What I’ve Caught Up With, August 2026 Part 1
Film: Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010)
A slow and contemplative Thai film, Uncle Boonmee concerns a man dealing with a chronic illness coming to terms with his mortality. One night at dinner with his sister-in-law Jen (Jenjira Pongpas) and her son Tong (Sakda Kaewbuadee), Boonmee (Thanapat Saisaymar) is visited by the ghost of his late wife Huay (Natthakarn Aphaiwong). He is also visited by his long-lost son Boonsong (Jeerasak Kulhong), who, thanks to mating with a monkey ghost, has essentially turned into a forest creature. Boonmee considers his life, his military years killing communists, and what this means for his karma and his next turn on the wheel. This is very slow—it could have been a short in a lot of ways—but the time taken is beautiful, as is the movie. You’ll want to be fully awake, but this is very moving.
Film: Catfish (2010)
It’s a rare movie that adds a word to the general lexicon, but Catfish managed to do so. This is a documentary about New York photographer Nev Schulman who has an online friendship with a child painter named Abby who lives in the Michigan Upper Peninsula. Nev also enters into a sort of long-distance relationship with Abby’s half-sister Megan. It soon becomes evident that there is something fishy (no pun intended) going on here, though. What Nev gets from Megan, Abby, and Abby’s mother Angela starts showing evident holes. Nev, along with his filmmaker brother Ariel and Ariel’s co-film maker Henry Joost start investigating to see how deep this rabbit hole goes. Nev is immediately likeable, which makes this kind of a difficult watch, because it’s soon clear that he’s going to get his heart broken in a few ways before the end.
Film: What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (1993)
Gilbert Grape (Johnny Depp) has a life that isn’t focused on him. A father who committed suicide, a mother (Darlene Cates) too overweight to leave the house, a mentally challenged brother (Leonardo DiCaprio in the role that made him famous), and an active affair with a local married woman (Mary Steenburgen). Things get more complicated when a new girl (Juliette Lewis) shows up in town. This is more a character study than anything else, and sort of a cross-section of small town Iowa. Gilbert is a classic case of a character who is too big for the small town he lives in—his dreams are bigger than the world presented to him. It’s a fine movie, and a strong case can be made that this was DiCaprio’s first deserved Oscar. It’s also one of the only times I’ve actually liked Juliette Lewis.
Film: Steve (2025)
Often, when someone wins an Oscar, they will do a couple of movies that are smaller that give them a chance to do something that they want to do rather than chase after a statue. Thus we have Steve, a small movie starring Cillian Murphy as the title character. Steve is a teacher working at a reform school that is a last chance for its students, whose next step is likely prison. Steve’s world is filled with conflict, students acting out, his own painful past, and threats to his career. This is not an easy watch because of how chaotic it is. It’s a good showcase for how good Murphy really can be, but expect a lot of this to be an assault on your senses. Emily Watson and especially Tracey Ullman are great additions to the cast.
Film: Employee’s Entrance (1933)
During the Great Depression, a store manager Kurt Anderson (Warren William) runs his business with brutality and efficiency, firing anyone who stands up to him or defies him. He is also a ruthless womanizer, treating women essentially as objects. This includes the down-on-her-luck Madeleine (Loretta Young), who essentially prostitutes herself for a job. Once on the job, she meets Martin (Wallace Ford), and the two of them are secretly married, since Martin has risen to become Anderson’s assistant. This is clearly pre-Code, especially based on the ending, which would never have flown once it was in place. It’s fine, but not anything that would need to be watched a second time.
Flim: Blindness (2008)
A sudden plague of blindness, seemingly caused by a viral infection of some sort, sweeps through a city. The infected are rounded up and put into a facility that soon devolves into chaos and squalor, since those tending them are worried about losing their sight as well. One woman (Julianne Moore) feigns blindness to stay with her husband (Mark Ruffalo), an ophthalmologist. This film is going to go to some very dark, apocalyptic places before it ends, and if you are not prepared for real brutality, stay away. Good cast—Danny Glover, Gael García Bernal, Sandra Oh, and Maury Chaykin have roles. Your first thought is that this is presaged COVID and looks like the treatment of the disabled. The truth is that this actually presages ICE detention camps.
I've seen Blindness which is alright while I do like What's Eating Gilbert Grape although I do not think Leo went full-retard with that role unlike some other actors. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is a masterpiece as it slowcore cinema at its finest and I love every fucking minute of it.
ReplyDeleteI liked Blindness more than I suspected I would. The same is true of Uncle Boonmee, which is truly beautiful.
DeleteEmployee’s Entrance just about screams pre-code the moment the credits finish up and that is what makes it worth checking out. Its wanton shamelessness and the absence of morals of most of the characters is indeed something that would vanish within the next year and a half. As I’ve said before I’m not much of a Loretta Young fan, she’s lovely but the picture would have improved immeasurably with Myrna Loy, Sally Eilers or Wynn Gibson in her place. The overall cast is excellent. Even if he usually played irredeemable bastards Warren William is one of my favorite pre-code actors and Alice White steals every second of her screen time as the extremely easy Polly. However, I agree it isn’t one of those pre-codes like “Baby Face” or “It Happened One Night” that lend themselves to rewatches.
DeleteI found “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?” involving without being able to say I really liked or enjoyed it. Great acting pretty much across the board. I am happy to discover I am not alone in my disdain for Juliette Lewis!!
I’ve heard of Blindness and of course Catfish but was never drawn to watch them. Steve and Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives don’t particularly strike a chord with me either.
There's a lot of cruelty in Employee's Entrance, which makes it kind of surprising. While I agree on Loretta Young in generaI think she works better for this. I'd struggle to see my beloved Myrna Loy treated so shamelessly.
DeleteI know what you mean about Gilbert Grape as well--it feels like a character study to me more than anything, and I'm not sure how much I actually like Gilbert even as I have sympathy for him. As for Juliette Lewis, even in movies I like (say, Strange Days), I can't help but think they'd be better with someone else in the role. She's never improved a movie for me--she's a lateral move at best.
Both Catfish and Blindness are worth your time, but I think you need to be in the right mood for them. The same is true of Boonmee, which will require being caffeinated. Steve is an emotional punch, but also good, and Cillian Murphy is really excellent in it.
> It’s a fine movie, and a strong case can be made that this was DiCaprio’s first deserved Oscar.
ReplyDeleteI love „Gilbert Grape”, one of my favourite movies of all time (but apart from it, I find Lasse Hallström's movies too pretentious). However, I believe Leo himself said that playing a character with a physical or mental defect is quite easy for a (good) actor. So, my take on it is that although playing such characters makes an easy impression on the audience, Oscars should be reserved for more subtle performances.
That's fair, but Oscar does have a history of loving that kind of performance. Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump jump out, as does Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot.
DeleteSo, while I think you're probably right, the whole bit in Tropic Thunder wasn't wrong, and the Academy eats it up, much like it loves a woman playing a prostitute--BUtterfield 8, Klute, Anora...