What I’ve Caught Up With, June 2025 Part 2
Film: Dinner at Eight (1933)
Dinner at Eight is intended to be a comedy, and in 1933, it might well have been a comedy, but a lot of what seems to have been played for funny isn’t really that entertaining. The entire film centers around a dinner party where everyone involved is either trying steal someone else’s business or having an affair with someone else. There are moments here that are truly tragic and don’t feel like they really belong in a comedy. It’s also worth noting that this feels like a rare movie from this age that purports itself to be about the rich during the Great Depression, but shows many of those rich folks struggling to stay afloat, attempting to keep up appearances while being a bad day away from being out on the street. The cast is why to watch this—it’s the whole collection of MGM stars of the time.
Film: Alita: Battle Angel (2019)
One of my main issues with manga and a lot of anime is a complete lack of context. I had that feeling with Alita: Battle Angel from the start, so not a shock that this turns out to be based on a manga series. It’s as if there’s a ton of exposition that simply never gets told to us, and I tend to feel confused. That said, Battle Angel is all about the effects and the action. In the future, a cybernetic doctor (Christoph Waltz) salvages a body from a junkyard, and it turns out that she is a former soldier from an invading army from Mars three centuries earlier. Insanity ensues, including a futuristic sport that has strong ties to Rollerball. It’s great to look at and pretty thrilling, but there’s far too much left untold, which is also why it feels unfinished.
Film: My Dinner with Andre (1981)
Wallace Shawn plays a fictional version of himself, much closer to a Woody Allen character laden with neuroses about money, who goes to have dinner with a long lost friend, Andre Gregory, also playing a version of himself. Much of the dinner consists of Andre Gregory spinning tales of his own spiritual awakening while Shawn, doing his best not to pooh-pooh the whole thing, reacts by saying that most people don’t have the wherewithal to run off to Tibet or spend time doing theater experiments in the forest somewhere in Poland. Gregory comes across as a bit pompous and out of touch, while Shawn seems very human. Gregory railing against electric blankets is a key example of his wankery. It’s worth seeing, but it’s important to remember that Gregory is only playing a character who has his name, because this version of him is insufferable.
3 more films I haven't seen but I do want to see My Dinner with Andre as I just like Wallace Shawn and Louis Malle.
ReplyDeleteIt's an interesting one, but seriously, Andre Gregory is a wanker in that movie. The real guy can't be that much of an ass.
DeleteThe Detrioters is so funny, but yes, sometimes the cringe is brutal to get through.
ReplyDeleteYes, exactly that. Some episodes took me a few tries.
DeleteAgain I've only seen the first film but tonal inconsistencies and all it is one I really enjoyed. I've always thought of it as a comedy drama rather than straight comedy. Lots of performers I love who aren't as well remembered as they should be (Edmund Lowe, Lee Tracy, Karen Morley, Jean Hersholt etc.) orbit around in secondary stories and Grant Mitchell and Louise Closser Hale are a stitch as the fill in dinner couple but the film belongs to three people. John Barrymore is a heartbreaker in what even he must have recognized as a reflection of himself. The other two of course are Marie Dressler and Jean Harlow. Both are comic gems and I would guess at the time it was seen as a case of the veteran handing off the crown to the emergent heiress to her comedy throne. Who would have possibly guessed they would both be gone with four years.
ReplyDeleteJust like Jo Jo Dancer, My Dinner with Andre is one that has been on that to see list for a long time. The thing that usually keeps me from it is that I know it's all talk and no matter how much Siskel and Ebert adored it that just isn't the sort of film you pop in on a whim. The proper mood is required and that mood and the availability of the film haven't meshed so far.
Alita isn't my kind of movie but I think I mentioned before that I love the Miss Fisher Mysteries. I've seen the first couple of seasons of The West Wing but haven't gotten any further.
I think our opinions on Dinner at Eight are essentially the same. It's not one I would think to watch again. My guess is that it might have been a bit more comedic 90 years ago. There's certainly going to be some schadenfreude at rich people being brought low.
DeleteI was in the same place with Andre, and I finally just got to the place I needed to be to watch it. I came across some snippets of interview with Wallace Shawn, and the time finally seemed right. It feels a lot like the precursor of a film like The Man from Earth, which is also a conversation, but with more people, and well worth your time.
Miss Fisher was fun, and it's a bit of a shame there wasn't a fourth series. As for the West Wing, it drops a bit (as did Parks and Rec) when Rob Lowe left. He was replaced by Josh Malina, who I tend to like, but who doesn't have the same kind of character heft, or at least has a very different energy. The last season is wrapped up in the presidential campaign at the end of the second Bartlet term, so there's very little focus on the actual West Wing. Alan Alda and Jimmy Smits are standouts as the two candidates, but it also features a lot of Bradley Whitford's Josh Lyman, who is hands-down my least favorite main character in the show. Add to that the fact that both Dule Hill and Richard Schiff had much reduced roles, and the final 22 episodes took me an age to finally finish.