Movies 2025 Movie Discussion Thread

[Technico Support]

16 hours ago, Contentious C said:

Yeah, but Tree of Woe is already such a good name.

I remember when Excalibur used to call it "Tree of Joey Lawrence" but that's a dated reference.

[Mister TV]

I re-watched some Gene Hackman flicks the past week, three things that stood out.

How was he not nominated for The Royal Tenenbaums, every scene he's in is a masterclass, that Sean Penn was nominated for I Am Sam is shameful.

He's the only reason Get Shorty is considered a good movie, bummed it wasn't just an entire Harry Zimm movie.

Hoosiers is so weird, all I remembered of it was older white dudes loving it and Ollie hitting his free throws, as I was watching it all I could think of is how weird it was, mainly due to the always dark skies, trippy synth score, totally grim characters, high schoolers with receding hairlines, even during final scene with some little kid shooting in the gym, I was waiting for a graphic saying the entire team died in a bus crash on the way home, that was the tone of the entire flick to me. Barbara Hershey's character doing a total 180 after hooking up with the coach was hysterical and WTF was Coach Dale think when he wanted to use Jimmy as a decoy in the final game! The movie did a great job making pre-shot clock high school basketball entertaining, those games back then were 90% teams holding the ball & playing 4 corners.

 

[Contentious C]

1 hour ago, Technico Support said:

I remember when Excalibur used to call it "Tree of Joey Lawrence" but that's a dated reference.

I don't even know who TF Excalibur is, so doubly-dated.

[Curt McGirt]

Edit from previous page: Scarecrow has Al Pacino, not Dustin Hoffman

[Travis Sheldon]

3 hours ago, Contentious C said:

I don't even know who TF Excalibur is, so doubly-dated.

I know Excalibur, but I never heard the sword talk.

Maybe they're confusing it with Black Blade.

Edited March 12 by Travis Sheldon
comedy

[The Comedian]

9 hours ago, Mister TV said:

I re-watched some Gene Hackman flicks the past week, three things that stood out.

How was he not nominated for The Royal Tenenbaums, every scene he's in is a masterclass, that Sean Penn was nominated for I Am Sam is shameful.

He's the only reason Get Shorty is considered a good movie, bummed it wasn't just an entire Harry Zimm movie.

Hoosiers is so weird, all I remembered of it was older white dudes loving it and Ollie hitting his free throws, as I was watching it all I could think of is how weird it was, mainly due to the always dark skies, trippy synth score, totally grim characters, high schoolers with receding hairlines, even during final scene with some little kid shooting in the gym, I was waiting for a graphic saying the entire team died in a bus crash on the way home, that was the tone of the entire flick to me. Barbara Hershey's character doing a total 180 after hooking up with the coach was hysterical and WTF was Coach Dale think when he wanted to use Jimmy as a decoy in the final game! The movie did a great job making pre-shot clock high school basketball entertaining, those games back then were 90% teams holding the ball & playing 4 corners.

 

Agreed on Hackman in The Royal Tenenbaums. And I haven't seen Hoosiers in decades, but thinking back on it, man, you're right; for a feel-good underdog sports movie, it is incredibly bleak. A grim stroll through dark gymnasiums and barren forests of dead leaves.

[Contentious C]

Anyway, other crap, emphasis on crap lately. 

Omni Loop - This? Not crap, but we're rapidly reaching the point where time loops are empty signifiers. Very much in the sad-feels category of time travel movies, and it has Ayo Edebiri, so naturally I liked it enough.

Mary Reilly - Like they saw Bram Stoker's Dracula and said, hey, we can make Jekyll a love story too! But this is only 100 minutes and it's the longest 100 minutes of your life. Just dreadfully slow, and about an inch deep.  Glenn Close is the only side character who gets anything to do and then is dead halfway in, and the change is handled TERRIBLY except for the CGI ending. But it probably is the only time Malkovich seemed like a believable romantic lead.

Stay Tuned - A rewatch, but at least now I'll remember it enough that it's not worth my time. 75 minutes of mostly lame pop culture jokes, 10 minutes of even worse plot. An interesting snapshot of the beginning of the Enstupiding of America, but that's about it.

We Don't Live Here Anymore - American Beauty with fewer kids, less ick, and bucketloads more dullness.  Based on short stories by the same guy who wrote the source material for In The Bedroom, but not within a country mile of that movie, either; just a dry adaptation. It's weird reading all the thirsty shit people say about 2004 Ruffalo, since I always thought he looked a little strange. Laura Dern is great, but when isn't she? And casting Peter Krause as a sleazy failed creative writing teacher is so so lazy.

Frankie and Johnny - Another of those "9 million TV ads back in the day" movies, and not much of a return on that investment. Al Pacino gives the world's earliest audition for Black Bolt by not making a peep during sex. Nathan Lane is great, and Pfeiffer is actually kind of good as a miserable sack since she's so angry all the time. But not an interesting enough execution from, well, anyone else. 

Joe Versus the Volcano - Is there a more misunderstood movie from the 90s? Part Kafka, part Alex Cox, part Preston Sturges, all ridiculous. Some of the ending is problematic and racist, but getting there is pretty awesome. Meg Ryan plays three different flavors of 40s Hollywood starlet and kicks ass at all three. I guess we're lucky somebody understood the chemistry she had with Hanks. But this might be better than their more famous rom-coms.

Edited March 13 by Contentious C

[Andrew POE!]

I'll have to watch the ones listed from @Contentious C and see if I agree or not (Joe Versus The Volcano has been on my list to see for a long time - I tried to watch that as a kid and I didn't get it).

Anyway....Movies today

Gay USA (Criterion Channel, leaving on 3/31) - 4/5 stars

Spoiler

"It's just a little bit of history repeating" -Propellerheads, "History Repeating"

The thing from watching this is it's surprising how much has changed while the same time hasn't. The documentary mentions Anita Bryant and her oxymoronic "Save The Children" campaign, but yet today we have politicians going on FOX "News" deriving men and women for the same reasons that she did. Except they are seemingly able to put forth laws that make it harder for men and women to be gay or lesbian. Not to mention the whole purging of "DEI" which includes the Stonewall riots (the riots were another thing broached in the documentary).

Some thoughts:
- "The gays should not be blatant" woman is incredible; she points out the hypocrisy
- The older gentleman who was in the Army and moved to San Francisco wouldn't even be thought of being gay by hetero-normative society until he said he is gay. "We used to stand on the side, now we join in and hold hands"
- It's amazing how religion is still warping people's thinking about themselves and how it's warping how people think about other people. The people at the start of the documentary talking about God and sin don't seem to realize that was never the intention of Christianity.
- Later on, the documentary draws the link between the abuse of religion and rise of fascist regimes and actions like the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, and Nazism.
- The soundtrack is very much in the mold of Joni Mitchell/James Taylor folk music, but it's not too bad.
-Got to love straight people standing up and joining the marches.

Just incredible work.

Buddies (Criterion Channel, leaving on 3/31) - 4/5 stars

Spoiler

To be honest, it's somewhat numbing to watch this. Although it is fictionalized about two men - Robert (Geoff Edholm) is dying from AIDS and meets a volunteer for a patient program David (David Schachter) - there's elements of truth for people who lived during the time.

The movie shows that not everyone will have the same experience in their lives - Robert's family disowned him when they found out he was gay and David's family is accepting of him.

With it being a low budget movie, there were creative ways that were used to get around that to tell the story. There were a lot of off camera dialogue to mainly David. The bulk of the movie is with the conversations between the two men.

Absolutely heartwrenching to watch.

Frenchman's Creek (Criterion Channel, leaving on 3/31) - 3/5 stars

Spoiler

Everything about this movie looks expensive. When it looks like they are shooting the movie at a real, physical manor and are at an actual beach, you know the movie cost a lot of money to make.

The story for the movie is about Dona St. Columb (Joan Fontaine) who desires of a life outside of being a wife to fuckboy husband Harry (Ralph Forbes) and fighting off the advances of his fuckboy friend Lord Rockingham (Basil Rathbone). She meets Jean Benoit Aubrey (Arturo de Cordova).

What's interesting is this storyline - wife lamenting what she did in her life and wanting something better - is in a lot of Douglas Sirk movies and was in Polyester as well.

Dona and Jean go on pirating adventures and rob a ship. What I find amazing is how involved Dona is with Jean's world - she lets unmoored boats that can't pursue and distracts the ship owner. Aubrey as a character regards her better than those in St. Columb's life actually treat her.

I loved the sequence toward the end when Dona fights off Rockingham with biting him, stabbing him and throwing armor at him. She even helps free Aubrey.

The ending for the movie is disappointing and a prime example why the Hays Code handcuffed filmmakers. If Frenchman's Creek were done in pre-Code or even later on (or perhaps a remake), I don't think the ending that we got would have been used.

Still, I loved the camera work involved and the high angle wide shots that were used of various actors.

Frenchman's Creek is worth swimming in.

The Love Witch (Criterion Channel, leaving on 3/31) - 5/5 stars

Spoiler

I'm not exactly sure how I feel about The Love Witch.

In a lot of ways, it's a feminist take on the filmmaking of Quentin Tarantino. It's often proclaimed that Tarantino writes dialogue clued in to women (see: Death Proof, Jackie Brown, and Kill Bill Vol. 1 & 2 among others). Yet the women depicted in his movies are from a male gauze, so many of the characters aren't quite as strong as they should be otherwise and are seen as weak.

Yet Anna Biller subverts that completely.

Elaine Parks (Samantha Robinson) is on the surface attractive to the male eye. The camera focuses on her dancing for male suitors and on her eyes as she seduces them. Her purpose is to have them 'fall in love with her' but for every man she encounters, this leads to their deaths.

Part of Biller's subverting the male gauze and using the female gauze is to have obviously attractive men fall for Parks' spells (no pun intended) like Griff (Gian Keys). It would feel very different if Biller did what Yorgos Lanthimos did in Poor Things and had Elaine Parks attract and bed unattractive men. I wonder if the results would have been the same, but more pronounced for Parks' intentions. With this, it seems almost like 'the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing.'

For example, when Parks meets with other women like Trish (Laura Waddell) and one of the women from her coven, Parks always speaks of the men she's involved with not being able to handle themselves due to her. It's almost as if she's purposely not aware of what she did. From an audience point of view, that leads to conflicting feelings: for a man watching it, I felt like I wanted her to get caught finally and for what she's doing to end. For a female watching it, it's possible that seeing Elaine Parks getting away with murder is a solution. Both can be right (which leads to my conflicted feelings about this movie).

As mentioned with Tarantino, other touchstones for this movie include Alfred Hitchcock (Marnie and Vertigo especially), Bava's Blood and Black Lace, Leave Her To Heaven (which was an inspiration for the director), and I would also say Gilda as well. Like Gilda, Elaine Parks is not aware of her own power over men. Unlike Gilda, Elaine Parks takes direct action with culpable denial in actually murdering people.

At least that is until the end of the movie. I found it interesting that Parks' dream sequence with Griff was completely dialogue-less and only contained sounds of walking through grass or onto a stage. While filmed with a soft focus lens (usually done in dream sequences). Parks at the end has completely surrender to a fantasy despite directly killing Griff. It's unknown if she will be discovered (but is likely).

For the most part, The Love Witch leaves a lot to think about.

 

[J.H.]

I think Hoosiers being so bleak in terms of pallette is very deliberate. Compare how outside shots and indoor shots that don't relate to basketball compare to when the games take place. It feels deliberate, saying what matters the most to these people is basketball. It's what gives their lives the most color, the blood that gives them life. If it isn't basketball then it isn't worth getting pumped up for.

Or maybe I'm just overthinking it. I love Hoosiers but it isn't in Hackman's top 10, hell possibly not even top 20!

James

Edited March 13 by J.H.

[Mister TV]

6 minutes ago, J.H. said:

I think Hoosiers being so bleak in terms of pallette is very deliberate. Compare how outside shots and indoor shots that don't relate to basketball compare to when the games take place. It feels deliberate, saying what matters the most to their people is basketbbasketball.what gives their lives the most color, the blood that gives them life. If it isn't basketball then it isn't worth getting pumped up for.

Or maybe I'm just overthinking it. I love Hoosiers but it isn't in Hackman's top 10, hell possibly not even top 20!

James

That makes sense and was totally deliberate when it comes to the color palette. 

[J.H.]

Not even 15 minutes deep in Chatley Varrick and I'm dialed in. From the quiet opening, then right to action with a heist. 

Matthau is just stone cold. He's smart, calculating and just so cool. He hits the screen in disguise, almost looking like Einstein butches isn't I.Q. 

The story is developing!

James

Edited March 13 by J.H.

[odessasteps]

With John Feinstein passing away, another good reason to revisit Hoosiers. 

[Raziel]

I mean, we're talking about bumfuck Indiana in the 50's in Winter, of course it's bleak.

[Mister TV]

Another Hoosiers take! It was supposed to be this horrible thing that Coach Dale hit one of his college players 12 years earlier, I can't really see that being a big deal in 1939, he gets a "don't do that again" if its the first time, maybe a "really" on the second and five games tops on the third hit. Hell in Indiana when the movie came out Bobby Knight was choking players and random students daily. 

[Raziel]

Honestly, in 39 the view in most of the country was probably "Why aren't you hitting the players MORE?"

[Andrew POE!]

Goddamnit, this Hoosiers talk makes me want to watch it again.

Edited March 13 by Andrew POE!

[J.H.]

Charley Varrick was just so good from start to finish. I love Walter Matthau even more than before, which I didn't think was possible. Everything in this movie just clicked for me. The soundtrack is especially dark and jazzy. Just beginning to end, a compelling crime movie. It's mentioned in the same breath as Tbe Friends of Eddie Coyle and I get why. It's dirty and grimy like that movie but it's Southwestern setting makes you feel the dust and dirt almost come to life and cling to you as you watch it. Eddie Coyle makes you to not want experience a Boston winter (I've got family out in Lexington so I had to deal with that as a kid). Charley Varrick reminds me how I hate the heat and dust of the Southwest.

This is definitely movie added to the "Yearly Rewatch List" along with Shaft, Highlander & Le Samourai 

James

[Andrew POE!]

Movies today...I'll watch Hoosiers tomorrow lol.

Full Moon In New York (Criterion Channel, leaving on 3/31) - 3.5/5 stars

Spoiler

Full Moon In New York is an almost Cassavetes like take on the Asian immigrant experience in America.

With the movie there are three women that the movie centers around - Lee Fung-jiau (Maggie Cheung), Wang Hsiung-ping (Sylvia Chang) and Zhaohong (Siqin Gaowa). Their relationship among each other is almost equivalent to what Cassavetes would have in his movies - there's a sense of authenticness but a sense of tension. Fung-jiau is hostile at first to Zhaohong - note the dinner scene where the three meet at Fung-jiau's restaurant and Hsiung-ping said 'not to argue in Chinese.'

For the most part with these characters, each character has aspect that sees a change. Zhaohong is almost regretful for marrying a Chinese American Tom; this shows up when she meets with his in-laws and Tom quickly gets the ancestral tablet from the basement. Fung-jiau is fighting with the pressure to be involved with 'the third Chinese resident in New York' while desiring a relationship with Stella (Josephine Koo). Hsiung-ping is fighting to break through the barriers in acting. I loved the scene where she explains why she wanted to play Lady MacBeth and relaying a story about the history of the empress of the Han Dynasty.

The ending scenes were great and symbolic. After smashing their glasses (and having nothing left to lose), the three drink alcohol out of their hands.

While this movie isn't a complete classic and there are some story threads that don't complete pay off, it's a decent drama about characters that aren't usually talked about.

The Goodbye Girl (Criterion Channel, leaving on 3/31) - 4.5/5 stars

Spoiler

Although later romantic comedies tended to be even more of a fantasy and unrealistic, I loved how The Goodbye Girl presented characters that were grounded in reality.

Eliot (Richard Dreyfus) and Paula (Marsha Mason) exemplify two people that came together out of an unusual circumstance. There's something positively relatable about two actors having to grapple with expenses and rent in a NYC apartment. Most other romantic comedies that use a similar mismatched couples (like Two Weeks Notice, The Proposal and Notting Hill) have an elevated sense of the characters and their stations in life. It's harder to relate to characters that are a successful lawyer, or a successful actress or a successful book editor.

Characters in the situations like Elliot and Paula are in make them relatable because they seem like actual people and don't have their lives figured out either. It were nice touches to have Elliot work as a doorman for a strip club and Paula work at a car show.

The script throughout the movie is just hilarious with lines from Dreyfuss and Mason but also Quinn Cummings as Lucy. Cummings as an actress is surprisingly poised and didn't seem like a 'child actor.' I loved the scene where Cummings is walking toward the door and Mason says "I'm your mother" - there's a sense of warmth even with that interaction between the two. I couldn't help but to laugh at Dreyfuss playing Richard III with a hump and a limp and an exaggerated feminine tone. Cummings and Dreyfuss' scenes where Cummings' character makes movie references is positively infectious to watch as well.

The resulting romance between Eliot and Paula builds up well and isn't annoying.

The other thing that can be mentioned that I really liked was how the apartment set looked. There's a lot of details and a 'lived in' quality to the sets. The camerawork in the apartment is smart and follows the actors really well through the rooms as each scene occurs.

The ending is a great ending where Paula is holding Elliot's guitar as he leaves in a taxi.

The Goodbye Girl is worth saying hello to.

Seven Veils (saw at the theaters) - 4/5 stars

Spoiler

Oh, to see without my eyes" -Sufjan Stevens, "Mystery of Love"

Seven Veils as a movie is a bit bewildering and confusing to watch. The movie opens with Jeanine (Amanda Seyfried) standing on a platform between the stage and the audience. The platform is a narrow strip - as if she is on a dock and about to fall into the sea. She is then walking through the production of Salome in rehearsals and stops to see a little girl projected onto the images of the forest being shown. "You stared too long," she says in voiceover. We know without saying it that the girl being projected is her.

This marriage of past and present serves as the strands throughout Seven Veils. Jeanine, as we come to find out, is the director for the production in Toronto after being selected by the unseen Charlie after his death. Beatrice (Lanette Ware) announces Jeanine as the director along with the two principal actors including actual opera singer Ambur (Ambur Braid). Jeanine is unsure of herself versus the legacy of the previous director but promises 'small but meaningful changes' to the production. This apparently causes problems that are heard about through the rest of the movie.

The other aspect that is a strand throughout the movie is the Me Too movement. Clea (Rebecca Liddiard), in documenting her work on the production through video, inadvertently records a sexual pass from Johann (Michael Kupfer-Radecky) that is shared with Beatric before eventually uploaded. For Jeanine herself, her sexual abuse isn't as spelled out.

Jeanine is shown as a much younger girl being recorded in a forest and blindfolded with her father's voice calling out to her. Jeanine finds out during a Zoom call from her mother that her father 'loved her too much.' Reading in between the lines, it is implied to be sexual abuse. There's also an element of sexual abuse at worse or a physical relationship at best that I wonder with Charlie. Charlie used his position and his power to take advantage of the situation; Jeanine was young and powerless to even be able to say anything, much less stop it. Jeanine viewed Charlie as a teacher and as a mentor, but Charlie did something much more.

In a lot of ways, this explains Jeanine's behavior throughout the movie. It explains how her relationships with the actors working with her was a bit frosty and Johann and the guy playing Herod (Michael Schade) were dismissive of her input as a director. It was practically an acting challenge for Seyfried to portray a character that is recalling her past while in her present all at once.

For the most part, Atom Egoyan did tremendous work especially presenting his past work as the director for Salome that's re contextualized for this movie. The movie uses 16mm footage from a character playing Jeanine in the past and footage from 2002 production that's attributed to Charlie. I loved the fact that Egoyan was directing Seyfried who played a character as a director. In some ways, it's a more serious Day For Night in the theater.

The only drawback, however, is the movie is a tad confusing to find your footing with where everything fits. The movie isn't easily spelled out. Also, save for Seyfried and Laddiard, the other actors don't have as strong of performances.

Even then, Seven Veils is worth watching.

 

[Contentious C]

7 hours ago, Raziel said:

Honestly, in 39 the view in most of the country was probably "Why aren't you hitting the players MORE?"

The Gary, IN Switch Company for Unruly Student Compliance disbanded in 1943 to lend its factories to the war effort.

[HarryArchieGus]

On 3/12/2025 at 1:37 PM, Curt McGirt said:

Edit from previous page: Scarecrow has Al Pacino, not Dustin Hoffman

I love Scarecrow. Gene and Al and their love/hate/friendship kills me. Two years earlier Pacino made the excellent Panic in needle park with the same director - Jerry Schatzberg. I have loved those two movies for many years, but have yet to see a third Schatzberg. I’m ready. Also, vulnerable lil Al in those movies is to me so much more interesting than Alpha Al with a machine gun (that’s fine too). What did you think Curt?

On 3/12/2025 at 10:14 PM, Andrew POE! said:

The Love Witch (Criterion Channel, leaving on 3/31) - 5/5 stars

Glad to see we can still agree on some of these assessments. Very divisive overlooked film. I’m an Anna Biller fan.

[Curt McGirt]

I still haven't watched it! It's just sitting there on my DVR tormenting me. I need a day for Good Things, like taking a walk, reading, and catching up with movies, so I'll put that on the list and let you know what I think after. 

[Brian Fowler]

BTW, on the Hoosiers talk, the real head coach of the Milan team that won the title was only 26 years old when it happened. So not only is that an improbable backstory in the movie, but the real guy would've been 11 at the time of the incident.

[J.H.]

Supergirl - Why did I do this to myself? This movie is totally the "I need to keep the Wikipedia entry for this movie open" movie because I never made the Marc McClure as Jimmy Olsen was also Marty Mcfly's brother connection until this! Fuck, Hart Bochner went from the male love interest in this to ending up as coke-head Harry in Die Hard!

Then there is the kinda weird Jimmy Olsen in his 20s trying to score on Lois Lane's underage sister! 

GREAT RAO!! Did the Salkind's just not give a fuck?

James

Edited March 15 by J.H.

[Andrew POE!]

Movies today....still no Hoosiers. Maybe tomorrow?

The Killers (1964) (Criterion Channel, leaving on 3/31) - 4/5 stars

Spoiler

There's a difference between The Killers (1946) and The Killers (1964). The 1946 version has an enormous amount of tension pulsating throughout the movie with the Swede essentially clueless that his days are numbered. The 1964 version has Johnny North (John Cassavetes) aware that everything could end, but is too powerless to stop it.

Also, throughout this version is a sense of effortless cool. Charlie (Lee Marvin) and Lee (Clu Gulager) stroll into the movie as two men who can't break a sweat. The title sequence is something out of 1960s crime drama TV show as it shows Lee in glasses before doing a match cut to him in live action. Charlie and Lee in this were Vincent and Jules before those two were a thought in Tarantino's mind.

What I found interesting with this version is the age difference between Charlie and Lee and the 'mentor / mentoree" relationship they had.

In addition to the effortless cool, there's also the darkly funny. In about every scene that he appears in, Lee is fiddling or messing or looking at something. He probably would take apart a telephone if he saw it sitting there and he was curious. Charlie half the time ignores whatever Lee is doing or just tolerates it to the point of ambivalence.

The choice of Johnny North working at a school of the blind is an interesting theme that carries through the movie. The people at the school cannot see the Killers coming. Johnny's peripheral vision is damaged after the race accident so he cannot see what's coming up behind him. Lee's death - with it filmed in a high angle on a roof - isn't able to be seen coming either. Then at the end, Charlie never sees the police coming before succumbing to his injuries. Jack Browning (Ronald Reagan) never saw Charlie coming either as he and Sheila (Angie Dickinson) are trying to pack up the money.

One of the aspects of this movie that's worrisome even today is the amount of violence towards Sheila. Sheila is hit by Browning then later by Lee before being dangled out of a window. The 1946 version would never have such a thing happen.

Despite the positive aspects of the movie with the effortless cool of the two assassin characters and darkly humorous aspects, the movie is a bit rushed towards the end. Compared to the 1946 version, it's a bit of a step down. Nothing can top the opening scene from the 1946 version as far as I'm concerned.

I would love to see a modern version of this movie. Maybe they could have Bradley Cooper or Glenn Powell play The Swede (or Johnny North if they want to rely on this version). I can see Anne Hathaway playing the love interest (or just get Zendaya or Sydney Sweeney). Not sure who from today would work as the pair of assassins - Liam Neeson or Viggo Mortensen could work as the Lee Marvin / William Conrad character with Tom Holland or Timothee Chalamat as the Clu Gulager / Charles McGraw character.

On second thought, maybe a third version of this story is a horrible idea.

France (Criterion Channel, leaving on 3/31) - 3/5 stars

Spoiler

With this as my first exposure to Bruno Dumont, this is a completely pitch black comedy/satire and a more serious examination of celebrity culture. It's telling to have the main character named France de Meurs (Lea Seydoux). She's the equivalent of France's Diane Sawyer or Barbara Walters. The fact that she had the same name as the country gives her a sense of self-importance and selfishness. Having good beauty and good graces got her in the position she's in - everywhere France goes, she's asked for selfies and autographs.

What triggered her self-inspection and self-doubt is a simple car accident.

France goes through a lot of changes and see those changes in Seydoux's face. We see her sadness and doubt. She throws herself into a warzone similar to what Lee Miller did yet it's televised on France's show nightly. She seeks meaning through doing so until her assistant Lou (Blanche Gardin) turns on a hot mic and mocks refugees being rescued.

I find it interesting that we never really learn France's backstory or how she got to be an entertainment reporter in the first place. We meet her mis en scene within her life at the start of the movie; it can be presumed that she's been on a television program for quite awhile due to the amassed audience and being able to ask President Macron a question at a press conference.

With this movie, everything is beautifully shot and filmed. Seydoux's wardrobe is beautifully captured on screen. Even the car accident that kills France's husband and her son is picturesque. Dumont seems to have a similar aim as Italy's Paolo Sorrentino with beautiful cinematography for his movies but a bit lacking in story and characters. Besides France, none of the other characters involved really have much of an arc, save for Charles Castro (Emanuele Arioli). Charles is no different than other reporters showing France at her worst. "He's just a reporter with a job to do."

The ending I thought was interesting - a random person destroys a bicycle on the sidewalk. There's a lingering shot of the wreckage. It's almost to say that all someone like France does is bear witness to destruction without having a part to play in it.

The Autopsy of Jane Doe (Netflix, leaving on 3/15) - 2/5 stars

Spoiler

The Autopsy of Jane Doe begins as a simple enough procedural crime movie before it slides into the realm of ridiculousness. Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch carry the movie through their father/son relationship.

There is a bit of commentary about Cox's character being near retirement age yet not ready to retire, while his son doesn't want to be the county coroner.

All of the attempts at building the characters are hamstrung by the back half of the movie. Usually, with movies like this, one character survives and is shaken by the experience. Instead, it's opted for all the main characters to die, which renders the character development pointless.

This movie isn't a 1/2 star due to the direction, cinematography, and editing being suspenseful and atmospheric.

Opus (saw in the theaters) - 2/5 stars

Spoiler

Opus attempts to be a satire about the nature of celebrity but falls very far from the mark.

John Malkovich plays Albert Moretti, a quasi Scott Walker/David Bowie/Prince musician who inspired a level of devotion from his fans. Ayo Edebiri plays Ariel, a young reporter who is invited to meet Moretti at a secluded location to listen to his newest album Caesar’s Request.

The movie moves both too quickly and too slowly through its plot. We don’t learn that much about the characters behind it or why Moretti has a cult established at the compound. Moretti earlier in the movie claims it was already there and he just latched on it. Yet those involved move at his direction and at his urging.

The cult he’s involved with is almost non descriptive and has elements of Scientology, LDS and Seventh Day Adventists. It’s hard to find anything that would make someone watching it consider it valid and it’s instead a bit cartoonish.

A lot of the plot threads seem almost standard now due to movies like Blink Twice and Get Out. We already have built up that there is something wrong with the mysterious character and the gateway character is suspicious from the start. Others around the main character doubt the suspicions until it’s too late.

The problem is it goes from slavish devotion to insanity almost too quickly; there isn’t really time to breathe on the change to the situation for the audience.

Cinematography is okay at times with a lot of gold in the shots due to the New Mexico location. For the most part, the scenes are unimaginative, which isn’t usual for A24 movies.

The ending scenes attempted a Silence of the Lambs dynamic but it falls flat. Moretti says there’s people who are members throughout society and incidentally Ariel goes on a talk show with someone that is a member. She claims up and doesn’t speak when asked about Moretti.

By the end of it, I felt that Opus played it very safe and had very safe outcomes.

Black Bag (saw in the theaters) - 4/5 stars

Spoiler

Yes, it's somewhat standard but this is what smart, urbane adult movies used to be from the late 1990s to 2010s. This could fit neatly next to Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Tailor of Panama, The International, The Constant Gardener, and other spy flick ventures.

Michael Fassbinder is positively Michael Caine in the 1970s-esque with his portrayal of George and Cate Blanchett as another spy and his wife Kathryn. The old guard of spy thrillers Pierce Brosnan shows up as their boss Arthur.

The movie positively crackles with energy from the start - I love a great tracking shot that goes on for a minute or longer, as the camera follows George into a bar then back outside.

There's also at least four different camera angles during the dinner scene near the start of the movie.

Honestly, this is what I like from Steven Soderbergh as a director. This feels like something he would do after doing Out of Sight.

 

[odessasteps]

I saw Mr and Mrs Smith on the TCM app and since we had mentioned it not  long ago, put it on while I was playing mlb the show. 
 

TCM also had a 2024 doc about Hitchcock’s Blackmail, I presume for its centenary.