Andrew POE!
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Posts posted by Andrew POE!
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5 hours ago, J.H. said:
But what about DC Cab?
How can you deny yourself a movie starring Mr. T, Gary Busey AND The Barbarian Brothers?
James
Sure I'll watch that too!
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I will likely be watching Wise Guys sooner than later.
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Thanks for enjoying those movie reviews Harry.
Movies today....
Paper Moon (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 5/5 stars
Spoiler"There's just a rainbow around the corner"
Paper Moon is in a long line of movies about the con and those who participate in the con. Arthur Penn's Bonnie & Clyde, George Roy Hill's The Sting, David Mirkin's Heartbreakers, Stephen Frears' The Grifters, Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood and The Coen Brothers' O Brother Where Art Thou? among others all pass through Paper Moon. O Brother Where Art Thou in particular has a lot in common - George Clooney's character in that movie is what Ryan O'Neal's Moze would be if he wanted a relationship with his children. Moze has a possible/maybe/likely kinship with Addie (Tatum O'Neal) that the movie never really answers. It's just known that by the end of the movie, they are both con artists together.
The con starts almost as soon as the movie starts. The movie opens with a closeup of Tatum O'Neal's face - not smiling, but not frowning either. Moze's car arrives in a wide angle shot and one of the first things Moze does as he walks up to the graveside is steal flowers. Moze looks at the coffin of Addie's mother and tells the coffin "I just know your ass is still warm." Upon meeting the group for the funeral, Moze tells them he is a Bible salesman - which was the same career as John Goodman's character in O Brother, Where Art Thou. Moze is begrudgingly given Addie and he seeks to unload her as soon as possible.
Moze and Addie's relationship seems to have an undercurrent of real life hostility between the two actors. When Tatum O'Neal won the Oscar for her role, Ryan O'Neal was rather jealous of her win and had actually punched her. It seems to come almost too easily for Ryan O'Neal to play Moze in this. Tatum O'Neal seems to convey being a precocious and misunderstood child really well - it's easy to sense the heartbreak when Addie is called a boy on account of how she dresses. Tatum's acting is otherworldly great throughout this movie. Moze does his con of selling widows Bibles with their names on it after checking the obituaries in the paper. Eventually, Addie gets involved and actually gets Moze more money than he normally gets.
Along the way, Moze and Addie meet up with Trixie Delight (Madeline Kahn) and Imogene (P.J. Johnson), who are also con artists of a different sort. Trixie uses her charms and her looks to get lonely men like Moze to part with their money. Addie and Imogene use a hotel clerk for Moze catch Trixie and the clerk in the act. The next scene, we see Addie and Moze riding together again with Addie in the front set.
What does Moze and Addie is the encounter with the bootlegger (John Hillerman) and stealing from him; this ends up getting the two in trouble with the sheriff (also played by John Hillerman). They manage to escape and Moze finally gets Addie to the relative at the start of the movie that he telegraphed. Only for Moze and Addie to continue their adventure at the end....
Like the movies mentioned earlier, family and the con game being the only game they know have a lot in common with each other. George Clooney's character in O Brother, Where Art Thou knows of nothing else but being a con in his quest of getting back to his wife and children and 'being bonafide.' The Grifters and Heartbreakers are about multi-generational families of con artists with the sires of the parents (John Cusack and Jennifer Love Hewitt's characters) joining their parents on the con game. There Will Be Blood more closely resembles Paper Moon; Daniel Plainview uses the dubious/possible/likely relationship with H.W. Plainview to buy lands to procure oil, without the end result of the land being dried up being known.
For me, Paper Moon is probably the fastest 1 hour and 40 minute movie I've seen - the scenes just move along and every scene works toward the story. In a lot of ways, the movie is a road trip movie; Addie and Moze are supposed to reach their final destination (the relative's house), but what happens along the way with the pursuit of money for the trip adds to it.
I loved the camerawork and the cinematography used. Bogdanovich uses split diopter shots a few times - one scene in particular had the closeup of a guy being hassled for money by Moze with Moze near the door and further back. There's also a few POV shots as it shows Addie looking at objects in the distance; this happens during the scene where they are chased by the police. Also, when Addie is peering into Trixie's room from a high angle.
Paper Moon is probably one of the most perfect movies ever made. It's bonafide.
American Sniper (Netflix, leaving on 6/21) - 3/5 stars
SpoilerFrom a purely technical level and a performance level, American Sniper is a great movie. Bradley Cooper as Chris Kyle inhabits a character that is from a rural area of the country and is trained from an earlier age in killing targets. Kyle talks infrequently, emotions just as little, and is inspired to become a Navy Seal on 9/11.
It's just when you break everything down about the character and the character's motivations, it comes apart.
Kyle is as patriotic as he is distant. Kyle seems unwilling or unable to let his wife Taya (Sienna Miller) into his world. Kyle as a character is taught at an early age into a set of beliefs that are toxic masculinity from his father: "The world is divided into three things: wolves, sheep, and sheepdogs. I don't want any wolves in my house." As Kyle's father threatens violence and holds a belt up. From the start, Chris Kyle is a damaged person that devotion and duty to the United States cannot save.
Kyle meets Taya in a bar and once he is deployed, he keeps her at arms' length throughout the movie. The audience is also kept at arms' length as far as the character goes too. It's only during the sandstorm after taking down the other sniper does Kyle let down his guard. "I'm coming home," he says on the phone to Taya as he is crying.
The thing with the story of American Sniper is Chris Kyle's continuous tours in Iraq is motivated to take out the Iraqi sniper Mustafa (Sammy Sheik). We never learn that much about him other than Mustafa has a sense of patriotism too (having competed in the Olympics for Iraq) and also has a wife and child. American Sniper could have told an interesting story with the duality of these two characters: both motivated by single minded purpose and both have superior skills in taking out their targets. Kyle in a scene is shown watching a video of an American soldier killed due to Mustafa's handiwork.
The other thing that the story for American Sniper missed out on is the complicated nature of American occupation in Iraq to attempt regime change and how the local civilians feel about that. Instead, of course, the movie does the nameless, faceless approach to Iraqis that movies like Black Hawk Down, The Hurt Locker, and Green Zone did to present a wartorn region like Iraq. We don't learn anything about the region (nor should we expect to). All we know about the movie is the determination Chris Kyle has as part of his deployments.
When Kyle returns, Kyle is experiencing PTSD. He lied to his doctor about it and his wish to 'have done more' while deployed, but it's there throughout the movie. A drill at a car repair shop sets him on edge (reminding him of "The Butcher" that killed people with a drill). A dog on top of a child at a birthday party causes him to grab at the dog and kill it. The abrupt, curt manner he talked to a fellow soldier that had his life saved by Kyle. It's as much what Chris Kyle says as what he doesn't say and as much what Chris Kyle does that he doesn't do. Helping the soldiers at the VA with missing limbs and the soldier that ended up killing him is a way for Chris Kyle to pay penance for what he did and the lack of care of life that he did.
Sienna Miller, who is a great actress, was given very little to do in this movie. Her character is at first resistant to the idea of dating or being involved with someone in the military due to her friends' experiences. This is never presented as a major story issue for the character and never leads much further. Taya as a character complains to Kyle that he's never there even when he's back from overseas. But that's far as it goes. Miller does make the best of what she can, but in the world of patriotic / supportive of the military movies like this where all of the emphasis is on the main character, then it can't be faulted that much.
Which leads to the purpose and aim of this movie. This movie does present itself as an anti-war movie, but it's as close mouthed about it as its lead character is. Chris Kyle doesn't react, but you can sense his emotions when he hears about people in his squad either dying, losing a limb, or never returning. The movie is more angry at Iraq than it is the interventionists policy of the United States; one scene had Kyle finding his brother and his brother being in near tears due to having to be in Iraq.
Throughout the movie, the production and sound design is really incredible; Clint Eastwood as a director tells stories in almost a dry a fashion as possible. In some ways, he's continuing what Don Siegel (his frequent collaborator in the 1970s for movies like Escape From Alcatraz, Dirty Harry, and what I recently saw Coogan's Bluff) did. There isn't anything fancy about the cinematography or the shot selection or how the story is told. It's basic, yet well-made.
Even with character issues and some story issues, American Sniper is a great recent war film.
Elio (saw in the theaters) - 4/5 stars
SpoilerA tale as old as time, Disney movies always have grief about the loss of parents for the main character. Elio (Yonas Kibreab) has the double whammy of losing both his parents and being with his aunt Olga (Zoe Saldana). Olga obviously doesn't understand Elio and he doesn't understand Olga; he reaches out to the stars for a connection to life beyond Earth.
After separating from Olga while she talks with a co-worker, Elio finds an exhibit for the Voyager 1 probe. In a nice tip of the hat to Star Trek, Kate Mulgrew is the exhibit announcer (you can always tell the warmth in her voice when she says "Voyager" and in almost the same tone as her Captain Janeway) as well as the original Star Trek: The Motion Picture where the Voyager 1 probe is swallowed up by the aliens.
Eventually, Olga finds Elio.
For the first 30 minutes or so, this is probably the heaviest Pixar movie since Up (although not full on crying like that movie provoked). The emotions evoked are similar and in a way, this is a bit like Buzz Lightyear's standalone movie but a lot better done. Elio is butting heads with Olga and with other kids at the base for his ham radio club until he gets found and taken away to outer space.
Elio hits its stride with a quite frankly Spielbergian sense of wonder borrowed from E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Elio is shown a world where he is understood and he is accepted. He is believed to be the "leader of Earth" and he meets Glordon (Remy Edgerly). In a way, their relationship is a PG rated version of the relationship between Pamela Pearl and Nicky Marotta from Times Square; they both are misunderstood but they understand each other. (It can be said that Lord Grigon played by Brad Garrett is like an intergalactic version of David Pearl from Times Square). Lord Grigon wants to be part of the council but due to his warmongering he can't.
Although some of the third act had a lot of deus ex machina (including ham radio operators guiding Olga and Elio through the asteroid field and Lord Grigon breaking out of his armor when his son is dying), Elio is probably one of the better Disney movies this year. (And I liked Snow White from this year, which makes me one of the few). It will not reinvent Pixar movies - some of the character and story choices are a bit too safe and lack the individualistic touches that other Pixar directors have - but it's a great effort from Disney/Pixar.
Brain on Fire (Netflix, leaving on 6/21) - 2.5/5 stars
SpoilerBrain On Fire honestly isn't as bad as the Letterboxd average indicates. Chloe Grace Moretz plays Suzanne, a New York Post writer who has an unexplainable illness due to issues in her brain from an autoimmune disorder.
A lot of the aspects of the movie isn't that adventurous with how the story is told although I really liked a section where there's quite a few quick cuts to show the chaotic nature of Suzanne's life. The movie is a bit melodramatic, but Moretz really tried to challenge herself with the role by showing the manic energy, physical issues, and the catatonic state of the character. It somewhat reminded me of Mila Kunis' role in Four Good Days. Moretz isn't known for challenging roles, so having an actor like her stretch herself in a role is a welcome sight.
Carrie Anne Moss as her mother Rhona was a great reliable actor in the role and Richard Armitage as her father Tom was decent (although his English accent did slip through when he got angry).
I'm not sure I agree with the character that an autoimmune disorder on a person's brain explains schizophrenia, bipolar and manic depression and people may have been misdiagnosed. Suzanne's symptoms are too wide ranging and as Dr. Sohel Naijar (Navid Negahban) indicates, those psychiatric disorders wouldn't lead to someone writing a clock the way Suzanne wrote it. Also, it's a bad idea for people to self-diagnose (usually that's done due to income instability and lack of finances).
The elephant in the room with the movie is it's never mentioned how Suzanne and her family was going to pay for her medical bills. In America, people get soul crushing debt for medical bills because according to those running the country, fuck socialism and fuck socialized medicine. The way the medical system is set up in America prevents people that are having to go through something like this from even being able to crawl out of the hole they are in. Suzanne isn't privileged to say the least, so the solution to extreme medical debt is to write a book about it that sells millions of copies to people that vote in politicians that vote against socialized medicine.
Also, some of the dialogue seems 'empty' (can't tell you how many times the parent characters say "we gotta keep looking" as if the doctors weren't doing enough). Jenny Slate's characterization and dialogue seems a bit better earlier on in the movie and Tyler Perry as Richard varies throughout the movie. Naturally, a boss at a publisher like the New York Post would be relentlessly cruel to employees regarding deadlines and Perry's character does a complete 180 once Suzanne returns back at the end of the movie.
Brain On Fire won't set any awards on fire.
River of Grass (Mubi, leaving on 6/30) - 3.5/5 stars
SpoilerIt's crazy that the same director that did Showing Up (and a few other movies I haven't seen yet) did River of Grass. As a movie, River of Grass is more like Malick's Badlands through a Reservoir Dogs / Pulp Fiction filter. It's very much an early 1990s indie film, so the budget aspects are definitely....showing up (sorry, couldn't resist).
Some of the story threads introduced (like with the jazz drummer police detective) doesn't pay off in the end and are left unfulfilled. The majority of the movie is Cozy (Lisa Donaldson) and Lee (Larry Fessenden) going on the run after Lee believed he killed a guy at a pool. This is despite the guy being interviewed by the police and at the Greyhound station.
Cozy's decision to kill Lee and shove him out of the car seems to be driven by a desire not to be around Lee anymore. Cozy finds herself at the end wanting to leave everything behind, but is stuck in traffic. Sooner or later, Cozy would have been found out for murdering Lee and throwing out the gun.
Still, this is a decent effort from Reichardt and seems in line with Steven Soderbergh's works since Soderbergh tends to focus on losers and deadbeats in his films.
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5 minutes ago, HarryArchieGus said:
Blue Jasmine and Irrational Man with Joaquin Phoenix follow VCB and are both excellent additions to his masterful catalog. Maybe take a look at Moses Farrow’s account of the personal story to get some balance. It may help avoid what seems like a pretty clouded judgment and lack of fair objectivity of the Allen catalog. If you’re blindly buying into the Farrow narrative it’s gonna be hard to be objective.
Actually, I wasn't even thinking about the Mia Farrow narrative when I watched VCB or the whole thing with Woody Allen's personal life. I was just thinking about how I felt about the movie versus the rest of his work that I've seen.
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27 minutes ago, HarryArchieGus said:
I like to think I can overlook a bad trailer, but the story of Materialists seems pretty clear in there - a completely homogenized mainstream normy romcom. Potentially very disappointing considering this director Celine Song's last film - the very good Past Lives. Still, I haven't seen it but I have a difficult time believing it's a stronger film than Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which you seemed to have completely missed. It's such a beautifully performed, sexy and fun movie. Penelope Cruz alone is just dynamite. I feel like you put a lot of weight on the story being something that it's not trying to be - all the while overlooking what Cruz, Bardem and Rebecca Hall bring to those well constructed characters. The quantity over quality watch model seems like it makes quieter, more subtle stories more challenging to engage with. Less is more?
Yeah, I tend to struggle when watching movies later at night as far as aspects like that go. It's likely if I watched Materialists at a 9:00 pm showing I would end up with what happened to me and the most recent The Wedding Banquet - essentially falling asleep in the theater and not remembering portions of the movie. I had paid attention enough to Vicky Cristina Barcelona and just wasn't a fan of Bardem/Hall/Johansson's characters. I could just re-watch it before the end of the month. Woody Allen movies to me just vary quality wise; some I connect with like Annie Hall, Interiors, and Hannah And Her Sisters, but some just seem really average to me like Bananas and Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Although his more recent movies after that have a Mendoza line it's failing to hit.
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2 hours ago, Brian Fowler said:
Materialists is the worst movie I've seen in a theater since... Probably the one two punch of Jurassic Park Dominion and Lightyear.
Yet I watched Materalists and liked it enough to give it 5 stars. It sounds like it's a divisive movie.
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Movies today...
Casualties of War (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 4/5 stars
SpoilerIt's interesting how much Michael J. Fox in this movie resembles James Stewart. Stewart throughout his career played characters that a strong sense of morality, principles and humanity, even with characters that weren't necessarily good (like in Vertigo and in Rear Window). Fox portrays very much a James Stewart like character as PFC. Eriksson; Eriksson starts the movie on a train, like the trains found in Hitchcock's The Birds and in Vertigo. The camera opens with the train car as if it is a room with Eriksson barely visible.
As Eriksson falls asleep, his story is recounted.
Contrasting this is Sean Penn as Sgt. Tony Meserve. Penn portrays Meserve as having a DeNiro-like swagger and jadedness. Meserve leads his squad of soldiers including Eriksson to locate a woman and kidnap her (Thuy Thu Le). The reasoning has to do with the death of "Brownie" Brown (Erik King) and Meserve being frustrated at having to follow orders. During the course of this expedition, the soldiers feel they have no choice but to follow what Meserve orders them to do. Eriksson objects to doing so and his sexuality is questioned. Even when returning back, Eriksson encounters resistance for reporting what happened from Captain Hill (Dale Dye, who was the technical advisor on the earlier Platoon). Eriksson finally tells a chaplain what happens; the next scene has investigators taking photos of the dead woman with Captain Hill angry at Eriksson for even daring to break the 'good old boy' system. "The chain of command must be preserved for a murder," Eriksson says sarcastically in a scene earlier.
Eventually, those involved (including John C. Reilly as PFC Hatcher and John Leguizamo as PFC Diaz) are found guilty and sentenced.
Brian De Palma directing a war movie is a bit of an unusual choice. The camerawork and shot selection in this does lend itself to De Palma's strengths, as well as Michael J. Fox as the lead actor. This movie is honestly Fox's best performance; imagine how things would have gone if De Palma and Fox continued to work together. Fox's next movies were Back to the Future series as well as comedies; I could have seen him doing a nostalgic thriller with De Palma that harkens back to Vertigo and Rear Window.
The ending scenes are a bit of another homage to Vertigo; Thuy Thu Le plays the woman on the train that reminds Eriksson of the woman he saw in Vietnam. Eriksson calls out to her in Vietnamese and she responds. "The bad dream is over" as she walks away.
Casualties of War as a movie is a great war movie about Vietnam and is a nice counterpoint to Platoon. Platoon depicts everything being messed up with morality in Vietnam; Casualties of War shows that morality is messed up, but the arc of the universe eventually turns back to justice.
Audition (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 4.5/5 stars
SpoilerHaving finished Audition, I'm not exactly sure what to make of it. So much of it seems to hit all the buttons for Hitchcock and the obsessives of Hitchcock. The initial hour or so gave me a flashback to Vertigo with Shigeharu Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi) searching for a woman to replace his dead wife through 'auditions.' The obsessiveness on his search is like James Stewart's character searching for a woman like Kim Novak's character. The difference being his former wife doesn't look anything like the female object of his pursuit named Asami (Eihi Shiina)
What hits the buttons for the obsessives of Hitchcock include Brian De Palma. Like De Palma, Takashi Miike has the camera function in a voyeuristic fashion; one scene in particular is when the camera watches the housekeeper leave and then the camera goes up the stairs into Aoyama's house. The camera stops at the whiskey bottle before the scene ends.
Another obsessive of Hitchcock that plays a factor in Audition is Dario Argento. The restaurant scenes with the glass walls reminded me a lot of Argento's The Bird With The Crystal Plummage. In fact, a lot of the characteristics of Asami is in line with Italian horror. The movie makes it seem as though someone or something is pursuing Asami as Aoyama tries to retrace where she was or what she was doing. The truth is though....Asami was the one luring Aoyama into a trap.
The movie seems to make a statement about the uniquely Japanese phenomenon of the standards of women in the culture. In a lot of ways, this movie wouldn't work in the United States at all. Sure, Hollywood would look excitedly at women auditioning for a part in a movie and the rapid sequence as Aoyama and his partner Yasuhisa Yoshikawa (Jun Kunimura) are interviewing the women, but that's where it ends. The cultural norms of the United States would likely prevent some of what's shown from happening (especially the child abuse that Asami endures).
What really is hard to follow in the movie is the last 30 minutes or so. We never hear the truth from Asami's own lips as to what it is. We don't know how much of it is Aoyama remembering what really happened, imagining what happened, or presuming what happened. Asami's own life even as we see it on the screen isn't completely real. Was she actually injured when she was younger? Or did the injuries happen recently? Did she kill the guy at the abandoned dance studio or was that imagined? Were there two different stories about herself that she told Aoyama? At times, I wondered if Asami was even a real person...her characterization is one of a Succubus than an actual woman. The creepy yet painful sounding neck twist after falling down the stairs makes me wonder if she was about to get up and kill Aoyama's son Shigehiko (Tetsu Sawaki).
Audition doesn't answer any of those questions....it's more Lynchian than anything else. The ending scenes confirms that with Asami talking, despite being seemingly dead. She repeats the phrases she said to Aoyama on one of their dates.
Even then, Takashi Miike plays with the conventions of dramas and of thrillers and inverts the "Hitchcock Blonde." Asami is not a 'damsel in distress.' She's not looking for Aoyama to save her. Aoyama is the one that needs saving at the end of the movie.
Don't Be A Dick About It (Mubi, leaving on 6/30) - 1/5 star
SpoilerI guess I'll have to be a dick about it.
First off, I have no issue with documentaries that present people having autism. For almost all of those, the filmmakers attempt to present the complexities of the people with autism on their terms and help those who don't have autism come away with an understanding of the person.
With Don't Be A Dick About It, so much of it is wasted motions and seems to be 'let's setup a camera and watch Peter re-enact Survivor episodes." The documentary is about his relationship with his brother (who may also be autistic too), but I never felt a connection to the material or to the documentary. I felt like I was wasting my time.
Peter through many minutes spent in the world of Survivor (whether watching it or re-enacting it and then telling family members/friends/unknown people they are voted off), comes across a bit mean-spirited. So much of his demeanor honestly rubbed me the wrong way and I came away feeling as though "I wouldn't hang out with this person or even want to be related to him." The chief example is the scene where he talks to the kids smoking out of a bong in the house and then wants to touch the bong. His father gets mad at the kids and doesn't like the fact they did this, while Peter laughs away and acts innocent (despite earlier expressing curiosity about what they are doing). I get it - this is how he understands the world. His brother has a relationship with him on account of being related to each other. Peter did start the early part of the documentary going on a subway and working at an arena for crew at Washington Wizards.
While watching it, I felt a bit of panic as an adult. "I remember going on a subway for the first time and I felt uncomfortable then too. Is this what it's like?"
The last five minutes were a bit redemptive for this movie with the song "Cheerios" and the two brothers telling each other what they're favorite things about each other are.
But to conclude this, I apologize that I have to give this 1 star. The documentary's heart is in the right place, just not sure that I liked it.
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Movies today...not as much as usual due to having to go into the office for work.
Platoon (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 4.5/5 stars
SpoilerPlatoon as a movie is oppressively bleak. The movie starts with Chris (Charlie Sheen) arriving at a base in Vietnam, just as bodies are leaving to be taken away. There's no respect for the dead; the soldiers throwing them are disgusted at having to do so and whatever idea of humanity is out the window. Barber's "Adagio For Strings" plays throughout the movie and adds to the funeral atmosphere. Platoon just shows the body count and, in a way, we become numb to it.
As Chris moves through the movie, he as a character isn't regarded as human being either. As is said early on, "They don't bother to learn your name in the first few weeks." The people serving with him aren't any better. Chris gets asked why he's there. "I volunteered, dropped out of college, I wasn't learning anything." Those that are, as Chris says, "With guys nobody really cares about. They come from the end of the line, most of them, small towns you never heard of. [...] Two years' high school's about it. Maybe if they're lucky, a job waiting for them back in a factory. But most of 'em got nothing. They're poor. They're the unwanted. Yet they're fighting for our society and for our freedom. It's weird, isn't it?"
This dichotomy of the rich and the poor shows up in another scene - "the rich will always screw you over. Always," said by King (Keith David). Even within the dichotomy, there's an element of further division. Black soldiers like King and Big Harold (Forest Whitaker) and Junior (Reggie Johnson) are regarded as 'lesser than' by Sgt. O'Neill (John C. McGinley) and especially Sgt. Barnes (Tom Berenger).
Sgt. Barnes is both scarred mentally and physically; he fights for control with Sgt. Elias (Willem DeFoe). The scene where Barnes guns down Elias is fraught and intense; the camera switches back and forth as it zooms in on their eyes before Barnes shoots him. It's only justifiable in a way for Chris to do the same to Barnes towards the end of the movie. As Chris narrates towards the end, "we did not fight the enemy, we fought ourselves."
With Platoon, Oliver Stone did what Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza tried to do with Warfare and present a realistic experience of warfare in Vietnam. We get the sense of who the characters are; the scene where Chris discovers the room where soldiers are smoking weed and dancing (set to "White Rabbit" nonetheless) is appropo. War isn't a place where people are supposed to 'feel good' about anything. The character moments are small, but throughout the movie, we sense the mounting frustration and fruitlessness they are experiencing.
There's much in the way of 'plot' or character arcs, but that's the point. As Chris said about going back to the same area the next day, "it's like we're going back to the scene of the crime." The soldiers gun down and torch a village because they can and they've picked the defenseless villagers as a target. Even Chris isn't immune from the hopelessness in those scenes; he has a one-legged villager jumping up and down as he fires at the ground. Chris later breaks down after realizing what he's done.
Discussion of Platoon cannot exclude the famous poster image as Willem DeFoe's character survives and just throws his hands into the air; the helicopters circling around and finally just flying away. Chris and Barnes exchange glances and, without speaking, Chris knows that Barnes killed Elias.
The cinematography throughout the movie is incredible; it's quiet and eerie and really presents the feeling of the soldiers being trapped in a jungle without coming up for air. Editing is also really great; scenes never out stay their welcome. A lot of the themes in Platoon stayed with Oliver Stone throughout his career and with his later movies about the mistrust of the US government. The US government in Platoon sends the soldiers off, as if it's a meatgrinder. "Eventually we get tired of winning too much," says O'Neill at one point in the movie.
Platoon is a standard in war films.
Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 3/5 stars
SpoilerCompared to other Woody Allen movies I've seen, Vicky Cristina Barcelona is more saved by the actors involved than the character work or the storytelling. The constant narration is a bit oft-putting; it feels like a combination of Arrested Development and The Royal Tennebaums and is more matter of factly than anything humorous. Some of the narration leaves the mystery of the story out and spells it out too much what is going on. I was halfway expecting the narrator to be a character that sees Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) from a distance at the end of the movie.
As it is, both Vicky and Cristina even as main characters are a bit too handcuffed. Vicky is repulsed, yet drawn unexpectedly to Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem). Cristina is drawn completely to him from the start. It's hard to take seriously or not sense danger from Juan Antonio's initial scenes with the two characters. He tells them he wants to dine, show them a sculpture and hope to sleep with both of them. Vicky's reaction would be a normal, rational reaction; in other movies, Juan Antonio would be pegged as a manipulative and yet psychotic character. With this, he seems almost faultless because of the relationship he has with his ex-wife Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz).
What makes Vicky Cristina Barcelona work as a movie is not the soap operaish writing and acting, but Penelope Cruz as Maria Elena. Maria Elena as a character is volcanic, but yet is truly talented. It seems to be a bit of a counterpoint to Julie Taymor's Frida with Salma Hayek. Maria Elena as a charcter reacts to Cristina and Juan Antonio and most of what works is how Cruz acts in scenes.
The movie eventually resolves itself to where Vicky has 'one last fling' with Juan Antonio who shows her his artwork - it does create a question that's similar to Tim Burton's Big Eyes - is Juan Antonio taking credit for Maria Elena's painted works? We do see Juan Antonio painting but he seems less in control of what he does versus Maria Elena and her artwork. Anyway, Maria Elena appears with a gun and Vicky realizes at this point what a mistake she made.
As I mentioned, the character work and the storytelling isn't as good. Vicky as a character is a fool; for her intellect and rationality, she seems more likely to make mistakes and screw up a good thing she has with her financee (a common Woody Allen trait apparently). I almost wonder if Cristina was written the way she was so that Woody Allen could fantasize about Scarlett Johnasson being in a bed naked. Her character arc is no different than when she started with the movie. The ending has the two characters being literally right where they started; the difference being that Vicky is now married.
Still, despite the formulaic approach and some character/story issues, Vicky Cristina Barcelona is a slightly average romantic comedy/drama.
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1 hour ago, Technico Support said:
Keep that kind of talk quiet. Some useless studio exec will start dreaming up a musician shared universe series of films. Do we need Rami Malek playing Freddie Mercury again? We do not.
If it includes John C. Reilly as Dewey Cox, I'm fine with it.
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2 hours ago, Dolfan in NYC said:
This is the teaser for the Springsteen biopic starring Jeremy Allen White
Can't wait for the crossover movie where Bruce meets Bob Dylan (played by Timothee Chalamet of course).
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3 hours ago, Control said:
Trump would have been in his 20s when Mailer ran for mayor, no?
I need to check this out. TOWN BLOODY HALL, which was previously on the Criterion Channel, is a pretty entertaining Mailer documentary, focusing on his “debate” with a handful of prominent feminists. They mostly eat his lunch.
Yeah, Trump was in his 20s when Mailer ran.
Town Bloody Hall is still on Criterion Channel now. I don't know when Norman Mailer vs. Fun City is leaving Criterion Channel, but considering the rest of the Fun City collection is leaving this month, it's likely to be next month.
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Movies today....a few more short films compared to usual.
Tongues Untied (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 4.5/5 stars
SpoilerPart theater, part poetry, part performance art, part documentary, part musical performance, part ASMR, Tongues Untied is so unique that it's virtually undefinable. There's a lot of standout moments in the less than an hour runtime. Men recounting their experiences growing up with white men saying racist phrases in close up of their mouths. A doo wop performance juxtaposed with footage of a march. Someone recounting a feeling of loss in a city like San Francisco while footage of him walking down the street and standing on street corners. Footage of the civil rights marches shown after footage of gay rights marches.
I wouldn't be able to have an understanding of Marlon Riggs and others involved and their experiences, but that's fine. The end result is a great piece of filmmaking.
Q (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 4/5 stars
SpoilerBeautiful cinematography throughout this documentary although it's a tad difficult to follow what the filmmaker Jude Chehab is trying to state in the movie. It's very likely to do with her family's complicated feelings and history with an all female Muslim sect the Qubaysiyat in Syria. What makes it complicated for them is it's not a black and white issue; the leader of the sect had an impact upon Jude's mother and grandmother and their lives in positive ways but also in negative ways too. Towards the end, when the Anisa (the leader of the sect) has died, Hiba laments the years spent but doesn't want to talk about it either.
Interspersed within the present day documentary is also family footage of Jude receiving her hijab and her childhood.
With Q, it's a beautiful yet sad documentary about the influence that other people can have on a person. The documentary doesn't present Islam negatively, but does present that other people acting as teachers in the religion can be negatively. Freedom from their influence can be both liberating and utterly transformative and heartbreaking too.
The documentary somewhat reminded me of The Seed of the Sacred Fig, although that was shot in Iran. This is shot in Syria and in America.
Q is worth checking out.
Will-o'-the-Wisp (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 2/5 stars
SpoilerWith this being my first exposure to Joao Pedro Rodrigues as a director, this movie is trying to fit with Claire Denis' Beau Travail, Fassbinder's Querelle and Derek Jarman's filmography but is a bit slim on the story. An aristocrat named Alfredo (Mauro Costa) decides to become a fireman in a few midrange shots that involve the doors opening and closing at dinner, spread a few years apart. The movie opens in 2069 as Alfredo is dying.
Alfredo meets a fellow fireman named Alfonso (Andre Cabral) and they fall in love.
The movie is a bit trippy to watch; there's an extended dance sequence, Alfredo and Alfonso jerk each other off in the woods, and there's a long scene where Alfredo stares at slideshow of male genital. I can't tell honestly how much of this is just trying to be absurdist comedy in the spirit of Bunuel. There's a lot that just doesn't make sense to me and a lot of the scenes just fall flat for me.
I will say that the movie is beautifully shot though and the dance sequence was the best part.
Norman Mailer vs Fun City (Criterion Channel) - 3.5/5 stars
SpoilerHaving someone like Donald Trump as United States President, it's crazy that a writer and journalist (who got his bachelor's degree at Harvard no less and actually served in the military!) named Norman Mailer was spouting similar ideas to Trump before Trump was a mattress stain on his dad's bed.
Mailer does the same sort of playbook: blame other people for getting more to give his supporters an enemy, say outrageous things about his opponents that ends up getting published, and having ridiculous ideas without even a plan (or "concepts of a plan"). His idea for 200 story housing with a bridge made out of Legos looks like something out of Blade Runner. He wants to have New York City become the 51st State too (the logistics behind both plans are really never discussed or thought out, other than letting people in Harlem have their own sanitation department and control over their police force for example).
The documentary covers the rough and tumble campaign that Mailer and his running mate Jimmy Breslin as they go around the city to get out the vote and hear from people who really aren't sure having these two running the city is a good idea.
Mailer and Breslin don't win and only get 5% of the vote.
Mailer would have been better than Eric Adams and wouldn't have been indicted while he was mayor! Not sure I would want to live in a 200 story apartment building though.
Autobiographical Scene Number 6882 (Mubi, leaving on 6/30) - 3/5 stars
SpoilerThis short film is accurate to what I know of male friends I have. The lure of the line between suicide and risk taking is too strong. Ruben Ostlund is able to depict how someone is suggested to do something, gets told it's dangerous and not to do it, the others around him realize it's a terrible idea, but he does it anyway.
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58 minutes ago, HarryArchieGus said:
Thank You! I appreciate this - the first review I've ever read of Left Behind. You've got me intrigued. Also, I sense something about Reservoir Dogs triggered an emotional response that clouded your judgement. Those characters are some of the best written and most memorable gangsters I've ever seen on film. Michael Madsen in particular feels like a huge star. Further, they stretched every dollar they had on that film and the result to my eyes/ears is a perfect film. IMO it's 2nd only to Pulp Fiction in the Tarantino catalog.
Yeah, it was honestly the first 30 minutes or so of Reservoir Dogs and having the characters dropping the 'n-word' left and right. Even when I divorced myself from that, I found myself not liking Reservoir Dogs as much. So far, I don't like that aspect of Tarantino's character writing. Almost all the films after Pulp Fiction though, he hasn't done that (or as noticeable). (I haven't seen Django and I'm fairly sure he does it there too).
I didn't have the same reaction to Reservoir Dogs as I did to Mallrats; I found Mallrats disappointing to watch.
EDIT: Oh and if you value your time and your life, don't watch Left Behind (2000). It's really that bad.
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September Criterion Collection releases got announced. They include:
- Flow
- Born in Flames
- Read My Lips
- The Beat That My Heart Skipped
- This Is Spinal Tap 4K (finally no longer in OOS)
- High And Low 4K
- Isle of Dogs
- The French Dispatch
Isle of Dogs and The French Dispath are individual releases and also part of the Wes Anderson box set for a kidney / $500.
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2 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:
Now I'm wondering if you've seen the Kill Bill films because this immediately reminded me of "My name is Buck and I like to fuck" -- after considering "somebody actually named somebody that in a movie?! And it wasn't Tarantino so they couldn't get away with it."
Yeah, it's too easy of a joke too. "My name is Buck Williams and I fuck millions!"
Christians are weird.
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3 hours ago, odessasteps said:
Yeah, I haven't seen what's in the spoiler yet. I also didn't take notes while watching the movie. I should probably watch every movie referenced in Pulp Fiction. Sometimes I'm really good at analyzing a movie and other times I miss the boat on my analysis.
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Movies today....finally saw ones that have been requested from me to see.
Pulp Fiction ("When are you going to watch Pulp Fiction?") - 5/5 stars
SpoilerCompared to the earlier Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction is a better movie on every level. The writing of the characters is better, the direction in general is better, and the story that's presented is better.
What made Reservoir Dogs a lesser effort is the characters are caricatures. With this, the characters reveal themselves not only in words but in actions. There's also so many ideas and situations that can spring from just this movie alone.
Vincent Vega (John Travolta) won't take advantage of his boss' wife Mia (Uma Thurman) as they go to a themed restaurant and resolves to just leave after dropping her off; in other movies, the sexual tension between the two would be fulfilled (notice how seductively Mia has a cherry in her mouth while looking at Vincent; you can guess what she really wants). This is primarily due to what happened to a man who gave Mia a foot massage, but the truth is a bit different. Butch (Bruce Willis) is given a choice to leave Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames) and getting out of there, but he chooses to stay and help Wallace as he kills the pawnshop owner and leaves the security guard for Wallace. In other movies, there would be a showdown between Wallace and Butch after this. (Part of me wished that Bruce Willis decided to do samurai movies after this instead of his "Made for streaming / Made for Blu Ray" movies, but he did what he wanted). Julius (Samuel L. Jackson) could have chosen to kill Ringo (Tim Roth) and Yolanda (Amanda Plummer) in the restaurant, but chose to let them live.
Which dives in the nature of the characters further - the characters are at their face not redemptive characters or even good people. The movie doesn't pretend that these characters will receive a full character arc or anything close to it - but in small ways, they change. Julius desires not to be a hitman/gangster for Marcellus any more. Marcellus spares Butch on account of Butch's kindness. Vincent experiences a change after Mia almost dies from a drug overdose, only for Vincent to be gunned down by Butch. The would-be robbers at the start, Yolanda and Ringo, cut their losses and leave. Walter (Harvey Keitel) seems to exist as a person who doesn't feel the need to change, but doesn't need to.
The other aspects that have been covered a lot from professional critics is the expanse of cinematic techniques and references employed in the movie. The briefcase is like the car trunk from Repo Man or the Ark of the Covenant from Raiders of the Lost Ark. We the audience never see what is contained in the briefcase. The famous dance scene with Travolta and Thurman calls back to other movies where Travolta dances (like Saturday Night Fever) but is connected to Godard's A Band of Outsiders. Butch's flashback to meeting Captain Koons (Christopher Walken) is out of Fellini's 8 1/2, where the adult character remembers his childhood.
The musical needledrops are excellent and fit the scenes. Having "You Never Can Tell" during the dance scene gives a bit of a romantic interplay between Mia and Vincent that's never consummated. "Son of a Preacher Man" when Vincent walks in to the apartment is Mia's way of telling Vincent something without expressing it (attraction, love, intrigue, take your pick). Mia choosing "Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon" and singing along with it has Mia acknowledging that Vincent and Mia's relationship isn't a good thing for either of them and she realizes that's as far as it will go. Using "Misirlou" at the start and later "Rumble" gives Pulp Fiction a nervous tension and kinetic energy that links to Morricone's soundtracks for Sergio Leone's Westerns.
Tarantino's skill as a director is really on display in Pulp Fiction. There were points toward the middle of the movie where it dragged a bit (mainly during the scenes with Bruce Willis at the hotel), but there isn't a weak portion to the movie. Although having Tarantino self-insert as a character who then says the 'n-word' repeatedly is a bit much, but not to the same level as that being done in Reservoir Dogs.
Pulp Fiction is a classic.
Left Behind: The Movie ("HarryArchieGus: You watch everything, when you are going to watch this?") - 1/2 / 5 stars
SpoilerI got dared to watch this.
I knew about the book series having gone to evangelical churches and going to a Southern Baptist Church (yuck on Southern Baptists and their recent efforts to overturn gay marriage). The people behind the book series are psychopaths who essentially wrote books that are lunacy to read.
The movie just is boring to watch. Direction is mildly terrible, cinematography has a darken blue light to the scenes everywhere (that's mildly annoying), and Kirk Cameron as Buck Williams is so bland as an actor I don't feel hatred or anything. The opening scenes had some of the worst special effects I've ever seen (like I can't tell where the planes are shooting). Acting is hollow throughout the movie.
The airplane scenes are strangely comical, but having seen Airplane numerous times, it's difficult to take seriously. I half way expected Kirk Cameron's character to be the one to land the plane like Ted Striker did. Maybe people's disappearances on the plane is due to they having the fish or the beef? I imagine the air traffic controller office had someone saying, "I picked the wrong day to quit drinking." I guess if they lost the pilots, Buck Williams would be piloting. "Our only hope is to build this man up. We gotta give him all the confidence we can. Williams, have you ever flown multi-engine planes before?" "No, never." "Shit! This is a goddamn waste of time! There's no way he can land this plane!"
The only decent scenes were towards the end with Nicolae Carpathia (Gordon Currie) shooting two people and convincing everyone else in the room that he didn't do it. Currie despite the hokey Count Dracula accent is pretty compelling to watch (in a Syfy Channel / Canadian television programming sort of way). Brad Johnson as Rayford Steele has no emotion at all with his acting and is really wooden in his line reading.
I kept yelling at my screen every time Kirk Cameron called Islam practitioners "Arabs." Arabs live in a region, anyone can follow Islam regardless of region. (Just watch Spike Lee's Malcolm X if you're needing help with that, Kirk).
This movie was made by humans in 2000 and they thought that it was releasable.
Dark Water (2002) (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 3.5/5 stars
SpoilerDark Water in a way is more Roman Polanski coded than other films in Hideo Nakata's filmography. The movie is concerned with a newly divorced woman named Yoshimi Matsubara (Hitomi Kuroki) and her daughter Ikuko (Rio Kanno). In some ways, the concept of divorce is almost cultural specific; American courts would be a bit more dramatic in comparison, so it's a bit harder to imagine Yoshimi losing custody of her child.
The apartment building and the water in the apartment above Yoshimi and Ikuko is the source of terror; in a way, this would fit neatly with Repulsion and The Tenant in Polanski's Apartment Trilogy. The apartment management is seemingly oblivious to the issues being reported until the apartment above them is opened to find the water source. Yet, that doesn't end the issues for Yoshimi. Mitsuko Kawai (Mirei Oguchi) continues to haunt Yoshimi until eventually Yoshimi claims the ghost spirit as her child and disappears. The scene where the elevator doors open with a deluge of water calls to mind Kubrick's The Shining in a similar scene from that movie.
For the most part, Dark Water is less scary than Ring and more psychological and sad as a movie. The ending with the 16 year old Ikuko (Asami Mizukawa) is especially sad as the two have 'one last conversation' before Yoshimi disappears forever - basically like the ending to The Shining where Jack Torrence shows up in a picture from the Overlook Hotel.
Dark Water is an above average Japanese horror movie.
Fit Model (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 4/5 stars
SpoilerAn amazing short film that tells just as much as some feature length films. Lucy Owen as Lu has to deal with not being regarded as a person in a fashion showcase while dealing with a wound that doesn't heal from a car accident with her as a pedestrian. It seems telling that just trying to make in New York City would lead to get hitting by a car while standing on a sidewalk (although the claim number she starts to tell the insurance company doesn't sound like a real claim number....).
For 30 to 40 year olds doing acting in a place like NYC, it's difficult. Some people are more luckier, prettier, skinnier, and have the right connections versus a character like Lu. For something as image focused as acting, having a hole in a sweater at an audition or dealing with a wound and bandages while trying on clothes and an idiot designer not remembering to write a check is a nightmare.
Nettles (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 3/5 stars
SpoilerInteresting vignettes for each body part on a woman. The first one is a bit harrowing. The second one was excellently shot. I didn't care for the fifth one that much due to the treatment of the characters.
Lamb (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 3/5 stars
SpoilerThis was fascinating - Lamb resembles in some ways freestyle wrestling with Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) thrown in before that was popular. It's part dance, part wrestling, part competition, part superstition.
There was one guy with an oversized gut that I wanted to see how he would do competing; he looks like he could block most attacks and do takedowns, but probably would get winded a bit. That wasn't to be.
I loved the dual narrator format of the documentary short.
Iba N'Diaye (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 2.5/5 stars
SpoilerSomewhat dry short film that's basically an interview with Iba N'Diaye. We rarely see his creative process at work or his creating a painting; he seems taken aback that he's having to be asked about what he was thinking when he created his paintings.
Some of his paintings I can't make heads or tails of what is being depicted.
Negative Two (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 3/5 stars
SpoilerInteresting short film that's basically two people speaking out loud their text messages to each other. Incredible shots of NYC and I loved the tracking shot of one of the actors walking down the street. There's something simple and pure about using a handheld camera for that.
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Movies today....
The Fog of War (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 4/5 stars
SpoilerWatching The Fog of War in 2025 and separated by over 30 years from the Vietnam War, it's interesting that the United States went from Robert McNamara, who had gotten degrees from Berkeley in economics and Harvard Business School for a MBA, to our current Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who gotten a degree in politics at Princeton, is homophobic, an alcoholic, and a propagandist on FOX News before his current position. McNamara was called unqualified at the time to be Secretary of Defense, but look at who has the job now. One chilling scene was McNamara talking about the protests outside the Pentagon and how he gave the Army guns but "wouldn't order them to load bullets into the guns." Nowadays, Hegseth would have given them guns, ordered them to load bullets, and order them to shoot the protestors (it sounds extreme, but given the current government not out of the realm of possibility).
With that said, the documentary seems to function as a way for McNamara to exonerate himself for his actions in Vietnam and justify what happened (or didn't happen) during the war in Vietnam. I thought it was telling that McNamara talks about the usage of "Agent Orange" while claiming to have never authorized its usage. The question then becomes, "Who came up with the idea of using 'Agent Orange' if McNamara didn't approve it?"
What I found interesting is that McNamara was more upset and distraught over John F. Kennedy's death than anything else. Yet, the destruction of the Japanese people with bombing their homes and businesses and the destruction of Vietnamese allies and their soldiers don't warrant any regret or sadness; those are just numbers on a report that McNamara uses. He analyzes the situation the same way he analyzes car safety at Ford; he concludes to have seat belts in cars and wants to have 'better packaging' for people driving Ford cars. The business and analysis of war is not the same as the business and analysis of car manufacturing, although lessen death is a motivation.
There are some issues with the documentary however. A lot of the pacing and narrative is a bit scattershot; this is due to the subject being a bit scattershot in telling his story. If the documentary was simply McNamara speaking, it wouldn't have been interesting. The fact that there was usage of archival footage, newsreels, press footage, and still photography kept the documentary interesting and engaging.
Also, it would have to be said but Errol Morris isn't interested in presenting Robert McNamara as being "right." McNamara did push back on a few questions and didn't want to respond to some of them. His responses shows more of a willingness to answer the way he wants to answer it.
The Fog of War is a decent documentary that won't present new light on Vietnam War or on Robert McNamara.
The Boys From Brazil (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 2/5 stars
SpoilerThe Boys From Brazil with its cast would be thought of as an acting tour de force. You have Gregory Peck, Laurence Olivier and James Mason along with Lilli Palmer and the highly influential theatre actor Uta Hagen as well as up and comers like Steven Guttenberg.
The movie functions in parallel - Dr. Josef Mengele (Peck) is being tracked by Barry Kohler (Guttenberg) in Paraguay who has secretly photographed their arrivals. Kohler attempts to call Ezra Lieberman (Olivier), who completely dismisses what Kohler said, not to mention acted annoyed that Kohler would track movements of Nazis in Paraguay. Then, when Kohler is able to record proof of what Dr. Mengele is doing in a secret meeting before Kohler is killed, Lieberman asks questions and delays Kohler.
The maxim of "good people allows evil people to flourish when good people do nothing" should probably be changed to "good people out of sheer incompetence lets evil people to flourish."
The plot of the movie is nearly hopeless throughout the entire movie; Mengele is able to exact his plans of murdering fathers aged 65 with 14 year old boys that have eerie blue eyes and dark hair. Lieberman, even when it is broken down and explained to him, still doesn't get it and is more fixated on other things. You want him to succeed, but at the same time, you just want him to fail because how annoying he is about the whole thing. There was something I read from a book about film school that said that characters in a movie aren't truly evil and there's an aspect to the character that makes the person human; in this, there's elements of humanity in Peck's portrayal of Mengele that makes him human and even sympathetic. It's apparent in the Saboteur-like scene where Mengele finds out the plans he advised to do had been cancelled and he attacks one of the would-be assassins.
Towards the end of the movie, Peck and Olivier finally have their "Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in Heat" meet up moment. From an acting standpoint, do they discuss their motivations and how one will prevent the other from completing their objective? Nope, no such acting showcases occur. Instead, it's action movie stunts as Mengele fires a gun at Lieberman and then they tussle for the gun before Mengele gets mauled by dogs. The son of the target comes in and Mengele lies to him before the son finds his father dead and orders the dogs to kill Mengele. That meet up between the two characters, that the rest of the movie has been building towards, is wasted on silent acting and camera shots of them looking at the door while Mengele lays out his plan.
Lieberman eventually is saved as the son calls the police. The final scenes are even more infuriating; Lieberman could have given the list over so that the boys could be killed. Nope, he essentially protects the secret and burns up the letter.
Despite some terrible character and story choices, Franklin Schaffner directs an average movie. There are points where the movie is at its strongest; Guttenberg was the best part of the movie with his enthusiasm and the spy work he did to record the meeting. Olivier, Peck, and Mason seemed a bit wasted in their roles; I did like Uta Hagen in her scene where she met with Olivier's character and essentially revealed everything. The drawback with everything is the first act was quite strong only for the second act to fizzle and the third act to fall with a thud.
For the most part, The Boys From Brazil is a disappointment to watch.
Urban Rashomon (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 3/5 stars
Spoiler"Everyone is selfish and dishonest." -Rashomon
How much of this is a documentary about a photographer finding a subject in the streets and how much of this is exploitation of that subject is not known. Khalik Allah narrates this documentary short as he finds a person named "Frenchy" and begins photographing him; he also buys illegal drugs for the person.
Yet judging Khalik Allah makes someone just as bad as he is.
Antonyms of Beauty (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 2.5/5 stars
SpoilerHaving seen Antonyms of Beauty immediately after Urban Rashomon, I think it can be definitely said that Khalik Allah isn't exploitive of Frenchie. There is some problematic conversations and beliefs that Khalik shares with Frenchie. Frenchie has more of an universal view of everything which is a bit undefined. This is more a collection of still photography and recorded videos than a defined narrative. A song from Nas is played, Khalik has a conversation with a fellow Five Percent Nation of Islam member (which for non-practitioners like myself took a bit of time to figure what they were doing with the coded language) and Khalik disparages a transgendered woman after taking her picture/video.
The Life of Chuck (saw in the theaters) - 4.5/5 stars
Spoiler"The waiting is the hardest part
Every day you get one more yard
You take it on faith, you take it to the heart
The waiting is the hardest part" -Tom Petty, "The Waiting"The Life of Chuck is a deceptive movie. It starts at the end, the final act. We see a group of characters go through a tremendous tragic event in human history - first, it was a 9.1 earthquake that took out a large chunk of California. Then, it was losing Wifi. Losing cable TV. Losing mobile phone service. Unexplained phenomenon started happening everywhere. Banners and graffiti and signs saying the same thing: "Charles Krantz, 39 Great Years! Thanks Chuck!" Who is Chuck? Is he a television personality? Is he a cosmic entity? Those that the characters Marty (Chiwetel Ejiotor) encounter as he searches for clues remark about his agelessness. "How can he work 39 years at a TV station? He doesn't look a day over 40!"
The movie has an enigma that's part Stephen King's The Stand, part The Truman Show. This portion almost feels like a metaphor of the second Trump term: we are waiting for a tragic, catastrophic event to happen and slowly it does. Tariffs cause prices to rise, stock markets to crater, jobs to be lost, hundreds of thousands no longer having a meaningful life because of a bunch of college kids with access to computer systems deciding they should be fired. Getting back to the movie, eventually, all the power cuts out in the world until we see Chuck reflected in every window in a suburban neighborhood. Marty reunites with Felicia (Karen Gillian). Chuck (Tom Hiddleston) is sitting in a bed as the heartbeat monitor beeps the end. Marty begins to tell Felicia he loves her, but it abruptly cuts to black, like the ending to The Sopranos.
As we move into Act II and then Act I, it's clear that what we saw may not have happened. Chuck remembers having learned to dance in his younger days. With this there's a message: don't forget the thing you are passionate about, even as you've grown older. For Chuck, it's dance. For me, it's acting. It made me reflect upon the training in acting I had gotten in middle and high school and doing improv comedy in high school with a guy that became a professional actor. For others, it's painting, it's theater, it's art, it's singing, it's playing the drums, it's playing the guitar, it's playing the piano. Chuck is told by his grandfather Albie (Mark Hamill) that he should take advantage of using mathematics. "What's doing the waltz anyway? 1...2....3." The biggest tragedy of Chuck's life isn't that he died at an early age of 39, but that there was so much he didn't get to do.
Act I shows the tragic beginnings of Chuck's life and having lost his parents in a car accident. For Stephen King stories, children going through a tragic circumstance is standard; it was there with Stand By Me, although in this case, Chuck didn't have a group of friends to assist. Eventually, he loses both his grandparents and he finally opens the door to the attic and sees his future; it's similar to Karen Gillian's former stint on Dr. Who's "The God Complex" episode where there's something specific that only the characters can see. The problem is of course, the surprise is ruined and we see a 17 year old Chuck (Jacob Tremblay) seeing himself on a hospital bed.
The amazing thing about The Life of Chuck is how much it's interconnected with the story for little details. Marty watches Cover Girl, which later is rented by Chuck and his grandmother in Act I from Blockbuster. Marty talks about the cosmic calendar concept over the phone, which Chuck later sees from a Carl Sagan special in Act I. The phrase "The waiting is the hardest part" that's said by Gus (Matthew Lilliard) is repeated by Albie. The undertaker (Carl Lumbly) telling Marty about his dream of being a weatherman is relayed to Chuck when Albie had passed away. The reading of Whitman's "Song of Myself" at the start of the movie and then later in the movie takes a different context due to the situations for the students involved. Everything is connected, everything is meaningful, everything matters.
The drawback to this is it makes it too obvious for the story and some of the performances aren't as strong as they should be otherwise. There are great moments with individual actors though - Ejiofor had great scenes with Gillian in Act III and with Lumbly while walking to the subdivision where Felicia lived. Kate Siegel as Chuck's schoolteacher had a wonderful scene where she explains that Chuck contains multitudes. The movie literally contains multitudes and it's almost hard to fit them all. The centerpiece of the movie, Tom Hiddleston, is only significantly in the movie in Act II.
Still, I loved what Mike Flanagan did with this - in a way, he did what Robert Zemeckis did with Forrest Gump and with Here as it is a summation of a person's life that yet feels personal to the audience.
Mike Flanagan, 1 Great Movie! Thanks Mike!
Birage Diop, Storyteller (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 3/5 stars
SpoilerFascinating documentary short about an African writer who isn't interested in making a living as a writer, but put out work that made people explore his works more.
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1 hour ago, Curt McGirt said:
Part 2 directly cribbed two murders from Bay of Blood, but you probably already knew that. If it wasn't intentional then it's one hell of a coincidence.
Should I even ask?
AMC has indicated in a press release that there will be a "premium spot" before movies at their theaters start for another ad, as if that's what's making people not go to the theaters.
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Movies today....quite a few short films.
Va Savoir (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 4.5/5 stars
SpoilerJacques Rivette as a director demands a lot of the viewer. When he's on, he's freaking on. The normally unwieldy 2+ hour character dramas feel like only five minutes have passed when they are done right (La Belle Noiseuse, Gang of Four). When it doesn't hit, it's just drags to watch (Joan The Maid I & II).
Thankfully, Va Savoir doesn't drag.
The theatrical cut I saw functions as a duel pursuit - Ugo, a theatre director (Sergio Castellitto) is pursuing one of the lost works of the playwright Goldoni that supposedly still exists. His wife Camille (Jeanne Balibar) is wanting to resume a relationship with Pierre (Jacques Bonnaffe), who is still working on his doctoral thesis about Heidegger.
As the movie goes along, other characters are in Ugo and Camille's paths and seem to have relationships with them too - Pierre's girlfriend Sonia (Marianne Basler) is a ballet instructor and has a rivalry at first with Camille over Camille's affections toward Pierre. Dominique (Hélène de Fougerolles) helps Ugo on his search for Goldoni's play but might end up having a relationship with him that Ugo decides isn't worth pursuing further (yet is still friends with Do). Dominique's half brother Arthur (Bruno Todeschini) steals things to sell, unbeknownst to his mother. He steals Sonia's ring for purposes of selling with Camille able to get it back and then able to keep it.
Researching a bit about Heidegger, there's a lot of modern cinema that owes itself to his philosophical works (in fact, Terrence Malick translated Vom Wesen des Grundes). Heidegger wants to pursue the activity of 'being in the world' and what it means for a person to act within a world. With cinema, the idea that characters are also people interacting and interfacing with a world is apparent; the line between written fictional works and the spoken and acted aspects is a fulfillment of Heidegger's philosophical pursuits.
The choice of Ugo searching for a Goldoni play is a well picked aspect for Va Savoir. Goldoni was influenced by his love for humanity and his interest in philosophy; someone like Goldoni would have likely read Heidegger if they were contemporaries. The gap in centuries between the two indicate that wondering about relationships and what people pursue in life is a constant.
With this movie, the pursuits aren't the objects - the Goldoni play, the Heidegger thesis, the ring worth millions - it's the relationships. What makes it interesting is the paths the characters take and the intersection of theatre, philosophy, history, and literature that occurs with the characters. This movie wouldn't have worked as well if the characters were living in a small town in France or weren't intellectuals. It's a Woody Allen movie without the hangups about sex and sex is more of an unspoken pursuit.
A memorable scene is of course Camille being locked in a room and using a window to escape. She arrives at the theater and apologies for being late. "Unprofessionale," she says. Camille realizes the perception that people have about actors (which this indecisiveness and conflict internally is what drove her to seek out Pierre in the first place).
The movie does resolve itself in the last 15 minutes with Camille finding the ring, Dominique and her mother finding the play, Pierre finding himself drunk, Arthur finding himself foiled again, and Ugo finding his theatre saved. Arthur and Dominique dance themselves to the end of love, to borrow a phrase from Leonard Cohen.
Va Savoir is yet another great movie from Jacques Rivette.
Mol (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 3/5 stars
SpoilerThis short feels like a documentary and not so much a narrative short. Even in countries like Senegal, just getting something to improve your life (like a motor for a boat) is a lot to ask and requires a lot of work to get. Some of the shots were really washed out though and the lighting was a little off.
Behind The Scenes: The Making of Ceddo (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 3.5/5 stars
SpoilerI'm not familiar with Ousmane Sembene, but I will seek out his movies. He has the right ideas and right approach with filmmaking - "First you make the movie for yourself, then you make it for others." I had knew about Black Girl and Mandabi since they are in the Criterion Collection, but haven't seen them.
A lot of the documentary feature is on the thought process and approach of filmmaking. One thing that stuck out to me is what Sembene says about a country investing in cinema for their country and the government has the responsibility to either "guide the cinema or appropriate the culture." "Do moviemakers want to be the voice of the people? Without substituting for the people?" "Not by being a witness, but an actor." "Without acting as the conscience of the people and saying "I'm the people."" This made me think about what cinema in the United States means today.
In cinema in the United States, a lot of people watch cinema through streaming. If they go to theaters, those theaters are half empty, regardless of what is playing. The experience of being in a theater is hand-cuffed; theater chains like AMC and Regal spend over 20 minutes on ads, trailers, and needless information (with plans for AMC to expand on this very soon). Those that make movies today aren't beholden to artistic vision and expression, but more concerned about satisfying their investors and satisfying the budget used to create the movie. The audience is focus tested and examined and endings or sections get changed due to 'how the movie played to a test audience.'
Then the current government of the United States is talking about charging tariffs to production companies for not making the movie in the United States and to send a few actors that are sympathetic to the current government to 'act as ambassadors.'
So cinema, not just African cinema, not just American cinema, but all of cinema, need people like Ousmane Sembene.
Dirty (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 3.5/5 stars
SpoilerWell shot and well directed short film about a 'first time' for two guys in high school. I'd love to see more from Matthew Puccini.
A Nation Is Born (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 2.5/5 stars
SpoilerInteresting to watch but propagandist. It's somewhat sad that the "modern world" is forced on a country whether they really want it or not. I did like the scene where those in Senegal's silhouettes are shown compared to the silhouettes of foreign countries like France. Then to denote war the various flags are entangled. Sometimes, you don't have to do a lot to get a point across.
Africa on the Seine (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 3/5 stars
SpoilerIn an alternate reality, the white woman and the black man would be starring in Jean Luc Godard's Breathless or Alfred Hitchcock's North By Northwest.
Africa sur Seine is an interesting time capsule of Paris in 1955 as it shows African and Asian individuals walking through the streets to pursue their ventures, go to restaurants, meet with friends, and engage in the world. I found one shot interesting where people on a bus just look and stare at an African man in a suit stepping off the bus. If only the narrator realized their hopefulness was a bit naive.
I loved the mixture of music deployed in the documentary.
Materialists (saw in the theaters) - 5/5 stars
SpoilerDating sucks.
As someone who had dated people and tried to do online dating (whilst failing spectacularly at it), Materalists as a movie doesn't convince that dating is worth an effort. To give you an example of my dating mishaps, I got set up on a date with a girl through Tinder and we decided to meet up at Cafe Intermezzo in Atlanta. I don't know what it was (probably having to deal with driving in Atlanta and people in Atlanta's seemingly inability to get out of the way while driving), but we sit down to meet, exchange names, she looks at me, and then says "I can't do this" and gets up to leave. No explanation, no apologies, no empathy.
So going into Materalists, it's really difficult to tell what kind of movie this is going to be.
Materalists opens with a 2001: A Space Odyssey-esque wide angle shots of a region, possibly in New York where a man has gathered flowers in a shoulderbag. He sees a woman and the woman excitedly comes out of a cave to see him. He gives her a flower, wrapped in the shape of a ring. Then we see the title.
We go from a wilderness of trees and rocks to a wilderness of buildings and poles in New York City. Lucy (Dakota Johnson) literally has everything a girl would have to make herself desirable; she's pretty, she's tall, and she dresses stylishly. She stops in her tracks for a guy and tells him she's a matchmaker.
What Materalists does with its setup for the story is present conventionality in romantic comedies/dramas that have been used before. We see Lucy's office life and what her service performs is the height of superficial in life and in dating. Women and men are judged as assets and commodities based on their height, weight, income, and jobs. Lucy complains to a co-worker after securing a ninth wedding through her services about a woman named Sophie who "will die alone."
From there, the movie moves to the wedding where Harry (Pedro Pascal) is introduced in a similar camera pan as was in Joe Wright's Pride & Prejudice (which was one of the movies used as a reference in A24 exhaustive list). Harry listens to Lucy's conversation to other women as Lucy sells her services to them: "I want you to see someone that you're changing diapers and end up in coffins together" is the moribund plug for the service.
Harry and Lucy actually seem like a fit. Harry doesn't want to do the chasing for Lucy and lets his position and income dictate the terms for Lucy. Harry doesn't need Lucy, but he sees more out of her. They are talking and Lucy asks for a drink, which leads John (Chris Evans) into the story.
From there, the movie is focused on Lucy and her seeming relational bliss with Harry and her tangental relationship with John.
One aspect the movie talks about a lot is using math to describe relationships. This happens a few times - one scene where this happens is where Harry breaks down why he likes Lucy and Lucy gives him reasons why he shouldn't. "I have a negative dowry," she says. "Why would I care about the physical assets?" Harry says. "With you, there's something intangible that I like." In a lot of ways, despite Harry working in private equity and basically being a ghoul (people like him are the reason the United States economy is collapsing), it seems like a safe secure bet for Lucy to stick with Harry.
Another scene where math comes up is with Sophie (Zoe Winters) in which Lucy has tracked her down after Sophie had reported to the dating service that she was sexually assaulted. "Do the math, I'm going to die alone!" Sophie says, in near tears. To be honest, I didn't like how the movie handled Sophie's storyline. After being sexually assaulted by a date and having to file a restraining order, she turns around and still solicits the matchmaking service to set her up with another date.
After deciding to not go to Iceland with Harry (which was her dream), Lucy takes a car ride with John to upstate New York where they crash a wedding and have a great scene outside of it. "You have shit pay, shit odds, but on the outside of it it's even shittier," Lucy says. Lucy has decided to stick with John. Once they get back to New York City, Lucy is in a park and gets told she'll be the head of the New York office of her matchmaking firm. The movie ends as it begins with John offering Lucy a flower ring. "Want to make a fucked up financial decision?"
Materialists as a movie uses the tools of romantic comedy/dramas and tells the story in similar fashion to other romantic comedies/dramas like Emma. (which in some ways Lucy is like Austen's Emma), Pride & Prejudice, Howards End (where Pedro Pascal's character is like a less abrasive Mr. Darcy and Henry Wilcox) among others. It does do something different where Lucy has an existential crisis over what her heartless matchmaking service does to people (including hilarious scenes where she tells a woman that "she's not a catch”).
Yet she and John end up together because "love wins" rather than safety/security wins. I was halfway expecting Harry's 'fatal flaw' to be he and his brother would give women Flunitrazepam at parties and then sexually assault them because when you give rich people money, don't expect them to act like human beings. Instead, he and his brother just had surgery to make themselves taller.
One thing I noticed was the usage of Celine Song's play Tom and Eliza, where John starred in. Materalists also mentions that Lucy used to be an actor while John is still trying to be an actor because "someone told me I was good at it one time." I also liked the usage of Harry Nilsson's "I Guess The Lord Must Be in New York," which reminded me a bit of another movie with Harry Nilsson's songs Midnight Cowboy.
Materalists is just a great movie and one of the best from 2025.
First (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 3/5 stars
SpoilerI can't connect to this at all because my experience with online as a teenager was hoping my parents weren't going to use the phone while I was chatting with a buddy about Monday Night Raw through AOL. I'm old.
It's kinda creepy with the captions as an invisible commentary on what the people are doing.
Friday the 13th (guess what date today is?) - 3/5 stars
SpoilerHaving watched a ton of giallo (like Deep Red, The Bird With The Crystal Plummage, Blood and Black Lace, Who Saw Her Die?, Don't Torture A Duckling, Torso, etc), it's amazing how much Friday the 13th feels like a giallo film.
A lot of it has to do with the choices for camera setups. Throughout the entirety of the movie, the camera is set up from POV shots, presumably of the killer. This is especially true in the introductory scenes where someone finds two counselors making out. It also does POV shots in a way, as the camera 'tracks' counselors like Kevin Bacon's character and the girl he kissed from across the lake.
The other aspect that lends itself to giallo is the production design and the color choices. A lot of the scenes have little details, like a taxidermied racoon and a deer head and pictures of older guys and piano books. The colors vary from yellow jackets to red blankets to blue shorts to colorful tops and jackets characters wear in the movie.
The aspect that's the weakest for the movie is the lighting - halfway through the movie, my interest faded because it was a bit difficult to locate the actors on screen. The story aspect is almost too simple as well - we don't really learn anything about the characters other than they are counselors and they are getting killed one by one. We don't need to learn anything more to be honest.
A lot of the kills were similar to Halloween (of course) but giallos like Deep Red and A Bay of Blood (which I need to see that one). The revelation that Mrs. Voorhees (Betsy Palmer) is the one behind the murders is reminsicent of revelations in giallo. The closeup of Mrs. Voorhees saying she would kill Alice (Adrienne King) is particularly similar to closeups in Argento films.
For the most part, Friday the 13th is a decent low budget horror movie that ended up having a lot of influence on later horror movies too.
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I caught the Youtube video of Cena tonight as World champion. I'm over him being champion and tired of it. I sorta wish CM Punk had told Cena, "You know, if you don't like appearing here in WWE, you can stay home. Nobody will complain." Cena can no show his remaining dates and just retire as champion. What incentive does he have to even be on WWE TV? Not getting paid? Getting suspended (he's retiring, why would a suspension matter to him)? It really doesn't make sense to me.
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Movies today....no Pulp Fiction or Left Behind 1 or Last Year At Marienbad. I KNOW.
Plane (Peacock/Netflix, leaving Peacock on 6/12) - 2.5/5 stars
SpoilerThe producers for this movie fumbled the ball not calling the next movie Trains to be followed by the third movie not called Automobiles.
As a movie, it's pretty much a hamburger. It's no-frills, so basic, and there isn't much in characterization or characters. This is a great movie for middle aged dads and grand-dads to watch on a Sunday afternoon after watching a football game.
Gerard Butler plays Brodie Torrence (name came out of an AI search I guarantee) who is the captain of a plane that lands somewhere in the Philippines. He has an inmate named Louis Gaspare (Mike Colter) who is on the flight too. The plane experiences problems and has to make an emergency landing only for a bunch of separatists to be on the island. It's Sully and Captain Phillips combined with none of the distinctiveness.
Butler in this occupies a similar spot as Liam Neeson does in Non-Stop, The Commuter, and A Walk Among The Tombstones. This is probably Butler's most likable role - he conveys a world weariness but also a sense of humanity as he has concerns about his passengers and getting off the island.
The director Jean-Francois Richet doesn't do anything out of the ordinary for action thrillers like this, but the movie is engaging even in the slower sections of the movie. I did like how the rescue of the passengers was shot with the camera showing the protagonists' eye level through the scenes. It did make me wonder if they would get jumped. I also liked the first fight scene with Butler's character and one of the separatists; it seemed to be almost 'mounted' on one of the actors during the fight.
For the most part, Plane sorta lands.
Lemon (HBO Max, leaving on 6/30) - 1.5/5 stars
SpoilerLemon as a movie tries to be a Yorgis Lanthimos comedy, but just fails to present anything interesting. Janicza Bravo as a director would do the later and much better Zola; as is the case with first time features, some directors have a rough start.
The problem with the movie is Isaac (Brett Gelman) is such a 'blank slate' as a character. The initial actions and scenes of the movie bear no weight upon what is shown later in the movie. Dialogue for his character (and others) are delivered in such a detached manner that they don't resemble actual conversations. In order to make an absurdist movie like in the manner of Luis Bunuel and Yorgis Lanthimos, there has to be an element of humanity and reality in the characters; they have to seem like people encountered in day to day life, but exaggerated to large degrees. Also, what makes absurdist comedies work is there is a central driving point about the characters, the movie, or some aspect of the movie that the writer and director and actors are trying to emphasize with the movie. With Lemon, the characters encountered don't seem like real people and seem like caricatures; so it's difficult to draw any connections to them.
For example, Isaac teaches acting to Alex (Michael Cera) and Tracey (Gillian Jacobs), who are doing scenes from Chekhov's The Seagull for an acting workshop. Isaac is unnecessarily cruel to Tracey seemingly without reason. Isaac has favor towards Alex, who just got offered a role overseas in Denmark. Yet Isaac, for whatever unknown reason, spray paints a racist term on Alex's car in the middle of the night and then attacks Alex when he comes to Isaac's place.
Yet none of these aspects have an effect on the rest of the story; Isaac doesn't reap any consequences and just moves on to doing a seder with his family. The transition makes it seem so jarring that it feels like Lemon became a different movie. After the seder, Isaac attends a family get together with Cleo (Nia Long), his new girlfriend.
The movie attempts to paint what's happening as being par for the course of the characters' lives, but I came away not understanding the point or the purpose of the movie. Bravo does do interesting things in the movie - like the scenes where every relative of Cleo is introduced, but there isn't a spark to the movie. It's trying to be a quirky indie drama/comedy with a low supply of actual quirk.
For the most part, Lemon is indeed a lemon.
Woodshock (HBO Max, leaving on 6/30) - 1/5 star
SpoilerI guess this movie breaks my dream of smoking reefer with Kirsten Dunst.
This movie is so obtuse and so oblique with it's story that it's nearly difficult to tell what the storyline is about - basically, Theresa (Dunst) is a complete fuckup. She kills a guy due to her incompetence at running her friend Keith's (Pilou Asbæk) head shop. This haziness through pot smoke is due to her feelings about euthanizing her mother.
It's heavy stuff.
There's a Jungian dream concept at play involving Theresa imagining herself in the woods and touching hundreds of year old trees while coupling that with images of preparing wood for logging camps. The point seems to be the forests that we have won't always be there.
The last five minutes is music video or perfume commercial imagery.
I wonder if I watched this movie stoned on pot if it would have made more sense?
How To Train Your Dragon (2025) (saw in the theaters) - 3.5/5 stars
SpoilerHow To Train Your Dragon (2010) is a movie about toxic masculinity and Bush Era's "War on Terror" but extended to animated vikings and animated dragons. The 2025 version is literally the exact same thing - same fear of the unknown, same fear of 'the enemy' and same fear of 'the other' from the original. Except the people are real and the dragons are CGI.
The movie has a mixture of visual influences - it looks like 1980s fantasy fare like Willow and Dragonslayer at times, then it looks like recent TV series like Game of Thrones and Attack on Titan at other times. Some of the sections with the dragon flying around and the "dragon's nest" recall the visuals of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings. The Vikings seem to exist as a mixture of cultures - the Norwegian, the Australian, the New Zealand, the Scottish, the Gaelic, the Celtic, and the Irish accents are all mixed with the characters.
Mason Thames as Hiccup literally is perfect casting; he captures the same awkwardness of the animated original. The drawback is he actually spoke a bit too softly; some of his dialogue was barely audible above the soundtrack and the SFX. Gerald Butler as Stoick the Vast is also perfect casting; it seems like Butler has become a bit of a more approachable in demeanor actor. I would also say his role in this is his best acting role thus far.
It was a nice touch having Julian Dennison from Y2K and Hunt For The Wilderpeople as Fishlegs Ingerman and Nick Frost (who had some hilarious lines) as Gobber the Belch. Nico Parker as Astrid was a decent actress as well with her 'enemy but friends' approach in the movie. "That was for....this is for everything else." It was also a smart choice having the same director for the original direct this movie since he's familiar with the original movie.
For the most part, How to Train Your Dragon (2025) doesn't reinvent the wheel, but doesn't need to.
Acid Rain (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 2.5/5 stars
SpoilerFelt like something that would be shown on MTV's Liquid Television about Polish rave culture.
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11 minutes ago, odessasteps said:
God, what a miserable experience it was seeing Last Year at Marienbad in film class.
It can't be that bad. Can it?
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31 minutes ago, Zimbra said:
Barnes & Noble is doing a 50% sale on Kino Lorber discs. I can finally get Sneakers in 4K!
I got The Sacrifice, Last Year At Marienbad, Nostalghia, Bob Le Flameur, and Alphaville from that sale. My poor wallet.
2025 Movie Discussion Thread
in MOVIES & TV
Posted · Edited by Andrew POE!
Movies today....
Robinson's Garden (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 2/5 stars
At times, Robinson's Garden works when it's striving for a Jim Jarmusch / Wim Wenders aesthetic. The scenes where Kumi (Kumiko Ohta) is sitting on the roof in a lounge chair while chaos happens around her just hits on a certain level. The first 30 minutes or so where she discovers an empty building after a drunken night has an appeal to it of saying 'fuck it' to society and just isolating herself away to start a garden.
It's just so much of the movie seems to be Kumi going through madness due to the isolation in an urban place like Tokyo. The rest of the movie just fails on some level.
There were some great scene towards the end where a younger Kumi imagines herself being carried by her grandfather and staring at the moon while next to a giant tree. The ending is a bit unexplainable - the kid that's been tormenting Kumi is flying a radio controlled plane around. Kumi has started digging a hole and then.....she doesn't appear for the rest of the movie. Did she die? Did she dig far enough that she fell into the earth? The movie never explains. We just see the garden over a nice synth riff.
Robinson's Garden is a bewildering movie.
What's Up Connection (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 3/5 stars
Having watched both this and Robinson's Garden back to back, Masashi Yamamoto seems as a director where plot is a suggestion rather than a hard and fast rule. What's Up Connection is basically Shoplifters done in the style of Jean Luc Godard. It's anti-capitalistic through and through and the movie starts as misadventures of a man from Hong Kong who won a trip to Tokyo, only to lose his money and his return ticket, then becomes a family against Mr. Yasaki and his business interests to seize their land to build a "friendship building."
Compared to Robinson's Garden, it's a lot more coherent. The sequence where the kids rob the guy of his card to hack into Mr. Yasaki's computer and then take 150 million USD away from the corporation is wild stuff.
Fauna (Mubi, leaving on 6/30) - 3.5/5 stars
Fauna at first is boring. A couple - Luisa (Luisa Pardo) and Paco (Francisco Barreiro) - go to the house of Luisa's parents where they meet Luisa's brother Gabino (Lázaro Gabino Rodríguez). The first half of the movie is generally a mingling of the parents with the siblings and the boyfriend with Paco spending 200 pesos on two packs of cigarettes he bought from Gabino's father. The small town life of the parents has the local convenience store running out of cigarettes.
Luisa and Paco are actors. Paco is asked in a bar to perform a scene from his season of Narcos, even though he doesn't have any lines. He makes up some lines as he walks back into the bar then gets asked to do it again.
Somewhere along the way, the movie changes to a Mexican Last Year at Marienbad as Gabino relays to Luisa what happened in the book he read. The book involves a guy going into a hotel room to take a shower and use a towel, but it's not his room. He apologies to the girl (also played by Luisa Pardo) and the girl named Flora wants him to find a girl named Flauna. The guy gets kidnapped when he finds the girl at a bar and runs into Flauna's boyfriend who grabs him and takes him out of the bar.
The movie ends as Gabino indicates he doesn't want to finish the book and wants to whisper something in Luisa's ear. The guy in the story whispers something in the girl next to him's ear. We never know what is whispered from both.
Fauna as a movie talks about actors and the worlds they create internally with the movie serving as a buffer to the world created from the book. With this, there's a lot of midrange closeup shots of the characters as they talk. The movie is more focused on the conversations rather than anything overly dramatic. The scene where Paco has to 'act' in front of Gabino's dad is both funny and typical; actors have this perception of 'constantly performing' when the truth isn't the case at all.
The story is a bit a low-key at times, but it's well shot.
Bride Hard (saw in the theaters) - 0.5/5 star
Legitimately one of the worst movies I've seen this year, Bride Hard just doesn't work. In a premise (and a script) that had to have been written by AI, the movie attempts to meld the action thrills of Die Hard with the comedic chops of Bridesmaids. Whereas both of those movies were funny on their own (with Bridesmaids having more of a meaning behind it), Bride Hard just tries too hard.
Rebel Wilson is Sam, who is the best friend and bridesmaid of her best friend Betsy (Anna Camp). Sam apparently is really good at disappearing for any get-together with Betsy and the other bridesmaids (including My Girl's Anna Chlumsky as Virginia and Da'Vine Joy Randolph as Lydia and Gigi Zumbado as Zoe). We find out nearly at the start that Sam is a spy. The movie tries to thread the line between bridesmaids gone wild hi-jinks and Rebel Wilson's stunt double doing combat, but just fails.
I would repeat the rest of the story, but what does it really matter? Betsy finds out that Sam is indeed a highly trained spy when a group lead by Kurt (Stephen Dorff) crash the wedding because Virginia and Ryan (Sam Huntington)'s family are insanely rich. They also set the movie in a private island near Savannah, GA and just casually drops that Virginia & Ryan's family made whiskey for over two centuries (without there being a mention that their family didn't do that work themselves if you catch my drift). The opportunity for the rich (especially Southern rich from the backs of slavery) to get their comeuppance besides nameless faceless mercenaries never happens. Also, Virginia was set up as a possible villain at the start, until she wasn't.
Bride Hard at times just isn't funny. None of the comedic moments seem particularly earned. Wilson offers wise cracks and she really makes it seem like she isn't sure of the lines she's saying (which I guess is campy). Sam seems to forgive Betsy way too easily for the snub and being removed as the maid of honor. Bridesmaids had a better, more emotional arc when it came to Kristen Wiig's character facing hardships even with being selected as a bridesmaid. Sam is momentarily upset before the movie speeds along to the bad guys arriving and firing their guns.
To top it all off, not once did Sam say "welcome to the party, pal" or "Yippie ki yay motherfucker." But we did have an okay (yet annoying) sequence set to "Raining Men."
Cinematography throughout the movie is just bad and has a "Made for Netflix" look to it. It's almost as bad as Shadow Force or Canary Black or Union. Why there seems to be a willingness to do low budget action comedies, I don't know. Shane West did better movies years ago like Tomb Raider and Con Air, but this is just bad. At a few points during the movie, it had a smokey haze in the shots that was a bit annoying along with a really overly lit look. Most of the time, everything just looked cheap.
Let's not forget the last 5 or so minutes with the false endings. One of the false endings was better than what they went with.
Bride Hard fails hard.
Il Buco (Mubi, leaving on 6/30) - 5/5 stars
Utterly impressive to watch and to reflect on. Somewhere between Werner Herzog's The Cave of Forgotten Dreams and the cinema of Nuri Blige Ceylan, Il Buco is a very simple premise and a very simple movie. It's a movie about exploration.
Every shot in this is captivating to watch and is made for contemplation. The story being told is through the long wide angle shots of a hole in the earth. We start the movie from us looking outwards from the hole to the sky as some cows look into the hole. People watch a television program about a crew going up a skyscraper as the host questions how high the skyscraper will go.
In this movie, the question is "how low does the hole in the earth go?"
Running parallel to the exploration from a crew of the cave is an old man shepherding cattle from a hill. He's found lying in the ground, unable to move. The crew explores the deeper mystery of the cave while a doctor explores the mystery of the old man's illness. The end of the cave is found. Sadly, the end of the man's life is found too. Yet, even after a lead scientist measures out the distance of 683 meters, the ending of the movie has us hearing the call of the old man through the fog.
Il Buco works purely on cinematography and sound design. The length, the width, the depth, the closeness, the farness, the intensity, the softness, the light and the darkness of cinematography and sound choices are incredible. As the explorers got to the end of the cave, I actually got a bit of anxiety watching them crawl through a tight squeeze. It's amazing the camera setups done in this movie and how the director Michelangelo Frammartino did everything. I'm surprised he isn't spoken more about among Italian directors.
Il Buco is a hole worth going down.