Watery World

Film: Flow (Straume)
Format: Streaming video from Hulu Plus on Fire!

Of the seven Oscar categories I watch every year, Best Animated Feature is one that is really special. The reason is that over and over we are treated to some really unique and beautiful films in this category, films that, assuming you could make the equivalent film live-action, would never get a moment’s consideration. Writers and directors can do some experimental things in animated films that they couldn’t otherwise do, and every year, we are treated to a film that is unique. These are the films that expand how we think about animation and about film itself. In previous years, Flee, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, and Loving Vincent have filled this role. For this year’s Oscars, that film is Flow (Straume in the Latvian).

Flow is a visual feast, a film that contains no real dialogue and in fact no human characters. There’s not so much a plot as there is a series of actions and events that happen to a small, black cat in a post-apocalyptic world where it appears that humanity has disappeared and where some manner of cataclysm seems like a regular event. We don’t know what happened, and we’re never really going to get that information. Whatever got rid of all the humans happened in the past at some point, but not so long ago. Many signs of human civilization still exist.

Cartel Queenpin

Film: Emilia Pérez
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on Fire!

When you learn that the main actress in Emilia Pérez is transgender, you know immediately that this is a movie where you can’t really rely on the viewer reviews to get a good idea of what it’s going to be like. I guarantee that a bunch of the ½- and 1-star reviews of this film were written by people who haven’t actually seen the movie and are slagging it specifically because they don’t really know what pronouns are. Because of that, it becomes even more important to actually watch the movie carefully.

It’s also a movie where one has to be very careful in the criticism. I go into every movie hoping to like it and wanting to like it. I don’t want to spend my time watching things that I don’t like. So it’s frustrating when I don’t actually like a movie. When it’s something like Emilia Pérez, the worry is that the assumption will be that I didn’t like it because it’s largely about transgenderism, and that’s not the case. Emilia Pérez has problems that have nothing to do with the characters or the plot.

This is What I Expect from the G7

Film: Rumours
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on basement television.

Guy Maddin makes some crazy-ass movies. When I came across Rumours, I knew it was one I would want to get to eventually, and when a copy essentially fell into my lap, I figure it was better now than later. I had to watch this over a couple of days just because of life, but I think taking a break in the middle actually helped me. This isn’t a deep movie, but it’s one that you need to soak in for a bit to try to make some sense of.

Rumours is generally being classified as a horror comedy, and that’s probably the closest we’re going to get to an actual genre/sub-genre choice that makes sense. In reality, this is an absurdist film. It makes a certain bizarre sense, but only by forcing yourself to make some sense of it. It feels like a dreamscape that shows up after you’ve been eating a tray of brownies that you didn’t know had been altered by the baker, and, inconsolably high, you decide to sleep off the drugs. There’s a kind of through line of story, but all of this feels like dream logic and it doesn’t actually make a great deal of sense.

Hush...Hush, Sweet Sarah

Film: Silent House
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

If you’d told me years ago that the Olsen twins had a younger sister who was extremely talented and was going to take some really interesting movie projects, I’m not sure I would have believed you. Elizabeth Olsen is a real talent, though, and it’s worth seeking out her movies whenever possible, as she has been extremely successful in digging herself out from under the weight of her sisters’ careers. Silent Houseis one of her earlier films where she isn’t serving as third fiddle to her sisters, one of her first roles as an adult. To be fair, Martha Marcy May Marleen is a better showcase for her talents, but this will do in a pinch.

The main issue with Silent House is that there is no way to really talk about it in detail without diving head-first into spoiler territory. That being the case, this will contain a bunch of spoilers. I’ll do my best to keep them as far to the end as possible if you want to avoid them, but I’ll be up front here—I'm not entirely sure this is a movie that you can’t enjoy spoiled, mainly because it uses a plot device that you’ve almost certainly seen before multiple times.

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Picture 2023

The Contenders:

American Fiction
Anatomy of a Fall
Barbie
The Holdovers Killers of the Flower Moon
Maestro
Oppenheimer (winner)
Past Lives
Poor Things
The Zone of Interest

At Least They Didn't Name Him Ryan

Film: The Wild Robot
Format: Streaming video from Peacock on Fire!

Animated movies, the common wisdom is, are for kids. To be fair, most of them are for kids, at least in terms of the main audience. It takes a great deal of talent from the film makers to create an animated movie that is going to be entertaining for kids and keeps their attention and doesn’t bore adults silly. And, while I think that’s not always a talent that everyone has, it’s definitely a quality that the best of animated films have. This brings us to The Wild Robot, one of the more critically-acclaimed animated movies of last year.

While I am going to talk about the story, I first want to talk about exactly what makes this film work as well as it does in the main: it gets our relationship with “things” right. For a lot of science fiction, the basic thought is that people don’t really care about their tools or the things that they have around them, and this is absolutely ridiculous. Humans will pack bond with anything. It’s why we as the average adult tear up when we contemplate the Mars rover Opportunity, its mission gone on so much longer than planned, sending out the message “My battery is low and it’s getting dark” before signing off forever. That truth—the fact that we will force personality onto our toaster—is what makes The Wild Robot work as a film.

Actually, They Were Normal Length

Film: Longlegs
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on basement television.

A friend of mine saw Longlegs in the theater, and when I asked her about it, she told me she had to see it again. Essentially, she said that she and her group had an edible and then sat in the front row of the theater, which made the whole thing something of a surreal experience, and she’s not sure how much of what she watched is actually accurate to the film. Well, for what it’s worth, I watched Longlegs stone cold sober, and I’m not sure what to make of it, either, something that she found very comforting when I told her.

Longlegs is, to this point, the latest film from Osgood Perkins, although his next film comes out in a couple of weeks. It’s also, as of now, his best-reviewed film. Perkins makes unusual movies, and this certainly fits that pattern. This is a serial killer movie, but it’s also a supernatural horror movie, and through most of it, it’s almost impossible to know what is going to happen next.

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Director 2023

The Contenders:

Justine Triet: Anatomy of a Fall
Martin Scorsese: Killers of the Flower Moon
Christopher Nolan: Oppenheimer (winner)
Yorgos Lanthimos: Poor Things
Jonathan Glazer: The Zone of Interest

Mother Superior Jumped the Gun

Film: Ms .45
Format: Streaming video from Plex on Fire!

I like a good exploitation film, which is why I tend to be at least mildly fascinated by the work of Abel Ferrara. Ferrara seems like a director who has genuine talent behind the camera, but has B-movie sensibilities. Moives like The Driller Killer are a good example of this. It seems strange to say this, but Ms .45 might actually be even more of an exploitation film. There’s not a great deal going on here beyond finding an excuse for murder. I wouldn’t normally call this a horror movie, but it’s on the They Shoot Zombies list, so here we are.

Because there’s not a great deal of plot here, I’m going to keep it pretty simple. Thana (Zoë Lund acting under the name Zoë Tamerlis) is a mute seamstress working the Garment District in New York. One day, walking home from work, she is sexually assaulted in an alley. When she gets home, her apartment is invaded by a burglar who also sexually assaults her. During this attack, she grabs a heavy glass object off her table and smacks the guy across the temple, then beats him to death with an iron and drags him into her bathtub. The next day at work, her boss Albert (Albert Sinkys) rips the blouse off a mannequin, which sends Thana into a sort of fugue state.

What I've Caught Up With, January 2025 Part 2

I got through a lot of television in January. I've finished the Mike Flanagan NetFlix shows by watching The Midnight Club, which should certainly have gotten a second season (and certainly could have). I also finished Parks and Recreation and Peaky Blinders, both of which I was close to finishing when January started. I got through the three current seasons of The Lincoln Lawyer, and I'm looking forward to the fourth season, and also finished Doom Patrol. I'm currently through the first season of The Righteous Gemstones, and my new workout show (which will go through April) is Battlestar Galactica.

What I've Caught Up With, January 2025 Part 1

My goal every year is to watch 400 movies--not necessarily new movies, but movies in general. A secondary goal is that I'd prefer 80% or so of those movies to be new. To be on pace, that's a movie per day, plus three movies per month. I'm not starting out perfectly in this case, since I watched only 32 in January. I did take a lot of movies off the giant list, though, a number of them being from 2024 and thus getting full reviews. So, while today and tomorrow will look a bit shorter than usual, I actually removed a bunch from that giant black hole of things I need to watch.