Movies 2025 Movie Discussion Thread

[HarryArchieGus]

On 6/11/2025 at 10:24 PM, Andrew POE! said:

Movies today....

Heathers (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 4/5 stars

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"She said yoo hoo"

Heathers has had an untold influence on later "satires about high school that's really a satire about class structures" movies like Jawbreaker, Mean Girls, Clueless, Election and Lisa Frankenstein. Veronica (Winona Ryder) is a girl at Westerburg High School who is part of a social group with the Heathers. (Since the high school is called Westerburg High School, why oh why was there not a needledrop for The Replacements?).

The movie opens with the Heathers (including Shannen Doherty as Heather) playing croquet. What I noticed is the balls they are using match a color on their outfits and Veronica's buried up to her head in the dirt. She addresses the camera and starts with "Dear Diary...." The movie gives the impression that this would be Veronica addressing the audience and narrating the events that occur through the movie. The fact is though, the movie on occasion uses this style.

The fact is Heathers has some pacing issues with the story and some aspects just aren't as interesting as it should be. It makes up for it with the dialogue ("Well fuck me with a chainsaw! Do I look like Mother Teresa?") and Winona Ryder's performance and Christian Slater's Jack Nicholson like performance as J.D. Both are just magnetic to watch throughout the movie.

The movie does commit to its satire by presenting the parents and authority figures as a bit clueless - it's almost like the earlier Massacre at Central High although not nearly as insane as that movie was. J.D. and Veronica make the various murders look like suicides.

The drawback is the ending. The movie cops out of having J.D. blowing up the high school along with Veronica; it would have been in the vein of Stanley Kubrick's dark satires like A Clockwork Orange and Dr. Strangelove to have Heathers end with everyone dead.

I did like the shot compositions throughout the movie - the scenes toward the end had usage of cut away as it switches between what is going on in the basement and the hallways emptying for the school assembly. It also used documentary style cuts between students to denote them being asked the same question a few times in the movie.

Even then, Heathers is a movie that makes up for its shortcomings with an overall well directed movie.

Showing Up (HBO Max, leaving on 6/30) - 5/5 stars

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This is my first exposure to Kelly Reichardt. I think I'm a fan.

Showing Up just feels like an idealized version of art college. I never felt like I was watching a story, or actors performing as characters. I felt like I was watching actual people who happen to look like famous and attractive actors going about their day to day lives. They sculpt, they paint, they embroidery, they set up exhibits, and do things that are creatively fulfilling. It made me wonder "Hey, why didn't I major in art or photography or theater or film or painting or scultpture in college? Why did I chose a degree in business administration?" Of course, the counter to the argument in choosing degrees in art, painting, sculpture, film, theater, etc. is if you're not careful, you'll never leave the college and go into the real world. You'll be happy living in a bubble (although to be fair with this being shot in Oregon, what a bubble it is).

Which is what happened to Lizzy (Michelle Williams).

Lizzy has very simple motivations as a character and the slightest thing bugs her - much of the humor is in how Lizzy reacts to things and the overly dramatic behavior she exhibits. The lack of hot water in her apartment bugs her. Having to leave to get food for her cat bugs her. Other people bug her. She is very much a misanthrope; having to go somewhere or take care of a pigeon on her day off bugs her. Being at work and working with her mom Jean (Maryann Plunkett) at the Oregon College of Art and Craft bugs her. The problem is she doesn't want to step out of her comfort zone.

The pigeon has a lot of symbolism with this movie. Lizzy and Jo (Hong Chau) have a shared experience with the pigeon where they are both caring for it. Lizzy is a bit more perturbed that Jo isn't caring for the pigeon as much as Lizzy thinks she should. After all, Lizzy spent $150 to take a pigeon to a vet to find out that the bird needs a hot water bag next to it. So the pigeon flying around and then leaving shows a bit of growth for Lizzy. Lizzy and Jo walk down the street and chat; Lizzy seems to have almost a weight lifted from her. That weight would be her exhibit and having to no longer care for the bird.

The other aspect that's interesting is Lizzy's relationship with her family. Her brother Sean (John Magaro) likely has undignosed schizophrenia and seems to believe that he can hear something while digging a hole in his backyard. He complains to Lizzy about losing access to a channel through his antenna and it's something caused by his neighbors. Yet he has the lights turned off and doesn't pay for cable. I get it. Everything is too expensive. Having to pay more than $10 for electricity is a crime. Those fat cats that work for the power company can afford to have cheaper electricity for all. It's not my problem they won't be able to buy a yacht this year.

Additionally, her father Bill (Judd Hirsch) may be experiencing Alzeheimer's but he's happy with himself anyway. "I do a little of this, a little of that, then it's time to watch TV." "That sounds depressing," says Lizzy. The other characters (like Jean) cares for him and tells him that things he is saying aren't true.

The climatic scenes at the art exhibit for Lizzy is the height of anxiety. Lizzy stands there nearly stonefaced as Sean had gone missing, Bill may be saying the wrong things, Jean is worried about Sean but happy he's arrived, Sean eats a lot of cheese and says "that's my supper" and two kids are screwing around with a pigeon in a box. The whole thing comes to ahead as the pigeon flies around the room - I was a bit worried that the pigeon would land on one of Lizzy's exhibits, but it would have been poetic if the bird had. It lands on the floor and Sean picks it up and carries it outside to fly away.

With this movie, Kelly Reichardt simply shows the simplicity of moments and of character interactions. If you're looking for grand, sweeping scenes or dramatics, you'll be disappointed. If you're expecting the story beats to fit some rules of storytelling, you'll also be disappointing. Showing Up has its grandeur in the moments and in the existence for the characters.

20th Century Women (HBO Max, leaving on 6/30) - 5/5 stars

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This is my first exposure to Mike Mills. I think I'm a fan.

20th Century Women doesn't feel like an American movie. It feels very Truffaut, very Ozu. The domestic drama that Ozu does with families in Japan seems to have a place in sun kissed 1979 California. The sentimentality and romanticism of Truffaut does has a reverse Jules Et Jim relationship for three of the characters.

It's everything that cinephiles, budding filmmakers, and intelligent people want out of a movie.

The characters are crafted to feel like actual people and to have actual intelligence. It's the realization of the image that people have when they first watch Wes Anderson's movies, except these characters aren't jaded about life or trying to be ironic. They are trying to make sense of the life they lead.

What's interesting is the almost anthropological overview of history Dorothea (Annette Benning) and her son Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann) provide when describing what has happened to the other characters that are met in this movie and the wider range scope of the characters' background. We're told several times that Dorothea is a product of the Depression; so naturally her musical taste is more old-fashioned and she likes Casablanca and Humphrey Bogart. Even with the exterior of trying to be 'hip' and going to dive bars and listening to Black Flag and The Talking Heads, Dorothea doesn't truly understand and connect with her son Jamie. It of course makes sense for her to ask the other people in her house to help.

Jamie and Julie (Elle Fanning) indeed have a "Jules Et Jim" relationship with Abbie (Greta Gerwig). It's more in the sense that Jamie wants Julie sexually but Julie doesn't see herself with that. Two scenes exemplify this "Jules Et Jim" dynamic; one is where Abbie is coming home after getting beaten up at a bar and tells Jamie "you should go as far away as possible." Abbie wants Jamie to seek adventure and to find his heart's desire. Jamie and Julie do this but it leads to disatrous results. "I don't wanna just have sex with you. I want you. But it's your version of me. It's not me. It would be a lot better if you just wanted sex. You are exactly like the other guys. You just seem like you're all modern," Julie says. Jamie walks off, obviously hurt by this.

Jamie as a character wants to be masculine, but being part of a 'generation of men raised by women,' it feels different. Dorothea suggests that Jamie talk with William (Billy Crudup) but Abbie points out that neither of them have anything in common. Abbie gives Jamie feminist literature to help Jamie understand what women think or feel (or at least what the author of those books think and feel). This leads to two different outcomes - the first one, Jamie tells a guy at a skate park that the woman he had sex with was faking her orgasm. He proceeds to beat her up and spray paint nasty slogans on his car (which goes into the dichtomy of Black Flag vs. The Talking Heads and how punk music has fragmentation). The other outcome involves Jamie reading a passage to his mother and Dorothea obviously is a bit taken aback; she doesn't understand why Jamie read to her this. "I don't need a book to tell me how I should understand being a woman," she says to Jamie, leaving his a bit confused. Eventually, Jamie gets it and is able to compartmentalize his thoughts (to borrow a phrase from Julie).

What makes 20th Century Women work is the usage of mixed media like still photography, other films, and newsreel footage within the movie. Also, Mike Mills just has smart shot selection and cinematography. Two scenes I really liked were almost mirror images of each other - Jamie and Julie are in a hotel room and the camera is facing towards the left hand side of the room as Julie is sitting on a bed. The mirror image of the shot is when Dorothea is picked up after being booked at the police station. The camera is facing towards the right hand side of the room and Dorothea is sitting on a bed. Another great shot is when Abbie arrives at the police station to pick up Dorothea; the camera is aimed towards the end of the hallway. As they are leaving, the camera goes to the other side and captures the characters in the shot.

20th Century Women is an achievement in any century.

 

On 6/8/2025 at 10:36 PM, Andrew POE! said:

Hale County This Morning, This Evening (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 4.5/5 stars

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Everything with Nickel Boys started here. RaMell Ross writes in the introductory that with an interest in photography and coaching football, he started to film what he was seeing.

What's shown is of black and brown people in rural Alabama. Two of the students at the local college talk about what they want to do with their lives in the most abstract terms. It's not "I want to live in another country," or "I want to study English or photography," it's simply "I have my goals and I want to be able to play basketball" (I may just be summarizing what one of the men said). Those dreams are deferred with the sad reality of having children, getting married and trying to earn what passes for income in a rural community. They go to a college but the dorms resemble a prison with painted cinderblock walls than a living arrangement like an apartment. College is essentially a punishment due to economics working against them. One of the subjects in the documentary talk about going to a different college with the idea that college will generate respect for him on the basis of going there. (Having taken out student loans and gone to a private university, i can tell you it makes no difference after college).

All that is in Hale County are three things: sports like football and basketball, religion and catfish processing plant. When jobs are taken away and all we have is selling hamburgers to one another, guess what we’re left with?

Ross uses a lot of the same tricks he later deployed in Nickel Boys: time lapse shots, shots focusing on certain things like a bee in the back of a flatbed truck, and dialogue said off screen with the main item on screen being something else. I loved one scene where “Love and Happiness” is played while two kids mess with a lit lightbulb on a battery.

The most heartbreaking aspect is the wife of one of the subject having twins then one of the twins succumbing to SIDS. There's a brief scene showing the aftermath of the funeral but neither partner has time to focus on it. Life has to continue whether they reflect on what happened or not. Life is too hard to do so otherwise.

The end of the movie has one of the subjects running through a basketball hopeful in drills; the cycle starts over again for another young man hoping to use sports as an escape.

Hale County This Morning, This Evening is an incredible sight to behold.

The Childhood of a Leader (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 3.5/5 stars

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Having absolutely raved about Brady Corbet's The Brutalist (enough to have seen it twice, once at an AMC and then in 70mm), The Childhood of a Leader seems like a dramatic prelude in what was shown in The Brutalist. Both movies detail events in history involving little known but fictionalized individuals - this is about a child growing up as the son of a diplomat with the story from a Jean Paul Sartre short story and The Brutalist is about a Hungarian architect.

Like The Brutalist, The Childhood of a Leader dwells in structure of the story. The Brutalist has two parts and an epilogue. This is has an Overture, three "tantrums," and then "A New Era."

Unlike The Brutalist, however, the moment to moment aspect isn't as interesting. The Childhood of a Leader also shares a common complaint made about The Brutalist: its themes are too 'on the nose' and too simplistic. Prescott (Tom Sweet) is known to be a 'bad child' at the start of the movie upon introduction to him. He is shown participating in a Nativity play, delivers lines slowly in French, and then throws rocks at people. He is made to apologize but acts so put upon with the act of doing so.

There's never a redemptive arc for Prescott: he's a bad child and then therefore a bad person. We never see him have retribution or contemplation for what he's done. His parents - the father (Liam Cunningham) and the mother (Berenice Bejo) - are similarly non-redemptive. This is despite the mother and father claiming to be Christians; like almost everything with a modern church, Christianity is purely performative.

The next two 'tantrums' follow an almost similar pattern: Prescott does something horrible and manipulative, he fakes contrition and he faces punishment. In the second tantrum, he has his arm broken or injured. In the third tantrum, he seemingly injures his mother severely after shouting "I don't believe in praying anymore!" several time at the dinner celebrating the end of World War I. We don't see his punishment but instead see an upside down view of the people going up the stairs to get him.

With "A New Era," we find out that Prescott is actually the son of Charles Marker (Robert Pattinson) hence the actor playing the adult version of Prescott and Marker. The adult Prescott is a military leader; how he got to that point is unknown. The movie doesn't attempt to bridge the gap from the character's childhood to his being a leader. Also, it feels like the country he is leading is a fantasy or unrealistic; obviously, the red and white flag makes us think this is Nazi Germany without saying so.

Acting as a result is a bit heavy handed; Pattinson isn't in the movie that long or that often and seems to be a bit hands off. It makes the revelation that he fathered Prescott with the mother a bit unbelievable given how he acts toward the family. The mother saying that she knew about Marker's wife dying but choosing not to say anything makes the mother distant towards Marker. Most of the acting in the movie is with Tom Sweet and Berenice Bejo. Bejo's portrayal of the character is strict and almost harsh towards Prescott; yet we know from how Prescott reacts to things, it's almost expected. Prescott is very much a sociopath and he uses the wait staff and the tutor and has them all sacked.

While I have some issues with the story and characters, the soundtrack is utterly impressive and evoke something that Stanley Kubrick would include in his movies. The soundtrack are unnerving to hear as the scenes unfold. (One scene literally gave me a 'jumpscare' due to the shriek generated at the start of the scene).

The Childhood of a Leader is a great start for Brady Corbet as a director though.

 

BTW love these. Hale County deserves all the word of mouth it can get. Neat reviews of the Reichardt movies. The Kristen Stewart-Lily Gladstone story was so goddamn perfect. I also like your take on the Corbet movie. What a leap from that to Brutalist.

[Andrew POE!]

Thanks for enjoying those movie reviews Harry. 

Movies today....

Paper Moon (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 5/5 stars

Spoiler

"There's just a rainbow around the corner"

Paper Moon is in a long line of movies about the con and those who participate in the con. Arthur Penn's Bonnie & Clyde, George Roy Hill's The Sting, David Mirkin's Heartbreakers, Stephen Frears' The Grifters, Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood and The Coen Brothers' O Brother Where Art Thou? among others all pass through Paper Moon. O Brother Where Art Thou in particular has a lot in common - George Clooney's character in that movie is what Ryan O'Neal's Moze would be if he wanted a relationship with his children. Moze has a possible/maybe/likely kinship with Addie (Tatum O'Neal) that the movie never really answers. It's just known that by the end of the movie, they are both con artists together.

The con starts almost as soon as the movie starts. The movie opens with a closeup of Tatum O'Neal's face - not smiling, but not frowning either. Moze's car arrives in a wide angle shot and one of the first things Moze does as he walks up to the graveside is steal flowers. Moze looks at the coffin of Addie's mother and tells the coffin "I just know your ass is still warm." Upon meeting the group for the funeral, Moze tells them he is a Bible salesman - which was the same career as John Goodman's character in O Brother, Where Art Thou. Moze is begrudgingly given Addie and he seeks to unload her as soon as possible.

Moze and Addie's relationship seems to have an undercurrent of real life hostility between the two actors. When Tatum O'Neal won the Oscar for her role, Ryan O'Neal was rather jealous of her win and had actually punched her. It seems to come almost too easily for Ryan O'Neal to play Moze in this. Tatum O'Neal seems to convey being a precocious and misunderstood child really well - it's easy to sense the heartbreak when Addie is called a boy on account of how she dresses. Tatum's acting is otherworldly great throughout this movie. Moze does his con of selling widows Bibles with their names on it after checking the obituaries in the paper. Eventually, Addie gets involved and actually gets Moze more money than he normally gets.

Along the way, Moze and Addie meet up with Trixie Delight (Madeline Kahn) and Imogene (P.J. Johnson), who are also con artists of a different sort. Trixie uses her charms and her looks to get lonely men like Moze to part with their money. Addie and Imogene use a hotel clerk for Moze catch Trixie and the clerk in the act. The next scene, we see Addie and Moze riding together again with Addie in the front set.

What does Moze and Addie is the encounter with the bootlegger (John Hillerman) and stealing from him; this ends up getting the two in trouble with the sheriff (also played by John Hillerman). They manage to escape and Moze finally gets Addie to the relative at the start of the movie that he telegraphed. Only for Moze and Addie to continue their adventure at the end....

Like the movies mentioned earlier, family and the con game being the only game they know have a lot in common with each other. George Clooney's character in O Brother, Where Art Thou knows of nothing else but being a con in his quest of getting back to his wife and children and 'being bonafide.' The Grifters and Heartbreakers are about multi-generational families of con artists with the sires of the parents (John Cusack and Jennifer Love Hewitt's characters) joining their parents on the con game. There Will Be Blood more closely resembles Paper Moon; Daniel Plainview uses the dubious/possible/likely relationship with H.W. Plainview to buy lands to procure oil, without the end result of the land being dried up being known.

For me, Paper Moon is probably the fastest 1 hour and 40 minute movie I've seen - the scenes just move along and every scene works toward the story. In a lot of ways, the movie is a road trip movie; Addie and Moze are supposed to reach their final destination (the relative's house), but what happens along the way with the pursuit of money for the trip adds to it.

I loved the camerawork and the cinematography used. Bogdanovich uses split diopter shots a few times - one scene in particular had the closeup of a guy being hassled for money by Moze with Moze near the door and further back. There's also a few POV shots as it shows Addie looking at objects in the distance; this happens during the scene where they are chased by the police. Also, when Addie is peering into Trixie's room from a high angle.

Paper Moon is probably one of the most perfect movies ever made. It's bonafide.

American Sniper (Netflix, leaving on 6/21) - 3/5 stars

Spoiler

From a purely technical level and a performance level, American Sniper is a great movie. Bradley Cooper as Chris Kyle inhabits a character that is from a rural area of the country and is trained from an earlier age in killing targets. Kyle talks infrequently, emotions just as little, and is inspired to become a Navy Seal on 9/11.

It's just when you break everything down about the character and the character's motivations, it comes apart.

Kyle is as patriotic as he is distant. Kyle seems unwilling or unable to let his wife Taya (Sienna Miller) into his world. Kyle as a character is taught at an early age into a set of beliefs that are toxic masculinity from his father: "The world is divided into three things: wolves, sheep, and sheepdogs. I don't want any wolves in my house." As Kyle's father threatens violence and holds a belt up. From the start, Chris Kyle is a damaged person that devotion and duty to the United States cannot save.

Kyle meets Taya in a bar and once he is deployed, he keeps her at arms' length throughout the movie. The audience is also kept at arms' length as far as the character goes too. It's only during the sandstorm after taking down the other sniper does Kyle let down his guard. "I'm coming home," he says on the phone to Taya as he is crying.

The thing with the story of American Sniper is Chris Kyle's continuous tours in Iraq is motivated to take out the Iraqi sniper Mustafa (Sammy Sheik). We never learn that much about him other than Mustafa has a sense of patriotism too (having competed in the Olympics for Iraq) and also has a wife and child. American Sniper could have told an interesting story with the duality of these two characters: both motivated by single minded purpose and both have superior skills in taking out their targets. Kyle in a scene is shown watching a video of an American soldier killed due to Mustafa's handiwork.

The other thing that the story for American Sniper missed out on is the complicated nature of American occupation in Iraq to attempt regime change and how the local civilians feel about that. Instead, of course, the movie does the nameless, faceless approach to Iraqis that movies like Black Hawk Down, The Hurt Locker, and Green Zone did to present a wartorn region like Iraq. We don't learn anything about the region (nor should we expect to). All we know about the movie is the determination Chris Kyle has as part of his deployments.

When Kyle returns, Kyle is experiencing PTSD. He lied to his doctor about it and his wish to 'have done more' while deployed, but it's there throughout the movie. A drill at a car repair shop sets him on edge (reminding him of "The Butcher" that killed people with a drill). A dog on top of a child at a birthday party causes him to grab at the dog and kill it. The abrupt, curt manner he talked to a fellow soldier that had his life saved by Kyle. It's as much what Chris Kyle says as what he doesn't say and as much what Chris Kyle does that he doesn't do. Helping the soldiers at the VA with missing limbs and the soldier that ended up killing him is a way for Chris Kyle to pay penance for what he did and the lack of care of life that he did.

Sienna Miller, who is a great actress, was given very little to do in this movie. Her character is at first resistant to the idea of dating or being involved with someone in the military due to her friends' experiences. This is never presented as a major story issue for the character and never leads much further. Taya as a character complains to Kyle that he's never there even when he's back from overseas. But that's far as it goes. Miller does make the best of what she can, but in the world of patriotic / supportive of the military movies like this where all of the emphasis is on the main character, then it can't be faulted that much.

Which leads to the purpose and aim of this movie. This movie does present itself as an anti-war movie, but it's as close mouthed about it as its lead character is. Chris Kyle doesn't react, but you can sense his emotions when he hears about people in his squad either dying, losing a limb, or never returning. The movie is more angry at Iraq than it is the interventionists policy of the United States; one scene had Kyle finding his brother and his brother being in near tears due to having to be in Iraq.

Throughout the movie, the production and sound design is really incredible; Clint Eastwood as a director tells stories in almost a dry a fashion as possible. In some ways, he's continuing what Don Siegel (his frequent collaborator in the 1970s for movies like Escape From Alcatraz, Dirty Harry, and what I recently saw Coogan's Bluff) did. There isn't anything fancy about the cinematography or the shot selection or how the story is told. It's basic, yet well-made.

Even with character issues and some story issues, American Sniper is a great recent war film.

Elio (saw in the theaters) - 4/5 stars

Spoiler

A tale as old as time, Disney movies always have grief about the loss of parents for the main character. Elio (Yonas Kibreab) has the double whammy of losing both his parents and being with his aunt Olga (Zoe Saldana). Olga obviously doesn't understand Elio and he doesn't understand Olga; he reaches out to the stars for a connection to life beyond Earth.

After separating from Olga while she talks with a co-worker, Elio finds an exhibit for the Voyager 1 probe. In a nice tip of the hat to Star Trek, Kate Mulgrew is the exhibit announcer (you can always tell the warmth in her voice when she says "Voyager" and in almost the same tone as her Captain Janeway) as well as the original Star Trek: The Motion Picture where the Voyager 1 probe is swallowed up by the aliens.

Eventually, Olga finds Elio.

For the first 30 minutes or so, this is probably the heaviest Pixar movie since Up (although not full on crying like that movie provoked). The emotions evoked are similar and in a way, this is a bit like Buzz Lightyear's standalone movie but a lot better done. Elio is butting heads with Olga and with other kids at the base for his ham radio club until he gets found and taken away to outer space.

Elio hits its stride with a quite frankly Spielbergian sense of wonder borrowed from E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Elio is shown a world where he is understood and he is accepted. He is believed to be the "leader of Earth" and he meets Glordon (Remy Edgerly). In a way, their relationship is a PG rated version of the relationship between Pamela Pearl and Nicky Marotta from Times Square; they both are misunderstood but they understand each other. (It can be said that Lord Grigon played by Brad Garrett is like an intergalactic version of David Pearl from Times Square). Lord Grigon wants to be part of the council but due to his warmongering he can't.

Although some of the third act had a lot of deus ex machina (including ham radio operators guiding Olga and Elio through the asteroid field and Lord Grigon breaking out of his armor when his son is dying), Elio is probably one of the better Disney movies this year. (And I liked Snow White from this year, which makes me one of the few). It will not reinvent Pixar movies - some of the character and story choices are a bit too safe and lack the individualistic touches that other Pixar directors have - but it's a great effort from Disney/Pixar.

Brain on Fire (Netflix, leaving on 6/21) - 2.5/5 stars

Spoiler

Brain On Fire honestly isn't as bad as the Letterboxd average indicates. Chloe Grace Moretz plays Suzanne, a New York Post writer who has an unexplainable illness due to issues in her brain from an autoimmune disorder.

A lot of the aspects of the movie isn't that adventurous with how the story is told although I really liked a section where there's quite a few quick cuts to show the chaotic nature of Suzanne's life. The movie is a bit melodramatic, but Moretz really tried to challenge herself with the role by showing the manic energy, physical issues, and the catatonic state of the character. It somewhat reminded me of Mila Kunis' role in Four Good Days. Moretz isn't known for challenging roles, so having an actor like her stretch herself in a role is a welcome sight.

Carrie Anne Moss as her mother Rhona was a great reliable actor in the role and Richard Armitage as her father Tom was decent (although his English accent did slip through when he got angry).

I'm not sure I agree with the character that an autoimmune disorder on a person's brain explains schizophrenia, bipolar and manic depression and people may have been misdiagnosed. Suzanne's symptoms are too wide ranging and as Dr. Sohel Naijar (Navid Negahban) indicates, those psychiatric disorders wouldn't lead to someone writing a clock the way Suzanne wrote it. Also, it's a bad idea for people to self-diagnose (usually that's done due to income instability and lack of finances).

The elephant in the room with the movie is it's never mentioned how Suzanne and her family was going to pay for her medical bills. In America, people get soul crushing debt for medical bills because according to those running the country, fuck socialism and fuck socialized medicine. The way the medical system is set up in America prevents people that are having to go through something like this from even being able to crawl out of the hole they are in. Suzanne isn't privileged to say the least, so the solution to extreme medical debt is to write a book about it that sells millions of copies to people that vote in politicians that vote against socialized medicine.

Also, some of the dialogue seems 'empty' (can't tell you how many times the parent characters say "we gotta keep looking" as if the doctors weren't doing enough). Jenny Slate's characterization and dialogue seems a bit better earlier on in the movie and Tyler Perry as Richard varies throughout the movie. Naturally, a boss at a publisher like the New York Post would be relentlessly cruel to employees regarding deadlines and Perry's character does a complete 180 once Suzanne returns back at the end of the movie.

Brain On Fire won't set any awards on fire.

River of Grass (Mubi, leaving on 6/30) - 3.5/5 stars

Spoiler

It's crazy that the same director that did Showing Up (and a few other movies I haven't seen yet) did River of Grass. As a movie, River of Grass is more like Malick's Badlands through a Reservoir Dogs / Pulp Fiction filter. It's very much an early 1990s indie film, so the budget aspects are definitely....showing up (sorry, couldn't resist).

Some of the story threads introduced (like with the jazz drummer police detective) doesn't pay off in the end and are left unfulfilled. The majority of the movie is Cozy (Lisa Donaldson) and Lee (Larry Fessenden) going on the run after Lee believed he killed a guy at a pool. This is despite the guy being interviewed by the police and at the Greyhound station.

Cozy's decision to kill Lee and shove him out of the car seems to be driven by a desire not to be around Lee anymore. Cozy finds herself at the end wanting to leave everything behind, but is stuck in traffic. Sooner or later, Cozy would have been found out for murdering Lee and throwing out the gun.

Still, this is a decent effort from Reichardt and seems in line with Steven Soderbergh's works since Soderbergh tends to focus on losers and deadbeats in his films.

 

[zendragon]

On 6/17/2025 at 8:33 PM, Andrew POE! said:

Movies today...not as much as usual due to having to go into the office for work.

Platoon (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 4.5/5 stars

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Platoon as a movie is oppressively bleak. The movie starts with Chris (Charlie Sheen) arriving at a base in Vietnam, just as bodies are leaving to be taken away. There's no respect for the dead; the soldiers throwing them are disgusted at having to do so and whatever idea of humanity is out the window. Barber's "Adagio For Strings" plays throughout the movie and adds to the funeral atmosphere. Platoon just shows the body count and, in a way, we become numb to it.

As Chris moves through the movie, he as a character isn't regarded as human being either. As is said early on, "They don't bother to learn your name in the first few weeks." The people serving with him aren't any better. Chris gets asked why he's there. "I volunteered, dropped out of college, I wasn't learning anything." Those that are, as Chris says, "With guys nobody really cares about. They come from the end of the line, most of them, small towns you never heard of. [...] Two years' high school's about it. Maybe if they're lucky, a job waiting for them back in a factory. But most of 'em got nothing. They're poor. They're the unwanted. Yet they're fighting for our society and for our freedom. It's weird, isn't it?"

This dichotomy of the rich and the poor shows up in another scene - "the rich will always screw you over. Always," said by King (Keith David). Even within the dichotomy, there's an element of further division. Black soldiers like King and Big Harold (Forest Whitaker) and Junior (Reggie Johnson) are regarded as 'lesser than' by Sgt. O'Neill (John C. McGinley) and especially Sgt. Barnes (Tom Berenger).

Sgt. Barnes is both scarred mentally and physically; he fights for control with Sgt. Elias (Willem DeFoe). The scene where Barnes guns down Elias is fraught and intense; the camera switches back and forth as it zooms in on their eyes before Barnes shoots him. It's only justifiable in a way for Chris to do the same to Barnes towards the end of the movie. As Chris narrates towards the end, "we did not fight the enemy, we fought ourselves."

With Platoon, Oliver Stone did what Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza tried to do with Warfare and present a realistic experience of warfare in Vietnam. We get the sense of who the characters are; the scene where Chris discovers the room where soldiers are smoking weed and dancing (set to "White Rabbit" nonetheless) is appropo. War isn't a place where people are supposed to 'feel good' about anything. The character moments are small, but throughout the movie, we sense the mounting frustration and fruitlessness they are experiencing.

There's much in the way of 'plot' or character arcs, but that's the point. As Chris said about going back to the same area the next day, "it's like we're going back to the scene of the crime." The soldiers gun down and torch a village because they can and they've picked the defenseless villagers as a target. Even Chris isn't immune from the hopelessness in those scenes; he has a one-legged villager jumping up and down as he fires at the ground. Chris later breaks down after realizing what he's done.

Discussion of Platoon cannot exclude the famous poster image as Willem DeFoe's character survives and just throws his hands into the air; the helicopters circling around and finally just flying away. Chris and Barnes exchange glances and, without speaking, Chris knows that Barnes killed Elias.

The cinematography throughout the movie is incredible; it's quiet and eerie and really presents the feeling of the soldiers being trapped in a jungle without coming up for air. Editing is also really great; scenes never out stay their welcome. A lot of the themes in Platoon stayed with Oliver Stone throughout his career and with his later movies about the mistrust of the US government. The US government in Platoon sends the soldiers off, as if it's a meatgrinder. "Eventually we get tired of winning too much," says O'Neill at one point in the movie.

Platoon is a standard in war films.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 3/5 stars

  Reveal hidden contents

Compared to other Woody Allen movies I've seen, Vicky Cristina Barcelona is more saved by the actors involved than the character work or the storytelling. The constant narration is a bit oft-putting; it feels like a combination of Arrested Development and The Royal Tennebaums and is more matter of factly than anything humorous. Some of the narration leaves the mystery of the story out and spells it out too much what is going on. I was halfway expecting the narrator to be a character that sees Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) from a distance at the end of the movie.

As it is, both Vicky and Cristina even as main characters are a bit too handcuffed. Vicky is repulsed, yet drawn unexpectedly to Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem). Cristina is drawn completely to him from the start. It's hard to take seriously or not sense danger from Juan Antonio's initial scenes with the two characters. He tells them he wants to dine, show them a sculpture and hope to sleep with both of them. Vicky's reaction would be a normal, rational reaction; in other movies, Juan Antonio would be pegged as a manipulative and yet psychotic character. With this, he seems almost faultless because of the relationship he has with his ex-wife Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz).

What makes Vicky Cristina Barcelona work as a movie is not the soap operaish writing and acting, but Penelope Cruz as Maria Elena. Maria Elena as a character is volcanic, but yet is truly talented. It seems to be a bit of a counterpoint to Julie Taymor's Frida with Salma Hayek. Maria Elena as a charcter reacts to Cristina and Juan Antonio and most of what works is how Cruz acts in scenes.

The movie eventually resolves itself to where Vicky has 'one last fling' with Juan Antonio who shows her his artwork - it does create a question that's similar to Tim Burton's Big Eyes - is Juan Antonio taking credit for Maria Elena's painted works? We do see Juan Antonio painting but he seems less in control of what he does versus Maria Elena and her artwork. Anyway, Maria Elena appears with a gun and Vicky realizes at this point what a mistake she made.

As I mentioned, the character work and the storytelling isn't as good. Vicky as a character is a fool; for her intellect and rationality, she seems more likely to make mistakes and screw up a good thing she has with her financee (a common Woody Allen trait apparently). I almost wonder if Cristina was written the way she was so that Woody Allen could fantasize about Scarlett Johnasson being in a bed naked. Her character arc is no different than when she started with the movie. The ending has the two characters being literally right where they started; the difference being that Vicky is now married.

Still, despite the formulaic approach and some character/story issues, Vicky Cristina Barcelona is a slightly average romantic comedy/drama.

 

When I watch scrubs I like to pretend that Dr. Cox is the same character John C. McGinley plays in Platoon. 

[Mister TV]

Once and awhile I fall down a rabbit hole of Siskel & Ebert reviews, about three videos in the other day I stumbled across this one for Brian DePalma's Wise Guys and they both loved it. I hadn't seen Wise Guys since maybe 1990 when it faded away from its cable tv rotation and couldn't remember if it was good or bad, so I gave it a re-watch. Yikes its bad, there's zero chemistry between Danny DeVito and Joe Piscopo, the jokes aren't funny, where were the people protesting The Sopranos for disparaging Italian-Americans when this came out, and its bad when a movies bright spot is Captain Lou basically being Captain Lou. Now, there's actually a decent story that was most likely lifted from some old gangster movie that could have worked as a drama with some jokes thrown in or a black comedy. Siskel & Ebert are so enthusiastic about this flick but its so bad. This isn't on any streaming services but multiple people uploaded it to YouTube, which makes me think whoever own the rights gives zero F's about it.

[odessasteps]

I remember it being hokey but not horrible, but I doubt I’ve seen it since it was in theaters. 

[J.H.]

I saw Wise Guys in theaters when it came out and remember liking liking I was like, 12 or so. Back then I would go see a movie when skipping Hebrew School, I didn't skip Hebrew School to watch it again. That's saying something about my subconcious I think, considering that I saw DC Cab 3 times in order to skip Hebrew Scholl

James

[Andrew POE!]

I will likely be watching Wise Guys sooner than later. 

[J.H.]

12 minutes ago, Andrew POE! said:

I will likely be watching Wise Guys sooner than later. 

But what about DC Cab?

How can you deny yourself a movie starring Mr. T, Gary Busey AND The Barbarian Brothers?

James

[Andrew POE!]

5 hours ago, J.H. said:

But what about DC Cab?

How can you deny yourself a movie starring Mr. T, Gary Busey AND The Barbarian Brothers?

James

Sure I'll watch that too!

[odessasteps]

5 hours ago, J.H. said:

But what about DC Cab?

How can you deny yourself a movie starring Mr. T, Gary Busey AND The Barbarian Brothers?

James

And Max Gail and Marsha Warfield.

[Andrew POE!]

Movies today....

Robinson's Garden (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 2/5 stars

Spoiler

At times, Robinson's Garden works when it's striving for a Jim Jarmusch / Wim Wenders aesthetic. The scenes where Kumi (Kumiko Ohta) is sitting on the roof in a lounge chair while chaos happens around her just hits on a certain level. The first 30 minutes or so where she discovers an empty building after a drunken night has an appeal to it of saying 'fuck it' to society and just isolating herself away to start a garden.

It's just so much of the movie seems to be Kumi going through madness due to the isolation in an urban place like Tokyo. The rest of the movie just fails on some level.

There were some great scene towards the end where a younger Kumi imagines herself being carried by her grandfather and staring at the moon while next to a giant tree. The ending is a bit unexplainable - the kid that's been tormenting Kumi is flying a radio controlled plane around. Kumi has started digging a hole and then.....she doesn't appear for the rest of the movie. Did she die? Did she dig far enough that she fell into the earth? The movie never explains. We just see the garden over a nice synth riff.

Robinson's Garden is a bewildering movie.

What's Up Connection (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 3/5 stars

Spoiler

Having watched both this and Robinson's Garden back to back, Masashi Yamamoto seems as a director where plot is a suggestion rather than a hard and fast rule. What's Up Connection is basically Shoplifters done in the style of Jean Luc Godard. It's anti-capitalistic through and through and the movie starts as misadventures of a man from Hong Kong who won a trip to Tokyo, only to lose his money and his return ticket, then becomes a family against Mr. Yasaki and his business interests to seize their land to build a "friendship building."

Compared to Robinson's Garden, it's a lot more coherent. The sequence where the kids rob the guy of his card to hack into Mr. Yasaki's computer and then take 150 million USD away from the corporation is wild stuff.

Fauna (Mubi, leaving on 6/30) - 3.5/5 stars

Spoiler

Fauna at first is boring. A couple - Luisa (Luisa Pardo) and Paco (Francisco Barreiro) - go to the house of Luisa's parents where they meet Luisa's brother Gabino (Lázaro Gabino Rodríguez). The first half of the movie is generally a mingling of the parents with the siblings and the boyfriend with Paco spending 200 pesos on two packs of cigarettes he bought from Gabino's father. The small town life of the parents has the local convenience store running out of cigarettes.

Luisa and Paco are actors. Paco is asked in a bar to perform a scene from his season of Narcos, even though he doesn't have any lines. He makes up some lines as he walks back into the bar then gets asked to do it again.

Somewhere along the way, the movie changes to a Mexican Last Year at Marienbad as Gabino relays to Luisa what happened in the book he read. The book involves a guy going into a hotel room to take a shower and use a towel, but it's not his room. He apologies to the girl (also played by Luisa Pardo) and the girl named Flora wants him to find a girl named Flauna. The guy gets kidnapped when he finds the girl at a bar and runs into Flauna's boyfriend who grabs him and takes him out of the bar.

The movie ends as Gabino indicates he doesn't want to finish the book and wants to whisper something in Luisa's ear. The guy in the story whispers something in the girl next to him's ear. We never know what is whispered from both.

Fauna as a movie talks about actors and the worlds they create internally with the movie serving as a buffer to the world created from the book. With this, there's a lot of midrange closeup shots of the characters as they talk. The movie is more focused on the conversations rather than anything overly dramatic. The scene where Paco has to 'act' in front of Gabino's dad is both funny and typical; actors have this perception of 'constantly performing' when the truth isn't the case at all.

The story is a bit a low-key at times, but it's well shot.

Bride Hard (saw in the theaters) - 0.5/5 star

Spoiler

Legitimately one of the worst movies I've seen this year, Bride Hard just doesn't work. In a premise (and a script) that had to have been written by AI, the movie attempts to meld the action thrills of Die Hard with the comedic chops of Bridesmaids. Whereas both of those movies were funny on their own (with Bridesmaids having more of a meaning behind it), Bride Hard just tries too hard.

Rebel Wilson is Sam, who is the best friend and bridesmaid of her best friend Betsy (Anna Camp). Sam apparently is really good at disappearing for any get-together with Betsy and the other bridesmaids (including My Girl's Anna Chlumsky as Virginia and Da'Vine Joy Randolph as Lydia and Gigi Zumbado as Zoe). We find out nearly at the start that Sam is a spy. The movie tries to thread the line between bridesmaids gone wild hi-jinks and Rebel Wilson's stunt double doing combat, but just fails.

I would repeat the rest of the story, but what does it really matter? Betsy finds out that Sam is indeed a highly trained spy when a group lead by Kurt (Stephen Dorff) crash the wedding because Virginia and Ryan (Sam Huntington)'s family are insanely rich. They also set the movie in a private island near Savannah, GA and just casually drops that Virginia & Ryan's family made whiskey for over two centuries (without there being a mention that their family didn't do that work themselves if you catch my drift). The opportunity for the rich (especially Southern rich from the backs of slavery) to get their comeuppance besides nameless faceless mercenaries never happens. Also, Virginia was set up as a possible villain at the start, until she wasn't.

Bride Hard at times just isn't funny. None of the comedic moments seem particularly earned. Wilson offers wise cracks and she really makes it seem like she isn't sure of the lines she's saying (which I guess is campy). Sam seems to forgive Betsy way too easily for the snub and being removed as the maid of honor. Bridesmaids had a better, more emotional arc when it came to Kristen Wiig's character facing hardships even with being selected as a bridesmaid. Sam is momentarily upset before the movie speeds along to the bad guys arriving and firing their guns.

To top it all off, not once did Sam say "welcome to the party, pal" or "Yippie ki yay motherfucker." But we did have an okay (yet annoying) sequence set to "Raining Men."

Cinematography throughout the movie is just bad and has a "Made for Netflix" look to it. It's almost as bad as Shadow Force or Canary Black or Union. Why there seems to be a willingness to do low budget action comedies, I don't know. Shane West did better movies years ago like Tomb Raider and Con Air, but this is just bad. At a few points during the movie, it had a smokey haze in the shots that was a bit annoying along with a really overly lit look. Most of the time, everything just looked cheap.

Let's not forget the last 5 or so minutes with the false endings. One of the false endings was better than what they went with.

Bride Hard fails hard.

Il Buco (Mubi, leaving on 6/30) - 5/5 stars

Spoiler

Utterly impressive to watch and to reflect on. Somewhere between Werner Herzog's The Cave of Forgotten Dreams and the cinema of Nuri Blige Ceylan, Il Buco is a very simple premise and a very simple movie. It's a movie about exploration.

Every shot in this is captivating to watch and is made for contemplation. The story being told is through the long wide angle shots of a hole in the earth. We start the movie from us looking outwards from the hole to the sky as some cows look into the hole. People watch a television program about a crew going up a skyscraper as the host questions how high the skyscraper will go.

In this movie, the question is "how low does the hole in the earth go?"

Running parallel to the exploration from a crew of the cave is an old man shepherding cattle from a hill. He's found lying in the ground, unable to move. The crew explores the deeper mystery of the cave while a doctor explores the mystery of the old man's illness. The end of the cave is found. Sadly, the end of the man's life is found too. Yet, even after a lead scientist measures out the distance of 683 meters, the ending of the movie has us hearing the call of the old man through the fog.

Il Buco works purely on cinematography and sound design. The length, the width, the depth, the closeness, the farness, the intensity, the softness, the light and the darkness of cinematography and sound choices are incredible. As the explorers got to the end of the cave, I actually got a bit of anxiety watching them crawl through a tight squeeze. It's amazing the camera setups done in this movie and how the director Michelangelo Frammartino did everything. I'm surprised he isn't spoken more about among Italian directors.

Il Buco is a hole worth going down.

 

Edited June 21, 2025 by Andrew POE!

[J.H.]

I saw a commercial for Bride Hard while binging episodes of The Good Wife (my infatuation with Christine Baranski is... problematic). I initially couldn't figure out if it was an Abrams brothers style spoof or a spinoff from Bridesmaids.

All I took away was that I have no interest to see it, even on a dare!

James

Edited June 21, 2025 by J.H.

[Andrew POE!]

21 minutes ago, J.H. said:

I saw a commercial for Brude Hard while binging episodes of The Good Wife (my infatuation with Christine Baranski is... problematic). I initially couldn't figure out if it was an Abrams brothers style spoof or a spinoff from Bridesmaids.

All I took away was that I have no interest to see it, even on a dare!

James

Well, I watched a crappy movie so you didn't have to and I can confirm it's crap.

And Christine Baranski is indeed a foxy minx. 

Edited June 21, 2025 by Andrew POE!

[J.H.]

Make no mistake, Christine Baranski could make a movie of her in a business suit in black heels reading a thesaurus and it would get all the stars!

She might be the only part of Chicago I like and she has, what, 5 minutes of screentime?

James

[driver]

I haven't seen Wise Guys but I've seen Wiseguy and Men of Respect. If you want a Shakespearean-based Mob movie then MOR is your fucking jam.

[odessasteps]

Is Wiseguy streaming anywhere at the moment? I seem to recall it had music clearance rights issues for that one season. 

[driver]

1 minute ago, odessasteps said:

Is Wiseguy streaming anywhere at the moment? I seem to recall it had music clearance rights issues for that one season. 

A quick Googlin' shows it's streaming on Tubi.

[Andrew POE!]

Movies today....I'll have to caution you, most of what I watched today was a bit political. 

L.A. Confidential (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 4.5/5 stars

Spoiler

L.A. Confidential may not be the best movie from the 1990s, but it certainly is one of the best noirs of all time. L.A. Confidential has everything that made Polanski's Chinatown a classic; the intersection of corruption and the police department. It's no surprise that the look and feel of L.A. Confidential inspired the video game LA Noire.

What makes L.A Confidential so compelling to watch is the three main actors and their storylines - Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey), Wendell White (Russell Crowe), and Ed Exley (Guy Pearce). The three different characters have different motivations for what they do - Vincennes is a consultant on a television show similar to Dragnet called Badge of Honor and uses publicity to keep his name in the papers. White is riding with his partner who gets involved in a jailcell riot and then finds himself dead. Exley is wanting to do better than his father did as a police officer and desires to earn a promotion within the department.

All three characters have varying shades of grey. At times, they aren't truly good, but they aren't truly evil either. Vincennes and Exley team to investigate further what happened at the "Night Owl murders," which leads to Vincennes being killed. Exley and Wells then team once they figured out who did it and how far it stenches the LAPD.

Besides these three characters, the supporting characters are equally compelling to watch. Lynn Bracken (Kim Basiinger) is mixed up with the dirty business of Pierce Patchett (David Strathairn). Sid Hudgens (Danny DeVito), who writes for a magazine called Hush Hush and pays Vincennes to generate stories through arrests, knows more than he lets on. Captain Dudley Smith (James Cromwell) functions as a guiding hand for Exley only for it to be found out his involvement.

Throughout the movie, there's a sense of propulsion. Although at some point towards the end, it does move a little too fast towards the finale shootout and the bodies do pile up by then, there isn't a wasted scene or a wasted shot. The cinematography for L.A. Confidential is beautiful - I loved one shot towards the end as Exley is walking towards the police with his badge up in the air.

I will say that I was surprised that Crowe's character survived and was seated in the back of a car at the end of the movie. It made more sense for Dudley to have killed Wells. In a way, L.A. Confidential ends more positively versus Chinatown. Exley goes on, the LAPD moves to a new HQ, and the Santa Monica Freeway is getting built.

Even then, L.A. Confidential is pretty much a classic.

Citizenfour (Mubi, leaving on 6/30) - 4.5/5 stars

Spoiler

Citizenfour as a documentary is more chilling to watch in 2025 than when it was first released in 2014. In 2014, the media reported on it and spoke up as members of the "Fourth Estate." They weren't afraid of lacking courage to report on the activities of the NSA in the United States and around the world. Through the entirety of the documentary, Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald meet with their source without knowing who he is and what information he has.

Could this documentary happen today? Absolutely not. The media is more afraid of speaking up because of how the United States will respond. Look at who is currently in the White House with Donald Trump and look at who is under him. The DOJ is investigating the recent "No Kings" protests and the funding for it. This could potentially go after the private citizens that participated. Who's to say they won't use the tools that Edward Snowden talked about in this documentary? Also, the media is afraid because of what Trump will do to the media companies; Paramount is looking to merge with Skydance, which owns CBS. Terry Moran, a reporter for ABC News, was fired for his Twitter comments about Stephen Miller. The implication of what was raised in Citizenfour is wider and scarier because we no longer have the adults in the room with the US government, we have bipolar children running the government.

At its core with the documentary are the brief interviews with Edward Snowden and the wider implications of what Snowden said to Poitras and Greenwald. What makes it compelling to watch is the lengths all three go to get Snowden's story out there; as Snowden predicted, the focus shouldn't be on him, but should be on the implication. Yet, with what happened, it ended up on him.

The other aspect that lends itself to paranoia are incidents that happen - a "fire alarm test" during one of the days of interviews, reporters trying to call Snowden and forcing him to change room, and Greenwald's partner being held for questioning in the UK airport.

The camerawork in the documentary is interesting with the unguarded moments of Snowden looking at outside from the hotel and towards the end where he's making dinner with his wife Lindsay Mills.

Citizenfour is a great documentary of an event that's still being felt today.

Milk (Peacock, leaving on 6/30) - 5/5 stars

Spoiler

"My name is Harvey Milk and I'm here to recruit you!"

Honestly, this is probably one of the better biopics I've seen in quite awhile (I haven't seen Malcolm X, which is considered the pinnacle of recent historical figure biopics). Gus Van Sant does this film almost conventionality and like other biopics - except with a twist just due to the person that's being covered in this movie.

The thing about Harvey Milk (Sean Penn) is Milk wasn't a perfect person, but he couldn't be anything except himself. I loved a lot of the scenes with Penn as Milk as he smiles mischievously and conveys the anger and sadness over ballot measures not being passed. The thing that's heartbreaking is the one person that he started with Scott (James Franco), he never ended up with. One telling scene was in which Milk told Dan White (Josh Brolin) that he had "four relationships in his life with three of them leading to suicide." Yet, Milk stood tall until the end. In that scene, White's frustration with himself and his life spills out as he stands there drunk talking to Milk.

One thing that I loved about Milk is how close to the actual people the actors looked, just based on the ending footage showing them. The actors got the behaviors and mannerisms down as well as the period clothing.

An aspect that stuck out to me was the scene where Milk and Scott were sitting in bed and Milk lamented about his birthday. "I'm 40 and I feel like I haven't done anything with my life." On a humanistic level, that line is telling and should serve as a wake up call to anyone in their lives; it doesn't mean that person has to become a gay rights activist or even be gay themselves, but a person's life up to that point doesn't end at 40.

I will say that some of the scenes did run a little long and the story for the movie was primarily focused on Harvey Milk. Everyone else involved took a backseat to him and to a smaller extent Dan White. The murder of Milk was played out without any sound as Milk stares across the street at the opera house as his face was going out of focus with the opera house in focus. The side story with the guy leaving his parents was really touching as well.

Still, there's a reason why Milk ended up getting nominated at the Oscars.

Bulletproof (Mubi, leaving on 6/30) - 2/5 stars

Spoiler

www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9212725/australia-buyback

To be honest, I can't even get mad about this documentary. The pacing for it is slow and meandering, the narrative focus isn't there, and I'm not exactly sure what the director's point with what's there. On a technical level, there's a lot of long shots of students walking, people working on kelvar hoodies, and overweight white men lecturing and fear-mongering about school shooters.

Nowhere does anyone say, "You know, if we pass laws where guns are banned in the United States and we did gun buybacks like in Australia, none of this would be a problem." Instead, let's have a bald school administrator that got deployed and hit on the head too many times show us AR-15s he has locked up at a Texas City high school. What kind of person would be encountered that resorting to using an AR-15 is even necessary? Is it an invading force or a foreign government? Nope, it's just the mythical school shooter, that's usually a white kid, usually alone, usually obtaining a gun somehow.

Then let's hear a bunch of people at a trade show fear monger school administrators about using an electronic flash bang or a bullet proof white board or anything else.

Thankfully, this documentary is mercifully short.

 

[J.H.]

I maintain L.A. Confidential should have won the Oscar that year and not Cameron's 3 hour snoozefest

James

[odessasteps]

Of the five nominees, I’d pick LA Confidential.  But other things I’d put over it:

jackie brown, the apostle, boogie nights. 

[J.H.]

I'll cede you Jackie Brown, but Boogie Nights is a movie that my view on it changes with each viewing. One would think a movie featuring Nina Hartley would get my full throated support. I've never seen The Apostle but now must add it to the "well now I gotta watch it" list.

James

Edited June 22, 2025 by J.H.

[Curt McGirt]

Jackie Brown should have absolutely won -- and of course it didn't even rate a nomination. Boogie is good but I think it feels aged nowadays when I catch bits and pieces on TV. It's close to something like Blow, quite honestly. The Apostle is great because Robert Duvall is great of course. Perdita Durango is probably the best movie of 1997 though 

L.A. Confidential is the shiiiiiiit. That's a movie my dad loved that I came around to on my own eventually after I caught the shootout on TV, which has to be a top five shootout in film history. Going back and watching the rest of it, it just puts the "hard" in "hard-boiled". Pierce is such an incorruptable hardass and Crowe you firmly believe should be institutionalized at times. The way the one-way mirror scene pans out at the end is perfect, the shit that goes down in the hotel, the beautifully hilarious scene where Pierce encounters Johnny Stompanado and Lana Turner in the restaurant and that smirk on Spacey's face when he spills the beans to Pierce, trying to hold in his laughter almost to no avail... man, that is a hell of a movie. 

[Curt McGirt]

Oh, and definitely watch Malcolm X -- or just read The Autobiography of Malcolm X (a book which frankly changed my whole life perspective). 

[J.H.]

It is a shame they killed off Dudley in L.A. Confidential the movie because he survived in the book and the next book White Jazz, deals with Exley finally taking Dudley down.

James

[odessasteps]

Apparently, Engeleand and Elroy pitched a sequel set in 1974 that would have starred Boseman and brought back Crowe and Pearce.