Andrew POE!
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Posts posted by Andrew POE!
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10 minutes ago, J.H. said:
But who plays JJ Dillon?
Lord a pro-wrestling comedy sounds like the perfect thing for Danny McBride
James
The Ghost of Wilfred Brimley, of course.
Danny McBride could play Dusty Rhodes.
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46 minutes ago, J.H. said:
I'm very disappointed that Tully isn't a movie about Tully Blanchard with Nicholas Cage as the lead and, I dunno, Deniro as Joe Blanchard
James
I guess we should expect it to be part of an cinematic universe with a movie called Arn (that has John C. Reilly as Arn), Ole (with Zach Galifianakis as Ole) and Ric (with Will Ferrell as Ric Flair). Then, of course, the resulting movie called The Four Horsemen.
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Movies today...
Tully (Netflix, leaving on 5/15) - 4/5 stars
SpoilerTully as a movie is about a mother named Marlo (Charlize Theron) pushed to an absolute breaking point without realizing it.
The thing with the movie is it's within a common film type involving nannies and families: Mary Poppins, Nanny McPhee, Mrs. Doubtfire. Marlo and her husband Drew (Ron Livingston) talk to her rich brother Craig (Mark Duplass) about hiring a night nanny so that Marlo can finally get some sleep. Tully (MacKenzie Davis) appears one night and the nanny you need is Tully indeed.
A lot of Marlo's troubles are misunderstanding her older children Sarah (Lia Frankland) and Jonah (Asher Miles Fallica). To be honest, I didn't like Jonah that much - because I felt like Marlo and Drew never took him aside and never really had him understanding the gravity of what's going on. The problem isn't Jonah though. It's adults not understanding him and not understanding that he has autism. So on a lot of levels I felt the scene where Marlo lashes out in the meeting with the school administrator about "Jonah leaving the school." "This is me when I'm not trying anymore."
What Tully does a bit differently is an almost mythical/"magical realism" component to the movie - it's similar to what Guillermo Del Toro did in The Shape of Water and in Pan's Labyrinth. A common image that appears frequently is mermaids. Drew falling asleep in a hospital waiting room while a reality show about Mermaid Cove is on. Sarah watching an animated show that talks about mermaids. Images that appear sporadically with a mermaid in water. Near the end after the car crash, a mermaid that looks like Tully comes to rescue Marlo from the car.
Which brings us to the reveal about Tully. The movie presents that Tully is a figment of Marlo's imagination. In a lot of ways, she is. Tully seemingly has all the answers and Marlo asks her how she knows these things. "You're 26," Marlo tells Tully. When checking in Marlo to the hospital, Drew indicates that "Tully" is Marlo's maiden name. So that does confirm it. Also, the flashback to the night out in Brooklyn showing that Marlo is riding a bike by herself and drinking at a bar by herself.
But there's a lot of scenes that cast doubt on Tully being a figment of Marlo's imagination. I thought it was interesting that Marlo and Tully would role-play as a waitress with Tully wearing the outfit for Drew. Tully talks at the prompting of Marlo and Drew in that scene looks at Tully, not at Marlo. But the next scene, he doesn't ask about Tully when talking about the previous night. He thinks it was great - and Marlo goes along with it.
One thing I really like is how the movie uses needledrops of music. In a lot of movies, musical choices are done in homages to Scorsese and Tarantino without really fitting the characters or the story. In Tully, the choices are really great - I loved the montage scene set to Rufus Wainwright's "Tiergarten" as well as a later one showing Marlo and Tully hanging out to a cover of "You Only Live Twice." Another great usage of music was Marlo and Tully riding to Brooklyn with various Cyndi Lauper song snippets being played - denoting a passage of time during the car ride. In all three cases, the song choices reveal something about Marlo as a character in those scenes.
The opening and closing scenes have a nice bookend with Marlo and Jonah. At the start of the movie, Marlo brushes Jonah based on what was advised by a child psychologist (until they couldn't afford it anymore). Towards the end of the movie, Jonah questions whether even doing the act of this is actually beneficial and hugs his mom. The ending has Drew and Marlo listening to the same song through earbuds, which means that Marlo and Drew are now part of the same world.
What I didn't like as much is how Marlo and Drew as characters seem to be fine with being overwhelmed while claiming to 'do better.' It makes much of the conflict presented in the movie trivialized, when it could be something more. Marlo jokes about suicide in a scene, which is a cry for help for her. Drew flies off for work with his company and is seemingly absent throughout the entire movie while lamenting that he's not more present. Although, to be fair, he does help with the older children in the mornings and when he gets back from work, but there's never scenes with him helping with the baby with Marlo together or with Tully and the baby. Marlo as a character believes that she needs relief so the "night nanny" becoming a figment of her imagination is a release; it doesn't explain how Drew conveyed the benefits to her brother or how he knew. Not to mention we hear the baby monitor, so it's presumed the "night nanny" was there. And Drew had overheard it, so the "night nanny" had to be there.
The movie with the fantasy of the night nanny tries to be a similar construct as David Fincher's Fight Club, but not quite to the same effect or nearly airtight way to tell where the invented character is there and when it isn't.
Despite some character and story issues I have with the movie, Tully is a great comedy/drama.
The Cry of Granuaile (Criterion Channel, leaving on 5/31) - 3/5 stars
SpoilerThe Cry of Granuaile is very Antonioni or Bergman-esque at times; the first hour or so is truly compelling as it delves into the creative process for a filmmaker trying to research a historical figure with a sift through fact, fiction, myth and legend. At points, it reminded me of Radu Jude's The Potemkinists short film but in Ireland.
At the center of the fact/fiction conflict are two characters, a film director Maire (Dale Dickey) and her Irish assistant Cait (Judith Roddy). The movie has Maire reading of the story to her grand-daughter while Cait is dealing with a breakup. I liked the scenes where Maire is discussing her work while Cait is arguing with her boyfriend; it shows a parallel conflict for each of the characters.
The problem is as the movie delves more into Maire's creative process and actually creating the film, The Cry of Granuaile loses its way. The resulting "film with the film" is confusing and is difficult to tell what exactly is going on; it turns into "images washing over you" rather than a coherent story about the creative process or about a creative person.
The last 10 minutes or so were utterly confusing; apparently, Maire is in jail (?) for drowning Cait's boyfriend but how much of that is true isn't even know. Cait immediately goes to two of the men selected as 'actors' for this project as they talk about defending the land. We then see Maire as Granuaile telling us what she sees before the movie abruptly ends.
Donal Foreman is obviously a talented director (for his first two movies he did, Out of Here and The Image You Missed) but this seems like a lesser work for him. I did like how cinematic it appears compared to Out of Here, but that movie story wise was much stronger.
Mission: Impossible - Fallout (marathon to watch all the Mission: Impossible movies before the new one is out) - 5/5 stars
SpoilerHunt. Ethan Hunt.
Mission: Impossible - Fallout takes every lesson learned from every action movie ever made. Some scenes throughout remind me of Nolan's The Dark Knight Trilogy - the planned hijacking/rescue of Solomon Lane (Sean Harris) is shot similarly to scenes that were in The Dark Knight. The penultimate scene with Hunt (Tom Cruise) and August Walker (Henry Cavill) hanging over the cliff with a helicopter dangling. The rivalry between Hunt and Lane evokes Batman and Bane; like Bane, Lane (hey, it rhymes!) has no agenda other than to destroy the world and turn what the world has against itself.
The entire movie reminds me of the entirety of the Bond franchise too. Some scenes like Hunt infiltrating Spectre - I mean, the White Widow (Vanessa Kirby)'s meeting as John Lark felt like a similar infiltration with Bond seeing the organization Blofeld is running in Spectre. The high stakes of the nuclear bombs needing to be disarmed is pure Bond (and at least several incarnations of Bond have done it).
But what makes M:I - Fallout so great is the character arcs and characterizations involved. I loved the scene where Luther (Ving Rhames) explains why Hunt and his wife Julia (Michelle Montagne) can never be together again to Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson). "And she would wonder: Who's watching the world while Ethan is watching me? Deep down they both knew that someday, somehow, something truly terrible was going to happen. All because they were together." (Finally, Ving Rhames has more to do than just shake his head at Tom Cruise throughout the movie!). Benji (Simon Pegg) is more brave due to working with Hunt. The Secretary of Defense (Alec Baldwin) even enjoys the teamwork and double crossing Walker. Let's not forget Julia's lines to Ethan: " I love what I do and I never would've found this if I hadn't met you."
Tom Cruise in this is incredible: he embodies Batman and Bond like I mentioned, but also Jack Ryan from Tom Clancy movies too - The Sum of All Fears, Clear and Present Danger, Patriot Games. The Hunt For Red October. Ethan Hunt is patriotic but the movie never beats it over everyone's head about it - his character values loyalty to his teammates over himself. It's an archetype that Cruise excels at with every character he plays - from Top Gun to Cocktail to Days of Thunder to so forth.
While I'm raving over the acting performances, the cinematography is just incredible as well. Every shot in this movie has a ton of color and perfectly captures everything in the frame. The fight in the bathroom is a wonder of cinematography as Walker and Hunt fight off "John Lark" (including the famous "arm pumps" from Cavill). Every scene never overstays its welcome even with a 2 hour and 30 minute runtime; it took a similar formula that occurred in Rogue Nation but made it better.
For the most part, Mission: Impossible - Fallout is just incredible to watch. I really wish they re-released it in theaters before The Final Reckoning came out. I would see it again.
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1 hour ago, Craig H said:
HELL YEAH, FUCK YEAH.
Nobody 2
https://youtu.be/-5X2pt95cIo?si=3K8QcvJj-UWmNxYa
I can only get so hard.
If there isn't a line where someone says "Sorry folks, the park's closed. The moose out front should have told you" not in the movie, they won't get my money.
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Movies today....
Joint Security Area (Criterion Channel, leaving on 5/31) - 4/5 stars
SpoilerWith this as my first exposure to Park Chan-wook, it's a bit of a disappointment. Compared to his countryman Bong Joon Ho, Park Chan-wook tells his story much more subtlely. The movie tries to show that North and South Korea aren't that different from each other when it's broken down on an individual level; it's equivalent of 1980s Cold War movies about love between two people from Russia and the United States like Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears or Reds. The difference of course is none of the characters involved fall in love with each other.
Major Sophie E. Jean (Lee Young-ae) is brought in to investigate an incident involving Sgt. Lee Soo-hyeok (Lee Byung-hun) escaping after two North Korea guards were found dead. Jean is brought in for 'objectivity' during the course of the investigation; the movie depicts the events leading up to the incident. This includes a friendship with Soo-hyeok and North Korea's Sgt Oh Kyeong-pil (Song Kang-ho) and Pvt. Jung Woo-jin (Shin Ha-kyun) and eventually Pvt. Nam Sung-sik (Kim Tae-woo) joining in.
Of course, the truth is never quite clear. Soo-hyeok is trapped behind a mine and is rescued by the two North Korean guards with a dog; yet he presents a brave face as other South Korea soldiers recount his abilities and his bravery.
The last 15 minutes or so presents what Soo-hyeok says is the truth with Kyeong-pil having killed his commanding officer, but even that isn't completely honest. Soo-hyeok is shown having done it.
It also seems that both sides aren't interested in the truth - Jean is transferred out upon discovery of her father rejecting both North and South Korea, communism and capitalism to go to Argentina. Jean's objectivity isn't as desired as thought; what Park Chan-woo seems to be saying is that an united Korea is not in either country's interest. As mentioned during the movie, "one incident won't start a war" as a soldier is reprimanded before Jean walks in for the first time to interview witnesses.
One scene that sticks out to me is the swapping of cigarettes in the snow and later at the demarcation line. The act of sharing something that can cause death acknowledges the inevitability of death; but for now, why not be friends for a short time?
Park Chan-wook throughout the movie had a lot of brilliant tricks used - I loved the match cut from the top of the tower to an umbrella in one scene. Scene transitions using walls from one room to another were great as well. The choice of opening the movie with an owl is brilliant as well - owls usually indicate something under the cover of night. It seems throughout the movie that animals have meaningful appearances like the small dog the two North Korean soldiers have in their post.
The one thing that I can say that didn't work as well was the English actors were a bit flat in their reading - this can be forgiven with a South Korean director like Park Chan-wook not speaking English natively. I wonder how it would have gone if the Swiss/Swedish Maj. Gen. Bruno Botta (Christoph Hofrichter) and Capt. Persson (Herbert Ulrich) both spoke Korean but that may not have been possible.
Some of the movie also dragged a bit in the middle, but this movie is interested in being a character study than necessarily an action packed thriller.
Joint Security Area isn't bad and I'll seek out other movies from Park Chan-wook.
Mutt (Netflix, leaving on 5/15) - 2.5/5 stars
SpoilerIt's weird but Close To You is a much better movie compared to Mutt. There isn't a lot of post-transition movies out there, but I couldn't help to compare this to Elliot Page's effort in terms of the story. Both movies talk about the difficulty of the main character with dealing with other people's reactions to who they are now. I did like the lines toward the end of the movie - "Do you think I just woke up one day and decided to be trans?"
In this, Fena (Lio Mehiel) has to deal with life situations and getting his half-sister Zoe (MiMi Ryder) back home. The scenes with Cole Doman as John, his ex, were the best part of the movie; although their goodbye scene was a bit rough to watch - "No one likes you not because you're trans, but because you're an asshole."
Script had a strangely stilted feel to it and the movie almost tries too hard to make the characters appear realistic. In the act of doing so, none of the characters are realistic. Alejandro Goic as Pablo had decent scenes although was hampered by the stilted dialogue for his character too.
Cinematography wise, most of the shots were a bit too dark and occasionally the movie would handle dialogue in scenes kinda poorly - too many 'start stops' where a person is talking, the person finishes, it cuts to the other person, that person talks, that person finishes, then cuts back to the first person. It makes less of a conversation and more of “waiting on my turn to speak.”There were a few great shots though - I liked the shot of Fena and Zoe on top of a car while eating pizza. The early scenes in the club and in the streets had great camerawork as the camera tracked Fena across the street for his phone call.
Mutt is a nice effort though and I hope to see the next feature from Vuk Lungulov-Klotz.
Re-Animator (saw in the theaters) - 4/5 stars
SpoilerRe-Animator as a movie is more than the sum of its parts. The main character Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) has an "otherness" shared with Arnie from John Carpenter's Christine. Herbert West is simply not interested in love or girls or anything like that - he has a laser focus on his experiments to revive the dead. It can be argued that like Arnie, Herbert is a queer character; I noticed the degree of affection Herbert has towards Daniel Cain (Bruce Abbott) in one scene when he drapes his arm over his shoulder. Before the Bernard Hermann-esque/Psycho opening theme/titles, he has to hold back his now dead mentor before the mentor's head explodes.
In addition to John Carpenter and Alfred Hitchcock as inspirations, it can be easy to say that David Cronenberg has influence on this movie. For awhile, I thought this movie was part of Cronenberg's oeuvre; it was something he did after Scanners, Videodrome and The Dead Zone. The truth is this isn't the case - although this movie fits neatly with those three movies. The difference being the movie takes place in Massachusetts whereas a lot of Cronenberg's work takes place in Toronto.
Having talked about the inspirations and influences for this movie, the actual movie has hilarious bits throughout the movie. The contrast between Herbert West and his roommate Daniel Cain is comical; Cain, at his start to the movie, is not expecting the fact that a patient had died. Cain begrudgingly functions as an Igor to Cain's Dr. Frankenstein as they sneak into the school and into the morgue. The security guard tries to peak at the body but Cain stops him.
Oftentimes, the security guard is the source of humor for this movie. I literally busted out laughing in the theater when the guard was walking down the hallway and sees an undead Dean Halsey (Robert Sampson) and a headless Dr. Hill (David Gale) bust through the door. After reading Boudoir magazine, he declares that it's 'break time' and leaves his desk.
Even though it's a tad morbid, the scenes with Dr. Hill brought back to life are absolutely hilarious. His body is stumbling around in his office knocking things over. His holding his own head is actually funny as well in a creepy way; the effects around that are great and definitely gross.
The other great aspect is Barbara Crampton as Cain's girlfriend Megan. Crampton acts similar to Janet Leigh in Psycho (notice the "shower theme" playing when she is being grabbed in the elevator towards the end of the movie). Plus, for the guys, she's naked a lot. And Hitchcock would be proud of her scream. The drawback though is Crampton isn't given that much to do as Megan; her character is able to sway her father from succumbing to Dr. Hill's control towards the end.
One scene I really liked from a cinematography standpoint is near the start of the movie as Herbert and Daniel are trying to get the re-animated cat off of Herbert. The light source sways back and forth from the overhead lamp as both are looking for the cat. Although I'm not a fan of violence against cats in movies, it does show how completely unhinged Herbert West is. There's no hope for the character; it's hard to feel sympathy for him when he has intestines wrapped around him.
The scenes toward the end when Dr. Hill brings back the dead in the morgue to life is absolutely insane to watch; it definitely feels like a Cronenberg movie in those scenes as the naked figures are under dr. Hill's control. Once Dr. Hill is killed, they lose their minds and attacking anything that moves. Towards the end, I really loved the onsie as Daniel is carrying Megan to a hospital room to revive her. Seemingly, one of the dead came back to life.
The ending is a great ending - everything is darkened except for The Substance (REMEMBER YOU ARE ONE) - I mean, the Re-Animator - as it is injected into Megan then we hear Megan's scream.
I saw Re-Animator during the 40th Anniversary theater showing and it was a great classic.
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I'll be seeing Re-Animator tonight.
If I have no desire to see Juliet & Romeo just based on the trailers, you know it's pretty bad. I'm going to try to suffer less with movies (although I will see an Angel Studios movie to see if they've gotten any better at filmmaking).
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I just ordered a copy of To Live and Die in L.A. in 4K so I get to experience the theme song too.
Movies today...not as much due to Mother's Day stuff I had to do.
Mind Game (Criterion Channel, leaving on 5/31) - 5/5 stars
SpoilerMind Game is the next logical extension of several different ideas. On its surface, it's a love story - Nishi (Koji Imada) has unrepentant love for Myon (Sayaka Maeda) that he's known all his life. Circumstances of fate and fighting against it lead him to recover from the time before his death and kill his attacker in a restaurant. Going deeper with the movie, it's definitely inspired by Richard Linklater's Waking Life and fits neatly with the later A Scanner Darkly - if this were shown at a film festival with those two, it would make sense. The movie depicts the whole of humanity for what Nishi, Myon, her sister Yan (Seiko Takuma), and various other characters experience. The montage at the beginning and at the end show the overwhelming thoughts and experiences for these characters.
Most of the movie is spent with Nishi, Myon, Yan and an old man (Takashi Fujii) trapped inside a whale. This functions as a metaphor - Nishi spent most of his life 'trapped' and unable to express himself freely with his manga work and with his love for Myon. In isolation with her does he feel confident and powerful enough to do so. What Myon really wants isn't really explored in the movie - we never see her daydreams or idle thoughts that we see with Nishi. For example, early in the movie, Nishi imagines what would happen if he finally told Myon not to marry Ryo and to marry him. Obviously, that doesn't happen.
In some ways, the characters once they are inside the whale begin to lose themselves to a shared madness and some of the scenes are a bit indulgent to be honest. So their escape seems a bit underwhelming story wise - although the sequence leading to the escape is absolutely crazy with the score and the characters literally running out of the whale's mouth.
Masaaki Yuasa as a director does something unique that at times recall Linklater but also Gaspar Noe and David Fincher. Japanese animation sometimes have a difficulty with storytelling falling into 'tropes' too easily and generally being geared towards young adults and children. Yuasa with Mind Game at least does something different enough where the movie is informed by Japanese animation traditions but skews and changes its form within the movie like how Noe and Fincher do with their movies.
Mind Game is a trip.
mother! (Peacock, leaving on 5/15) - 4.5/5 stars
SpoilerJennifer Lawrence is one of the most versatile actresses today. The same actress that did the hilarious No Hard Feelings and bittersweet SIlver Linings Playbook to a blockbuster franchise like The Hunger Games trades in Hunger Games for Funny Games in mother!. Jennifer Lawrence is the erstwhile mother who is married to a poet with writer's block (Javier Bardem).
The movie starts like a dream. A crystal is placed on a pedestal in a burned out house as Lawrence's character wakes up. Through the early parts of the movie, it's depicted as a docile home for her and her husband. Aronofsky uses a lot of shot/reverse shot and Kuleshov effect as the camera follows Lawrence's face and her expressions. Oftentimes, it seems like Lawrence's character is the last to know everything. The poet invites a man (Ed Harris) who claims at first to be a doctor. Bardem's character doesn't even know how he knows him but feels it would be impolite to turn him away. Soon, the man brings his wife (Michelle Pfeiffer) into the picture while continuing to take advantage of the poet and his wife's hospitality. This soon extends to their children coming to the house (Brian Gleeson and Domhnall Gleeson respectively). The people involved with the man and the woman's family is a similar effect to Funny Games; Haneke had two young men visit a family and continued to see how far they could push the husband's sense of obligation to conformity and agreeableness.
The logical extension of this is when a wake happens due to the murder/death of one of the sons. People that the mother doesn't even know start appearing out of nowhere to attend the wake. The poet is asked to say a few words, despite not really knowing the family. What he says later is reconstituted towards the end of the movie after the group of people sacrifice the poet and his wife's son. During the scenes at the wake, Lawrence's character is shown bewildered by the people and really wanting them to show manners. She catches a couple in her and her husband's bedroom and they scoff at leaving. Two people sit on a sink and she tells them to get off the sink and the sink can't hold their weight. They scoff at this too and jump up and down, breaking the sink and breaking a water pipe. Lawrence's character screams for everyone to get out and Bardem's character acts offended that she wants them gone.
Eventually, the two have sex and the mother realizes that she's pregnant.
As the movie progresses, Bardem's character as a poet finds new inspiration in her pregnancy and soon attracts a slavish devotion to their house. The scenes involving the mass number of people wanting to be touched by the poet with a black mark on their heads, to ripping up the walls and floorboards is absolutely insane to watch.Darren Afonosky compared this movie to the Bible in terms of his intention, but I wonder if a better inspiration would be Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet or poems of Rumi. Although both of those poets do not elicit the type of reaction Bardem's character elicits, their writings are spiritual in nature and mystical in application. What they write about is the abstraction of the human condition in a poetic form. Based on other characters' reactions to Bardem's character's poetry, it's almost appropriate (and to be fair I'm not comparing Gibran and Rumi to Bardem's character due to the fact that we never read/hear the character's written works). One of the people visiting tells the poet "I feel like you wrote those words for me." "I did" as the two share a hug. I wonder if Afonosky's point is about the fine line between religious fanaticism and popularity that people in creative endeavors straddle a lot.
There's a few things I noticed a lot with this movie. I noticed how Lawrence's character would look at the floorboards after the son's death and blood would seep downwards. The wood would be rotting away and expoosed the basement. Eventually, as Lawrence's character discovers, the blood is seemingly a dark sacrifice and helps to open a doorway to a furnace. How it was patched up is unknown.
Lawrence's character mentions a few times when discussing her sense of posessiveness for her and the poet's life the fact that "she built the house up" out of nothing. A few times we see her painting the walls to complete the room. She again is taken aback when one of the people from the wake starts painting as well without being asked to do so.
Throughout the movie, whenever Lawrence's character would experience anxiety, she would drink a yellow-ish liquid in her water. The coloring calls back to an earlier movie The Fountain, where the dominant color in that movie was yellow. What effect the liquid has is really unknown, although it seems to calm Lawrence's character down (anxiety and frustration mainly and also her latent 'powers' like being able to 'see' inside the wood of the house as it dries up and dies). Once the character becomes pregnant, she pours down the yellow liquid and throws away the bottle.
The movie takes a turn from the Haneke-like domestic eeriness to an apocalyptic scene with masses of people converging to the house. The effect towards the end of the movie is very different as the camera mostly shows what Lawrence's character is looking at as she tries to venture through the house for an escape. She is almost killed several times until the poet intervenes and rescues her.
The ending scenes of the movie indicates that what is shown is a cycle. The mother burns up the entire house and the inhabitants to make them 'go away'; this cycles back to the beginning of the movie where the opening shot was on Lawrence's eyes. After the house burns up and Bardem's character is seemingly killed, we see the poet carry the mother as if nothing happens. He reaches into her chest to pull out her heart as she dies and the heart crumbles away to reveal a crystal that is put on a new pedestal. The cycle starts anew; Shiva opens her eyes and her arms on the bed.
mother! as a movie is a tough watch and isn't for everyone. Aronfosky as a director uses a lot of what is done in Haneke (as I mentioned earlier) but also what Roman Polanski did with psychological horror/thrillers and with female main characters in Repulsion, Rosemary's Baby and The Tenant. mother! doesn't have a 'happy ending' nor should there one be expected. The actors involved did incredible, especially Jennifer Lawrence, even with difficult material like this.
mother! is a great way (?) to celebrate Mother's Day.
Meet Marlon Brando (Criterion Channel, leaving on 5/31) - 3/5 stars
SpoilerInteresting time capsule and interviews with Brando as he tries to avoid actually answering any questions. I thought it was interesting that not one person actually saw the movie they were asking him about, so for all they know the movie is terrible. (I wonder how it would have gone in this day and age if an interviewer watched the movie, took notes on it, and asked the actor what they felt they got out of it when doing the role while comparing the interviewer's experience with the movie).
Brando also spends a bit too much time flirting with the female interviewers with at least one of them (the interviewer at the end) trying to keep him on track and quit trying to get the Miss USA turned interviewer in bed with him.
I did like the portion where Brando interviews with a French film show and asks a woman he sees on the street how she felt about what the government was doing for the African American/black people today.
Great actor, probably a mildly intelligent and maybe not as interesting as he thinks he is.
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42 minutes ago, Contentious C said:
Brief pop-in as I start watching To Live and Die in L.A. to say it has, unequivocally, the WORST cheeseball 80s theme song ever recorded. It's not enough that the song is dated and terrible; it's that the lyrics CLEARLY make it better suited for a comedy about struggling actors in Hollywood, not a goddamned action film! What in the cream cheese fuck, people??
I bet William Friedkin was like, "whatever, the song sounds great, my movie is done."
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Movies today...
Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (the marathon to watch all the M:I before the new one) - 4.5/5 stars
Spoiler"Help me Jesus! Help me Tom Cruise!" -Ricky Bobby, Talladega Nights
Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation is quite possibly the best spy movie ever.
Rogue Nation as a movie is designed and calibrated to deliver action and spy thrills through the entire 2 hour and 11 minute run time. It doesn't really run out of gas even to the end (although the last 10 minutes were a bit iffy).
Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt in this seems to have changed a lot as a character. In the first four movies, Hunt is a damaged yet committed agent in the field. We see the cocky arrogance of him as a new agent in Mission: Impossible, the nearly Chinese/Hong Kong action star in MI:2, the character that seems conflicted between serving as an agent and rescuing his fiance in MI:3 and the unhinged, adrenaline junkie/maniac introduced in Ghost Protocol. Ethan Hunt in Rogue Nation is quite simply Spy Jesus. He's still an adrenaline junkie/maniac (witness his hanging onto a plane in the opening), but he will always be in control and helping those under his protection, like Jesus and his disciples. After all, as Alan Hunley (Alec Baldwin) said later in the movie, "Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is the living manifestation of destiny and he has made you his mission."
The other story thread is Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa Faust. Ferguson has a positively "Bond Girl" entrance in Casablanca as she comes out of the pool to greet Hunt and Benji (Simon Pegg). It called to mind for me Ursula Andress appearing in Dr. No; the difference is Faust as established is much more capable and more of a trickster compared to "Bond Girls." Even the choice of last name "Faust" is an interesting choice for the character; she made a deal with the Devil - in this case, Solomon Lane (Sean Harris) - to stay alive after failing to capture/kill Hunt at least three times. Lane keeps Faust alive to serve as 'bait' for Hunt. Ferguson's characterization as Faust is much more subdued; as if she's aware her time is running out and there will be 'one last thing to push it over the edge' as Benji puts it.
While a lot is mentioned about the spy thrills and action, I have to talk about the wonder of filmmaking that is the "Madame Butterfly" scenes in Vienna. Christopher McQuarrie uses impressive camerawork and shot/counter shot as Hunt sees one of the long thought dead agents, Faust, and another long thought dead agent trying to take out the prime minister of Austria. The camerawork and tension in those scenes are simply incredible and were absolutely perfect. It's positively on the level of Hitchcock's work in North By Northwest, Sabotage, and The Man Who Knew Too Much. Although the scenes in Morocco with the motorcycle chase is really thrilling, the rest of the movie couldn't ever top those scenes in Vienna.
The drawback I can say is Jeremy Renner's character William Brandt doesn't have any new nuances or characterizations compared to his character from Ghost Protocol - the difference this time is "he's on the team." Ving Rhames' character Luther Stickell as a black/brown character has virtually no story at all - we don't learn a thing about Luther or why he is even loyal to Hunt at all (or how come he never seems to be targeted for capture). Benji is about the only character that is captured and it's rather sad that Hunt doesn't believe in his capabilities at all - although I loved the scene with Pegg where the character spells out that "I am a field agent and I'm staying."
I was somewhat surprised that the Syndicate didn't have more wider range effect into the IMF; how was Hunt able to independently investigate the leader of the Syndicate and acquire the tools/resources to do so on his own? The "six months later" near the start showed Hunt being able to elude the CIA (with the implications that Brandt made him aware so it's possible Brandt supplied him with money/tools/resources for the investigation). A separate movie about the investigation into the Syndicate I think would be really compelling to watch - since there's a ton of John LeCarre Cold War spy thrillers like The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and one I watched recently A Most Wanted Man about the 'day to day grind' of being a spy.
Still, even then, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation is nearly perfect.
[Quote above is reference to Ethan Hunt's supernatural ability to get out of danger and Ricky Bobby drawing that to Tom Cruise]
Wanted (Max, leaving on 5/31) - 2.5/5 stars
Spoiler"I am Jack's complete lack of surprise" - The Narrator, Fight Club
Wanted has an unique melding of John Woo action violence with Fight Club's self-actualizing vision of manhood. James McAvoy plays Wesley Gibson, a listless 24 year old who gets recruited into a league of assassins born out of a group of weavers, Assassin's Creed in a textile mill basically.
Much of the story is 'video game'y in its execution as Wesley meets "Fox" (Angelina Jolie), who obviously got named that because she's attractive. Wesley works and trains with Sloane (Morgan Freeman) who has Wesley learning to curve bullets and catch an object in a loom. Nine Inch Nails' "Every Day Is Exactly The Same" acts as a depressive leifmotif for the movie to show Wesley's nihilism and listlessness in his life.
You know the movie was made in 2008 because it just had to include fat shaming for Wesley's boss. (That wouldn't and shouldn't fly today, no matter how much Wesley is undermined by his boss).
What was impressive to me was the train scene where Wesley finally catches up to Cross (Thomas Kretschmann) who left the Fraternity. The train derailment is out of Uncharted 2 as Wesley is climbing his way out only to discover that Cross....isn't the bad guy. Wesley is rescued by Pewaksky (ill used Terence Stamp).
Wesley using the Assassin's Creed against them, gathers rats with peanut butter (really) to be exploded (poor rats) in the textile mill HQ so he can get after the actual target: Sloane. "Fox" upon receiving her Death Note (well, I mean that's kinda what it is), fires a bullet that curves around and kills everyone in the room including herself while Sloane escapes.
Wesley eventually catches with Sloane and takes him out in a similar impossible way that the introduction to the movie had someone get taken out.
The problem with Wanted is the style is interesting but the story isn't as interesting. The characters involved are the kind of nihilistic power fantasy out of Fight Club along with the Wachowskis' The Matrix series. McAvoy at the end looks into the camera and asks "What the fuck have you done lately?" to provoke an existential crisis. I sit there and ponder why I am watching movies and not doing something more productive.
Anyway, to keep it on track, Timur Bekmambetov as a director has done relatively few English language releases and Wanted is one of the few he's done. For the most part, the movie is interesting although gimmicky.
Wanted makes me want to find the PS3 copy I have of Wanted: Weapons of Fate and play through that for more video game thrills.
Death Race (Max, leaving on 5/31) - 2.5/5 stars
SpoilerPure trash cinema but glorious trash. I absolutely loved the choices of having zoom-ins for various actors introduced as contestants and the voiceover for the "TV show." Paul W.S. Anderson can't direct serious moments or actors actually doing acting for shit, but he can do visuals like nobody's business.
Given the premise of the movie, I wouldn't be surprised if this will be our future.
Jason Statham as Jensen Ames earns a lousy $300 in cash for his final paycheck (and given the amount of withholdings, deductions, taxes, 401(k), medical, dental, union dues, legal payouts, etc. I'm surprised it wasn't less) as a factory work and goes home to his wife Suzy, who is subsequent killed. The movie never really says who did it or what happened. Pachenko (Max Ryan) is presented as the person who did it (and he claims to have maybe done it), but we never find out the truth. Part of me wondered if Hennessey (Joan Allen) ordered it because she's mean.
But anyway, you don't watch Death Race because you want a plot, character arcs, characterizations, or for a story to make sense, you want cars, explosions, Mary J. Blige needledrop when "female prisoners" appear including Natalie Martinez as Case, and dystopia to get your mind away from our current dystopia.
Anyway, like Jason Statham's movies always do, Death Race delivers.
Ninja Assassin (Max, leaving on 5/31) - 3/5 stars
SpoilerHaving watched Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation this morning, I think it fueled a desire to watch action movies. So this 'theme' for today has Ninja Assassin up next.
Rain as Raizo is nearly one note, one emotion throughout the movie - but he's charismatic to watch. It's somewhat like watching Brandon Lee in The Crow where you can't help but to be drawn to him despite the script and the material being a bit weak. Naomie Harris and Ben Miles provide better acting throughout the movie; they too have scripting issues with their characters. Harris' character is almost set up as a love interest for Raizo, but the movie never commits to doing so.
Even then, there are incredible fighting scenes involving Raizo (especially with his capture and having to fight his way out of custody against those from his former clan). The climatic battle against his former master Lord Ozunu (Sho Kosugi) has great cinematography with the side profile fighting with the fire in the background. The climax is pure Cannon Films as clan members and SWAT team members battle it out with explosions and limbs flying everywhere.
What seems to be a theme with this movie is the placement of a person's heart. In the gross but hilarious intro, the tattoo artist had his heart in a different place than normal. Naomie Harris' character had the same thing; this is seemingly regarded as special.
We never saw the body after Raizo defeated his master so I'm surprised there isn't a sequel called Ninja Assassin II. Lord Ozuna could be hobbling around with a missing forearm and a deep cut in his shoulder while swearing revenge. (It would probably turn into a Monty Python bit where Raizo chops off the other arms and legs while Lord Ozuna say "it's only a weakness!" trying to get at him).
Anyway, Ninja Assassin is decent ninja fun.
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1 hour ago, odessasteps said:
Disappointed that was not a review of the Doc about Toshiro Mifune.
Sorry! I can't watch them all in a day.
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Movies today....watched my first ever mini-series since I started doing this on a daily basis.
Mifune (Criterion Channel, leaving on 5/31) - 2.5/5 stars
SpoilerMifune is a dark comedy that isn't very funny. In fact, it's rather mean to watch. Kresten (Anders W. Berthelsen) is a recently married businessman who goes back to Lolland to bury his dad. Jesper Asholt plays his brother, who at various points he yells at and hits. They hire as a housekeeper Liva (Iben Hjejle), who is actually a prostitute.
During the movie, it was rather difficult to determine what the point of it is. What carries it is the cinematography choices and handheld camera setups in accordance to Dogme 95 rules. Liva's friends appear and beat up Kresten after Kresten's former friends appear and beat him up too. At various points, Kresten plays as Mifune with his brother, although why he does it is not really known.
Mifune is an interesting experiment, just not very compelling as a movie.
Little Women (2017/Masterpiece mini-series) (Peacock, leaving on 5/18) - 4/5 stars
SpoilerThis is my first review for a television mini-series. I haven't seen George Cukor's 1933 version, or Gillian Armstrong's 1994 Winona Ryder version, or the more recent Greta Gerwig version.
With this, there's something positively Sofia Coppola-like about the actresses involved. Much of the mini-series' focus is on Jo (Maya Hawke), who as a character is conflicted within herself and with the expectations upon her: "I wish I had been born a boy because it's much easier." Jo as a character rejects the idea of having to fall in love with someone "because it's suggested" like with Theodore Laurence (the very Miles Tenner looking Jonah Hauer-King). With the modern context, it's possible that Jo would have been transgendered or even a lesbian. With the context of the mini-series, Jo is perfectly content with being a "writing spinster" until she meets Professor Bhaer (Mark Stanley). Bhaer and Jo end up together rather quickly; which lends itself to Jo being happy with someone as an equal than based on what the society want for her.
On the other hand is Amy (Kathryn Newton). Newton plays Amy very bratty and a slight bit of the modern context in her character. Amy in the first part of the miniseries has conflicts with Jo - she burns part of her book before falling through the ice to be rescued by Theodore and Jo. Jo is angered at Amy for the rest of the episode and there is an element of a rivalry even after that. Theodore's revelation to Jo that "I will always you" but "you have switched places in my heart" and "I love you like a sister and I love Amy like a wife." Amy and Theodore are much better matches anyway - she's immature but aware and he's romantic but a bit clueless.
Emily Watson as Marmee March is incredible as well - there were a lot of great scenes with her. I especially loved the scene in Episode 3 where Beth will die and the way Watson slowly had Marmee's emotions to the surface.
Throughout the miniseries, I loved the natural lighting and the cinematography. In Episode 3 alone, there were a lot of incredible shots - I especially love the shot of Jo on the beach, the shot of Amy and Theodore in Florence on the balcony, and the shot of Beth (Annes Elwy) on her deathbed with the family around her.
For the most part, Little Women is a great mini-series.....I hope to check out more of the Masterpiece episodes/mini-series the show has done.
The Image You Missed (Criterion Channel, leaving on 5/31) - 3.5/5 stars
SpoilerA film about a filmmaker making a film about another filmmaker - in this case, Donal Foreman making a film about his father Arthur MacCraig.
Much of what is shown is from MacCraig's footage during the Troubles and is talking about what it was like documenting those times and the approach he takes as a documentary filmmaker. I especially like the portion where MacCraig did a voiceover about documentary intention over Foreman's footage from "Occupy Wall Street" protests. In those scenes, both Foreman and MacCraig have the same intention to present the unvarnished truth.
At times though, there is a bit of confusion as to what Freeman is trying to do with this documentary; it felt more like he was exorcising his past and indirectly addressing his father. The ending scenes go full circle with what MacCraig had said in the introduction but with footage of himself, as if Freeman is asking the same things MacCraig seeks to ask of his documentary subjects.
Clown in a Cornfield (saw in the theaters) - 3.5/5 stars
Spoiler"Every generation
Blames the one before
And all of their frustrations
Come beating on your door" -Mike & The Mechanics, "The Living Years"Clown in a Cornfield has quite a bit of 1990s horror nostalgia. The movie is soaked (with blood) with Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer as far as the characters and much of the plot. Quinn (Katie Douglas) and her dad Glenn (Aaron Abrams) recently moved to Kettle Springs, which has significantly nothing going on beyond a "Founders' Day" event every year.
Quinn, as she is introduced to the town's high school by Rust (Vincent Mueller), is told to 'be careful, there's a lot of weirdos here.' What occurs is familiar to anyone watching 1990s horror movies like Scream and 1990s TV shows like Dawson's Creek and Roswell; Quinn as an outsider slowly becomes acclimated to the town. What's interesting is it goes against type for these type of movies or shows; none of the teenagers Quinn encounters have a particular hatred towards her for being an outsider. They just want to scare the crap out of her with their YouTube videos about Friendo the Clown.
With one of the videos, Quinn notices a figure stalking in the background. Slowly, one by one Quinn's friends get killed. Eventually, Quinn gets captured and the culprits behind the Friendo the Clown suits are revealed.
What I find interesting about this movie is several things. The usage of clown as a horror villain is slowly been building up over the years; this stretches back to 1980s' IT where Pennywise appeared everywhere. So the continued usage in this movie is interesting; additionally, the local teenagers actually mocking the clown and showing an awareness of the connotation in modern horror is a new wrinkle too.
Additionally, the movie ultimately is built as a clash between younger people and older people. (Hence the song quote from MIke & The Mechanics at the start of the review). I thought it was interesting that Quinn's inability to drive stick shift was a significant step for the character. The mayor Arthur (Kevin Durand) decries everything that came through "first, it was the hobos, then it was the 1960s with the hippies. Then the 1990s with those burnouts. And your generation is the worst" in a monologue revealing his and others' plan to Quinn. Arthur Hill and his plans are thwarted as Quinn, Rust, Rust's boyfriend Cole (Carson MacCormac) (that explains why Cole didn't want to make out with Quinn) and Glenn drive out triumphantly (with Quinn mastering how to drive stick shift).
For the most part, Clown in a Cornfield is a nice bit of 1990s horror nostalgia.
Sundown (Hulu, leaving on 5/17) - 4.5/5 stars
Spoiler"Walking on the beaches looking at the peaches" -The Stranglers, "Peaches"
What's interesting when Sundown started is I started humming the bassline to the quoted song then singing the above lyric to myself. Tim Roth's character Neil seems like a kindred spirit to Ray Winstone's character Gary Dove in Jonathan Glazer's Sexy Beast. Apathetic, miserable, and a shell of himself as Neil vacantly goes through life on a vacation with his sister Alice (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and her two children (Henry Goodman and Albertine Kotting McMillan). There's also elements that remind me of Luca Guadagnino's A Bigger Splash as its main character (namely Ralph Fiennes) goes through a midlife crisis that results in the character losing his mind. I had even been reminded of M. Night Shyamalan's Old as the resort in this movie looks surprisingly similar to the one in Old.
Through the entirety of the movie until it was mentioned towards the end, I thought that Neil and Alice were husband and wife rather than brother and sister. It would brought a different dynamic to a marriage falling apart than what Gainsbourg did in Antichrist. Instead, Neil just shrugs his shoulder over his mother's death as Alice and the kids leave to go back home after Neil leaves due to not having his passport.
Within the first 20 minutes or so, we see the back or the side profiles of the characters; we never shoulder length headshot of the actors in any of the scenes. When Neil watches his sister and her kids leave is when we see a shoulder length headshot.
Having watched Michel Franco's New Order, about halfway through did I realize what he was doing with Sundown. New Order is about the social structure tearing itself apart with "white Mexicans" being gunned down and killed at a wedding. With this, Sundown is about the social structure being torn within one person's life. After Neil signs away his control of the business to his sister, Alice is assassinated by the taxi driver Neil used frequently. The movie never makes clear that Neil ordered the hit. Throughout most of the movie, he mindlessly has sex with Berenice (Iazua Larios) after meeting her at a drink stand. He watches violence in the area and ducks to avoid a drink vendor being killed.
Two frequent images appear throughout the movie. One is of the blinding sunlight seemingly shining in Neill's face. It turns out later this ties into a hospital stay Neil has for cancer treatment. The other is of dead animals or animals in general. The movie opens with a shot of fish in a boat with a shot counter shot of Neill looking at his sister's children and at the fish. Later in the movie, pigs appear in the communal shower and on the beach wondering around. It's found that Neil and Alice control slaughterhouses - which is where pigs are killed. Neil, in the last image before his collapse and hospital stay, sees a pile of dead pigs in the middle of the floor. Also frequently shown is the characters riding in vehicles - the camera seems a bit detached as the characters sit in golf carts, vans, taxis, and later in the movie for Neil, the back of an ambulance.
The ending for the movie is interesting. Neil, after being diagnosed with cancer, seemingly walks out and walks down the street. The movie ends showing a chair with his shirt on the back of the chair, seemingly going for a swim. I think at the point that he's walking down the street, he is dead. No one seems to acknowledge or say anything to him as he is walking (not even the women standing on the sidewalks if we can presume they are prostitutes). The final image of the movie doesn't show Neil, but his presence is there.
Throughout the movie, I loved the cinematography and usage of shots of the characters from behind. I also liked the sense of detachment the shots had - a lot of the shots were done in side profile as the characters were walking and were further back as the characters arrived in rooms. The color choices reflect the Acapulco summery location.
Sundown for the most part is a better movie than New Order.
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Movies today...
Key Largo (Criterion Channel, leaving on 5/31) - 4.5/5 stars
SpoilerKey Largo is not just a film noir. It's also a post-World War II film, one of the last gangster films, and a bridge to the personal melodramas of the 1950s/1960s.
The way the movie is setup, Frank McCloud (Humphrey Bogart) is thought to be "on the run" as he goes to Hotel Largo. His first scene on screen has the police pulling over the bus he's on to look for runaway fugitives; the way it's framed, it's made to think that Frank McCloud knows something we don't about the fugitives.
He runs into Nora Temple (Lauren Bacall), who is the wife of one of the troops under his command in WWII and her father-in-law James Temple (Lionel Barrymore). Frank as a character goes over his regrets and what he remembered about George. I loved the scenes with Bacall and Barrymore as Bogart's character relays personal anecdotes from what George told him and their reactions to them.
Frank meets people at a bar who seem incidental and is told "the hotel is closed." The bartender doesn't give a drink despite the bar having people having drinks. Gaye Drawn (Claire Trevor) forces the bartender to give Frank a drink.
Frank and Nora have a budding relationship which leads me to think that this movie would be a romantic drama between the two characters. All is well and good with the uneasy tension as I wonder when it would be revealed what is going on with Frank until the phone rings....and Howard Brown (Edward G. Robinson) answered to say that Sawyer (John Rodney) isn't there. Guns are drawn from Brown, who is Johnny Rocco and his men.
This is when the movie becomes a gangster film.
The focus of the movie then rests on Rocco as he holds captive Frank, Nora, and James during a hurricane. I loved one of the scenes during his captivity from Bogart: "Johnny Rocco was more than a king. He was an emperor. His rule extended over beer, slot machines, the numbers racket, and a dozen other forbidden enterprises. He was a master of the fix. Whom he couldn't corrupt, he terrified. Whom he couldn't terrify, he murdered." Barrymore responds with "You filth. You city filth." "Oh, Mr. Temple, you're hopelessly old fashioned. Your ideas date back years. You're still living in the time when America thought it could get along without the Johnny Roccos."
That scene coupled with one of the thugs saying "I wish they'd bring back Prohibition" while Rocco nervously paces the room during the hurricane. Which is interesting - law enforcement doesn't make Johnny Rocco nervous. Surviving a hurricane makes him more nervous. After all, "you don't like it, do you Rocco, the storm? Show it your gun, why don't you? If it doesn't stop, shoot it."
The other aspects I liked were the little details in how John Huston filmed the movie. Objects would receive close-ups to indicate their significance - the briefcase holding the money for Ziggy (Marc Lawrence). Glasses falling and breaking during the hurricane. Temple handing McCloud a gun before he takes a boat ride. Later directors inspired by John Huston would do similar tricks in their films too; a lot of directors at the time didn't really do such closeups on objects or even closeups on actors' faces during scenes. A lot of what is in Key Largo appears later in more modern films. The ending scenes with Bogart and Robinson on the boat had me wondering if the ending would be similar to Arthur Penn's Night Moves where Gene Hackman's character is alone and adrift in a boat.
What's mentioned a lot are two scenes as well. I loved the scene where Barrymore gets up from the wheelchair and tries to take a swing at Robinson's character; Bacall's reaction and the closeup on her seems genuine due to Barrymore's actual health issues. Also, Claire Temple's singing "Moanin' Low" nervously due to a lack of preparation; it feeds into the notion that Rocco and his men would shoot Temple if they didn't like her singing - a few closeups of Robinson looking at his men to motion for the song to end had me wondering that.
The melodrama of the 1950s/1960s being linked to this is due to how Frank McCloud as a character is going through personal turmoil after WWII and his reaction to Johnny Rocco. During the early parts of the movie, Frank is asked about his time in WWII and the medals he earned - he implies he didn't feel heroic when he earned them. The scene where McCloud is given an opportunity to shoot Rocco, but doesn't. Sawyer grabs the gun and tries to shoot it. It's empty. Sawyer is killed by Rocco. The scenes toward the end also exemplifies this. Frank McCloud is asked to go with Rocco and his men onto the boat. Gaye Dawn wonders why Frank didn't try to run away when he had a chance, even after giving him Rocco's gun. For Frank McCloud, the memories of the war still lingers on him and affect him. As he recounts near the start of the movie, he worked as a reporter then after the war became a waiter, a boat hand, and even a day laborer. WWII didn't make him complete and left him as an empty shell.
Even with great acting moments and great scenes in the movie, some of the script is a bit dodgy. From a modern lens, the treatment of the Native Americans in the movie didn't age well, especially with the music providing a connotation associated with Native Americans. The sheriff shoots two of the escaped fugitives basically believing Rocco at his word; obviously, he'll take the word of a white man (no matter if he's the actual criminal) over two guys fleeing the law and told to turn themselves in by Mr. Temple.
But despite my script issues, Key Largo is a near classic. The music is incredible - I especially love the scenes after Gaye Dawn sings that sounds similar to "Moanin' Low" as Frank is slapped. John Huston is a great director that colors a lot of later filmmakers and their approach to drama, even today.
Marmalade (Hulu, leaving on 5/9) - 3.5/5 stars
SpoilerMarmalade as a movie taps into Cohen Brothers' style of filmmaking. Quirky characters, unusual character details, and a noir tinged story. On its surface, it's Forrest Gump if he and Jenny became Bonnie & Clyde in a regional Southern area and started robbing banks. Baron (Joe Keery) tells his story about meeting a girl named Marmalade (Camila Morrone) to his cell mate Otis (Aldis Hodge), whose ears perk up when he hears about the $250,000 Baron has stored somewhere.
The way the story is constructed through Baron telling how he met Marmalade and the money would be the hook for Otis to help Baron break out....until it's revealed that Otis is a FBI agent embedded in the same prison cell as Baron to find out about Marmalade.
The twists don't end there.
Marmalade as a movie seems like the work of an experienced director rather a first time director. It recalls to mind Raising Arizona a lot of times, especially with Baron and Marmalade having a bond that connects them with Baron's mom Eda. Throughout the movie, Baron seems to be a complete fool and Marmalade is the mastermind for the robberies. When Eda dies, Baron doesn't even want to proceed with the robbery and is urged to continue by Marmalade.
In a nice sequence, Otis breaks Baron out and Baron drives off. As Otis and the FBI are after him, slowly Otis realizes the truth at the ice cream parlor.
Baron has been playing them the whole time.
Baron and Marmalade then take on a similar relationship to Tyler Durden in Fight Club. What clued me in that something was up was when Marmalade was drinking alcohol while being pregnant - my first thought was that Marmalade was lying to Baron about the pregnancy and she was going to ditch him. Then, in light of the fact that Marmalade is an alter ego and a figment of Baron's sub-conscious, it made sense. Marmalade was never there in the first place.
Polly Morgan's work as cinematographer is terrific, especially with the shots of the cars going along the route to Baron's cabin. Stewart Reeves' work as an editor is also great as every scene never overstays their welcome. Reeves' experience as an editor for music videos lends itself to this style really well.
For the most part, Keir O'Donnell is a great director and I hope to see what he does next.
Shadow Force (saw in the theaters) - 2/5 stars
SpoilerShadow Force as a movie seems to fit with the low effort, low stakes type of filmmaking shown on Netflix and Amazon Prime with older famous stars in movies like Union and Canary Black. The premise is basically Mr. & Mrs. Smith with a child where the husband Isaac (Omar Sy) is taking care of his son Ky (Jahleel Kamara) until a thwarted bank robbery attempt gets Isaac on the news.
After that, every member of Shadow Force (that's their name, stop laughing) is activated by Jack Cinder (Mark Strong). Among those activated is Kyrah (Kerry Washington). Kyrah and Isaac briefly fight until they decide to team up again due to their son - whatever conflict between the two seemingly stops after their fight.
Isaac and Kyrah link back up with Auntie Clanter (Da'Vine Joy Randolph) and Marcus Owens (Method Man). Clanter and Owens have a hilarious bickering relationship throughout the movie. The highlight for me is Ky being asked about Wu-Tang Clan and Ky replying that "Wu-Tang Clan ain't nuthin' to fuck with" (with Method Man laughing the hardest in a nice metatextual moment).
The fact is Shadow Force should have been called Slowed Force. For a movie about two operatives being hunted, it seems to lack with any dramatic moments in the movie. Story wise, it's relatively simple - probably too simple. Washington had a great acting highlight towards the end with Mark Strong where Kyrah tells those in the room that Cinder is still mad he can't have her. The last 15 minutes or so had a shootout sequence with the characters in the room that has some dodgy blocking/staging and messy camerawork. One of the fights with Washington and one of the operatives seem to cover up for Washington; Omar Sy doesn't bode any better during his fighting sequences.
What was irritating was that Mark Strong's character would never die - he got shot multiple times, set on fire from a gas grill, and yet could climb into a boat for a poorly shot chase sequence.
What saves the movie for me is Sy and Washington's chemistry and the funny moments with Jahleel Kamara singing along with Lionel Richie and cursing.
Shadow Force barely escapes the shadows.
Butterfly Vision (Mubi, leaving on 5/17) - 3.5/5 stars
SpoilerButterfly Vision is quite different than other recent Ukrainian cinema I've seen recently. It's a bit more grounded and taps into neorealism compared to the satirical Dombass and the documentary The Earth Is As Blue As An Orange.
The movie opens with a prisoner named Lilya (Rita Burkovska) being released from separatist forces in a prisoner exchange. The exchange is 'captured live' with journalists and camera crews recording it as Lilya steps off the plane to return to her family.
What I found interesting is the usage of drone footage - it's as if Lilya constantly has eyes following her. With the mixed media presented in the movie (streaming footage, YouTube videos, etc), it appears to 'sputter' and 'buffer' like actual videos being streamed do. At several points as Lilya recalls her memories from the camp, they warp between her present life and her memories - the way that online videos do when there's something blocking the transmission or slowing the transmission down.
Lilya tries to adjust to life after captivity with her husband Tokha (Valivots Liubomyr). Tokha is put on trial for his involvement with the murder of a Roma citizen due to new video footage of the incidents. Unfortunately, he takes his own life, which is never shown. Lilya's reaction is shown as she rushes everyone out. Then, there's drone footage of Tokha's funeral as his commanding officer tells him "to wait until we're there."
What I found interesting is the movie never says if the baby Lilya has is Tokha's baby or she became pregnant from one of the guards (although she is shown being r*ped). Which makes the decision for her to give up the baby for adoption with the English speaking couple rather a sad fate. Lilya knows that the baby would face a lifetime of war in Ukraine and she couldn't be able to provide for the baby.
The movie ends the way it began with a truck door opening - except this time Lilya and a fellow soldier conduct drone operations during the war in Ukraine.
Maksym Nakonechnyi as a director did an incredible job. The movie melds narrative fiction with scenes that play out rather realistic. The actors involved do not seem like actors moreso that they are reacting naturally. A lot of the cinematography choices for the movie shows a cold, gray world that the characters inhabit; war in modern times is never pretty, but it leads itself to a lifeless pursuit. Lilya's life continues even after escaping captivity and her character seems completely numb to everything around her. I found it interesting she would do a medical exchange and was clearly in pain; we don't see the exam and see the screen put up. But we can hear it.
The movie moved a bit slow but it wasn't hard to be captivated by the character of Lilya in this.
For the most part, Butterfly Vision presents a vision of life during wartime.
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Movies today....
All The Colors of the Dark (Criterion Channel, leaving on 5/31) - 4/5 stars
SpoilerFrom all the giallo films I've seen, this one has more in common with Mario Bava's Black Sunday and Roman Polanski's Repulsion and Rosemary's Baby. The psychedelic and psychotic effects throughout the movie makes it uneasy to tell what is reality and what is delusion for Jane (Edwige Fenech).
Fenech is the best part of the movie as she is absolutely helpless and feels like she can't pull away from the cult her neighbor Mary (Marina Malfatti) is involving her with (it should tell you what type of movie this is when two characters are named "Mary" and "Jane").
I loved a lot of the shots used throughout the movie - the POV shots during a Black Mass were really good and I liked the shots of Jane looking outside to see the blue eyed killer following her.
The last 15 minutes were a tad confusing for me and I had almost wondered if Richard (George Hilton) was involved in the cult too. When Dr Burton (George Rigaud) got killed then Richard got killed, I had thought the ending would be Jane embracing her place in the cult, like how was done in 1999's The Ninth Gate (also from Polanski). That wasn't the case though.
Still, All the Colors of the Dark is a trippy affair.
Phantasm (Criterion Channel, leaving on 5/31) - 5/5 stars
SpoilerPhantasm is an incredible film. It does so much with so little and it's just loaded with atmosphere and tension throughout the entire movie. It uses probably about 2 sets through the whole movie, but everything feels lived in.
Mike (Michael Baldwin) is one of the best young adult characters; he's something out of a Stephen King novel. He works on cars, he can drive a car, he knows how to fire a gun, and he sticks his hand in the Pain Box and undergoes Bene Gesserit's test of humanity. He's better than that wimp Paul Atreides. What did Paul Atreides do anyway besides make Zendaya jealous?
Angus Scrimm as the Tall Man is an incredible villain out of Stranger Things. Everywhere he goes, he follows Mike. He can pick up a coffin one hand by himself. He throws these silver ball bearings that kill one of his minions. He has an army of Jawas at his command; that's how powerful he is to get minor characters from Star Wars to be at his command. He says "Boy!" as much as Kratos in God of War on PS4 did. I think I figured out the Jawas' origin story - corpses get reanimated, crushed to be three feet tall, and get thrown through a dimensional door on Tatooine. (Tatooine is what Mike saw he glimpsed the world, right?).
Jody (Bill Thornbury) has the best advice I've ever heard in a movie involving gun ownership: "Now, remember: you don't aim a gun at a man unless you intend to shoot him. And, you don't shoot a man unless you intend to kill him. No warning shots. Hey, you listening to me? No warning shots. Warning shots are bullshit. You shoot to kill, or you don't shoot at all." Everyone that owns a gun should remember rather than randomly pointing it at things.
I will say the ending scenes didn't make a lot of sense due to Jody (Bill Thornbury) seemingly died. It did make me wonder if the whole thing was a dream. That is until the Tall Man saw Mike and he was pulled in by hands from the mirror. The lighting throughout the movie is a bit too dim at times and it's easy to lose sight of the actors.
But still the scene with Mike driving a car while Jody shoots at a hearst is just incredible filmmaking. One of the silver ball bearings getting stuck on a minion's face while Mike is going through the funeral home is also great. The introductory scenes are great as a guy gets killed while having sex at a funeral home/cemetery. I literally busted out laughing when Mike came yelling through the cemetery while his brother Jody was doing his thing. "Stay right there, that's just my brother," as if this isn't the first time Mike came screaming through a room while Jody was getting laid.
Phantasm is just inspiring to watch.
Torso (Criterion Channel, leaving on 5/31) - 4/5 stars
SpoilerTorso (or the title I like better - The Bodies Bear Traces of Carnal Violence) is a movie that lends itself to predicting movies like Scream, A Nightmare On Elm Street, and Halloween. Many of the characters involved are college students - the film opens after a nude photo session with a college professor named Franz (John Richardson) talking about Perugino's St Sebastian and discussing with a student named Jane (Suzy Kendall) afterwards about the lack of blood even in martyrdom.
Soon afterwards, one of the students who is friends with Jane named Flo (Patrizia Adiutori) is strangled to death. Much of the movie seems to point to the culprit being Stefano (Roberto Bisacco). There's an element of hatred towards women that's inherit in Torso. Stefano is spurred by Dani (Tina Aumont) and follows her to a stairwell on campus. Later in the movie, the local men oogle over the four women including Jane staying at the villa (within earshot of the killer too).
In some ways, Sergio Martino and fellow screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi seem to be saying that women can't freely pursue what they want without drawing attention and why should they be able to spurn a man if they aren't interested in him? Throughout the movie, it is part of the giallo film style but also taps into commedia sexy all'italiana with frequent nudity for Dani, Katia (Angelo Covello) and Ursula (Carla Brait). The women in one scene go to bed together, sit outside on lounge chairs naked, and swim near a waterfall naked. Martino is showing these women in these situations and playing it up comically, without those women realizing the danger they are in.
Jane meets up with the women and sprains her ankle while falling asleep. Katia, Ursula and Dani are murdered. The 30 minute sequence where Jane stays hidden in her room are some of the most intense bits of filmmaking I've seen - the camera catches everything from Jane's POV as she cannot see the killer that's in the villa. The scenes where her friends are cut up and hauled away in bags is gruesome to watch, even if Jane is only getting a limited POV of the acts. The scene where Jane gets the key to unlock the door to her room with the help of the killer was really intense.
Which leads up to the reveal of the killer being Franz. Franz has a greater issue beyond hatred of women. He saw his brother did from a fall and regards nearly everyone as "dolls made of flesh and bone." How Franz was able to maintain his role as a college professor and separate himself from this pain is not really known; we never see what Franz does outside of the collegiate setting. Yet, it's learned that he was behind every murder depicted in the movie. Like all giallo films, the murderer fights with the guy that came to the rescue - in this case a doctor named Roberto (Luc Merenda) - and ends up dead.
For the most part with Torso, everything is shot and framed incredibly well. All the actors have an incredible sense of style in their wardrobe and beautiful Italian men and women are photographed well. For me, I liked the technical aspects of Torso, but I'm uneasy with the message Sergio Martino did for this movie. Uneasy (and possibly sexist and misogynistic) depiction with men and women are hallmarks of slasher films after all, so Torso isn't any different.
Sleepless (Max, leaving on 5/14) - 1/5 star
SpoilerI once again achieve a state of 'brain sleep' during a movie. The lucky movie is Sleepless. I don't remember a damn thing that happened in this movie past the opening scenes.
Jamie Foxx plays a high strung policeman named Vincent who robs a shipment of cocaine with his partner Sean (Tip "T.I." Harris). The fact that T.I. is playing a policeman is sorta funny; the dynamic pre-dates Den of Thieves by at least a year.
The problem is the rest of the movie isn't nearly as interesting. Vincent fights people for an impossibly long time after being stabbed and bleeding. He could teach some of the giallo characters a thing or two.
Michelle Monaghan is part of internal affairs that the movie spends quite a bit of time talking about her being 'traumatized' after getting beaten up, yet nothing that happened to her comes into play with the story (well, why talk about it?). She and her partner Doug Dennison (David Harbour) go after Vincent in a casino until we find out (purely out of convenience) that Dennison is on the Rob Novak (Casey Affleck-looking Scoot McNairy)'s family payroll and causes a car to flip over.
I find the rest of the movie I don't remember anything. The action scenes are shot terribly and the camerawork drunkenly follows Jamie Foxx beating people up and getting beaten up.
I will say it's refreshing that the main character is POC and is ultimately a 'good guy.' Although Foxx and his character's wife Dena (Gabrielle Union) had practically zero chemistry and essentially fought with each other throughout the movie.
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A neo-noir with Margaret Qualley is not something I thought would be possible post-Death Stranding / post-The Substance. Drive Away Dolls was okay but people didn't like it.
Honey Don't looks like a more quirky version of Under The Silver Lake.
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33 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:
Kill or Be Killed from 1976 was just on and it was a hell of a '70s semi-tournament kung-fu film. A Nazi commander lost in the Olympics and wants another battle so he "recruits" (kidnaps) a bunch of karate fighters. There's a dwarf dude running through the whole proceedings and they end up grabbing guys who are now teachers, or bounty hunters, or whatever. Now the "sequel" Kill and Kill Again is on.
These Dish streaming channels are full of awesome trash. I recorded Mutant with Wings Hauser last night! They have a full MST3K channel and a full Trailer Park Boys channel, if you can believe that.
Kill Or Be Killed sounds like something that would get a trailer in Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarrantino's Grindhouse (which I need to re-watch/find a copy).
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Movies today....
Death Walks At Midnight (Criterion Channel, leaving on 5/31) - 3.5/5 stars
SpoilerGreat giallo although a bit convoluted plot wise and leans a bit more into the Hitchcock influences compared to other giallos. Susan Scott / Nieves Navarro as Valentina has everyone not believing her story about witnessing a murder while under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs. The character and the premise fits very much into Hitchcock's Rear Window with a woman being in danger drawing from Hitchcock's The Birds.
Everything in this movie is stylish - even the person Valentina believes is the murderer has great designer shades! The style of the movie is more influenced by Jacques Demy's French movies than typical Italian giallos.
I loved a lot of the shots in the movie - the usage of wide angle shots were especially great as Valentina was stranded on the highway or of the patio across the way from her (very Rear Window like too).
The last 15 minutes had everything coming together with Stefano (Peter Martell) being revealed as the mastermind of the murders. Throughout most of the movie, I had a tough time telling him and Gio Baldi (Simon Andreu) apart and had to pay attention to how they dressed.
Like I mentioned with the storyline, it was a bit tough to keep track of. I found myself also getting annoyed a bit at nearly everyone not believing what Valentina was saying about the murder she somehow saw. It had me wondering if the conclusion of the movie would be she would end up in the asylum while the murderer walks off.
Death Walks at Midnight is a great giallo.
Out of Here (Criterion Channel, leaving on 5/31) - 4/5 stars
SpoilerIn some ways, Out of Here has more in common with 'slow cinema' like from directors like Tsai Ming-liang or Kleber Mendonca Filho than UK/Irish directors. At times, I felt like I was watching a Belfast version of Tsai Ming-liang's Days. The main conceit in this case is Ciaran (Fionn Walton) returning to Belfast to live with his parents after dropping out of university.
The movie captures the listlessness and loneliness of a post-college life. Ciaran goes to pubs, to hear bands playing, to hang out with people he meets on the streets, and to parties. The conversations he has doesn't address anything in particular and seem more like empty speech and empty gestures. His dad asks him what he'll do once he's back and it's simply "I'll try to figure out something to do." Ciaran is still not over the relationship with his ex-girlfriend, who he encounters during the movie and asks to be with her. She turns him down.
Ciaran's feeling of loneliness and longing is personified in the extended story he tells about meeting a girl in Vietnam and her taking everything but his camera. He concludes by wondering why he is even there.
The ending scenes have Ciaran and other men going into the ocean, naked. It reminded me of Sigur Ros' album cover for Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust as it also shows men running somewhere naked. Nudity with men and amongst men in such circumstances seems to be a freeing, liberating act.
For some people, this movie won't be that interesting and in a lot of ways there isn't a story with this movie. But a lot of what happens to someone without direction is true to life and it's not hard to see someone trying to figure themselves out go through something similar.
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (death race to watch the M:I movies before the new one) - 4/5 stars
SpoilerFar and away (see what I did there?) a better movie than Mission: Impossible II & III combined - although Brian DePalma set the tone for everything with the series.
There's more physical acting and even physical comedy with Tom Cruise in this movie (although another review compared him to Jackie Chan, which I would be plagiarizing if I went further). Cruise as Ethan Hunt in this is almost unhinged - the entire intro scene with Hunt escaping the Russian prison and silently motioning for Benji (Simon Pegg) to open the doors is hilarious.
Every action sequence is careful planned, thought out, well edited, and well shot. Every review will likely talk about the skyscraper scene where Tom Cruise is climbing on the side of one of the tallest buildings in the world (without security seemingly being aware of it, but let's not dwell on that too much). It's incredible - but I loved the scenes after that with Hunt and William Brandt (Jeremy Renner) in one room and Benji and Jane Carter (Paula Patton) in another room. The way those scenes were done had nice usage of match cuts as the characters entered the room and it switched back and forth between the two sets of characters.
I noticed that Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol's usage of BMWs almost rivals the Bond's movies usage of Ashton Martins. About every car shown in the movie was a BMW - even during the climatic scenes where Hunt is jumping from platform to platform to get a briefcase from Kurt Hendricks (Michael Nyqvist) and drives one straight down.
I will say the character arc with Renner and Cruise's characters weren't as well earned as they should have been. The revelation about Brandt being on the protection detail for Hunt and his wife came a bit late and undermined the earlier scenes where Hunt and Brandt were trying to locate a traincar that housed the IMF team. Brandt in the earlier scenes seem to not understand how Hunt knew a distraction would work, yet had mastery of combat skills - the movie had me wondering if Brandt was a Russian mole planted in IMF but that never happened. Then the ending scenes between the two seemed a bit like a rush of exposition before the end of the movie - it was like an elongated epilogue for the movie and I wonder if there should have been a conversation between the two earlier in the movie to go over that. Maybe have Hunt and Brandt ride in a car together to talk (for a call back to the scene introducing Brandt).
The other thing, like the Bond movies, is showing the foreign countries in the movie is more about the extravagance of Hollywood than anything really story or acting related. Having Tom Cruise running through a sandstorm in Dubai is just so he can. I did like the party in Mumbai scenes, which recalled back to me a few of the Bond movies (although the movie did begin to drag a bit at that point).
Some of the story aspects weren't quite as strong as should be - Lea Seydoux as Moreau was wasted in her scenes and we learn absolutely nothing about her as a character. She shows up to take out the IMF agent Hanaway (Josh Holloway) and later gets kicked out of a window. Nyqvist as a villain is a bit underwhelming compared to Phillip Seymour Hoffman in MI3 and absolutely nothing is learned about him either. It seems as though the villains' motivation in this movie are almost way too simple - "he's a nuclear extremist." We never get a scene where Hendricks has Hunt captured and tell him why he's doing what he's doing (a common trick in the Bond movies). Instead, it just brushes past that, he twirls his moustache, there's a video of a speech about "the day after the end of the world," and he does evil things because that's what the story said he should do. The "why" behind it or the motivation for it is never really discussed. We get more motivation about why Ethan Hunt does what he does in the last 5 minutes versus any other character really.
Even with the character and story aspects having issues, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol is the best one so far.
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5 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:
"Takashi Miike is going to direct" doesn't work on you?
Considering that, this could possibly be crazier than the first two Bad Lieutenant, and is something I wholeheartdly welcome with open... pants, open pants.
SpoilerEveryone in the movie uses cocaine! It's not just one guy standing naked and crying in his living room, it's two! Nicholas Cage and Harvey Keitel show up at the end and say, "He was a....Bad Lieutenant." "Yeah, let's do some cocaine!" with Toto's "Hold The Line" as the ending credit song.
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5 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:
I have to watch if you asked the longer cut of this or the original. I finally saw the OG in the theater and was shocked by how well the story flew through its paces, much tighter and more appealing. It's kind of like the Argento cut of Dawn of the Dead (Zombie) to Romero's.
I watched a 2+ hour version on the Criterion Channel, so I think it was the longer cut.
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They got Jason looking like Channing Tatum. Two of the women look like SZA and Keke Palmer from One of Them Days.
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Movies today....
Lured (Criterion Channel, leaving on 5/31) - 3/5 stars
SpoilerLured is a bit of a mismatch as a movie. It is a great atmospheric noir with lot of comedic elements but shifts in the last 30 minutes or so into a police procedural drama.
Lucille Ball as Sandra Carpenter is a droll, sarcastic female lead who is used to entice a serial killer in London - the premise is very similar to a few giallo films I've seen recently but it's not quite as dark or bloody. It does make me wonder if this movie could be re-made to make it more like a giallo film than a noir film.
George Sanders as Robert Fleming isn't quite a heroic character - throughout the movie, I had wondered if he had done it and he was finally caught. Charles Coburn (who later was in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) as Inspector Temple matches wit with both Fleming and Julian Wilde (Sir Cedric Hardwicke).
The highlight for me was Boris Karloff's role as Charles van Druten; his character is absolutely maniacal and insane with grief over having once been a famous designer. It's somewhat sad the movie didn't spend a lot of time with his character and had him only be in for about 10 minutes or so.
Fantastic set design and production design throughout the movie. I loved the sequences near the start where it showed a letter working its way through Scotland Yard.
This isn't among Sirk's best, but it's pretty decent.
Shockproof (Criterion Channel, leaving on 5/31) - 3/5 stars
SpoilerShockproof feels more like a Samuel Fuller movie than a Douglas Sirk movie. Some of Sirk's trademarks are there (the exquisite outfits for the female lead, the set design and low angled staging of the house shown in the movie, the melodrama), but it's mostly what Fuller would do later and with The Naked Kiss.
Jenny (Patricia Knight) is a parolee who has to report to her parole officer Griff (Cornel Wilde) regularly. While some aspects seem a bit absurd and even abbreviated due to the runtime (such as why they are falling in love even though Griff tried his best not to), the movie is a pulpy B-movie that turns into a "Thelma & Louise" like on the lam for the two characters. It's purely what Fuller did with characters on the outskirts of society throughout his directorial features.
The scene where one of the parolees rather than going back jumps off the balcony is even shocking today. The way that was filmed was incredible.
I loved the usage of match cuts in the movie (a match cut at the introductory scenes with Jenny's hats, a match cut later with the clocks and another one as the calendar changes from July 8 to August 2).
For the most part, Shockproof is a short movie packed with a lot of action.
Fight Or Flight (saw in the theaters) - 1/5 star
SpoilerWhat do you do when you combine Bullet Train with Non-Stop? You get Fight or Flight.
The movie is a mess. Dialogue is awful. Story beats make zero sense - like how did Josh Harnett’s character figure out who Ghost was that quickly? How did the guy at the agency BlueHarp (?) send out the bounty when at the start he was as confused as everyone else? Who these people are and why I should care went out the window about 30 minutes into the movie - it should be an easy layup. Just make Die Hard on a plane and focus on one person with a main villain after the main character. Instead, it tries to have a lot going on with the 'world' and have three women that looked after "Ghost" and look like characters out of Kill Bill. The lighting is out of a Netflix series or movie. Camerawork is atrocious. Fight choreography is abrupt with camera cuts and the way the action is framed. It's not exciting, it's just bad.
This apparently is the director James Madigan’s first feature. I can’t complain that much about a director being able to do this since making movies are an absolutely impossible task, but I wish the resulting movie were better written.
The only plus is the toad’s venom induced scenes with Harnett’s character hallucinating and using a chainsaw to kill bad guys with a needle drop of Elvis Costello’s “Pump It Up.” There's some perverse sense of thrill with Harnett chopping people up with a chainsaw (albeit with badly done blood and limbs).
Then the movie has a sequel bait ending. Gross.
Just avoid this and Fight your way to take a Flight out of the movie theater. A dump for 90 minutes is better usage of your time than this.
Rosario (saw in the theaters) - 2.5/5 stars
SpoilerRosario as a horror movie isn't exactly original but does well with what's there. The movie has elements of other low budget horror movies like The Curse of La Llorona (Mexican folklore horror), Guillermo Del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth, The Autopsy of Jane Doe (a dead body having a lot of control over the apartment), and even 1408 (another horror movie in an apartment building). Emeraude Toubia as Rosario isn't that bad to look at either (I know a girl on Instagram who looks like her, so I had vaguely feeling of familiarity).
I did like the scenes where Rosario sees a glimpse of her parents having to enter the United States - there's elements of real life concerns in the horror movie being depicted.
My one complaint is the fact that there were too many 'false endings.' It had me wondering if the ending would be Rosario and her dad Oscar (Jose Zuniga) were able to stop it until we find out he had done the enchantment and gets killed, then a flash forward to six months later and Rosario now has something coming out of her mouth.
Even then, I would love to see what Felipe Vargas does next as a director.
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Movies today....
The Assassin (Criterion Channel, leaving on 5/31) - 4.5/5 stars
SpoilerThis is my first exposure to Hou Hsiao-hsien as a director. I had seen Three Times (or at least I think it was Three Times) and found it interesting, but wasn't sure I actually watched it or just watched a part of it (I'll have to track it down and watch all the way through).
I'm not as familiar with Chinese cinema as I should be; it and cinema of India and maybe of Korea and Japan are a bit of a blind spot for me. Watching Western directors exclusively does tend to color what types of movies I watch - I'm hoping to see more of them soon.
With that said, I found Hou Hsiao-hsien's movie utterly impressive. In some ways, this felt like a wuxia film directed by Terrence Malick. The entire movie is contemplative and sad, but it's not outwardly shown as such.
The namesake Assassin Yinniang (Shu Qi) does everything but assassinate someone. We see a beautiful black and white sequence where she does - the rest of the movie is about running away from a responsibility as much as it is about confronting it. Yinniang doesn't appear often on screen, but her looming appearance colors what the other characters do in the movie.
The times that Yinniang appears, we learn a bit about her. She relays a story about a bluebird that's told earlier in the movie - "the bluebird was her." The story about the bluebird is due to its isolation for three years, it didn't sing. When faced with a mirror, the bluebird sings then dies. Yinniang as a character is almost an empty vessel - but she can't help to notice the emptiness. She does engage in fighting, but it's to disarm others and with the intent not to kill (except for the scenes in the forest where she saved Tian Ji'an (Chang Chen), her intended target.
Throughout the movie, everything is beautifully shot and painstakingly framed. A lot of the cinematography and sound for the movie is of the actors being in nature; I could hear the birds chirp and wood creak as the actors in almost whispers talk to each other. There's no sweeping dramatics for The Assassin; it's as though the movie is occurring during the time frame naturally.
The drawback is if there's further thought about the movie, there isn't that much story wise. The characters are a bit empty and it left me having to fill in the blanks on the significance of each character. Why Yinniang felt a sense of loyalty to Tian Ji'an isn't readily known - as Jiaxin (Fang-Yi Sheu) puts it, "Your skills are matchless, but you are encaged by human sentiment." Yinniang perhaps sees Tian Ji'an as a reminder of her past life rather than an intended target and reminder of her current life as an assassin.
From this, I'll be trying to seek out other movies from Hou Hsiao-hsien and from other directors of the region.
The Surfer (saw at the theaters) - 2/5 stars
SpoilerI’m fine with movies that are strange and only make sense to the filmmakers. The audience isn’t expected to understand nor find themselves identifying with the characters in a movie, so long as the overriding point or idea is arrived at the end.
The Surfer with Nicholas Cage as the erstwhile surfer had me wondering “where” they were going with the movie or “what” they were trying to do.
Is Cage’s character a “ghost” of the homeless man he encountered? Is he dead or participating in a purgatory he can’t escape? Is he really a native Australian who moved back with unknown means (other than being a writer) to purchase a house?
Why not all three?
The Surfer as a movie seems to make a statement about hardcore toxic masculinity and about communities that close themselves off to “preserve” their ideas of what they want. It could be said it’s talking about the conservative movement in the world and people like Andrew Tate sharing false ideals to younger people. The movie comes close to say that this is Its Point, but it’s never really clear.
Most of the movie is Cage going through a quasi-Fight Club / Requiem for a Dream psychosis where his character imagines himself as having once been wealthy enough for an oceanfront house then meeting and becoming the homeless guy he meets (Nic Cassim). I was convinced leading to the ending that the Bum was a figment of the Surfer’s imagination or a depressed/depraved version of himself.
In the end, who knows. The Surfer stylistically as a movie conjures up a similar vibe in its cinematography and score to late 1960s/early 1970s movies like Easy Rider and The Swimmer but executes its conceit so poorly.
Thunderbolts* (saw at the theaters) - 3.5/5 stars
SpoilerThe most obvious touchstones for Thunderbolts* are three movies - Watchmen, Logan, and Avengers. Thunderbolts* focuses on what it means to truly be 'good' in a comic book world like the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The movie opens with Yelena (Florence Pugh) listlessly talking about the void in her life as she goes through her assignment to take down an OXEGroup lab. The 'who' and 'why' isn't really solved, but does tell us of a main character with Yelena who is bored with being a costumed hero.
We see her dad Alexei / Red Guardian (David Harbour) who is sadly in a messy apartment while his limo is outside (which reminded me a bit of Logan's start in Logan and his driving a limo). The movie never shows Alexei driving around (probably because the comparison would become too obvious). After meeting with Alexei, Yelena takes 'one last job' (like Logan did in his movie).
Yelena meets with John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Ghost (Ava John-Kamen) and Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) and fight against each other until meeting Bob (Lewis Pullman). Taskmaster gets killed in the first five minutes of meeting her (bad Marvel bad), which completely undoes everything about the character from the standalone Black Widow (why introduce a character if they won't make through a later movie?).
Behind the characters meeting and trying to kill each other is Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). Louis-Dreyfus is a bit like her character from Veep except more evil (and possibly more like the perception of Hilary Clinton). At the start of the movie for her character, Valentina is being brought forth on impeachment charges; obviously given what the US went through with a Congress trying to impeach a President (twice), it's hard not to read the current political climate into that. Like anything else in Washington DC, it's team sports and professional wrestling; de Fontaine takes a picture with the congressman who brings forth the impeachment inquiry. In a committee, they play a part but outside of it, it's different.
Bob (Pullman) as a character is vastly different than most other MCU characters I've seen; Pullman's portrayal and arc reminded me a lot of Billy Crudup's turn as Dr. Manhattan in Watchmen. Both characters are beyond human existence, yet Sentry/Bob is focused on darkness and internal issues due to what Yelena tells him, "I just push it down and stuff it inside," she says. Sentry takes it to heart and literally wonders what any of this means. People are seemingly zapped out of existence as a literal creeping darkness appears.
What reminded me of Avengers was the way the characters that were fighting each other and not getting along came together to rescue people from wanton destruction - which also happened in Avengers during the attack from Thanos' minions.
One scene that I really liked was between Pugh and Harbour. Yelena breaks down and recounts what she does on a daily basis. "Daddy, I'm so alone. I don't have anything anymore. All I do is sit, and look at my phone, and think of all the terrible things I've done; and then I go to work, and then I drink, come home to no-one, then I sit and think of all the terrible things I've done again..." Pugh and Harbour's acting in that scene broke my heart (which if you remember from We Live In Time, that was the entire movie, now I need to watch that again....).
Thunderbolts* as a movie cinematography wise is a bit greyed and dulled to match the darkness in Sentry and the mental health issues/depression in Yelena. Nothing is really standing out cinematography wise and everything has a brown color to the world; it's hard to want to see the team save the world when it looks so drab. Really the movie's story is of Yelena and Sentry's story. The other actors involved aren't as to the forefront. I did find it interesting the movie cast two sons of famous actors (Bill Pullman and Kurt Russell) to play Marvel characters.
The last 15 minutes were a bit rushed for me as the rest of the characters entered the Tarkovsky-like interior world where Bob is reliving his memories. Those characters were seemingly unaffected, unlike Yelena who had an extended sequence leading to seeing Bob again. I did love the usage of dolly zooms as Bob & Shadow Bob fought each other and the characters were pinned against the wall.
The last movie I saw of Jake Schreier's was the disappointing Paper Towns. Like that movie, Thunderbolts* focuses on the ordinariness of the characters and has its characters going to a place untouched by the rest of the world (Agloe in Paper Towns and a secret lab in Thunderbolts*). I really want to see what Schreier does next. I somewhat hope he works with Florence Pugh on another movie because she was the standout throughout the entire movie.
Thunderbolts* won't make the cover of the Wheaties box, but it won't be on the Great Value Wheaties box either.
Strip Nude For Your Killer (Criterion Channel, leaving on 5/31) - 2.5/5 stars
SpoilerAn average giallo film. Nothing is really extraordinary about it other than The Umbrellas of Cherbourg's Nino Castelnuovo as an overly aggressive photographer named Carlo. Carlo doesn't help his cause and there's something inherently gross about the way the characters are in this movie; it's almost a bit manipulative and sleazy.
In some ways, the movie is more like softcore porn like Emmanuale than a true giallo.
Although there's something a bit sad about Maurizio (Franco Diogene) trying to sleep with Doris (Erna Schurer) after driving fast to his house with her. I was amazed at the sequence with the driving and wondered how they pulled that off and if they drove in actual traffic to achieve those shots. It's seems a bit like what Friedkin did in The French Connection.
Some of the scenes toward the end were a bit too dimly lit for me and made the actors barely visible on screen.
Also, the ending has Carlo attempting to coerce a woman into sex. Yuck.
Cedar Rapids (Max, leaving on 5/31) - 2/5 stars
SpoilerThe movie poster for this is the stuff of nightmares. Ed Helms with a look of either shock, surprise, or terror. Take your pick.
With the actual movie, it's easy to see which insurance company is being referenced or at least a composite of independent agents that set up their own companies. The movie is 'funny' in the sense that the actors involve act as caricatures of who would be agents - although John C. Reilly's character is a bit like his character from Step Brothers. Even down to "are you going to be my friend?" to Tim Lippe (Ed Helms).
It's somewhat sad that Anne Heche as Joan wasn't in more comedies (although she was in a few after this) and was mostly a secondary actor in ensembles.
The highlight was Isaiah Whitlock Jr as Ronald, who likes The Wire; which Whitlock was on. The interesting thing about this movie is it's not really a comedy as it is a drama about a character learning about the wider world outside of his hometown.
Cinematography wise is a bit like other low/mid budget comedies from around the same time period - very much shot similarly to Adam McKay's comedies than anything else. I did like how the scenes were shot at the party Tim goes to where he does drugs.
Cedar Rapids is an okay movie with a scarier movie poster.
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I saw Thunderbolts* today, expect a review in the movie thread later today.
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3 hours ago, Brian Fowler said:
The good news about having watched Mission: Impossible 2 and 3 is that the series has never gotten close to that bad again.
The bad news is that you watched M:I 2 and 3. (Except PSH. Hoffman was incredible in 3.)
M:I 2 was one of the first movies I saw when I started this year-long journey of watching movies every day. My review at the time was like a few sentences, but I knew it was bad.
(Although I'll never stop loving the opening free climb and Cruise & other guy throwing motorcycles at each other in MI:2).
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Movies today....a lot of giallo and Tom Cruise to break up the giallo.
Don't Torture A Duckling (Criterion Channel, leaving on 5/31) - 4.5/5 stars
SpoilerIt's interesting how Don't Torture A Duckling is influential on later movies. There's a lot of Tarantino and Scorsese in how the movie was shot and what was emphasized during closeups. The scene with the witch Maciara (Florinda Bolkan) being beaten to death having a needle drop of a song refers back to Fulci's earlier musicarellos but would pre-date a similar usage in Reservoir Dogs and in Goodfellas.
With Fulci compared to Argento, the world is entirely cruel. Argento's main characters are almost entirely innocent even as horrific incidents happen around them. With Fulci, everyone is suspicious and untrustworthy, even the police, even young boys and even the church. Most of the focus of Don't Torture a Duckling is on the police investigating the murders of the young boys.
What I found interesting is how the movie starts with long wide angle shots as it shows one of the boys hitting a lizard with a slingshot while Maciara digs up a small body on a hill overlooking the highway. The cruelty of the world is at the start. It goes inside to the church, which is shot ominously (almost reminiscent of what Almodovar would do in Bad Education). The boys later meet up to follow where a car is going and share cigarettes - what's interesting is the fact that the young boys aren't viewed as completely innocent with their talk about the women's breasts and smoking cigarettes. If anything, they are almost framed as miniature adults, with the camera actually centered lower on them to make them appear taller on their first frame. It's only when the camera goes to a midrange shot that we see how tall they actually are.
Another scene I loved was at the funeral for one of the boys. A mother cries out that the murderer is there as the camera pans over Don Alberto Avallone (Marc Porel), then Patrizia (Barbara Bouchet) and then over on Maciara as she runs out the doors of the church. Maciara was filmed and part two of the movie has the police examining the footage of Maciara to wonder if she had committed the murders.
It can be said that Fulci is a bit misogynistic. The women in this movie seem to have the worse ends regardless of what they did. Maciara is suspected of having done the murders after the first suspect didn't do when a second murder happened while he was in custody. The scenes where Maciara gets accused are gut-wrenching. The camera shows a POV shot as she spins around and falls down, foaming at the mouth.
Patrizia is targeted as well as the camera does closeups of her face during interrogation. At some point, I was wondering if she had committed the murders; especially during the scene where she was taking the mute child to buy a doll. Eventually, her and the newspaper reporter Andrea (Tomas Milian) begin to notice a duck's head being in one of Andrea's photos for the newspaper.
Which leads to the actual murderer Don Alberto. The scenes where Don Alberto's mother Aurelia (Irene Papas) has the girl include zoom-ins on their eyes as they struggle over the girl. Don Alberto grabs the girl and takes her to a cliff side. Andrea and Don Alberto fight and eventually Don Alberto falls off the cliff. I loved how they did the final scenes with the fall; soft focus lens are used as Alberto falls and it shows flashbacks to the boys in the church earlier with his voiceover. One of the murdered boys is shown as Alberto administers last rites.
The drawback with Don't Torture a Duckling is there really isn't a central character to the movie; it seems to be more on the investigations than any main character. But despite that, Bolkan and Bouchet did incredible work with their roles and Porel portrayed his character as innocent the entire time (as if Alberto didn't know or remember that he murdered people until it was triggered).
Don't Torture A Duckling even with really grisly scenes isn't a torture to watch.
What Have They Done To Your Daughters? (Criterion Channel, leaving on 5/31) _ 3.5/5 stars
SpoilerWhat Have They Done To Your Daughters? is not really as much of a giallo film as it is a poliziottesco film. Giallo is more than a killer walking around with knives/cleavers and wearing black gloves; although really what's at the heart of the movie is the level of corruption depicted.
Where the movie lacks in the story aspects, it makes up with the police procedural and gripping chase sequences. Some of the aspects with the inspector Silvestri (Claudio Cassinelli) not able to capture everyone involved in the sex ring is reminiscent of 1977's Chinatown conclusion.
The introductory scenes and music have an innocent quality that is in contrast with what happens in the movie.
Still, I loved the sequence where Silvestri chase after the motorcycle helmet killer through the hospital and into the roads to conclude at a train tunnel.
Mission: Impossible III (Blu Ray, trying to watch the rest of the series before the new one) - 3.5/5 stars
SpoilerSince the new Mission: Impossible is coming this month, I decided to take on the monstrous task of watching the rest of the series before the release date.
Mission: Impossible III is probably J.J. Abrams' best movie. It's a bit more like Brian De Palma's Mission: Impossible than whatever that was that John Woo did with Mission: Impossible II and it has probably too much shaky cam, but this is the best and most focused movie Abrams has done. At the time this movie came out, Abrams had done Alias and Lost so some of what happens is shot a bit more like a television show than a big budget movie. (Although it's Tom Cruise and Mission: Impossible, it's big budget and was $150 million, so yeah).
What is interesting is how Ethan Hunt (Cruise) in this seems a bit more ready to leave the spy work behind - the scenes after the mis en scene intro has the character adopting a life outside of IMF. I did like the camera setup from inside the fridge as Julia (Michelle Monaghan) raises her head out of the fridge for Ethan and Julia to kiss.
Story wise, this movie tonally is a bit of a combination of Brosnan's Bond movies like GoldenEye and The World Is Not Enough. Those running spy organizations are almost not as trustworthy as the enemies themselves; one of the characters lament that the sacrifices they did for the United States as a spy isn't what they thought it would be - like Sean Bean's character in GoldenEye with Bond's MI6 organization.
Having seen a lot of Italian giallo today, the scenes in Italy felt like a parody of Italian movies with Rhys Meyers and Cruise shouting at each other in Italian.
The highlight is probably Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Owen Davian. Having seen a lot of PSH's work in the past several months, Davian is basically Hoffman sleepwalking through the movie; a lot of his usual approach isn't really on displayed and Davian is played more as a controlling sociopath than what Hoffman usually does in dramatic roles (like his character in the later Before The Devil Knows You're Dead or even Jack Goes Boating). Davian's death on screen is a bit more toned down despite it being a bit grisly (in other movies I've seen, there would have been a ton of blood and maybe his foot would have been attached to the shoe). I did like the scenes where "Hunt played Davian" and seeing how non-chalant Davian was when running into Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) from the sewer. "What's up?" "Nothing. What's up with you?" "Nothing."
It's a bit of a shame how ill used Keri Russell, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and Maggie Q were in this movie. Meyers is normally in more meatier roles with Russell and Maggie Q being more featured in television shows. All three characters are a bit of a blank slate - Russell's character Lindsay is a rookie that Hunt felt confident enough to have in the field, Meyers' character Declan Gormley has virtually no character other than "he always copies," and Maggie Q's character Zhen Lei has no background at all but is really pretty.
I had to scoff a bit at Musgrave (Billy Crudup) calling Brassel (Laurence Fishburne) an "affirmative action poster boy" (nowadays, there would be a portion of the audience that would have cheered at that line).
Even then, this movie is the Tom Cruise show and he does running. And shooting. And spy work.
Who Saw Her Die? (Criterion Channel, leaving on 5/31) - 2.5/5 stars
SpoilerSlightly below average giallo but has an eerie Ennio Morricone soundtrack and George Lazenby plays a grieving father named Franco Serpieri. There are times in which Lazenby's voice actor and his emotions doesn't match how Lazenby comes across.
A few interesting POV shots (especially at the beginning) and nice scene leading to the title. Besides those shots and a nice footchase scene in an abandoned mill, nothing truly outstanding about this movie.
2025 Movie Discussion Thread
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Movies today...
Kandahar (Hulu, leaving on 5/18) - 2/5 stars
Kandahar as a movie just isn't very interesting. Gerard Butler as Tom is a CIA operative who gets exposed due to a journalist Luna Cujai (Nina Touissant-White). Tom has to reach a CIA base with "Mo" Doud (Navid Negahban). Butler does about as well as he normally does in his movies although he's less of an outward ahole like his character was in Den of Thieves series. The only thing about him is needing to sign divorce papers (is it in his contract to playing divorcing dads?) and seeing his daughter. The introductory scenes has him setting up a hack into Iran's nuclear facility.
Much of the movie focuses on the chase for Tom and Mo and the various countries and governments wanting him. On its surface, this should be an interesting premise; for whatever reason, in the hands of Ric Roman Waugh, it crumbles.
The lone highlight is Ali Fazal as ISI agent Kahil Nasir doing James Bond shit and riding a motorcycle while hunting down Tom and Mo. Honestly, I would watch more movies with Fazal as an action movie star; he has the charisma and presence for it. We see him matching with a woman on a dating app while coercing a military operative to letting him chase after the CIA operative.
The movie attempts to incorporate themes about "family" but is rather clunky in its handling. We see the person who captured Luna named Farzad (Bahador Foladi) talk to his wife about being home then is killed when Tom shoots down his helicopter. The story arc around his body being accepted re-appears in the last five minutes. The movie tries to be much deeper than it actually is; the song at the end of the movie tries to tie everything together. The choice of song, like most of the movie, isn't very interesting.
What's irritating is the fact that the movie could have said something about journalism in the region and how even leaking CIA operatives and endangering them is a failure of journalism, but the movie never does that. There's also the implication that the US government essentially left Tom to fend for himself as a CIA operative after the leak, except of course towards the end when it's convenient and having Taliban vehicle bombings from jets. What the movie seems to focus on is beautiful desert scenery and the characters going from point A to point B.
Kandahar is B-movie/straight to Blu Ray filmmaking that's not very good at times but it could have been worse.
A Simple Favor (Netflix, leaving on 5/18) - 4/5 stars
A Simple Favor practically drips from French style at the word 'oui.’
The premise of the movie with Stephanie (Anna Kendrick) making friends with a domineering woman who 'has it all' named Emily (Blake Lively) is literally The Talented Mrs. Ripley (or the original Purple Noon); Emily has what Stephanie wants out of life. The movie sets about Emily being the object of Stephanie's attention as they grow closer until one day....Emily vanishes. After Emily vanishes, Stephanie begins to adopt clothing and some of her habits - I especially love the scene where Stephanie cleans out the closet at Emily's house only to come back to see it back in place. The scene with Stephanie dancing to Serge Gainsbourg's "Bonnie and Clyde" is infectious as is watching Emily and Stephanie kiss in a flashback.
Much of the movie then sets about a Hitchcock plot structure: Stephanie seeks to find out what happened to Emily and what was going on in her life prior to her death. As it turns out, it becomes a bit like Henri-Georges Clouzot's Les DIaboliques - which Anna Kendrick's character hilariously namedrops to the Cary Grant-like Henry Golding as Sean - and a bit like Vertigo and Suspicion.
Most of the fun of the movie is the twists and double crosses that appear and how much of it is lead by Kendrick's character. Kendrick is a bit like a female James Stewart in some ways until towards the end; she presents herself as a wholly innocent person as something breaks in her. Blake Lively is also the best part of the movie with her sardonic yet slightly evil manner she portrays the character; another review online compared her to Julie Christie in this for her maniacal and ruthlessness. The "twin sister" storyline with Blake Lively playing two sisters does capitalize on the Vertigo influence, although the difference being that Emily killed her own sister. I absolutely loved the wide angle shot as Emily drowns Faith in the lake.
The last 10 minutes is bonkers with the melding of comedy - as friends of Stephanie get busted for pot - and the drama as Stephanie reveals she's been live streaming the entire time after Emily admits to the murders and cuts the wiretapping.
Compared to other works from Paul Feig that I've seen, this is practically his best movie. I loved the melding of flashbacks, split diopter shots, and closeups that are used - the comedy really works against the Hitchock/Clouzot like suspense thriller attributes.
The Time Traveler's Wife (Max soon to be HBO Max, leaving on 5/31) - 3/5 stars
There's something positively sweet and earnest about The Time Traveler's Wife. It's not a sequel to The Astronaut's Wife (although I guess both could be part of an unofficial series). In this, Eric Bana plays Henry, who is able to go forwards and backwards in time; every time he arrives to a place, it's like Kyle Reese in The Terminator and he has to procure clothes. In a nice homage to The Terminator, the first time we see Henry on screen, he's arrived in a library.
Playing his wife is Rachel McAdams as Clare. McAdams has an unbelievable ability to melt snow with just her smile. The character is very much a traditionalist, despite meeting Henry as an older man while her character is still a child. To be honest, that is a bit of grooming going on and rather icky to think about it. The movie doesn't really address that aspect of it and just aspects it on face value nor does the younger Clare and Henry avoid each other when meeting.
As the movie goes through, I realize that it isn't necessarily about time travel. The author of the book had it be a metaphor for failed relationships, but with this movie, it's more of a metaphor of being at the wrong place at the wrong time in life. Henry never really feels a permanence with his situation and with Clare; the next thing he knows, he is disappearing and somewhere else again in a different time.
The movie does have some elements of Dr. Who and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "The Visitor" as Henry goes through time and makes slight changes to his and his wife's life. I loved the scene where Henry gives Clare the winning lottery numbers; the next scenes after that shows Henry and Clare house-hunting until they find a specific house with a studio in the backyard. After the lottery winnings, there is an element of upper class wish fulfillment with the characters and their stations in life. Initially in the movie, Henry tries to romance Clare in a small one bedroom apartment (although he disappears).
I will say the choice of “Love Will Tear Us Apart” is an interesting choice for a bride and groom dance at a wedding (when the song was basically a suicide note from Ian Curtis).
Robert Schwentke did the classic The Captain and this movie is vastly different from his later work. There's almost a Spielbergian sense of humanity to the movie; I absolutely loved the tracking shot where it shows Henry and Clare walking through their house with baby Alba.
The drawback is the introduction of Alba (Hailey McCann) as she time travels too; I had wished Alba as a character felt like she had to re-appear to prevent her father from dying, but is always too late to stop it. In that instance, even those that control time can't control everything. But the movie kept the focus on Henry realizing that his death is oncoming in the last couple of scenes in the movie and teleports to the time that he got shot.
Even with the premise issues and some ickiness involved, The Time Traveler's Wife is worth the trip.
Hurry Up Tomorrow (saw in the theaters) - 2/5 stars
Leading into this movie, I had virtually no awareness of who The Weeknd/Abel Tesfaye is. I knew he played at a Super Browl halftime show, he had a hit song called "Blinding Lights" and he really fucking loves 1980s style synths that go 'meow' in his songs. For awhile, I thought The Weeknd was a band.
With Hurry Up Tomorrow, will it be as self indulgent as Prince's movies like Under The Cherry Moon and Graffiti Bridge were? Yes. Is it going to be an examination of the pressure of fame cracking a person like Smile 2 was? Yes and no.
So much of Hurry Up Tomorrow is literally carried by the visuals. They are absolutely overwhelming and conjure to mind for me Gaspar Noe's visuals in Enter The Void and Climax among others. The introductory scenes has a woman screaming, presumably into an answering machine and it's seemingly Jenna Ortega's voice. We see a photo negative image of an eye on a person's face. There are a ton of tracking shots throughout the movie; one of the first scenes follows Tesfaye into a dressing room and pans around the room, like Scorsese did in Taxi Driver when Travis Bickle is first shown at the taxi company. Ortega is soon followed around in a tracking shot brandishing a gasoline can as she doses a house and belongings with it.
Until the characters meet, I had thought that Ortega's character Anima was Tesfaye's ex-girlfriend. In one scene prior to his concert, we see him screaming a message that he's leaving on a voicemail for someone. The movie never explains who it is that draws his ire; Anima suggests later that it's himself.
Hyping up Tesfaye is Barry Koeghan as his manager Lee. What we do know about Lee, we know that he quit school to follow Tesfaye as his manager. Seemingly, the two know each other. Also, Lee has his own destructive habits like cocaine usage that Tesfaye feels he has to participate. The scenes at the club with Lee and Tesfaye near a DJ booth has a real 'la vie de la fete' vibe to it and you never feel the two will come down.
When Anima and Tesfaye finally meet, it seems to be a blossoming relationship. We find out that the house Anima burned down was her mother's, not Tesfaye's house. The movie implies that the two have sex (for whatever reason in 2025, that's never shown anymore or even have a scene with the characters going into bed with each other - it's like it's the Hays Code all over again). The next scene has Anima in a bathrobe as the two share breakfast. Tesfaye begins to leave and just sees Anima as a 'means to an end' without any concept of a relationship. Anima knocks him out and we have an extended Stanley Kubrick The Shining dream sequence that sucked the life out of the movie - including Tesfaye walking down empty hotel lobbies and empty streets.
It's when Tesfaye comes to that we realize Anima is an obsessive fan. Her character is literally Katey Bates' character in Misery; she derives value and meaning from The Weeknd's music and it means more to her than anything else. She has Tesfaye tied up and dances around to his songs like "Blinding Lights" and "Gasoline" while asking him who they are about (he doesn't know, he's a drugged out musician, he can't remember where he was last week). Lee finally breaks in and gets killed; Anima pours gasoline on Tesfaye and....he starts to sing with the camera focused on his face. Deux ex machina, that frees him!
The end of the movie has the hotel room on fire while Tesfaye walks down a hallway to a dressing room and stares into the mirror/camera for the ending.
As I mentioned, the cinematography from Chayse Irvin and Trey Edward Shults' filmmaking literally carry this movie. Abel Tesfaye is not a very good actor at all; I would love to see do another role where he plays an actual character instead of a character that's an extension of himself. The best part is Jenna Ortega and she tries her best with the very loose characterization that's available; her character feels very underwritten. Barry Keoghan also feels underwritten.
The main aspect seems to be the theme of fame destroying a person and destroying their meaning, although that theme is a bit undercooked at times.
Hurry Up Tomorrow makes you want to Hurry Up Today for some aspirin afterwards.