which this was made and feels like a cop out, but Barbara is always a joy. As an odd little side note, one of Babs’s early conquests on her rise to the top is a very young John Wayne. <P>
Film: Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) <br/>
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I considered doing a full review of this movie and ultimately decided that I just wouldn’t have enough to say about it. The world is once again in peril, this time from a killer AI, and Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) must mobilize the Impossible Mission Force to take care of business. The <I>164 minutes</i> of this film are frenetic, filled with wild car chases, crashing trains, and knife fights and it never friggin’ ends. It’s fine, but it’s not really any better than fine. Action movies need to be pared down again to fit under 100 minutes. Bigger, better, faster, more just leaves me exhausted right now. <P>
Film: Blow Out (1981) <br/>
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A few years after <I>The Conversation</I>, Brian De Palma decided to make a similar film in <I>Blow Out</I>, where a sound recording catches a crime in action. Horror movie sound guy Jack Terry (John Travolta) is recording ambient sound when he catches the sound of an accident where a car goes into a lake. He saves a passenger named Sally (Nancy Allen), but soon discovers that the driver was the front runner in the next presidential election. Now he and Sally are loose ends that need to be snipped by Burke (John Lithgow) while they attempt to prove that this wasn’t an accident but an assassination. It’s <I>The Conversation</i> meets <I>Blow-Up</I>, but it’s the right level of sleezy and the end is brutal. It’s easy to forget that Travolta had chops, even back in ’81. <P>
Film: Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget (2023) <br/>
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Everyone loves Pixar and most people love Disney and Dreamworks, but I’ve always championed animation studios like Tomm Moore, Laika, and Aardman. I’ve loved Aardman since the early Wallace and Gromit days, so I was excited for a potential <I>Chicken Run</i> sequel. Sadly, Aardman seems to have dropped off in recent years. <I>Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget</i>, starting with a virtually entirely different voice cast, is a pale shadow of the original. More depressing, it’s derivative. I liked this when it was made by Pixar and called <I>Finding Nemo</i>, because this is very much the same movie. The stop-motion work is still top-tier, but the story feels like nothing new. <P>
Film: The Mark of Zorro (1940) <br/>
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It's a given that a movie in 1940 is going to have a good amount of whitewashing in it, and that’s certainly the case with <I>The Mark of Zorro</i>, which puts Tyrone Power in the title role of a Mexican-California Robin Hood type. Don Diego Vega (Power) is brought home from Madrid to California where his father is the leader only to find that his father has been deposed by the greedy and venal Don Luis Quintero (J. Edward Bromberg). Don Diego pretends to be a fop, but takes on the mantle of Zorro (which means “the fox”) to help the oppressed. This really is a Mexican Robin Hood with a heavy dose of The Scarlet Pimpernel tossed in. Basil Rathbone plays the Sheriff of Nottingham equivalent Captain Esteban Pasquale and classes up the entire thing, and Linda Darnell as the Maid Marian stand-in (and Quintero’s niece) adds to the joy. It’s fun, but pales next to the stories it’s sourcing. <P>
Film: Excalibur (1981) <br/>
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<I>Excalibur</i> is what you get when you filter the stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table through a haze of the ‘80s and a truckload of psychedelics. It is, of course, a shortened version of Le Morte d’Arthur, because it would have to be. The real stories are wild as hell. This is merely over the top in pretty much every respect. This covers a lot of the basics of the story, all through what feels like a fog of hallucinogens. There are some fun cameos of people like Liam Neeson, Helen Mirren, Gabriel Byrne, and Patrick Stewart but it’s the wild scenery chewing of Nicol Williamson’s Merlin who makes the film. I saw this years and years ago, and there are moments of it that I remembered as if I saw it yesterday. Honestly, I’m a little shocked this isn’t a Ken Russell film. <P>SJHoneywellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13550007053995112090noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3166297507174717122.post-15022715620941413952024-03-02T06:46:00.007-06:002024-03-02T06:47:53.588-06:00What I've Caught Up With, February 2024 Part 1I ended February with a total of 65 movies watched on the year, which is one short of the pace to hit 400 for the year. Based on the last couple of years I’ve had, that’s actually surprisingly good. I took a bunch of films off the list in February—there’s a solid dozen that will be reviewed today and tomorrow, but a few of the full reviews I’ve put up this past month have been from the big list as well. Additionally, there are a few more that are likely to show up around Halloween. Honestly, I’m surprised I got this many watched. Look for more tomorrow. <a name='more'></a> <P>
<B>What I’ve Caught Up With, February, 2024 Part 1:</b> <br/>
Film: Angels and Insects (1995) <br/>
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A very upsetting period drama puts naturalist William Adamson (Mark Rylance), nearly destroyed by a shipwreck on his return from the Amazon, in the home of a benefactor (Jeremy Kemp). He becomes enamored of the man’s daughter, Eugenia (Patsy Kensit), but forms a more intellectual bond with the estate’s nanny, Matty Crompton (Kristin Scott Thomas). The drama and romances are played over the top of William and Matty crafting a book on an ant colony behind the estate. It’s a wildly underseen film, perhaps not as good as I think it is, but I find it very affecting, tragic, and in the end, quite uplifting. <P>
Film: She Said (2022) <br/>
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When the #MeToo movement started, there was a sense that it was going to snowball and keep going. <I>She Said</I> is specifically about the case built against movie producer Harvey Weinstein by reporters Megan Twohey (Carey Mulligan) and Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan). It’s reminiscent in many ways of <I>Spotlight</i> from a few years ago, and not simply because it takes place in large part in a news office. The revelation here is not the work that went into tracking down the story, but the depths of depravity of Weinstein and the decades of abuse this case represented. This probably should have gotten more play as a film, and honestly, I’m a little surprised by the lack of Oscar play this got. <P>
Film: Coma (1978) <br/>
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A medical thriller, <I>Coma</i> involves a conspiracy to supply human organs to the black market. Essentially, patients go in for minor surgery and have an adverse reaction to the anesthesia and never wake up. Dr. Susan Wheeler (Geneviève Bujold) starts to investigate when her best friend becomes comatose in a routine operation, and is eventually assisted by her boyfriend, Dr. Mark Bellows (Michael Douglas). This more or less goes in the direction you expect—it feels like a medical version of Douglas’s movie <I>The China Syndrome</i> in a lot of ways. It’s a decent thriller, and there is a tremendous horror moment in a freezer filled with bodies. It features a great cast, including Richard Widmark and Rip Torn as well as early film roles for Tom Selleck and Ed Harris. <P>
Film: Forty Guns (1957) <br/>
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This is a pretty standard Western involving a woman (Barbara Stanwyck) who runs a county with an iron hand. While her brother (John Ericson) runs roughshod over the locals, a marshal (Barry Sullivan) and his brothers (Gene Barry and Robert Dix) ride into town. There’s a lot here that feels like a sort of budget <I>Gunfight at the OK Corral</I>, with the marshal and his brothers serving as a sort of poor man’s Earp brothers, down to more or less what happens to them. This is toward the end of Stanwyck’s career, but before her stint on The Big Valley on television so it serves as kind of a lead-in to Stanwyck on horseback. It’s not great, but it’s short and Barbara Stanwyck is always worth your time. <P>
Film: Compliance (2012) <br/>
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In what seems like a modern day retelling of the Stanley Milgram experiments from 1948, <I>Compliance</i> is an ugly story that is legitimately based on a true event. A young woman (Dreama Walker) working at a fast food establishment (a McDonald’s in the actual story) is accused over the phone of stealing from a customer. The store’s manager (Ann Dowd) complies with everything she is told to do by the “officer” on the phone—strip searching, forcing a young girl to be watched by men, and more. And, naturally, some of those men are going to be happy to follow the instructions of the cops into some disturbing and illegal places. This is filmed as tastefully as possible, and based on what happens, that wasn’t easy to do. <I>Compliance</I> is a good reminder that we seem to be wired to follow authority and we probably shouldn’t be. <P>
Film: The Limey (1999) <br/>
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I’m not sure what the fascination is with British gangster pics, but that’s what <I>The Limey</i> is. Wilson (Terrence Stamp) finds out his daughter has died in LA under mysterious circumstances, and so he goes to find out what happened to her. What he finds is a music producer named Valentine (Peter Fonda), who is clearly dirty and well-protected. That’s pretty much it—it’s a straight revenge picture as Terrence Stamp works his way through California looking for answers. Like the old saying about life, this is nasty, brutish, and short. Lesley Ann Warren and Luis Guzmán round out the cast for what is a simple exercise in quick, effective violence. <P>SJHoneywellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13550007053995112090noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3166297507174717122.post-38281333214613183042024-03-01T15:07:00.004-06:002024-03-01T15:07:52.926-06:00Incursion of the Torso GrabbersFilm: <I>The Changed</i> <br/>
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire! <p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVKt7AtVXGSuWxvoUUJjvoFjisuwjtiimcis0Vvrsn0akJT3Coz8kHDolgWQtvMtGNMOloEEMKi_-dCLa8_rvltpOdnFMDobjVvRPhXPVkNHT9hclta0DsBDnt5hThoPNRbref-8VjnhBa1ZuqOdEAPqsF_TtzzaJL_J0ElTPexR7ZIXvEwOLI7SjHNRg/s641/changed.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="330" data-original-width="641" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVKt7AtVXGSuWxvoUUJjvoFjisuwjtiimcis0Vvrsn0akJT3Coz8kHDolgWQtvMtGNMOloEEMKi_-dCLa8_rvltpOdnFMDobjVvRPhXPVkNHT9hclta0DsBDnt5hThoPNRbref-8VjnhBa1ZuqOdEAPqsF_TtzzaJL_J0ElTPexR7ZIXvEwOLI7SjHNRg/s400/changed.jpg"/></a></div><P>
I get the desire to play with the ideas of an established story. You can connect to your audience by giving them something they already have a connection to. You have to do a lot less work because you are already playing with not merely established tropes but with established plot points and concepts. And, importantly, you can feel like you’ve added something meaningful to an established piece of fiction. Look at <I>The Lion King</I> picking the corpse of <I>Hamlet</I>, for instance. This brings us to <I>The Changed</i>, a movie that desperately wants to play with the ideas of <I>Invasion of the Body Snatchers</i> without saying it’s doing so in so many words. <p>
I’ve seen multiple movie versions of <I>Invasion of the Body Snatchers</I> and I’ve read the book a couple of times. I recommend the book; it’s fantastic, and the audiobook is a great version of it, too. There’s a sequence in the book as well as the original film where the pod people confront the doctor and his girlfriend and more or less explain what has happened and the reality of the invasion. It’s a great scene because it shows the insidiousness of what is happening and the new reality of those who have been converted. Now, imagine that scene blown up to the length of a feature film. That, friends and neighbors, is <I>The Changed</i>. <a name='more'></a><p>
To be fair, it’s not a bad a bad thread to pull from the original story. The psychology of the invaders is fascinating and it gives the whole story a sense of purpose. What’s happening is not merely something random, but something that was a part of something else’s plan. This isn’t merely nature attacking humanity, but a directed attack that simply happened to us. Understanding that there’s something in the attackers’ plan is what personalizes resisting what is happening. <p>
We’re going to start when the invasion is well under way. Mac (Jason Alan Smith) is talking to his neighbor Bill (Tony Todd) about how it seems that a bunch of people have changed. It’s soon evident that Bill is one of those people who have changed. He’s odd and oddly serene, and seems to want to kiss Mac for some reason. On this same day, we see unusual interactions between Mac’s young neighbor Kim (Clare Foley) and her classmates at school. Additionally, Mac’s wife Jane (Carlee Avers) is attacked by her boss at work, who also tries to kiss her. <p>
Later in the day, Mac is propositioned by a neighbor opening, basically offering herself up for sex if he wants it. He turns her down and discovers that Kim has had as strange of a day as he has had Jane comes home and talks about what happened with her. And then Bill shows up and more or less confesses that he is, well, changed and that he wants to change them as well. Eventually, we’re going to find out that people are change by some sort of interstellar bacteria, which is precisely why they need to kiss people to change them—the infection is passed on that way (and, presumably, through sex). We also get to watch the conversion happen when Kin’s uncle (Doug Tompos) is convinced that everyone is pranking him, a thought he has right up to the end. <p>
There’s a kernel of an idea here, something that really wants to tell a good story, but it’s also something that feels like it never got much past the rough draft stage. It’s a great idea to put this story at this point in the invasion—the day starts just before the tipping point, and ends with broadcasts telling people to give up or they will be forcefully assimilated. That’s a cool place to put the story, because in a lot of ways it’s the most interesting point of the story—the original <I>Body Snatchers</i> showed the start of the invasion while the first remake essentially shows the end. This is in the middle, and the middle is exactly where the best story moments can happen because they lead to the climax of the full scope of the story. <p>
The problem is that it feels really amateurish in a lot of ways. It feels unfinished, or that things are specifically happening because the plot wants us to get to a particular showdown. We have to have a stand-off, but there’s no reason for the stand-off. If the changed people are that powerful and have taken over most of the world…why would they spend this much time asking for compliance when they could take it by force, especially since every new convert not only reduces resistance, but swells their own ranks? <p>
Ultimately, <I>The Changed</I> is a fun idea that doesn’t go anywhere new. The whole point of playing with a known story is to do something different, and <I>The Changed</I> just tells a point of the story that most of us have already filled in in our own heads. What a waste of Tony Todd in a film! <p>
Why to watch <i>The Changed</i>: It plays with one of the most interesting parts of <I>Invasion of the Body Snatchers</I>. <br/>
Why not to watch: It doesn’t live up to its potential. <p>SJHoneywellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13550007053995112090noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3166297507174717122.post-73824675020213174742024-02-29T19:41:00.002-06:002024-02-29T19:41:12.033-06:00Broke(n) Back MountainFilm: <I>The Spine of Night</i> <br/>
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on Fire! <p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh8TcHWj3sjAt0CWybojUBYRBt1tA0abb1-w4d8mitXxsdsVXPFOrS1Wt48u80Cb1NIdXlGGwgYK2Wk31e8pHPfNR71mgMDEy0w_DVQc2TUc9g36dZ-j4TyKvu6pLDBgoxUhFP5lIKJTutW3DXiib5LHe34aeZEh9x5Qp6v-0d0VeoziuGaWgyoKh0J6U/s1170/spineofnight.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="688" data-original-width="1170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh8TcHWj3sjAt0CWybojUBYRBt1tA0abb1-w4d8mitXxsdsVXPFOrS1Wt48u80Cb1NIdXlGGwgYK2Wk31e8pHPfNR71mgMDEy0w_DVQc2TUc9g36dZ-j4TyKvu6pLDBgoxUhFP5lIKJTutW3DXiib5LHe34aeZEh9x5Qp6v-0d0VeoziuGaWgyoKh0J6U/s400/spineofnight.jpg"/></a></div><P>
I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect when I loaded up <I>The Spine of Night</I> today, but whatever my expectations were, they weren’t what I got. I don’t know if there’s a clear way to describe this except to suggest that it is as close as possible to a sequel to <I>Heavy Metal</I> as you can get without actually being a sequel. It feels exactly like a much more violent version of the Tarna story at the end of the film. If you’ve seen <I>Heavy Metal</I>, you know exactly how violent the final story is, and it’s not a patch on what happens in <I>The Spine of Night</i>. <P>
There’s a lot here that reminds me of <I>Heavy Metal</I> starting with the rotoscoped animation. Traditional rotoscoping runs at 12 frames/second, so it always looks a little jittery. It also, while it tells a specific story, feels episodic in nature. We start with Tzod (Lucy Lawless), a new swamp priestess climbing up huge mountain to find a man called the Guardian (Richard E. Grant). She confronts the Guardian about a magical plant called the Bloom, one that he is sworn to protect, but she reveals that she has the same flower. <a name='more'></a><P>
From here, she tells the story of how she got here, which begins the violence that will be the hallmark of this film. Tzod and her people are attacked by a militaristic society led by Lord Pyrantin (Patton Oswalt). Tzod is dragged back to their city at the same time as the arrival of a scholar named Ghal-Sur (Jordan Douglas Smith). Ghal-Sur is tasked with the history of Pyrantin and his people, but he is eventually thrown in prison with Tzod. The two use the power of the Bloom to escape, but Ghal-Sur double-crosses Tzod, steals her shroud of the Bloom and returns to his own city. Eventually, he engages in a ritual that vastly expands his power, and also ends up killing most of the people around him. Ghal-Sur becomes a tyrant. And eventually, a shred of the Bloom winds up on the corpse of Tzod and revives her. <p>
The Guardian tells his story as well, which is essentially that he is the latest in a long line of guardians of the Bloom. Each guardian discovers the Bloom and learns its secrets. Realizing that the world is not ready for the knowledge, the guardian defends the Bloom with their lives until the next guardian arrives to take his place (by murdering him). And, well, this might be where we are now, except that Ghal-Sur is on his way to the mountaintop as well. <p>
I’m not kidding when I say that this is violent in a way that few things are. This is something that would be impossible or close to impossible to do in live action. This isn’t just people getting stabbed and decapitated, but people having limbs chopped off, being cut in half, and otherwise rent asunder. It’s also not shy about who is going to be subjected to this violence. The moment you think you might have a character who is worth hanging onto as someone to carry you through the film, they’re going to be gutted or impaled or otherwise filleted soon enough. Seriously, even one of the main point of view characters, Tzod, dies early in the film and comes back only through the auspices of magic. <P>
There’s also a <I>lot</i> of nudity in this film. This is something it again has in common with <I>Heavy Metal</I>, but in <I>The Spine of Night</I>, none of the nudity is sexual in nature. This is simply nudity because the characters are nude. This starts with Tzod, but hardly ends with her. In fact, at any given time, it’s a mild crapshoot if the character is going to be full frontal nude, swingin’ cod or full tribble and all. <p>
For as much as this was reminiscent of <I>Heavy Metal</I>, the film that I’m actually most reminded of is <I>Mad God</I>. There’s a senselessness to the violence, a constancy of it, and what seems like a promise of it continuing forever that the films have in common. While <I>Mad God</i> is a terrible stop-motion vision of hell, <I>The Spine of Night</i> is a rotoscoped vision of a world run by cruelty and pain. <p>
This is not a bad film. There’s a lot here to look at and a lot that is really interesting, but it’s also not the sort of film I would want to watch again very soon. While there are ideas that are fascinating, this is a bleak vision of the world, and it’s not the sort of vision I want to live with too often. <p>
Why to watch <i>The Spine of Night</i>: Adult animation is an underrated area of film. <br/>
Why not to watch: This is violent in a way that few things are. <p>SJHoneywellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13550007053995112090noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3166297507174717122.post-82567604849757449862024-02-25T22:45:00.002-06:002024-02-25T22:45:07.560-06:00Among UsFilm: <I>Werewolves Within</i> <br/>
Format: Streaming video from Hulu Plus on Fire! <p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUDovkoPXOGVhjkzs5Y5EAJCd3q1yudsFo7fv-YvmI79Wcv1JryiMNTkLc7d8E1kTkUFx61MzQbWxR9HrMHyG90jWdg1oZ0kId5VZu4aUdzse7ZOYsEiD_F710Gh_ejuCxQNjnkgML-4EAoZsly8IeeGrdJ1H_8fT-XIMiHqNiakPOtWuhoSlj4EpqVs0/s1920/werewolveswithin.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUDovkoPXOGVhjkzs5Y5EAJCd3q1yudsFo7fv-YvmI79Wcv1JryiMNTkLc7d8E1kTkUFx61MzQbWxR9HrMHyG90jWdg1oZ0kId5VZu4aUdzse7ZOYsEiD_F710Gh_ejuCxQNjnkgML-4EAoZsly8IeeGrdJ1H_8fT-XIMiHqNiakPOtWuhoSlj4EpqVs0/s400/werewolveswithin.jpg"/></a></div><P>
I’ve seen an interview with Joe Dante talking about <I>The Howling</i> specifically as a film that he had to more or less hide the subject matter from the public on. If people knew it was about werewolves, he said, they would think it was hokey. Of course, <I>The Howling</i> is actually a pretty great werewolf movie. We’ve gotten past that “It would be hokey” mentality, because <I>Werewolves Within</i> is clearly not hiding the fact that it is indeed a werewolf movie. It’s also a comedy, and it manages to walk the line between the two genres pretty well. <P>
In the small town of Beaverton, VT, Finn Wheeler (Sam Richardson) is appointed the new ranger. He shows up to his new position and is soon introduced to pretty much the whole town. Not unlike the town of Perfection in <I>Tremors</i>, Beaverton has about a dozen or so residents, each of them nuttier than the last. Finn is walked around town by Cecily (Milana Vayntrub), the new mail carrier. The biggest news in the town isn’t the arrival of the new forest ranger, but the controversy over a new pipeline set to run through the town. Some of the townsfolk are desperate for the pipeline to go through because they’ll make a good deal of money from it. Others want to preserve the town as it is. This is a tension that will continue throughout the film. <a name='more'></a><P>
One of the pieces of hot gossip is that the husband of Jeanine (Catherine Curtain), who runs the local lodge, has run off. Hower, this is not actually the case. As will surprise no one who has heart the name of the film, there’s actually a werewolf in town. When one resident loses a dog, Finn investigates and finds the body of Jeanine’s late husband crammed under the porch. Tensions start to run high, and naturally people start getting picked off and turn on each other, because no one is able to avoid being considered a werewolf by someone else. Things are made worse when the environmentalist (Rebecca Henderson) who is in town to explore the idea of the pipeline, tells the assembled townspeople that they have a werewolf among them. And then, she winds up dead, allegedly a suicide according to Sam Parker (Wayne Duvall), the man building the pipeline and the man most likely to want the environmentalist dead. <p>
As the number of townspeople dwindles, Finn finds himself in a position of needing to determine who could be the werewolf…troubling since there’s a good amount of information that it might actually be him, and the most obvious candidate, the trapper (Glenn Fleshler) who lives out of town and seems to hate everyone, can’t be guilty. <P>
At its heart, <I>Werewolves Within</i> is a movie version of the old party game Werewolf, or, if you are unfamiliar with that, a werewolf-ified version of Among Us. That’s really it, and we are more or less in the role of Finn as the main character. We (and Finn) are trying to figure out which person (or potentially people) is/are the werewolf(ves) before it becomes too late. <P>
There are a few things that work very well in <I>Werewolves Within</I>. For starters, this is clearly a horror/comedy film and it manages the blend of horror and comedy extremely well. It’s not an incredibly scary movie for what it is, but it’s definitely horror, and there’s a little bit of gore here. For someone not used to horror movies, this will be scary enough, even though it’s honestly pretty tame. It’s also not laugh-out-loud funny, but it is funny. The characters are wacky, but on the edge of realistic, which works well. So, there are extreme characters, but just believable extreme characters. The dialogue is snappy and fun. It’s entertaining and amusing, if not an absolute laugh riot, but it’s clearly an effective comedy. <p>
It also works well to make Finn an incredibly likable character. Finn has the manly job of forest ranger, but he is far from what we expect in a character like this. He is not what anyone would call an “alpha,” or at least not anything that the wankers who take that alpha/beta stuff seriously would make him an alpha. He carries a gun, but he’s far more prone to try to talk himself out of situation, and he makes a point of being decent to everyone. It’s honestly refreshing to see a male character in a position of authority who doesn’t spend the entire movie acting like it’s a dick measuring contest. <p>
The biggest issue with <I>Werewolves Within</i> is that it’s eventually pretty predictable. There are only a couple of places it can go, and for the shock value it wants this to have, it’s pretty unshocking. Additionally, the reveal of the central fact of the movie is fun, but it’s handled very quietly, and without fanfare. I don’t mind that, but in a horror/comedy with some clear influence from other places—there’s a bit of <I>The Thing</I> in this as well, it’s not hard to see where we’re going. <p>
Why to watch <i>Werewolves Within</i>: It’s live-action Among Us. <br/>
Why not to watch: Once the big culling happens, the end is obvious. <p>SJHoneywellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13550007053995112090noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3166297507174717122.post-74751894762982019782024-02-21T08:25:00.002-06:002024-02-21T08:25:22.047-06:00Super Mario ShortcutFilm: <I>How to Blow Up a Pipeline</i> <br/>
Format: Streaming video from Hulu Plus on Fire! <p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeaczxvnWSlIK-EklMz35Y-ZyrMkSexSwNbTLK4R9sIqeOXhePBN2rnSdpQ8xToKe2IPFSZYbBhH3pH5g9jSD8zDs6ykdIpz8wX9XRd5w5hMZYMwLWoaQLWf9fXGvxJCnNthcjI8Vep5-ZZYC_14MTzif00sBWVMcIQgKKUfNSn0Y8nkPoBKELWI2230U/s1067/howtoblowupapipeline.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="591" data-original-width="1067" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeaczxvnWSlIK-EklMz35Y-ZyrMkSexSwNbTLK4R9sIqeOXhePBN2rnSdpQ8xToKe2IPFSZYbBhH3pH5g9jSD8zDs6ykdIpz8wX9XRd5w5hMZYMwLWoaQLWf9fXGvxJCnNthcjI8Vep5-ZZYC_14MTzif00sBWVMcIQgKKUfNSn0Y8nkPoBKELWI2230U/s400/howtoblowupapipeline.jpg"/></a></div><P>
I don’t tend to talk politics a lot on this blog because there’s no real reason to do so. It comes up now and then, and there are films I will refuse to watch because of their source, but other than that, this blog is mainly apolitical. It’s impossible to be apolitical when discussing <I>How to Blow Up a Pipeline</i>, though. This is a film where you will either throw in your sympathy wholeheartedly for the group of young people attempting to, well, blow up a pipeline, or you will do the opposite and want to see them thrown to the wolves. Just to make it clear at the top, I’m 100% on the side of the people blowing up the pipeline. <p>
We’re going to get a main narrative of a group of people meeting up, creating explosives, and conspiring to destroy pieces of an oil pipeline in west Texas. Along with this, we’ll get a few side stories introducing us to the people involved. There are a number of intertwined stories here. Xochitl (Ariela Barer) is frustrated with the slow speed at which activism moves and argues for more direct action. This catches the attention of Shawn (Marcus Scribner), who is in the same environmental campus group. Xochitl’s best friend is Theo (Sasha Lane), who is dying of cancer most likely contracted because of oil spills and pollution. Theo is in a relationship with Alisha (Jayme Lawson), who objects to this kind of action. Meanwhile, in the course of making a documentary, Shawn meets Dwayne (Jake Weary), a rancher who has lost some of his family’s land to the pipeline thanks to eminent domain statutes. We’re also going to meet Michael (Forrest Goodluck), a native American who has learned to make explosives, and Logan and Rowan (Lukas Gage and Kristine Froseth), a hippy-like pair who have been recruited for a reason that isn’t immediately apparent. <a name='more'></a><p>
The goal is to target a pipeline in Texas. This will accomplish a number of goals for our group of protagonists. First, the disruption of oil distribution will spike gas and oil prices around the country. Second, doing this carefully, they will avoid killing anyone and cause minimal environmental damage. This is clearly definable as an act of terrorism, but our main players are attempting to be as ethical as possible in doing so. <p>
This is the whole film—our group shows up to a remote location that was formerly on Dwayne’s land. They plan, prepare their materials, and carry out the destruction of the pipeline, which includes turning off the oil going through the pipeline to prevent spilling, and damaging the pipeline only at the places where it is at its highest point, meaning any oil in the pipe will drain back rather than spilling out. <p>
There are a lot of things that work beautifully in <I>How to Blow Up a Pipeline</i>. One of the major things is that all of these people look completely normal. These are not known actors in general. They all look like people you would see in line at the grocery store. It makes the film feel much more real that these aren’t people who have a famous role in the past or a catchphrase they are attached to. <P>
It also works that these are characters who genuinely feel like real people. In the real world, if these people existed, a lot of them wouldn’t like each other. Dwayne is clearly the sort of guy who probably blames his problems on the “damn liberals” despite it being conservative policies (more than likely) that led him to his current problems. Michael is quiet and stern and seems to not really care about any of the people around him. In the world of many of the characters, this is about building something better; for Michael it’s about destroying the system without caring about what comes behind. The best indication of this is when Dwayne meets the rest of the conspirators and offers a cooler filled with fresh deer meat, something that is immediately responded to with “I’m vegan,” and “I’m vegetarian.” <p>
I’m not going to pull the punch here: <I>How to Blow Up a Pipeline</i> is a polemic about climate change and about carbon emissions. The problem that people are going to have with this is a political one rather than a survival one, though. The people who aren’t going to like this movie are the ones who think climate change isn’t real, isn’t serious, or isn’t something that we’ve done. And that’s really it, and I realize that this is a bold statement. If someone doesn’t like this film, there’s a +90% chance that it’s for political reasons. <p>
Why? Because this movie is smart, well-made, and compelling. It’s also not what you expect. You likely go into this thinking that it will feel like a propaganda film, or that it’s going to play like a documentary. In reality, this is a heist movie. The difference is that the reward isn’t money, but destruction. <p>
Why to watch <i>How to Blow Up a Pipeline</i>: This is soon our reality. <br/>
Why not to watch: This is soon our reality. <p>SJHoneywellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13550007053995112090noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3166297507174717122.post-11903418474972565892024-02-16T13:46:00.004-06:002024-02-18T09:46:29.834-06:00Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Picture 2022<B>The Contenders: <br/><br/>
<a href="https://1001plus.blogspot.com/2023/02/soon-germany-will-be-empty.html">All Quiet on the Western Front</a> <br/>
<a href="https://1001plus.blogspot.com/2023/06/water-tribes.html">Avatar: The Way of Water</a> <br/>
<a href="https://1001plus.blogspot.com/2023/01/giving-someone-finger.html">The Banshees of Inisherin</a> <br/>
<a href="https://1001plus.blogspot.com/2023/02/im-going-to-graceland.html">Elvis</a><br/>
<a href="https://1001plus.blogspot.com/2022/09/everything-bagel.html">Everything Everywhere All at Once (winner) </a><br/>
<a href="https://1001plus.blogspot.com/2023/05/lights-camera.html">The Fabelmans</a> <br/>
<a href="https://1001plus.blogspot.com/2023/12/downbeat.html">TÁR </a><br/>
<a href="https://1001plus.blogspot.com/2023/01/return-to-danger-zone.html">Top Gun: Maverick</a> <br/>
<a href="https://1001plus.blogspot.com/2023/03/eat-rich.html">Triangle of Sadness </a><br/>
<a href="https://1001plus.blogspot.com/2023/06/talk-is-not-cheap.html">Women Talking</a> <br/><br/><a name='more'></a>
What’s Missing</b> <br/>
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You have to know by this point that when we’re talking about Best Picture snubs, the first thing I’m going to bring up is <I>The Menu</I>, a film that absolutely should have gotten much more play come Oscar time than the effective zero it did. Seriously, two Golden Globe nominations is criminal. Animated films like <I>Marcel the Shell with Shoes On</I> and <I>Apollo 10 ½</I> don’t get a lot of Oscar play, so no shock that they aren’t here. The same is generally true of superhero movies, which leaves out <I>The Batman</I>. <I>The Woman King, The Northman, Three Thousand Years of Longing</I>, and <I>The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent</I> do belong in this conversation, especially over some of the actual nominees. <p>
<B>Weeding through the Nominees</b><br/>
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10. The nomination for <I>Avatar: The Way of Water</I> feels like an award handed out for the people who spent the most money on making a film—it got nominated because it bought its way in. No doubt that if we’re looking at things like effects, there’s a lot here to love, but in terms of everything else, this is an absolute waste of a nomination. With the movies that could have been honored in this way, I’m frustrated that I have to talk about it here, and that I’ll probably have to do the same with the upcoming sequels. <p>
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9. It would be natural to think that my objection to <I>Top Gun: Maverick</i> is the obvious and ridiculous military nationalism that the film absolutely embodies. The truth is that while that certainly bothers me, the real problem here is how little the film actually offers about most of the characters involved. I challenge anyone to watch this film and then have more than a sentence or two to say about any of the pilots other than the main couple of characters. Most of them are ciphers because they don’t matter to the film. That’s just bad writing and bad story telling. <P>
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8. Deciding the next two spots took a moment or two for me, but <I>Elvis</i> fits in 8th place for a couple of reasons. The first is that it’s far too long for the story it wants to tell. There’s at least an extra half hour of this specifically because it’s the story of Elvis Presley whether or not the story actually needs the time. Second is the absolutely ridiculous, embarrassing performance of Tom Hanks. I don’t hate the nomination for Austin Butler, but that’s the only nomination this should have gotten. <P>
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7. <I>TÁR</i> is a film that I wanted to like more than I did. It’s also far too long for the story it wants to tell, and it has a great deal in common with <I>Elvis</I> in that it tells the story of someone who free falls from grace. Cate Blanchett is great in this role, but when isn’t she great in anything she does? But, much like <I>Elvis</I>, the acting nomination is the one that was deserved and the other nominations far less so. Given so much that wasn’t nominated, there is no need for this to be in the conversation for Best Picture. <p>
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6. I have complained about <I>The Fabelmans</I> in the past few weeks a couple of times, and in truth, it’s probably a better movie—as a movie—than I want to give it credit for being. But, as with the last couple of entries on this countdown, this is far too long for the story it wants to tell, and trimming this down by a good 30 minutes would make this a much better film. While I don’t love this nomination, I don’t hate it, either, and it’s right on the edge of what I would nominate in my own list of ten…but if it makes the cut, it’s at the very bottom. <P>
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5. I like the nomination for <I>Women Talking</i>, and I like that it won for screenplay, even if my choice might have been different. It’s a very good film, and I think an important one, both for the story it tells and for the reality of the dangers of religiosity that it confronts. But in terms of being a movie, it’s a title that fully sums up what it’s about. This is about women talking, and not a great deal more. The story is an ambitious one in a lot of respects, but the film itself really isn’t, which puts it at the bottom of the nominations I genuinely like. <P>
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4. Fourth place seems a little low for <I>Triangle of Sadness</I>, but this is more about the competition than it is about the other films. The issue here is more about things being a little disjointed in terms of the story. This is much more a series of three interconnected shorts than it is a single film. I like what this film does, and I very much like the story (or stories) that it is telling. This is merely a case where I genuinely like the remaining three nominations more. In a different year, this probably moves up a space or two. <P>
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3. <I>The Banshees of Inisherin</I> has some of the same issues as <I>Women Talking</i> in that it’s a film that is very small in terms of the story that it tells. This isn’t a sweeping tale, but a very personal one. So, since it suffers from the same problems, why is it here? Bluntly, because I like it more. I like the story it tells, and I love the central performances. Additionally, I like the storytelling more here. Of the two, this is one I’m much more likely to watch a second time. It’s a dandy little film, with “little” being an operative word. <p>
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2. The rule of this blog has always been that the tie goes to the Academy (mostly because the Academy is right only about 1 time in 4). <I>All Quiet on the Western Front</I> is a film that I would have been very pleased to see walk away with the top honor from this year. This is precisely how a war movie should be done, and while it clearly owes a debt to <I>1917</I> and <I>Dunkirk</i> it manages to be as strong of an anti-war statement as the film made nearly a century ago. In a lesser year, it’s an easy pick.<p></br>
<b>My Choice</b><Br/>
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1. It’s probably true that I like <I>The Menu</I> and <I>Marcel the Shell</I> more than I like <I>Everything Everywhere All at Once</i>, but I’m still putting <I>EEAaO</i> on the top. The reason for this is that Best Picture is not merely the movie I liked the best from its year, but the movie that is, more or less, the most important. The idea of a multiverse is currently the hottest idea in movies, and over and over, we’ve had big, splashy attempts to make it work, not always successfully. This is how to make that concept work—it’s complex without being complicated, effective and understandable. For that reason, and because the movie is great, this is the choice for me, and the Academy got a rare one correct. <p>
<b>Final Analysis</b><br/>
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Format: Streaming video from Hoopla on Fire! <p>
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When we dive into the stranger end of the cinematic swimming pool we have to be prepared not just for things to be strange, but for a lot of what we’re seeing to be metaphorical. That’s certainly the case with <I>We’re All Going to the World’s Fair</I>, a film that has been suggested to be about, essentially coming out, something confirmed by the writer/director Jane Schoenbrun, who is nonbinary. There are also potentially themes of gender dysphoria in this, and that’s not too hard to see. <P>
There’s plenty in this movie that is going to pick the bones of some other classic horror. Specifically, this plays in part with the Bloody Mary myth or, movie-wise, <I>Candyman</i>. No one is looking in the mirror and saying the name five times, but there is something very similar happening here, and once it starts, we’re going to go on a very strange ride. <a name='more'></a><p>
We’re going to spend most of our time with Casey (Anna Cobb), a lonely teen who decides to participate in the latest online craze. According to the trope that is passed around, the “World’s Fair Challenge” consists of saying the words “I want to go to the World’s Fair” three times, pricking your finger, and smearing blood on your computer screen. We watch Casey do this, and then see her watching a short video with strobe-like lights. Casey then tells us that she will post any changes. <p>
What soon becomes apparent is that there is an entire World’s Fair subculture. People take the challenge and then post videos of what is happening to them afterwards. Everyone finds themselves changing in ways that they don’t really understand. They start to lose feeling of themselves, feeling essentially like plastic. They also seem to have moments of clarity where they realize what is happening to them as they change. Casey has similar symptoms, creating a video that talks about feeling like she did when she was younger and had a sleepwalking problem. <p>
Eventually, Casey is contacted by a man calling himself JLB (Michael J. Rogers). He warns Casey that she is in danger and asks her to continue to make and post videos so that he can monitor what is happening to her. JLB, it turns out, is someone who watches a lot of World’s Fair videos and tracks what is happening to a lot of people. <p>
Much of the film consists of Casey’s videos, which get increasingly disturbing. There are moments that smack of the <I>Paranormal Activity</I> series, and others that are far more mundane but include thoughts of murder and self-harm. Casey becomes increasingly destructive as well, eventually starting to destroy things that she cares about as she continues to lose her own sense of herself. In one of the more disturbing videos, she claims to not feel anything, then dances and sings, stops for a moment and screams in a sort of realization of what is happening to her, and then goes back to dancing again. <p>
The idea that this is about gender dysphoria, or about coming out aren’t too hard to figure out. Something is clearly happening to Casey that she can’t explain, and she keeps saying that someday she will disappear and that no one will be able to find her. Could this be a metaphor for changing herself so completely that she’d be a different person? Are the changes that are happening to her both liberating and terrifying a part of that same metaphor? I don’t think it’s a stretch to say so. When she eventually says that her name isn’t actually Casey, there’s certainly a transgender reading of that line that makes a great deal of sense. <P>
If there’s a downside to <I>We’re All Going to the World’s Fair</I>, it’s the overall look of the film. A lot of this is grainy, but it’s designed to be so because much of it is filmed on phones and webcams. It’s supposed to look like this, and that’s going to turn off people who get frustrated by what is frankly a <I>Paranormal Activity</I> or <I>Blair Witch Project</I> level of cinematography. I don’t have an issue with it because it makes sense for what the film is, but I can’t help but think there are going to be some people who find the look off-putting at best. <p>
I like indie horror like this a great deal, because it’s often a great deal more inventive than the more mainstream films. Additionally, a lot of mainstream films seem to crib notes from films like this—you can see shades of this in the much more mainstream and better funded <I>Talk to Me</I>. Movies like this are why I started doing this blog, and I’m happy to have seen this. <p>
Why to watch <i>We’re All Going to the World’s Fair</i>: It’s metaphorically dense. <br/>
Why not to watch: The production quality is going to turn off some people. <p>SJHoneywellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13550007053995112090noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3166297507174717122.post-89496534912829344982024-02-13T23:25:00.001-06:002024-02-13T23:25:26.434-06:00That's an Unusual Doorbell NoiseFilm: <I>The House that Screamed</i>(<I> La Residencia</i>) <br/>
Format: Streaming video from AMC on Fire! <p>
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It’s not a shock that there would be some similarities between Italian horror and Spanish horror. <I>The House that Screamed</I> (originally <I>La Residencia</i>) is a film that makes that connection very clear. The film takes place at a girls’ boarding school in France where a series of grisly murders are going to take place. In a sense, this feels like a Spanish <I>Suspiria</I> in large part. It’s a lot more sexually charged, though, with elements of women in prison movies, young girls showering (while clothed, which is oddly more sexual), and some lesbian overtones. I wasn’t sure what to think going into this one, but the reality of the film is very different from what I expected. <p>
Before I talk about this, I need to talk for a moment about where to find the film. It’s currently available on Tubi TV, but the transfer is terrible. It’s grainy and hard to watch, and more importantly, there is a noticeable and terrible hiss. It’s barely watchable. I got about 30 minutes in before I looked for a better version of it, which is available. <a name='more'></a><P>
As mentioned, <I>The House that Screamed</i> takes place in a French boarding school for girls. What is going to soon become apparent is that this is a school for “troubled” girls. We begin with the arrival of a new student, Teresa (Cristina Galbó). We also meet the headmistress, Madame Fourneau (Lilli Palmer), who runs the school much like a prison. She is assisted in large part by an older student named Irene (Mary Maude), who she sees as a sort of protégé. We also learn of her son Luis (John Moulder-Brown), who is of an age where looking at girls (especially in the shower) is something he desperately wants to do despite his mother’s objection and her insistence that none of these girls are good enough for him—he should be looking for someone like her. <p>
Another thing we discover soon is that Madame Fourneau is a believer in corporal punishment, something we learn when we see one of the girls whipped for disobedience, in a scene that feels straight out of <I>Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS</i>. It’s also worth saying that Irene is a part of this as the one doing the whipping. So right off the bat we’ve got Oedipal impulses, strong lesbian vibes, and sado-masochism. This is ramped up in the scene where the girls shower while still wearing shifts, which is actually more sexual than if they had been nude. And, of course, Luis is watching, so we can add voyeurism as well. <P>
Of course, the girls start disappearing one by one, and we’ll see not just that they are running away, but that they are being rather brutally murdered. And so, much of the latter half of the film concerns this, who is doing the murdering, and why. The best part of this is that <I>The House that Screamed</I> genuinely sets up a number of possibilities and points us in a lot of potential directions, some more than others. The ultimate conclusion is a bit of a surprise, as are a few of the moments that lead up to it. There are some real risks taken in the narrative, and they work surprisingly well. <P>
I’ve never been shy about not really appreciating Italian horror as much as many other people do, so I went into this more or less expecting to check off a box. I can sometimes get a sense of film quality in terms of where it falls on the They Shoot Zombies list, and this is just a bit outside of the top third of the list. However, that’s true of a lot of horror films of this style that ultimately leave me flat. <I>The House that Sceamed</i> managed to exceed all of my expectations, especially once I found a transfer that actually looks the way it’s supposed to. <P>
The truth is that for a horror film that is this lurid, the expectation is that it’s going to play essentially about that forbidden sexuality. It’s easy to think that this is going to just be as lurid as possible—tits and murders. And sure, that’s a part of the appeal of <I>The House that Screamed</i>, but it’s almost as if it draws in the audience with the promise of nudity and violence and gives them something far more interesting instead. <p>
If this had the visual flair of <I>Suspiria</I>, this would be one of the top 100 horror movies ever made. Yes, that’s a bold claim, but I stand by it, especially because of how the third act plays out. No spoilers here, but a lot of what you expect to happen is going to be radically upset. <p>
Why to watch <i>The House that Screamed</i>: It’s surprisingly smart for the type of film it is. <br/>
Why not to watch: Look carefully for the best transfer—there are some really bad ones out there. <p>SJHoneywellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13550007053995112090noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3166297507174717122.post-25514212001706303172024-02-11T18:08:00.006-06:002024-02-11T18:08:33.740-06:00And So We MarchFilm: <I>Rustin</i> <br/>
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on Fire!<p>
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I tend to try to be more proactive with Oscar nominations once they are announced, but I’ve been slacking off for the past few weeks. It’s time for me to try to get at least a couple done per week since the ceremony is now exactly four weeks away. A lot of the movies aren’t available yet, which means I have to be a lot more selective how what I’m seeing. I figured <I>Rustin</i>, a biopic about Civil Rights organizer Bayard Rustin, would make a good place to start. No need to dive head-first into Best Picture just yet. <p>
On the surface this is a biopic, but it’s much more of a memoir. The way <I>Capote</I> was a film about the writing of <I>In Cold Blood</i>, <I>Rustin</i> is about the creation and execution of the March on Washington, where a quarter of a million people converged on the capital and, among other things, listened to the I Have a Dream speech, arguably the most important and effective oratory of the last 100 years, at least in the U.S. <a name='more'></a><p>
While I do want to talk about the film, I want to start by talking about Colman Domingo, who plays Bayard Rustin. This is a truly transformative performance, one that is filled with intensity and power. Domingo appears to have not merely taken on the role, but adopted the persona of Bayard Rustin as completely as possible. It is a case where it might be impossible to see another person in the role. <P>
We’re going to learn a number of important facts about Rustin right away. He is a very powerful speaker, committed to non-violence (and in fact takes some credit for teaching those principles to Martin Luther King Jr.), and gay. His homosexuality is something that will come up frequently, being used to force him out of positions, mainly due to the threat of exposure of those associated with him. In fact, at one point, he is forced out of a position because of a threat to connect him with King as lovers, something that wasn’t true but that would have clearly swayed support against civil rights regardless of veracity. <p>
The substance of the plot, at least the substance of the main narrative, concerns the March on Washington in 1963. Because of his past and his sexuality, as well as his aggressiveness in terms of what he wanted to accomplish, Rustin is pushed out of the way, but is immediately named as second in charge of the event and given all of the power to run it, essentially using him for his strengths while hiding his presence as the head of the effort. Needing to arrange things quickly, Rustin managed to bring a quarter of a million people to the capital and kept things peaceful, something that is still astonishing and perhaps unrepeatable today. <p>
Through all of this, we will spend some time looking at Rustin’s life and his relationships. One of the more enduring ones, at least at this point in his life, was with Tom Kahn (Gus Halper), who was not only gay, but white, making their relationship forbidden on multiple levels. But while this was an important one, it was not an exclusive one. The film also explores his relationship Elias Taylor (Johnny Ramey), a married pastor. The film does this without any judgment. It’s merely a part of who Rustin was. In fact, he even goes into this at one point, essentially saying that he cannot allow himself to fall in love. <p>
<I>Rustin</I> has a cast list that is truly impressive. Among those in important but often small roles include Chris Rock, Glynn Turman, fellow Best Actor nominee Jeffrey Wright, and CCH Pounder, a personal favorite of mine. It’s a hell of a line up. <p>
What strikes me as interesting about this film is that the entire film feels like waiting for the penny to drop. I’ve seen enough films about Civil Rights topics and the movement to always expect that at some point Bull Connor or his equivalent is going to show up and heads are going to get knocked. This does happen a little in the sense of attacks on Rustin as well as mention of the death of Medgar Evars. There is pushback from the Washington police. But <I>Rustin</I> in many ways is not about the struggle, but about the success. Far more than most movies about the Civil Rights movement, <I>Rustin</i> is genuinely hopeful. <P>
I went into this without a lot of knowledge of who Bayard Rustin was. I came out of this feeling like my education was insufficient, something honestly true of most Americans when it comes to the Civil Rights movement. <p>
As far as the Oscars go, I don’t know that Colman Domingo has a snowball’s chance for the statue, but I absolutely can’t fault Oscar’s choice in the nomination. <p>
Why to watch <i>Rustin</i>: A truly deserved biopic. <br/>
Why not to watch: It feels like we still have so far to go. <p>SJHoneywellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13550007053995112090noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3166297507174717122.post-54346306477642426952024-02-10T21:24:00.002-06:002024-02-10T21:24:17.310-06:00Feedback LoopFilm: <I>You Hurt My Feelings</i> <br/>
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on basement television<p>
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Some actors get typecast, or get known for a specific role and can’t seem to get away from it. Julie Louis-Dreyfus is, for almost everyone in the world, Elaine Benes from Seinfeld. That’s got to be a little frustrating, to have a career that for almost everyone in the world boils down to a single role. I don’t feel sorry for her, mind you—she’s clearly going to be able to live off the residuals if she lived to be 200. But I would imagine that she’s got to want to break away from that sometimes, which is how we get to <I>You Hurt My Feelings</i>. <P>
or
High concept movies tend to be action films, but this is a comedy/drama that can be easily summed up in a single sentence. An author working on her second book discovers that her husband doesn’t actually like her book. And really, that’s it. The film is an exploration of that event, but also the idea of honesty and how relationships work. <a name='more'></a><P>
Beth (Louis-Dreyfus) is a creative writing teacher. Her first book is a memoir about her childhood and the abuse that she suffered at the hands of her father. She is working on her second book but her agent is less enthusiastic about it because this book is fiction, and so a significant change of pace. Her husband Don (Tobias Menzies) is a therapist with some very prickly clientele. Their son Eliot (Owen Teague) is working on his own writing, but works in a cannabis store. <P>
One afternoon, Beth and her sister Sarah (Michaela Watkins) see Don and Sarah’s actor husband Mark (Arian Moayed) in a store. They sneak in to surprise them and overhear them talking. Specifically, Don is talking about the fact that he genuinely doesn’t like Beth’s new book, and even though he has read multiple drafts of the book, he still just doesn’t like it. The rest of the movie is Beth coming to terms with this, as well as the fact that she has essentially treated Eliot the same way (as encouragement) that Don is now treating her (which she considers lying). <p>
A great deal of the film is about the ordinariness of the people involved. Don has clients who are actively angry with him, including a married couple (David Cross and Amber Tamblyn) who are so frustrated with him that they demand their money back from the last two years of therapy. Beth’s students don’t realize she’s written a successful book, and spend a class talking about other people’s memoirs. Sarah, who is an interior decorator, has a client who cannot be pleased no matter what Sarah brings to her. And Mark gets a part in a play and is almost immediately fired. These aren’t wildly successful people, or the sorts of people who live in apartments far beyond their means in a sitcom world. They fail at things. They’re average, and that makes them relatable. <P>
This is also a movie that blends comedy and drama extremely well. That’s not always easy to do. There’s not anything in this movie that is genuinely laugh-out-loud funny, but there’s a lot that feels like real-life humor. All of this, or at least most of it, is completely understandable. Even the main idea of Beth being angry at Don for essentially doing to her what she does to their son (and to him to some extent) has some humor in it. This isn’t really dark humor, but it’s not sitcom-brand comedy. It’s genuine, mostly because everyone in the film in one way or another feels like they are failing to simply be successful at being a person. The genius of this is that everyone else in the film, all of the minor characters, act like they should be the main characters. Don’s patients are miserable but act like he’s the one holding them back. Eliot’s coworker at the pot store calls herself an executive producer of films, even though she’s never worked on one. <p>
All of the performances are good, but it’s Julia Louis-Dreyfus who carries the entire film on her shoulders. It’s her emotional crisis that we are dealing with, after all, and that means that she needs to be understandable to us, competent enough for us to want to care about her, and vulnerable enough to be wounded by things, and she absolutely is. This is a very nuanced performance. Not to go anti-Seinfeld (a show I’ve honestly never watched), but the broad comedy strokes from that are not here, aside from in a moment or two. Honestly, <I>You Hurt My Feelings</i> almost feels like something Woody Allen might have written if he weren’t obsessed with sex. <p>
I enjoyed this a great deal. It’s smart and it’s ultimately rather sweet and honest. More importantly, it felt real, and that seems rare. <p>
Why to watch <i>You Hurt My Feelings</i>: It feels very honest. <br/>
Why not to watch: No good reason. This is good start to finish. <p>SJHoneywellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13550007053995112090noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3166297507174717122.post-53494475103331443042024-02-09T09:15:00.003-06:002024-02-09T20:24:31.596-06:00Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Director 2022<B>The Contenders: <br/><br/>
<a href="https://1001plus.blogspot.com/2023/01/giving-someone-finger.html">Martin McDonagh: The Banshees of Inisherin</a> <br/>
<a href="https://1001plus.blogspot.com/2022/09/everything-bagel.html">Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert: Everything Everywhere All at Once (winners)</a> <br/>
<a href="https://1001plus.blogspot.com/2023/05/lights-camera.html">Steven Spielberg: The Fabelmans</a> <br/>
<a href="https://1001plus.blogspot.com/2023/12/downbeat.html">Todd Field: TÁR </a><br/>
<a href="https://1001plus.blogspot.com/2023/03/eat-rich.html">Ruben Ostlund: Triangle of Sadness </a><br/> <a name='more'></a>
What’s Missing</b> <br/>
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I don’t love a lot of Oscar’s choices for 2022 in terms of nominations, which means that we’re going to be covering a lot of familiar territory in the suggestions. When it comes to Best Director, that’s going to start with Mark Mylod and <I>The Menu</i>, a film that hides its cards beautifully and comes to a fantastic climax. We also need to talk about Edward Berger and <I>All Quiet on the Western Front</I>, which picks up where <I>1917</I> left off and ramps it up to 11. I think it’s also worth bringing up Matt Reeves and <I>The Batman</I>, a film that could have been retread and absolutely was not. I also want to toss out a nod to George Miller for <I>Three Thousand Years of Longing</i>, a film that really plays with narrative structure and never drops the ball. <p>
<B>Weeding through the Nominees</b><br/>
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5. I don’t love putting Spielberg in fifth place, and while <I>The Fabelmans</i> is a fine film, I don’t know that watching Spielberg essentially go through therapy on screen is worth nominating. Our boy Steven seems to get a nomination regularly in part because of who he is and it seems wrong to not have him in the ceremony somewhere, kind of like Meryl Streep. Oscar needs to look outside its narrow field of dramas with token nominations from other genres, because there were genre film directors who should be here instead. <P>
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4. I’m going to say something similar about <i>TÁR</i> and Todd Field. Field doesn’t have the gravitas that Spielberg does, but Cate Blanchett certainly does, and this was her film as much as it was Field’s. My issue here is that this movie is too long for the story it wants to tell, and while we can look at the screenplay for the start of this problem, it eventually falls on the shoulders of the director, who could have sliced out 20-30 minutes without damaging the story. Length isn’t a guarantor of quality or importance, and <i>TÁR</i> is proof. <P>
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3. <I>The Banshees of Inisherin</I> is a fine little film, and I like what Martin McDonagh did with it. It’s intimate and small, but it’s always fascinating, and the story is beautifully told. My metric for Best Director is not the story itself or the production, but the storytelling, and this is one of the best-told stories of this year. I’m not going to give McDonagh the win, but I’m happy he’s here, because this is such an odd little tale, but it’s told with precision and care, and even a touch of whimsy in the face of something that could, in places, slip easily into horror. <p>
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2. I will admit that at least a part of my love for the nomination of Ruben Ostlund is that <I>Triangle of Sadness</i> is a huge middle finger to both the 1% and to toxic influencer culture. This is another movie that plays hard with narrative structure, and plays less like a single film and more like three connected shorts. It would be easy to lose control of this, and Ostlund never does. The story stays understandable and coherent and never loses focus, when that focus would be very easy to scatter in a thousand directions. In a year with a less obvious winner, he’d be an easy choice. <p>
<b>My Choice</b><Br/>
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1. The clear winner, though, is the Daniels and <I>Everything Everywhere All at Once</I>. In the science fiction/fantasy world of films, the idea of the multiverse (thanks to the MCU) has become the flavor of the month, and you don’t have to look too hard to spot another movie that plays with realities connecting and disconnecting. But no one has done this in a more coherent and interesting manner than the Daniels and this film. The fact that this is intelligible at all, let alone coherent, interesting, and fascinating is a testament to their skill. Right choice, easy choice. <p>
<b>Final Analysis</b><br/>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhCANFHN0jcAytmX9gtgv8fEVDN4qd4t7rYKSUF3rUus1Ben-DJ-mB4xiYoRsuw14KbUuIfhZXMEPe71hYtPsJuF4f0mLYSMdSu2kU9GIfL2_rGT4FfOEPtc5AvbvtOIMLDuE7KESNERtjcPjTt71idXFIJxbZB5Kv9QKHxcdFzlfBGzTzDtgx-yrDG6Y/s640/gotitright.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="359" data-original-width="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhCANFHN0jcAytmX9gtgv8fEVDN4qd4t7rYKSUF3rUus1Ben-DJ-mB4xiYoRsuw14KbUuIfhZXMEPe71hYtPsJuF4f0mLYSMdSu2kU9GIfL2_rGT4FfOEPtc5AvbvtOIMLDuE7KESNERtjcPjTt71idXFIJxbZB5Kv9QKHxcdFzlfBGzTzDtgx-yrDG6Y/s400/gotitright.jpg"/></a></div><P>SJHoneywellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13550007053995112090noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3166297507174717122.post-2555867054605895312024-02-07T22:44:00.003-06:002024-02-07T22:56:45.194-06:00Spins a Multiverse, Any SizeFilm: <I>Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse</i> <br/>
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on Fire!<p>
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Ask a lot of people what the best Marvel movie is and you’ll get a number of different answers, but for my money, you don’t have to look further than <I>Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse</i>. It’s a great introduction to the idea of the MCU multiverse (although I don’t really love what they’ve done with it since), so I was interested in the follow-up film. <I>Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse</i> picks up kind of where the first one left off, and features the same kind of visual style that made the first film such a surprise. <p>
In fact, there are a number of aspects of this film that can only be described as “frenetic.” We’re going to spend a lot of time in a world where there are hundreds of Spider-people from a variety of dimensions, and many of them will be animated in completely different styles. In that respect, this is kind of like <I>Who Framed Roger Rabbit?</I> <a name='more'></a><P>
While we’re going to be focused on Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), we’re going to start with Gwen Stacy/Spider-Gwen (Hailee Steinfeld), who is the Spider-Person of her dimension. In her dimension, she became the equivalent of Spider-Man and in a battle, managed to kill her friend Peter Parker. She encounters a variant of the Vulture straight out of a Da Vinci drawing. A pair of other Spider-People arrive to help. When he’s captured, Gwen is forced to reveal her identity to her father, and the Spider-Folks take her back to a different dimension with them to become part of an interdimensional team. <P>
And then we’re on to Miles Morales, who has a new enemy. Called The Spot (Jason Schwartzman), he was created in the same event that turned Miles into Spider-Man. The Spot is figuring out his powers and soon realizes that the anomaly that created him gives him powers to move through dimensional portals. Naturally, this is going to cause some serious problems, and soon enough Gwen shows up to catch The Spot because that’s what her team does, and she takes a moment to visit Miles. <p>
Ultimately, Miles is taken to the headquarters of the interdimensional Spider society to discover that, essentially, he is the only Spider-Man in the multiverse who hasn’t been asked to join the group. The reason? As it turns out, Miles is Spider-Man on Earth-1610, but was bitten by the spider from Earth-42. This means that he was never intended to be Spider-Man, and Earth-42 was denied its Spider-Man. He also discovers that there are canon events in the lives of all of the Spider-People. One of those is the death of someone close to them. This is Uncle Ben in the classic Spider-Man story, but in Spider-Gwen’s world, it’s the death of Peter Parker. However, in many of the worlds, the death is of a police captain…and it just so happens that his father is about to be promoted to captain, and The Spot has more or less promised to ruin Miles’s life. <p>
This is not an easy movie to summarize. There is a definite narrative throughline here, but visually, it’s very difficult to focus on for me. I called it frenetic above for a very good reason. Visually, this has ADHD, and I can’t imagine that this doesn’t come with an epilepsy warning. <P>
There is a lot to love with <I>Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse</I>. If nothing else, there are a lot of variants that are fascinating to look at. They haven’t skimped on those. There’s at least one variant in a wheelchair, and another wearing a hijab. There’s also a Spider-Punk variant who uses a guitar as his main weapon. It’s also interesting that while The Spot is clearly a major antagonist in this, arguably the main antagonist is looks to be another Spider-Man variant named Miguel O’Hara (Oscar Isaac). <p>
But (and you could certainly sense that there was going to be one of those, couldn’t you?), it feels like a huge punch in the stomach to watch 140 minutes of an epilepsy warning to realize that this is the first half of a film and that we’re going to have to wait for the third movie in the series for the story to end. This ends on a cliffhanger, and not even a hint of resolution. Even in <I>The Empire Strikes Back</I> we at least got to something that feels like an ending. This, though, is literally the middle of a story. <P>
And so I’m a little torn. This will almost certainly win the Best Animated Feature Oscar in a few weeks because of its ambition, and since I haven’t seen the other nominated movies, I don’t know what to think yet in terms of that. I don’t like the idea of half a movie, though, and this is very much half a movie despite the length. <p>
Why to watch <i>Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse</i>: It’s ambitious as hell. <br/>
Why not to watch: Two hours, twenty minutes of set-up, no pay-off. <p>SJHoneywellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13550007053995112090noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3166297507174717122.post-51811558715081300602024-02-04T08:53:00.002-06:002024-02-04T08:53:27.989-06:00What I've Caught Up With, January 2024 Part 2So, here's the rest of what I picked up in January. Eventually, I'll get the list of to-see movies down to something manageable (since it's over 1100 right now). Also worth noting that both <I>Dumb Money</I> and <I>Polite Society</i> were on this list, but got full reviews, so they naturally don't appear here. <a name='more'></a> <P>
<B>What I’ve Caught Up With, January, 2024 Part 2:</b> <br/>
Film: Return of the Secaucus Seven (1980) <br/>
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I genuinely dislike <I>The Big Chill</I>, which is about the reunion of a bunch of friends 15 years after college. <I>Return of the Secaucus Seven</i>, which is from three years previous, is about a reunion of college friends 10 years after they graduate. A lot of the themes are the same, including relationship problems and sex, but this movie is a lot better in almost every respect. The main reason this is superior is that the characters feel more real, their problems feel more real, and everyone is substantially less up their own asses. The biggest mystery for me is that one of the leads, Bruce MacDonald, never did another film. I can’t figure out why. It’s also the big screen debut of one David Straithairn. <P>
Film: Flesh + Blood (1985) <br/>
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A group of mercenaries led by a man named Martin (Rutger Hauer) help a nobleman reclaim his city. Promised run of the city, the mercenaries are kicked out after a short pillage and decide to get their revenge. This happens when the mercenaries take a carriage containing the promised bride (Jennifer Jason Leigh) of the nobleman’s commander’s son (Tom Burlinson). What follows is a sexual awakening for Agnes, the promised bride and a lot of fighting over what used to be her virginity. There’s also a subplot involving the plague. The story is an interesting one, albeit far more prurient than I thought it was going to be. The cast is good, and includes Ronald Lacey, best-known as the little German dude with the glasses in <I>Raiders of the Lost Ark</I> as well as Bruno Kirby. There’s also full-frontal of Leigh if you’re into that sort of thing. <p>
Film: Super (2010) <br>
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When you look at anything directed by James Gunn, you can’t help but remember that he got his start with Troma. <I>Super</I> is his second feature-length film, and it’s hard to pin down exactly. This is clearly a comedy in many respects, but it’s also very dark and tragic, and explores something akin to severe mental illness. The presence of Rainn Wilson as a line cook whose wife leaves him is not the only connection to The Office; it feels very much like a Michael Scott fever dream. It’s also got a hell of a cast—Liv Tyler, Elliot Page, Nathan Fillion, and many of Gunn’s frequent players like Gregg Henry and Michael Rooker. It’s worth seeing, but it’s very, very dark pseudo-prequel to <I>Kick-Ass</i>. <P>
Film: Bonjour Tristesse (1958) <br/>
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I’ve mentioned my family’s odd connection with Jean Seberg before, so it’s always a little weird for me to watch one of her movies. <I>Bonjour Tristesse</I> is the story of a playboy Raymond (David Niven) and his young daughter Cécile (Seberg) having their carefree life upset by the arrival of Anne (Deborah Kerr), an old friend of Cécile’s mother, a situation complicated by the presence of Elsa (Mylène Demongeot), Raymond’s young mistress. Things naturally end tragically. Interestingly, the film is told in flashbacks in color, and black-and-white in the present in Cécile’s thoughts. This is a sort of coming-of-age story; Cécile grows up in the course of this, and not to her benefit. Sadly, Seberg is the weakest link here—some have said she doesn’t act her lines, but merely says them, and that’s accurate. I want to like it more than I do. <P>
Film: Hardcore (1979) <Br/>
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George C. Scott plays a devout Christian man whose daughter (Ilah Davis in her only role) goes out to California on a mission trip and winds up missing. He hires a private detective (Peter Boyle) and discovers that his daughter is now working in the porn industry. Convinced that she has been kidnapped and forced into it against her will, he heads out to find her himself. Not an easy watch, and sort of a precursor to films like <I>8MM, Mute Witness,</i> and <I>Tesis</I>, but it feels closer to <I>Missing</i> from a few years later. The whole thing really turns on the performance of Scott and Season Hubley, who plays a prostitute who helps him. It feels a little over the top, but it’s actually pretty heartbreaking. If you’re an MST3K fan, this is the film they’re referring to anytime one of them says, “Turn it off! Turn it off!” <P>
Film: Watermelon Man (1970)<br/>
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A classic piece of Black cinema, racist white insurance agent Jeff Gerber (Godfrey Cambidge) entertains himself by harassing any Black people he comes across. All of this changes when he wakes up one morning with his skin inexplicably darkened. Hilarity ensues, as well as Jeff getting a serious lesson in being the victim of racism. The initial conceit of the film is a fun one, mildly overturned by the fact that Godfrey Cambridge, despite the heavy makeup, can’t pass as white. This isn’t about that, though—it’s all about the message, and it’s delivered as only Melvin van Peebles could do it. It’s probably more important than it is good, but it’s still pretty good.<p>SJHoneywellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13550007053995112090noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3166297507174717122.post-64926582686168246312024-02-03T06:39:00.002-06:002024-02-03T08:13:14.602-06:00What I've Caught Up With, January 2024 Part 1Last year was filled with a lot of personal drama, which meant fewer movies watched. Some of that is going away, and I rededicated myself to getting some movies watched, even if I didn't put up a lot of posts. And I did, in fact watch slightly more than a movie per day in January, enough that I have to split this post in two. That means there will be another chunk of movies tomorrow. I also managed to get through all but the last seasons of The Blacklist and 30 Rock, watched the second season of What If...? and also the new Castlevania series. <a name='more'></a> <P>
<B>What I’ve Caught Up With, January, 2024 Part 1:</b> <br/>
Film: Extraction (2020) <br/>
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Without really trying, I’ve seen a substantial number of Chris Hemsworth movies. Minus the MCU films, though, <I>Extraction</i> is more or less the sort of film that I expect him to be in. This is purely an action movie, but also the sort of action movie that has a message to it. Burned out mercenary Tyler Rake (Hemsworth) takes the job of retrieving the kidnapped son of an imprisoned Bengali drug lord. It’s the sort of dark action film that has become much more the norm, and as such, it’s pretty standard fare. That doesn’t mean that it isn’t good; it’s just not that unexpected. <P>
Film: I Walk the Line (1970) <br/>
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One of the issues I frequently have with films is older men having affairs or romances with much younger women. <I>I Walk the Line</i>, which features a Johnny Cash soundtrack, puts a country sheriff played by Gregory Peck who has an affair with the daughter of a moonshiner, played by Tuesday Weld. In the film, Peck’s sheriff is clearly middle-aged while Weld’s character is no older than her very early twenties. In reality, Peck was literally twice her age. The story is a good one, but make Weld’s character 30 and give Peck’s role to someone like Donald Sutherland or Warren Beatty and you’ve got the same story without a really unpleasant relationship. <P>
Film: Branded to Kill (Koroshi no Rakunin) (1967) <br/>
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If you told me that <I>Branded to Kill</i> had a huge influence on the <I>John Wick</i> series and movies like <I>Ghost Dog</I>, I wouldn’t disagree with you. This is an absurdist bit of assassination plot that exists in a world where mob killers have known rankings. Our main character is the third-rated assassin, who botches a job and becomes a target for the #1 killer. I have a sense that this wanted to ride the coattails of <I>Tokyo Drifter</i>, and managed to do so without a lot of what made that film so cool to watch. Yes, I’m in the minority on this one, but I expected a lot more and a lot better than people telling each other that they are going to kill each other and not doing it and a guy with a sexual fetish for cooking rice. No, I’m not kidding about that. <P>
Film: Strawberry Mansion (2021) <br/>
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In a world where advertisers have figured out how to infiltrate our dreams and the government allows this because they can tax people’s subconscious thoughts, a simple tax man (co-author and director Kentucker Audley) is called on to assess the taxes on an eccentric artist (Penny Fuller in the real world and Grace Glowicki in the dream world). A mad combination of <I>Get Out, Stranger than Fiction</i>, and <I>Moonrise Kingdom</I>, <I>Strawberry Mansion</I> is Wes Anderson on acid, and I mean that in only the most positive way that I can. This is a glorious and wonderful fever dream of magical realism and anti-capitalism. How this didn’t become a massive underground hit, I’ll never know. <P>
Film: A Canterbury Tale (1944) <br/>
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Three travelers during World War II end up in a small town outside of Canterbury. These are British Sergeant Peter Gibbs (Dennis Price), American Sergeant Bob Johnson (John Sweet), and farm girl Alison Smith (Sheila Sim). Alison is attacked on their way to the local hotel by a man known as “The Glue Man,” who dumps glue in women’s hair. Bob decides to hang around for the weekend to help solve the mystery that Alison has determined she will solve. It’s a bit of a lark for a middle-of-the-war film was certainly intended as a morale booster for the home front. The most interesting part is the presence of John Sweet, an actual US Army Sergeant stationed in the UK during the War. This was essentially his only role, and he donated his entire salary (about $35,000 today) to the NAACP before returning to a non-Hollywood life. <P>
Film: See How They Run (2022) <br/>
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The key to making a good whodunnit is to have it be unique in some way. <I>See How They Run</i>, attempting to capitalize on the current run on the genre, goes for a mystery that takes place on the set of an Agatha Christie-based stage play. It’s a fun idea to say the least, but it’s the idea that is honestly better than everything else in the film outside of the top-of-the-line cast. Fans of the genre will very much enjoy everything that happens here, but in truth, it’s not much better than the average in the genre. I’m happy to watch Saoirse Ronan and Sam Rockwell do whatever they want, but I want it to be better than average. <P>
Film: 5 Steps to Danger (1956) <br/>
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An oddball film that is half film noir and half Cold War spy thriller, <I>5 Steps to Danger</i> has a touch of propaganda about it. A former German citizen (Ruth Roman) tries to smuggle rocket data out of East Germany to an ex-Nazi scientist working in America while being pursued by Russian agents, including a doctor played by Werner Klemperer. She is aided in this by a man trying to get home to Texas (Sterling Hayden). There’s a weird sense of not quite approval of the Nazis who now work for us, but at least not disapproval of them. Probably better for its time, but it does feature solid work by both Roman and especially Hayden, who has good tough guy cred. <P>SJHoneywellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13550007053995112090noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3166297507174717122.post-34918234486852291652024-02-02T08:29:00.001-06:002024-02-02T09:43:22.174-06:00Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 2022<B>The Contenders: <br/><br/>
<a href="https://1001plus.blogspot.com/2023/12/fatherhood.html">Paul Mescal: Aftersun</a> <br/>
<a href="https://1001plus.blogspot.com/2023/01/giving-someone-finger.html">Colin Farrell: The Banshees of Inisherin</a> <br/>
<a href="https://1001plus.blogspot.com/2023/02/im-going-to-graceland.html">Austin Butler: Elvis</a> <br/>
<a href="https://1001plus.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-cure-for-quiet-desperation.html">Bill Nighy: Living</a> <br/>
<a href="https://1001plus.blogspot.com/2023/06/harpooned.html">Brendan Fraser: The Whale (winner)</a> <br/>
<a name='more'></a><p>
What’s Missing</b> <br/>
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There are a lot of options for Best Actor for 2022, and admittedly, a few of them did get nominations. But, naturally, there are a lot of people who would never get a glance from the Academy because of the films they were in. On the science fiction and fantasy front, this includes Colin Farrell. Yes, Farrell was nominated in <I>The Banshees of Inisherin</i>, but he could have been nominated for <I>After Yang</i> as well. We can also include Idris Elba in <I>Three Thousand Years of Longing</i> for this. Superhero movies don’t get much traction, which leaves out Robert Pattinson and <I>The Batman</i>, and also Brad Pitt in <I>Bullet Train</i>, and potentially Alexander Skarsgård in <I>The Northman</i>, no matter its Hamlet credentials. Oscar hates horror, too, which leaves out Ralph Fiennes in <I>The Menu</i> and Viggo Mortensen in <I>Crimes of the Future</I>. Daniel Craig will likely never get a nomination as Benoit Blanc, and he probably doesn’t really deserve it for <I>Glass Onion</i>, but he should be in the conversation. The same is true of Harris Dickinson and <I>Triangle of Sadness</i>. Two interesting choices would have been Nicolas Cage playing himself in <I>The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent</i>. Bad decisions made Daniel Radcliffe in <I>Weird: The Al Yankovic Story</i> ineligible. If there’s one addition I’d make (along with Ralph Fiennes), it would be Felix Kammerer in <I>All Quiet on the Western Front</i>. <p>
<B>Weeding through the Nominees</b><br/>
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5. To be fair, I think all of the nominations are pretty good ones, or at least I don’t hate any of them. Austin Butler did a fine job playing Elvis in the movie of the same name, but of the five nominations, I think he’s the one I can most easily move aside for someone else, like Fiennes or Kammerer. Some of this may simply be the film, though; it’s far too long for the story it tells, and it’s one of the most embarrassing performances in the storied career of Tom Hanks. There’s no clear reason that <I>Elvis</i> should have been in the conversation for most of the awards it was nominated for. <P>
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4. <i>Aftersun</i> is a movie I liked more than several of the Best Picture nominations, so it’s one that will come up in the conversation in a couple of weeks. Paul Mescal’s performance is a good one, and again, I don’t hate this nomination, and putting it in fourth shouldn’t come across as a slight. My issue with it isn’t at all the performance of Mescal, but the fact that the film is genuinely carried not by him, but by the performance of Frankie Corrio. If you’re going to get a nomination for an acting role when your costar isn’t, you should be the most magnetic thing on the screen, and most of the time, Mescal is not. <P>
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3. It’s almost certainly the case that I am punishing Bill Nighy in <I>Living</i>, since his performance is probably better than I want to say it is. I like Nighy in general, but that’s going to be balanced here by the fact that <I>Living</i> feels like a remake that didn’t need to be made. There’s nothing wrong with <I>Ikiru</I> that necessitated another version of the film. In that respect, Nighy is in kind of a thankless position, putting in a very good-to-great performance in a film that really didn’t need to be made. That’s uncomfortable for me, but the fact that I’ve put it third is a good indication of how much I like Bill Nighy.<p>
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2. I have slowly started warming to Colin Farrell. For a long time, he always felt like the worst part of most of the movies he was in, and I always went into his performances expecting to be frustrated by him—something that sticks with me in his films directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. But here, paired with his <I>In Bruges</i> costar Brendan Gleeson, Farrell is brilliant, heartbreaking, and very real. This is a performance that he had in him somewhere, and I didn’t know he had it in him. Good on him, and this was a very worthy nomination. <p>
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1. Limited to the five nominations, Oscar did the right thing in giving the statue to Brendan Fraser, even if there are a lot of people who didn’t love what he did with this role. It’s probably true that Fraser’s win is in part due to his redemption arc, a man who was ignored by Hollywood and whose life had bottomed out, but it’s also likely true that he used a great deal of that pain to portray the terrible inner world of Charlie. I love this arc for Fraser, and if I have to give the statue to someone who was actually nominated, he’s going to always be my choice. <p>
<b>My Choice</b><Br/>
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But the reality of things is that my favorite two performances for this category were unnominated—Felix Kammerer and Ralph Fiennes. Given the choice of the two, I’m going to give the statue to Fiennes, who never gets the respect that he deserves from Oscar. The man has done pure evil, incredible dramas, compelling cyberpunk, and he has comedic chops as well. Fiennes is the complete package and <I>The Menu</I> is some of his best work. He’s my choice in an open field. <P>
<b>Final Analysis</b><br/>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqqXRm-J8G3gOBKq7F1q-aPRzTSMz3tzbG35zrqNarn7USekT2gnIi1p3f04Gpq___KaQZ1QCNU573c90VSFi7f8bESM11DCV4AuosoMPbjY9UfWYzCbemiuX_rPwuixEoi_J9DWuBSkKrZlLXVBbFfTjGJxs8I4R3S_NIgn-sG5x_Fu5Onxr6a7adHHM/s856/screwedup.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="482" data-original-width="856" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqqXRm-J8G3gOBKq7F1q-aPRzTSMz3tzbG35zrqNarn7USekT2gnIi1p3f04Gpq___KaQZ1QCNU573c90VSFi7f8bESM11DCV4AuosoMPbjY9UfWYzCbemiuX_rPwuixEoi_J9DWuBSkKrZlLXVBbFfTjGJxs8I4R3S_NIgn-sG5x_Fu5Onxr6a7adHHM/s400/screwedup.jpg"/></a></div>SJHoneywellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13550007053995112090noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3166297507174717122.post-54922916743728145642024-01-26T11:29:00.004-06:002024-01-26T11:29:43.867-06:00Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 2022<B>The Contenders: <br/><br/>
<a href="https://1001plus.blogspot.com/2023/03/nudie-not-so-cutie.html">Ana de Armas: Blonde</a> <br/>
<a href="https://1001plus.blogspot.com/2022/09/everything-bagel.html">Michelle Yeoh: Everything Everywhere All at Once (winner)</a> <br/>
<a href="https://1001plus.blogspot.com/2023/05/lights-camera.html">Michelle Williams: The Fabelmans</a> <br/>
<a href="https://1001plus.blogspot.com/2023/12/downbeat.html">Cate Blanchett: TÁR</a> <br/>
<a href="https://1001plus.blogspot.com/2023/06/rock-bottom.html">Andrea Riseborough: To Leslie</a> <br/>
<a name='more'></a><p>
What’s Missing</b> <br/>
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2022 feels like a down year for Best Actress, at least based on what I have seen so far; there’s still a long list of 2022 movies I need to catch up on. <I>Crimes of the Future</I> seems to offer possibilities for both Kristen Stewart and Léa Seydoux, but both may be closer to supporting, and horror isn’t an Oscar-approved genre in general. This is also why we’re not talking about Gabby Beans and her role in Andy Mitton’s <I>The Harbinger</i> and Jessie Buckley, the best part of the lackluster <I>Men</i>. I love Gwendoline Christie, but <I>Flux Gourmet</I> is probably too weird for the Academy. <I>Women Talking</i> was almost certainly too ensemble (and based on recent history, it’s a bit of surprise that no men were nominated for it). While I don’t love Daisy Edgar-Jones’s performance in <I>Where the Crawdads Sing</i>, I’m a little surprised she didn’t get more build up. But let’s talk about the real snubs from 2022. There was a great deal of controversy over Andrea Riseborough’s nomination for the little-seen <I>To Leslie</i>, which prevented a nomination for Viola Davis in <I>The Woman King</i>. Davis should have been nominated, to be sure; we’ll get to that. Another snub was Aubrey Plaza—an actress I am ambivalent toward—doing excellent work in <I>Emily the Criminal</i>. I could say the same about Mia Goth; I don’t love her, but she’s great in <I>X</I>, and from what I’ve heard, she’s equally great in <I>Pearl</I>. Tilda Swinton should have gotten some love for <I>Three Thousand Years of Longing</i>, which was criminally overlooked in general. Finally, the biggest miss for me was the tremendous work of Anna Taylor-Joy in <I>The Menu</i>. <p>
<B>Weeding through the Nominees</b><br/>
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5. I said we’d get to the Viola Davis snub, and we’re going to talk about it here. It was the big snub for this year, but it’s not Andrea Riseborough who should be dumped; it’s Ana de Armas in <I>Blonde</I>. This was a dumpster fire of a movie to begin with, and while de Armas does her best with the role, she’s inappropriate for it. Marilyn Monroe had an incredibly distinctive voice. So why give that role to someone who not only can’t do the voice, but can’t do it without her own distinctive accent? I like de Armas on screen, but she shouldn’t have been in the conversation, let alone on the docket. <P>
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4. I like Michelle Williams as an actress as well, and I tend to enjoy seeing her on screen—and ironically (kind of), I liked her as Marilyn Monroe in <I>My Week with Marilyn</i>. In <I>The Fabelmans</i>, there’s nothing wrong or bad about her performance, but aside from a moment or two, there’s also nothing particularly memorable about it, either. And, this seems almost like category fraud to me. This feels like a performance that is more supporting. Her story is the driving force of the film, but it’s not seen through her eyes. She seems secondary, since the actual story is about the reaction to her, not her. <P>
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3. More and more, it feels like Cate Blanchett is the new Meryl Streep when it comes to award shows. It’s not an award season unless she’s named somewhere for something she did in the previous year. Her work in <I>TÁR</i> is very good, but in a year with great work from Davis, Taylor-Joy, and Plaza, she should be on the also-ran stage rather than sitting in third place. In an open field, I don’t nominate her, but I at least think about nominating her. This feels like a nomination based on reputation and film content more than the performance itself. <p>
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2. So let’s talk about Andrea Riseborough. The controversy over her nomination was based on the fact that the movie was underseen and underknown, so the nomination seemed to come more from a media campaign than from merit. Is that possible? Sure—and based on that, she probably didn’t deserve a nomination. But based on the performance, she absolutely did. This is amazing work, and one of the best of the last 10 years overall. I love that she was nominated because she deserved it regardless of how many people saw the film. This blog’s position has often been one of boosting little-seen work, and to have <I>To Leslie</I> in the conversation is a legitimate win. <p>
<b>My Choice</b><Br/>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQxvTllMBJRiEDjcSxuYIYGBMhOe1NFnom290YcZ6b4sGihKBPZ33SCKiv2TSHLXr6iQ8jXAaQnOgyb0YJnhln9gGWIqLAiD0TYi6lk4KZlT1v8c4yLV6-MdBbgEM7TJ9a05lWLRfnioqlJMMrQku2ERuq1_439UuJEQwhUfzxfKde4-_rjy8O-ubidyE/s3840/everythingeverywhereallatonce.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; clear: left; float: left;"><img alt="" border="0" width="200" data-original-height="1599" data-original-width="3840" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQxvTllMBJRiEDjcSxuYIYGBMhOe1NFnom290YcZ6b4sGihKBPZ33SCKiv2TSHLXr6iQ8jXAaQnOgyb0YJnhln9gGWIqLAiD0TYi6lk4KZlT1v8c4yLV6-MdBbgEM7TJ9a05lWLRfnioqlJMMrQku2ERuq1_439UuJEQwhUfzxfKde4-_rjy8O-ubidyE/s200/everythingeverywhereallatonce.jpg"/></a></div><P>
1. But, ultimately, there could be no other choice. Michelle Yeoh has deserved more acclaim for the last few decades or more, and I love that she has finally gotten some deserved recognition. Better, this is not anything like a career Oscar in the guise of a competitive one. Yeoh is fantastic on the screen, and in a film that is genuinely complicated and could leave the audience gasping for understanding, it is Yeoh who consistently keeps us grounded in the story and understanding of where in the multiverse we are. She’s the right choice. <p>
<b>Final Analysis</b><br/>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3Uq6nIDm0h1txVAbA2Ecqib-1pvyc4W38nGeDH_c_9w0MVvVUZ2a_CXmeh79NWCTfq3C7ssEC4uI8RvFDvZ4bpHqLS1lJQWmn9wgOgMUIACB63vSJtA4VWw93nQvYdDA-klH8BPGdUeKpgGSB3TanYeMOe-ka-jL44NnHh8dAlv3-_HXm1FQ2gymI8n0/s640/gotitright.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="359" data-original-width="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3Uq6nIDm0h1txVAbA2Ecqib-1pvyc4W38nGeDH_c_9w0MVvVUZ2a_CXmeh79NWCTfq3C7ssEC4uI8RvFDvZ4bpHqLS1lJQWmn9wgOgMUIACB63vSJtA4VWw93nQvYdDA-klH8BPGdUeKpgGSB3TanYeMOe-ka-jL44NnHh8dAlv3-_HXm1FQ2gymI8n0/s400/gotitright.jpg"/></a></div><P>SJHoneywellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13550007053995112090noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3166297507174717122.post-83540051788442333312024-01-25T23:33:00.001-06:002024-01-25T23:33:03.592-06:00Hodl to the MoonFilm: <I>Dumb Money</i> <br/>
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on basement television.<p>
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No one would ever mistake me for knowing anything much about money. My wife handles the bills because if it were up to me, I’d be late on a bunch of them. Everyone has their talents and mine don’t lie in that area. Because of this, movies like <i>The Big Short</I> tend to go a little over my head. I have to pay a lot of attention to keep up with financial stories because it’s just…beyond me. That makes me kind of the target market for a movie like <I>Dumb Money</I> because I am very much named in the title. <p>
This movie is based on the story of GameStop. More specifically, this is about the GameStop stock explosion that happened during the pandemic. According to the film, and I honestly don’t know how much of this is actually real, a guy named Keith Gill (Paul Dano) noticed that some major investors were shorting GameStop, including hedge fund managers who put significant money into shorting the stock. As I understand it, shorting is basically a bet that the stock will tank—a future promise to buy the stock created by “selling” the stock now. If you “sell” the stock at $10 and it drops to $5, you’ve just made $5 per share. If you think the company is going under—and GameStop certainly looked like it was going to—you sell for whatever the price is and buy it for essentially zero. So Keith decided that the stock was undervalued and started telling people on the Wall Street Bets subreddit on Reddit. <a name='more'></a><p>
And the stock blew up, going from a price of a couple of dollars to hundreds over the course of a few months, sending the financial world into a spiral and revealing some extremely shady behavior at high levels in the market. <p>
Some of the movie naturally focuses on those hedge fund managers. The main fund shorting GameStop was run by Gabe Plotkin (Seth Rogen), who went billions into debt because of his short positions on the stock. Plotkin is eventually bailed out temporarily by other financiers Ken Griffen (Nick Offerman) and Steve Cohen (Vincent D’Onofrio). And then there’s Robinhood, run by Vlad Tenev (Sebastian Stan). Touting itself as the trading app for the average person, Robinhood seemed to immediately knuckle under to pressure and prevent people from buying GameStop stock to prevent the price from climbing, a move that, among other suspicious behavior, started a Congressional inquiry into the entire situation. <p>
The appeal of <I>Dumb Money</i>, of course, is obvious. This is a classic David and Goliath story, one where we are naturally going to root for the little guys against the major players who have the deck stacked in their favor (to the point where despite clearly, obvious collusion in many cases, no charges were ever filed against anyone—shades of the housing crisis). To help us with this, we are going to spend a lot of time with some of those small investors who, rather than pulling massive profits out of GameStop, held their positions. These include nurse Jenny (America Ferrera), college students Riri and Harmony (Myha’la Herrold and Talia Ryder), and GameStop employee Marcos (Anthony Ramos). We’re also going to spend time with Keith Gill’s brother Kevin (Pete Davidson), who manages to be the one person not worth a billion dollars who is genuinely annoying in the film. Other players include Keith’s supportive wife Caroline (Shailene Woodley), and his parents, (Kate Burton and Clancy Brown). Honestly, it’s really nice to see Clancy Brown in a role where he’s not the bad guy. <p>
There’s a weird sense of hope that comes with a film like <I>Dumb Money</I>, but also one that smacks a bit of despair and anger. The system is rigged, and it’s always going to be rigged. This is another point of connection with <I>The Big Short</i>, but also with something like <I>Moneyball</I>. The minute the guys with all of the money figure out that someone else has found a way to beat the system, they either close the loophole that allows it or they find a way to use their limitless resources to capitalize on the loophole themselves and rig the game further. <P>
This is an easy movie to like, though. I tend to like Paul Dano in just about everything he’s in, and that’s not going to change here—he’s the best part of a good film. I do feel like this should come with a pamphlet that explains everything fully, though. I get what is happening, but there were a few moments I had to rewind and watch again just to make sure. Those of us who find finance above our paygrade need the baby steps, and <I>Dumb Money</I> didn’t really provide them.<p>
Also, just to say it, the title on this post is not a typo. <p>
Why to watch <i>Dumb Money</i>: What a story! <br/>
Why not to watch: The bad guys always win eventually. <p>SJHoneywellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13550007053995112090noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3166297507174717122.post-21446837423883985012024-01-24T22:30:00.001-06:002024-01-24T22:30:24.170-06:00Closing the CurtainFilm: <I>Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things</i> <br/>
Format: Streaming video from Hoopla on Fire! <p>
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One of the better ways to get an audience interested in a movie is to have a title that really tells the audience what to expect. There’s absolutely no mistaking what you’re going to get with a film called <I>Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things</i>. This is not going to be a drawing room comedy or a cute rom-com. No, we’re going to be dealing with dead bodies almost certainly coming back to life and causing problems for the “children” too dumb to let the dead rest. <p>
The main thing different from the film title and the film is the nature of the children. We are not going to be witnessing 10-year-olds playing with body parts. Instead, this is going to be the story of an acting troupe wandering in a graveyard at the behest of their director and owner, Alan (Alan Ormsby, who co-wrote the screenplay). Alan is arguably the smuggest wanker to appear in film in the 1970s, and I realize that is saying a lot. One of the ways that he demonstrates how much more important and awesome he is compared with his actors is that he calls them “his children.” <a name='more'></a><p>
Essentially, the plot can be summed up pretty quickly. Alan takes his troupe into a graveyard with the intent of performing a ritual to raise the dead. He plays an initial trick on everyone with the help of a couple of other people, and then they perform the ritual. It doesn’t look like it takes initially, but of course, it does and the dead rise as zombies. And, as per the established canon of George Romero, these aren’t Voodoo zombies who act as ghoulish servants, but actual flesh-eating ghouls. And, people naturally get picked off, or eaten, until the end of the film. That’s pretty much it. <p>
One of the best features of the movie is also one of the most annoying, and that’s Alan. It’s really easy to suggest that Alan’s smugness, constant arrogant laughter, and over-the-top theatrics are an exaggeration or an extreme caricature. I assure you, as someone who has a Bachelor’s degree in English literature and who did some acting in college, Alan is right in line for a lot of the people who walk around in that world. I know people who used to go out of their way to drink what an author did while reading their work to make it more authentic. I once watched a poet friend break up with his girlfriend at a party and then count on his fingers to the right aesthetic moment to run after her, barefoot in the snow. Alan is a complete wanker, but I’ve known people who are a lot like Alan—mediocre clowns who are convinced of their own genius, mostly because they’re mildly more clever than the people from their 500 population home town. <P>
This is also true of proto-Goth girl Anya (Anya Ormsby, Alan’s wife at the time). Anya spends time lying in a coffin because death is beautiful and wants Alan to treat the body that they unearth with respect for the same reason. I’ve known a lot of Anyas as well. <p>
However, Alan is also the focus of a great deal of the film, and that makes it very frustrating to watch. There’s no pleasure in Alan; there’s just reality. And because the zombies don’t actually rise up and start doing anything until the third act of the film, this means we’ve got more than a full hour of Alan being a prick to everyone and Anya freaking out about the treatment of a corpse as the only entertainment on offer. <P>
This puts me in a strange position. For as many qualities of film that this has in common with <I>Manos: The Hands of Fate</i> in terms of some screenplay elements, line delivery, and overall sensibility, there’s a weird connection to reality here as well. But that connection comes at the expense of it being incredibly annoying. Alan is a character who needs a punch or ten to the face. So, while Alan is very real, he’s also someone who is not fun to spend time around. <P>
It's also worth saying that once the dead start coming back climbing up out of the ground, this gets genuinely good. You have to get through 65 minutes of nonsense to get there, but once that happens, this is a genuine horror film that is as good as most zombie films of the era, and honestly better than most. Interestingly, while these aren’t fast zombies, they’re also not particularly slow—they movie at what feels like normal human speed. Another interesting difference is that the zombies don’t seem to pass on the affliction—they were magically raised, and both kill and devour, but don’t infect. <P>
It's also more or less true that no film could really live up to the title. The expectations are just too high for any horror fan. There’s no way anything could ever be better than what you imagine this is going to actually be. <p>
Why to watch <i>Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things</i>: A top-10 all-time title. <br/>
Why not to watch: You have rarely encountered a character as awful and smug as Alan. <p>SJHoneywellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13550007053995112090noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3166297507174717122.post-89452622532370966712024-01-19T09:16:00.004-06:002024-01-19T09:16:52.063-06:00Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Adapted Screenplay 2022<B>The Contenders: <br/><br/>
<a href="https://1001plus.blogspot.com/2023/02/soon-germany-will-be-empty.html">All Quiet on the Western Front</a> <br/>
<a href="https://1001plus.blogspot.com/2023/01/self-referential-title-is-self.html">Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery</a> <br/>
<a href="https://1001plus.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-cure-for-quiet-desperation.html">Living </a><br/>
<a href="https://1001plus.blogspot.com/2023/01/return-to-danger-zone.html">Top Gun: Maverick </a><br/>
<a href="https://1001plus.blogspot.com/2023/06/talk-is-not-cheap.html">Women Talking (winner) </a><br/>
<a name='more'></a><p>
What’s Missing</b> <br/>
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There were a number of interesting adapted screenplays from 2022 that were overlooked in favor of the movies that got wrapped up in Oscar acclaim. So, while the same group of movies gobbled up all of the nominations, Oscar voters were forced to ignore gems from the year like <I>After Yang</i>, which, like the best science fiction, asks the question of what it means to be truly human. As always, the science fiction and horror genres came to play and got overlooked, leaving out <I>Hellraiser</i> (a solid reinterpretation of the original myth), <I>Prey, Scream</i>, and <I>The Blackening</i>. The same is true for action movies—since <I>Top Gun: Maverick</i> got this nomination, <I>Bullet Train</i> got left out. Animated movies rarely get these nominations, which leaves out <I>Lightyear</I> and <I>Marcel the Shell with Shoes On</I>. Both <I>Where the Crawdads Sing</i> and <I>The Whale</I> seem like obvious nominations, but for me, the one I wanted to see here and was surprised that it was ignored was <I>Three Thousand Years of Longing</I>. <p>
<B>Weeding through the Nominees</b><br/>
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5. Is there a cadre of jingoistic wankers in the group of people who decide on the nominations? That’s the only explanation I can see for <I>Top Gun: Maverick</I> being here. This is a screenplay that wants us to embrace a new generation of elite pilots and then gives us a movie that essentially ignores all of them. If you’ve seen this movie, please give me a distinguishing characteristic for each of the younger pilots involved in the film. I suggest that you can’t, because the film didn’t care enough about them to include them. <P>
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4. When you are basing your film on a classic film from a previous era, all you really need to do is stick to the script as much as you can. As such, <I>Living</i> was a wonderful screenplay because it toed the line with the original, <I>Ikiru</I>. And, while I don’t think it’s necessarily easy to update a screenplay like this, I also don’t know that it involves the same amount of overall effort as adapting from a different medium. It’s a great screenplay, but it was also a great screenplay 70 years ago. <P>
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3. I very much enjoyed watching <I>Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery</I>, but I was also a little disappointed in it. Seeing a film absolutely take the mickey on Elon Musk is wildly entertaining, of course, but I had very high expectations going into this. The plot is clever in a lot of ways, and the characters are just as broad and ridiculous as in the first film, and Daniel Craig is having the time of his life, but perhaps my expectations were too high. This is good, but it’s not great the way the first one was, perhaps because of just how surprising the first one was. <p>
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2. I don’t entirely dislike the win for <I>Women Talking</i>. This is a smart screenplay and an important one in terms of what it discusses. One of the signs of a very good screenplay is how much it manages to keep the audience’s attention without anything flashy or exciting happening on the screen. <I>Women Talking</I> is exactly that. There’s not a great deal of flash or bang going on here, but what happens is riveting, nonetheless. My putting it in second place is no insult to it. I simply like another screenplay more. <p>
<b>My Choice</b><Br/>
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1. My winner is <I>All Quiet on the Western Front</i> for a number of reasons. This is the third version of I have seen of this film, and in many ways it is the best version. This is a modern retelling of the story, and while there are definite connections to the previous filmed versions, especially the Best Picture winner of many decades ago, this is an entirely new take on the story. It’s smart, it’s brutal, and it is unrelenting, which is exactly what the story needs. It’s also very modern, taking lessons from films like <I>1917</i> and pushing it further. It should have taken this award. <p>
<b>Final Analysis</b><br/>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhctvop_qKEWTXSkhMV2QxuqhWbQX9J1Lfiraw0cOvbflNeZ0chKoA84N1zKZqwYy4wIs8OYNoL3V0UIHWxsaaSGoQ-kj3qh-BUXkX4g4n7XySJ4eK2PjYFFBEdZc3xeml1TKpvfNLQfS9s6re1AwLqz7iU-sVz-kCLgC6NnXAl691hywkt2OIy4s5om7E/s700/gotitwrong.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="521" data-original-width="700" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhctvop_qKEWTXSkhMV2QxuqhWbQX9J1Lfiraw0cOvbflNeZ0chKoA84N1zKZqwYy4wIs8OYNoL3V0UIHWxsaaSGoQ-kj3qh-BUXkX4g4n7XySJ4eK2PjYFFBEdZc3xeml1TKpvfNLQfS9s6re1AwLqz7iU-sVz-kCLgC6NnXAl691hywkt2OIy4s5om7E/s400/gotitwrong.jpg"/></a></div>SJHoneywellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13550007053995112090noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3166297507174717122.post-34744080312189521142024-01-12T13:38:00.009-06:002024-01-12T13:43:21.500-06:00Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Original Screenplay 2022<B>The Contenders: <br/><br/>
<a href="https://1001plus.blogspot.com/2023/01/giving-someone-finger.html">The Banshees of Inisherin</a> <br/>
<a href="https://1001plus.blogspot.com/2022/09/everything-bagel.html">Everything Everywhere All at Once (winner)</a> <br/>
<a href="https://1001plus.blogspot.com/2023/05/lights-camera.html">The Fabelmans</a> <br/>
<a href="https://1001plus.blogspot.com/2023/12/downbeat.html">TÁR </a><br/>
<a href="https://1001plus.blogspot.com/2023/03/eat-rich.html">Triangle of Sadness</a> <br/>
<a name='more'></a><p>
What’s Missing</b> <br/>
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I’m not always looking too far in the future when it comes to this blog, but last year I was dedicated in getting though as many 2022 movies as I could in anticipation of these posts. There were a lot of interesting original screenplays from this year, many of which would never come close to an Oscar nomination. Many of these--<I>Dual, Bodies Bodies Bodies, Men, Hatching, Talk to Me</i>, and <I>Sissy</I>, for instance, don’t really deserve to be in the conversation, although <I>Sissy</I> is pretty close. Andy Mitton’s film <I>The Harbinger</i> feels like one of the first truly pandemic-inspired films I’ve seen, and it was notable for that reason. I was a little surprised that the early hype on <I>The Northman</I> didn’t carry all the way to award season. <I>The Woman King</i>’s absence was perhaps a bigger surprise. Single nominees <I>Aftersun</I> and <I>To Leslie</i> would have been interesting additions to this category. Films like <I>Crimes of the Future, Flux Gourmet</i>, and <I>The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent</i> were probably too weird to show up on Oscar’s radar. <I>Emily the Criminal</i> deserved some attention. The big miss, though—and you’ll be hearing a lot of this over the next few weeks, is <I>The Menu</i>. <p>
<B>Weeding through the Nominees</b><br/>
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5. I frequently say that these posts are not a celebration of Oscar, but a reckoning, and the Academy’s love of <I>TÁR</i> is at least a part of what I mean. There’s nothing specifically wrong with the film, but there’s also nothing particularly special about the screenplay. It’s good, but with the wealth of interesting screenplays from this year available as nominations, there’s no good reason it should be here, other than the fact that the Academy decided that it was one of the films that was going to net a ton of nominations. This instead of <I>The Menu</i>? Really <P>
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4. I was torn about what to put last, and the film that could have just as easily been in last place was <I>The Fabelmans</i>. The reason for that is exactly the same. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this film, but at least for me, there’s also nothing inherently interesting about it beyond what it is. It’s also at least 30 minutes longer than it needs to be for the story it tells, and that seems to be a problem both with the director’s choices (sorry, Spielberg), and with the screenplay that informs those choices. Did we really need 150 minutes about what is ultimately a pretty standard divorce story? <P>
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3. Given an open field and the ability to pick my own series of five nominations, the remaining three would at least be in the conversation. My putting <I>The Banshees of Inisherin</i> in third is no knock against that film or the very interesting screenplay. It’s instead a comment on just how good I think the other two screenplays are. The reason I’m putting this third is that of the three remaining nominations, this is the one that is the least ambitious in many ways. The story is quite simple compared with the other two. That’s not always a bad thing, of course, but ambition does factor in to how I look at these awards. <p>
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2. Picking a winner was not easy for me in this case, since I think either of the final two nominations would make a solid winner. I’m putting <I>Triangle of Sadness</i> in second specifically because the position of this blog has always been that the tie goes to the Academy. This screenplay is as much a middle finger to the 1% of the 1% as <I>The Menu</I>, and in many ways, this condemnation is much more brutal. This is ambitious and interesting, and also politically aware and risky. I’m genuinely surprised that FOX News didn’t try to organize a boycott against it, or that right-wing organizations didn’t create endless podcasts about how terrible it was. <p>
<b>My Choice</b><Br/>
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1. This is a rare case where the Academy picked the right screenplay and probably picked it for the right reasons. It’s not only a beautifully written screenplay that approaches a familiar topic in a new way, it does so with the kind of ambition that usually relegates a film like this to being interesting, but not fulfilling its promise. <I>Everything Everywhere All at Once</i> absolutely fulfills its promise. In a completely open field, this would compete with <I>Triangle of Sadness</i> and <I>The Menu</I> for my vote, but the Academy wins the ties, and in this case, I’m not going to complain too much about the Academy’s choice. <p>
<b>Final Analysis</b><br/>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJuZEfuEwsvMQXI8qImrS1qA5jnW-hb56FZhGPYY_zbiYM56L_06nCQYzHffBdloVB1_T6aMA2JaMlfB2BwSw7R9N0WGgHUYzXj6EVhxeLjc_2j7W8Yjw6Ph7NMw9XytOacpgswUi7FH6PpudtMbAeQOVoNYdygn_XbDDaiFclyBhyhSFORdwzNFpD-Z4/s640/gotitright.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="359" data-original-width="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJuZEfuEwsvMQXI8qImrS1qA5jnW-hb56FZhGPYY_zbiYM56L_06nCQYzHffBdloVB1_T6aMA2JaMlfB2BwSw7R9N0WGgHUYzXj6EVhxeLjc_2j7W8Yjw6Ph7NMw9XytOacpgswUi7FH6PpudtMbAeQOVoNYdygn_XbDDaiFclyBhyhSFORdwzNFpD-Z4/s400/gotitright.jpg"/></a></div><P>SJHoneywellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13550007053995112090noreply@blogger.com2