Contentious C

Georgia looks like a team poised to repeat, and the best chance at knocking them off might be Michigan. I hate life.

Finally making my way through the Crisis crossover and God is it mostly garbage. It feels like they left half the explanations for things in the editing room. Also a little disappointed the "Superman who lost more than most" wasn't Dean Cain for having lost his damn mind. Kevin Conroy's appearance didn't disappoint, though.

Something tells me Sight and Sound doesn't have a particularly high opinion of ESB.

Will Poulter? Seriously?? How much money would they have needed to throw at Zac Efron? They have it!!

Quarter post of the season and the Celtics are undefeated against non-Cleveland/non-Chicago teams. I'll take it. Doesn't 100% bode well for the playoffs, though.

So, something good came of that after all. Yep. We're here again. It's Day 504 (and counting - although I almost quit this week!) of whatever this is, #504MoviesIn504Days Edition. AXE Body Spray Instead of Shower The Legacy of a Whitetail Deer Hunter - I guess if you had to add someone to the Danny McBride/Jody Hill comedy mix, Josh Brolin is 100% the right person for that. But, as is often the case with these movies, they're just...eh. I want to like them, but they just don't punch hard enough often enough to be memorably funny. Of course, it doesn't help when one of your major cast members is a kid who's terrible at acting. There are certainly worse Danny-Plays-the-Fuckup movies - I've reviewed a few of them, but this one is way too predictable and not uproarious enough to rise that much above a lot of his other output. Also, how did they miss the chance to go all Hereditary towards the end and bounce McBride's head off a tree? Just left a joke right there; not like them. Not the biggest waste of your time, but, mmm, a little bit of one. Runaway Bride - Clearly the lesser of Julia Roberts' 1999 output. Seeing the line "Director: Garry Marshall" in the credits should tell you a lot about the movie, from the generally dull way it's shot to how small-minded and petty and misogynistic the tone of it can be at times. But, there are things that work for a moment or two. Christopher Meloni is sort of perfect for a movie like this: just enough likability that you feel for him but enough of a goofball that his inevitable flattening is an OK thing. And Joan Cusack, Hector Elizondo, and Laurie Metcalf are pretty good throughout, perhaps the three most relatable and/or consistently funny characters. But, if My Best Friend's Wedding had not come out a couple of years before, this feels like the sort of movie that would have worked better if it had gone the incredibly rare route of "the leads don't end up together", since if the point was to demonstrate their personal growth, that would have gone a lot further. But, that wasn't the point: the point was to make money, and I suppose it did, so I've already wasted enough words on a boring movie. That'll Do, Pig Brain on Fire - Ooof. I suppose I should have expected this to be a much more clinical and serious take on the kind of stuff covered in The Big Sick, and it is, but I didn't expect it to be quite so terrifying. As someone whose body has failed him a few times, it's awful to watch it happen to someone else who has no answers for such a cavalcade of terrible experiences. And, at least early on, what really provides good contrast are the pathetic attitudes of so many of the people in her life who can't be bothered to take the situation seriously (except in terms of how it reflects poorly on them). Chloe Moretz is pretty good here, although the camera tricks used to signify the moments of dissociation get more than a little stale after a while. And it's a bit disappointing that, aside from part of one line near the end and Richard Armitage's daddy-rage, there's really no excoriation of our incredibly shitty medical system that wants to pigeonhole problems rather than solve them. But despite this being a "true story" kind of film, it's way, way closer to deep horror than you might be ready for. Little Children - I only realized recently that Todd Field had finally emerged from his weird seclusion to direct Tár, so I felt it was time to watch his other movie, since In the Bedroom is one of my all-time favorites. And this...ehhhhhhh. It was written by the same guy who wrote Election and you can just *tell* the two of them went over the whole thing and said, "B-b-but-but-but how is the audience going to know it was funny if we don't put this monotone, tedious narration over the top?" How will they know, guys? They'll fucking laugh, that's how. Ugh. If there were ever a movie where it needed the narration completely ripped out, root and stem, this is it, because it would have been a lot better. Not as good as In the Bedroom or not even close, really, but not constantly insufferable when it worked well enough on its own as a bleak, absurd comedy (instead of the copycat Magnolia that it feels like with the narration). Although there are some bigger names attached to this, it finds its footing more with the likes of Noah Emmerich and Jackie Earle Haley than with the main story. The Wonder (2022) - I think it's something of a failing when the strangest thing about your movie is not the off-kilter music you use for emotional stingers but that the captions for said music have to tell you the music is "eerie". This feels a little bit at times like something Ari Aster might have done, if he showed an asswhisker's worth of restraint, that is. Then again, this might show too much restraint, as it's not really sufficiently weird to warrant the way it attempts - and only once in a while succeeds - to manipulate you into thinking something far more sinister or inexplicable might be happening. All told, the story itself is quite routine, and I'm not sure the decent-but-not-great acting does enough to help you appreciate the internal journeys the characters take. This may sound like I didn't like it much, and I suppose there are some aspects where that's true, but DAMN is this movie nice to look at, like Power of the Dog/Fukunaga Jane Eyre-level of gobsmackingly beautiful sometimes. So, it's not all bad. One Maple-Frosted Donut Dogtooth - Hoo boy. What even IS this? Creation myth? A nasty 'love letter' to an abusive parent? Just an exercise in seeing how far you can stretch a single gimmick? I think at the end of the day what keeps me from appreciating this (and I don't say 'like' because if you 'like' this movie you're fucking sick) more is that I have so little interest in children on SO many different levels that I can't even fathom being as empty as the parents in this. How you bring yourself to do this to anything, anywhere is a level of self-absorbed cruelty that's too far gone to really grasp. If you played a drinking game where you had to take a drink when each awful decision by the parents made you want to shoot them in the face, you'd be dead from alcohol poisoning before the halfway point. So, compared to something like The Lobster, which isn't *quite* as thought-provoking or *quite* as committed, this lacks a certain relatability and universality that leaves me with a lot less emotional resonance. Then again, considering what goes on here, you could very much argue it's supposed to lack those things, as that's rather the point. Another strong entry on the "Great Movies I Will Never Watch Again" list. Why They Make 'Em, Why We Watch 'Em Do the Right Thing - Speaking of... I'm not quite certain what the biggest trick is that this pulls off. I expected Spike Lee's acting to drag it down for me, but somehow it didn't (leave that to Rosie Perez, maybe?). I thought having grown up more or less in the wake of this film, despite not having seen it, would spoil too much of it, but that didn't happen, either. But I think what it is is that I've really only seen one other movie - that being 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days - that strikes so hard at the heart of a socially relevant topic while practically begging its audience to finally, finally, finally turn the film's social relevance into nothing more than a museum artifact. Considering the last six years of hellscape this dumb-shit country has put itself through, we're only further away from that day on both counts. My opinion on Pulp Fiction being the best film of the nineties is that, even if I didn't like the broad strokes of what the movie did, it would probably still be deserving (or very close to deserving) of that spot because it altered the trajectory of what movies were supposed to be doing. This isn't always a good thing: just look at the MCU's rampage of mediocrity. I probably like some bits and pieces of this a little less than Pulp Fiction, but not a whole lot, and I think the characters are better and more authentic. And, as I said, having grown up with the early-90s MTV generation that practically sprang into existence because of all the things this movie said and tried to say, it's hard to deny how important this is. If anything, it feels like a little bit of a letdown because I don't really know how many filmmakers have been this truly audacious since. Welcome to #1, Spike.

For all my Bethesda support, at least I can say burnout and frustration have never led me to make this awful, awful mistake.

Didn't he say something when he was at BC at the time about how the country was due for its first Catholic President?

The work never stops. It's Day 497 (and counting) of something-or-other, Best and Not-So-Best of the 2000s Edition. Your Baby's Dirty Diaper Hitman - Oof, poor Olga Kurylenko, star of the two worst video game adaptations of the decade, but somehow this isn't the worse of the two (because that would be Max Payne). It's...some of the most pointless bullshit imaginable, but you know what this doesn't do? It doesn't bog itself down with slavish adherence to garbage storytelling that may or may not have existed in the games at the time, and it doesn't try to explain backstory that no one actually cares about. So, hey, there's that. Of course, I think there might be something of a glaring plot hole with the notion of a contract killer who's difficult to spot when he's BALD WITH A UPC ON HIS NOGGIN. Price check on Aisle Batshit Crazy! Oh, yeah, there are also a couple of fight scenes that aren't entirely dire (particularly the one in the train station), so this floats to the level of garden-variety shit instead of especially craptastic. I watched the "uncut" version, though, and I guess they meant the sound editing, which was worse than amateurish to say the least. AXE Body Spray Instead of Shower Man on Fire - The "Tony Scott only made 1 good movie per decade" hypothesis still holds. Ugh. This feels sometimes like a dry run for the incredibly awful Domino, which would come out the following year and remains one of the worst movies I've ever seen. There are bits that work, particularly Radha Mitchell (aka, the Sneakiest Quality Actress of the decade) and of course Denzel, but it's too jittery and manic and pointlessly goofy to really work well. It makes you nauseous because of the camera work more than because of the story concepts. But, it feels sometimes like there's a sense of continuity between movies like this and, say, Sicario, or even No Country for Old Men, where the entire notion of Existing In Mexico is supposed to be the scariest possible outcome, and I'm not sure it works well in any of those movies. And it definitely doesn't work here; it just feels cheap and stereotypical and lazy. I've seen about 15 minutes of the original movie with Scott Glenn, and I have a feeling that, even though it takes a whole different approach, I will end up liking it more when I see the rest (even if it is stereotypically 80s in quality). Yes Man - Yeah, it was a week for crossing a lot of stuff off the 2000s Haven't-Seen-Yet list. Zooey Deschanel and Jim Carrey seem to actually go together fairly well, if you ignore the fact that Carrey is about 90 and drinks the blood of young children to maintain his vigor; if you can get past that squicky detail, it's not so bad! But it's another rather forgettable comedy of his, and it makes me glad he's off the board as far as major stars go. There really aren't a lot of jokes that hold up ("Haha, gum jobs, hahah! No one knows what those were in 2008! Hahaha, except me, my dad told me about that when I was 14, hahah!"), and there's no clever dialogue or worthwhile insight at any stage to make this more than Just Another Thing in the Theaters for the time. That'll Do, Pig Thumbsucker - Hey, early Mike Mills! This has a couple of genuinely funny moments, but, as schticky as it may seem, I think his oddball narration style in Beginners and 20th Century Women is a valuable tool for him; when he's as straightforward as this, it doesn't always work too well. Granted, that may also be because this was a book adaptation, and I wonder how faithful he tried to keep it. Tilda Swinton is pretty good in it (but when isn't she?), but Vincent D'onofrio is...I don't know, his whole character feels undercooked, like they could have spent another 5 minutes or so in a few places really giving some sense of why their marriage seemed to have the distance it did. There are some good stretches here, but they feel a little too few and far between to hold together and keep some sense of momentum. That, and as far as coming-of-age stuff goes, it's just been done better elsewhere. L' Enfant - Man. The movie this reminds me of the most - and somehow I doubt this is an accident on the part of the Dardennes - is Pickpocket. Ultimately, while I can respect the technical worthiness of both films, they leave me high and dry for the same reason: it's hard to be the least bit empathetic with someone whose life is a series of self-created problems. At least in this instance, there's no narration to bias the proceedings; the camera is, in its own tiny way, relatively agnostic to the events that unfold. But even then, watching someone hop from bad decision to bad decision with no greater governing power than "what feels good right now" is something I couldn't have identified with even when I was the age of these characters. It would have been maddening 20 years ago and it is still today. The rest of it is...fine, I guess, but I didn't care much for Two Days, One Night, either, and neither of these later films have much on Rosetta in terms of conveying power and emotional impact. Yeah, But... Funny Games (2007) - I found myself asking why Haneke remade this after seeing the original, and I'm not sure I have an answer even now. All I can think is that he felt the target audience would be missed if it was a non-English movie, so a remake where he made it "easy" for U.S. audiences to sit through it (as easy as it could be to sit through a movie like this, that is) seems like the only sensible - if decidedly weak - reason. Because, other than the casting and language changes, this is a beat-for-beat, almost shot-for-shot remake of the original: not quite Van Sant Psycho level of fanatical detail, but certainly a case where it seemed like he leaned hard into, "If it isn't broken, don't fix it." And that mostly works, except maybe there's a deeper layer to the remake's existence next to the original, an unintended one, even if it is predictable. And that's that violence truly does desensitize - or, at least, it does when the narrative structure is already familiar. As much as I found myself dreading eventually watching this, it didn't hit the way the original did; perhaps that's because it can only pull off that emotional power play once. Perhaps it's because it's *too* similar, down to settings and camera angles. Perhaps the acting was just a little better in the original (which it probably is). But I wasn't left pondering this much at all afterwards; then again, how much more pondering can you really do after a massive mindfuck like the original has already wormed its way into your consciousness? Why They Make 'Em, Why We Watch 'Em Waltz with Bashir - Oooof. I really didn't think there was much wiggle room for my Best of the 2000s list to take on something else *reeeeally* high up the list, but...here we are. This does, however, more than solve the mystery (for me, at least) of why Flee got nominated for a bunch of things last year but won nothing: because it does borrow a LOT from this movie. And oddly, it's both just as anti-war as this while also being, in many respects, the anti-Waltz with Bashir as well. And I don't know, maybe that rubbed some people the wrong way. But this? Jeeeeeeeeezus. There are so many echoes of other movies, before and after, that felt like this. The recurring "memory" we see is like a golden version of the beach scene in Moonlight, one that both shares that film's sense of brotherhood but also warps it beyond recognition; there's a roadside vista of destruction shot in profile that Denis Villeneuve *had* to have had in mind when making Incendies; and the art style for this, as much as it might immediately remind you of those lame brokerage commercials or A Scanner Darkly, is subtly but deeply evocative of Akira, once you really start studying the faces carefully, particularly in the more carnage-ridden scenes. And the satirical use of pop culture and wry, mocking way it approaches the absurdity of the fog of war would make Alex Cox or Mike Nichols proud. And yet all these wonderful, powerful moments that connect it to other works also connect it to another time and place our 24-hour-news-cycle shitshow culture has forgotten about these past 40 years. How many stories like this do we not even know about from that time? How many will be born out of today's pointless insanity and cruelty in Ukraine? Watch the last shot here - easily one of the 5 most disturbing final shots of a film ever - and ask yourself how many of those scenes are happening daily around the world, and why? And why we find it so easy to forget, to move on to the next thing, to choose sides and label good guys and bad guys in pointless wars? Nobody wins wars; everyone loses them. Just some of those people survive. I think this *just* sneaks into my Top 10 for the 2000s. Sorry, WALL-E.

Legends was always 10 times sillier than the others, so I can't imagine what embracing silliness looks like.

Man, S4 of Flash was...meh. Dibny doing a 93rd-rate Jim Carrey impression for 99% of the season was lame, the bus metas got really rushed at the end, and the Council of Wells was so cringe. Somehow S5 is appreciably worse. Good thing that Jessica Kennedy is adorable enough that I don't care how badly Nora is written. And I can't believe they did the "Fists don't make you strong; friends make you strong" bit during the Daddy Frost episode. Ugh. I'm only watching this so I can follow one of the shows long enough to get to Kevin Conroy as a live action Batman. Should have gone with Legends. Was Supergirl any better than the others (it was the only one I never watched a full season of)? Or did they all just turn to crap after a year or two?

Meaning, he's championship material...

Yep, here we are. Day 490 of Some Stuff by Some Loser, Muddy Composition Edition. ALERT ALERT ALERT - Unforgivable Instance of Film Malpractice, Worst of the 2000s Version A Better Way to Die - Hoooooooo. Boyyyyyyyyy. The puns that rollick off of that title once you subject yourself to the sheer horror of actually sitting through it. "A better way to make movies?" "Diving head-first into a Slip-n-Slide made of razor blades and rubbing alcohol would be a better way to die than the boredom this inflicts?" I could keep going but you really should do yourself the terrible and terrifying disservice of watching this yourself so you know just how SHITTY this is. And the weirdest thing? There's this...hm, I don't know exactly what it is about it. I think it's like you can sense that it's almost pointing itself in the right direction at First Positions for a number of scenes, where it would still be B-movie crap but at least garden-variety crap, and then it falls prey to the old adage of "every plan goes out the window once it meets the enemy"...except the enemy in this case is the director, writer, and star of the film, one Scott Wiper (and clearly he hasn't been wiping well enough). Sure, some of the people involved (Lou Diamond Phillips, Natasha Henstridge) are people you associate with schlock, but Andre Braugher? Joey Pants?? How in the SHIT did Joe Pantoliano have a calendar year or so that saw him star in THE MATRIX, MEMENTO, and THIS?!?!?!? How? How did this get made??? Ugh. We finally have another worthy contender for Worst Film Ever Made, alongside The Crow: Wicked Prayer and Seventh Son. This is a clear Mount Flushmore candidate. I think it keeps itself from being The Actual Worst for the simple fact that there is one legitimately zany shootout in the middle of the movie where it's quite obvious they are trying to play the chaos for laughs, and it does manage to be genuinely funny. So it has exactly one bright spot, which is one more than TC:WP. But GOD everything else about this is the dumbest garbage imaginable. I bet Natasha Henstridge had to have a Personal Splinter Removal Assistant spend a few hours on her after her love scene with wooden-ass Mr. Wiper. Find this on Kanopy, if you hate life and want to throw 100 minutes down the drain, never to return. That'll Do, Pig Maggie - I'm not sure why this has mediocre reviews on IMDb, except that, well, it is kind of mediocre, but I imagine it's largely because this is described like it's going to be a horror movie and it just isn't. It's got a few jump scares and obviously a zombie-adjacent movie has got a little element of creepiness to it, but this is a lot more meditative and considerably slower than maybe some people expected. But, as far as I'm concerned, that kinda works, because we've had enough zombie bullshit for several lifetimes already; it's nice to see someone do something a bit different with it. Abigail Breslin and Joely Richardson are pretty good in it, as are the True Detective Season 1 alum cops who try to make the best of a bad situation. Arnold is...well, he's there, he's not the worst, but you do wonder if someone else would have done something more interesting with the material. Viggo, maybe? It skirts around a lot of different possible outcomes, and just when you start asking yourself why things are going the way they're going, it leads you by the nose right to the ending you expect. But that's not really a bad thing; it's satisfying and well-done in its own way. Still Alice - I'm both surprised and not surprised Julianne Moore won Best Actress for this; it's the kind of role that screams Oscar Bait, but I'm not sure it's her best or the best of 2014, either. But given who they nominated that year, I guess it was her time. There are two things about this I could have done without: Alec Baldwin, who is the worst fake scientist this side of Nicole Kidman (seriously dude, never play a scientist ever again); and the infomercial way that much of the film is presented. But most of the time is spent with Moore and Kristen Stewart, and they're a pretty good pair. You may like this a bit more than I did, but I found much of the first hour to be a bit mawkish, and it wasn't until the false finish that things get genuinely compelling, but then it's just over. Unstoppable - This is to action movies what the premise of The Fault in Our Stars was to sadboi romantic movies: if you couldn't deliver on this layup, what's wrong with you? But, hey, I guess Tony Scott did. The weird thing about this is that, in some ways, it feels a great deal like his prior pile of shit in the Pelham remake, but that could be in part because they're both mostly on trains and have Denzel in them. Also, did Scott have some kind of weird fetish about blinky light board maps? What it doesn't have that dragged Pelham way the Hell down were all the unnecessary cuts and edits or Travolta's hammy-ass bullshit getting in the way. I found myself liking Chris Pine a lot here, but I realized there was a really simple reason for that: he's not actually expected to do any real acting at all, which, hey, maybe that's for the best. This has the good sense to not waste too much of our time on personal drama: it just keeps the focus where it belongs and takes you on the journey. Some of you like this better than I do, but I do have to say this meets the standard of "Tony Scott Had One Good Film Every Decade". Ondine - I didn't really know what I was getting myself into with this until I saw Neil Jordan's name, and then it became kind of exactly what you'd expect him to do, which is nice enough. No matter how absurd or fantastical or impossible the situation his characters find themselves in (and they would get even more fantastical in Byzantium, I suppose), their response to the problem is always so practical: "Well, now what do I do about it, even if this is crazy?" Eventually, this unwinds and turns out not to be crazy at all, but the getting there is decent enough (except for the climax, which is really, really badly shot and just looks like garbage - a rare misstep for Jordan). Colin Farrell is his usual steady self, but the real show stealer is Alison Berry, who plays his daughter. Hardly one of his best movies, but if you like Neil Jordan, you should probably like this. Love Story - Oof. Talk about your alleged classics that aged poorly. 1970 must have been a shit year for movies if this got nominated for Best Picture. It's just...OK. I think the biggest issue is Ryan O'Neal, who is basically awful and not believable or likable in any meaningful way; even his rebelliousness towards his father comes off as him being a massive prick, since Ray Milland plays his role with a lot of sympathy and reservation, such that you can't really feel like he's such a bad guy other than being wealthy. Ali MacGraw is OK, I guess, but the only character I actually bought as real and genuine on any level was John Marley as her father - once again, an older actor doing more with looks and body language and what they're not saying, rather than getting the "meaty" bits from this script. And said script probably seemed a lot punchier back then but now seems melodramatic when it's not being mean-spirited. Kind of strange to think Arthur Hiller directed this. I think I'll take the Douglas Sirk variety of melodrama over this, thanks. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever - I feel like I've been grading Marvel movies on a curve, and this finally pointed that out for me. Aside from Logan, Infinity War, and Into the Spider-Verse, I'm not sure anything associated with Marvel has been capital-G "Great", though the first Black Panther would have been close if not for that awful "sneak into the lab" sequence followed by a third act that was half-"typical Marvel bullshit". They've done a lot of good stuff - and sometimes this is really good! - but I'm wondering if these films wouldn't be so much better off if they didn't have to think about how they rope into some other, larger setting. This very well could have been two separate movies: a 2-hour smash-up with all the action bits, and a 90-minute movie that focused on the character development that had to arise from Boseman's untimely passing. And that this jams all those pieces together ends up doing a disservice to both, because it gets to be a bit unbelievable that Shuri wouldn't well and truly just break altogether, and so the ending is...eh. Lots of you have had issues with some particular details; I have those, plus her remarkable ability to solve her mental state and make a cool-headed decision in a whopping 25 seconds. But my biggest problem with this movie (thus the mention in the header) is how *UGLY* it is, especially in the first half. You can't. See. Shit. And that isn't limited to the underwater stuff where you'd sort of expect that (though Aquaman and James Wan would argue that isn't the least bit necessary). It's just really, REALLY awful lighting and editing and cinematography, and I'm surprised Ryan Coogler let this get released in this kind of shape. It just makes you wonder how necessary all the goddamned CGI truly is, and if some of these bean counters and knob pullers at Disney couldn't try to yank their heads out of their asses and their stock dividends long enough to make a FILM that actually holds up AS A FILM. I think if it weren't for the acting, particularly Winston Duke and particularly particularly Angela Bassett, I might not have liked this at all. But, as I said, it made me rethink a lot of other Marvel stuff, since this is frankly the best movie they did in this "phase", even though I suppose I said at the time that some of the others were better. They weren't and aren't and consider them all retroactively downgraded. This had bigger ideas, bigger goals, more emotional breadth and depth, more to think about, but DAMN does it ever spend a lot of runtime shooting itself in the foot. Why They Make 'Em, Why We Watch 'Em Cleo from 5 to 7 - Why not just jump right in the deep end with Agnes Varda, right? The absolutely stupid intro aside, good GOD does this movie just work. I found myself thinking pretty early on, "Wow, this is really Male Gaze-y", and I had to look it up to realize that phrase wasn't even coined for another TEN YEARS after this came out, and Varda had already given us a near perfect example of it to study. The camera work is wonderful; the reflections and movement and dissociative elements are always wonderfully in service to actually putting us where we're supposed to be, helping us understand. The musical section is crazy with how it's light and zany one minute and explosive and funereal the next, how often Cleo refuses to speak her mind and then does just that even though she's the only one who knows it. And as much as film history is littered with "love letters" to certain times and places, this feels like one of the best examples where the showcase feels earned: I think that's thanks in no small part to the bits that aren't nice at all, like the news radio reporting in the taxi. That one scene probably did more to help me understand France in the 60s than every other film I've ever watched from the period. There's just no wasted anything with this: not the acting, not the script, certainly not the cinematography. And whoever handled the restoration from 10 years ago really outdid themselves. It looks amazing. I always told myself I didn't like French New Wave, but I guess I just didn't like what I'd seen, because THIS is the stuff.

And I thought I was crazy.

Figures that once I burn out yet again on Witcher 3 and get hip-deep in a Fallout 4 playthrough that CDPR announces the next-gen update will be out 12/14. I'm stuck in 2015 this year.