David Baruffi's Entertainment Views and Reviews

MOVIE REVIEWS: "I'M STILL HERE (Salles)", "INSIDE OUT 2", "KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON", "DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE", "HARD TRUTHS", "THE PIANO LESSON", "SUPER/MAN: THE CHRISTOPHER REEVE STORY", "WILL & HARPER" and "ASTEROID CITY"!

2026-10-15T13:29:26.341-07:00

(Sigh)

My movie reviews keep taking longer and longer to get out. Part of it is that I'm just working on a lot more recently. I've written a couple shorts recently, and I even directed a short TikTok video-thing?

I didn't want to, but I might as well promote it, but I wrote and directed a short Carl's Jr. thing. Apparently it's their anniversary and my friend wanted to enter their TikTok contest celebrating it. We didn't win anything, but if you're interested, here's the link:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/caL8_tbwBxY

I'm not sure how I ended up directing it, but I hope I did okay there. When I shared it on Facebook, I wrote a cryptic post insinuating that I was parodying something with it, and left the hashtag: #ELKMBCCRRMMCMMM as a hint, just to see how many people would even get it. I think one or two people might've figured it out, but here, what's I was parodying:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h17XM_KoXcM

Yeah, for those who don't know, this is an infamous scene from "All My Children" where Erica Kane, for reasons that are we too complicated and elaborate to explain, she is out in the wilderness and runs into a bear and begins yelling at the bear like it should be something she should be able to control. How or why I had this weird inspiration in my head, is-, (Sigh) yeah, the inner workings of exactly how my mind works are sometimes too bizarre to explain, this is the kind of thing that happens when you know way too much and have distressing, fascinatingly good recall; you make ridiculously obscure 40-year-old television references that only you and like five other people are ever gonna understand. (Oh, and that hashtag, is Erica Kane's full initials. Erica Louise Kane-Martin-Brent-Cudahy-Chandler-Roy-Roy-Montgomery-Montgomery-Marick-Marick-Montgomery [I know some people argue that some of these marriages don't count for various reasons, Cudahy's was annulled, Roy's marriages were invalid-, well the first one way,- whatever, correct me in the comment sections if you want. I swear I'll read them.)

I also got this added to my IMDB page:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt45294320/?ref_=nm_flmg_job_1_accord_2_cdt_t_1

A short film I wrote that, actually did pretty well, won a couple local awards. We'll see what happens, link for that's here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp6pN2Rq6Gk

Plus, I've been busy with other aspects of life between all these projects. (Shrugs) I don't know, I don't try to think or look too far into the future right now, I'm just happy to be getting whatever I can get at the moment and it's nice actually getting some projects finished and done. Hopefully, there'll be more later.

Anyway, enough humblebrag promotion, let's get to the movie reviews!

I'M STILL HERE (2024) Director: Walter Salles

⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2

There's always something about a filmmaker, who suddenly, returns home, to make a movie, isn't there? For me, it seems like a lot of a filmmaker's best films come after they left their home country and tried to work in Hollywood, or elsewhere, sometimes successfully, but then they find their way back to their home country and suddenly they make something special. And it's particularly interesting here, 'cause we have a filmmaker who hasn't made much at all recently. Walter Salles makes any list of the greatest filmmakers from Brazil. He's not always the first name, but it'll come up, even though he hasn't made much in the last decade or so; his last feature, outside of a documentary on, the great Chinese director Jia Zhangke of all people-, um-, actually scratch that; that makes sense, they're pretty similar filmmakers, but besides that, and a few scattered shorts, the last film, film, he made was 2012's "On the Road". Yeah, that one; remember that strange but mostly forgettable adaptation of Jack Kerouac's novel? That also,-, strangely makes some sense. Well, trying to adapt Kerouac to film has never actually made sense; it's better to read Kerouac than to actually watch it, but Salles's films, up 'til then, if ask me what his specialty or genre is,- it would've been the road movie.

His biggest films that hit America were "Central Station", a wonderful tale about a mismatched older woman and a young orphaned boy who have to travel all through the country of Brazil to find the boy's never-before-seen father, and "The Motorcycle Diaries" based on the diaries of Che Guevara and Alberto Granado as they traveled through South America in their early twenties. Both are very good films, and also, they seemed to be the films of his that are the most personal to him. He's made other films in the U.S. and elsewhere, and he's got a lot of odd muses; I remember watching his film "Behind the Sun" in one of my film classes, and that's an odd one where he adapted a romanian novel about two families that have fought a multi-generational war with each other, and resets it in turn-of-the-century Brazil, and even that one I think of as having some road trip elements to it. Still, he hadn't made that much since, certainly little to capture the world's attention, but suddenly, he burst back on the scene with "I'm Still Here", which became the first film from Brazil to finally win the Oscar for Best International Feature, something was way overdue. (Especially if you know the history of how they've treated other Brazilian films in the category before.... IYKYK) And in a way, it feels fitting not only 'cause Salles seems like the heart of modern Brazilian cinema to me, even if he's made more films outside the country than inside it, but also because, for somebody who hasn't made much in awhile, in order for him to come back this big, it had to be something very personal to him and to his country, and oh boy, did we get one here.

"I'm Still Here", tells the story of Eunice Paiva (Oscar-nominee Fernanda Torres), the wife/widow of Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello). Rubens Paiva, was one day, taken by authorities from his home, and never came back. He was a former Congressmen, and one that was in exile after the U.S.-backed Brazilian military overthrew President Joao Goulart which led to a military dictatorship that lasted 'til the mid-'80s, and he's not the only one who was an enemy of the state that was taken in and suddenly never returned. He was in contact with other expatriates and contacting with them, but he wasn't involved in any activities, but that didn't matter to the government. He was arrested, and then Eunice and their daughter Elaine (Luisa Kosovski) were also taken in by the police. The daughter was released soon after, but Eunice remained for twelve days, where she was tortured and inquired about activities and peoples that she knew little about. Eventually, she's let go, and the news reported that Paiva had fled the country, but nobody believes them.

It's hard to describe this movie in just, the actual facts-, a different movie and a different filmmaker might've been more focused on trying to figure out what happened, make the movie more investigatory, and there are some elements like that, for instance, one of Eunice's child's teachers, Martha (Carla Ribas) is also taken in and questioned, but doesn't reveal her story and what she knows until after the dictatorship is overthrown, perhaps for good reason. They can't go to the local press, so Eunice is going through lawyers and international press to make public the situations here, but that's-, that's the details of what's going on, but what the movie is really about is the struggles of a family having to go through all this and what that means. The Paiva's were well-off but Rebens was the one with the jobs and careers, and suddenly Eunice has to take care of several children of various ages, all the while being watched by the state, while having to grieve her husband's lost and probable murder, and somehow keep the family together, and surviving, and figure out how to suddenly do all of that as a single parent of five children.

Salles actually was close to Eunice and the Paiva family, which explains why he was talked out of semi-retirement for the project, and to create his first feature film in his home country since 2008's "Linha de Passe". The film was based on a book by novelist Marcelo Rubens Paiva, Eunice's son who's played by Gilherma Silveira as a kid and Antonio Saboia as an adult, and the entire movie shows the transformation of the family over the years. His memoir actually begins with Eunice suffering from Alzheimer's near the end, who's played by Fernanda Montenegro, Torres's mother, and the Oscar-nominated star of Salles's "Central Station", not only making Torres and Montenegro the first two Brazilian actresses nominated for Best Actress Oscars, but only the second mother and daughter to be nominated in the same category, after Judy Garland and Liza Minelli and the first time it's happened while both were nominated for films made by the same director. The real journey of the movie isn't so much Eunice's fight for the truth, it's how the family changed and evolved over those years because their father was taken. Beginning in small ways from their oldest daughter Vera (Valentina Herszage) coming home from London, to them having to let go of Zeze (Pri Helena) their family's beloved maid, to moving to Sao Paolo and eventually Eunice going back to school eventually becoming one of the world's foremost lawyers and advocates for the rights of indiginous peoples, but that's what happens, the movie isn't what these characters do, it's how they do it, and it's those smaller moments that surround the greater injustice.

The moment of the movie for me is during an interview for a local newspaper that's doing on a story on Paiva, and their insistance on a somber family portrait, and instead, Eunice, and everyone else, asks why they can't smile, and eventually they all do. Why should we just be sad and angry, and honestly, I get it. If anything, the Paiva's smiling like a happy family in their photos, probably was the biggest F-U they could give the dictatorship for their actions; you took away our father, husband, patriarch, but you didn't take away our spirit; we're still a lovin family and will remain so for years to come. It's not gonna be any of the details of the atrocities the regime committed, and they committed a bunch, trust me, but how they didn't let it break them. Salles's last road movie is a journey through the horrors and struggles of life through a recent horrific past in his native Brazil, and yet, we are still indeed here.

INSIDE OUT 2 (2024) Director: Kelsey Mann

⭐⭐⭐

I posted my Canon of Film on "Inside Out" before I watched "Inside Out 2". Part of it was that, I had started writing that one a little while ago. I forgot I hard started writing it; in fact I had it on my list to actually write one on "Inside Out" and was planning to do it soon enough anyway, only to find that I had already started it, apparently awhile ago. (Shrugs) It must've really been on mind..., no pun intended.

That's not to say that I expected bad things from "Inside Out 2", I certainly didn't think that; Pixar isn't perfect of course, but I certainly wasn't afraid that would happen, but I think it's that there's something so utterly perfect and essential about that film, that's so essential and universal that I was a little afraid that a sequel, even a good sequel could diminish it a bit. It's happened before, many times,- I mean, look at the "Shrek" franchise, but even Disney/Pixar,- there's a few sequels you can look at and point to there, I personally think "Incredibles 2" is good example; it's not that it's a bad movie, but it's definitely not a great one. It's not nearly as memorable or interesting as the first,- it doesn't take away from the first one, in fact, that film kinda goes out of it's way to kinda correct a lot of the issues that might not have aged that well in the original,- I won't say it was "woke", that's not the right word, at all, let's say it's more of an afterword or an epilogue to the original film than a true sequel. It doesn't make the original worst, but like most postfaces, it's not always essential that you read them to consider yourself finished with the book. I guess that's my real concern, I'm not sure I wanted a sequel to "Inside Out", but I certainly didn't want an epilogue to it.

Or, maybe that was just the Anxiety (Maya Hawke) in me talking. So, Riley (Kensington Tallman) is older now, and about to enter high school. In the meantime, she's made friends at her new school, Grace and Bree (Grace Lu and Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green) and all three are star players on the local junior high hockey team, and they all get invited to the weekend camp for the Fire Hawks, the main high school team that Riley wants to attend. She's thirteen now, however, and suddenly, the crew in her head, are awoken by the control panel's giant puberty light suddenly going off, and the construction crew bursts in to do some sudden renovations while Riley's sleeping. This alarms Joy (Amy Poehler) and baffles and concerns all the other emotions, and suddenly when she awakens, Riley's acting in ways that they're unable to fully handle, luckily new emotions have come in, led by Anxiety.

This is the kind of thing that was somewhat obvious to begin with, sure, but essentially this makes sense from the beginning.

Originally, Pete Doctor and the Pixar crew, when conceiving this film, they originally had ideas for dozens of emotions, not just Joy, Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Tony Hale) and Disgust (Liza Lapira), but decided to limit it to five, partially because of just how complex it would be to even feature every emotion, but also just to simplify the story in general. And it does make sense, the older you get the more complex emotions in terms of their kind and range one tends to have, although I certainly knew people who definitely had Anxiety controlling much of their mind, way before puberty. (Anxiety's pretty quiet now, but yeah, he definitely started, eh, early elementary school for me. Definitely at the latest, first or second grade for me, whenever I really started fearing getting a bad grade or missing an assignment, or whenever I started having panic attacks? First grade, yeah.) Strangely, I don't recall having Anxiety, over trying to befriend or impress somebody the way Riley does with Valentina (Lilimar), the team's star Senior player. I definitely remember the other emotions like Embarrasment (Paul Walter Hauser) and I guess I had some Envy (Ayo Edibiri) and I definitely had Ennui. (Adele Exarchapoulos, who is definitely the best cast person for that role they could've picked, [granted, it was the nineties, ennui was pretty in, but yeah, it's an underrated and useful emotion.]) And personally I'm kinda glad because Anxiety seems to be very controlling, and she decides to take over Riley for the weekend, and send the other emotions into a vault along with some of Riley's darkests secrets, and eventually they find Riley's true self from the back of the mind where Riley's most troubling thoughts lie, and get back to the Hub before Anxiety completely rewires Riley's belief system.

I definitely hate anxiety, and definitely feel Riley's pain towards the end of the film, but yeah, as much as this film is still pretty good, it's definitely not as powerful as the original. This is a good story, I guess but I feel like it's not fully enriched in this film; now if we had an "Inside Out" TV spinoff on Riley-, I mean, that'd be hard, but I think this could be more interesting. Hell, that's a decent idea to continually adding new emotions one at a time as opposed to a bunch of new ones right here, kinda like, the seriously underrated "The United States of Tara" added a new alter periodically through the series the more we found out how troubled her character was. (I probably shouldn't be comparing a teenage girl to a character with Disassociative Personalities Disorder, especially considering how exceptionally rare that condition actually is and how much of the mystique of that syndrome came from flawed pop psychology books that turned out to be completely made up to begin with....- ["Sybil" was a lie, look it up.] but yeah, this story, it feels more like a couple episode arc in a series more than a movie.)

Anxiety is just not a fun emotion to have around, and it's a devastating one to control you. I guess we all learn that, but it's certainly not as powerful or important a message to a young person learning that it's okay and important to be sad sometimes. Anxiety is a teenager emotion so it does fit, my anxiety was never trying to impress anybody but yeah, one year in a badly-run magnet program where keeping my grades up cost my a bottle of Excedrin/week headache, yeah, Anxiety definitely caused that, ugh! Yeah, Anxiety should just stay in it's comfy chair in the back.

"Inside Out 2" doesn't diminish the original masterfulness, but this still feels like a good story that didn't need to be a movie. I mean, it's not like Disney sequels didn't have a couple of those as well, so I certainly don't think that Pixar was immune from that syndrome, hell, they've made far worst already, (Like, c'mon, did "Monsters University" really need to exist?) Thankfully "Inside Out 2" is still better than most of those. But it is weird how the first movie taught us how important and essential an emotion can be while this one's story is how horrific and awful it can be having a different emotion be in control of you. I'm not saying it's a wrong message, I totally get where it's coming from, but eh, that is a bit of a tonal whiplast if you think about it long enough. Maybe if I didn't love the original so much, I'd appreciate this one more but that comparison does hurt it.

Also, all this focus on hockey, and being an ethnomusicologist even though they don't even know what that is yet, when you're supposed to be teaching her to be an astronaut Joy, you promised, remember!

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON (2023) Director: Martin Scorsese

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I knew there was another reason why I've always been a little bit troubled by the rise of the so-called "True Crime" docu-narratives in-, well, basically all forms of media right now; essentially that kind of storytelling, was invented and made popular, by the FBI. Seriously, J. Edgar Hoover, was a propogandist among everything else, and he used all the media, movies, eventually television, and even the radio, with some of the earliest and biggest radio plays to talk of tales about how great the FBI was, by them, getting to the bottom of several of America's biggest crimes. It's not that these weren't stories worth telling or shouldn't be told; in many cases these are stories that absolutely should be told, but they were told from the perspective of the heroic law enforcement officers, and frankly that's- well, very few crimes begins with the police-, they're just the ones piecing it together, they're rarely the "Heroes", at least not the heroes that they often claim that they are. There usually isn't heroes in these stories, most crimes are bad guys and victims.

If anybody realizes that more than Martin Scorsese, as a storyteller, I'm not sure who that would be, but I'd be willing to bet whoever that is, was a victim. For all the talk about Scorsese as a great director, which he is, one of the interesting things about him is how genuinely difficult it is to pin him down, as a storyteller. He himself famously brought this up during some of the Oscar promotion he did for "The Departed", the only film of his to ever win Best Picture, in that, that film was the first time he ever made a movie, with a plot. Hmmm, that's probably not completely accurate, even at the time, but he definitely has never cared about shaping his films into a more traditional Hollywood-style three act structure narrative; hell some of his most famous films are infamous for outright destroying some of the more conventional screenwriting rules. (There's a reason Robert McKee teaches "Casablanca" and not "Goodfellas") Yet, why does he tell his stories this way? He can tell a more traditional and cohesive narrative, but he's not interested in that. He's always been way more interested in creating a world his characters live in, and also, trying to figure out exactly, who's telling their story, and perhaps more importantly, from who's perspective the story is being told.

"Killers of the Flower Moon", is not a new story, it's actually quite an infamous one. That doesn't mean I had heard about it beforehand; I hadn't. Basically, at around the turn of the 19th Century, oil was found on Osage land in Oklahoma. This made the tribe, at the time, quite rich; per capita, the Osage were the richest peoples in America. Well, on paper, they were, 'cause people originally thought that, they needed some white man banker to be in charge of their money, fearing that they wouldn't know what to do with it or how to spend it,- but if you know where the story goes from here, than you know that that's arguably the least of the problems for the Osage. After oil was founded, others began to move into their world from the outside, most notably, William Hale (Oscar-nominee Robert De Niro). He's taken to help the Osage build up their area and city, and is a local sheriff among other high-profile roles in their culture, community and influence. In essence, he's the local mob boss, and he runs the area like a mob boss would run their area, except, he's doing a lot of this in order to, well, steal the money from the Osage, in due time.

His nephew Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) comes into town to help be with his Uncle after the war, and he seemingly drifts into his Uncle's long, elaborate scheme of marrying into the Osage people, and then, slowly, yet periodically, kill off all the Osage, making the Hales and the Burkhart able to inherit their mineral rights and money for themselves. It's unclear if that's always the intention with Ernest; he seems to actually be in love with Mollie (Oscar-nominee Lily Gladstone), they have a brief but lovely romance that leads to marriage and kids, but it becomes clearer and clearer that William's praise of the Osage peoples and encouragement of connecting with them, isn't just meer suggestion, or even matchmaking. One-by-one, Mollie's family and relatives are killed. Some are outright murdered with little-to-no investigation, others die from illnesses that seem to be so common among the Osage it's almost like those old, and real stories of how, the Native Americans, when meeting the original colonizers from Europe would get sick and die from blankets, or just from naturally non-immunity from the diseases they brought with them across the ocean, although, even back in the '20s, I knew diabetes wasn't gonna knock out somebody so much the way the "insulin" seems to knock out Mollie, the one Osage who genuinely seems to be fighting and screaming for outside help. She hired a Private Investigator, (Gary Basaraba) at one point, but he's soon taken out by Hale and his gang.

Eventually, Mollie goes to Washington and begs the President to do something, and for those who don't know, this story is infamous in the lore of the birth of the FBI, represented here mainly by Agent Tom White (Jesse Plemens) who, along with his crew, eventually come in and investigate and-, well, they get to the bottom of what's been going on, but it's hard to say that they, somehow stopped it or anything, although that's what old J. Edgar would have you believe.

I'm leaving out a lot here, including a lot of great and memorable performances by people like Cara Jade Myers as Mollie's trainwreck sister Anna, or Scott Shepherd as Ernest's brother Byron who's also caught up in Hale's enterprise. Brendan Fraser and John Lithgow make some glorified cameos as lawyers eventually as well. Yet, the story itself is practically nauseating in it's grotesqueness when the fact get said out loud, but in terms of the film, despite it's epic length, the movie earns that 3+ hour time length by drifting us into the clashing worlds of the film. The very slow reveal of what's going on under the surface creates such a nervous tension that fulfills not just the story, but the entire world. A beautiful reminder that the stories of true crimes and atrocities don't really occur in a easily digestible-for-all-time-zones vacuums, even if they can be told in a three hour movie, or a half-hour podcast. (Especially when it's not the Osage people telling the tale.)

DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE (2024) Director: Shawn Levy

⭐⭐

Oh-kay, I have to begin with one single declaration, we have to fucking stop using NSYNC's "Bye Bye Bye", for any reason whatsoever. In fact, you really shouldn't be using any NSYNC song for any reason;- yeah, I wasn't a Backstreet Boys fan either, but this has never been a contest BSB were miles better than NSYNC on their best day, but any use of that horrible song in particular, after the way it was used in "Red Rocket" is-, well for one thing, it's just gonna remind that that's a better movie and the only good use for that song's existence, but also it's just cheap and uninteresting to use it, especially for an opening fight scene where the steel bones of a wolverine are used as weapons.

Also, I feel like I have to catch up on my Linkara to watch this movie, and I have not been keeping up with my Marvel,- well, anything. So, I went and checked my original review of "Deadpool", which, I liked a lot, but was also just in general, hugely confused by, 'cause I knew nothing about "Deadpool". Anyway, one of the first things I mentioned was a joke about how Deadpool was technically in the X-Men universe, and how combining them and the Marvel universe wouldn't make any sense, which, it doesn't, but that's besides the point. I misspoke though, because Deadpool wasn't in the X-Men universe, he was in, an X-Men universe....

(Sigh)

Oh-kay, forgive me, if I get this wrong, 'cause it's all stupid, and I don't care, but this movie begins, in Earth-616, which-, I think in the Marvel comics world is the nickname given to the main timeline-, or, as it's called here, the "Sacred Timeline", of everything that is proper canon in the universe, as oppose to-, um, all the others branches and bunches of other things that are not canon.

(Sigh)

Fifteen minutes in and this film is reminding me of every reason I'm not into comic books.

Anyway, Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds), we learn is not in this timeline, but he's in something called the Earth-10005 timeline. In this timeline, which I think is the original X-Men timeline, he's called into action by Mr. Paradox (Matthew McFayden), who runs the TVA; they're the keepers of the timelines, and his timeline is about to die 'cause Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) died in his last film, "Logan", which was the only "X-Men",- well, basically anything, that I actually really liked, so he's determine to find a new Wolverine to replace that Wolverine so that his timeline can keep going and not fall into "The Void".

The Void, is basically, this empty Mad Max-inspired place where all movie franchises that die out, their characters eventually end up. So, I'm gonna call this place, "Tattertown", and hope you all get the obscure Ralph Bakshi reference. Anyway, the ruler in Tattertown is Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin) who is Charles Xavier's sister, which-, I-eh, maybe that was the thing before-, I don't remember. She's the evil one who basically is allowed to run roughshot over The Void in a deal with Mr. Paradox, who's been secretly creating a time ripper machine which is there to end these superhero timelines sooner rather than having them continue going-on after their main character dies off and decay into The Void.

Personally, I'm on Time Ripper's side, but sure, he's evil and eventually Deadpool finds a Wolverine, from a universe where he was a huge failure to and for the X-Men, and apparently in this one he wears that stupid yellow outfit which I always did think was a good idea to get rid of when the live-action X-Men came around. (I was hoping that in his universe Storm just said, "I'm mother nature bitches!" and just kicked everyone's ass, but- I don't know, even when I like the X-Men, they fundamentally confuse me as a concept. Except for "Logan" again-, where somebody actually had the same genetic mutation as another X-Men for once.) Oh yeah, Laura, (Dafne Keen) is here in The Void-, along with other characters from other franchises over the years. Some I liked,- for instance Jennifer Garner's "Elektra" shows up, which- I never got around to her film, but I stand this, "Daredevil" is still one of the better superhero movies and shouldn't get shit on nearly as much as it does and she is one of the big reasons for that. (She should be a bigger star in general actually, both Elektra and Jennifer Garner.) I won't list too many others, some of them are so obscure even if I did spoil them I'm not sure anybody would know who the hell they are; even some of the characters in the film barely know who they are.

The "Deadpool" franchise has already always been ridiculously self-referential, it goes beyond-, I mean, if the MCU is an oroboros, "Deadpool and Wolverine" is the film where the tail has shoved itself up the snake's sphincter and gone through it's digestive system and all the way up through the mouth, where the tail begins to eat the snake's head from the inside out. I mean, Deadpool even lets Wolverine know that, "Hey, sorry that you're joining at a bit of a low point," and yes, this is a low point. And nothing in the film is objectively terrible in of itself but there's such a general pointlessness to it.

It's weird how the quantum physics theory of their being infinite number of universes can be done so well in so many kinds of literature, yet most of the time it's usually done really badly, even by people who should know better. Like, "Star Trek" uses it's badly, most of the time, but the best use of it in a literary context might've been that episode of "The Next Generation", "Parallels", where Worf keeps going through multiple versions of himself in different universes, which is still brilliant. It's way better there than it's ever done in these comic book superhero stories, and the reason is because they actually treat it, you know, scientifically. Like, they go into the thought processes of what it means and how you may be different if one decision or one alteration caused so many differences in your universe and what you might encounter if for instance, there's some kind of portal created through science technobabble or magic crystals or whatever and you end up in an entirely different alternative univese version of you, and what that means, but whenever it's in these superhero films, it's always about, how to get all these characters from all these different worlds and universes together, in order to,- I don't know save the world, or stand there and be cool, or see how every single Deadpool variant really likes Peter (Rob Delaney). It's just a Get Out-of-Jail Free card for poor creativity and storytelling, this is why I couldn't stand that "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" film, it reminds me that I think Spider-Man was never a good story to begin with and now you're all just trying desperately to come up with several other variants until you stumble across one that's good, instead of just giving up entirely and coming up with something better that's not Spider-Man.

Or, any of these superheroes.- Look, I don't mind that somebody's taking all these shots at the MCU and the idea of a 20th Century Fox logo covered in dirt like it's a relic from "Planet of the Apes" that's a funny idea, but it's not really all that funny, when the people making the joke are indeed, the ones who came up with all this to begin with. This is the kind of satire that should be made from the outside looking in, and yeah, Deadpool even existing in cinematic form in the Marvel Universe, being able to find streaming on Disney+ of all streaming services, like I get that he's the accidental superhero in the Marvel's roster of superheroes but it still isn't as sharp as it could be because the jokes are coming from inside the Mouse's house, and also, it's not as fresh and unique as when the first "Deadpool" did come out.

Look, I didn't want a "Deadpool & Wolverine" film, I'm not particularly angry that we got one, I'm not even that upset at how it came out, but I can't imagine how it's worth anybody's time. Even if you were able to keep up with every joke and reference and bizarre randomness at the choice of pop songs on the soundtrack, and appreciated the raunchiness of the whole thing, I can't imagine this is a film that even the hardcore MCU people are going to care about.

Also, while it did have a funny post-credits scene that-, almost convinced me not to knock a half-star off of my rating for having one, (Almost, and yes, I'm still doing that, #StopPostCreditScenes!) the movie also had a bizarre, kinda sincere mid-credit montage, of like, the behind-the-scenes of like, Marvel, everything over the last few decades that,- honestly I'm not sure what to make of. It kinda defeated the movie's thesis that the timelines were worth saving and not sending them into the void, while also, kinda acknowledging that this is sort of a final post-script reflective farewell afterword? Is this whole thing dying or not? I mean, I know it's not dying-dying, unfortunately, but was that the joke that it was, a reminiscence on the end of a film franchise in a movie that's about saving a film franchise?! or wasn't it-,

(Sigh)

I give up. I don't even know what to make of that.

HARD TRUTH (2024) Director: Mike Leigh

⭐⭐⭐1/2

You know, there's this idea, of a Mike Leigh film. If you know his work, than you know what I'm talking about. To a degree you can kinda fill in some of the details, usually a kitchen sink family-type film, or at the very least, a modern slice-of-life character piece where there's one character in particular who's got this overabundant personality trait, one that, no matter what that trait is, it's omnipresentness seems to completely overwhelm the movie and to some degree effect the other characters, and this occurs where's a particular triggering event or reveal or whatever that moment would be where we'd traditionally consider a revelation or a plot comes into focus. It doesn't always happen, but what's more important, that there's a character who's personality is driving everything else around them.

Sometimes, it's an extreme optimistm, sometimes it's this annoying cloyingness, sometimes it's flirtatious clinginess, in "Hard Truths"'s case, in short-tempered, anxiety-ridden anger. In some ways Marianne Jean-Baptiste's performance feels like the epitome of what we would consider the most prototypical Mike Leigh main character, ever. (Hard to call most of these characters protagonists, but they're almost definitely the main characters-, well, maybe not Lesley Manville's in "Another Year", but usually it's the most pronounced character in his ensemble pieces at the very least) Which is weird to say, 'cause, on paper, that's- that's not entirely true.

We think it is because of how he makes movies; Leigh's process is infamous for beginning with the actors and then taking and recording months of improvisation seesions with the actors in order to flesh out the characters and then he forms a screenplay out of the improvs, so it seems like the hyperrealistic kitchen sink dramas are the most natural for him, and they do seem to be the go-to genre for him most of the time, but still, that's very deceptive. In fact, his filmography overall is way more interesting and elaborate. For instance, he's got quite a few period pieces, and not just the severely underrated "Vera Drake", about a 1950s-era abortionist; my favorite of his films might be "Topsy-Turvy", which is a comedy about Gilbert & Sullivan as they produced their play "The Mikado". His last film, "Peterloo" which I haven't gotten around to watching yet, is a military film about a massacre at an infamous early 19th democracy rally. "Mr. Turner" was a biopic about painter J.M.W. Turner. His interests are way more eclectic than I think we tend to realize. But, if I think of Mike Leigh, I'm not thinking about any of those films, as great as they are; I'm thinking about "Secrets and Lies", or "Happy-Go-Lucky", or even one of his more overlooked films "All or Nothing", these melodramas about the personal struggles of these- I mean, they're usually lower class, but they're mostly just common, everyday people, or at least that's what they think they are, and through a peek from Leigh's lens, we slowly really how extra-ordinary their lives and experiences genuinely are, in their ordinariness.

"Hard Truths" though, this one's a little harder to push through than others and mainly that's because Pansy (Jean-Baptiste) is just one of those truly disturbing and unlikable characters. She wakes up, angry, pissed off and is constantly berating anyone and everyone around her, like their mere presence is an absolute disturbance to her day. She's berate her son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) for nearly every action he partakes in, and wonders why he's so lazy and overweight that he doesn't go out and get a job, but when he can't even put a dish in the sink without getting yelled at, you get his quiet solemness. As well as his father, Curtley (David Webber) who works as a quiet plumber but doesn't say or do much when he gets home. When Pansy freaks out at him because she decided not to make dinner, he and Moses quietly get some fried chicken and then Pansy complains about how they wouldn't be able to get along without her.

You've all probably run into an erratic and unhinged personality like this somewhere before, and you're hoping there's some kind of answer for all of this. It's not that their isn't, it's just that, there isn't a single easy answer. Pansy's sister Chantelle (Michele Austin) is a successful hairdresser with two grown daughters, who seem to be well-enough adjusted even as they go through their own work and life struggles. The movie hinges around Mother's Day, where Chantelle's trying to get Pansy to go to their mother's grave, as Mother's Day is the fifth anniversary of her passing. Pansy has some unkempt feeling about her mother, but she's also feeling like the family just doesn't love her. She's also aware that, she's not exactly been lovable though. And she herself knows that she's been more of a caretaker than a wife or a mother, and her family can feel that pain too.

"Hard Truths" isn't one of Mike Leigh's very best films, but it's again one of his more brutally realistic ones. Marianne Jean-Baptiste famously worked with Leigh on arguably his most successful film, the brilliant "Secrets and Lies" where she plays an adult black woman who finds out that her birthmother was a waify white lady, who didn't know that the child she gave up for adoption years earlier was black. That's a great performance, and earned her an Oscar nomination, but this is a tour de force performance, and if you didn't know Jean-Baptiste's other acclaimed works over the years, you might not think that she's acting here. Everyone else is great, but I'm not gonna recall their work in this film later. Jean-Baptiste's role is tough to watch but gets more and more complex the more you think about the ramifications of it. Sometimes you run into someone like that, you wait 'til they leave the room and wonder, "How the hell they got that way," but this movie also asks how did their family or anybody else put up with them," and sometimes that answer is more strained that we want to admit ourselves. "Hard Truths" indeed.

THE PIANO LESSON (2024) Director: Malcolm Washington

⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2

Denzel Washington's undertaking of adapting all of August Wilson's plays to the big screen is a fascinating and admiral endeavor, and has so far produced some great films. It's also become now, a family undertaking, as Denzel is merely a producer on this film, "The Piano Lesson", but his son Malcolm Washington has taken over directing for this, his first feature, and his son John David Washington, play Boy Willie, the scheming southerner who's coming up to Doaker and Berneice's (Samuel L. Jackson and Danielle Deadwyler) Pittsburgh home, under the guise of selling watermelons, that he's brought up from down south, selling them literally out of the back of a pickup, but also, to take the family's piano, and sell it in order to gain some farmland of his own. If possible, from old the Sutter estate, the latest patriarch, he claims was taken by the Ghost of the Yellow Dog. Also, Denzel's daughter Olivia, Malcolm's twin, and Denzel's wife Pauletta, are also in small roles.

(Shrugs)

I don't know what to make of this becoming their family business, but I've certainly seen and heard about far worst such businesses. And it's not like we don't need these films.

August Wilson is simply put, one of the greatest playwrights in American history, but he is possibly the biggest and most important African-American playwright ever, but none of his films ever got made into features in his lifetime. He was in talks early on to have "Fences" made, but he objected because he insisted on an American-American director, not because he didn't think a white person couldn't direct him technically, but he felt culturally, his plays needed somebody from that background to do it well. I can understand that; it was around the time that Milos Forman originally got the ball rolling on producing the biopic that would become Spike Lee's "Malcolm X", before Spike Lee convinced him that it should be an African-America, more specifically, Lee himself, directing it. "Fences" of course, would eventually be directed by Denzel as the start of this journey to record what's colloquilly been called "The Pittsburg Ten", but "The Piano Lesson", has one slight asterisk to this, 'cause, it actually was adapted before on film,- but it was adapted into a TV movie, not a theatrical film.

You can find that version pretty easily too btw, it's currently streaming on Tubi for free, and streaming on Hallmark, believe it or not, because it was a Hallmark movie, back when they didn't make a hundred of those a year and they'd be a little more selective of what they'd put their brand label on; it wasn't all just crappy Christmas movies in order to sell more christmas cards. (Do they still do Christmas cards, come to think of it?) It's pretty good, it starred Alfre Woodard, and about half the cast of "Roc". I started watching it as I wrote this, because as I watched this theatrical adaptation, it did feel like I had heard this story somewhere before and I think it might've been from this TV movie back in the day. Or, I might've just read it at some point in some English class; "The Piano Lesson" along with "Fences" earned Wilson a Pulitzer Prize among many other accomplishments, so you can make an argument that it's the most famous of his plays, and this does feel like something that might've been an assignment from an English textbook at some point. I imagine it might be the most theatrical one too, 'cause I'm not surprised finding out that this was the technically the first one to get a film adaptation of any kind.

August worked in a few different genres, and "The Piano Lesson", is a ghost story. And a haunting one at that. Obviously, the piano is a McGuffin, but this isn't any piano. It's a piano that's got the carvings of the family members on it, family members that go back to the slave days, when the family was owned by the Sutters themselves, and that's only part of the story of the piano; I don't want to spoil the entire tale about it once the entire significance of it gets fully explained, basically Boy Willie, believes he has a right to it, and Berniece is being stubborn for not allowing him to take it, especially since she's not using it to make any money on his own. She's not even teaching young Maretha (Skylar Aleece Smith), Doaker and Berneice's daughter, although she plays a little and Boy Willie even shows her some boogie woogie fingerings at one point. Apparently, Boy Willie can play but isn't interested in it anymore, and now that James Sutter (Jay Peterson) fell down a well, something that apparently the Ghost of the Yellow Dog does a lot, he's offered to buy the estate a deal on a parchment of the farmland, first dibs if he can come up with the money in time, or else, they're gonna sell the whole thing publicly.

What happens though, is that, with Boy Willie's arrival, Sutter's ghost begins haunting the family. Mainly Berneice and then Maretha, and they can't quite figure if it's because of Boy Willie, of if it's because Sutter's haunting them themselves, of if it's that he still believes the piano is his. It's honestly amazing how many of these plays, especially these family plays deals with this kind of economic conflict;-, well, amazing's not the right word, but it does come up way too often in my view, but then again, I usually like most of those plays, including this one. This one, does have a different twist to it though, with it being a haunting, and essentially climaticing with a local pastor Avery (Corey Hawkins) performing, essentially an exorcism on the house.

Usually with play adaptations, I tend to look at the film and try to consider, more-or-less how the film captures the experience of having seen the actual play on stage, which is something that I think freaks people out a bit. Most people want to know how well the film expanded on the play, but ehhh-, I question that critical approach a lot, and frankly, August Wilson's material really will forever be most effective on the stage, that doesn't mean you can't create a cinematic experience that gets us the feeling of the stage, and "The Piano Lesson" is like the perfect example of this, 'cause being a ghost story, means you have to really believe there's something truly scary and haunting going on when you're staring at the actors on the stage right in front of you. (I also think about how, in a bunch of theater's storage units, there's a giant piano that's got some carvings on it, that they only bring out just for this play; probably standing up right next to three or four dozen extra glass unicorns.) This movie with the combination of the spiritual and supernatural clashing head-first with all the other conflicts, I can easily imagine a really spellbounding stage production of "The Piano Lesson" being truly special. Obviously this film expands a bit, like a few sequence in a jazz club where Boy Willie's soft-spoken friend Lyman (Ray Fisher) has trouble getting with any of the girls that seem to flock to the flamboyant Boy Willie, and it helps exacerbate the movie's most tender moment between Lyman and Berneice. Danielle Deadwyler got a lot of awards attention for her performance most of all, and deservedly so, but this film has a lot of great performance, and I feel like I wish I could've seen this live. Like any version of "MacBeth" we happen to come across, we wonder what decision the play would take, about whether or not we actually see the ghost, for instance.

Well, this is a film adaptation first and foremost, but I like that I cared enough to think about those things a lot. "The Piano Lesson" is the August Wilson play I'd most want to see live, at least of the three they've adapted so far, and that's a compliment to how good the adaptation is. I like the choices they did make, and I'm looking forward the next one. I hope it doesn't keep taking another four year to pump these out though, even though, sometimes I do need the time to rest between them to recover. August Wilson's legacy is in safe hands. Thank God, the Washingtons take after Berneice way more than they do Boy Willie.

SUPER/MAN: THE CHRISTOPHER REEVE STORY (2024) Directors: Ian Bonhote & Peter Ettedgui

⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2

You know, all these superhero movies out there now, and all the other IP characters that have overtaken Hollywood, if there's ever a superhero actor who I'm still genuinely stunned to ever see in a non-superhero role, it's Christopher Reeve. Even to this day, and I'll be honest, I actually don't think much of "Superman" as a film-, I actually think the only really great superman film was "Superman II", which he is of course great in as well, but when I happen to run into Christopher Reeve in something else, it takes a minute to think of him as somebody, other than Superman. This isn't even unusual for people playing Superman, George Reeves, the original television superman, infamously struggled with typecasting all the way until his tragic suicide, but it's still seems different with Christopher Reeve-, it always seemed strange to ever see him outside of that role. I remember watching "The Remains of the Day"; he's only in that movie for, maybe not even ten minutes of screentime, but it's like he was almost cast because he was as big of a fish out of water as you could possibly find, playing an American in a very British film about a butler and a maid, and who's more of a fish out of water in a Merchant-Ivory film than friggin' Superman! The other film I remember him in was "Noises Off", the Peter Bogdanovich adaptation of the most well-beloved play about the behind-the-scenes of a play; he's actually really good and really funny in it, and he had to do a lot of physical humor in it too, but that's one of those plays that's better on stage than on screen, even with that film's all-star cast. It's got a little bit of a cult following, I guess it's worth the watch though, especially to see him in it.

I also saw that TV movie remake of "Rear Window" that he was in, and he won a SAG award for it, but-eh, of course that was a role he did, after the accident.

(Wipes tears from eye)

Sorry, I think I was partially putting this movie off knowing how sad it would be. And we needed this movie, ever since he passed, I think Christopher Reeve's legacy has kinda been forgotten a bit over the years. Not just the fact, that, yes, he is the best and most iconic Superman, and he probably will always be, but after the horse riding accident that left him paralyzed, he became one of the biggest advocates for disabilities and spinal cord research, and his foundation still survives to this day, and a lot of the amazing techniques that are actually available now to get people to walk again, were some that might've first been attempted on Reeve, or were developed because of the exposure and funding that Reeve helped provide. What I hadn't realized was how major a political activist he was even before the accident, and frankly a lot of his personal histories and background has been quietly underreported, so that alone makes a wonderful documentary like "Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story" absolutely essential.

For instance, his father was Franklin Reeve, a famous poet and academic and he came from a very complex broken home, with divorce and several marriages from both sides, and Franklin was one of those most obnoxious and esoteric of artists, who- yes could back it up 'cause the guy had like, dozens of rare skills that no normal human would have, but he definitely didn't think comic book characters were a high enough art for his son to be doing. Reeve himself, was a Juliard trained actor, a major high school athlete at several sports, but he a theater kid at heart who played a few instruments as well, and good lord, he had that kind of a perfectly chiseled face that it clearly seems like he was carved like Greek marble. The movie even used that statuesque image of Reeve, as a cutaway shot showing a stylized effects of what it was like to be paralyzed after being Superman. He also was a pilot who flew solo across the Atlantic a few times. Honestly, looking at his life and all his accomplishments,- I mean, perhaps the reason we don't think about him much anymore is because of how pitiful his life makes most of ours look. Even spending the last nine years of his life parallyzed, I'm still taken aback thinking, how the hell did he do as much as he did?!

I didn't understand a lot of this as a kid. I knew Christopher Reeve was Superman, but I hadn't seen the movies and only vaguely recognized his picture, but I remember when he showed up at the Oscars, a mere ten months after the paralyzation how everybody stood up and everybody in my family watching with me, was kinda in shock. It dawned on me watching "Super/Man...", that I'm sure there had been a few famous people even in Hollywood who, maybe not as severe ailments, but somebody must've had personal physical struggles or even disabilities, but few of them were ever public about it, and most I'm certain probably just left the industry and public life altogether. I looked it up and honestly, I couldn't even find that. Everybody I can think of who had some kind of disability after they became famous, and still tried to remain in the industry, they all did it after Christopher Reeve did. Especially back then, I don't think people get it,- nowadays, you see a ramp next to stairs, and you think, "Why are they bothering still putting stairs there?", like, the ADA, the Americans for Disabilities Act, was in 1990! It was that recent; it was Bush Sr., and it was a long fight to get that, and no, they were still trying to get a lot of those rights at the time, and Reeve was somebody who ended up fighting for them, and pushed a lot through. He was already very politically active to begin with, but- like, the last thing I remember about Christopher Reeve was him being mentioned at the 2004 Presidential debate by John Kerry, as being somebody he was working with to fight for better conditions as well as guiding money to help advance spinal injury treatments.

John Kerry's one of the talking heads here, as well as most of his kids, and his ex-wife. Dana Reeve died shortly after Christopher's passing from lung cancer, and the kids, some of whom had spent most of their lives with their father in a wheelchair, took over Christopher and Dana's foundation and that's still running strong today. Reeve had a lot of friends in Hollywood and Washington. Robin Williams was actually his roommate at Julliard, and I knew they were close but I didn't realize how close he was, and he close Robin and his then-wife Marsha was to them up until Christopher died. Glenn Close, who was close to both of them hypothesized how big a hole Chris's passing left Robin, who after Reeve's passing, began struggling with his old addiction demons, and later had struggles at home, and eventually with his mind. (I'm not personally as sold on that, especially if you've checked Robin's autopsy report, but I imagine it's, in an oddy way, a fairly comforting thought for those close to them.) It definitely represent a giant whole missing for everyone around Reeve.

If there's anything missing from "Super/Man..." it's probably that we still didn't get enough of Christopher Reeve in his life, therefore making the film feel slightly unfulfilled, but that's a minor issue. "Super/Man..." is an important document of a man who's legacy is so much more than being the chiseled image of human perfection that Neitzsche would describe as "Superman". The film was directed by the team of Ian Banhote and Peter Ettedgui, two of the best documentarians, especially among autobiographical documentary filmmakers around. They're film "McQueen" about the late fashion designer Alexander McQueen made my Ten Best List a few years ago; they also more recently made the Netflix documentary, "Rising Phoenix" about the history of the Paralympics Games. I haven't seen that one yet, but these guys are unusually good at getting to the essence of their subjects, and from everything I ever heard about Christopher Reeve, and I never heard a bad word about him from anybody, they achieved his essence really well. I am certain he would appreciate this beautiful monument to him.

WILL & HARPER (2024) Director: Josh Greenbaum

⭐⭐⭐

There's a lot of aspects of the trans experience that I must confess aludes me. There's many of the obvious aspects of course that I will never fully be able to comprehend even if I am able to empathize, but there's definitely one detail that, always kinda fascinates me, and that's, the name. Despite everything else, this is by far the strongest barrier for me to fully understand, and while I don't think I'm alone in that, I do think I'm in the minority, 'cause especially working in a creative field, it's startling to me just how often I run into people, not even in the industry but for whatever reasons, they go by different names than the one's they're given. Perhaps I live in a neighborhood right now where a lot of people just go by quite a few different names as well, especially the females, I see around town, but it does feel like it's becoming more and more common for people to go by different names than when they were born. Makes me consider how I've felt about my name over the years, which has not always been easy. My last name got made fun of quite relentlessly through much of my schooling; and since I had a more common first name, it often became the name I was most commonly called, even by close friends of mine. Sometimes I embraced it; I even remembered a prolongued period of time where I didn't even put my first name on papers I signed. Other times I have fought against it, asking to say that I prefer David,- sometimes being very pedantic and saying that I don't like being called, Dave. My mother not only was single, but she gave me her last name, and when she did marry, kept her given name, and perhaps that's apart or my virilence towards it, believing that my name is unique and important enough to keep. Yet, it was not a name that I chose and there were times that I did not like having it, but I never thought about actively changing it for any reason, I think it is something that comes up way more often than is ever discussed when growing up. My mother is a product of a time when it became out of fashion for new wives to have their name changed for instance, but now it seems much more common for those, when of the legal age to do so, to be able to simply fill out a few court documents and indeed, change their name to whatever they feel more suits or fits them, and while that does coincide with the more common prominence of trans people in society, and the uptake in transphobia and hate crimes towards them, this sense of striving for finding one's natural self, has lead to more consideration of what exactly one wants to be called.

Will Ferrell's real name, is John, for instance. John William Ferrell, apparently at home, he was always called Will and that name stuck through adulthood and natural his successful acting career. That's not terribly unusual, in fact it's sometimes shocking to look up an actor or performer of any kind it seems and find out that they're actually going by their real name. That's understandable and simple enough, a lot of people I knew preferred to go by their middle name. His friend Harper Steele, that's a different story. Harper was Andrew Steele, a successful writer and producer, famously the head writer for "Saturday Night Live" during much of the '90s when Will Ferrell became a star on the show, and the two have remained close friends ever since, both of them often working on each other's projects over-the-years, and they decide to go on a road trip together, about a year after Andrew announced that he was transitioning to a woman and had decided on the name, Harper, obviously after Harper Lee, the author of "To Kill a Mockingbird", which is interesting 'cause, that is also, not her real name. She was born Nelle Harper Lee, and like Will, went by her middle name for publication, but she went by Nelle personally.

I don't know why people's names fascinate so much about the trans experience, part of it is that I'm still not 100% sure I fully get it. I still struggle with, say Elliot Page's old travel show "Gaycation with Ellen Page", since she transitioned and that whole show was about her being gay, which, since he's trans, and dates women now,- I struggle with that one; it almost feels to me like, Elliot and Ellen are two different personas entirely, but if I go look that show up on Vice's network, they've changed it to "Gaycation with Elliot Page", even if the credits still say Ellen. I also don't really call Eddie Izzard, one of my personal favorite stand-up comics, "Suzy", although he says he prefers to be called that since he transitioned but he also says he's not disturbed if people call him Eddie, and she usually still performs as Eddie Izzard, or Suzy Eddie Izzard-, and he's also not particularly caring about which pronouns he uses. Compared to realizing you've been the wrong gender all this time and then going through the process of changing one's gender, changing/altering one's name is a predominantly trivial matter, but it still feels like a complicated one.

Anyway, it's one of many subjects that Will & Harper talk about on this road trip of there's from New York to California. The idea is that, Harper would travel the country regularly as Andrew and would go to a lot of places that, might not be particularly welcoming towards somebody who's transitioned. Basketball games for instance, or just regular truckstop bars in flyover country states. He grew up in Iowa, so it's not new to her technically, but it's new since he became a her. And for Will, it's also his way of essentially, understanding his friend more. Sometimes the attempts backfire; famously they go to one of those restaurants where they try to eat a giant steak in a quick enough time period to get it for free, and Will, for some reason decided to go there in his Sherlock Holmes character from "Watson & Holmes" which-, I guess nobody told him that that was his worst film yet. Anyway, the photos of the event hit Twitter and once they stopped noticing his publicity stunt, they recognized Harper and the keyboard transphobes went at them. He makes it up to her by going in disguise to a restaurant at the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas later on.

They end the trip by visiting a secluded house that Harper had bought in California years ago which was her getaway house, where she had ideally planned to one day leave her life and live there where she could secretly dress up in women's clothing and live as she really wanted. That place was vandalized badly at some point, and the remnants of it make it seem like such a shallow pursuit, but in the moments of fear for Harper, I get it. When you think you won't be accepted, you look for some place where you will, even if that place is alone.

"Will & Harper" was directed by their friend Josh Greenbaum; he's directed some television and films, often with some of Will's SNL-Alum compatriots before, I liked the overlooked Kristen Wiig/Annie Mumalo vehicle, "Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar" he directed for instance. The film itself isn't necessarily special more than it's just these two friends who happen to be big in the entertainment world going on a road trip, but you know how those films are, if it's interesting people, than you're gonna mostly enjoy the road trip with them. I guess it's a little more interesting than that vanity project description; apparently they even said that after they finished filming they weren't entirely sure they actually made a movie, but it was a nice trip anyway, and honestly, that's enough.

ASTEROID CITY (2023) Director: Wes Anderson

⭐⭐

For some reason, after watching "Asteroid City", I decided to jump to Rogerebert.com for the first time in a while and read Glenn Kenny's review of the movie on there; I'm not entirely sure, although I suspect it had something to do with the other Wes Anderson film that I'm not particularly fond of, "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou", which Ebert explained as, quote, "the damnedest film. I cannot recommend it, but I wouldn't for one second discourage you from seeing it." I'm kinda on the same wavelength on Roger for that one, although I ultimately thought it was one of Anderson's more pointless meanderings. Kenny actually praised "Asteroid City" quite a bit, and he notedly brought up Jason Schwartzman's breakout character in Anderson's "Rushmore", which is a movie I like, but is also the film that-, at least before "The Grand Budapest Hotel" was the most beloved critically of all of Anderson's films, and-eh, honestly I've never fully understood that one.

It's got the whimsy but I never really felt "Rushmore" had any real emotional punch to it, which is fine. Wes Anderson's movies are so distinctly his, stylized and center-framed to the nth degree that I can understand how some people can be completely turned off by them, but at the same time, when he's on, he's on. And to me, his first great film wasn't "Rushmore" but "The Royal Tenenbaums". Part of what I loved about that film, is the framing devide he uses, as the opening of that film begins with, a library book being perchased called "The Royal Tenenbaums" and then, as we continue with the movie, we get interstitials of the chapter openings. It's a surreal family epic with a narrator, presumably because the book is in third person, and also probably is a bit of an obnoxious and possibly bad novel to read and is filled with eccentric characters who've all lived lives that seem way too extraordinary to ever be real, it's like a fictionalized account of a downfall of some kind of Kennedy or Rockefeller-esque family; it turns a lot of the parts in the movie that would've been questionable and unrealistic if the movie were just, a regular movie, into strengths.

He's done this a lot, in fact, I'm quite convinced that literature is the hidden core to the center of Wes Anderson's motifs. I think he's best when his focus is on the tone and stories of classic children's literature, "Moonrise Kingdom" for instance, I think his very best film, not only feels like a novel that's somewhere between "The Boxcar Children" and "Island of the Two Dolphins", but it also kinda feels like how I, as a kid would imagine the book would play out in my head, as I was reading it. He's also adapted some Roald Dahl novels, and stretched into stop-motion animation when the typical live-action devices he has for his movies aren't enough.

He's also inspired by other forms of literature though, but sometimes when he is, he ends up with more of an erratic and surreal mess than a completed film. "The Life Aquatic..." feels way more like a bunch of parts than it ever does a complete whole, Roger Ebert was right about that one. I kinda feel similarly about his previous film, "The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun", which used the conceit of a strange newspaper magazine's, final issue as a framing device for a few different short stories that he's telling. That one I didn't like much either, but I found that one kinda clever, even if this was the kind of off-brand Parade magazine that would only ever exist in a world created by Wes Anderson. "Asteroid City", though, is the first time where I think this playful inspiration is just absolutely getting in the way.

"Asteroid City" uses the framing device of a 1950s documentary TV special, with a Rod Serling-like narrator, who's only credited as "Host" (Bryan Cranston) to tell the story of a play, called "Asteroid City" which is apparently the most famous play by famed tragic playwrite Conrad Earp (Edward Norton) about a small desert town, named "Asteroid City" that is the meeting point of a lot of unique people on one particular day in the post WWII America, around the time of many famous UFO sightings in the American deserts, so think Roswell, except this place has a tourist trap in the form of a giant hole cause by an asteroid that hit the area millenias ago. It also has an unfinished onramp to a never-built freeway.

Anyway, the play stars Jones Hall (Jason Schwartzmann) who's playing Jones and the character in the play, Augie Steenbeck a war photographer who's going to "Asteroid City" where his son Woodrow (Jake Ryan) is taking part in a major science competition held there. He's also there with his daughters, where he reveals that their mother has died and that their grandfather Stanley (Tom Hanks) is on their way to pick them up after their car breaks down. There's also Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson), well, the actress is named Mercedes Ford, who's playing Midge, but in the play, Midge is a major Hollywood star who's daughter Dinah (Grace Edwards) who's also in the competition...- and-

Okay,- you know what, I can't explain the rest of this film. I tried, I've spent like three days trying to go over everything, and I can't. That's the problem with this movie,- I tend to like Wes Anderson's elaborate whimsical approach to characters, especially with his love of literature, but there's a line, and were in a play, that's apart of a documentary about the play, that's about the author of the play, and how all these characters and parts and sets come together- I could spend like six paragraphs trying to connect all the dots of all these characters, and not even mention the fact that in the middle of the movie, Jeff Goldblum plays an alien!

That's how batshit, this movie is, like, that phrase, "Jeff Goldblum plays an alien", can begin with the word, "Meanwhile". This movie has an all-star cast, almost all of the actors are playing multiple roles as themselves and stars-, and I don't know. This is why I brought up how I like the ideas of playing with the conflated storytelling mediums in "The Royal Tenenbaums" before, because everything that works there, it does not work here. Like, all Wes Anderson films, parts of them work,- like what would happen if suddenly an alien came down and just randomly grabbed a rock and was photographed and seen by a bunch of people forcing a quarantine in the middle of a weird desert place,-, like, that's actually a cool premise for a play, even toying about the idea that this is a play were watching being adapted, but when you keep adding these extra layers, that the play is in the documentary of the play, but there's also act breaks, and while it's a play and clearly we're on a set,- ugh, and there's still so much other stuff, like how the Hotel Manager (Steve Carell) shows off the plots of land that can be bought at the local motel's quarter machine. Or Maya Hawke's character as a science teacher trying to teach science to a group of Stargazers who were also there for the science thing, only to be stranded 'cause of the alien... It's all too much.

He's done stuff like this before,- "The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun", that one's a mess I didn't really like it but even that one, but it's clear were getting visualizations of magazine article that would've been in an issue of the titular paper, so even as it's a bunch of short stories and asides, it makes sense why it's like that. This movie has way too many extra layers about it, and because of that, any power that the stories within the stories of the film it might've had is just lost. Maybe you can argue that's the combinations of genres is the point,- I mean, I just watched "Killers of the Flower Moon" and that movie made a major point about how the interpretation of the story and how it was told, and had been told through sketchy biases and mediums had diluted the importance of the tale, but in this case, we're not even talking about a real play or playwright; this is all in Wes Anderson's head, and somebody needed to tell him to let a few things go. Personally, I would've just let this story be the play that it is, maybe make it clearly a teleplay like something Paddy Chayefsky would've done in the '50s or something, and then, begin the movie like this, staged teleplay and then have the more fanciful parts come from the movie....- there was a way to do this, granted, it would've been done in a more conventional manner and tone than I think Wes has any interest in ever doing, but like, this is the first of his in a while, maybe since "The Darjeeling Limited" where I just had a hard time even caring about what was going on by the end. In fact, this might be his worst film; I know some people are gonna live and die on it, and Roger Ebert is right, when he's off, he's still making the damnedest film where I wouldn't stop others from watching this film, but man, if there's a movie where the parts are better than the, well, literal giant hole in the middle of town, it's "Asteroid City".

CANON OF FILM: "JEANNE DIELMAN, 23, QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES"

2026-08-25T01:57:35.470-07:00

JEANNE DIELMAN, 23, QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES (1975)

Director/Screenplay: Chantel Anne Akerman

4 YEARS EARLIER:

(David stares at his computer, talking to himself like he's recording his own voiceover and thinking it was normal behavior.)

DAVID

Ah, there we go. My personal Top Ten List, in accordance for this edition of BFI's "Sight and Sound" poll, as well as some predictions for the results, and it's posted.

https://davidbaruffi.blogspot.com/2022/08/some-thoughts-on-sight-and-sounds.html

I really hope "Vertigo" doesn't win again; that really was a bummer. Over "Citizen Kane", what were they thinking?

(Annoyed sigh)

I hope at least "Psycho" does better this time. Well, you know what, whether "Citizen Kane" comes back or something else, I'm sure something great will win. That should be my next Canon of Film post. Whatever film wins the poll, or-, well, it will probably be something I've already written on, won't it? No matter, I'll do whatever the highest one is that I haven't posted yet, there we go. And I'm sure it's not gonna be a complete curveball. Maybe "Tokyo Story" or something else I haven't posted on yet, but would love to rewatch. That would be fun. So, now I get two blogposts out of this that I really don't have to think too much about. Even if they screw it up completely, it's gonna be at least be a film that's familiar to everyone. Every cinephile at least.

A FEW DAYS LATER

(David stares at computer intently confused.)

‘Jeanne Dielman’ Tops Sight & Sound’s 2022 Poll of the Best Films of All Time

https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/sight-and-sound-best-films-of-all-time-poll-2022-results-1234786615/

I'm sorry, they picked what film?!

(Long confused pause)

"Jeanne Dielman..."? Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmm.....

PRESENT TIME

(Long deep sigh)

I guess you're now wondering, that if I had these clear succinct plans to cover "Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai Du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles" right after it was named the greatest film of all-time by the BFI, the one list that even film people who hate lists actually take somewhat seriously, why am I only now writing this Canon of Film post? Um, see when "Vertigo" won in 2012, I didn't like the choice and was pretty vocal about it, but I wrote my post on "Vertigo" and joined in on the discussion of the list, and somewhat already kinda suspected that "Vertigo" would be the go-to alternative to "Citizen Kane", just based on the tone of the cinephile world. I was hoping I was reading it wrong, but sure enough, that happened and I had something pre-prepared long before then anyway. I was prepared for a lot of scenarios; I even brought up in that post that female directors, like Chantal Akerman were probably gonna do better than before on this version of the list, as per a lot of the trends in Hollywood and in general as 2022 was a peak time for promoting the introduction of female authors of all kinds into the literary canon, including film.

What I hadn't prepared for, like, at all, or even seen predicted, was that, "Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai Du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles" would win the poll. And by that I mean,- I hadn't seen that movie.

I'd heard about it, I knew a little bit about Akerman,- but I never thought they'd go so outside my immediate knowledge base;- well, not my knowledge base, but that a film that I hadn't seen yet would top the list! I thought I had seen all the major films that I could reasonably believe would win this poll! I know this poll has been a lot less predictable, but Jesus, I felt like I fell out of a boat and missed the water.

And also I couldn't get to around watching it, for a couple years. I definitely jumped it up on my Netflix queue, although they weren't DVDs through the mail anymore so now that's just a long list of movies and TV shows that I haven't watched yet, but I already was way behind on the current films I was supposed to be watching and didn't want to make it just jump the entire queue right away. Plus, life got in the way as that's when my mom had gotten sick.... (I certainly thought a lot about her watching this film. My mother and my grandmother come to think of it.)

And also, this wasn't even an easy film to particularly get ahold of; my library didn't have a copy, it wasn't streaming on any site I owned a subscription to, and frankly I couldn't afford a new streaming service at the time, just to watch it. So, yeah, this blogpost got delayed and pushed aside; I really had no preparation for a film that I hadn't seen before, and a film by a filmmaker I really hadn't watched much of at all.

The only Akerman film I had seen was her last film "No Home Movie" which, unfortunately I saw a version that didn't have subtitles and my French isn't that good.... And that movie is-, well,- maybe I'll revisit that one later too now; not that I think that film belongs in this Canon now too, but,- well,- actually in hindsight, maybe it does. Eh, I'll explain why that film is significant later.

In the meantime, I didn't want to just push "Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai Du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles" up over everything else that I was already way too late and delayed on watching, so this post had to certainly wait, until, through various manipulations of my cinematic viewing methodology, it eventually made it's way to the top of my watchlist, this three and a half hour slow-moving feminist masterpiece, with perhaps the most ungainly and arguably unnecessary title in the history of cinema, finally was able to come across my eyes. What could possibly be here in this infamous feature film that could, suddenly, almost fifty years after it's original release, suddenly make the whole cinematic critic community stand up and declare it the greatest film of all-time?

(Deep breath)

Yeah, about twenty minutes in, I completely understood why this film won the poll. I can see why it won, why it's so beloved now, and frankly why it did take so long for it to properly be placed in this highest of echelon, or even be in the conversation. In the 2012 poll, the film ranked in the mid-thirties, which is pretty high, but this is definitely a movie where it's absolute greatness sneaks up on you. It's simple in it's description, sure, it's a look at three days in the life of the titular Jeanne Dielman (Delphine Seyrig). What about her? Well, at first we don't learn that much, we see her set the stove for dinner. She takes off her houseshirt revealing a more elaborate outfit underneath, and answers the door, where her and a gentlemen, than go into her bedroom. A little while later when it's darker, they come out of the bedroom. He leaves, give her some money, that she puts away, and goes back to finishing dinner.

Okay, now imagine, how many ways you can take that sequence of events, and shoot them? There's hundreds; I think you can honestly take that idea alone, give that ideas to a bunch of diffrerent filmmakers, and end up with a bunch of different short films, like some kind of a reverse "The Five Obstructions" kind of thing. I think only Chantal Akerman would do it this way, with these extreme long takes, usually from tripod-high, always Ozu-like stoic in the camera's rigid positioning, and few, if any close-up cuts. Hardly any dialogue spoken out loud. Showing it like it's a routine. Except it's not just a routine, it's- basically Jeanne's life. Or rather, it's what her life has become. Or maybe what society has deemed that it's supposed to be.

There's not a lot about Jeanne Dielman that we know about that's necessarily distinctive. We know she was a Holocaust survivor, that she is cooking dinner for her teenage son, Sylvan (Jan Decorte) and there life is fairly quiet. She's a widow now, and mentioned that she married and had a kid because, that was what she felt she was supposed to do. At some point she puts on some music, only to bemoan that she doesn't care for the singer. In fact, the movie has no score at all, and the jarringness of that is also kinda stunning-, it's not like say, "The China Syndrome" where part of the trick is that you don't realize there's no score, it's clear from the beginning that there's little-to-no sound in Jeanne's life. The few sounds there are, the sudden dropping of a utensil on the kitchen floor, the screaching of a teapot, the sudden knock of the front door, they stick out as ferociously as somebody blaring heavy metal on a streetcorner. Even in what we can charitably call her "spare time", she often sits alone in silence, often for minutes at a time, and in this film, we sit with her.

She hardly even talks to the gentlemen callers she gets. She gets one a day. We don't know where she gets them or how or when she started doing tricks on the side,- we know she's saving some money, but exactly why is she doing it?

Well, I have theories within the story itself, but within the metaphorical context of the film, Jeanne is the most severe representation of womanhood, as put upon her, by the society at large, up to that point. Keep in mind, second-wave feminism is just starting to come in, and of course Akerman, a post-New Wave vigilante feminist, is definitely apart of it, but more importantly, the movement was about breaking out of the oppressive of society's roles forced upon women, and Jeanne is every one of those roles taken to the most repressive extreme.

This is probably a male thing as well; I think it's easy to look at the feminist movement in terms of allowing women to have a more involved and present role in the world, but the thing that that need comes from, is a forced oppression from a male-dominated society. Men, controlled the roles woman were given, and forced them into these roles. So, in that sense, watching Jeanne Dielman, as she goes about her days, is watching the result of that oppression, combined into all the roles forced into being a female. She's a homemaker, who cooks dinner and cleans for her family; she's a caretaker, making sure everything is perfect, for her son who's off during the day in college to explore the several possibilities of life choices that males are promised and guaranteed. She's even more shown in the role of "mother", when for a few moments during the day, a neighbor drops off her baby for her to watch over. We barely see the baby, although we hear it occasionally, and we don't see the mother, who only stands at the doorway, blocked by the door, occasionally talking, reflecting on her struggles as a single mom and being thankful for such neighbors as Jeanne to help her out. Mother to not only her son, but to others as well.

And then, of course, the other role for women deemed by society, prostitute. Until the very end, the only scenes we see in Jeanne's bedroom, usually just show a perfectly-made bed, with a towel calmly placed on top, until she wraps it around her arm and tosses it into the laundry basket in the bathroom. We do see more eventually, but mostly we see her doing the regular daily chores and activities. This is a movie about a prostitute, where the most famous scenes, involve our main protagonist, calmy struggling to peel potatos. Not just because that's all there is, it's because that's the moment that's far more important and relevant to Jeanne's day.

The movie antognistically approaches it's subject by singularly focusing on those details that, as Akerman would put it, other movies would otherwise skip, and by doing so, she gives them more importance. In other words, what's on the screen, are the moments that are, for-lack-of-a-better-term, holy, and what's off-the-screen, is insignificant, but they're not for Jeanne Dielman. At the beginning at least, they're significant to her, but they're also what's been deemed more important by the society that Jeanne's brought up in, it's what lead to her behaviors and the fragile fragidness of this routine that she goes through every day. It's not that she's peeling all those potatos, it's why she's peeling those potatos. Or, perhaps a better question to ponder; why is she so compelled, to peel those potatos?

Personally it makes me wonder about those, especially my mother, how they must've been feeling having to struggle to perform such tasks, and I know that's the feeling that Akerman had, because "Jeanne Dielman..." was inspired by her mother. This is where I get back to discussing "No Home Movie", 'cause if there's one definitive word to describe Akerman, as a person, that word would be, daughter. Her mother Nelly, was an Auschwitz survivor who saw her parents killed at the camp, and she insisted on Chantal seeking out a career instead of a man. Akerman did, eventually making her way to New York becoming one of the big voices of the feminist film movement, and a major figure in what we'd think of as the Post-French New Wave, although she herself didn't like placing herself with such labels as those. For instance, even though she was one of the first publicly out lesbian filmmakers, including filming herself in a lesbian sex scene in her previous film, "Je, Tu, Il, Elle", she never allowed her films to be screened through dedicated LGBT frameworks, and had similar thoughts with her work was considered from a Jewish filmmakers perspective. Or from a female perspective. And, even from a single female's perspective; she never married, although she did eventually have a long-term girlfriend later in life, but her primary relationship was with her mother. She usually ended up back at home and taking care of her mother, and "No Home Movie" was a documentary about the last few months of her mother's life and it spent most of it's runtime, just talking with her, usually in the kitchen, the room we most affiliate Jeanne Dielman.

After her mother's passing in 2014, she fell in a deep depression and hospitalization, before eventually returning home to Paris, where she committed suicide in 2015. It wasn't unforeseeable, she even made note in her memoir that she had suicidal tendencies before, but stressed that she wouldn't do it while her mother was alive. In some ways, this declaration of her and this film in particular's greatness is very haunting and bittersweet; it's always easier to praise someone's work after they've passed on, but I also think that the reason that this film finally won is that, the cinematic world at least has finally caught up with it.

Like everything else, cinematic critique and appreciation and of course, filmmaking itself, has always had a masculine bias. (That's just a fact, do not list exceptions, and argue that it was always equal.) I often complained about how narratives and stories that are more distinctly feminine in their approach and nature were heavily overlooked by such stewardships like the Academy. I've often complained that it was fascinating how Kathryn Bigelow was the first female Best Director Oscar winner since, in terms of motifs and most of her narrative stories, she was by far, the most masculine of female filmmakers. (Not a criticism, I love most of her films, just an observation) Since then, there's still a striking advantage for the males vs. females behind the camera in terms of, literally every metric you can think of, but since then, we've had several other female nominees and two other winners, Jane Campion for "The Power of the Dog" and Chloe Zhao for "Nomadland", and I wouldn't call either of those films, or those filmmakers and their approach to filmmaking masculine.They're female filmmakers with a distinctly female approach to filmmaking, and they've been brought in a post-2nd wave feminist world that was directly shaped by filmmakers like Akerman. She herself insisted on having an entire female cast behind-the-scenes for "Jeanne Dielman...". (although she has conceded that might've not been the best thing.)

Perhaps "Sight & Sound"'s shift in recent decades represents this as well. "Citizen Kane" winning for all those decades, is quite a bold, blustering, great film, but very male-centric and masculin in it's approach and point-of-view. "Vertigo" finally overthrowing in 2012 is more interesting when you think of how that film, is about the male's obsessions over females, the male gaze in cinematic terms, the male repression of females in feminist terms, but at least, it brings in the female at the center of the focus, even if it's from a distinctly masculine film and filmmaker itself, and perhaps it's the fact that it's literally about the male obsession with controlling women and the distressing and disturbing undertones that entails is why "Vertigo" being number one, has never remotedly sat well with me. In this light, "Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai Du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles" is the perfect combative, long-oppressed, long-delayed first deadly stab at the taking down of that kind of patriarchal cinefilia. The film is nothing if not a quiet, calm, peaceful and sudden burst of anger that completely disrupts our previously well-controlled routine, so why shouldn't it be that for the cinephile world as well.

CANON OF FILM: "INSIDE OUT"

2026-07-26T08:50:32.114-07:00

INSIDE OUT (2015)

Director: Pete Docter Co-Director: Ronnie Del Carmen

Screenplay: Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve and Josh Cooley based on the original story Pete Docter and Ronnie Del Carmen

I’m fairly certain that there are far more emotionally complex and fascination characters in the Disney/Pixar library than Riley (Kaitlin Dias), but man does it not feel that way when you’re watching “Inside Out”. Of course, before this film, we rarely ever got so into the mind of a Disney character before. When I participated in Geekcast Radio’s Top 100 Animated Characters poll, I ranked Riley in the Top 20, however, she didn’t make their list overall, but I stand by my thought process on that one. The movie is about Riley and the entire movie, basically takes place, inside of this young eleven-year-old who’s suffering from severe change and discomfort for the first time. It’s strange that those words don’t sound so negative, change especially, but let’s face it, they’re painful, and trying desperately to pretend your real, true emotions, are indeed not your emotions, at any age is a struggle, and it’s probably most important to understand that as a kid and “Inside Out”, well, it visually shows us, kids of all ages, exactly how to do that.

I know, it’s an easy trick and “Inside Out” is by no means the first piece of art to ever take place inside the mind or body of a character. Hell, I think I made more “Herman’s Head” jokes when the film trailers came out then anybody; I don’t even know how many people even remember that show, but how many of those movies or series or other pieces of art, actually try to examine or even teach the complexities of emotions? I mean, as much as I love “Being John Malkovich” for instance, that movie’s really nothing more than an intellectual mind exercise. “Inside Out” doesn’t just explore the complexity of emotions, it teaches us how to understand them and why they exist. Helps us realize that we can’t simply have Joy (Amy Poehler) without also suffering through Sadness (Phyllis Smith) and also reveals the power of empathy. There’s a scene in the movie that I didn’t remember ‘til now. It’s after Joy and Sadness are stuck in Imagination District, trying to make their way to board the Train of Thought directly to the main station with the other Emotions, and Riley’s old childhood imaginary friend Bingbong (Richard Kind) has lost his rocketship to the Memory Dump. Joy tries to cheer him up but it’s Sadness that ultimately does it, by making him let out his emotions. It’s a subtle scene, but one that is necessary and sets up Joy’s emotional breakdown later and her coming around to understand the importance of why it’s okay to be sad.

And that’s the biggest thing of all. There’s a lot of greatness in this film, but if there’s any singular greatness in “Inside Out” it’s that it shows how it’s okay to be sad. I honestly can’t think of any other film that stirs to teach that. There are movies that definitely make most people, and for that matter, me sad but ones that teach that’s okay; much less a Kid’s movie? And do it this well? I mean, I guess “Sesame Street” and especially “Mister Rogers Neighborhood” at their best had moments where they touched upon that, maybe that one episode of “The Simpsons” where Lisa was sad, but that’s about it in this day and age, and boy that's it's own sad commentary on the state of children's television today.

Sure, there’s a lot of subtler Pixar touches that will fascinate adults like me too, like the particularly inspired casting of Lewis Black as Anger, or the great little jokes about how those facts and opinions all look the same, or how people can forget some crucial and important childhood memories, but somehow that damn bubble commercial jingle just keeps getting stuck in your head, but the reason I keep deciding to torture myself whenever it’s on and keep watching it is because of how it gets to those lessons. It doesn’t shy away from it either; we lose a beloved character and he sacrifices himself to do it. There’s painful realizations that as Riley grows up, she will forget things, and that some things she used to love she will ultimately look upon not-so-fondly. Sure, her real conflict is just that she and her family have moved across country, but it’s usually some sudden simple change even that will ignite the growing up process faster than others. In time, it’s the kind of emotional tug-a-war that most people will inevitably forget later in life; the farther away from the most tragic and painful moments of your life, the less the pain feels, but at the time,….

Director Pete Docter and Co-Director Ronnie Del Carmen originally came up with the idea, and Docter in particular has been around Pixar since "Toy Story", and I think I could argue that he's become their most significant creator. He took over the brand after John Lasseter's exit, and when you look at the stuff most important for him, besides "Inside Out" he's directed "Monsters, Inc.", "Up" and "Soul". All three of those are great and special films in their own right, but it's interesting that, he really went in a direction where he wanted to explore life's most primal emotions. Compare that to Lasseter's most personal films were "Toy Story" and "Cars," or even the short, "Luxo Jr.", it was inanimate objects that he cared about. Part of that is that more plastic-looking objects looked and played better and moved more realistically than humans did in the early days of computer animation but it still was his focus even after they began perfecting that. Docter, always cared more about human connections. "Monsters, Inc." is about monsters, who were taught that humans were somehow toxic, form a connection with a human toddler. "Up" is about looking over one's entire life, as an old man struggles through grief by going on the adventure he promised his wife they go on, even if it's after her passing, and "Soul", is not only about confronting one's death, but also looks at what it means to empathize with others who are struggling with the lives they've got but didn't ask to have. You can pretty easily look through his works and see that he's got a fascination with capturing the emotional struggles of humanity throughout the life cycle. Content-wise, his films feel like they'd fit more next to the filmography of somebody like Richard Linklater than people like Lasseter or Brad Bird, or Andrew Stanton or some of the other great Pixar artists. Other than maybe some of the top Studio Ghibli guys and their storytelling best, what other animation storytellers are so naturally introspective?

Being that they're so connected to human emotions, it's interesting that Docter's films tend to be the most experimental as well. Even though their computer-animated, Pixar tends to not stray too far into the more surreal aspects of animation, but Docter loves diving into it; it's like he was more inspiration by UPA animation instead of traditional hand-drawn Disney or classic Warner Brothers cartoons. The most obvious example in "Inside Out", is the Abstract Thought Shortcut where our main characters go through several levels of animation surrealism before making it out the other end, going through everything from cubism to 2-d dots and lines by the end. It makes sense that his inspirations being the widest range of emotions, depicting that in any form of animations often does require more surreal techniques and narratives.

That didn't make the filming easy. Going through the process of how "Inside Out" was made is a fascinating one itself. Even before you get to the specifics and extra details of the animation-, Joy alone took about three years to fully create for the screen, not to mention Amy Poehler helping create her dialogue almost to the point that might be able to argue that she should've been a credited writer on the project, but they spent a long time going through child psychologists, neurologists, and other specialists to learn how the emotional centers of the mind work to try to recreate these emotional feelings accurately, not just how they come about but why, and then trying to figure out how to animate that,- you could write full books about every Pixar films and how detailed and elaborate they are to create, but "Inside Out", really went through a lot of work and care, and not only was Lasseter barely involved, but it was the first big project for the company where Steve Jobs wasn't alive to give any of his input towards. There's a lot of threads of input towards it, but this was definitely Pete Docter's baby, and feels like the most personal and touching of all his films so far. It's one I go back to the most, and frankly in general, his name just never comes up among the great animated storytellers. Perhaps because Disney and now Pixar are such behemoth conglomerates in of themselves that we tend to overlook the artists if their names aren't the brand's founders, but take the name Pixar off his projects, and take an auteur view of Docter's work on it's own, and I don't think it's a controversial statement to say that he's already one of the greats.

The guy found a way to make grown adults cry over a cotton candy pink elephant named Bing Bong; if that isn't a master storyteller, I don't know what is.

MOVIE REVIEWS: "THE MANDALORIAN AND GROGU", "WICKED", "FLOW", "A REAL PAIN", "NO OTHER LAND", "I SAW THE TV GLOW", "LOVE LIES BLEEDING", 'DAUGHTERS" and "A TALE OF LOVE AND DESIRE"!

2026-07-07T03:57:44.721-07:00

I plan to post a lot more Canon of Film entries in the immediate future of this post. "Plan to", obviously being the keyword, but also "post" because I do have a lot more to get around to. For those who maybe are new to this blog, even before I ever started writing her, I had written several of what would become the Canon of Film and one of the reasons I actually started posting was that I was writing a bunch of these and believed I needed an outlet to post some of them, as well as other movie reviews and other commentaries on the entertainment world that, I otherwise struggled to find elsewhere on the blogosphere, as it was once called. I don't know how many blogs are even out there anymore, but my thinking was that, when I was devoting most of my time to more modern material writings, I'd have things to post ready prepared to basically cut-and-paste with only a few modifications, just so I could continually put out work. Well, at some point, I didn't write here nearly as often as I was back then, and now I don't even really intend to, I just post and write here when I feel like it, but more importantly, when I hadn't posted in a prolongued period of time, I still would go through and post a Canon of Film, but eventually, I got older and wiser and started to sort through a lot of those older writings, and realized that I didn't particularly like most of what I wrote back then. Some of them were so underwritten that if I was gonna post them, it'd basically be the equivalent of completely rewriting them from the ground up; a lot of these were just, minor blurbs that were intended as reasons why certain films needed/should be watched, and frankly I was younger, and the younger you are the worst a writer you are, and yada, yada, yada.... Eventually I just didn't post these older ones as often and if I did, there was a lot more re-edits and rewriting to them. I'm not saying they're terrible or not worth reading anymore, but more often than not, when I do dive into earlier stuff I've written here, I find myself cringing at a lot of what I wrote and felt was worth posting when I was younger. Not the content of my opinions per se, but definitely the quality of the writing. (And occasionally I've gotten an opinion wrong too, but still, if they were written better.) I end making more edits to my old work on here than I do writing newer material, and it's annoying to have to go through that sometimes. Hell, I'll probably do it to this post soon enough.

Anyway, recently I was looking through my old writings and decided to look at what films that I have prewritten that I haven't posted yet, thinking it would only be a few, maybe five or ten posts.... It's more like 50! Which is annoying, 'cause what I really want to do and planned-, well, still planned on doing, is writing a bunch of new Canon of Film posts. I'll still write these movie reviews of course, but I want to cut down on my commentaries. For one thing, I'm also writing a lot more screenplays and on other projects right now, so those commentaries are planning to be fewer and farther between, unless something really intrigues me enough to write about it, but yeah, mostly what I want to do these days is watch great old movies and write about them, and both of those activities are harder to do than they used to for me. And yeah, looking back and realizing that I actually have a lot more left to do on this blog from when I originally intended,- that, that gave me pause.

So, in the future, I'm gonna post more Canon of Film posts between these review posts. Sometimes it'll be a newer one, sometimes it'll be one I wrote on years ago, decades ago now, but will almost definitely be rewriting and reworking from my old scribbles, but- best laid plans, and usually best to start planning after you finish your original laid plans.

Also I want to promote Geekcast Radio Network's recently released "100 Greatest Animated Series 15th Anniversary Countdown"! They polled quite a few people, including myself to create their Top 100 List, and they just released numbers 25-1 just now. If you want to find out what shows ended up where, the links to their podcasts are below, and it's worth listening to, and I was happy to participate. I've participated in a few of their older polls; I do think I released my ballot on this yet, I can't remember if I posted my ballot on the blog's FB page or not, if I didn't I'll post it later, but check out the podcasts for the full results.

GEEKCAST RADIO 100-76

GEEKCAST RADIO 75-51

GEEKCAST RADIO 50-26

GEEKCAST RADIO 25-1

Anyway, that's all the housekeeping for now. Let's get to these latest movie reviews!

THE MANDALORIAN AND GROGU (2026) Director: Jon Favreau

⭐⭐⭐1/2

(Shrugs)

Unless I'm forgetting something, and I don't think I am, I believe this is the first time I've seen a "Star Wars" movie, in a movie theater. That's the kind of statement that I suspect might surprise a lot of you, but-eh, for one thing, I've never really been a "Star Wars" fan. I don't hate "Star Wars" necessarily, I've certainly been far less annoyed by it than many other overexposed Hollywood franchises I can name, but I haven't or have rarely, if ever, really chosen to go out of my way to see any film in the series. I didn't go see any of the re-releases of the original when that happened when I was in middle school; apparently I might've been the only one who didn't see any of the prequel movies in theaters-, in fact, I still haven't seen, whatever the third one of those were, eh, (Imdb search....) "Revenge of the Sith". I only started watching the others when I was an adult, and other than thinking that "Attack of the Clones" is the first genuinely bad "Star Wars" film, (Bad and boring, honestly; that was a chore to get through) I don't hold that many strong feelings towards the first two. I liked the original movies when I saw them, and I guess I'd argue "The Empire Strikes Back" is a great film, but I never found them films that I would normally go out of my way for. I certainly never actively kept up with the majority of any of the outside the main narrative stories through books or television series,-, well, most of them I haven't kept up with. I did see the first season and I think a little of the second of "The Mandalorian" and honestly reason I watched that is because of the Emmy nominations it was getting and hearing that it was good. I didn't watch it 'cause it was "Star Wars", and frankly while I liked the show, the less I thought about it as "Star Wars" the more I enjoyed it. To me, that show was much more of a western that happened to take place in the "Star Wars" universe.

Which I think is my issue with the franchise, in that, I just think the worldbuilding of "Star Wars", is,-, it's actually not that interesting. In fact, it's really thin. For all these frickin' talks about the Empire and the Rebel alliance, and how everything is a grand fight for control, there's actually really little discussion of like, actual politics of the world. Honestly, I'm just baffled by how much keeps getting added to the franchise, more movies, more TV series, more animated series,- and honestly, the only thing we genuinely know, is that one side is good and one side is evil. How is this universe so friggin' elaborate and expanding? Like, I'm not a fan of these cinematic universes, in general, and usually my complaint is that there's just way too much and it's too elaborate and the science doesn't work in the world, 'cause the worldbuilding is flawed,.... stuff like that, but "Star Wars", it's like, the exact opposite issue-, it's not bad worldbuilding necessarily, it's just so light and flimsy, that I'm kinda amazing people finds anything deeper in it at all. It's so underwritten, and that was fine for the early films, 'cause their inspirations were Saturday morning matinee serials, like the Buck Rogers kind of stories, but it's been fifty years, and for something that's supposedly so beloved and elaborate, it's just never progressed further than that.

Hell, I think that's part of why I did enjoy "The Mandalorian" the most when it didn't feel like "Star Wars", 'cause it didn't feel like "Star Wars", it felt like one of those classic old westerns, like "3:10 to Yuma" or "Unforgiven", one of those films with a lone stranger who's on a long journey to deliver something, usually, and in this case, awwww, a Baby Yoda! Ot-eh, Grogu?! Baby Gro-gu?

(Sigh)

I only watched one season of "The Mandalorian", maybe a little of season two; I went to this movie with a friend who wanted to see it. I liked what I saw, but I don't really know the show all that well. (Although I did a spit take when Werner Herzog appeared in the series; that's about the last person I expected to see in "Star Wars" anything.) Apparently, he's not Yoda, but he does have powers similar to Yoda, he's Grogu. And after traveling around with him for a few seasons, The Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal, along with-, this is interesting, there's top credited Stunt Performers for The Mandalorian [Lateef Crowder], as well as a "Suit Performer" [Brendan Wayne], hmm,- I'm wondering if this is kinda like that time those three teenagers won the Best Actor Tony for playing the lead in "Billy Elliot"?) eventually adopted him, 'cause even though Grogu's in his mid-fifties, he's still a toddler, 'cause Yoda's species do that, and he also becomes his mentor, so we have a father/son dynamic, along with a mentor/mentee dynamic. He's pretty damn helpful Grogu, even though he hasn't fully grasped the entirety of his powers yet, and he still doesn't know how to start a spaceship.

Basically a lot of this movie is just a scene, and then cutting to Grogu doing something, and going from big actions sequences to aww, how cute! Again, not really a complaint, the one "Star Wars" aspect I did like about the series, is little Grogu. Which begs the question, since this isn't Yoda, but we all want a Baby Yoda so badly, well, why or why have we not gotten a "Baby Star Wars" series!? Like, that I would watch. I mean, think about, Baby Han Solo, Baby Princess Leia, Baby Luke Skywalker, Baby Yoda, Baby Chewy, Baby Darth Vader, Baby C-3PO and Baby R2D2, spending their days playing together and getting in their own adventures, before Nana takes them and puts them down to bed; it'd be amazing! I say, if we don't get a Baby Star Wars series, and get one soon, we should riot! I mean, c'mon Disney, it's right there!

(You think I'm joking, but seriously, "Baby Star Wars", would be a-maz-ing!)

Anyway, the movie, "The Mandalorian and Grogu", it's-, it's fine. I enjoyed it. It's a little long, had a few too many endings. I suspect if you liked the series that you would like the movie. There's a few other strange cameos, while The Mandalorian is an independent contractor, he's working closely with the Rebels, and his boss, Col. Ward (Sigourney Weaver) constantly complains about how all his assignments end up "messy", and rarely does he get the job completed, exactly how it's planned out. Like, he's supposed to play off the Hutt Twins, who've taken over the Hutt criminal empire, have been working with the Rebels, and will trade info on a secret hidden Empire leader, named Coin, in exchange for finding Rotta (Jeremy Allan White) their nephew and rightful son/heir to Jabba the Hut and bring him back. Rotta turns out to be on another planet, where he's enslaved by a fight promoter, Lord Janu (Jonny Coyne) and has become quite the cult hero for being unbeatable. It's basically the plot of that one episode of "Star Trek: Voyager" where The Rock guest starred and he had to take on Seven of Nine. It gets more complicated from there obviously, and there's some good classic Star Wars shenanigans from there.

(Sigh)

I never know what to say about films like these anymore, especially with "Star Wars" which, even a good side project, and "The Mandalorian" is a good one, feels so far removed from the franchise main or proper that I don't really know how to elevaluate it. I have a similar hard time with any of these uber-franchises and these way, way, way, too elaborate cinematic universes and "Star Wars" always feels like too simple a world to begin with, so these stories don't make it more elaborate or complex to me; they feel like I'm learning about a story that happened to somebody's distant relative's best friend's in-law who I don't know to begin with.

That said, it's a good enough story and it clearly mattered to somebody. The film was directed by Jon Favreau who co-created the original series, and-eh, I just-, I just don't know what to make of him anymore. He's an interesting filmmaker to be sure, but he's been so caught up in the monolith that is the Disney conglomerate for so long now, that I feel like if anything actually comes out of him that does represent him as an artist, it's almost by accident anymore. That's not necessarily true mind you; he's done these kinds of films for so long that I have to presume it is something that inspires him to make these big budget blockbusters but it doesn't always feel that way though, especially with his last few feature films. Outside of the delightfully little small movie "Chef" he's made the unwatchable "Cowboys and Aliens" and then two of the most dreadful and useless of the Disney "live-action" reboots "The Jungle Book" and "The Lion King". But, he seems like he's inspired by "The Mandalorian" and you can feel that here. I don't know if this is the greatest story; I think one of the strengths of the series was how it can make these kinds of picaroesque narratives seem more thrilling and intriguing, even within a Lucas universe; it almost feels disheartening to put this show onto the big screen, but-, you know what, if the series itself has run it's course and the next story is just something for a couple hours, than I'm find with it.

Admittedly that's mainly just because I want to see more of Grogu. He is delightful in this thing. Sometimes a cute little baby puppet is really all I need to be entertained.

Seriously, "Star Wars Babies" somebody should get on it!

WICKED (2024) Director: Jon M. Chu

⭐⭐⭐

I'm sorry, bear?!?!?!

Why is-, I'm sorry, BEAR!?!?!? She's raised by a bear?!?!?!?!? That,- that can't be right? I know I never saw the musical, but....- (Google search)

Yeah, that's not in the play, or the novel it's based on; I knew that couldn't be right.

Okay, I came into this film, a little, conflicted, but also just tepid in general; like many other people "The Wizard of Oz" has fascinated me for years, but not exactly in the way that I think most people are. Most people think mainly of the classic MGM Hollywood musical, that turned Judy Garland into a superstar, and it's so inherently ingrained in our culture, especially American culture that like-, it's like the one old movie that's everybody's seen, even little kids have run into it at some point. I mean my mother once made a copy of it onto a blank VHS tape, along with "Mary Poppins" just so I would have an extra copy of it, and yes, I said extra copy, 'cause I already had a regular VHS copy, as she didn't even particularly like the movie that much. (Nor did she like "Mary Poppins" either, and frankly I'm not even particularly big on that one; I think even back then, when I finished watching "The Wizard of Oz" I usually just rewound the tape and put something else on, just so I didn't have to rewind it before watching "The Wizard of Oz" the next time.) But I really was fascinated by "The Wizard of Oz" after I read the original L. Frank Baum novel, "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz", or, I at least tried to. I've asked a few people who've also tried to read this over the years, whether or not they had a similar experience to me, and the consensus is that I'm not alone on this, but "The Wizard of Oz" is maybe the most convuluted book I've ever read! Or tried to read; I got pretty far, but I didn't finish it. It is different than the movie, in fact there's whole theories about the novel being a parable for the populism political movement of the late 1800s in America, that are genuinely also fascinating, and I don't know, they're worth taking a day to dive into, anything more than that I warn against, but it's kinda intriguing. That said, I'm not sure I buy that, because on top of the book itself being very,- convuluted, the franchise is actually even more elaborate....

Yeah, Baum didn't write just one book about Oz; he wrote about 40 of them! Okay, he really wrote fifteen, but there's books by other authors that canonically follow the Baum books, and that adds up to 40. Like, "The Wizard of Oz", was the premiere children's fantasy book series of it's time, like it's kinda in the same vein that we think of "Harry Potter" during it's prime-, I'd argue Harry was probably bigger, but, it's also in the vein as like, "Nancy Drew" where people kinda kept writing it even after it's original creator long stopped. "The Wizard of Oz" was big, and in fact, the MGM film was not even the first film adaptation of the novel, in fact there was at least three that we know of, and like two that have survived, including a 1925 feature length adaptation that's nothing like the book or the MGM film.

And here's the thing, "Wicked" came from none of these. It's not canonical to anything Baum-related, but most of the books are in the public domain now, and "Wicked" was originally a novel by children's book author Gregory Maguire, and it's technically influenced by the books, and even though there are canonical books in the franchise about the witches of Oz, I'd characterize the idea here, being mostly in the realm of fan fiction. In a way, it's a pretty influential book all things considered, not just 'cause of the huge Broadway musical about it; in fact, there's a lot of popular public domain Oz stuff, even in film and television; I think I'm the only one who liked that sci-fi channel miniseries "Tin Man" from a few decades ago, but taking the Wicked Witch of the West, and giving her a backstory and telling the story from her perspective-, it's hardly the first time the villain in popular literature has been re-positioned as a sympathetic antihero, but you can still make a pretty direct line between "Wicked" and say, Todd Phillips's "Joker" films or especially Disney's fractured fairy tale re-evaluation of the classic villains from their library, like "Cruella", "Malificent", "Descendants",- yeah, this probably started from "Wicked", or if not started, definitely was a major precursor to the trend, if not the major influence.

And I remember hearing about "Wicked" from the moment it hit Broadway so big; it's one of the biggest shows in my lifetime, and especially knowing that the main characters were played by Broadway greats Idina Menzel and Kristen Chenoweth,- I mean, I was definitely on board. (And I am happy they do have a number here in cameo roles) Eventually I borrowed the cast CD from the library, which in general, is something I recommend if you can. Even if you never see a musical on stage, or if they never adapt it to the screen, you can usually figure out enough clues from cast albums what the stories of some musicals are, and even if that's not the case, a lot of times the music's still good anyway, and I think it's an underrated way to explore theater. I of course love "Hamilton" for instance, but I also recommend "The Producers" cast album a lot; it's probably better than the movie. A couple others out there, "Fiddler on the Roof", "Guys and Dolls", etc.

(Sigh)

Anyway, I didn't like the "Wicked" cast album. In fact, I didn't like the music much, at all, from "Wicked". I listened to that album a few times and the only song I even really remember was "Defying Gravity", and even then, I- I wasn't as sure that it worked outside the musical, and that's when I really started digging into the dramaturgy of the musical, and-um,...- is "Wicked" actually any good?

Yeah, after hearing the music, the more I read about the actual play, the more concern I had. I was concerned from the original "Wicked" novel which was actually kinda mixed reviewed to begin with, but the-, the musical itself, also was kinda more popular than it was critically accalimed, even at the time. Even on Broadway, sometimes the biggest musicals you can think of were also not as beloved among the critics. Ask a person who knows Tonys history about the 1988 Musical race some time and be prepared to hear a few scathing remarks about how overrated a hack Andrew Lloyd Webber is, (and honestly I'm kinda on their side on that one; "Into the Woods" got robbed.) and "Wicked" is kinda also not beloved by the critics. (Actually the 2004 Tonys where "Wicked" lost to "Avenue Q", is also kind of a hot-button topic in those circles as well, so be careful, although we really should've gotten an "Avenue Q" film by now.) Like, I don't think it's hated exactly, but it's not exactly the most beloved musical, but again, a lot of the big ones aren't actually critical darlings, and that hardly matters on Broadway anyway.

Where it first kinda lost me, was, when I found out that "Wicked" was told in flashback.
I guess thinking it through it shouldn't have caught me offguard that much, flashback can be done on the stage and done fairly well, but the way "Wicked" introduces that conceit.... So, Elpheba (Oscar-nominee Cynthia Erivo) has been killed by an errantly-thrown bucket of water, and also the peoples of Oz are celebrating in glee. Galinda (Oscar-nominee Ariana Grande) leads in the admonishing, and tries to head off to oversee a new Oz governmental structure after the Wizard's (Jeff Goldblum) taken off, but then she's asked about how she knew her, and were friends with Elpheba. And that's how we get into, the story of their time at Shiz Academy together as sorcery majors.

(Deep breath)

I've thought about that being how the story begins forever, and, (Sigh) I'm sorry, that makes no goddamn sense. I was hoping it would work better seeing it here, in this long-awaited film adaptation of the musical, but why and how would somebody,- or so many people, not know that Galinda and Elpheba were already closely acquainted; this isn't even something hidden from the movie, this is like, made clear to begin with. Like, I know it's based on the books technically, but c'mon, if you've ever actually tried reading "The Wizard of Oz", you know nobody actually is inspired by them; they're influence and inspired by the movie first, and even in the film, clearly they'd been familiar with each other, long before they were in charge of their particular kingdoms, and even beyond, why would somebody suddenly pick that exact moment to ask Galinda about her past with the now-dead dictator?!?! Why would you,-, the way this should work, is that that's the last scene in story. Elpheba's dead and then somebody from whatever Oz's version of the labor-born comic relief side characters are, asks a conflicted Galinda about her past, and then she just acknowledges how they did know each other, once upon a time and how things went regretfully awry. The story should just begin with them meeting in school, it's much stronger that way?! The flashbucks screws everything up!?!?

Am I alone here?!- Am I off on th-, if you think I'm way off on this, like, fine, let me know, but other than to inform us that were in the world of Oz, which I legitimately don't think anybody needs to be informed about, I don't get telling this story in flashback, and I really don't get how they go about it. Like, this annoys so much that it would honestly take me out of the play immediately. Now whether I'd enjoy it anyway afterwards, well that's another thing, but yeah, since I wasn't huge on the music itself, I was worried going into this film version, which they decided to break into two parts? Hmmm, okay I know why they did that, but, well, should they have done that?

We'll get back to that eventually. First thing though, that I'm pretty taken aback by, actually seeing the movie now, is,- how much of a mean girl drama queen bitch they made Galinda. Like, I guess I get it,- actually does it make sense, on the surface, but-, hmmm. This is where I wonder if taking so long to adapt this hurt the film, because Kristen Chenoweth would've made this character work. In fact, I know she did, even seeking out a few old bootleg copies of the Broadway show and seeing only a few minutes of her, it's night and day, but on top of being a great comedic actress with a more operatic voice, her naturally pixie energy would take this kind of obnoxious character traits and still given her some likeability and charm. Grande, is a good singer and she's got some acting experience before this, but at least in this film, the role begins way too far off in the unlikable category, and it gets frustrating waiting for her to have her first real character growth. And that doesn't even happen 'til Elpheba convinces her teacher/mentor Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) to accept her as a student, and this is after Galinda's been quite horrid towards her. She doesn't think she's being that way of course-, maybe Grande's just too pretty for this role; I know that sounds like a weird complaint, but she's nailing this character in a way where every nice thing she does seems like it's completely a backhanded compliment the way a really overly-beautiful girl teenage mean girl would, and I'm just not sure that's right for the future "Good Witch of the North". Okay, maybe it is accurate to some of the books but I don't know, I think I liked "Oz the Great and Powerful"'s interpretation of her a little better in this regard, where the Wicked Witch doesn't start out green with wickedness, but evolves into that over the period of events. Maguire wrote the novel more with an emphasis on the classic conundrum of nature vs. nurture and which one determines a person's qualities, especially ones that turn out so monstrously evil, which, ehhhh,- like that was an interesting, popular, theory for awhile, but even some of the best pieces of literature that have used that are often more camp now at best. I mean, I still love watching "The Bad Seed" whenever it's on, but I don't know,- it's pretty outdated. I mean, Galton was a eugenisist so, it's always been a sketchy theory even before fiction got ahold of it.

Cynthia Erivo is also kind of an odd choice here in the opposite end. Obviously, she also has a different singing voice, than Idina Menzel, but making her way too much the butt of the insult for having been born green, and then dismissed by her father, Governor Thropp (Andy Nyman) and raised by, in this film, a bear, Dulcibear (Sharon D. Clarke)-, okay that part's not in the play, in the books that's explained as a Nanny that raised her. Okay, the reason for this change, is that there's actually more talking animals in Oz than you might realize, and apparently there was a culture battle between the animals who could talk, many of whom were underlings and subserviant labor members of the classes and now they're being particularly ostracized. One of the professors, a goat named Dr. Dillamond (Peter Dinklage) is an animal rights activist who's secretly forming an underground political movement, and Elphaba's the only student who appreciates him and begins joining the cause and making her parent a bear, is-. okay, even saying this out loud, I'm still not sure that was needed. In fact, I'm kinda debating with myself on this one, whether Elphaba would be more empathetic to animals than humans. She has the trust of the monkeys, (Which, we do find out why) but they don't speak in the original movie. The Cowardly Lion speaks, so there's precedent for animals talking, there's trees who talk, are their any other animals who talk in the original "Oz"? I'm trying to remember. Then again, she hates Toto. Also, why would everybody be so prejudiced to talking animals? Man, the politics of Oz, like, in every reimaging I find, is just insane, really. How is it always about that too? Like there's no story about the average Munchkin's day as he tries to keep his job at the Lollipop factory, while his kid's going through a heroin withdrawal and his wife leaves him for his neighbor. God, the more these franchises go on, the more I wish Harvey Pekar was alive to create characters in them; I thought the MCU needed him, but maybe Oz needs him more.

Anyway, this is why "Wicked" is so strange, it's an adaptation of an adaptation of a reimagined prequel of an adaptation, from an original novel, but is more directed inspired by a previous adaptation that everybody knows, but they can't technically claim they're directly inspired from. It's the kinda stuff that makes me think that maybe we shouldn't let some things be in the public domain honestly. It's so far removed from it's original source that I kinda wonder why you wouldn't just create an entirely different world and set of characters altogether. (This is one reason I'm kinda on the right-wing's side on that, the argument that it's limiting creativity not having the ability to tell more creative stories by not having access to popular characters and franchises,-, like how? How is that naturally more creative? To take something that's already been created and then change it?! That sounds like the exact opposite of being creative, right? It's that kind of non-creative thinking that lead to people colorizing classic black and white films, or now, it's the people who use AI prompts to simulate artistic creativity now. [I'm generalizing of course, many things with pre-existing characters can be incredibly creative, including "Wicked", but it is a thought process that I can't fully get out of my head sometimes, and it's doing backflips in my head as I watch this film.])

So, other than all that, am I enjoying the play? Um, well, I'm still not totally impressed with the music. It's a little more helpful seeing it in a somewhat proper context; I do like "The Wizard and I" a little more now. And I enjoy "Sentimental Man" a bit more, especially with the inspired casting of Jeff Goldblum as The Wizard doing a very Chaplinesque performance of that number, that was a nice moment. Conceptually, I'm still questioning some of how we got here, but the best part of "Wicked" has always been the end of Act I, and the movie ends an intense act break, where finally Glinda, or Galinda, finally has a bit of a revelation about the world, but is still not nearly as emotionally outraged when she realizes the corruption at the top that's lead to the problems within Oz, and her ultimate villain arc begins, although, it still feels, a little way too much like I'm watching the opposite world version of the story. I guess Glinda turns into a real good witch and Elphaba becomes truly wicked later, or maybe this is the AXIS comics version of Oz.

I don't know, maybe I'll finish one of those bootlegs before I second act this. It's tricky, 'cause there's way too many songs in "Wicked," too many that aren't really that memorable or interesting, and yet it kinda does make sense to split this into two parts and cut nearly nothing, 'cause the clear best song and most memorable part of the musical is at the very end of the first Act. It does get me excited to see Act II, or "Wicked: For Good" as it got titled in the film world. "Wicked" was always been one those musicals whose great moments are so great that it completely overwhelms everything else about the musical; and the spectacle of a climax of Act I, is genuinely astounding, but man, everything else around it can range from mediocre to messy to completely misguided. I've said that I thought "Wicked" was one of those musicals that absolutely perfect to adapt to the big screen with a big-budget Hollywood musical epic, but there was always also a nagging part of me that thought that perhaps part of what really makes it special is seeing it on the stage; the theater can alleviate more story issues and concerns than any other medium; the immersiveness of it can hide a lot of flaws, I mean, how else do you explain how "Cats" lasted so long on Broadway?

"Wicked" ultimately comes together and the performances, especially by Erivo and Michelle Yeoh, I think really make this worth watching. It's tricky though, when you see something that's so familiar done differently, you can't help but to analyze every single decision that was made. Like making Elphaba's sister Nessarose (Marissa Mode) a parallygic; it makes sense, but it's still a head-turning decision. That one is in the play, but not in the novel, in the novel Nessarose has no arms, which, is also a little head-tilting, so.... (Shrugs) Of course, making a Nanny a bear,- like nothing's gonna top that, even a wolf doctor gets no reaction from me compared to that. We also do get a lion cub; I don't think we found a tiger of any kind yet.

The film was directed by Jon M. Chu, and he's been a mixed bag with adaptations. His last film was "In the Heights" which I did like ultimately, that's Lin-Manuel Miranda's other famous Broadway musical. He previously did "Crazy Rich Asians" which made my top ten list the year it came out. He also did a G.I. Joe movie, that "Jem and the Holograms" movie that apparently pissed off both fans and those who weren't fans of the original cartoon, which is pretty hard to do. He first broke out do the "Step Up" sequels, so I think he likes being more in the dance genre, so Broadway adaptations aren't a bad path for him, but I do wonder if he's only as good as however much he cares about what he's making. That said, there is a lot of care here in "Wicked" so that's at least honorable and worth a recommendation, but it is a mild one. I'm not sure I really enjoy "Wicked" overall, but despite my critiques, I can't exactly build up any disgust for it either. I have conflicted questions and views on the musical itself, so naturally I have them for the film, so all things evening out, I'm basically in the middle on this one, stuck at a yellow-bricked intersection trying to figure out what way the movie will go.

FLOW (2024) Director: Gints Zilbalodis

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I've spent a couple days trying to figure out how to write about "Flow", and I'm still not sure how to fully approach this film. It's not that inherently unique necessarily, in fact, on the one hand, it's story it's painfully simple. It's about animals on a journey. I can think of a bunch of Disney films with the same basic idea, and yet, "Flow" is not like any of those. "Flow" is hard to describe in general,- well, that's not true exactly either; it's one of those rare amazing films where I could literally describe what happens, but explaining it is kinda defeating the purpose. This movie has to be experience, preferably on the biggest screen possible; if it's available in IMAX; hell-, screw "The Wizard of Oz", somebody put "Flow" in the Sphere, without any addition or edits that aren't approved by it's director, Gints Zilbalodis.

A loose expansion on his short film, "Aqua", "Flow" takes place, some future time on Earth, somewhere on Earth-, I think it's Earth. It looks like Earth, there's remnants of humanity but no humans, and clearly the world is post-apocalyptical. I say "remnants" because you're tempted to look at them as "Clues", like you're playing "Myst" and trying to figure out what exactly happened, but personally, I'm not even 100% sure that matters. If you want to dive into several theories there's plenty of other blogs and Youtube essays out there trying to come up with their own theories of the world of "Flow". I'm not even going to try pretend that any of them either know or are particularly close, what I know is that we're following a cat.

I don't know his or her name, I know it's a cat. Cat, is a cat. He's a loner cat. There's not a lot of other cats around, but there are other animals, and Cat is living in his refuge and is a scavenger, preferring to sneak and steal from other animals around than to fish in the nearby rivers and streams. He lives by an abandoned house and a giant statue of a cat. Why is there a statue of a cat? Clearly Cat didn't build it, by why did whoever built it, build it?

Dammit, I'm already caught up in questions,- that's the wrong approach to "Flow"; it's in the title, the movie flows, both your thoughts on the world, and the world literally, as the world that Cat and all the other animals surround is flooding, and flooding fast. Is it the return of the Great Flood, is it the original one? Did a dam break? At some point, we're on a boat. Cat, along with a Dog, a Labrador Retriever to be exact, who was separated from his pack, a solemn but steady Capybera, a frenentic Lemur who becomes obsessed with a mirror, and eventually a Secretarybird that was kicked out of his flock. And they're traveling on this boat? To where? Over there. Whatever, there eventually is.

According to Wikipedia, the film was made using Blender, which is already kinda stunning, but apparently it was also made without any storyboards, which-, I just-, no, I don't believe that. As somebody who doesn't like storyboarding at all, like, no, there's no way I'd be making this without storyboarding; if that's true, how is that possible. And how does look this amazing-, it's not just that it's the advanements of 3-D animation technical, people can use Blender and other similar free animated software and make some awful looking cartoons; this movie looks like it's a bunch of stunning water colors paintings come to life. I would've sworn that they at least did some variant of rotoscoping to get these animals to look and act so hyperrealistically, but apparently they didn't do that either. I mean, a lot of the issues with motion-capture performances has been how tough it is for it to make animal characters look and act like animals on screen. Like, once upon a time, Norman Taurag won a Best Directing Oscar for a film called "Skippy" because he made a movie with both a kid and a dog as a main characters; nowadays you would never think of giving an award like to whoever directed this generation's "My Dog Skip" or for a more interesting comp, "Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey" but still trying to find that right part perspective of doing similar things in animation now, is gonna hard but this is one of those films that's even if the technology dated in like twenty years, it's still gonna look amazing and we're gonna get caught up and swept in this story.

The movie became the first Latvian film to ever get nominated for the Best International Feature Oscar and won Best Animated Feature, because the first non-Japanese foreign feature to win that category. The movie's already become a huge point of pride for the nation, there's already statues made in honor of it, and frankly, I completely understand that reaction. One of Zilbalodis's inspiration was the films of Jacques Tati, and this movie belongs in the conversation with something like "Playtime" which is a film you can watch dozens of times in different-sized theaters from different parts of the theater and see something different every time. I partially can't wait to see what else Zilbalodis makes, and I'm also a little terrified that he might never repeat something this special, but either way, I'm gonna be excited for whatever else he makes.

A REAL PAIN (2024) Director: Jesse Eisenberg

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Hmm, I haven't run into this one in a while.... You ever have this, the "What-Is-Wrong-With-This-Person Movie"? The kind of movie where you're trying to figure out, what exactly is wrong with this character that you're observing, and you're, hoping to actually find that out. I say "hoping", 'cause sometimes these movies, well, they don't realize they're that kind of movie, and it's really disappointing when the movie, like doesn't have an answer at the end, and you're like, "Wait, did the movie not think there was something seriously wrong with the character?" Everybody's got their own, well, "favorite"'s the wrong word, but personal choice to use as an example, mine is "Spanglish"; I-, to this day, I have no idea what the hell Tea Leoni is doing or thinks she's doing in that movie, or what that movie thinks she's doing. You can also kinda use this to explain every Tennessee Williams heroine-, well maybe not Maggie Pontliff from "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", but every other one of them. (BTW, IMDB.com, can you use a different photo of Elizabeth Taylor for her main picture; I don't need to look up her films that aren't "Cleopatra" and then see her headshot being her in "Cleopatra"; that's,- c'mon!) Anyway, I give those a tepid pass, because, well; psychological analyses wasn't as prescient and common back then, but when you see a modern film where clearly someone has some sort of psychoanalytical issue and it's like, not addressed-at-all,... ugh, cringe. It's the only word I can use here, it's cringe.

Honestly, it's kinda cringe even when the movie knows it's that kind of movie, but boy it is relief when the movie does actually, you know, realizes it. Thank fucking God, "A Real Pain" actually does know this. In fact, that's kinda the whole point of the film. Two cousins, David (Jesse Eisenberg) and Benji (Oscar-winner Kieran Culkin) meet at JFK before going on a Jewish Heritage Tour of Poland. Their grandmother Dory passed away recently, and believe this is the best way to honor her, as she was the family member who survived and escaped the concentration camps and made her way to America, and now that she's passed, they're going to seek out the house that she grew up in; the last spot the Kaplans were in Poland before she left. David lives in New York and has a wife and a kid, and a high-pressure job working on creating internet ad banners, but Benji has been a n'er-do-well as an adult, and mostly has remained in Binghampton on his mother's couch, and is otherwise just drifting aimlessly and erratically through life. For instance, when they arrive at the Hotel in Warsaw, a package of marijuana is there waiting for him. David's not opposed necessarily, but considering the trip, and how Benji's thinking of partying and getting high, it's a little awkward, but then again, the cousins haven't seen each other in a while, and don't hang out nearly as often as they used to. They're the same age and grew up together and apparently used to be much more similar, but adulthood has led them astray.

Benji, is naturally the more erratic one, sometimes very erratic, and his moods can switch on a dime. One moment he's having fun with the group, convincing them to take action-like photos in front of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Monument, but then freaks out at the cemetary over the tradition of putting stones on the grave and berates the tour guide, James (Will Sharpe) over his constant repetition of facts. He tries to get close to other members of the group, like Eloge (Kurt Egiyawan) a Rwandan Genocide survivor who converted to Judaism after he moved to Winnipeg and the Jewish community helped him acclimate, and even spends a night with Marcia (Jennifer Grey) a divorcee who's moving back to New York from L.A. Everyone's looking for something different in this trip, but if there is a common motivator, everyone's suffering through some kind of emotional struggles and pain, and are trying desperately to figure out how to cope with it. Benji's more outwardly expressive and emotional, letting all his emotions take over, while David has repressed a lot of his quiet desperations.

There's a scene at a restaurant where eventually, everything breaks down, and Benji ends up leaving the table for a few minutes, and the group begins talking about him. I won't give anything away, but Jesse Eisenberg, who has always been one of our great modern actors, I legitimately don't think he gets nearly the credit he deserves as an actor, both in general, and for this movie, because he gives a monologue about his cousin, that's just so amazing to watch and emotional, and does reveal the reason for the tensions between them that I will not reveal here, but, man-, people are crediting Eisenberg's writing especially for this film; he's been a successful short story writer and playwright outside of his acting work and he got an Oscar nomination for Writing this film, which he also directed, but I think it's actually his performance that made the film for me. I know that's weird, considering this film is basically a two-hander, and Culkin's character is the one getting all the acclaim and accolades, but I think Eisenberg's performance is a little more special honestly. It's more reserved, so at the surface he seems to be doing less, but that's why Eisenberg's such a great actor, I think of him as being Nicholas Cage-like in how eccentric he can be with all his choices, but Eisenberg knows how to play the inner struggles of his characters maybe better than anybody, and here, you can see the repression of his natural instincts, wanting to lay waste to the room the way Culkin can and does, but he knows he's not quite able to do it himself anymore and it's really special watching him work. A bad performance in that scene, could've absolutely tanked this movie, and made the film feel more indy and cliche and honestly could've made the script itself feels more average and even uninspired; it could've completely ruined the movie, and instead he absolutely nails the scene and ruins the audience.

That's nothing against Culkin's performance, in fact, if Eisenberg ever thinks of adapting "A Real Pain" into a play, I would love both these actors to perform on stage, but switch roles, and see how that would work.

I also love that there's no real resolution to their personal struggles, and also how they go about showing that, again without giving anything away, other than, they both come back home later, this movie gets that, one's problems, especially modern problems aren't going to be solved by one trip, or one hug from a loved one, or one slap from a love one even, or even trying to combat and contextualize your own struggles and pains to those around you, and looking at, or even trying to simulate their, real pains and struggles they went through, not that seeing the mostly untouched remains of an actual concentration camp won't effect you, it will, and it may put your hill of beans problems into perspective but it doesn't solve all your problems at home. "A Real Pain" can be a struggle to get through when you're watching it at times, but it's definitely rewarding to get through, even if sometimes it's still painful.

NO OTHER LAND (2024) Director; Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal & Rachel Szor

⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2

Masafer Yatta.

Look, I'm not gonna pretend I get every nuance, of-, well, anything involving the West Bank, pretty much. Trying to go online and decipher what exactly I'm watching being documented in "No Other Land", the Oscar-winning documentary about the area called, Masafer Yatta, (of according to Wikipedia, it's also called Mosafaret Yatta sometimes) honestly, I think there's far fewer in the West who really know what's been going on and why in the conflict than they want to admit, and I mean that for those on both sides of conflict, but I can tell when I'm watching a people suffering and being, repressed, or worst. Literally, in this film, I'm watching in some cases Palestineans getting killed by Israeli soldiers. Why are they killing civilians over this land? (Chuckled sigh) Well, I can start at the beginning with that guy named Abraham, but.... Masafer Yatta, is a municipality in the West Bank, which Israel, way back in the '70s, declared to be an Israeli Firing Zone.

Israeli Firing Zone, are these areas in the occupied West Bank, that's the Israeli-occupied areas that the Israeli military has been occupied since the Six-Days War, that they declared as space for them to specifically use for Military Training. I-, I'm trying to find some American military comparison, but I can't because, the ideas of these place is that their otherwise uninhabited stretches of land, used for military purposes, except, back when they declared Masafer Yatta an Israeli Firing Zone, there were about 5,000 Palestineans living there, and they're still there, and basically, they can be killed for being there, basically without punishment by the Israeli military. And that's been happening, and they do other things too, like evict them from property, destroy their houses and homes- eventually they're trying to eventually turn these into Israeli settlements....

Look, it's easy to joke about how complex this conflict is, or how old it is, or-, how dumb it is, or how both sides are awful,- and all that is true, but like, all this is, well-, it's all happening on a very small strip of land. This isn't a cold war between superpowers or anything, the country of Israel is, a strip of land smaller than New Jersey they're fighting over, any atrocity you hear about that's happening there is occurring down-the-road and across the street from the last atrocity. And determining who's "ultimately at fault"- well, that's the wrong way to look at it. The real way to even begin to analyze this conflict, is to look at each individual issue individually, and "No Other Land" is a look at that, and yeah, I know there some complaints that this was too bias or anti-Israel a perspective, but no, this one is clearly Israel's fault. They're an illegally invading force and the only thing that's probably stopping them from using the residents of this area as regular military target practice is that there's people with cameras around.

"No Other Land" was mostly shot by Basel Adra, a renowned Palestinean activist and photojournalist and he's been recording the Palestinean resistance to this Israeli's attempted forced displacement since he was a child. We see his cousin shot near the end of the film; that's not the first attempted murder by the Israeli forces we see; in fact, we see another one earlier that lead to his friend's paralyzation and eventual death, and cause his family to leave their home and hide in a nearby caves. The Palestineans aren't alone in their cause here either; the other journalist in the movie is Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham, and they're actually decent friends. Abraham's not ignorant of Israel's actions, but they're differing background do mean that they come from very different lives. That's something that I never think about with this conflict, is that, the Israeli occupation means that the Israelis are more well-off in the region while the Palestineans are often too poor to fully defend themselves. That resident that's paralyzed; he died because the displacement meant that he couldn't receive the proper medical care needed to survive. It's not simply a religious disagreement, the fight for control and power is about wealth disparagement, as well as a human condition disparagement.

Despite winning the Best Documentary Oscar, the film struggles to this day to be widely-available in America, and barely got a Oscar-qualifying theatrical release, partially due to the supposed controversialness of it's subject matter, and even streaming this film is difficult to find. I think to some anything that's anti-Israel is (finger quotes) "controversial". Look, I would not confuse "No Other Land" as a synecdoche for the entire conflict, even the conflict in it's current form; it's an intense look at one singular aspect to a larger conflict, and in this instance, it's clear which country's in the wrong. That said, when Basel's cousin was shot by an Israeli soldier, while he was defending his home, that even took place around the October 7 Attacks, the deadliest attack against the Jewish population since the Holocaust, and all told almost 1,200 people, most of which were civilians were killed in those attacks, that were mainly executed by Hamas. Maybe they do need land for military firing zones, but then again, do they need land that Palestineans are on? Even if they occupy the region? Is there really "No Other Land"?

I SAW THE TV GLOW (2024) Director: Jane Schoenbrun

⭐⭐⭐1/2

"I Saw the TV Glow" feels like a movie that, had I seen it at an earlier time in my life, I would've been really into it for a bit, but then, would've found it somewhat disappointing afterwords when I tried to revisit it.

That's partially a joke, admittedly, but-, hmm, well, first off, full disclosure, one of my favorite Youtubers is Pop Arena, run by the seriously underrated and underappreciated Greg "Gregifer" Stevens, and in particular his amazing series, "Nick Knacks" where he goes over literally every television show to ever air on Nickelodeon, and he spoiled a certain absurdist detail in "I Saw the TV Glow" that he mentions during his episode on "The Adventures of Pete & Pete", I won't spoil here, even though it doesn't spoil the film necessarily, but it was the kind of detail that let me in on what exactly to expect going into this film. This is why I hate trailers and shit like that; I like reviews but sometimes something comes up and particularly when something is a really inventive and creative mood piece like Jane Schoenberg's "I Saw the TV Glow", it means you're coming in with expectations, and I personally think that's not a great thing, and why I only ever advise reading/watching movie reviews before watching a movie, the good critics will not spoil anything that they don't need to spoil. (And if they do, there's probably a good reason,- unless you're maybe the late Rex Reed. [BTW, Burn in Hell Buddy; I hope Marisa Tomei dances on your grave in a red dress. [Mock thumbs up]) Still though, there's-, there's something to this movie that's got this vibe to it; this idea that somehow, in our own memory, we tend to put some substandard works of art on higher pedestals than they actually deserve.

Sometimes because we saw them as kids and didn't know better, other times because we thought they were decent but we didn't know quite how to read them yet so while they're still good, they're not actually as good as time goes on. Sometimes, well, there's something about the piece of art that's so intriguing and fascinating to us, that, perhaps we want to be better than they are so badly, that in our minds, we just simply make them better than they are. That third one,- me, being a constant critic for so long, has always kinda fascinated and worried me, on both ends.

For instance, there's a TV show that's at the center of "I Saw the TV Glow"; airing on the Young Adult Network, Saturdays at 10:30pm, which seems very late even for the mid-'90s, called "The Pink Opaque". They show clips and highlights of the series throughout the film, including showing a few opening credits which definitely looked a lot like those teenage drama aired on UPN and WB during the late '90s, back when I was a teenager, and was the target demographic for a lot of those shows, many of those big shows, especially if they had the phrase "Created by Joss Whedon" in the credits, were right in my age demographic, and back then and even now, I thought those shows were basically garbage. Granted, I was a TV historian even then, so I looked at something like "Supernatural" and wonder why the hell would anybody watch that when there's "The X-Files"-, which I didn't even like, but seriously, why is "Supernatural" so popular; it's terrible. It's just stupid "The X-Files" with good looking kids. But god, most of those shows, I can't understand how people watched them and took seriously, and put extra meaning into a lot of those series. Even today, there's some defenders of them; like "Veronica Mars", got a reboot, and as an avid Nancy Drew reader at that time, I have no idea why that show needed to exist, or be brought back. Those shows were not uplifting and back then I thought, that they talked down to their audience, of teens and kids instead of bringing them up, and I still do, and that's just insulting to me, but I'm getting off-topic. The thing is though, it can work the other way around too.

I fear some people don't get why "The West Wing" is the best show ever, because of-, well modern times have made us more cynical of politicians actually trying to make the world better, but also they don't realize that that's how the world should be, and that showing that, is just as important as showing the world for what it treacherously is sometimes. I have friends I respect who thought it was "Hammy", and I thought, "Yeah, you don't know what good is if you think that." And the show hasn't changed, in my mind, but there's definitely shows or movies or moments on television that for one reason or another sparked such a visceral reaction upon originally airing or seeing it, that you overrate it. You watch it now, and sometimes, the thing is off a little; it's not quite what you remembered. Our memory can fail us sometimes. Or to be more precise, sometimes our emotions, can fail our memory.

"I Saw the TV Glow" is about two teenagers who are fans of this TV show, "The Pink Opaque", Owen (Justice Smith) a quiet young man who struggles to understand the world of middle school in the mid '90s, who sees promos for "The Pink Opaque" on TV, but it airs too late for him as his bedtime is 10:15pm every night. He does befriend an outsider goth girl, Maddy (~~Brigette Lundy-Paine~~ Jack Haven) who's a photographer that's obsessed with the series and begins taping the series and sneaking Owen episodes when he's unable to manuever his way into having a Saturday night sleepover at Maddy's house. Around the time of the show's cancellation though, Maddy suddenly completely disappears through unusual circumstances. Owen was supposed to go with her, but his mother Brenda (Danielle Deadwyler) gets sick and he feels regret for not being there.

Years later, she shows up again, mysteriously, and under a different name, "Tara", and now claims that, she and Owen have similar powers as the two main characters in the show, which involved two girls with psychic powers to connect with each other and fight off some distant villains and monsters that they happen to come across who are after them because of their psychic powers, and again wants Owen to come along with her on a journey in order to-, well, it's hard to explain, but she's under the belief that the TV show, itself has become so apart of her that it's cancellation has essentially killed her, and now she needs to enter a real Pink Opaque, in order to get a sixth season,- and-, (Sigh) okay, I'm just gonna,-, it's a trans coming out metaphor.

Well, I guess I did give up something, but y'know, honestly, I watched the movie and didn't fully get that the first time around, and needed it explained to me too, so maybe it helps, but it is, and yeah, that's-, something that is definitely more in the LGBT community, how a lot of these shows, have aspects that they relate so well to, because of their struggles to figure out who they are, they look for anything symbolically in media to help them explain it, and there was quite a bit of that in a lot of those television shows, including those ones that I despised. You see, just because I don't see anything in them, or believe they could've found the same/similar/better things in other shows, doesn't mean that it didn't effect others, even if it wasn't in the media itself. I think that's part of why I gloated so much when people figured out how much of a perverted sex pest Whedon actually was, 'cause I felt justified in that my reading of his material was correct, but my friends found things in it, that I didn't see, perhaps because they were looking for it, and it was ultimately close enough for them to fill in blanks that weren't there.

"I Saw the TV Glow" is basically a parable for this modern age of gender openness and awareness that's coming-of-age in a parasocial world. The movie was written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun, a trans director who previously was Dan Schoenbrun for a few shorts, and this is apart of her trilogy, with the previous film "We're All Going to the World's Fair", which I haven't seen it, and their next-, um, apparently novel, called "Public Access Afterworld". It's called the "Screen Trilogy". I'm gonna withhold on the entire trilogy of films, but "I Saw the TV Glow", definitely goes for this eerie vibe of trying to understand a world that you can't fully grasp.

The movie has a surreal tone in it's undercurrents, and- I guess it goes with that strange tone where the nineties couldn't figure out if it wanted to continue with the alienated misanthropic youth of the early nineties, with the more freewheeling later nineties, and just decided to let everything happen at once. Like, I don't know in what universe an arcade outlives a movie theater anymore, but it does in this world. There's also a helluva good soundtrack, the title is actually from a Sloppy Jane song, and Sloppy Jane, actually plays the song in the movie, along with Phoebe Bridgers, and kinda like an old music videos, song performances do interstitiallly pop up in the film as well, not just as background soundtrack.

Now, I'm not entirely sure it fully works as a narrative,- although I guess we've all had that weird friend from school who disappeared and went a little nutty afterwards, but the movie definitely aims for a tone, and-, I don't know, it almost works for me as a mood piece, but I can definitely see it working for somebody else. I don't know how it'll feel afterwards though; this movie feels like it's definitely for a specific audience that, I happen to at least-, if not be apart of, definitely a, tangentially aware of. It was released by A24, that independent movie label that, personally I worry is becoming a product that itself is getting to caught up in it's own cult of fans who are proudly way-too-appreciate of their works, often well-above the quality of their actual films, if only because it's like, the first new opening logo to a movie they recognize as being quality different entertainment. (Shrugs) Good luck with that, when I young that logo was Miramax, so,... well, see how well A24 ends up down the line, but maybe that's just the cynical me who has to travel a lot farther back than high school or middle school to truly regret liking a piece of media only to realize later how little they hold up now.

(Sighs)

I thought "Popples" was good when I was two; there, you happy?! Now, let it be.

LOVE LIES BLEEDING (2024)

⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2

Trying to describe this movie in terms of typical genre descriptors is a Herculean task. It reminds me of those genre packets that script readers would occasionally get to use for samples of literally every possible subgenre and trying desperately to put every one of them that counts into that small little line on your Reader's Report. That's nothing compared to actually explaining the events themselves, at least not without going too deep into pure deconstructism of just telling you what happens. Part of me just wants to knock the movie for constantly being so unpredictable; in fact I could make a pretty good argument that the film is underwritten, in terms of just giving these characters more elaborate backstories and details, but that would take away from the fact that despite everything, this movie is so mysterious. It's mysterious, it's sexy, it's romantic, it's violent,- it's all those things and more, and it's literally on steroids.

The movie begins with Lou (Kristen Stewart) a manager at a local gym, who seems to be the town's only lesbian, except for Daisy (Anna Barishnakov) a flaky manipulative ditz who's desperately in lust with Lou, even though Lou's not that interested, but I suspect when options are limited.... Daisy's got the kind of toxic personality where you know her overly cheerful and sensual demeanor is exactly the kind of temptation you stay away from, except if there's no other kind around. Thankfully, a hulked up loner, Jackie (Katy O'Brien), an inspiring bodybuilder comes into town and gets in a fight with one of the local gymrats and her and Lou hit it off immediately. She's a n'er-do-well traveler trying to get to a bodybuilding competition in Vegas and is hitchhiking and sleeping her way from town-to-town to make it there. She ends up with a temporary waitressing job at a diner/gun range owned by Lou (Ed Harris), Lou Sr., I should say, Lou's father, who's also the town's local mob boss. Lou and Lou Sr. don't talk with each other, and their history is fractured, (Although not because she's gay), but she remains in town to protect her sister Bethany (Jena Malone) who's got a very abusive husband, JJ (Dave Franco) and soon, he goes way to far.

Bethany's too in love and brainwashed to do anything, even after spending most of the movie in a coma, and both Lou's are still fighting about what exactly should happen next. Both of them know where all the bodies are buried, literally and figuratively, and...- man, trying to explain everything else from here. Like, I'm barely a third of the way through the film at this point, and I haven't even gotten into, what may or may not be a series of hallucinogenic body dysmorphia events that lead to one person dead, and at least one person in jail. There's also various hitmen characters, as well as an FBI agent, O'Riley (Orion Carrington) who's presence seems more as a threat than an active participant in anything.

The way this movie genre-hops makes the obvious comparison, especially for a film with a lesbian romance at the center of it to The Wachowski's debut feature "Bound", but even that film, which goes from erotic romance to gangster thriller to heist comedy feels like it's only coincidentally going through a few genres; this film seems to start with pulp, bring in everything else, and beats those genres 'til their turn into their own bloody pulp. The only thing consistent in this movie is that, I genuinely never knew what the hell was gonna happen next.

There's some really great performances here, especially by Stewart and O'Brien, and the film was directed by Rose Glass, the British director who's debut "Saint Maud" was a straight up disturbing horror movie about an overly pious religious zealot nurse who believed god possessed her to convert her dying patients; that movie was about a disturbing relationship between two women who express their desires through two severe extremes, and "Love Lies Bleeding" feels similar in that both women go to their own extremes to escape their life. Lou, goes for extreme minimalism, having sparse relationships with anybody, and barely keeping any mementos of her family's troubles, in an attempt to figuratively escape when she's not pulled back in to make sure it doesn't end in fiery demies. Meanwhile Jackie, literally running away, and obsessing over her body to become as strong and powerful on the outside so that whatever emotions she does have get repressed to the point where they eventually explode out of her when they eventually do come out, sometimes in violence, sometimes in-, well, other ways, and perhaps whatever she's ingesting into her body is eventually gonna force it's way out, whether she wants it to or not.

It's interesting seeing a film that goes to extremes, actually be sexy and romantic for once, which seems to be one of Rose's themes. "Saint Maud"'s devotion to God was itself practically an orgasmic pursuit for it's main character and here, it seems sex, especially about women of severely repressed emotional extremes can have outbursts that are just as explosive in and out of the bedroom, and make that connection seem natural for all involved. It turns this very typical gangster story essentially into a charcter piece romance, even as the movie insists on trying to push it's characters into the trappings of the genre; complete with femme fatales around every corner, bad guys protecting other worst guys, and all the other sex and drugs and guns you'd expect in a movie like this. I have no clue honestly if the film fully works; this is the kind of movie that has logic holes that you can stretch pretty far if you think about it long enough, (and I'm not entirely sure of the significance in specifically setting this film in the early '90s with bizarre radio choices of such things like George H.W. Bush's infamous crack cocaine address) but this is a film that you want people to see so you can talk to them about it, and it certainly deserves being talked about.

DAUGHTERS (2024) Directors: Angela Patton and Natalie Rae

⭐⭐⭐1/2

You know, about a third of the way through "Daughters", a documentary about men in prison and their young daughters who are struggling to deal with their father's being locked up on the inside, as touch as I was with the stories told by both, the fathers and daughters, and other loved ones, I couldn't help but wonder, what exactly any of these prisoners were in jail for? I mean, there was no talk about them having not done whatever they were accused of doing, no claiming of innocence, not from them, or from their families. As soon as I thought that, I heard one horrific story from the mother of a young girl named Raziah who said that this was the second time that she had to talk her daughter off the roof of the building, threatening to,- well, you can fill in the details. That, along with a lot of the other tales I was hearing made me wonder, well, maybe it doesn't matter why they're imprisoned, the big issue is that, they're not there right now for their child. I mean, it is a struggle; when someone who should be there, isn't, and growing up with that, whether you're a baby or a teenager or many points in-between, it effects you. Then again though, it's a mindset, isn't it.

If you're surrounded by parents or surrogates, who have nothing but contempt for your parent, whether he's in jail or not, or just anger that he's in jail and constantly struggling to live and raise one, maybe many kids, it could be the most innocent man in jail and you'd definitely think that his actions being in prison is simply a selfish act and one that will forever have treacherous effects on you. There are young girls in this film, some very young, I might add, who are really keenly aware of that fact, and yet, what would happen,- I'm not saying one of their fathers are innocent, but what if they're taught why they did what they did, and in a way, that, doesn't justify their actions, but that they can help you to understand what they did and why they did it? Would that make them, more sympathetic, better off, better understanding of why their situation is the way it is? Would they even be able to understand that kind of decision that young, or ever, or should they even?

I'm not looking for an answer to these querries by the way, I don't think there is one, not a good one at least, perhaps I'm just looking for a way to explain to a young girl, why they shouldn't jump off a building just because their lives are, (Sigh) not ideal, and that while yes, having had your father around could've very well made it better and easier, doesn't mean that you should be trying to end it all because all the struggles surrounding that fact that you have to go through,...-

Honestly, perhaps I'm just thinking this because I grow up with my father; he wasn't in jail or anything, he's still alive, fine and all, I still talk to him when I can, I just grew up with a single mother and while we occasionally struggled, for the most part, I didn't have any of these kinds of thoughts, but having a parent in prison is vastly different, and not remotely a comparable homelife situation to my own. So, for me, I'm not exactly sure why it's so important to these little girls to see their fathers at a father/daughter dance, but I do get why it's important to the fathers. This dance has apparently been around before, but Angela Patton, one of the film's co-directors, a local Richmond activist for At-Risk African-American girls, started expanding the Daddy/Daughter dance to prisons after a few of the girls at Camp Diva, a local camp for young girls in the Richmond area, had fathers who couldn't come because they were in prison. This was a way of bringing the dance to them. Fathers have to attend classes on parenting in order to be allowed to go to class, and those classes are more group discussions about the struggles of being, or trying to be a father while behind bars. How to stay in your child's life despite the impediment of prison. I didn't realize for instance, how expensive and elaborate a phone call to and from prison to others on the outside can be, which honestly is-, is a sympton of the privatizing and corporatizing of prisons that frankly shouldn't exist.

There's very little discussed in the film of what any of the father's are in prison for; it seems to barely matter, and I guess that's true enough, if you're out of someone's lives what different does it really make the reason, the struggle to stay in your daughter's life the best you can is gonna be real enough no matter what. "Daughters" is a nice glimpse at the struggles on the homefront involving the penal system. I don't think it's a complete picture, of course, but it's a good depiction of one attempt to help alleviate the struggles, just a tiny bit, and from what I can tell, the program's been pretty successful overall.

A TALE OF LOVE AND DESIRE (2021)

⭐⭐⭐1/2

So, there's a scene in a wonderful Cuban film called "Strawberry and Chocolate" about a friendship between a conservative Communist and a flamboyant gay artist, and it's a sequence where the artist is making the Marxist uncomfortable, and challenging his views on homosexuality, and one of the way is by showing some Marxist literature that Marx was indeed pro-homosexuality. Now, in reality Marx and Engers' actual text spoke pretty little of homosexuality in general, but mostly were against it, but it has been a debate with Marxist theorists basically since the Manifesto was written, but y'know, in Castro's Cuba, being gay was paramount to being a capitalist. That said, I thought of that scene during "A Tale of Love and Desire," a romance about a young Ahmed (Sami Outalbali) is confronted at a bookstore by a fellow student he's attracted to, Farah (Zbedia Belhajamor) who begins reading to him some very sexually explicit Arab literature from the 13th Century, literature that Ahmed is clearly uncomfortable with. The point of these two scenes are the same, that sexual repression and openness are themselves more fluid in any religious or governing system, but in "Strawberry and Chocolate" it was an attempt to open up a character's mind, (Also, we find out that it part that it was part of an elaborate rouse but by the time we find that out it's not important) while in "A Tale of Love and Desire", it's about the slow opening up of,- well, something else.

It's a little, cliche admittedly, but it's also kinda nice to see a romantic and sexy coming-of-age story about a boy who has sexual hangups and the attractive and-, well, not an (Finger quotes) "extroverted", extroverted girl, but more extroverted than the guy, who's willing and wanting to get him out of his shell. It happens that way sometimes, more than I think people realize. And yeah, this kind of relationship often starts with simple flirtatious discussions that often drift into sex, coming from the woman. Ahmed and Farah are pupils at the Sorbonne. Ahmed's lived all his life in Paris, but his parents were Algerian refugees. His father Hakim (Samir Elhakim) was a journalist once upon a time, and for the most part, their household seems fairly strict, although his younger sister, Dalila (Mahia Zrouki) seems slightly more rebellious. Ahmed's tried to keep to his more stringent family's expectation and the expectations of his Muslim upbringing, but Farah, who actually is from Tunisia, seems more open to the more modern and liberal ideals of expressing oneselves, including sexually that have long been prevalent in the literal City of Love. In reality, she's only had sex with one other guy, but you know, religious or not, even a mild case of madonna/whore syndrome is genuinely a bitch to get over.

All this is overlapping with their Arab literature class, taught by Prof. Morel (Aurelia Petit) and this is also, a point of note, how "love" can be taught differently through expression. There's a buildup to an oral report that Ahmed's supposed to give, and he interprets a poem as being about the longing and rejecting of one's desire, love from afar, while most people would interpret the poem as being much more personal and sensual in it's nature. They don't dwell on it, but who knows who exactly is right? Hell, one of my literature professors in college, her favorite poem was T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song for J. Alfred Prufrock", and I think she wildly misinterpreted that poem; even she noted that she wasn't in the consensus on it. It's one of my favorites too, but no pretty curly-haired woman ever opened up a book of poems and handed it to me that was written by some Arab poet from the 13th Century, so perhaps my view is bias.

There's also the hangups of culture, within a similar culture here. Even though, Ahmed is Algerian and identifies as such, he's not only never lived or visited the country, he can't even read or write in Arabic. When confronted about it, his father said that he didn't think it would be necessary or essential for him. Maybe it isn't, but it's one more loss thread for a man who's own culture is as far apart from him as the surrounding French culture is.

Also, it is nice to get a sexy Muslim film, and a nice one about romance. Perhaps it ending with, you know, being awaken by getting laid, is a little too on-the-nose, but how often is that the ending for a coming-of-age male story anyway? The film is directed by Leyla Bouzid, her second feature, and she is a Tunisian woman whose background feels achingly similar to Farah's. In fact, this is her second feature to have a main young woman character named Farah that's a curly-haired Tunisian young woman. It's interesting that she doesn't make it Farah's journey into eroticism, and instead shifts it onto the male character. Perhaps you can read criticism of the modern Muslim faith and teachings in this, or at least, what growing up in that world can lead to unneeded repressed feelings in boys, and probably most girls as well, but I enjoyed "A Tale of Love and Desire" best, as a story of one person's eventual understanding that they are indeed too separate feelings.

CANON OF FILM: "THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW"

2026-05-31T03:19:21.372-07:00

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW (1964)

Director/Screenplay: Pier Paolo Pasolini

Around a year ago, I happen to catch "The Gospel According to St. Matthew" on TCM late at night, and watched it again for the first time in years. It might've been around Easter, I think; I'm sure there was some reason they were airing it as even the stations that don't have to go out of their way for the holidays also tend to at least find something to air. I remembered watching it the first time a couple decades earlier and being startled at how intriguing it actually was. I've rarely been influenced by the Bible or even religious works at all, especially film. Part of it is that most of them just aren't that interesting or even watchable if I'm being completely honest. (I don't even think "The Ten Commandments" is that great, at least the one they replay all the time; Demille's original silen black & white one is great though) I'm sure I read Matthew at some point during my brief time in elementary school where I got talked into going to catechism and eventually getting my Holy Communion, but by the time I had seen the film that sort of childlike wonder at the idea of a heavenly father had long-, well, to paraphrase the great philosopher George Carlin, I was Catholic before I reached the age of reason.

And yet, I couldn't turn off "The Gospel According to St. Matthew". I become transfixed by it every time I happen to come across it, and after watching it again, I've had it in the back of my mind, no matter what I was doing at that particular moment that at some point, and some point soon, if my life would ever calm down enough for me to have the time again to do so, that I had to watch it again and add it to this way-too-long abandoned Canon of Film of mine. Which is funny, 'cause it was out of a similar inspiration that the film even exists at all.

Another reason that's been my thought process is that, while I like this Canon I've put together so far, I clearly have a lot of films and filmmakers that it's missing and need to be put in, and I can make a pretty good argument that one of the big filmmakers I haven't added yet, is Pier Paolo Pasolini. I've only seen a couple Pasolini films, "The Gospel..." and his operatic interpretation of the twisted Greek tragedy "Madea" , two films that probably are among his least representative of his work, but- that's also,- like, it's one thing to say that a particular film doesn't typically represents his mileau, but that's also presuming his main artistic medium was film, and while he directed quite a lot of films, and even wrote the screenplays for many other, including a couple of Fellini's best, "Nights of Cabiria" and "La Dolce Vita", he was a renaissance man who did a little bit of everything, and he thought of himself as a poet first. Actually, renaissance man, might not be right,- the term I see used to describe him is that he was a "Public Intellectual"; you know, the kind of guy who would be acting, writing plays, debating major politics on the news, in-between publishing a lot of essays and novels in his spare time. Yeah, Pasolini was a very controversial figure in his day. He was openly homosexual, had affairs with young men, many of whom were probably not of legal age at the time, at least not in America. He was also a communist, whose father was an aristocratic Lieutenant who became a fascist under Mussolini's regime, and he became extremely critical of even a lot of Italy's more left-leaning political parties for eradicating much of the lower-caste cultures of the nation, and becoming too westernized in their economic and cultural interests. People on all sides had some issues with him, and, in this particular case, regarding his choice to adapt "...Matthew", he was also a staunch atheist. One who had quite a lot of conflict with the church; I mean this guy co-wrote "La Dolce Vita" and that movie opens up with a statue of Jesus being taken by helicopter, and then being followed by a news helicopter that's trying to get phone numbers from bikini girls on top of a roof.

Yet, he read the gospel one day while awaiting a meeting with Pope John XXIII, who was seeking out non-Catholic artists for an open discussion, and it apparently enraptured him, and decided to, simply film it. He didn't even write a script for it, he literally just kept the Gospel as close to intact as possible, and shot the film in black & white, in one of the poorest and most ancient areas of the nation. He didn't use traditional actors a lot to begin with, and here, his Jesus is a Spanish student he knew, Enrique Irozaqui, and he casted the film with mostly locals and other people he knew; even his mother plays an older version of Mary watching as Jesus, or Christo as he's credited is crucified. Pasolini, did come out of the 2nd Wave of Italian Neorealism, and he's trying to actually depict, life as it would've been during the time of Jesus, and-, it's an odd mix. Like, the fact that he's only documenting the Gospel, basically verbatim, means that, all the flaws of the storytelling aspects of the Gospel are there visually as well. There's often several cuts to black to and from Jesus saying something, mostly in closeup, not necessarily to or from someone or something, in particular, just words he said, words that may have been taken with meaning beforehand. Sometimes conflicts come and then Jesus says something, and then, nothing. The others, I guess, backed down, or were converted? Scenes start and end, like half-forgotten memories, which, yeah, the Gospel is a collection of scenes from Jesus's life, purportedly spoken by an eyewitness, although there's a lot of debate about that even among Christian Biblical scholars on who exactly wrote that gospel, and either way, it was most likely written long after Jesus's death, so it makes sense that the movie can seem random and fragmented like recalling memories out of time and order and context a bit, because the Gospel itself is a bit of a conflicted state like that.

Oddly, it also makes the story more spiritually inspiring, by being so accurate that this is most definitely the least deified Jesus ever put on screen, that humanity of the conflict helps make his actual words, more enlightening spiritually. Jesus, the person, has always been way more interesting than Jesus, the son of God, or God himself. In that respects, it does become apparent that Pasolini and Jesus had a lot in common. They were both philosophers, political activists, both hated the petit bourgeoisie and were very critical of capitalistism and it's role in government. Both had artistic outlets, where Pasolini was a poet, playwright, filmmaker,... Jesus was a teacher, a carpenter, a magician....

Oh, and they were also both gruesomely killed. Yeah, after what became his last film, the infamous, "Salo, or 120 Days of Sodom," he was,- killed on the street in Ostia, Italy. Actually "Killed" is really understating this 'cause he wasn't just randomly killed; he was kidnapped, beaten, tortured, had his testicales crushed, had several bruises and broken bones, before his body was then, run over by his own car, several times, and then, partially covered in petrol and set on fire, burning much of his body. Yeah, and it's still a mystery who actually were the perpetrators, although it's clear several people were definitely involved and it was definitely a contract killing. One teenager was sentenced for playing a part in his death for nine years in prison, but he has recanted his testimony since, claiming to being forced to take blame from people with a "Southern Accent", and some DNA evidence and witness statements now seem to link the death to a far-right terrorist group called Banda Della Magliana, which was involved or suspected of being involved in several gruesome incidents over the years in Italy, everything from the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II to the Bologna Massacre to several assassinations of politicians and journalists-, the Years of Lead were pretty brutal on all sides.... It's hard to even say how or why Pasolini got caught in the middle of it, although on some level, it's easy to see how, and from his perspective, this kind of ending for him might've seemed inevitable. Perhaps that's why he must've felt a kinship with Jesus, and why Matthew effected him enough to make such a singular biblical film. One that's not an overblown epic or glofification of Jesus or even of Christianity or faith, but one that's as straight-forward a telling of the Bible as one can, faults and all.

And yet, some still try to make it more cinematic; in order to watch this, I highly recommend streaming on the Criterion Channel or getting the Criterion DVD. You can find a version of the film, most anywhere, but years ago, somebody made a colorised and edited version of "The Gospel According to St. Matthew" that's available most everywhere on the internet. It's not watchable, and frankly insulting. Apparently the Weinsteins were behind that version, which cuts about forty minutes from the film. I've seen some have claimed that it was originally supposed to be in color and that they're bringing it to it's original version, that's not true at all; it was shot in glorious black and white by Tonino Delli Colli, one of Italy's greatest cinematographers; he shot films for everybody from Federico Fellini to Roberto Benigni, but he's probably most famous for his work with Sergio Leone, including "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly", "Once Upon a Time in the West," and "Once Upon a Time in America",- the guy could shoot in color if he wanted to, and it would look a ton better than it does in any colorized version of "The Gospel..." Also, Pasolini tried to tell the entire Gospel without anything taken out, so why edit out forty minutes, unless you were trying to give it a more traditional narrative. That kind of tainting might be worst than getting run over and burned to death honestly. Just avoid that version at all costs; it's literal blasphemy.

In terms of being inspired by Jesus, this is the one film that I most recommend. And it's definitely proof that we should probably look to non-believers more often in trying to find the truth of our faith and spiritualness. Perhaps everybody can find more in Jesus that way.

MOVIE REVIEWS: "EMILIA PEREZ", "THE SUBSTANCE", "CONCLAVE", "NOSFERATU" (Eggers), "NICKEL BOYS", "SUGARCANE", "SOUNDTRACK TO A COUP D'ETAT", "ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT", "THELMA" (Margolin) and "MY CHILDHOOD, MY COUNTRY: 20 YEARS IN AFGHANISTAN"!

2026-04-05T05:55:00.000-07:00

I didn't say much about the Oscars this year; I did watch the show, and sure, I could've given a few minor criticisms if I live-tweeted it or something, but honestly there wasn't anything that egregious, and frankly it was just a good show in general, and that's about all I ask for these days. Conan did good, and the winners, eh-, well I haven't seen most of the films or nominees, so I didn't feel too right criticizing or complaining, but they seemed okay to me. The few I had seen I basically agreed with, although one of the films that tied for Live-Action Short Film was one that I thought was terrible, but I seemed to be in the minority on that one.

There's not too much else going on at the moment, even though it does take me longer to get out these blogposts than ever. I actually intended to stop writing commentaries in general, to be honest, I know my last blog on A.I. ended up what I last posted, but actually I was hoping to do fewer and fewer of those and mostly make this blog in the future be focused in on movie reviews, with Canon of Film posts in between. That's another reason I wasn't particularly infatuated with the Academy Awards as I had other years with this blog, modern movies have interested me less and less lately, and I kinda just hope to watch and rewatch older films in the immediate future. Of course, the ever-growing, constantly updating personal self-imposed algorithm that tells me what films/tv shows to watch next wouldn't completely allow that, so all the reviews here are clearly from the recent past, and a lot of them were Oscars and other award show darlings, but I still intend to focus more on that for now. Part of it is that I have other projects outside the blog I'm working on, another part is that I just feel like I have less to say about the state of cinema and entertainment for now, and frankly I only want to post commentaries when I feel like I have something to add to the discourse, in the meantime, I feel like I would rather just talk more about the movies I watch, the new-er-ish, ones that I review here and occasionally the ones I love and admire from the past. Hopefully, I'll be doing more of the latter very soon.

Anyway, let's get to this edition of our reviews!

EMILIA PEREZ (2024) Director: Jacques Audiard

⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2

So, this was the movie that evvvv-ver-y-body, seemed to have an opinion on. By far the most controversial film among last year's Oscars' Best Picture nominees. I didn't listen closely to all the controveries when they were going on, other than from a cursory view, 'cause I hadn't seen it, and frankly didn't want to say anything until I had. Now that I have and went back, and a quick google search later, umm, hmmm. Well, there's definitely some baggage with this film. Hell, just the premise of it will definitely get a few people up in arms. I'll tell you though, the first thing I really noticed that was strange for me, wasn't any of the Twitter issues or anything, but it was the, well, the curious director behind it.

If you were to ask me, who would be making a Spanish-language musical about a Mexican drug kingpin who goes through a sex change operation, believe it or not, there'd be a few names I'd think of. Pedro Almodovar comes to mind immediately. I can even see Del Toro or Inarritu trying it. I don't think Alfonso Arau is still directing, but would it be that surprising for the guy who made "Like Water for Chocolate" to tackle this? (I mean, other than the fact that he's 90-something now.) But, instead, it's Jacques Audiard, a French filmmaker. A good one, one of my favorite in recent years actually. "Read My Lips", "Dheepan", "A Prophet" all great films there. My favorite of his is "Rust and Bone" which is the film I like to pretend is actually the movie Marion Cotillard won her Oscar for instead of the messy Edith Piaf biopic, "La Vie En Rose". None of those other films of his are musicals though, although there is a lot of modern music in "Rust and Bone", and to be fair, he did start out by making music videos, so it's not completely out of his wheelhouse. And actually, come to think of it, there is a lot of parallel themes in those films that you can bring in to "Emilia Perez". Cotillard's character was as an animal performer/trainer at a water park show that lost her legs in an accident, "Read My Lips" is about a deaf girl who decides to get caught up in with a thief to pull off a con. There's a body issues theme going on. There's a lot of criminality in his films too. They're also, not always limited to just France and the French, "Dheepan" is about a Sri Lanka immigrant who was a Tamil freedom fighter trying to protect his new family while struggling to make it in Paris. No, this isn't that unusual, I guess; the deeper you look this makes a little more sense why he's the one behind this film.

That still doesn't answer the question of whether this is a good film, or even besides that, whether all this is a good thing for him to be making. His weakest recent film is his only American film, the interesting but forgettable western "The Sisters Brothers". So maybe, he doesn't necessarily translate well outside of his native France? That's a possibility, and not necessarily a negative, I wouldn't want to see Tarkovsky try make a Hollywood blockbuster. And one of the controversies surrounding the film, is around how, not-Mexican a lot of this film is.

I can go into how most of the main actors are not of Mexican descent, or the fact that most of the film was made in Europe, and mostly in France from what I heard, but let's looks at the story, which yes, is very much not Mexican. Is based off on one of Audiard's operas, which itself was inspried by a chapter in a French novel. The titular character is Manitas (Oscar nominee Karla Sofia Garcon) when we first meet her-, well, actually, we don't meet her first, we meet Rita (Oscar-winner Zoe Saldana) who's a disgruntled defense lawyer working for some big name clients and a big name lawfirm, although she's the biggest help in getting some of the richest and probably guiltiest people off, and she's rarely given the credit for it. Manitas, eventually finds her, and convinces her to help him out as he plans to retire as the leader of the largest cartel in the country. He does this, by saying that he wants to secretly and securely transition into a woman, and he's hiring her to basically arrange it, literally flying all across the world to learn about the procedure, procure the proper physician and surgeons, getting Manita's wife Jessi (Selena Gomez) and their kids out of the country for their protection while he's on the run, and eventually, he has his death faked in order to begin his life as a transitioned woman.

These two meet again, not by chance, four years later, and now, Emilia is trying to get his kids and wife back. They're not aware that he's Manitas, but they come back to Mexico and stay at her mansion, and meanwhile, with Rita's help, begins establishing charities for those who've lost loved ones, during the drug wars that have continued being slaughterous since Manitas's "death". She even meets Epifania (Adriana Paz) a widow of the drug wars, who she starts dating, while Jessi rekindles a secret relationship she had with Gustavo (Edgar Ramirez) who she was having an affair with during the later years of her marriage to Manitas.

(Deep sigh)

Okay, I have no idea if any of this sounds remotely plausible to the current status of the Mexican cartels, which,- well, recent news makes some of this seem more realistic honestly, but I'm not going there. What all this does feel a lot like, is a telenovela. I mean, I'd actually be surprised if something like this hasn't happened on some telenovela before, everything except for maybe the sex change,- I mean, even the music I bet. I'm surprised soap operas don't have more musical numbers honestly; it's literally in the genre's name-, well it's American name. But, material wise, yeah, I'm not surprised this comes from an opera. People who think operas are like, the most stuffy of literary mediums, have never looked deeply into most of the stories in them, but again, the word's in the name of the genre, for a reason; they're full of all his romantic melodrama and love and sex and death and cheating and murder,- and yeah, I buy that even a modern form of this genre would simplify the cartel trade this much to tell their story. The only thing missing in this is a villain with an evil mustache to twirl while smacking his wife and fucking his mistress.

So, I have no idea if this passes the Mexican test, but it felt like it passed it enough story-wise for me, and frankly I was entertained. I was caught up in what was going to happen, and how it unfolded and I wasn't sure exactly how, but I knew it would somehow end tragically. In fact, this being a musical made me realize the movie's biggest issue with claiming that it's a good Mexican representation, (And no, I'm not even going to pretend to get into the argument of whether this was a good representation of gender dismorphia or trans representation,- I'm just, no, I'm not going there. Comment section that's all yours.) 'cause the story that this felt the most familiar to me, was a very French piece of literature.

Like, one of the big ones. About a criminal, who escapes his past by creating a new identity and begins to become a beacon of the area that he's around before his past suddenly comes back wanting to take him back to his criminal ways, while there's several new figures of love in their own very complicated life, and there's also a rebellion and/or war in the middle of it, one for the soul of the country too?!

Oh, and it was also adapted into a musical!? I mean, really, there's some serious "Les Miserables" fingerprints all over this. That musical eventually got adapted into a feature film that polarized a lot of critics and fans as well. I've seen multiple versions of the story in film, and even tried reading the Victor Hugo novel at times, for me, I always thought the musical is the best medium to tell that story. You can get through a lot of complicated ideas, conflicts and emotions in a musical while also getting out some much needed exposition, way quicker and better in song than I think you can in other genres, and okay-, this wasn't perfect with all it's exposition in the songs,- they apparently got some things wrong about vaginaplastia during the hospital musical number. Also, the movie's best number, the "El Mal" segment that went over the corruption of the entire room that Emilia was heading over for her charity, also kinda seemed odd, particularly in how she invited and still knew a lot of the local cartel leaders even after transitioning and faking her death. Interesting that they didn't particularly care about her leaving the life or the fact that she recently became, well, a she. That seems like-, well a progressive take, but maybe still an unusual one, but yeah, that scene probably won Saldana her Oscar. She in particular is great in this, although another argument is that she got nominated and won in Supporting Actress, and that probably is category fraud. And that one, I will take a stand on, 'cause yes, this was category fraud; they should've both been considered leads. I can see the argument for Supporting, but she has more screen time, for the majority of the film she's the main character we're following...- yeah, congrats on the Oscar campaign team on that one, but I don't blame them for doing that either, she deserved to be honored, and her and Garcon's performances alone are worth the watch.

It is otherwise a mess of a musical, but it's a fascinating mess, perhaps of misintent hubris, but I'd much rather be on the side of defending this. It's an audacious film, and maybe Audiard went a little too close to the sun, but you know, he was aiming for the sun, and he came close to it. I applaud that. It looks and feels like an over-the-top melodramatic, emotional rollercoaster of a soap opera, or just like a regular opera, really, and I think if it's accepted as that, it's a much more enjoyable experience.

THE SUBSTANCE (2024) Director: Coralie Fargeat

⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2

Oh boy, I've been waiting and hearing about this one, and yikes, I was not disappointed.

Man, I don't even know where to start on this one. I guess this isn't a new subject, the fading youth of a major star actress, and the All About Eve up-and-comer coming in to replace her,- I'm not even sure it's new in this subgenre of body horror, but man, this is a hell of a way to go about it. Coralie Fargeat is one of the big female directors who's suddenly hit the world of horror, and not just any horror films, body horror films. I liked her debut feature, "Revenge" quite a bit, and I wonder how much that movie has to do with this one, 'cause weirdly they're both about survival. In "Revenge", a young woman is raped, assaulted and left for dead by a gang of rich cheating older men, and she somehow manages on her own to, not only survive, but, well, get revenge on them. (Sidenote: there should absolutely be a law against naming your movie, "Revenge", there's way too many movies with that title.) But yeah, she did what she could to survive, and here, you can kinda argue that same thing, that Elisabeth Sparkle (Oscar-nominee Demi Moore) is doing what it takes to survive.

Elisabeth is a big time actress, purportedly an Oscar-winner who's turning 50, and she finds out after a taping of her,- um, exercise show...-? Ummm-, oh-kay,- the whole world of fame, in this movie, is so outlandish and surreal that I think taking any of it literally, is going give you logical thinking cramps, like I think this movie takes place in the same universe as that game show in "Requiem for a Dream", which,- yeah, actually Fargeat is really influenced by Aronofsky now that I'm thinking about it, especially his early work.

Anyway, Sparkle has a star on the walk of fame for her movies and now she's being fired from her exercise show 'cause she's turned 50. Even if you're able to still do a regular exercise routine show on TV,-, which, btw, eh, just recording a single exercise tape of something, is actually, really fucking hard. Like, anybody remember that reality show, "Workout", the Bravo show that took place at the Beverly Hills Gym, with Jackie Warner? Anyway, one of the later episodes of that series, they record an exercise video, and it's brutal! It took like ten hours, and remember, they have to be exercising the whole way! Like, fuck! Like, go watch that old Jane Fonda video and try to keep up and then, imagine having to do that for the next 12 hours to get enough footage! But apparently, in this world, you can take over that show and become a huge star, and then be out on your ass if you're too old. At least that's what we get from the really grotesque and eccentric producer, Harvey (Dennis Quaid), hmm-mm, yes, Harvey, is his name..., and I'm gonna leave it at that.

Well, eventually, Harvey, does replace and find a new star with Sue (Oscar-nominee Margaret Qualley), just Sue. Who is Sue? Umm, it might've been better if she was called Eve, but she came up with the name Sue in the casting session. Um, yeah, I'm not gonna explain Sue, other than to say that she's Elisabeth's replacement and now they're competing with each other. How, can somebody older try to compete with somebody younger and more beautiful, well, after a car accident, Elisabeth got a note from a nurse to go to a secret place that provides her with the titular "The Substance" that she has to take regularly in order to stay young and even get younger. The Substance does of course have some side effects, like any mysterious product that claims to make you seem younger would, and this is where the body horror comes in, and I'm trying to figure out how much else I can say, and frankly the less I think I can say, the better. Other than to say that the events and how they're depicted in the rest of the movie and so beyond outlandish and dive headfirst into the most absurd and surreal depictions of, what we're just gonna call "Fame", for lack of a better word, that it can only reasonably be understood as some kind of insular Kafkaesque nightmare logic, perhaps with a touch of the drug illusions you'd read about in a William S. Burroughs novel.

One thing that's kinda odd to me, is how lonely fame seems to be. Or, at least, how lonely and insular fame is for Elisabeth Sparkle. The way it's depicted in the movie, it appears to be the only thing that she wants and craves, and she's often alone. Often at home alone, usually staring at herself in the mirror, starving, hysterical, naked, dragging herself along her tiled bathroom floor, and, looking for an angry fix. Well, maybe she's not starving, for reasons beyond my understanding, her going-away gift given to her by Harvey, and chipped in by others, was bizarrely, a French cookbook..., um...- that sounds like the weirdest going-away gift I can think of, especially for somebody known for an exercise show? (Also, isn't that like, the one profession in hollywood where the older you are and still look good, the better it would be for you to be doing it? Like, Jack LaLanne was in exercise commercials 'til he was in his 90s!- I'm sorry, she's making a larger point and just going as over-the-top as possible with the exercise bit,- like, the legwarmers, and I know that, I get it,- and yet it still just seems like such a strikingly odd choice.) Like, there's a subtext going on here, that Elisabeth Sparkle is, probably a lousy person to be around, 'cause there seems to be nobody around her, and we, don't learn why. Like, she does run into "fans", only one of them, a former high school classmate of hers, Fred (Edward Hamilton-Clarke) who seems remotely interested in her as a human being, and even then, he might just be a starfucker who's only got the one chance to fuck a star, and even then, after her supposed fame was up. There's no husband, no boyfriend, no girlfriend, no friends at all, no kids,... Even for famous stars, and ones who are actually fairly known for being hard-to-work-with, this is kinda odd.

Perhaps, I'm trying to look for immediate inspiration without diving headfirst into the hypertext. Obviously, I can think of tons of actresses who've struggled in some ways, or taken steps to combat either the ageism in Hollywood, or the aging process against themselves through thinks like strict diet, extreme exercise practices, plastic surgery, or even worst and more grotesque versions of body dismorphia. Including Demi Moore, who, to dive into the hypertext, who, even though she's definitely taken more than her fair share of roles that aren't focuses so much on her appearance, has definitely been defined for most of her career for how beautiful she's been, and for that matter, how drastic she's been willing to go from showing off her body in demanding roles, to altering her body in severe ways, and going back and forth again, and even completely abandoning acting on multiple occasions for very prolongued periods of her career, sometimes at the top of her career. But either way, the times that she's been most pushed as a major movie star, like, "Ghost", "Indecent Proposal", "Striptease", "G.I. Jane", and that "Charlie's Angel's" sequel nobody wants to remember exists, much, if not, most of the attention, was based around, how she looked. I'm only bringing this up because it's one of those performances where everybody else in the audience would be thinking about that; it's part of why she finally got an Oscar nomination for this film, not that she doesn't deserve it, she does, but the narrative for her helps.

Meanwhile Margaret Qualley, who also got nominated, I've seen in two films, this and "Poor Things", and it's kinda odd to me, that both times, she's playing a literal creation. That's- I hope that's a typecasting that goes away, 'cause I might argue she gives an even better performance as a bright-eyed young ambitious starlet who'll do just as much, if not more, to keep her fame and her perfect swimsuit model looks.

The real star though is the director. What bends this movie to me, is mostly surrounding her, 'cause, as much as I might wanna hypothesize ways to make this story just as good, but use a more naturalistic storytelling structure for a metafilm about Hollywood, like, if Robert Altman combined the horror of this film with the hollywood of "The Player" and the surrealism of "3 Women", I bet that would be interesting, and selfishly I might enjoy it more, but it wouldn't be as striking and compelling. Fargeat's intense focusing on the close-ups of the gross and the grotesque, countered with the photoshopped lusciousness of the gazeworthy and awed at. The intense Aronofsky-esque quick-cutting that's borders on the hypnotic and obsessive. In fact, the more I watched this film, on top of some of the other major body horror figures like Cronenberg that I could compare her influence-wise, this movie in particular feels like she was inspired by Darren Aronofsky's best film, "Requiem for a Dream". And you could argue, they're pretty similar, if you think of fame as an addicted drug that our characters can't live without. I mean, there's a literal drug involved, and it does graphically change the characters' appearances the more it's used. (Come to think of it, there's almost as many fetal positions in this film as their is that film too.) But, Aronofsky's was getting mostly into the mind of his character, Fargeat, is far more visceral and physical in her approach, from beginning to end. I can't blame her, she's right about what women are forced to and in some cases are willing to do to their bodies for,- well, not even fame, even just getting basic acting gigs sometimes.

There's a moment during a casting call where a couple producers talk about some unseen actress they just saw and they talk about how they wish her breasts were on her face instead of her nose. That's harsh, and ridiculously over-the-top and reductive but honestly, it's more true than you'd think. Like, have you ever seen a pre-nose job photo of Lisa Kudrow? I have, and she's still beautiful and a great talented actress, but I'd be hard-pressed to tell her that she made the wrong decision by getting that nose job, and I doubt she regrets it. I've also seen what bad plastic surgery does and that's before getting into such deadly activities like eating disorders and extreme exercising have done to a lot of Hollywood stars, particularly women. And, if I have to play devil's advocate, and apparently I feel like I do if I'm writing this, there's lighting and photography reasons why, say, HBO used to have a casting agent on hand just to determine what breasts were good enough to be shown on screen on episodes of "The Sopranos" and their other TV shows; some breasts are harder to photograph well than others.

(Shrugs)

And Jenna Fischer's wonderful book "The Actor's Life" talks about how her accidentally gaining an extra couple pounds meant that the costume designer's perfectly tailored buttoned-down shirt that she worked days on, couldn't be used in a shot on in "Walk Hard...", so it's not just looks-obsession for looks-obsession sake, sure,- but way too much of it is an obsession on looks. "The Substance" dives head first in the deep end of that pool and isn't afraid to land splat, right on concrete steps of the Walk of Fame, leaving us with a bloody, gory, nauseating look at beauty extremes we put on ourselves and those that the industry thrusts upon on.

CONCLAVE (2024) Director: Edward Berger

⭐⭐⭐1/2

You know, maybe this is my own naivete, perhaps a small holdover belief from before I reached the age of reason, but, you know, at least in regards to the process of the "Conclave", at least in terms of the modern ones, I don't actually think there's nearly as much politicking that goes on there, than we'd like to think. I'm fairly confident that at the top there's far less going on, at least, less than there was in the past, 'cause if you know anything about the history of the Papacy, than you absolutely know that this is not remotely true, there was tons of politicking in the past, but in modern times, I think it's far less than we think. Ideally-, (Slight chuckle) you know, I tried explaining this to somebody, during the conclave last year, somebody who wasn't Roman Catholic, and probably worships at the alter of whatever congealed conglomerate of pop culture slime that TikTok spits out at her, but she hears of the practice and she can't go off of the idea that it is a vote, and an election, and whatnot,- but like, see, that's the kind of thing that's technically true, but if you try telling that to somebody who's Catholic, even a lapse one like me, they'll-, well, that...-, that's just simply not how they think of it. The Cardinlas are not voters trying to be persueded or corrupted by the best of multiple bad options, they're insisting, waiting on God to tell them who should be the one that most represents him. In their mind, (Eye roll) again, ideally, it's not their vote, it's God's vote, and they are only a mere vessel for which that vote shall be placed. The Pope isn't chosen by Cardinals, no, pope's are chosen by God, and it's through the Cardinals for which God has ordained to be his voice and God expresses his wisdom who shall next be his human embodiment on Earth, who we call the Pope.

This is why, we, really should be talking about how a pope, in our lifetimes, resigned from the office way the hell, 'cause, seriously, what-the-fuck, the Pope is literally defying God's will! Like, that shouldn't happen. We should really be talking about that, the last time that happened previously, was a century and a half before Columbus discovered the New World! It should be the most shocking thing the papacy ever did in our lifetime, until they did something even more impossible-to-believe actually happened in my lifetime and named an American pope, but I digress.

(Actually, no, I won't digress 'cause do you guys have any idea, how ridiculous that sounded before it actually happen. Like, not only did I literally tell that person that their wasn't a shot in Hell that an American would ever be Pope, like a few days before it happened, but I'm-, I won't go into too many details, but one of my personal projects is a sci-fi idea that takes place like five or six centuries into the future, and I had an idea for an episode to involve there being a conclave going on at that time, and I would've said the same joke about how an American wouldn't be pope even then, and here's the real kicker, the zinger to that punchline would've been that by the end of the episode, they would've named the first ever Chinese pope. Like, that is literally how impossible, ridiculous and absurb that concept would be, and I have would've had no problem making such a prediction as though that was a futuristic prognostication that I would've thought was going to be true, that's how unbelievable that genuinely was! GRRRRRRR~!)

[Long deep breaths, sighs, long pause])

Anyway, "Conclave" takes place in, I presume modern time, although I couldn't exactly tell you when or where. It's apparently a world that's very unease, including terrorist attacks going on all through modern-day Europe and the Pope (Bruno Novelli) has just died. Cardinal Lawrence (Oscar-nominee Ralph Fiennes) is in charge of convening over the conclave, a position that he literally doesn't want; he confessed that he even submitted his resignation from the position to the Pope, but he rejected it. As the conclave goes on, it becomes clearer and clearer why as there is division among the Cardinals on who should be Pope, and there's also quite a large divergence among them about what the future of the church should be. Lawrence is originally pushing for Cardinal Bellini (Stanley Tucci) an American who's quite humble but also very progressive, but there's also Cardinal Tremblay (John Lithgow) a moderate Canadian pope who seems to be the most like a politician in the group, and perhaps has some scandals lurking, especially since he was one of the last to see the Pope alive before his passing. There's also Cardinal Adeyami (Lucien Msamati), who is an an African, and a black one at that, but perhaps is a little too socially conservative, although that's perhaps better than the more traditional choice, the bombastic Italian, Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellito), who's a staunch traditionalist in terms of Catholicism. These are very simple descriptions of all these characters, and it's also quite easy to look at them as conflicting points of view on and within the church currently. What happens over these days,-, well I don't want to give too much away. In fact, I'm pretty conflicted overall of what to even make of the events.

In trying to put my finger on it, but what exactly is this film trying to say about the church, or about conclaves? The movie's based on a novel by Richard Harris, and other than a name change or two and one Cardinal's location changed from Baghdad to Kabul, which-, actually that is sort of a weird thing, I should mention- Cardinal Benitez (Carlos Diehz) is an unexpected arrival to the conclave, because he was apparently named a cardinal en pectore,- which, yes, is technically a thing, kinda-, popes have named cardinals in secret before when they're in parts of the world where Catholicism is not particularly socially accepted, and potentially their lives would be in danger however, normally those Cardinals, unless their names are revealed before the death of the pope who named them, are not allowed to participate in a conclave, and this is concerning when he arrives unexpectedly. Now, the way they go around this is that they claim that the Pope, when he declared Benitez a Cardinal, rescinded that part of the conclave rules, which, um,...- I think that technically is possible. I could be wrong here, but from my understanding, If a pope ever did decide to enact that, I think he could, so sure, I guess this contrivance technically works.

I think my issue is how this film is so much of a mystery. I mean, the whole point of the conclave is that the Cardinals are secluded from the outside world and they have to decide who the next Pope is, so you would think this would be a lot of inner debate and discussion, but instead, there's quite a lot of eavesdropping and investigating, probably too much if we're being honest. At one point, Cardinal Lawrence even breaks into the Pope's room, which is literally sealed off and preserved per tradition after a Pope dies, which is true, and no, you're not supposed to break that seal, that's a big no-no. He's also brought in several people to secretly help out in finding out these things, Archbishop Wozniak (Jacek Koman) is investigating reports about Tremblay, his assistant Monsignor O'Malley (Brian F. O'Byrne) is looking into Benitez, as while he's got the documentation for his eminacy, they still have to match it to the papacy's, which was so secret they're still trying to investiage Benitez's own background, and just to make sure he is a legitimate cardinal. (And yes, that's happened before, fake cardinals have tried to sneak into a conclave, so this isn't unusual; the church is much weirder than you think.) He even brings in Sister Agnes (Oscar-nominee Isabella Rossellini), who has the housekeeper and caterer role for the conclave, which is-, honestly from what I've ever heard of the food at a conclave, is cooking the best food ever given to cardinals, but she's also important helping search and spread some information.

It's also kinda bizarre; I guess it works overall because of the skills of it's actors, but the movie feels like one of those paperback novels at an airport that's basically, let's get a high-profile situation and then add a murder to make it appealling, well, without the murder, but essentially it feels like that kind of mystery. Like an Alina Adams ice skating murder mystery novel. And I'm not sure that's the right approach. Wouldn't this film be more compelling if there was more debate and discussion about the futures of the Church, basically all we see in the conclave is everybody voting. At one point Lawrence, depressed by all the politicking tries voting for himself before he's interrupted, which, also absolutely not, NO! You're not allowed to vote for yourself, and no, you can't just write your own name; you have to sign the papers as well, so that's not a thing. (Also, you think God's telling you to be Pope, hell no, that would not be accepted by the papacy, once that informations brought up, you'd lose every vote and probably be asked to resign. I don't care how corrupt and political the Cardinals have become that would never have be tolerated. And don't tell me "Well, the ballots are destroyed, the complete results are secret...- like I said, you have to sign your ballot, they'd be aware after it's counted. [This was b.s. in that "Angels and Demons" movie too.]) It is kinda fascinating, that after all the investigations are mostly finished they actually do get to these discussions and it eventually leads to the Pope getting elected. I don't know though, I feel like the less of the other stuff and more of the discussions the better. In fact, getting to know these Cardinals through that discussion would be better.

"Conclave" is a movie that seems enthralling on original watch, but upon reflection you feel like there was far less there than their originally was. It's the first English language feature from Director Edward Berger; he did that remake of "All Quiet on the Western Front" a few years ago, that I also found more interesting than enthralling. He's a talented filmmaker although admittedly I've had some trouble really getting a grasp on him, and I feel like this is the film that should've done it though, but at the end I felt more cold from the movie, not that I needed something to uplift my religious spirits, something that would've also made me more skeptical of the church would've been good to, but I think he didn't want to pick one. There's some criticisms that I saw from those in the Catholic community and those outside it, that while the film is generally good, it is very much a Hollywood version of what a conclave would be; I don't necessarily disagree although I would add that that's a limitation of the book as well. For somebody who's not enticed by the majority of the modern Catholic church, the papal conclave is one of the practices that genuinely does fascinate and intrigue me but the movie didn't focus as much on the aspects of the conclave that intrigue me and ultimately despite the great performances and technical skills of the film, it's good, but it's just disappointing.

Also, really, you-, you want to choose that as your papal name? Have you, looked into other popes that had that name, buddy? Umm, let's just say they all weren't exactly so innocent, y'know?

NOSFERATU (2024) Director: Robert Eggers

⭐⭐1/2

I'm one of those weird people who's actually not that into the original "Nosferatu". It's a classic of German Expressionism of course, and it's infamously the first adaptation on film of Bram Stoker's "Dracula", which, honestly, has always kinda struck me as weird.Like, technically it's true-, actually, legally, it's true, so legal that the original film, technically shouldn't even exist. For those unfamiliar, and it's actually a long, more fascinating story, but the people behind the original "Nosferatu", they changed the names and some elements of the original novel in order to avoid legal action from Bram Stoker's widow, and that failed. In fact, she won a lawsuit and the court orders prints of the film to be destroyed, which happened, especially for the master prints, most of them were actually destroyed, and getting secondhand prints together from took awhile, although eventually they did, and cobbled together a pretty good cut and you can pretty easily find the original streaming, although you can also find a lot of questionable versions of it. I was gonna rewatch the original on Tubi before watching this one, but Tubi's got the colorized version for some reason. (I honestly can't believe that's still a thing in some parts of the internet. Don't colorize black and white films, people, it ruins them.) The film itself is still pretty terrifying, especially for an ancient silent film, but, maybe I just grew up on more modern vampire interpretations; my favorite "Dracula" is the original Tod Browning one from 1931, with Bela Lugosi; personally I always felt like "Nosferatu" fit closer to story to something like "Frankenstein" than a modern "Dracula". (Huh, there's a new "Frankenstein" adaptation out too.... Everything old is new again, I guess.) BTW, it does make perfect sense that Del Toro would redo Frankenstein while Eggers would redo "Nosferatu".

That said, I'm not yet sure how I feel about Eggers. He's clearly a lover of the classic horrors, but his background as a production designer is really what distinguishes him, 'cause his previous films were infamous for seemingly going the extra mile, is horror no less, of trying to recreate eras of the past. "The Witch", or "The VVitch" as it's supposed spelled, went to great lengths to incapsulate the world of early pilgrims in the 1600s and create this horror-fantasy of the Salem Witch Trials, and that was nothing compared to "The Lighthouse" which was a startling black-and-white two hander about two lighthouse workers on a turn-of-the-century New England island. I haven't seen his first real Hollywood film, "The Northman" quite yet, but overall it's an odd conflict, his style. He's almost got an anthropologic desire for authenticity and then he drifts into psychological and spiritual horror out of this recreated realism. He has definitely seen "Eraserhead" one-too many times, and that's not a negative, per se, but it's still an odd mix of inspirations that I'm not sure I fully get ahold of either.

Anyway, I didn't ultimately decide to compare the two versions, (I haven't seen the Werner Herzog adapation that he did in the '70s, so I'm not throwing that one into this mix either.) it has been awhile since I watched the original, but the essence I always got from it was that it was always a Frankenstein movie disguised as a vampire movie. This version, however, it's definitely more recognizable for me, as a "Dracula" story, and to be clear, "Dracula" is a very specific story. I know over a century of reimaginings and reinterpretations of the "Dracula" archetype has kinda twisted a lot of the original narrative, but "Dracula" mostly takes place in London, and involves the vampire as he tries to navigate and insert himself into the upper crust of London's elite; "Dracula" is a count, he is an aristocrat, and even though, he's from Transylvania, and lives in a horrifying castle, away from the rest of the people in the area, and everybody fears him, 'cause he'll suck your blood and all, he's trying to seduce and work his way up to the tops of society. There's other symbolic metaphorical meanings behind Dracula's attempt to infiltrate the bourgeoisie, but "Nosferatu",- well, even before Germany became Fascists, when the book came out they didn't really have this appreciation for the monarchy; in fact, after World War I, they had just gotten rid of it, so it does make sense that F.W. Murnau would get rid of that part when telling his version, and Eggers's version basically does this, but he's definitely going for more of the Ancient Eastern European folklore of vampires. So, the couple at the center are the Hutters, Thomas (Nicholas Hoult) a real-estate broker who's hoping to move up at the brokerage firm run by Herr Knock (Simon McBurney). He's recently married his young bride, Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), but she's begun having sleepwalking spells as well as other metephysical illnesses that confuse and dispell them both. Despite this, he's sent by his boss to Romania to help execute a purchase of a house to Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgaard) a disfigured old nobleman who's behavior seems more animalistic than human. After an uncomfortable negotiation, Thomas spends the night at his castle, but then both him and Ellen begin having weird dreams and nightmares that seem out of their control.

Of course it's naturally revealed that Orlok is indeed, the nosferatu, which,- honestly, that's something that's also a weird about this, "Nosferatu", is, not really a word. There's arguments about the intended origin of the term, most likely, it's a mistranslation of some other word that was intended as a descritive for vampirism, although nobody can even agree on which term that was,- or when it got applied even to the original film; it's not the name of anyone in the original movie, and basically it's stuck around because the original movie is a classic and it sounds scary, like it should be an old term for vampire. I think that's always been my holdup over the original is that, while I can appreciate it, I just prefer "Dracula" compared to most of what was changed for "Nosferatu". Now, Eggers does go back and add in some stuff that the original didn't. For one, I don't think of Murnau's "Nosferatu" as sexual, in any way, which in this movie, there is sex, I wouldn't call it erotic or arousing, but Orlok, basically is able to possess the mind of Emily, which as well as others who blood he's feasted on, but I prefer versions where that isn't so much possession of another's faculties, as they are, that person's faculties are so enraptured and aroused by the vampire that they essentially, let them in. In this version, it's definitely more folkloric and it actually makes the exposition characters who understands what's going on, in this case, Von Franz (Willem Dafoe) an occult scientist who recognizes Orlok as the demon possessing Emily, as a particularly believeable and frightening expositor. Especially in this time period and place, his character is very credible.

After that, other than a lot of scenes which may or may not be dreams or possessions of thoughts, so much so that I couldn't be sure I was watching "Nosferatu" or "A Nightmare on Elm Street", the movie soaks into the detail, and that's basically what determines whether this film works for you, do you like the details that Eggers goes into in telling this story or not? And he does research, the vampire eats into the chest, not the neck, as in old myths, they would go for your heart, and that's the blood center, for instance, apparently Eggers really liked that one. There's more graphic violence of course.

Honestly, the more I watched, the less I cared about the details; in fact, while some of them might be more accurate than others, but even within that, a lot of it just reminded me a lot of other horror movies and monsters, perhaps too much. Some of that is Eggers's own cinematic inspirations, a lot of it is just that this story has been inspiring to the horror genre for so long, it's just too difficult to tell a really straightforward telling of the story anymore.

Robert Eggers is really a pretty interesting rorschach test on how you analyze a filmmaker; if you admire the craft of filmmaking, the technical aspects, the effects, the makeup, the look, the style of the film, the work put into making the story as close to depicting it as how- well, it's not exactly how it happened, but how it could've happened if the more supernatural elements actually existed, than you'll probably like his "Nosferatu" more than I ultimately did, but if you're more intrigued by the telling of a good story and having and interesting pace, and a narrative that thrives in it's deconstructionistic narrative, than you might be limited in how much you like his films. I think that's where I'm at, 'cause his best films, "The WWitch" and especially "The Lighthouse", as fascinating as they were, I was more intrigued because I wasn't entirely sure what or how what was gonna happen, and "Nosferatu" is the opposite of that. You know what's gonna happen, so you're kinda just waiting for it to happen, and therefore all the exquisite details feel like window dressing as oppose to making the story better. I think that's why I've gotta ultimately pan this one; even when it drifted into being interested in how it's gonna tell the story, it ultimately wasn't different enough to draw me in. It might be enough for others, and I might appreciate the film more if I did do the direct comp with the original film, but as a standalone film, the movie didn't compel me the way I think it intended.

NICKEL BOYS (2024) Director: RaMell Ross

⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2

At about 25 minutes into "Nickel Boys", a movie with a fascinating if oft-putting motif of mostly showing the movie from the singular perspective of it's main character, Elwood (Ethan Harisse), the movie suddenly switches entirely into, a very familiar black-and-white scene. A rainy black and white scene shot of a dark road and two headlights coming towards the camera as an unknown voice is singing "Long Gone (from Bowling Green)", and I immediately recognize what it is; it's the opening from Stanley Kramer's film "The Defiant Ones", and a chill came over me. Depite this film being from the perspective of a young black man growing up in the South during the '50s and '60s, it was at this immediate moment that I knew that I had to fear for the worst of what could happen in this film.

For those not familiar with "The Defiant Ones", the film stars Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis as two chain gang convicts, obviously one black and one white, who have to find a way to work through their differences in order to escape. Stanley Kramer, was one of Hollywood's most socially-conscious filmmakers, maybe the most ever, especially back then. He made "Guess Who's Coming for Dinner?", "Inherit the Wind", my favorite is "Judgment at Nuremberg"; "The Defiant Ones" hasn't been as remembered but it's still a really stirring film, and the fact that it was made in the '50s is kinda astonishing today. "The Defiant Ones" isn't in his very best tier, but it might the most direct film he made about race, even moreso than "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?", but the way it's being used in this film,...- Like, it's put in the middle of a scene, a scene in which Elwood, is in the back of a cop car, although with two white young men, and are being taken to some place called "Nickel Academy". The scene flashes in front of our eyes real quick, because it's flashing in front of Elwood's eyes; recalling that films opening, and realizing similarities to his own situation. And you know, for all the times I've seen movies reference other movies, or movie characters reference other movies, I don't think I've ever seen that trick done before, certainly not done like this, and this well. I wonder if that's in the book this is based on?

"Nickel Boys" is adapted from a popular Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Colson Whitehead, and the book and the movie is inspired by the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, a juvenile,- (sighs, rolls eyes) a "reform" school for juvenile delinquents and...- honestly, I don't even want to go on, detailing what happened there; just look it up yourself on Wikipedia, or watch this film, if you don't want to, literally, see where the bodies were buried.... (Ugh, I want to punch somebody and I want to throw up.)

The titular "Nickel Boys" are the aforementioned Elwood, as well as Turner (Brandon Wilson). Elwood was hitchhiking to college when he got in a car that turned out to be stolen, and ended up there. Turner is a lifer there it seems. Elwood's idealist upbringing especially from his grandma Hattie (Aujanue Ellis-Taylor) gives him some hope and inspiration, and she's trying to get him out, and keep in touch. She tries to visit him, but is denied; she tries to hire a lawyer, but the lawyer himself ran off with her money and meanwhile, Elwood has to circumnavigate a strange world of segregation, corruption, abuse, of all kinds,...- again, I don't even want to go into all of it. Even the Reform school's annual boxing match between the black and white students,...- like, okay, a lot of people, from troubled backgrounds learn some form of pugilistic arts, traditionally; it's not unusual, it's not even that unusual a way to try to get out of your troubles, both economically or legally, but-, like, why would you have kids, 'cause these are mostly teenagers and younger, have an annual fight at the reform school, with each other, as like, a major yearly event, especially a segregated one, and have people betting on it,- like why would you do that? I think even prison boxing matches usually doesn't have anything that grotesque. I'm not sure that's from the book itself, or an addition from writer/director RaMell Ross, but unfortunately I have no doubt that's probably something that's happened somewhere at one of these places. I bet it's a creation of Ross though.

RaMell Ross has one of the more unique backgrounds for a filmmaker I've seen; he actually played college basketball at Georgetown before he ventured into art school. He earned an Oscar nomination a few years ago for his documentary, "Hale County This Morning, This Evening," about the daily lives of Hale County Alabama, one of the poorer counties in the South, and he spent a year there locally, and focused his camera on the people of the county, and if I remember that film correctly, there was a lot of sports in that film; I think he actually coached a high school basketball team while filming that movie. (I might be misremembering that honestly; I couldn't find the note about that to confirm that.) That film was intriguing, and lot of people did praise it pretty highly, comparing him to people like Charles Burnett, and-, y'know, I found it more of a curiosity than a groundbreaker, but with "Nickel Boys", yeah, I see it now.

It's not just that he's using this admittedly odd and oft-putting 1st-person camera angles, it's how he's using them; he's trying to give us different points of view. He switches between the first person POV of Elwood and Turner periodically, and although the timeline isn't linear, and there aren't a ton of scenes where we see the same scene from both their points of view, there are a couple. One of them involves an orientation given by one of the main guards, Spencer (Hamish Linklater). From Elwood's POV, the speech he's giving about what to expect at Nickels,-, it's delivered in a-, manner-of-fact kind of way. It's hard to describe if you're not seeing it, but it's done in a way where, it's like Spencer is aware that there's something brutally wrong with the system and the way things are going on, like a teacher knowing that they're teaching a part of the curriculum that they don't really believe they should be spending time on, but they still have to teach it anyway. Yet, when you see it again from Turner's perspective,- I mean, it's not R. Lee Emery in "Full Metal Jacket", it's not even George Kennedy in "Cool Hand Luke", but you can see that it's given with more force and deliverance. Which one is more accurate,- we don't know, and I'm not sure it really matters. Probably both at some point. One isn't necessarily wrong or right, what Ross is doing is using film to show different visual perspectives. How the ideals and moments and memories of the worlds they knew shaped their world views now.

Ross has often talked about how he believe people's inability to get out of their singular perspective is what prevents us most from coming together, and it's one thing to say that, it's another thing to show that in your art. Film in particular, can often be a very singular and unique perspective and even attempts to show multiple perspectives within film are really rarely more than just showing the multiple ideas from the filmmaker themselves. Even great films, Kieslowski's "The Double Life of Veronique" for instance, one of my favorite films, but even though that film depicts the world from two distinct characters, it's all Kieslowski. Ross, is trying to not do that, and you can make an argument that he might be closer than anyway to ever actually succeed at this.

Notice, Elwood's perspective is almost always shown from a first person perspective when he's younger, but when we skip to shots of him when he's older, (Daveed Diggs) it's-, usually shown from an over-the-shoulder perspective, almost like a Aronofsky's walking behind his subject shot,-, actually it feels more like, an angel's perspective, a guardian angel's that's floating over you.

I don't want to give anything else away. The only other thing I can add is that I see why some people seem to be willing to ride-or-die on this film while others might find it more of an accomplished curiosity. Like, even though I don't think anybody thinks the film should've been told linearly in time, but I would question why some scenes occur in certain parts of the films and think some could be switched and not lose anything in particular. It is nitpicking, but the story itself is, so traumatic that I think the only way you can really criticize it is in the way the story is told, but all that said, I'm not sure changing the way it's told would make it better; in fact, I think a lot would be lost. I do hope this becomes more of a unique signature for Ross and doesn't start a trend of shooting entire movies from this first-person camera perspective;- like there's been several creative ways to come up with first-person narratives in films, from voiceover to found footage to simply breaking the fourth wall, but this works for this film 'cause it helps tell this story better. If this starts a trend, than every bad uncreative amateur filmmaker's gonna accidentally remake the Prodigy music video for "Smack My Bitch Up", and we don't need one ninety-minute movie looking like that, much less a bunch.

Yeah, if I have to stretch that far to criticize than it's hardly worth it, but it is an unsettling film. It's probably just the subject matter and the uniqueness of the style and approach; I mean, even films I love which can have jarring first person narrative approaches, feel far more digestable that "Nickel Boys". I can easily see this movie regarded as an undeniable masterpiece in the years to come because of that. I hope that's the case honestly, I'd like to revisit this film later when I'm more able to be engrossed in the approach as opposed to just being impressed by it. It's absolutely a must-watch either way right now though. This is a film that needs to be viewed now and then needs to be revisited later.

SUGARCANE (2024) Directors: Emily Kassie and Julian Brave NoiseCat

⭐⭐⭐1/2

So, Canada's history with the treatments of their indiginious peoples, is almost as bad as the United States's history with how we treated our indiginious peoples, and, it might actually be worst somehow. That's sounds like a strange and disturbing statement to make, especially if you even take a glancing view at American history, but like, seriously, I wonder who was worst sometimes. The more stories that trickle down into America about Canada, you do wonder about them. Especially if you look at America right now, and see how much we've screwed up the country and try imagine Canada as a possible Utopia to escape to at some point. I bet they leave a lot of this stuff out of the Canadian History part of their Citizenship Exam. Although, I bet the Catholic Church leaves the story of St. Joseph's Mission out of their teachings up there as well.

Man, the Lord's Prayer's is disturbing when it's being forced to be recited by young First Nations children against their will, many of whom were victims of some serious atrocities.

"...Forgive us, our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us,"- you ever realize how fucked up that part of the prayer is? It's saying to first, "Forgive Us first, for our trespassing," and then, "as we forgive those;-" but what if they were the ones trespassing against us, which, is also often what was going on with the Catholic Church, and then it's saying to forgive us, because we forgive others who do it to us? Like, even if you wanna argue, "Well, it's a prayer to God," it's still insinuating that you need to be forgive those for the trespasses they're doing to you! It's so much more sickening the more you think about it. (I knew there was a reason I always liked the "Hail Mary" better.)

Anyway, "Sugarcane", refers to the Sugarcane Reserve, a First Nations reservation near Williams Lake in British Columbia, where the First Nations peoples known as the, Secwepemc [Pronounced She-whep-m], where the Canadian Government and the Catholic Church forced members of the Secwepemc to attend the Mission, separating them from their families and-, basically,-,well there's what they were supposedly trying to do, which, is already bad enough, but like, any discussion about indoctrinating the First Nations people into a forced cultural assimilation into Western ways is dwarfed by the events that apparently did actually occur there. Two hundred unmarked graves, some once they dig around there have little crosses on them, many of them might've been newborn children. Others might've been the students themselves. Director Julian Brave NoiseCat, is actually the son of one of the children born at the mission, one of the only ones to survive, and it wasn't for lack of trying to be killed.

(Sigh)

God, I don't even want to talk about what occurred there. They do show some of the "investigations", which is a weird word here; it's more-or-less just a word to describe trying to figure out, how pervasive the abuses that went on there were, and who/if it's even kinda possible to find out what happened to who, and let the surviving family members know, if there are any. Most of the film though, is often just talking to some of the people who were there, and slowly having them talk about what they or others might've suffered. Trying to piece together a bunch of fragments of horrors basically, but what's really going on, is that were seeing how this mission effected the entire area. So far, I've only discussed what happened to those who were there, but that's not taking into account anything that happened after to any of the survivors. There's a lot of suicides, alcohol and drug problems, violence....

(Sigh)

All the while, there's this struggle to continue to survive, not only the people themselves, but the culture, the Secwepemc, as well. One of the early scene shows Julian performing in a traditional native dance performance, where he actually wins the top prize in his category. Those scenes are interesting to intersperse with them, actually going to The Vatican to try to get,- well, they'll get apologies, but I mean, try getting more than that out of the Catholic Church even on their best day. The Prime Minister shows up at one convenient point and Trudeau kinda bumbles a question on whether or not he's there for the photoshoot more than anything else. The movie is surprisingly meditative, but, honestly that's probably because that's the only way the film could deal with such atrocities.

I've been going back and forth trying to figure how to rate this film. It's not exactly an entertaining subject, or filmed in a visually enthralling manner, but it does serve it's subject in about the best way it could, and considering that subject, it's a mini-miracle this film isn't completely unwatchable. I guess there's similar films about people struggling to live in the shadows of crimes against humanity, but....- I recall once hearing a story about a Canadian television show that had some indigenous characters in it, and how the people behind the show, who weren't indigenous people, struggled trying to force western storytelling structure into stories about indigenous people, because, our structures involve things like conflict and drama, and a lot of their stories just don't involve stuff like that. I wonder if my struggles with this documentary are similar as a viewer; I'm looking for a more concrete narrative of some kind, but that's not how goes and that's probably not how it should be told. "Sugarcane" could be more succinct in telling it's full story, but that's probably not the way it should be heard. It might make it more palatable to a general audience, but good lord, if there was ever a story that we shouldn't be able to easily digest, it's this one. Maybe it's poetic and proper that the film struggles with it as much as I am?

SOUNDTRACK TO A COUP D'ETAT (2024) Director: Johan Grimonprez

⭐⭐⭐

Something that I think gets a little lost when we look at-, well history, in general, but especially from having a very natural but limited localized view of history, is that, you kinda don't realize just how often so many different things were going on, at the same time. And not just in those weird TikTok videos where they tell what was happening in China was Jesus was alive or something like that, I mean, from geopolitical historical analyses. Cause, what was also going on in the world, does effect, how other countries and governments acted during those times. The Cold War, is a great example here, because we think we know, essentially what all the major players were doing, but even then....

A good example is shown here in this documentary, "Soundtrack to a Cout D'Etat", it's about the Cold War, but it's also about jazz music, which during the 1950s one of our biggest cultural exports and many of the great jazz and R&B performers of the day were touring the world as cultural liaisons, particularly in the Soviet Union. And, unbeknownst to many of them, those concerts and performances, done on behalf of the United States were often covers for some spy missions, including a few that were, at least, intended to be, pretty deadly. You might, dismiss that and go, okay, but that's not as atypical as it probably should've been for the time, but we were doing that, they were spying on us too? Eh, yeah, but there were other things going on, and it wasn't just the USSR. This movie is actually about, Africa, during that time. Why? Because that was when the decolonization of the continent was starting to take shape, and those jazz artists performed there too, and those performances, were often covers for missions. So much so that Nina Simone actually ended up being a spy inadvertantly at one point.

Even then, there's a lot of different layers to all of this, and, 'cause while some European countries left Africa rather ceremonially, others were a little more difficult...- hmm, you know, I get it, trying to explain all of this, it is convuluted, it is, jumping around like jazz music, trying to keep everything straight. In that sense, I guess the film works, in terms of like understanding all of the nuances of the footage and a few interviews they show,-, the whole movie, is mostly footage of everything going on, and then slowly telling the story of the assassintion of Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba by the Belgian,- well, government, slash, corporation whose interests were in the area. Yeah, nowadays you don't even hear about this story unless you're really paying attention in that one Billy Joel song, and it's basically the origin point of Africa's issue ever since, and a lot of this, is that the Cold War, was apart of it, because the Soviets backed Lumumba's regime, and it wasn't necessarily America being against it, although I can't imagine that the way Khruschev would pound the table at the UN when he was in favor of something made us like him more. Khruschev was utterly fascinating, and yeah, a lot of the time the more you look into a lot of this, the Soviets might've been onto more things than we were. It might help because the U.S. actually did stay away from Africa for the most part, this was all apart of a Soviets vs. Western Europe part of the Cold War, and a lot of Africa was caught in the middle, and apporpriately, the most caught in the middle, was the DRC, right in the middle of the continent. And the U.S. was pretty divided. A lot of those jazz performers had a lot of sympathies for what was going on there; Louis Armstrong nearly denounced America and threatened to move to Ghana for it, and even threatened to run for President in response to some of it.

For my money, it's all a little too complicated to set into a documentary like this one, even with al the jazz music soundtracking it. It's a fascinating experiment, but it doesn't make the intracacies of what happened more understandable or clear-cut, I'd argue it actually makes it harder to follow. It does make it eye-opening though; the one thing I did get out of this was looking at how history is often frame in a very narrow, narrative singular perspective, and how much the whole board of the world we really have to look at.

ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT (2024) Director: Payal Kapadia

⭐⭐⭐⭐

(Me, looking Wikipedia entry on "All We Imagine as Light")

Hmmm.

Academy Awards selection controversy

For the 97th Academy Awards, All We Imagine As Light was not selected to be submitted by either France or India, with the former submitting Emilia Pérez, and the latter submitting Laapataa Ladies. The film had been shortlisted for France's submission.^[39] The Film Federation of India's (FFI) decision to not submit the film was unexpected, with NPR's Diaa Hadid remarking that the film's international reception had "garnered raised hopes that India might finally have a serious contender for an Oscar in the best foreign film category".^[40] Many like Naman Ramachandran of Variety drew comparisons to India's decision to not select The Lunchbox (2013) and RRR (2022) for its Academy Awards submissions, particularly in light of the film's success at the Cannes Film Festival with it having won the Grand Jury Prize.^[41]

At the initial news announcing the selection of Laapataa Ladies, FFI president Ravi Kottarakara explained All That We Imagine As Light's exclusion, saying "The jury said that they were watching a European film taking place in India, not an Indian film taking place in India."^[42]

As I was looking through some analyses, and other critics, trying to fully decipher my own thoughts on "All We Imagine as Light" and I came across this blurb on the wikipedia page. I can kinda see both sides of this. Having now watched "All We Imagine as Light", I'll definitely say that, the movies that I often thought of watching it, well, they weren't exactly Indian films. Granted, that could just be me; India, is the one major, major, maaaaa-jor, film country that I consider having the biggest blind spot for, but then again, why do I have that blindspot? Now, I can analytically explain the overwhelmingly difficult task of even trying to decipher the Indian film industry, 'cause like, it's not just Bollywood, it's far more complex than that- it's far more complex to decipher than any other country; I'd argue that tackling Indian cinema for somebody who's not from India, it's more like trying to decipher like, minimum 20 different countries' cinemas. Then again though, being an American, for most of my life, Indian cinema hasn't easily been at my disposal. Perhaps, being an American it's vastly easier to become a more Western-centric cinephile, and perhaps having those influences primarily, means that we just don't fully understand what is Indian cinema.

That question alone, "What is Indian cinema?" is a loaded question btw, I know enough to know that even if I was more knowledgeable that I wouldn't begin to answer that question, but, that said, it is curious, that the Oscars, are noticeably lacking in Indian representation, especially considering just how beloved film is there and how many movies they make in India. They make considerably more films that any other country and yet, India's never won the Foreign Language Oscar, in fact, only three times has it ever been nominated, and of those three,... Well, "Mother India" is kind of a controversial film now, it's basically that country's "Gone with the Wind", but there's a certain argument that that film represents a certain idealist portrayl of India. There's also "Salaam Bombay" from Mira Nair, who is probably the most western filmmaker to ever come out of that country. Great filmmaker- I love most of her films, but did you know how western she is? She's so western, and this is completely true btw, that her son is the current mayor of New York City! She's that western-, I barely think of her as an Indian filmmaker; she's basically an American now. And the third one "Lagaan" is famous for being the only Bollywood film ever nominated in the category. You can definitely argue whether or not Bollywood is a good or bad representation India or Indian cinema in general, but to the general American public at large, anything we can call Bollywood represents India to the majority of us. I'm not sure how beloved "Lagaan" is, even in Bollywood circles; it's rarely a film I hear mentioned even as an essential Bollywood film, not as often as I hear something like older classics like "Pyaasa" or modern big ones like "Dilwale Dulhania le Jayenge" or my personal favorite "3 Idiots". (Shrugs) Maybe it is, and I'm not looking in the right places,-, but y'know, these are all semantics, but it is kind of the issue, like, do you need to have a film that feels less "Indian", whatever that means, to attract American/western audiences? It seems like the Oscars think so, but is it wrong to pick something that is more representative of the country? Again, I don't even know what that means.

"All We Imagine as Light" is from an Indian filmmaker who was born and studied film in India's biggest city, Mumbai, which is where most of this film takes place, it has an all Indian cast, and yet, while controversially it didn't get named India's representative for the Foreign Language Oscar, it also didn't make France's, which doesn't weird at first, but it was on that country's shortlist though. In fact, the country's listed for the film, are India, and four other different European countries.

So, if I'm saying, I like this film a lot, am I saying that I like this film, because of how European it is, or am I saying I like it because of how, non-Indian it is? People seemed to like it, a lot, including in India, but obviously, not as much as the rest of the world thinks India should like it.

On top of all that, including feeling more like a film I'd expect somebody like a Sofia Coppola to make than most filmmakers from India I've come across, the movie does feel like it has a pro-western perspective. The movie is about three working women, all people who work at a busy Mumbai hospital, mostly on the night shifts it seems. Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and Anu (Divya Prabha) are roommates and both of them are in the midst of some complicated romance situations. Prabha is married, but she hasn't seen her husband (Anandsami) in over a year, since they were married in fact. It's an arranged marriage, and he's gone to work in Germany, and only occasionally contacts her, and even then.... At one point, Prabha receives a very expensive and elaborate rice cooker, that it appears he sent, but they're not 100% sure he sent it, and if he did, why he sent it. Meanwhile Anu is having a secret hidden affair with Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon) a local Muslim man who she's quickly falling in love with. Now, in my reading of the movie, through a narrow lens of what I think I know about Indian culture, this is basically, the traditional marriage put up against the modern ideas of romance, and modernity is clearly winning in this film.

Even the third nurse, and older widow named Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), a cook at the hospital, is in the middle of a struggle involving her home being one of many that's attempted to being taken down and have a skyscraper placed on top of it. Her issue is even more complex as according to the law, she might not have an legal residency since her husband put everything in his name, a remnant of laws and traditions regarding marriage that seem downright archaic, and yet are probably more common today than we realize. Outside the bustling, ever-growing metropolis, Parvaty decides to return home to Ratnagari and Anu and Prabha come with her on the road trip, and it's that contrast of experiences between the city and the more local fishing village that's basically the jist of the movie, and where everything, I guess, comes ahead?

(Shrugs)

Despite all of this, "All We Imagine as Light" is more mood piece than anything; it is in a sense a meditation on love and life in a modern world, or a modern India, I should say, especially for women. The expectations put upon them by others, the lives they want to live, the contrast between the differing worlds of India, and how all of them are apart of everyone. There's a scene late in the film when one of the nurses saves a man from drowning in the village, and tries to get him to a hospital when she's told their isn't one, but that there is a medicine man. It's not that long a road trip, but they are different worlds, and the thing I like most is that I don't know if the movie picks one or the other. I think it's showing that both worlds can co-exist with each other, and that it's the culture and societies of both that lead to the world and people around it. Some people live in the village, others escape to it to get away from their troubles, and you can say the same thing about a metropolis like Mumbai, so people escape to the village to get away from there. I want to know if the movie has something deeper to say, but perhaps it doesn't and that's what makes it special. The film is the second feature from Kayal Kapadia, and it doesn't surprise me that she previously mostly worked in documentary films beforehand. She's clearly a fascinating and skilled filmmaker who's got something to say about her homeland, and at least compared to the artifice I've noted in most other modern Indian films I've encountered, she's going for, not only a more neorealist depiction of India, but also an emotional sense of ennui that connects both to India directly, but perhaps also is universal to those outside the country. Maybe it is good to see India as a world that's less,- for lack of a better word, foreign, to those outside of it?

(Shrugs)

Well, maybe that's a step too far, and perhaps a little too ignorant and dismissive, especially from a Western reviewer like myself. What I can tell you is that I enjoyed "All We Imagine as Light" immensley, and am looking forward to what else I get to see from director Payal Kapadia.

THELMA (2024) Director: Josh Margolin

⭐⭐⭐1/2

It's amazing how short June Squibb's career has actually been, at least on the screen. In her mid-'90s now, she's been around forever, but mostly worked in theater, on-and-off Broadway, mostly off though for the majority of her career, not even getting a SAG card until she was 55, and not acting in a theatrical film until 1990. Even then, it took decades before she became a household name after her Oscar-nominated performance in "Nebraska". Ever since then, she's been such a delight to see onscreen whenever she does pop up; honestly- you can basically cast her in a cameo role for a minute or two in the worst movie ever and I'd probably give the movie an extra star or two just for having her in it. Like, this film here, "Thelma", it does show off Squibb's wonderful acting, but mostly it's a film that's basically a love letter to a beloved grandmother, and because that grandmother is played by June, you love the film.

I'm not kidding with that, the film is the directorial debut for Josh Margolin, and his inspiration for the film was his beloved grandmother, who was ten years older than Squibb when the film was made, and is still alive last I checked, and how she was almost scammed out of $10,000 from scammers. I don't know, how much the rest of the film is based on fact, it's just probably a fun fantasy adventure, but it's made with such care and love, that real logic holes are just,- eh, not worth bringing up. The Margolin self-insert is Thelma's (Squibb) grandson Daniel (Fred Heichinger) and he's a quarterlife slacker who prefers to watch over his grandmother than to find a job. Thelma's a widow who lives alone after her husband passed, but is convinced to give $10,000 to a scammer who convinces her that her grandson was in an accident. It's believable at first, since Daniel's so close to her, but she feels embarrassed about it. Determined to get her money back, she goes to one of her husband's friends, Ben (Richard Roundtree, in his final film performance) who lives in an adult living facility, to help her travel across town to track down the money that she sent. He initially refuses, but Thelma steals his scooter and eventually, they're on the way, as they have to get across town, and all the while avoided Thelma's family, both her grandson and his parents, Alan and Gail (Clark Gregg and Parker Posey) who are concerned for her welfare.

There's some other good actors in the film, Roddy McDowell has a good scene near the end. There's not much else to the film, but I'm not complaining; I enjoyed every minute of this. I don't know if I would have if it wasn't June Squibb, or if the film wasn't shot with such care and delight. There's a lot of indies about quirky old people believe it or not, and sometimes they're not even really that quirky. Half of them seem to be just be set with the idea that a film be based around an older character and barely give them a plot or a story. It's almost like, the joke or the idea is just, they're old, (Or, whatever the filmmaker idea of "Old" or "Older" is) and that's supposed to be enough to make us care. Most of those films are forgettable honestly, and it's because it's not really a film that the filmmaker's care about; they're probably just making these films because it's easier to get a bigger named older actor to star in them than other actors, especially if it's a lead role. "Thelma" is made with care and love, in front of the camera and behind the camera. June Squibb always seems to be happy and excited for whatever part she gets, and Josh Margolin didn't make a movie about his grandmother, he made a movie inspired by his grandmother, that his grandmother would love. I guess I could complain that there's not more to it than that, but I don't see the point, let's just enjoy what we have.

MY CHILDHOOD, MY COUNTRY: 20 YEARS IN AFGHANISTAN (2021) Directors: Phil Grabsky and Shoaib Sharifi

⭐⭐⭐

(Sigh)

It's hard to remember this now, but there was a time, at the beginning of-, um, the beginning of,- man, I don't even know what call it, the Afghanistan War...? The Afghan Conflict? Looking it up real quick, reminded me that we had several other names for it. "Operation Enduring Freedon", or "Operation Freedom Sentinel".

(Eye roll, frustrated sigh)

Sorry, our military got it right once with "Desert Storm" and now they think they can name everything. But yeah, at the beginning, and it's hard to remember this from our end, but the Afghan people, were actually pretty excited about us coming in and taking out the Afghani government and the ruling Taliban, hoping that, especially for those in the far outstretches of the desert areas, that things were gonna be different and better for them. And you could say that is was, for awhile,- I mean, nobody liked the Taliban. They were and are, a virilently repressive regime, the most repressive in the world. And the fact that, yeah, they likely were hiding Osama Bin Laden at that point, and even if they physically weren't, there's a halfway decent chance that they knew who was, and they're refusal to help us find him, meant that we had to overtake them....- I mean, honestly, even with the power of hindsight, it wasn't unreasonable. And I believe we could've done it. Yes, the Taliban unfortunately took back over after Biden finally got us out of there after the longest "conflict" in American military history, but- well, that because we completely fucked up.

(Shrugs)

I-, I don't have a better word, but if there's any Afghanis reading this who lived through all that, um, well, sorry. Truly, we-, we screwed you guys over. Perhaps if things had gone differently and perfectly,.... well, I wish I could say that things would've turned out better, but I honestly don't know. From everything I've ever observed about our involvements in the Middle East, whether it was good-intentioned or not, it seems that us coming in will inevitably make it more likely that things will get worst than it will get better. "My Childhood, My Country: 20 Years in Afghanistan" basically documents the full length of our involvement, and boy did that bring up a lot of rough memories.

The film documents Mir, from a young child in the in deserts of Afghanistan from the moments the invasion breaks out to eventually, the day we pull out. He grows up to eventually become a cameraman in Kabul who spends most of his time, heading out to see, well, suicide bombers as they attack at various places within the ctiy. We meet his family, particularly his father, who seems,- well, he's definitely not Al-Qaeda or anything, but definitely brought up in the very traditional old ways of the Afghan people, but he also sees the world change around him as the war progresses. He's not angry at it, and seems surprisingly at ease with the camera, but they're living is pretty hard and rough. The clash between those desert caves to the big city is quite striking honestly.

I don't know how else to really consider this film honestly, especially as an American who lived through us doing all this, the film mostly makes me feel guilt more than anything. Obama's declaration of striving to help the Afghani people defend themselves,- I mean, it's hollow, knowing what we know now. Could they have ever defended themselves however? Even as,- well, better-intentioned as this invasion was than say, Iraq, it was probably a doomed prospect no matter what. We would've had to have completely wiped out Al-Qaeda, and then stayed around and continued fighting their remnants, basically for eternity, and that's supposing, that we actually did focus 100% on that, which we definitely did not. It looks like Mir ended up okay, all things considered though. Apparently, he's a taxi driver now that Al-Qaeda's taken over again. He's also married with a kid. I like his wife, she seems like the kind who will keep him in line.

(Shrugs)

I guess, all things considered, things are better than it could have been for him, I guess?

On the one hand, we failed the Afghanis, on the other hand, should we have ever put ourselves in a position, to fail them? These are depressing questions that I will leave to those who's ability to revisit this period of our history without feeling nauseated. Those people I suspect either have a blissful ignorance of our failures there, or have a much stronger stomach for it than I do.

RANDOMLY-GENERATED THOUGHTS ON A.I.: THE TRUE POTENTIAL PERILS AND BENEFITS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.

2026-01-21T00:44:00.000-08:00

So, a while ago I watched one of those "30 for 30"'s on ESPN. I watch those sometimes, they're usually good. I don't watch all of them or anything, but if there's one I'm interested in, I'll usually seek it out, and even if you're not a sports fan, there's some top quality filmmakers and top quality storytelling going on most of the time. Some are better than others, but ESPN's made enough of them now over the year that when they don't have sports to show and don't feeling like poisoning the airways Stephen A. Smith, or whatever random former athlete blowhard or obnoxious former sports journalist-turned obnoxious sports columnist they have on talking nonstop about whatever sports soap opera they're trying to conjur up, they'll some old "30 for 30" episodes. I personally wish they'd air something like women's 9-ball, or hell, just make "Sportscenter" more tolerable like it used to, but these docs are fine. Anyway, the one I was watching was called "Al Davis vs. The NFL".

It's fine on it's own if you want to watch it,- actually it is pretty interesting- it's about the Raiders' longtime owner Al Davis and how he fought the NFL, several times, but about the big one that got all the way to the Supreme Court was when he moved the Raiders from Oakland to Los Angeles in the early eighties, against the approval of the league. It's not a new or unusual story to me or anything, but I still liked the documentary for going over all of the details 'cause if you know about these people involved, particularly Raiders' longtime owner Al Davis and then-NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle, there's a lot of history that spreads decades there, and going over every point of it in one thing,- it's a good retelling of those events in ways that we might gloss over otherwise. That said, from a filmmaking and storytelling manner, they-, made a weird choice in my mind....

You see the documentary begins with shots of Allegiant Stadium, the Raiders' current home stadium in Las Vegas, NV, and begins with legendary announcer Brent Musberger talking about the then-new staidum 'cause the Raiders had just moved to Vegas from Oakland then he talks about how the stadium, despite being built years after the deaths of both Al Davis and Pete Rozelle, it claimed that, their ghosts, were still luring around the stadium and, in essence, haunting the place? It was weird, and then, the movie tells us that they hired actors to stand-in for Davis and Rozelle, and through the magic of a.i., has replicated their look and appearance for this documentary, essentially being interviewed about each other, in order to talk about the events of the documentary. In essence, they're giving their sides of the conflict, through the their recreations through artificial intelligence.

Umm, that was, a choice.... I-, hmm.... like, okay, I kinda see it, like, the Raiders fought to move to Los Angeles, and that opened the door for other teams to move, as well as instigate expansion, and the creation of the Raiders new stadium in the Vegas desert is something that literally couldn't have happened with the court cases and conflicts between these two titans of the league, so they're presence, while not literal, is still there. I kinda see the idea. On the other hand, Al Davis had nothing to do with the Raiders moving to Las Vegas, he passed away in 2011, it was Mark Davis, Al's son and current Raiders priority owner who moved the team to Las Vegas, and even though the state and taxpayers paid for a lot of that building, I think if anybody's fingerprints are on the building it's Mark's way more than Al, plus Pete Rozelle also had passed away long before, back in 1996, and he hadn't been commissioner for seven years prior to that,- I haven't been to Allegiant Stadium yet, even though I do live in Vegas, but I can't imagine there's the ghosts of these two there! I get it, it's a storytelling device, but it's a weird one, right, just on that level, it's weird, but like, that's not even the part that concerns me. Like,- why do the a.i. recreations, like, at all?

I mean, the documentary, is mostly archive news footage and highlights,- Al Davis and Pete Rozelle-, I guess they were a little coy to the cameras when talking about each other, but they didn't exactly make their feelings unknown about each other, nor were they particularly camera shy in general, there's plenty of footage of both of them, in general and talking about and to each other at times. And, okay a lot of the people who were around back then, they aren't here now, but not all of them. The movie has plenty of talking heads and it's not a super-obscure story they're telling. If you need to get, like, the "thoughts" of Davis and Rozelle, like, you don't need to get it from their own words. You could just, have like a close friends or representatives of both of them, just say the copy out loud of what their thoughts would've been, in their own words, describing what Davis and Rozelle felt and were thinking when appropriate, if you really couldn't find like, the silver bullet archive footage you want of them, but like, even then,- like, the main thing I'm getting at here, is that this was clearly a decision by the filmmakers, that wasn't necessary in order to tell this story.

Does that mean it's bad? Does it mean it's good? Umm..., honestly, I don't know. It has an effect, I'll say that, but I think it could've been done a different way.... I'm not bringing it up, 'cause I liked it or hated it, I'm bringing it up because it's the first time I saw something in a film or TV show that really genuinely made me think about artificial intelligence, or a.i. in terms of it's use in filmmaking. I don't know what other peoples' moments for that would've been, I'm sure most people have seen A.I. in films or television and certainly in online media recently and had a striking reaction to it, in one way or another. Honestly, I don't have an immediate story like that.... Maybe I haven't seen anything so striking before, or really, it's probably that I just have a terrible uncanny valley meter to begin with. (Sorry, I- I've heard people use that term for decades now and give me examples of it, and I don't get it. I've seen the Kyle Kallgren video about it, I've seen other things, and 99% of the time, I don't see what they see mean and I just don't get it in general. Whatever example you can name, I probably will not have have the same effect. Sorry animators.)

Anyway it wasn't the effect of it, so much as, the decision to use it at all. It's so clearly unnecessary that it also clearly means that it was a stylized choice by the filmmakers; they believed that it would improve the story. And this isn't an ESPN-thing, they're pretty hands-off on most of these docs in general, and also their latest "30 for 30", "Boo-Yah: A Portrait of Stuart Scott", begins with a specific note that all of that film's audio is source from archive footage and that none of the audio has been manipulated with, so I doubt this was something insisted upon or anything. (Yes, Stuart Scott's story is probably a little more personal to ESPN than this one about Al Davis, but still..., unless I hear otherwise, I suspect this wasn't a choice made against a filmmaker's wishes or anything. BTW, I watched that documentary too, and it was excellent. Sad, but excellent.) That's the part that struck me, it's never what it creates, it's why are they using it, and what are they using it for?

I know others have talked about a.i. for awhile now, I'm probably the last person who's talked about it at this point, but honestly I hadn't had anything to really say about it. I mean, I get why people hate it; I see why people use it....

(Shrugs)

Honestly, I only kinda understand what it is. On the surface it doesn't seem that different to me, than things people already had been doing, just a lot easier. People had been warning about, say computer animated models taking the place of actors, forever-, I remember when "The Sopranos" got in hot water over recreating Nancy Marchand's character for a scene after she had passed away-, they didn't use the term A.I., but essentially it's the same thing.

Yeah, this scene, that frankly I didn't know/believe was CGI until after people told me and were upset at how unnatural and wrong it looks? (See, told ya, I don't have an Uncanny Valley meter, this looked fine enough to me; I was convinced they shot this scene and then changed the whole rest of the episode to have it be about her actor/character's passing.)

CGI/a.i.... is there a difference? (Shrugs)

Sometimes it doesn't really seem like it, but yes, the difference seems to be that, instead of painstaking humans doing the actions, it's now, easier, through the use of machines? Algorithms? Something like that?- I'm not here to pretend I'm an expert on it. A.I. seems to be a catch-all term for a lot of things, but the basic difference I see is that, unlike having to teach the machine how to do what you want it to do, the machines can be programmed so advanced that they can help you out instead. This is through a process called "Machine Learning".

Okay, I might not fully get what we're calling, A.I., but I definitely remember the first time I heard the term "Machine Learning". If was fifteen or so years ago when I saw a machine do something that few people thought a machine could do.

If you're not familiar, Watson, was an IBM supercomputer that was designed specifically to win on "Jeopardy!". And not just, win, against anybody, those two players that he's competing against, current host, and still the all-time record-holder in consecutive wins on "Jeopardy!" Ken Jennings, and Brad Rutter, who at the time, was the highest money-earner ever on "Jeopardy!" and I think is still, 2nd or 3rd on the list-, basically, the two greatest "Jeopardy!" contestants ever, and Watson, despite admittedly a few hiccups, like thinking Toronto was in America, for instance, still, he beat the crap out of both of them. This was the modern-day equivalent of Big Blue defeating Garry Kasparov times 1000, it's one thing to teach machine how to move chess pieces on a board, but getting it to understand speech and language, and figure out "Jeopardy!" clues,- hell teaching it to ring in, is hard! Teaching it to answer in the correct format, is hard!...- It was undeniably impressive, and even then, I remember hearing that the technology used to build and create Watson, would inevitably help lead to other greater advancements where machines could assist in things like, figuring out genetic codes or diagramming unknown disesases and helping find cures faster than scientists trying to do it alone, and you can look up the things that WATSON been doing, it's technique have advanced the world. It's also the same kind of technology and process that would create something like ChatGPT.

(Sigh)

I'm a little, um, hmm, uncomfortable, talking about ChapGPT or other similar programs; they're quite controversial, and especially as a writer, it-, it makes me a little queezy to a degree. That's not true for everybody; when it first started to break out a few years ago, I saw a lot of friends of Facebook, many of whom were way more successful writers than I am, using ChapGPT, you know, to create, laughs basically. Like, they would give ChatGPT a concept and a style and tell it write something and then we laugh and whatever it blurted out. It was funny then, 'cause we were laughing at it, on some high level, but the more ChatGPT has become in use, the more natural it's become for many to use. There's good and bad to this, obviously, these are tools; it's not what they do, it's how you use them....

(Sigh)

I guess you all might be wondering if I've ever used it, right.... Well, not on this blog, no. I'm not pretending that's good or bad either, but I've never used it here. I have used it in my writings, and I did it recently. I don't really talk or promote some of the other projects I work on a lot, but I did write a short film recently. This one:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt34443645/?ref_=nm_flmg_job_1_accord_2_cdt_t_1

I guess, I could probably find the actual short film and post it here, but.... eh,; I'm sure it's somewhere online; I'm just happy it got made and finished personally, it even got screened publicly. Most people who saw it seemed to like it. It's a cute little short. It was shot during something called a 48 Hour Project, where a group of filmmakers work together under a given set of conditions, and they have to make a short film, from writing to filming to editing, all the way through completion in 48 hours. Anyway, I helped write the screenplay with a friend of mine, and the plot was her original idea and basically, and we had to turn this idea about mystery shoppers into a superhero movie. It was the genre we picked, that's one of the conditions; we pick the genre at random. Anyway, at some point, we had to come up with a superhero name for one of the characters, and that's what we used- honestly, I don't even know if it was ChatGPT, but it was one of those sites. It might've been some other kind of name generator, which,- isn't that another version of a.i. anyway, although I've seen name generators, even before I heard of Watson, so...,- but yeah, we put in some descriptions and asked for a superhero name, and if I'm being honest, I don't even remember if we used any of those suggestions or not. I think we did, but, it's possible we saw one of the suggestions and came up with something we liked better. That's literally about the only thing that I even remember trying to use it for. To me, that's kinda what it's there for, to help, or assist in the creative process, or the writing process, if it's not something that's inherently creative. I'll admit when the idea to use a.i. was brought up, I was a little apprehensive at first, but y'know, if that's all it is, and if I can't think of anything better than what a machine would come up with, than absolutely use the machine. It's one part of a much larger thing, it's not creating it entirely, and it's certainly not doing the work for me. In my mind, that's not any different than when I have to use a thesaurus to try to find a better word to use.

Of course, not everybody uses it that way, and, some of the recent stats on how prevalent ChatGPT has become, across everything, honestly is pretty frightening. That's before you look into a lot of the recent plagairism claims that are out there, even before ChatGPT became really prevalent, everywhere from lazy video essayists to people who reached the highest levels of academia and governments.... Business reports, law briefs are being dismissed for being obviously A.I...., if you want to look it up, there's so much where a.i. has reportedly been taking over everything. I'm not the first to bring this up, hell, "The Simpsons" did an episode about how kids are using ChatGPT to do homework and how the teachers have to combat it with A.I.-recognition software..., they're not even the first, or fifth show to even do something about that. Just a couple weeks ago, there was another published book where the "author", left in the writing prompt in their book. (Yes, another, that's happened multiple times too now.)

(Another prolonged sigh)

You know, despite all of this, I was still basically gonna ignore all of this and not write anything about ChatGPT, a.i. or anything else. I didn't really have any strong feelings about it. Like,- people have been finding ways of cheating forever. And sure, some people have to write things for their jobs and that's not their best skill or something, there are times where I don't think a.i. is the worst thing, I don't mind if I a.i. is used to say, create a generic business contract letter or something of the sort of something of that nature that can be tedious to put out, and sure, it can be used to do the things that we can't do some times, right? And on top of everything else that's permeated our media over the years that I've bitched and complained about on here, and elsewhere, like, honestly, a.i. being used, it isn't nearly as close to the list of complaints for me. I mean, if I heard that the next "Spider-Man" movie turned out to be written by A.I., my complaint wouldn't be that it was written by A.I., my complaint would be that we were making a new "Spider-Man" movie at all! Like, c'mon, don't we have more than enough; I'm sick of these things! See, where the energy and the angers should go, not towards, the a.i., right?

The thing is, I did see a tweet somewhere awhile ago. This one, by fantasy author, Carol Maciejewska, I don't know her work, but apparently this tweet went viral enough for me to see it pop up somewhere, and I can't get it out of my head:

"You know what the biggest problem with pushing all-things-AI is? Wrong direction!

I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes."

I know, it's just a funny line, and the perfect kind of thing to randomly throw out into the world; which is how a website like Twitter, should be used..., (And no, I'm not calling it that letter.) but, this kept sticking into the back of my mind every time I heard something about some flagrantly bad use of A.I., and she dismisses as more than a funny observation as well, but the more I think about it, I think she nailed it here. Like, I don't need my jetpack, but, why exactly do we have this instead of, Rosie the Maid?

Okay, look, I'm gonna warn you all now, um, a lot of the rest of this post, is gonna get a little, tinfoil hat-like.... I'm aware of that, so I'm letting you all know that now. I don't dive into, for-lack-of-a-better-term, "conspiracy theories" or anything ridiculous like that normally, and I don't think that's even what this is,- and I do try to avoid making too many giant leaps of logic, especially pertaining to some of the things I'm gonna bring up, even I feel like I'm bordering on turning into a crackpot for thinking about some of this way too long,.... I realize that I'm about to put 2+2 together and coming up with a formula for how the stock market is rigged or whatever ridiculous thing you want to put at the end of 2+2, and maybe the stupid computer algorithms and my general surrounding are putting these observations into my head, it's very, very possible, but, I'm gonna knowingly risk it, this one time. This is my one, grand theory of the modern ways of the world, so forgive my indulgence, if this sounds like the meanderings of that old crackhead at the bus stop who thinks the government's hiding the cure for cancer in the AIDS vaccine they secretly made out of dandelions and alien DNA but still asks you for a dollar and tells you "God Bless" when you get on the bus but that he never gets on,- anyway, if it sounds a little like that, I'm apologizing for that now.

(Long deep sighing breath)

Okay, if you're still with me, thanks for your indulgence..., but yes, why, exactly, do we have ChatGPT and not Rosie?! Not literally, obviously, although looking at my sink full of dirty dishes, yes, I would rather have a robot maid than a tool that would help me write this essay faster; it's literally just four dishes and I feel exhausted just looking at it, but why did the first really huge mainstream advancement in A.I., come in the department of writing and creating.... Like, who benefits from that?

In my experience, the idiots who kept trying to copy my answers during school tests.

Okay, that's a little facetious, sure some people have learning disabilities and struggle with writing in general, I'm not thinking about them, but is it, that facetious though? Like, it's not the people who can't write or can't create that bother me, it's the people who see the mere act of it, as an annoyance. Something that they shouldn't be doing, and shouldn't have to do, something that, some other person should be doing for them, or some machine. The people who could do all the hard work of, actually writing or creating, but don't exactly want to do it, or those want to say they've done it but don't actually want to do it. I mean, people get hired to take tests for people all the time, to get threw school, get into college, to go threw college..., people who just shouldn't be in those positions, but they somehow can afford it. And, I'm not expressly talking about one person here; it's a whole problem with modern society, when you think everything is commodable and disposable...,- like, I'll give an example here, 'cause it's easy to look at politicians or business leaders and see how incompetent and/or corrupt they are, but how many people do you think "passed" the BAR exam, and became lawyers but, didn't actually take the test? Even if it's say, half of 1%, wouldn't that scare you? Or, how about doctors! You don't think it's happened occasionally? Probably not at the same level as other positions, but would it not worry you? Usually people who do that kind of thing, you hope would get weeded out by their incompetence pretty quickly, but y'know, not always I bet. Certainly not at positions that might still hold a lot of power, but might not be that intense.

Okay, let me bring it back to something fun and entertaining to show my point here, you know, I have a friend who we discuss one of our favorite television shows together, "Abbott Elementary". I'm a couple seasons behind admittedly, I'm trying to catch up, but I do have one observation...- see, a few years ago I participated in a poll listing the greatest villains in literature, I posted my ballot at one point:

https://davidbaruffi.blogspot.com/2017/10/my-top-100-villains-ballot-50-1-for.html

I don't know if that entire ballot holds up now, and if you look at the actual results of the list, my ballot was not even close to the final results, like, my number one didn't even make their list, but I still like that ballot for the most part, however if I did that list today, there's absolutely one name that I would absolutely find a place for, and yeah, it's from "Abbott Elementary".

My friend tries to defend her, apparently she, "gets better" which I guess is true, but, Principal Ava is fucking evil! One of the most evil characters on television, maybe the most evil. I mean, just think about it for half a second people, she hates school, she hates teaching and learning, she blackmailed her way into a job as a school principal over somebody who wanted the job and was more qualified for the position, she's the most self-centered person ever, and based on how she's built things like private toilets for herself, she's probably stealing funds from the school district, and she's the one running an elementary school! Imagine your kids going to this school, and praying that they're somehow able to learn-, I mean, it's already bad enough there's a lot of idiots and psychos on schoolboards across the country trying to give our kids very bad educations now to lie and manipulate and brainwash our students, and that's even besides every other problem with our modern school system, but here, you have a sociopathic nutjob like Ava, as your school Principal! I mean, we really should be madder at incompetence at positions of authority in general, but this is like getting Frank Burns as your doctor! Okay, it's not that bad, 'cause at least she's not killing the students by being bad at her job and excusing it by saying it was "God's will", (I should've put Frank Burns way higher on that list, especially in the books, he's way worst than you realize.) but here's the person in charge of molding young minds! All, because she wants to be in charge and bully around her co-workers and not do anything substantive, and this is all at the expense of an elementary school, their teachers, their students, a place for learning for those who need the best advantages the most! (Oh, yeah, big fish in a small pond syndrome, all this to have the power as an inner-city elementary school principal! She doesn't even have the grand ambitions she thinks she does!) I love the show and the character is hilarious, Janelle James's performance is magnificent and underrated; she's funny as hell, but I can make a legit argument that she's the epitome of everything wrong with this country. I won't go that far, but I shouldn't legitimately be able to do that.

BTW, it's not easy to get a job as a school principal! I'm sure, at the very best, she coasted through all the classes and credentials needed to even become eligible to be a principal, if she didn't, you know, pay/bribe/blackmail somebody to make her pass all those exams and classes too.... I mean, she probably was a teacher for a few years, I doubt she was a good one, but even with all the blackmail in the world, you need a Bachelor's Degree, years of teaching experience, a Master Degree in Education, several other state-required licenses and exams....- I mean, this is Ava, do you think she legitimately did all this to get this job!? You don't think she'd use A.I. to do this, if she could've!? There were Presidents of Harvard and others in highly-ranked positions in Ivy League school caughts plagairizing, do you think it's not happening on the lowest levels of the education systems in general?! At all levels of society, in general!?

And with A.I., it's so much easier now, for people like Ava, to advance to positions like that. I get chills thinking about that. I mean, it's one thing that it's poisoning the arts right now, and yeah, that does annoy me, but it's honestly, everything else that bothers me about it. Like, how far does this go? The people who are using A.I. to find cures for cancer or stuff like that, I mean, I have nothing but great things to say for that. Even a.i. when it's needed to help improve art, it's fine. Artificial intelligence is never gonna fully replace true talent and skill,- the problem is never gonna be a.i. taking over- all those fears about machines taking over the world and whatnot,- I don't buy that. What I am concerned with is idiots using those machines to take over the world. Or maybe even worst, smart-enough idiots with very ill-intent, using those machines to take over the world. (Yeah, think about that too, sometimes when make something too easy to do, that means that some people who shouldn't be doing things are now doing those things, and that's not necessarily good either. Oh god, can you imagine some of the world worst a.i.-created films from some of the most incompetent of human beings would come with like-, it could make Tommy Wiseau look like a competent filmmaker, Jesus.)

And, for those people, the smart-enough idiots with ill-intent, what's the ideal endgame for them? I'm not saying this is what's ultimately gonna happen, I honestly don't think that, but these are people who aren't skilled enough to actually be in positions of authority, trying to cheat and bribe their way into positions of authority, and like, for the time being, let's ignore all the great things that are coming from a.i. for moment and people trying to use it to genuinely benefit humanking and whatnot, I get the use of a.i. for that, but the percentage that's not interested in that, what do they want society to become? What are they trying to lead us towards? They already are thumbing their nose at academia, politics, arts, and if you want to include all kinds of modern automation that's ruining our job markets-, (and to be fair, not all automation is bad either, like McDonald's had to hire more people when they put in self-check outs 'cause people ordered more food so they need more cooks, and it ultimately benefitted everyone, I get that, but there is a lot of automation that, all it does is kill jobs, and frankly can just ruin things in general) it's like they don't want anybody to do any work of any substance, at all, unless it's in service to them.

Like, that's my conspiracy theory, the incompetent, the rich, the-, as George Carlin once called them, the real "Owners" of our country, the richer and more powerful they get, the poorer and dumber they make us, they're slowly using and manipulating the trappings of modern society in however they can, in order to destroy us, the regular people, and a.i. is another tool for that. They don't really want us to be around, unless they need somebody to go fight a war or tie their shoes, or whatever. Anything that they can't do, or don't want to do/learn or are unable to take the time to learn how to do it themselves, they think it's beneath them, and not something that they should ever be doing and therefore anything that makes that part of their lives easier, they're going to press it onto us, and a.i. is so much another tool in the ultimate goal of that for them, that it makes me cringe a little every time, even when it's perfectly reasonable to use a.i. And the more they take away, from what we can do, not just to create, but to make a living like a regular person, like, what's going to be left? I mean, are we all just gonna end up being OnlyFans models at this point, cause it's either sell ourselves to get what crumbs they give or nothing else? It feels like it, although a.i. has probably penetrated, no pun intended, porn as well,- hell, the industry is probably got the best a.i. technology of everything right now. I mean, it makes sense, if they can't get us humans to satisfies their most bizarre desires and fetishes, you can make the fake humans do it, although they're probably rich enough now that as long as it's physically and anatomically possible, they can probably pay them to do it now.

I know, I'm going off the rails on this, and it's probably bad to talk too much about porn in this but, if you go to a porn website, there's sixty ads for a.i. porn on them, and of course it's the first thing that explodes in popularity; the industry is a better trend forecaster than anybody wants to admit and realize. Also, isn't it freaky, that people are getting so much richer on those model sites? Free porn is easier and cheaper than ever to get and yet, people are paying a lot of money to a lot of those "amateurs" and others on those websites...; who are those people, some of them are giving a lot of money to those performers, and I certainly don't begrudge them for making it, but,.... I mean,...- maybe they couldn't afford a seat on Epstein's plane, but the way they give to some of these performers, unless way more people are going broke by donating to OnlyFans models than we realize, or these are the people who could probably afford to buy a plane of their own.

Yeah, I get it, we don't want to think about it, but I do think about it. I think that's part of why "Anora" hit so hard for me and works for me so well.

It is cliche and all, and I don't know how accurately it portrays the escort or stripper parts of the sex industry, and sure, maybe living in Vegas and working in the service industry effects me too much, but if you've ever had to deal with a lot of these people, especially the younger yuppie people, who can spend thousands on the dumbest of bets without thinking or worrying about it, 'cause they're families are some kind of oligarchs or something, that movie brutally nails everything wrong with capitalism right now. I feel it in my bones, seriously. They're turning us all into hustlers just to get a little ahead, and eventually you buy into your own con because, there isn't anything else you got.

I also think it's that same train-of-thought though, that also made me absolutely despise and hate "Ready Player One" so much too.

Like, that's basically a film that's about how great living and being in an a.i. world is, one created by an eccentric rich billionaire and everybody's in a symbolic power struggle to control this virtual reality heaven, meanwhile everybody lives in fucking trailers and abandoned cars repurpose as crates, everything's run by drones, and everyone's obsessing over famous pieces of nostalgia that they're iconic hero was obsessed with, so like, literally instead of trying to create a better world, or even just, be pissed off that the world around them isn't better, they're stuck trying to make a fake world better...-, a fake world they didn't even design...- God, I hate this fucking movie! And yes, there's some girl in the opening, who's dancing around a stripper pole in that a.i. universe, and sure, maybe she enjoys doing that, or maybe she thinks she does because the world that's evolved to in this universe makes it seem like a quality and productive choice of lifestyle than whatever else she could've been doing? I don't know, it's so annoying and depressing and it's media like this that I believe is sending out all the wrong messages to the populace. Ignore the world's problems and just worry about your own little portion of the fictional world we give you, hell, fight for that fictional world to be better, instead of trying and fighting to make the real world better. (Sarcastic voice) "Don't teach the audience to be critics, or critical teachers at least, just congratulate them on being such big fans of them!" Ugh.

So, is there a greater thing I've come to with my thoughts on a.i.? I don't know? Probably not. Despite my Revelations-level projections of how a.i. is gonna end us, I still think I might be giving a.i. way too much credit honestly. I'm not even convincing myself of these delusional predictions I'm spewing honestly, and frankly, I obviously hope I'm wrong, and there's plenty of evidence to indicate to me that a.i. is a bubble that's gonna eventually burst soon. People will realize how genuinely minimally useful it is, and that it's just gonna be better and easier to do most things the good old-fashioned way. A.i, is only as good or bad as it's user and it's developer. Some are better than others, some are better at some skills than others..., hell,- you want to really get laughs at a.i. and ChatGPT in general, don't try to give it obtuse and bizarre writing prompts, watch competing a.i. play chess against each other.

Yeah, this is what I need when I want to not be afraid of a.i. I know they're not chessbots like Stockfish or Komodo or anything, so they're not designed to know chess, although some have learned and have apparently some of them have gotten better...? But, yeah, 40 years after Big Blue, we have machines that could beat the best at "Jeopardy!" but still some machines that think pawns can go backwards if needed, your queen can jump over a horse, and your bishop can you magical powers to cross the board and turn into a queen to checkmate your opponent's queen, before offering a draw.

And you know, the annual CES Convention was in town last week, and you know what the huge think was this year? Vacuum cleaners! No, seriously, vacuums; they were the big thing.

Look at that? I mean, my sink is still fully of dirty dishes right now, but look here, after everything else, we are indeed taking a.i. technology and it's being used to help make our lives better by indeed, doing the chores that we would've been too consumed with to write stuff like novels, scripts, and yes, blogposts before. And these are way more advanced than even those old Roombas. They're climbing and descending stairs, switching between mopping hardwood floors and vacuuming carpets,- they're moving old socks from the floors, they're identifying how things move on the floor.... Maybe we're a lot closer to having our own Rosie the Robot Maid's than we think, and once we get those things, the more useless a.i.'s like ChatGPT are gonna be gone the way of other old modern programs we thought we once couldn't live without like America Online or MySpace or, eh, whatever civil liberties we lost today?

(Sigh)

I'm trying to smile through this, I swear, but we're never gonna be able to afford any of those machines, right? By the time they're cheap enough and useful enough to actually buy, they're gonna figure out that the mop and the broom are still gonna be so much cheaper and just as good that it won't make the investment worth it, right? That's not part of my the rich want to make us their servants' rant, that's just-, that thing's gonna break, a large kid's gonna step on it or think it's a frisbee and throw it off the roof-, you all see that right? I wish it would work but it's just gonna be easier and cheaper to trick an OCD friend of yours to clean your place for you than to ever use buy or use any of those things, right?

Yeah, those things are cool but it's kinda the same with recreating Al Davis and Pete Rozelle using a.i. technology, just because we can, doesn't necessarily mean we should.

Certainly! I've written a closing passage that calls back to your previous reference to "Al Davis vs. The NFL", as a way of connecting most of the previous prevalent ideas and threads from this blogpost together, to make it appear more coherent, while still keeping it in your trademark meandering and insipid rambling, first-person faux-stream-of-consciousness style of mediocre commentary.

MOVIE REVIEWS #211: "SINNERS", "F1: THE MOVIE", "A BIG BOLD BEAUTIFUL JOURNEY", "POOR THINGS", 'THE BOY AND THE HERON", "SING SING", "CHALLENGERS", and "HOPE (Sodahl)".

2025-09-30T03:27:00.000-07:00

(Sigh)

So, I thought I'd be posting a little earlier this blog, but life got in the way, again. Somebody really need to put a stop to that kind of thing, in this case, if you read my last movie reviews blog, I mentioned I was working on my health, which I was and still am, and am most doing okay. I put off some teeth issues but otherwise, other than being on more prescriptions, I'm doing okay. However, I still ended up not posting nearly as often as I would've liked, because I had some computer issues this time.

Basically, my entire hard drive reverted back four years and I lost basically in the meantime, and the only USB Drive I had was corrupted to the point where I had to send it to a place in California, in order to recover the files. It cost, a pretty penny, but thankfully, they managed to recover everything, thank you very much, DriveSavers Data Recovery. Seriously, these people were amazing and it did cost less than they said it would, but it was a lot of money. I took out a loan of 401K just to make sure I had some money to live on, 'cause it wiped me out, but it was better than my entire work wiped out. Lots of screenplay and documents and files that I needed, yeah, I can't promote them enough for everything they've done. And during the few weeks they were working on and I had to get the money together to pay them, I was pretty depressed and basically shut down from anything entertainment, movies, TV, and I'm already behind on everything. I didn't even watch the Emmys this year and honestly still I don't know who won, so if anybody wants to let me know, go ahead.

However, I've recovered, and actually gotten to the movie theater a few times more recently than normal, and have finally finished a new batch of movie reviews. And apparently movie theaters are showing more older films as some classics are getting some re-releases to the big screen, which is pretty great honestly. My Canon of Film post on "Hamilton" recently was inspired by me seeing it on the big screen, and if that's still playing, absolutely go see that, but the theater experience, really is the place to see a lot of these, and I'm glad to see that stuff like "Jaws" and "Back to the Future" are getting major re-releases to theaters at the moment. Things like that should be done more often anyway, and if you can afford it and have the time, go see something in the theaters in that way. On the big screen, with an audience, in the dark,- remembering how that great that experience can be is a genuinely great feeling.

So, that's why this absense has been for longer, but I'm back here again, so let's get to the reviews!

SINNERS (2025) Director: Ryan Coogler

⭐⭐⭐⭐

After trying to digest "Sinners" for a day or so, I think I've come to the conclusion that this is probably the first real time Writer/Director Ryan Coogler, decided to just have fun making a film. That's not to say that his other films and ideas weren't passion projects, or anything, they were, and they were good, sometimes great. They were also personal, you can feel that most of the time, but you can't say that, as great as "Fruitvale Station" was, that it was a fun film he was making, and even "Creed" and "Black Panther", their franchise films, and he did them well, and definitely cared about them, and told some stories that he definitely wanted to tell and was heavily inspired by them, but they were cries of a deep-seeded need to express himself and scream that we see him and know him; they were the held-down thoughts of a deeply complex young man, deeply in touch with the stories and themes and ideas that he felt that he needed to express his way. He's still doing that with "Sinners", but, now that those initial screams of artistic frustration have come out, he realizes, it's time to have a little fun.

Do a little dance, make a little love, get down tonight, maybe play a little guitar before the Sunday morning sermon. Like I said, there's definitely still stories he wants to tell, deeply personal and important tales and "Sinners" is that. It's a period piece that takes place mostly in the Mississippi Delta in 1932 inspired by tales his grandfather would tell him, some of the ghost stories and folk tales of the time, and uses a lot of the elements of that time and place, where the Blues were born at late night juke joints the locals would go to after spending their long days on the cotton fields. The movie follows two twin brothers, Smoke and Stack (Michael B. Jordan in a duel-role) who years earlier had left the area for Chicago to make some bigger money, but claim they've come back, to deal with the devils they know instead of the ones they didn't up north. Despite some of the more supernatural elements that will arrive soon enough, there's a lot of history here already. For instance, there was a huge migration of African-American to the Chicago area from the south around the beginning of the 20th Century, especially during World War I where immigration was halted and factories up north began allowing African-American workers.

This also artistically effected the area especially musically; the 1930s was around the beginning of the Chicago Renaissance and to some degree, the birth of modern blues and jazz. Delta blues in particular play a part. On top of Smoke and Stack, the next major character is their cousin Sammie (Miles Caton). Sammie is a blues guitar virtuoso known as Preacher Boy because his father (Saul Williams) is a strict Baptist preacher who believes that he's playing the devil's music. Yes, this was a thing that happened way before what we tend to think of as rock 'n roll came about. Coogler is playing with a lot of old Delta blues legends and tales here, most of which I don't know, but clearly Sammie is inspired by Robert Johnson, the legendary delta bluesman who basically invented rock & roll, and according to legend, made a deal with the devil by the light of a graveyard moon in order to become the best guitar player in the world. Sammie's inspired by him but Coogler takes the story in a different direction.

The SmokeStack Brothers by a local sawmill from Hogwood (David Maldonado) the local Klan leader, with the intent of turning the place into a local juke joint. They've brought some fine Irish beer and Italian wine and have gone through their old town to bring together the gang for the endeavor, and opening night's promising to be a humdinger.

I love the sequence where Sammie starts playing at the club, and the spirits of music past, present and future seem to be summoned altogether and colliding with each other the more he plays, as though he isn't just playing the so-called Devil's Music, but that the music itself seems to have otherworldly special powers; it's like a fuck you to anybody who's complained that somebody isn't really "Rock & Roll" every time the Hall of Fame names somebody that they don't like. Of course, it also summons those undead spirits and they, well, put a stop to the party, in a sense. I don't know how much I want to give away here, but a cynic could say that this is Coogler jumping in on the trend of mainstream African-American filmmakers diving into the horror genre a la, Jordan Peele, but I like that trend, part of it is because it gives horror a new flavor and depth. Setting a story like this in the south adds so many more interesting elements, like Hailee Steinfeld's character Mary, who once was Stack's girlfriend, and even though she passes for white, she's actually half-black and kinda prefers being around their world and culture. Or Delroy Lindo's character as a drunk old blues musician legend who performs for beer instead of money and has seen it all; in another time and place, he'd be as big as Buddy Guy is now, but back then and with fewer opportunities..., not to mention elements that are naturally horror, like the Hoodoo princess character played by Wunmi Mosuka, which is a horror trope, but also brings more engagement and depth to the time and place, and her character has layers to her and significance.

I guess the movie has a few too many endings personally, including a post-credits scene that I like enough not to fully dock the film for having it, but mostly, I think the movie is just fun. This is what horror at it's best is; it takes the personal elements of the storyteller and then adds the supernatural and horror aspects to accentuate the fears. I saw this movie in the theaters and among the fifty or so trailers they put in front of the movie was a sequel/remake of a horrible dead teenager movie from the '90s that frankly we didn't need a remake of and frankly nobody wants a remake of. That's the era of horror that I grew up with and I hated it then and I hate it now. Dumb characters, uninteresting cliche stories, violence and blood for the sake of violence and blood, and maybe something scary about sex thrown in, to try for a PG-13 rating and maybe this version is done better, but why are they even bothering, when were getting some of the most fascination, fun and inventive new stories in the genre in recent years. I'll take "Sinners" and other recent horrors over stuff like that any day.

F1: THE MOVIE (aka F1) (2025) Director: Joseph Kosinski

(Shrugs) ⭐⭐1/2

Ugh, I don't know how to rate this film.

This is the movie I've heard the most about recently, and I don't know what people want me to say on this one. Joseph Kosinski is the modern-day Tony Scott, or at least he's trying to be, and frankly, I hated Tony Scott's films. One of his films I hated the most was "Days of Thunder", which was his racing movie, except that was about NASCAR. This is,- even more blatantly a product placement for the racing league they're covering and I have thoughts on that too.

"F1: The Movie", is about a fictional Formula-1 racing team. Now, Formula-1 has been gaining in popularity in America in recent years, which is actually kinda surprising, 'cause Formula-1 is very much not an American sport. At one point, long ago, it kinda was, because IndyCar and Formula-1 basically have the same similar roots, and the Indy 500 used to be a Formula-1 race, but that was decades ago and they've long-since split up, and open-wheel racing in general, had been going downhill in America for decades, especially after the IRL/CART racing split in the nineties, and Formula-1, in particular, already being more of a European centralized sport, basically died out after the disastrous 2005 U.S. Grand Prix, which basically turned the whole of Formula-1 into a joke to us Americans, and they only really recently have started to begin to have regular races in the United States again. In fact they now have three American races on the schedule, the most they've had in a while. There's also been some good movies and documentaries made about Formula-1 and other F-1 adjacent racing stories, Ron Howard's "Rush" for instance, made my Ten Best List the year that came out, and that still is a good movie, I highly recommend that one. There's also been some good docs about some of the sports' best stars from the past and present, as well as a very popular reality series on Netflix, "Formula 1: Drive to Survive" that details the teams and the drivers that take on and race Formula-1.

And here's the thing...- F1 fucking sucks!

The racing league, not the movie,- I mean, yeah, it kinda sucks too, but, (Shrugs) eh, it's whatever, I'll talk about it in a sec, I gotta rant about this here and I might not get the opportunity again, but Formula-1,- I mean, okay, the drivers, especially at the top level are good,- I don't think they're as great as they think are, and as somebody who did grow up as a bit of a NASCAR fan, I should point out that Michael Schumacher, did lose that head-to-head NASCAR vs. F1 race in '08 to Carl Edwards, and that was on a track designed supposedly, specifically for Formula 1 cars; just because you're smaller and open-wheel doesn't mean you're the best racing league, nor does it make you better that you're an International league, as opposed to NASCAR's more regional presence in the U.S. Yeah, F1's big thing is that it races all over the world, supposedly at the world's best tracks and road courses, although what it really wants is to show off how they're always in the most exotic, extravagant locations in the world, often in the streets of these locations. The most famous race of there's and probably the only one that I would say is actually worth watching at least once to say that you did, is the Monaco Grand Prix, where they race around the streets of Monte Carlo. This is funny to me for several reason, firstly because road courses make for terrible racing generally. The reason you race mainly in circular courses, especially on large ovals, like for the Indianapolis 500 in IndyCar or the Daytona 500 in NASCAR, is so there's room for the cars to go faster and room for multiple cars to manuever and actually race each other for the long stretches, and sure, you give up having right-hand turns, but this actually is better racing. Road courses can be fun occasionally, Watkins Glen is great road course for instance, and it's a nice change-of-pace, but open-wheeled cars like Formula-1 are actually faster and better-designed for these oval tracks, so they're running around the world, creating and running on courses that are actually not designed for the cars they're running!? And it leads to shitty racing, that's why the same cars win all the time. Like, Verstappen or Norris or- I guess it's Piastri's turn this year, but it was Verstappen for how long before then and Hamilton for twice as long before he hurt his back. And frankly, they're mostly winning 'cause they're in the McLaren's now. Verstappen would still be winning if he wasn't on Team Red Bull and stuck with Tsunoda as his teammate. That's the other thing, F1 isn't about who the best driver is, it's about who the best car constructor is, 'cause whoever has the best car usually wins, especially with these terrible courses they have where passing is almost impossible half the time. There's teams and car constructors in other racing sports, that matters too, and it might not be, as much, about the cars in F1 now as it used to be with more regulation than there was, but historically it mattered in F1 way more than in any other other racing leagues, and it still matters way more now, and it shows if you look up the history of Formula-1, 'cause even by old standards of auto racing at the time, they did not give two shits about driver safety until Ayrton Senna's death in '94! Since then, there's only been one death of a Formula-1 driver, Jules Bianchi in 2015, which is great compared to what they used to be. Like, there were times where the average might've been three deaths/year and they might've been lucky it was that low. That's how little, historically Formula-1 gave a shit about the drivers of the cars. That's because, and this is big reason I hate Formula-1, it's not just that it's European-centric, it's that, Formula-1 is the worst of what that means; Formula-1 was started by rich cocksuckers who had nothing better to do but put a bunch of money into building and racing the fastest cars they could construct, just to see if they're penis was bigger than the other rich cocksuckers penises. This is why half the teams are car manufacturers like Ferrari, McLaren, Aston-Martin, and BMV, it's a sport for rich capitalistic motherfuckers to show off how they're successful at being rich capitalistic motherfuckers! And that's why they go to these famous places all over the world! They have a race now in Las Vegas, which is where I'm at, and it runs right down the Las Vegas Strip, and whoever allowed this race to happen on the City Counsel, I hope get voted out by landslides and get burned alive in a gasoline fire. And it's not just that it interrupts the locals who have to find alternate routes to get to work and shit, they black out the rooms and the streets during that whole time when F1's in town, including the bridges over the Las Vegas Strip, unless you pay extra to watch the race from your hotel rooms, so it's fucking over the casinos, the locals and the tourists! The FIA are some of the greediest pieces of capitalist garbage I've ever been around!

Fine, they can't race at the Las Vegas Speedway, it's an oval but it's not built for open-wheeled racing, we found that out the hard way..., RIP Dan Wheldon, but they're still not worth the time and investment we put into serving them every fucking year now! Say what you want about NASCAR, and yes, part of why Formula-1 is starting to come back is because NASCAR has so fucked up their sport in the last two decades that it left the opening for disillusioned racing fans, but NASCAR, was started by rumrunners and bootleggers who had to figure out how to modify their regular cars themselves in order to run alcohol up and down the East Coast during Prohibition in order to outrun the cops; it might be a strange Southern sport filled with redneck fans who will too proudly wear the Confederate flag and cheer on "Brandon", (And those fans have been fucked over by NASCAR for decades now, someone tell the France's to sell! And get rid of their stupid goddamn playoffs!) but here, I'll defend NASCAR and even it's fans, 'cause at it's core, it's a working man's racing sport, full of fun eccentric characters who are just as great athletes as the Formula-1 guys, if not better. Let's see those precious open-wheel cars runs on some dirt tracks once in a while, than maybe I'll start to be impressed!

(Long exhale)

So yeah, I'm not inclined to enjoy a giant 2 1/2 hour advertisement for F1. That doesn't mean I couldn't enjoy it, part of why Formula-1 is so fascinating is because of how fucked up it's history and the racing actually is, but yes, in general, they are the most obnoxious, snooty, impressed-with-the-smell-of-their-own-farts part of the racing world, certainly the people running it, the people who put their money, time and investment into it, and to be honest, a lot of their fans are too. The drivers, the people in the pit crew, some of the designing and building the cars, and the spotters and whatnot, I can respect them, and there's definitely incompetent pricks at the top of running most every sport, but it does feel worst with Formula-1 than most.

(Shrugs)

As to the film, um..., I guess I liked it more than "Days of Thunder", eh? Kosinski's been around for awhile, but he got really big when he directed "Top Gun: Maverick", which somehow everybody seemed to love except me, but I hated the first "Top Gun", to begin with and the sequel just felt like a better "Top Gun" to me, better but not good. Kosinski's not an untalented filmmaker, but he very much feels like he wants to make this action spectacles a la those Tom Cruise '80s films, complete with very simple-minded characters and plots. In this case, we follow a terrible F1 team owner, Ruben (Javier Bardem) who's about to lose his losing team to a board of directors, unless he can get a win with either of his drivers in the last nine races. Frankly, I'm on the Board of Directors' side, he's had this team for three years and he hasn't gotten the team a single point! You just need to finish one of two cars in the Top Ten to get a point, how have you not had one point in three years?! I don't think Williams at their worst was ever that bad. (Okay, maybe they were) Anyway, he's got one driver, a young British kid, Joshua (Damson Idris) who is an up-and-comer, and he's got several other drivers at the lower levels, (Oh, it's called Formula-1, because it's the top level, but like minor leagues in baseball for instance, there's lower levels of racing, F-2, F-3, F-4, etc. There's even Formula-E now for electric cars.) but instead, he decides to scout and bring in Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) who is an aging racer who takes whatever ride he can get when he's not living out of his car. He last raced in Formula-1 back in the early '90s, and while he's still handsome like Brad Pitt, he's known for being a little reckless on the track. Reuben finds him after he was one of a team of racers winning the 24 Hour race at Daytona. I guess, he's supposed to be the rogue racer-type, who comes in and saves the day? I mean, there are people like that, who will just take any and every race they can, not for the riches but just, for the thrill, like a 24 Hour team race, or even something out there like the Baja 1000. If the Iditarod was run on cars, I imagine he might run that. They/He don't/doesn't really portray that in his character, great, but... (Shrugs)

Anyway, he's brought in, to try to either get a win, or help Joshua get a win, or at the very least, some points. Him and Reuben are old friends from when Reuben was a racer, and- I guess, that relationship, is one, he cares deeply, about?! I-eh, I-, whatever, I don't know. This sounds like a ridiculously stupid plan that wouldn't work in real life. Honestly, this movie kinda reminds me of "Draft Day", one of the worst sports movies ever, on top of that movie being about the behind the scenes of the NFL draft, which-, I mean, I love the draft, but it's not an engaging sporting event for a film, and it's also about a fairly incompetent idiot GM, who makes some terrible moves until he happens to get incredibly lucky that other GM's were just as awful and incompetent as he was. It's kinda weird that F1's movie about their own sport is about a fictional awful team. It made a little sense for "Draft Day", because, the draft is where the bad teams have the first shot at trying to get good, hypothetically at least, but couldn't this be a story about a team owner that's close to being the best and just never quite getting over that hump, and then they find the rogue group of drivers and crew and they run that perfect season scenario where they just finally pull off that miracle championship season?! This is how you know how euro-centric this sport is, they can't even get the underdog Cinderella story narrative right! This is a film that's about not being dead last at being a rich multi-billion dollar racing team!? Also, why are the announcers focusing so much on the last place team?! Shouldn't they be focusing on what Hamilton and Verstappen are doing at the front of the race?!

Oh, and there's a love interest character, Kate (Kerry Condon) the team's technical director. She's filling in the Jennifer Connolly love interest role, except she's like half Brad Pitt's age. And apparently, despite the quick-cut editing, which for the most part was pretty good, you can tell a lot of the time when it was Pitt and when it was his stand-in, at least that's what my friend Elicia was telling me when we were watching this? She's an actress so she probably would focus on that,- honestly I didn't notice or pay attention enough to notice. The movie looks good. I was entertained, I guess. It was basically just every other sports/action movie with this narrative. The cliched out-of-town stranger-with-a-past, the young up-and-coming hotshot, they conflict, the owner, they conflict, there's a love interest because the handsome stranger needs a love interest. There's a bad guy reveal too, (Shrugs) 'cause the modifications they've begun making on the cars to make them better and faster might not be legal with specs? Also, their strategy is kinda just friggin' things up, since Sonny comes aboard, he basically begins manipulating the race in some sketchy-but-legal ways, like causing small accidents in the back in order to have Joshua stay out on the track and gain positions instead of coming in to pit, or using softer tires to go faster even if they don't last as long,- basically the strategies that Ferrari were using back in the early 2000s to run away with most races. I don't know, you might like watching "F1," but I mostly felt like I was watching the three-act structure screenplay formula on screen, and one that could've really used some better exposition dialogue.

I won't begrudge anybody who finds "F1: The Movie" interesting or fun; I've definitely had worst 2 1/2 hours, but this movie does get worst the more I think about it, and I don't think the movie wants us thinking at all. Maybe if it's the first intro to Formula-1 for some, you might be a little intrigued; I know a few Formula-1 fans who do like this film, but from my experience car fans will tend to like anything with cars in them,- that's the only reason I can figure why those damn "The Fast and the Furious" lasted so long. (Hell, I know grown adults who still watch the Herbie movies 'cause they want to see the cars.) I think there's better entries to F1 though. Personally, I hope F1 fans eventually find "F1: The Movie" as laughably enjoyably bad as "Draft Day" is to NFL fans. As for me, I'd rather hear some interesting real stories about Formula-1, but most of the interesting ones are probably not the ones that Formula-1 wants a movie made about so, this is what we get.

A BIG BOLD BEAUTIFUL JOURNEY (2025) Director: Kogonoda

⭐⭐1/2

Before I begin this review, I saw this film at a screening setup by David Rosen where he afterwards recorded for his podcast "Piecing It Together". One of my friends was a panelist on that episode, hi Darlene, good to see you, and I've known Rosen on Facebook for years, even before he had this podcast and it was fun being at the recording and screening. It's the first time I've attended one of his recordings, and if you're local I recommend it, and his podcast is a pretty fun one too. They take a movie, usually a newer release and then analyze what influences that the filmmakers might've been inspired by. It's a fun, quick little podcast, and he's been doing it for years now; I linked his website above, and you can find the Piecing It Together Podcast on most places you find podcast if this interests any of you at all.

And this was an interesting film to do that with oddly enough since Director Kogonoda is almost more of a film historian in my mind than a filmmaker, so whatever he is referencing, he knows his stuff. He's switched over from primarily being a video essayist to filmmaking himself awhile ago. I was impressed with his debut feature "Columbus", which follows two characters as they had a flirtatious and thought-provoking walk-and-talk few nights around Columbus, Indiana, which if you're familiar, it's actually a strangely famous location in archetecture circles, and the movie revolved a bit around that. I haven't seen his previous before "After Yang" yet, but I heard good things about that one, and this movie, his first,- well, I wouldn't say, "big budget", but it's one of his first real commercial film, I would say.

It's also kind of a strange movie, and the more I thought about it and discussed it with others, I found myself having a pretty hard time buying into it. It's kinda going for that similar Linklater-esque feel of "Columbus", it even plays with time more, something Linklater does as well. And there's archecture in a way, there's characters going through a lot of doors mostly. So, very, Antonioni, although I don't know if he ever did a video on him; I know he did one on Linklater that I highly recommend. This film is kind of a romantic, magical-realism,- rom-com, I guess....? This is one of those movies where, whether you liked it or not, you can discuss "What's wrong with it", with a bunch of people and they'll all come up with some different answers.

The movie begins in the city of...-, um,..- actually,- I don't know where any of this film takes place weirdly enough, which is kinda odd since this is a road movie. (I'm sure it was shot somewhere, but I don't think any place is named directly.) Anyway, David (Colin Farrell) is going to a wedding, when his finds his car booted, and a weird sign for "The Car Rental Company" right next to his car. Already late, and nowhere else to go, he ends up borrowing a '94 Saturn and at the insistence of the Agency's Cashier (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) takes the GPS option, in case his phone craps out on him. I guess that's something I never really thought about as modern cars have made some of the perils of typical road trip films avoidable these days, but...-, anyway, he rents the car, and then he gets to the wedding where he meets Sarah (Margot Robbie), who lives in his city, but lives Downtown, while he lives Uptown. She also, has apparently had to go through this same sketchy rental car company to get here, and also has a '94 Saturn with a paid-for GPS. They flirt a bit at the wedding, but don't seem to hit it off, but then, the GPS insists on having David go on the titular, "A Big Bold Beautiful Journey", and makes him stop over at the nearest- I guess it was a Burger King, although I swore he was eating a Big Mac at first. (BTW, apparently people brought this up as particularly cringy product placement, not just at my screening with the podcast crew, but it's even in the Wikipedia and not a plot summary.... Um, I personally was fine with it. I thought it fit in kinda whimsically into this strange, surreal romance. I don't get that criticism honestly; there's so much way worst product placement out in much bigger movies that frankly, this one just seemed,insignificant to me.) Anyway, that's when he runs into Sarah again, and they find out that their GPS told them to go here, and now Sarah's Saturn won't start, so now, they're both on their, big bold beau-, okay, this is getting annoying, they're both on this, "Journey".

And this journey, leads them to a door. A door, in the middle of-, nowhere. They go through it eventually, and eventually through many other doors that the GPS happens to lead them too. Some lead them to far away places, like Canada and Musuems and High School.

(Sigh)

God trying to explain this movie,- I know what he's trying to do, and a lot of this is funny and clever and well-acted even, but does it work? It might be a clue that this wasn't written by Kogonoda; it was a long-delayed Blacklist script by Seth Reiss, a longtime comedy writer for television, who got a film breakout by writing the script for "The Menu", which is an amazing film and a great script I might add, but this feels like it was, underwritten. It's got some interesting ideas like, when Danny has to revisit his childhood heartbreak which happened when he said he loved a girl who didn't love him back while they were both in a school play together. (Actually, if this movie works as anything, there's a surprising amount of talk about acting, whether doing it literally, or pretending your way through life and romance, and that's actually the most interesting part to me, but it's not nearly focused on enough.) I like the scenes with Sarah having to go back and deal with memories involving her mother (Lily Rabe), but ultimately I didn't know if I wanted these two to come together, and I wasn't sure why they were going through this weird journey. I guess it's more interesting than just two people getting to know each other through a long car ride, there's plenty of great movies like that already, but in terms of the narrative, it felt like they were going through these emotional epiphanies because this is a movie where characters have to go through emotional epiphanies in order to be together. I don't even need them to be together at the end, but I need a reason to care either way, and I found that lacking. I also wonder if this film might've been miscast a bit. Colin Farrell is one of my favorite actors honestly; I don't think he gets nearly the credit he deserves especially in smaller films like this one. (If you've never seen it, look up a very small indy called "A Home at the End of the World", his work in that film is one of my favorite performances of the 2000s.) But, I do wonder if this movie would've been better with some more naturally comedic performers in the leads. I could easily see Melissa McCarthy or Katharine Hahn giving a lot of extra levels to Sarah's character; nothing against Margot Robbie, but yeah, the more I thought about it, the more this role feels miscast. (Also, the age difference between her and Farrell; it's not a dealbreaker for me, but this film could've been more interesting with an older actress I think.)

The more I thought about this film, the more I think this might've been-, like, not a spec script, but an example script which is a writer's, eh, not-so-much as a finished product but a script written to show the writers' various different skillsets. Show some comedy, show some ideas for visuals, some surrealism, some comedic scenes, some emotional scenes. I remember having to read a script like this once, which didn't fully come together, but had a little bit of everything and there's a reason never got made, but the writers did get work eventually from that. This movie feels like one of those accidentally got made and maybe Kogonoda wanted to see how it would be to try something like that.and hope that his filmmaking skills and styles could overcome some of the underwriting in the script. Even as I'm writing this, I'm thinking of ways that I would've altered this script to make it work, like perhaps move the introduction to the rental car company 'til after our two leads meet at the wedding? I bet that woulda helped.

"A Big Bold Beautiful...-," ugh...- (also, a better title would've helped) "A Big Bold Beautiful Journey", probably does live up to it's promise, but ultimately I wondered too much why these characters were on this journey, and then I wondered why I was supposed to care about them. It's an interesting film, and I think you can have with the ideas in it, and sure, eh, thinking about how they came up with these ideas, but ultimately, this was an interesting miss for me.

POOR THINGS (2023) Director: Yorgos Lanthimos

⭐⭐⭐1/2

Okay, finally getting back into watching movies again. Oh boy, and this DVD, is way overdue at the library. "Poor Things", okay.

Huh, Emma Stone, jumping off a cliff, okay? Now she's what she doing, playing piano- AHHHH!

What the-, what happened to William Dafoe's face?! It's like Picasso tore is apart and somebody put it together. Wait, does Emma Stone not talk? Does anybody?

Who directed this, again?

(Grabs DVD box)

Yorgos Lanthimos, I should've known. The Greek Freak of modern cinema. He's made some great films, like "The Lobster", or "The Favourite" which co-starred Emma Stone; that one in particular was an amazing film. He likes to create or examine some very bizarre and insular worlds in his movies. Sometimes they're sci-fi, like "The Lobster" others take a very disturbing look at society in general. Huh, why is the Emma Stone character, why she's so-, as Dafoe's walking out the front door, she's like trying desperately to go outside? That's weird,- that's almost like she's never been-, uh-oh! Oh, no! Oh no! What am I walking into!? Is this a "Dogtooth" thing-oh, okay, it's not that, she's just.... Whew! I was a little worried there, it's not that. Instead it turns out she's just...- um wait, WHAT IS SHE?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Okay, um, Emma Stone, her character, committed suicide, and was then brought back to life, by Dafoe's character, after he replaced her brain, with that, of her, unborn child. Okay, well,- oh boy, this-, well, I'll say this, as with all Lanthimos films, I'll definitely have a lot to say about this, after this film is done.

(3 HOURS LATER)

Ummm,- hmmmm.....

(1 WEEK LATER)

Hmmm.... Hmmmm...

(Long pause)

Hmmmm.

(Sigh)

Huh. You know, I've been thinking about this film for awhile, and I don't know if there's actually a lot to say about this film.

I know, that seems wrong, and weird, but, I-um,- I mean the movie, clearly has, a lot to say, that's not the problem, the movie has an abundance of things it's trying to say, intriguing things, interesting things, maybe, they're not exactly, "Poor Things", but-um, hmmm...

Okay, like the thing with Yanthimos's films, whatever they've been in the past and whatever you may think of them, I always got why they existed. Like, okay, his international breakthrough, "Dogtooth", that movie is,- some people think it's funny, but I found it disturbing. It's basically about parents who stunt the intellectual growth and maturity of their children by forcing them to stay inside their compound and completely disconnect them from the outside world to the point where they're creating their own world within their world, and it's- really dark and disturbing, and frankly as good as a film it is, I don't ever want to see it again, but I get why it exists and what it's trying to depict. What it's trying to say. And just to be clear, when I say "Trying to say", that doesn't mean it's got a moralistic point to make necessarily, like I don't think the movie just exists to say, "Do don't this to your kids", but it is saying something in a way that makes us think about certain things, it's trying to show what happens when such an extreme and insular world is forced upon people.

His next film, "Alps", was about a young woman, who is essentially acting as a prostitute in a way, but more importantly, she's paid to act like a recently deceased loved one, in order to help those get through their grief of losing that person. It's an extreme version of that, but I got what he's showing you and why that exists, why some people would do that, why some would hire for that job, etc. etc. I got why he wanted to create and/or show us this world. And that film is touching.

"The Lobster" he made next, his first English language film, and it also creates a world, a dystopian future where single people have to find a mate or they're forcibly turned into an animal of their choosing. It's out there, but it's saying stuff about how extrovertedness can smother introvertedness into rebellion, as well as just the awkwardness of forced romance,-there's a lot going on in that film.

"The Killing of a Sacred Deer", where a family's life turns deadly and turmultuous after the father brings home the son of a former patient, it's about bringing in people or anything that's ultimately bad for you and then, the inability to get that force out of your life until it takes over and destroys you everything you love.

"The Favourite", is just,- well, firstly it's just hilarious, but it also, is focuses on a created and absurd world of royalty where everybody's playing "All About Eve" to be a gout-infested queen, because she's the Queen. It's saying a lot about societal power, how artificial it is, and also, how much we strive for it.

So, what exactly is "Poor Things" here to show us, to tell us? I mean, it's got all the elements in which to say something, it's an absurd futuristic world, it's got a character who's had a strange insular existence who then has to react to it, and it's really symbolic and metaphorical,...- I kept looking for deeper meaning to it, constantly, 'cause it feels like it should have something deeper there. Like, Bella, (Oscar-winning Stone) at first is, this disturbingly childlike creature, who's mentally not fully equipped. Honestly, having an autistic brother kinda gave me some moments of flashbacks with the early moments of this film. The surgeon who brought her back to life, Godwin (Dafoe) brings in a young surgical student, Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef) to take notes on her development, which eventually does happen, to an extent. He also, begins to have an emotional connection to her, which, is also kinda disturbing, but he's also not the only one. At some point, she agrees to marry Max, but first, she wishes to go on an adventure with Duncan (Oscar-nominee Mark Ruffalo) a lecherous older excessive man, who she finds enjoyment out of his furious jumping, which is her term for sex, apparently.

Honestly, this might be why I'm struggling to find a positive in this; essentially this movie is about a guy who creates his own woman from scratch into being a simple bimbo sex toy. I mean, not for him, but obviously for others. That's not the intent, but I guess Ruffalo's character represents that. And the movie does subvert it, eventually, but it's still kinda creepy. It really kinda reminds me of those A.I. porn ads that promote building your own sex doll, it's just-, awkward and creepy. If you don't think of Bella as an experiment to see what happens when you take an infant's brain and put it into a full-bodied human's brain,...- this is creepier when he does it again with a new girl, Felicity (Margaret Qualley). Meanwhile, we mostly follow Bella, who then goes on to explore the world at large. This leads her home eventually, but first, she becomes a Parisian hooker after Duncan falls in love with her and then she blows all his money after giving it away to the poor, once she becomes aware of the poor. BTW, there's some fascinating supporting work by people as wide-ranging as Jerrod Carmichael to Hanna Schygulla, which,- man, I don't know what game of Mad Libs the casting person was playing, but kudos on that.

"Poor Things" is so bizarre. It starts out like "Frankenstein," although I think of Dafoe's mad scientist, literally named and called, "God" in this film, as more of a Rotwang from "Metropolis" character, albeit a more sympathetic one, complete with body deformities; yeah this movie deserved it's makeup Oscar (And who knows, this film might exist in a "Metropolis" future) but it turns into "An Education"-type film, and then it even evolves into,- I mean,- I can't think of another example here, but this felt like a twisted, post-modern version of "Born Yesterday". You don't normally see this plot, with a main character, that in the text of the film was literally born yesterday, basically, but I don't really know what else to compare this to. Now, I love "Born Yesterday", the original at least, but what a way to go about it. I don't expect to compare that to a film that has a half-dog half-chicken hybrid pet, or for that matter, a sheep with a human brain implanted into it. I haven't even brought up that character-, this movie has a bit of a deus ex machina ending, that-, it's not tacked on, but it's still kinda questionable in it's existence.

I feel like all these things should add up to something, and maybe it does and I'm just missing the forest through the trees, but I found it more of a curiosity than as an impactful tale of someone's wide-eyed, unknowing approach to a modern sci-fi world, that, sure, I can definitely make some comps to our world, especially how the world must seem to an attractive young female entering the world, but,- I don't know, it feels like a lot of pieces but the whole puzzle's not quite there. It might be an issue with the medium. Unlike his previous film "Poor Things" wasn't written by Lanthimos unlike most of his other films, it's adapted from the fantasy novel by Alasdiar Gray, and written by the great Tony McNamara. I haven't read the book, but it's apparently an epistolary text, which, isn't quite first person,- it's more told through documents like letters, as opposed to a traditional narrative. I always think of Daniel Keyes's "Flowers for Algernon" with this structure, which is kind of an appropriate comp if you know that story, although this one has a better ending, and I suspect that probably is a better way to tell this story, something probably gets a little lost here since it's difficult to create a piece of art like that and place it into film. Still, I can't deny "Poor Things". It's too inventive and interesting; the visuals in this film are some of the most fascinating I've ever seen. And Emma Stone's performance in particular, like-, even if you're not crazy about the implications or the character, this performance looks and feels daunting. There's so many layers to this character and performance..., like I could analyze her work for days scene-by-scene in this. I wish it had more of an effect on me, and I wonder if the book would've effected me more.

THE BOY AND THE HERON (2023) Director; Hayao Miyazaki

⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2

Ah, the old master has returned.

Only the slightest of frames into "The Boy and the Heron" and I knew that I would be in safe, but also that that sense of wonder and imagination and beauty that you just don't get with other filmmakers was in my bounds. Hayao Miyazaki is unquestionably considered the greatest animator of all-time but at this point, that's putting it mildly; you can easily make an argument that he's among the greatest living filmmakers, period. Now, in his eighties, from a distance it seemed like his last retirement announcement might've actually been for real since it's been a decade since "The Wind Rises" his previous last feature film, and only a slight short film "Boro the Caterpillar" in the meantime, where he of all people actually became Studio Ghibli's first director to use CG in a film, had been done in the meantime, but slowly, word had been spreading that he was working on something again. Now, in his eighties, he could only supervise over a few minutes of a film per month though, and with COVID delays, postponed the film even longer than normal, but that's nothing for the master, he would take however long it could to make sure it was right.

And yeah, this one is pretty spectacular. "The Boy and the Heron", which won Miyazaki his second Oscar for Animated Feature, begins with a moment that might be haunting and similar to those familiar with Studio Ghibli, the firebombing of Tokyo during WWII. A similar scene took place during the late great Isao Takahata's masterpiece "Grave of the Fireflies", and that left me a little bit concerned to be honest. "Grave..." is arguably the saddest of all animated feature, but even in this horror and dread, we begin with a shockingly fantastical image of a young man, Mahito, running through the falling flames, as others are running away, to get to a hospital where his mother was at, and where the bombing landed. This is the first time Mahito sees an image of his mother, Hisako surrounded by flames, reaching out, Mahito believing that it must be for him.

Thankfully, it wasn't worst, and after a few more years of the war, Mahito's father falls in love and marries Natsuko, Hisako's sister, and Mahito first gets acquainted with her as the family moves to his stepmother's family's country estate, in an effort to stay out of the way of purportedly some of the war's more coming destructive years. Also, Natsuko is now pregnant and all this has led Mahito to begin lashing out. At school, he gets in a fight, but then, he self-harm's himself, and seriously at that. This keeps him from school, but he also quietly rejects his home life too. There's seven older women, the most notable one is Kiriko, who tries to help him out and but she also warns about going too far into the forest, especially around a strange tower that's guarded by a giant blue heron that's seems to be seeking out Mahito, ever since he arrived. There's family folklore about that tower and apparently other family members have heard voices and been lost to it. Attempts to board it up have been unsuccessful over the years, and it seems Mahito might be destined to follow the Heron into this strange Neverland that I don't even know if I want to describe this world.

First of all, I couldn't do it justice even if I did try, you'd just have to see it, but even more than that, it's not a narrative that's gonna be benefitted by describing the events, or the images-, it's way too complicated. In fact, this in some ways feels like a more adult "Spirited Away", in terms of it's plot, and also, it is more adult, the movie got a PG-13 rating for how dark a lot of this was, and that wasn't just the U.S. MPAA being out-of-touch, other places found it dark as well. But, unlike how "Spirited Away", was essentially a story of a young girl, dealing with the simple change of moving to a new place and having the understanding and empathy of growing up and needing to appreciate the trials and tribulations of adulthood, this movie is more of an emotional journey through the perils of life, death and grief and how to make sure processing any of that doesn't overcome you or burden others even as the world around you seems to be crumbling headfirst towards it's own self-destruction, like a high-flying bird diving right towards you during a hunt. If "Spirited Away" is Miyazaki's "Alice in Wonderland" than "The Boy and the Heron" is his reflective note towards, Dante's "The Divine Comedy" essentially, at least in the literal narrative, but emotionally it's a tour-de-force of the complexities of every possible personal emotion. You're growing up, you experience tragedy, you experience change, you have the moments your in, the moments of the past that lead to you being there, the desire to get out, the realization that the pains you're feeling and nothing compared to others, and that it's better to experience and survive the worst than to never have had them before.

The movie's Japanese title, translates to "How Do You Live" and I'm not entirely sure whether that's a question pondered to Mahito or to us, the audience. I'm also not sure where to rank "The Boy and the Heron" among Miyazaki's greatest films; Miyazaki's incapable of a bad film but he can certainly make some odd ones occasionally. Even still one tier below his best, is still so much better than almost everyone else's on their best day that even considering the question seems like the kind of pointless naval-gazing activity that Miyazaki wouldn't approve of people doing with their time. "The Boy and the Heron" is another brilliant addition to the great master's work, and if it is the last word from him, he goes out with a great last reflection on life, art, and himself, even if selfishly, I and nearly every cinephile alive, hope it isn't.

SING SING (2024) Director: Greg Kwedar

⭐⭐⭐

This is a weird one for me. Like, I can appreciate this film, but man was this a struggle to get through, and I'm not really sure why? For a while, I figured it was just me, but,- eh, no, something's off. It took me awhile, but I think I figured it out what my issue was. "Sing Sing" has been in development for awhile, basically it's kind of an autobiography of John Whitfield, aka Divine G (Oscar nominee Colman Domingo) an innocent man who spent years in jail at Sing Sing before getting his release. In the meantime, he started the "Rehabilitation Through the Arts" or RTA program in the prison. The program is highlighted in the film as Divine G helps lead the program, and even recruits new people in, as they put on plays in and outside of the population. Even while in jail, he's become a well-known novelist and playwright who's won awards for his work. The movie is actually filled with people who were apart of the program but later got released, and the acting is particularly great.

The movie basically shows us their process of putting on play, even recruiting people into the group, most notably Clarence Maclin who got a Supporting Actor Oscar nomination, basically playing the new guy character, who's reluctant and skeptical of some of the techniques and ideas in the system at first, and I would argue for awhile, before finally coming around and accepting and appreciating it. He's good and it says he's playing a version of himself, which I believed, he's really good, but I think he can definitely do much more. A lot of these actors could do a lot in fact. That's the biggest takeaway from this, and frankly I just think there should be more. Which,- I guess I'm recommending the film because that was the objective of the film, but that's also just kind of the problem.

Like, the movie's here to showcase both John Whitfield, through Colman Domingo's performance, but really it's about the Rehabilitation Through the Arts program. And-, it's a success. It's already long been a success when we get into this film. Like,- okay, I kinda, at first got why they started us this late, because I don't think showing the beginnings and origins of this program, would be the best writing idea. Like-, okay, there's a movie that I think I'm the only one who still kinda admits to liking, called "Renaissance Man". Penny Marshall directed it, Danny Devito starred in it, and basically, it's pretty stupid. Devito's character, through a plot contrivance, has to teach English at an Army military academy and it's a group of misfits from the Academy that he ends up teaching "Hamlet" too. If you think about it for half-a-second, even the movie knows how dumb it is, 'cause they don't even need to taken the final exam in order to pass, but they all take it anyway.... It's one of those movie plots that you'd see being made fun of as like a movie role that's like designed to earn an Oscar nomination, but like, the so-obnoxious and absurd kind that's you'd expect it in a fake trailer at the beginning of "Tropic Thunder" or something. I bring it up though, 'cause, if you did tell the story of the RTA program like that, the movie could've come out as absurd as "Renaissance Man", so I get that. What I don't get is the story they actually told.

It feels like there's a story coming, Divine Eye, Maclin's character, he is recruited to join the RTA, and yet, he's very reluctant and unsure about doing this whole acting thing. They end doing, something like his idea for a play, which is a comedy, but like, a comedy, where everything's coming together in like this manic hodgepodge of time periods, styles, characters,-, basically it doesn't sound all that different from "Hamlet 2", which is also weird, because despite wanting to make a comedy originally, Divine Eye wants to and is tasked with playing Hamlet, which is also apart of this story. The one dramatic lead in the role that's basically in no way really funny,- like it's this weird thing where it's like, were not sure whether he doesn't really get it, or he's trolling everybody and it's like a long con to just laugh at everybody. Eventually, he gets it and appreciates it, but it feels like, it's not enough. Like, there is something interesting in that idea, where somebody's stuck in jail, decides to join this theater program in the jail, and then, you know, just doesn't get it and doesn't fully relate to it, and that conflict,- like there's something to that idea. And, you add on, the idea of being behind bars, and knowing, that you might not get out, and now you're just dressing up on stage and looking ridiculous,- like, they touch on these things a little, but like, all those conflicts, they don't like, ever come up to a boil, in ways that you'd expect, at least for dramatic effect.

You could argue that well, that's kind of the point of the program and the life behind bars for these people, but I don't know, it feels a little too flimsy on the page. It's like they didn't want to actually show just how difficult and challenging this whole thing could be, and they just kinda wanted to showcase the program. Like, there is one, real blowup, and that's when Divine G, is rejected for parole, again, despite evidence that he's innocent and his success with the program and he snaps during rehearsals going badly, and that's good. Like, he's the main guy and the big runner of the program, and even he of all people, has a breaking point, like that's good. That's great drama, that's character, that's great inner conflict. It's just,- there's so much more room for conflict, and the movie kinda tries to avoid it at all costs.

The film was directed by Greg Kwedar, it's only his second feature, I don't know his work. His only other feature was a film called "Transpecos", a crime drama, it looks like it's about border patrol agents? It sounds a little interesting, but doesn't tell me much in regards to "Sing Sing", but that film was almost a decade ago and apparently he's been working on "Sing Sing" ever since. I guess it's a labor of love, but in terms of an actual film, I feel like this film lacks. I mean, you kinda get so excited for the stage production they're making that you wondered why didn't they just show that instead, a la, say-eh, Denys Arcand's great film "Jesus of Montreal". We do see clips of all the actors in the troupe performing when they were imprisoned as apart of the RTA program. If I'm watching a movie about these two characters, Divine G and Divine Eye, as their friendship continues to grow and evolve through the program, than I feel like the script let them down and there's not enough here, despite the great performance, and if this was a movie that just promoted and advertised the RTA program, than, I'm fairly satisfied with it, although kinda wish I could see the productions proper. In that way the movie does feel like the play they're putting on, it's trying to do too much, tell too many different and conflicting stories and satisfy everybody. I'm torn, but I'll recommend it for what's good about it.

CHALLENGERS (2024) Director: Luca Guadagnino

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Tennis anyone?

(Slight chuckle)

I was gonna say that I wasn't exactly sure of the exact origin of that phrase, but I then decided to look it up, and apparently some people credit it to Humphrey Bogart, believe it or not, although he did deny it, but no matter the beliefs of the exact origin, I don't think even at the time, that that meant somebody was asking simply, for a game of "tennis," although I do highly suspect that it didn't exactly have the innuendo that I'm insinuating it has in regards to "Challengers". It's rare that a film just utterly fascinates me, but I watched "Challengers" well over a week ago and have been blown away by it ever since. It's one of those movie that's actually a little difficult to discuss the plot of, but yet, you struggle to come up with the proper adjectives how great the experience of watching it is. Sexy, is an easy one. Enchanting, hypnotic, mind-blowing, I guess, absurd...- this movie, well- maybe it's not exactly as absurd as the film likes to think it is, but eh, the more you actually "Know" about tennis, I think the more you'll enjoy it, and I think those who don't are equally gonna be sucked in.

You see, I actually do love tennis; I think it's a very underrated and underappreciated sport, but I also grew up with the sport before the Williams Sisters took over, and like, okay, that was huge, and Serena is the best female player and their accomplishments by taking a country club sport and being African-Americans from the lower-end of the class ladder to dominate it, akin to say Tiger Woods's dominance of golf at his peak, is admirable and great, but while they're both country club sports, so hugely played and popular by the uber-rich and obnoxious people, like, they also kinda took the fun out of it. You see, golf is where the real old money schlubs who wanted to slice up their own little corners of the world amongst themselves played. Tennis, was the sport where, the odd, rebellious, renegades from those families drifted to. There were nice goody two-shoes players back in the day, some who even dominated, but there was also just so many personalities across the sport. The people who the family were not proud, went to tennis, like, whoever the Kieran Culkin character from "Succession" in their family was, they drifted to tennis, so you ended up with some, rich oddballs, and you bring some of these people together for a match, you saw some fun outcomes, mens and womens, and since they did tour a lot together, these, young, hormonal rich, rebellious athletes, some of them may not entirely be legally of age,- let's just say, I've heard a story or two that I'm not gonna share here, but knowing that kind of profile of some of these elite athletes, at least they were like that back in the day...-. (Prolonged insinuating grin) Nowadays everybody at the top of the tennis world either is, or at least seems like a goody two-shoes.

Note, I said, "at the top" of the tennis world, 'cause it's still a little crazy underneath.

For instance, this movie, essentially is about a match between two tennis players during a "Challengers" tournament. What's a challengers tournament? Oh boy, the intricacies of competitive tennis are a little tricky, but essentially it's a year-round sport and there are several big tournament at the top levels, but in order to qualify for those tournaments, in particular the four major tournaments in tennis, you have to be highly ranked. How do you get ranked...? Oh boy,- don't ask me, even I don't understand all the specifics of tennis's ranking system, but the point is, if you're not ranked highly enough, you can earn a high ranking by participating in lower level tournaments and doing well there, and some of them in particular, called Challenger tournaments, winning one of those can potentially get you a wild card entry into those majors.

This tournament, is where two tennis players playing each other in the finals, Art (Mike Faist), a former champion tennis star, who's starting to slip a bit and hasn't been doing well after some injuries, who's playing the challenger as a tune-up/way to earn a backdoor entry into the U.S. Open, the one major he's never won, and his former friend and doubles partner Patrick (Josh O'Connor), who is one of those spoiled rich kids from old money, but who's rebelled to the point of sleeping in his car, stiffing on bills and using his charms to couch-surf his way through these events, hoping beyond hope to one day make a "comeback" in the tennis world. But it's more than just a match. You see, Art is married to Tashi (Zendaya) who once upon a time was an on-the-rise top female young star, but who's career ended in college and has since become Art's coach and husband. Describing Tashi, is even more complicated. She's a physical fuck on the court and a mindfuck in the bedroom, and the intricacies of this love triangle,- I mean,- on the one hand, it's incredibly layered. It's the game within the game, within the game, all three of these people are playing it. And if I'm being honest, I don't even know if what actually happens makes any real logical sense....

"Challengers" is one of those films that stumps me and yet fascinates me. I don't know how seriously to take it, but it's one of the most fun movies I've seen in a while. It's fun, sexy, seductive, entrancing. Weirdly, the movie it reminds me the most of, and this is strange cause nothing usually reminds me of this film is Tom Tykwer's "Run, Lola, Run". It's weird, the driving techno score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross helps with this feeling, as well as the editing that uses almost every trick, starting with the classic tennis trope of the audience turning their heads and one person not, to the strange jumps in time and just the cuts themselves in the editing; this movie is a constant stream of elevated emotion, even often ending, like Lola, and like most tennis players, in a scream.

The film is the latest from Italian director Luca Guadagnino who's made some wonderful films over the years like "A Bigger Splash", "I Am Love" and "Call Me By Your Name". He does seem to have a sense for romance, especially among the many varietals of the rich and upper class, and it is tough to use that as a backdrop and make it both enchanting and appealing. Really it's just a matter of understanding drama being raised up and how the ebbs and flows of relationship dynamics work. This might be my favorite film of his so far honestly, and that's mostly a personal thing 'cause this film just hits my emotional points the most. It's a movie that's not afraid to be out there or outrageous and it even twists the ideas in normal sports dramas as well.

My Uncle Billy had a saying that, "They're either fucking with us, or they're fucking with us." In the same mode "Challengers" motto could be, "We're either playing tennis, or we're playing tennis."

HOPE (2021) Director: Maria Sodahl

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Oh boy, this is gonna be a bit of a tough one for me, so I'm gonna suspect it might be a tough one for some of you as well. The main character in, the somewhat ironically titled Norwegian film "Hope", is Anja (Andrea Bræin Hovig) and is suffering from cancer, which may or may not have started in the lungs, but it has progressed to her brain. She's a workaholic choreographer with several of varying ages, some from her longtime boyfriend Tomas's (Stellan Skaarsgărd) first marriage, some they had together. Both are artists, both are otherwise living togeth,- hmm, it's hard-to-describe honestly.

The whole movie takes place, essentially within a week or so timespan, during Christmas and New Years, and Anja's finding out how sick she is, and honestly, it seems like she's a ticking time bomb, I'm half-expecting her to just suddenly drop dead before anything happens, which is, exactly how you feel when you find out something like that about someone, suddenly. Half the time, while picking up prescriptions which she's told by the pharmacist that she should take now, before she leaves, she and Tomas are trying to figure out exactly how to tell the kids. It's Christmas week, and in-between sneaking around for doctor's appointments, you're trying to figure out, do you tell them now, or wait 'til after Christmas? And how do you tell them that you don't have long to live. And now these pills are making me stay up late and I can't sleep, and have to eat!

Also, maybe it's time that we get married, which, actually is a thing by the way; people do try to get married before dying a lot more often than you'd think, and this causes some fights as well. Tomas is kind of a,- um,... well, he's not exactly a natural caretaker. It's hard to describe the relationship between these two, which is weird because it's basically the crux of the movie. These are two workaholic artists who've kinda stumbled their way into having spent their lives together, and they're not even entirely sure they love each other, and now one of them is dying, and might be dying quickly. And this brings up a lot of baggage between them. How their relationship's been, how it started, how it's going now. There's one sex scene in the film and it's kind of an interesting scene, because, it's quite possibly the last time they're having sex, and they're both aware of it. Also, their workaholic tendencies mean there's a distant both from their kids and each other, especially Tomas as Anja is the main caretaker as Tomas is a little more aloof in his family life, including with Anja. And now, when she's dying and suddenly he's starting to be more involved, it pisses her off even more, and I get it!

"Hope" is a complex look at what it means to be dying, and having to suddenly deal with everything because you don't have the time to do it like you thought you did. Most movies with that plot, it's about getting to do the things that you always wanted to do and frankly that's fun, but it's also kinda simplistic; this movie is about having to unload all the emotional turmoil that you have to go through when that happens, and it eventually leads to, one of the more uncomfortable wedding sequences I've ever seen in a movie, and that's saying something.

"Hope" is the first big breakout film internationally for it's director Maria Sødahl, who's mostly worked in short films, over-the-years, and this was first feature since 2010's "Limbo", which was a bigger hit in her native Norway than "Hope", but I get why this film has resonated. It dares to explore and show just how complex dying can really be, literally and emotionally are yourself and everyone else around you. This film brought back some painful emotions and recollections to me, hopefully some of you will never have to go through those, but for those who did, it might not be the easiest watch, but it's nice to see somebody get these moments on film right.

CANON OF FILM: "HAMILTON"

2025-09-09T22:53:00.000-07:00

HAMILTON (2020)

Director: Thomas Kail

~~Screenplay~~ Book: Lin-Manuel Miranda based on the novel "Alexander Hamilton" by Ron Chernow

For years, when it comes to theatrical adaptations to film, there's always this constant debate about whether or not to open up the play or not. To open up a play, means to expand the work beyond the limitations of theater. The obvious is the idea of breaking the fourth wall, cause theater, at least most traditional theaters no matter the construction of the stage, even theater-in-the-round, there's the imaginary wall that's a boundary between the performers and the audience. There's no technical right-or-wrong answer here but most films tend to expand beyond the production in some manner, even in situations where literally the entire play takes place in one location and there's no reasonable, logistical or practical reason for the characters to exit the location, and even adaptations where they do stay in their limits, they'll still try to find ways to make the movie adaptation more cinematic. They'll find shots and ideas that move the camera from the audience's perspective to something more akin to the camera seeming to be within the chaos of the scene, like it's a character itself almost. And I think some film critics and even some film scholars, tend to think this the more logical and appropriate approach and are sometimes surprised or even bash some movies outright when a film adaptation of a play doesn't do stuff like this as often as it could. Like, one of the complaints I've often heard about the film adaptation of Neil Simon's "The Odd Couple", is that, the movie goes too far in trying to recreate the feeling of the play, to the point where it leaves logic gaps, the most notable is how during the poker scenes, instead of all the actors playing around the poker table, there's still a large empty area on one side of the table, which, is how it's traditionally performed live, 'cause you can't have an actor on stage with their back to the audience, (although you could argue that based on the situation, it gives us the impression that we, the audience are apart of the game, and we're being interrupted as Felix enters the movie and turns everything upside down, [Shrugs]) and sure, it seems weird nobody would sit there if you think about it for half-a-second, but it does convey more accurately the feeling of watching the performance live, even if it makes no sense in film.

I've personally never thought opening up a play was necessarily the best idea, some of my favorite films, like "The Odd Couple", are basically just filmed productions of a theatrical performance, and I think a lot of the times that's what make those films good. Like, I'm in the minority on this, but I claim that "Arsenic and Old Lace" is Frank Capra's best film, which most people, including probably everybody involved with that film would say is a bad position, but no, keeping that movie to the three walls the play has as much as possible makes it even better, especially when all the insanity and chaos of that story erupts.

However, I think there's another reason that people think the opposite is true, that you have to open up a play and make it more naturally cinematic for it to be good, and that's because there's a sneaky third option that nobody wants to admit is actually much harder than either opening up the play, or recreating the play as much as possible for the cinema, and that's actually recording the theatrical performance of the play. Honestly, why isn't it done more often? I mean, it is done, but it's not nearly as publicized or sold to the masses as it should be. You'd think it'd be easy, wouldn't you think; I mean, you don't have to do any extra rehearsals, everybody knows their lines and their places, and you just have to put the cameras in the right spots, right? Well, that's the thing, it's not really that easy; theater is an immersive experience and film is a 2-D experience, a lot of people don't even try this idea, or at least give it a real attempt? Which is a shame, 'cause I think when it's done well, it's easily the best choice for preserving theatrical productions for all of time. One of Spike Lee's very best films is "Passing Strange", which is just a recording of the theatrical production of the play. As much as I love and am an apologist for Chris Columbus's adaptation of "Rent", (Which did a good job of opening up that play I might add) the best way to see that work on film is "Rent: Live on Broadway" which documented the final performance of the show's original run of the show on Broadway.

That said, it isn't always done well. (and when it isn't, oh it can really be brutal sometimes; there's a reason there's still a huge bootleg market for theater performances). Sometimes the dramaturgy will let you down as much as the production admittedly, but more-than-that, the static image of the screen, just isn't gonna be the best approach to capture the essence of seeing a show live, or at the very least, it takes a lot of hard work to make it as great as it could be and sometimes putting in that effort is just a little more difficult than people think, and sometimes finding the right ways of shooting things like a multi-level set with set pieces and ensembles moving around all the time, just isn't easy to fully capture in a way that will transport a film audience into the environment and mindset of the theater.

I'll say two things though, it does help when you're recording a production of the greatest musical ever put on stage, and also helping, is putting the film, on the big screen.

A few months ago when I finally got around to my Best Films of 2020 list, I not only put "Hamilton" number one, I declared that it was one of the best films this century so far. I was wrong; it's, the best, film this century so far. And seeing it on the big screen finally, in a movie theater like it was originally supposed to be, with an actual intermission between Acts I and II, absolutely confirmed that suspicion for me. I know TV's are bigger than ever, but really, seeing Lin-Manuel Miranda and Leslie Odom, Jr. and company on the giant screen, in the darkened theater, on a screen that's 3 or 4 times your height, it's a truly different experience. The movie's being shown in theaters now, after it was intended to be screened in theaters in 2021, but with COVID cancelling everyone's moviegoing and all other plans for 2020, Disney decided to rush the film out and spring it on their streaming service early to give everybody stuck at home something to watch. And I haven't stopped watching since; I must've seen 'Hamilton" hundreds of times on Disney+ by now; I mean, when you release the greatest thing ever, everything else, no matter how good it is, it's just not gonna compare to it.

And yes, "Hamilton" is that good. I think we're used to this now, so we've just kinda accepted, but like, not even a decade before the musical, I distinctly remember jokes on like some "SNL" or "MADTV"-type show sketches about how ridiculous stuff like, a hip hop musical based on "Gone with the Wind" would be. Of course, those jokes never involved somebody as intelligent about music and history and theater in general as somebody like Lin-Manuel Miranda, but yeah, I remember his original White House performance of "Alexander Hamilton" and thinking it was the most ridiculous and hilarious thing, and didn't fully believe he was actually doing it or that it would actually come out well. Much less, this well. And to be fair, it's not just that he's telling the story of Hamilton, it's how he's telling it. I watch "Hamilton" reactions all the time, and half the time somebody will make a comment along the lines of, "If history was taught like this to us in school...." Now, personally, I love history in general, and the American Revolution is one of my favorite parts of history, so nothing surprised me in this film, even though I never read Ron Chernow's biography, but I certainly knew enough about Hamilton. But I wouldn't have both connected his experiences and personality to those of modern characters like people in hip hop culture. He's taking every influence he can think of to put into this story, some as recent as DMX and Eminem, some as ancient as Gilbert & Sullivan. You can pick your own game on that one, my favorite are catching his subtle "The West Wing" references, like Eliza (Phillippa Soo) singing that he wants Alexander to "Come home at the end of the day", or Angelica (Renee Elise Goldsberry) mentioning during "The Schuyler Sisters" that's she's looking for "A mind at work", or even the movie's best showstopping song, "The Room Where it Happened"; that's a quote from a "West Wing" episode.

But even more impressive though is how Miranda takes these modern motifs and musical cues in telling this history story, and placing it in a modern context of why we tell these stories from our past. History does matter, and seeing how we later compartmentalize the story from the past effects how we view them as the future. How the act of telling the story of our nation, is just as important as the actual story itself, and that's probably what makes people lose interest in learning history the most, not just the boring ways it's taught or how the textbooks try to tell us, the context of why it's important to tell these stories about what happened and how we got here and why, it's something that gets lost sometimes.

Even telling a story of America's past through modern music, wasn't even new on Broadway. On top of the several other historical musicals, like "1776" for instance, a couple years before "Hamilton", there was a big Broadway musical called "Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson" that took Andrew Jackson's story and imagined him as an emo-punk rocker who enjoyed cutting himself. And that musical wasn't bad, by the way, but it's only telling a story through a modern lens, and it borders more on the satirical than the authentic. (Although Andrew Jackson's life, is probably best portrayed as though it was a satirical joke.) At the end it's still a story of a bunch of old obnoxious slave-owning white people and it is hard to appreciate it in modern day, but just because that's who they were at the time, doesn't mean that's who they have to be when you tell their story.

But what really puts "Hamilton". as a film, above everything else, is how well it's made to recreate the experience of seeing the play, and this is obvious when you're watching it on streaming, but it's so much more clear on the very big screen, in a theater. Having seen this movie so often, I don't just look at the main actors anymore, I'm always trying to, well, "look around, look around,"... and see what everyone else is doing and where they're at, and this movie's done that better than any other theatrical production I've ever watched on film. The lighting helps for the stage, but the lighting for the film show even in those more dimly-lit scenes, you can more clearly see the ensemble people and all the action they're doing. Did you see the movie and see where all the Schuyler sisters were, before they introduction of them in "The Schuyler Sisters"? They're all there, and not just in the opening song. Or how they go in and out, brings in and out props. Like, I knew they were picking up the pamphlets that were being tossed around on stage, but I wasn't able to focus before on how they're able to do it, and stick to the steps they're doing. The girl who's the bartender during "Aaron Burr, Sir" and "My Shot", and how she's doing her job. You get a glimpse of that, and you don't get 100% of it, but my god, on the big screen, you get every little subtle hint. Like how Alexander (Lin-Manuel Miranda) pours himself and drinks a second drink as Washington (Christopher Jackson) is telling him that he's not running for another term. That's something you might catch when you're watching it live, but seeing every detail like that. The letter that Eliza burns actually has writing on it!? I know it's Broadway, so you can afford to do stuff like that, but you don't have to do stuff like that. Andy Blankenbuehler's choreography is what really gets showcased the most on the big screen, and again, not just the dancing, but Kail's mise-en-scene directions for everybody, combined with the choreography,- like, this as close to a real theatrical experience that you're gonna truly get on film, and basically any film that tries to do this in the future, is gonna get compared to how "Hamilton" did it here. (Which kinda sucks, because now you gotta compare everything literally to "Hamilton"; I do not envy any other show on Broadway right now, in the past, or in the future.) I do wish we had one shot of when exactly Mariah Reyonlds (Jasmine Cyphus Jones) shows up during "We Know", just to see when she's popping up in the shadows behind Alexander, but if you're watching her, she's hovering around the whole time too beforehand, and we see that more clearly on the big screen.

No, I'm glad it was released early during those COVID years, but to fully replicate the theater experience, the big screen is where this needs to be. The movie was shot over a few days of recording the performances in front of the audience and some without an audience to get some of those more intimate close-ups for those moments where the audience will inherently be focused exclusively on a specific character or moment; my favorite is Leslie Odom Jr.'s close-up in "Wait for It", although I do like noticing how the Ensemble moves in to listen, throughout the song and aren't just sitting there in the beginning. There's also that one shot from the above camera of the pamphlets flying and two shots from the back of the stage when King George (Jonathan Groff) and George Washington get introduced. Seeing the film will never replace the theater entirely, but I think the film medium should be good enough to want you to see it on the stage, even after seeing it in your home. "Hamilton" succeeds at this way more than any filmed stage production I've ever seen, plus it forever immortalizes it's original cast performing the greatest and most important musical to ever hit the stage, and one of the greatest pieces of art,- it's the greatest telling of the story of America, ever, and just how important that story is, not just to us, but it really did turn the world upside down, and why it's important to retell it as much as we can.

And yeah, since I've looked at the ticket prices for the touring show, and the price for the movie tickets at the local CineMark theater, um,- most of us will gladly (finger quotes) "settle" for the movie version. (Although both prices are a bit out-of-line I might add; still totally worth it though.)

CANON OF FILM: "THE MALTESE FALCON" (Huston)

2025-08-13T11:07:00.000-07:00

THE MALTESE FALCON (1941)

Director: John Huston

Screenplay: John Huston based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett

For reasons that I'll discuss some other time, I haven't been watching any movies, or frankly, anything of note, for a little while now. It's been dark for me lately, and I know I have to eventually get out of this funk, and I think I'm finally starting to get out of it. But in the meantime, I gotta start somewhere and I've stayed up late a lot of nights lately, and there's only one movie I really want to watch at this late an hour. They don't really have a late show anymore like the old TV networks used to, but this is the movie I think of when I think of watching a movie that late, and somehow, I noticed that I never talked about it here before.

Kinda strange, "The Maltese Falcon" is genuinely one of my favorite films, and I think it's one of the all-time best; I've listed on my Top Ten Lists I make periodically to parallel Sight & Sound's once-a-decade list twice. I guess I thought I'd already done the Canon of Film for this film, or perhaps I just didn't know what else to say about it. You ever watch a movie so often that it becomes impossible to truly talk about? To me, "The Maltese Falcon", isn't just one of the all-time seminal films, it's the perfect late night movie. When you're up at like two or three in the morning and you can't sleep, and you're looking for a late night show to get engrossed in and help you relax, "The Maltese Falcon" is the movie I'm hoping is on. It's got all the great pulp images and motifs that late night films on television were made for: a cold private eye with a symbolic name, a femme fatale who's trying to desperately hold her lips shut while spreading her legs wide, (Symbolically, at least), thieves, murderers, and of course, the stuff that dreams are made of.

It's kind of a forgotten footnote now, but on the same lot that Orson Welles was creating "Citizen Kane" another first-time filmmaker was also reinventing cinema as we know, and he did it, with an unusual work, one that had already been adapted into film, not once, but twice before already. I've seen the original "The Maltese Falcon", directed by Roy Del Ruth, a decent early director, but it's nothing too special, although they stay as close to the same story as this one, only it tries to turn it into a love story at the end. It's also, just not got the proper tone and tense for the Dashiell Hammett novel. They tried again with an even stranger and more surreal film, called "Satan Met a Lady", directed by William Dieterle, who is a better director than Del Ruth, but his better work came later, and this was a weird film. It's got Bette Davis at the peak of her power in it, but despite changing most everything, it's got most of the elements the same, and it is just bizarre and weird; it's kind of a fun awful, but it's- it's awful. (Bette Davis was right, she got a lot of really terrible scripts) There's an explanation for this, remember Dashiell Hammett basically invented the hard-boiled detective story, which-, people kinda forget this now, but the entire detective and mystery genre is much newer, than people realize, and the modern hard-boiled American detective subgenre was just getting being created by people like Hammett and Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain,... a few others around this time, and through film, it would eventually morph into the film noir, however, Hammett's only real good film adaptation up 'til this point was one of his more light and comedic detective tale, "The Thin Man". Part of this was trying to maneuver the subjects of his novels around the censors, and "The Maltese Falcon," does have a lot of symbolism around the edges of the screen, that we have to kinda pick up on, in order to circumvent the Hays Code censors. So, this is why both previous film adaptation, feel like they're trying to be some lighter variant of like a Sherlock Holmes tales, ("Satan Met a Lady", especially feels like it's trying to be one of the really frivolous one.) John Huston knew the tone he needed, and that involved taking from the German Expression filmmakers use of darkness and shadows, and well as somebody in the lead as Sam Spade, who can keep Hammett's sharp wit and cynical awareness, but to play the absurd aspects of the story straight.

Despite being a first-time director, John Huston was the son of the great actor Walter Huston, he even later directed his father to an Oscar in "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and since he was making this movie on the cheap, he had some leniency on the film. He casted mostly then-unknown actors, at least in Hollywood at the time, and that includes Humphrey Bogart, who was known for sporadic supporting work on stage and occasionally on screen at the time; this film made him an A-list star, starting off a long career of playing some of the silver screens best anti-heroes.

Bogart was best as anti-heroes like Sam Spade, and when he got this part, he became an A-list actor able to get roles later in films like “Casablanca,” “The Big Sleep,” “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” “The African Queen,” etc. etc. Here, his partner, Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan) is killed, and he barely notices. In almost no time he has changed the office door, and has slept with his partner’s widow, who he was already having an affair with. Like, I said, Hays Code, reading between the lines; in fact when the film was given to the Hays board, they had there fair share of complaints originally with the screenplay, and then later with the film itself, like, this you can find the the original script with the red pen scratching out what was obscene still, and this is one they really battered with, which forced some reediting to occur, but Huston still got a lot through. Pay close attention to every slight and bizarre detail. It enhances the story to know that Peter Lorre’s Joel Cairo has a business card that smells like gardenias, or why he strangely position the top of his cane so close to his mouth while talking. Is that why Bogart beat him up in his office? Not really, but it certainly wouldn’t have stopped him from doing it.

Along with Bogart’s tough guy image, we also get comedy from his wit, not just verbally but in his actions. There’s a running joke in the movie how Gutman’s henchman always get there guns stolen from Spade, even though he usually gives them back to him. There's a lot of acting in the film from Bogart, and also from Sam Spade as well. The other films showcase this aspect too, but they play it up too much, Bogart's version of Spade, casually throws those lines away. There's an early sequence where Bogart's Sam Spade is angrily leaving a room after confronting Gutman (Oscar-nominee Sydney Greenstreet, in his first film role), and then, once he finishes storming out and making a scene, he slams the door, mid-sprint, and then just starts casually walking towards us like he's taking a stroll through the park, with a sly smile on his film.

The film is considered the first, and in my opinion the best film noir ever made. I’ve watched this film about a dozen or so times, and I’m always surprised by one thing or another in it. There’s a scene where Spade is having a drink with Sydney Greenstreet’s Gutman, and it never fails to surprise me what happens at the end of the scene, especially because Huston chooses not to outline what really important in the scene, even though it shouldn’t be hard to figure it out. Upon my tenth viewing, I realized that everything Mary Astor’s Brigid O’Shaughnessy says in the film is basically a lie, which makes her character’s closure a little more satisfying because as the audience as we hate being fooled by a character as much as she fools with us, although Spade is a little more indifferent to her than we are. Watching it again, I realize why the film works so well, is how wonderfully side-eyed Bogart is at anything she says, just completely not buying any of the over-praising, over-indulging, especially those lines about how she isn't the "good girl" that she was claiming to be. (Those lines were probably twice as funny at the time if you know about Mary Astor's well-publicized personal troubles. [She wasn't the biggest star, although "Dodsworth", her big breakout film, had come up a few years earlier, but this was coming off her diaries being released as apart of a long and lurid divorce/custody battle, so her, even pretending to be the "good girl" even in the beginning, like everyone in the audience would be thinking, just how much she was not a good girl.... Although I should say she did ultimate win custody and that case, but people forget that, and like to fawn over what was in those so-called "Purple Diaries.)]

I think that's what really separates "The Maltese Falcon", in nearly all the other great film noirs, the femme fatales, are taken pretty seriously as the fatal women that they are, whether they're in on the crime(s) going on, or are just innocent bystanders around them. That doesn't mean they're lesser or those movies are lesser, that's what makes some of those are great films still hold up after all this time, but Bogart just calling off her shit every time,- while she perfectly acts as this wonderfully bad actress that she's trying to be for him. This is why turning this film into a real romance never works. Everyone's working everyone all the time, trying to find cinema's most famous MaGuffin; it's just perfect that it not only doesn't fall into that trap, but it's almost making fun of us for even having that trap to fall into.

My favorite line: "You're good, you're very good," Spade chuckles as he observes Brigid being very bad.

MOVIE REVIEWS #210: "THE BRUTALIST", "ANATOMY OF A FALL", "THE WILD ROBOT", "FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA", "THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH" (Coen), "WAITRESS: THE MUSICAL", and "EL PLANETA"!

2025-05-18T02:51:00.000-07:00

(Sigh) Another long-delayed blogpost finally posted.

Anyway, there's been a lot of goings on with my life in recent years, and I've had to deal with them, preferably one-at-a-time. Right now, I'm trying to get some of my health straightened out. I've been to a few doctors and dentists over the last few months, I'm on a lot more pills than I was, but I'm slowly getting better. Getting healthier. That's the latest reason why these posts, especially my reviews have been coming later and later. Other posts I've just been cutting down on, and while I'll try to post more Canon of Film posts in the future when I get a chance, and maybe a commentary here-and-there, I have one in my mind already at the moment, but only when I feel like I have something to say and I want/need to say it. I feel too often in the past I tried too hard to write when I frankly didn't/shouldn't have, especially with commentaries. Not that I take any of them back, but I'm just not in a hurry to push out opinions on things anymore. If I need to say something, I will, don't worry.

Anyway, not much else going on. I'm working on keeping healthy and hopefully the healthier I get the more these reviews and blogposts will come out more often. Here's this latest batch of movie reviews.

THE BRUTALIST (2023) Director: Brady Corbet

⭐⭐⭐1/2

I get what this film is doing..., I think. I don't really know if I like it though. "The Brutalist" is formulated like a long, classic Hollywood family epic, complete with several parts and an overture to begin the movie and it definitely feels like one of those long, sprawling epics. That's not necessarily a negative thing offhand, a lot of those films were great. Others weren't though. "The Brutalist" is, somewhere in between. The skill is striking, the story is,- well, it's interesting, in the abstract....

This is one of those that I think works symbolically better than it does as a literal narrative. Like, if I just tell you the story, it's gonna be intriguing, but placed in this genre, it gets stretched and stretched, all the way through the length of a building being built. For those unfamiliar, and admittedly, I was going into this, "The Brutalist" is the titled after the architecture style, which, already kinda puts this movie a little behind the eight-ball for me. Not because of the style, the term refers to a post-war movement of architecture that tended to strip down to the bare materials in their buildings and constructions, but a movie about, architecture style and criticism, immediately points me toward a movie and book that, I can't stand, called "The Fountainhead". (Yeah, don't trust anybody who likes Ayn Rand, even taking out all the problematic parts of her works and her life, her writing was not nearly as good as people make it out to be.)

Now thankfully this movie isn't as objectivistic, although it is a little rapey...-, anyway, the main character is Laszlo Toth (Oscar-nominee Adrien Brody) a Hungarian-Jewish architect who survives the Holocaust and manages to escape to America, where he eventually begins working on a major project for a wealthy American industrialist named Harrison Lee Van Buren (Oscar-nominee Guy Pearce). Harrison Lee Van Buren-, okay, that's the name of at least two Presidents and a Confederate General. I don't know what Laszlo Toth means, apparently he's an amalgam of several architects from the era. Like, I said, I think the movie is more interesting metaphorically than it actually is content-wise. The most interesting part to me, in hindsight, is seeing how Harrison's character ultimately reacts to the events of the film, and what that means, presuming his character represents America towards the Jewish characters, who've come here to escape the Holocaust.

They've all reacted different as well. Laszlo, originally came to live with his cousing Attila (Alessandro Nivola) who's married a Catholic girl, Audrey (Emma Laird) and he has assimilated into the American Catholic culture of to the point of even changing his name and renouncing his Jewish faith. He does help Laszlo get some work, but with Laszlo's wife Erzsbeth (Felicity Jones) wheelchair-bound and still stuck in Europe along with their mute niece Zsofia (Raffey Cassidy) taking care of her, Laszlo's more anxious to find more solid and permanent work. Plus, being an architect makes him just a little more ambitious anyway, which is part of why Harrison, eventually takes an interest in him, and helps get his family over while Laszlo finishes the ambitious project that Harrison's commissioned him for.

Explaining more of the movie feels arduous, and the movie itself is pretty arduous, it covers a lot of events over decades of time, and I guess it's an intriguing look at post-war artistic life for the Jews. There's a lot going on and being said subliminally; especially with the Harrison character, who's very complex. I don't feel adequate to discuss every little detail, that eventually ends in accusations at one of those high society fancy dinners that eventually breaks up an empirical family.

The title is apt for another reason, this movie is brutal. Brutal in it's depictions of events, brutal in Laszlo's attitude and approaches to things that come up. Even in it's cinematic approach, which is gorgeous by the way. I'm not terribly familiar with Brady Corbet's filmmaking; I've only ever seen one feature of his beforehand, "The Childhood of a Leader", which was okay. That was also a brutal film about a young unnamed dictator's childhood. He's more well known for "Vox Lux", but I'm more familiar with his acting work, especially in Gregg Araki's best film, "Mysterious Skin", also a pretty brutal film. I'm not sure what his appeal to this material and approach is, but it's definitely ambitious. I love his filmmaking, the cinematography for this film is top-notch; I love how every era and locations looks so different. Still, I still feel a bit standoffish from this film, perhaps because it's so dense.

It also kinda bugs me, because trying to come up with a comparison film that doesn't have credits like "Directed by David Lean" on them, leads me to one of my favorite films in modern times, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's "Never Look Away". That movie was my number one film of that year, and it still stirs a lot in me, and looking at "The Brutalist", which, except for it being more about escaping the Holocaust for America, has quite a few similar beats to it. It's also more about artistic expression about surviving the Holocaust. Like,- even a cursory intro to brutalist architecture, the first thing I thought of regarding how it's a deconstructionist practical approach to buildings, immediately made me think of, well, things that were built more for practical purposes than beauty during the time of World War II....- let's say I kinda caught on to that, eventual reveal at the end-, although I don't know if it's a "reveal". They're different films and it's not great to compare, but I felt more affected by "Never Look Away", personally, now that film is going for that emotional effect more but it does achieve it's power. By comparison, "The Brutalist" left me more disconnected to it's emotional center. It's a strange contradiction, to look for beauty in brutality, in basic, core, barebones, materials-on-display architecture and filmmaking, and yet it tells that story with this long, elaborate, over-arching, sprawling, decade-sweeping epic. That severe a contradiction is like pairing blue cheese with fish, you're either gonna appreciate such a severe and disparate contrast or not, and there's almost no real in-between. I can appreciate it a lot, definitely enough to recommend and discuss, but yeah, I'm not sure about blue cheese and fish.

ANATOMY OF A FALL (2021) Director: Justine Triet

⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2

So, do you think she did it?

That's basically the question. The movie doesn't necessarily give us an answer. "Anatomy of a Fall" is essentially a courtroom drama, a woman, a famed novelist, Sandra (Oscar nominee Sandra Huller) is accused of murdering her husband, Samuel (Samuel Theis). She was having a disagreement with him at the time, and his death is, odd. He was playing music really loudly, too loud for Sandra to keep an interview she was having going. They live out in the mountains, and Samuel was working on renovating their cottage and is up in the attic. Their son, Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner) recently loss part of his eyesight after an accident. He was the one who found him, but his story changes when he realizes he was in another room at the time during investigatory reenactments.

He isn't sure what happened. We're not entirely sure what happened either. You know I probably could make an argument against this film because, if I'm going just off the bare materials of the plot, the movie disturbingly reminds me a lot of a movie I can't stand, and it's weirdly "Basic Instinct".

I don't know if others picked up on it, most people just remember the film for Sharon Stone portraying a living, breathing succubus, but the actual plot of that movie, involves how she's an author, who may or may not be getting herself caught up in those sexually ravenous and deadly endeavors in order to then write about them in her "fictional books". The books that Sandra writes, do come into play a lot, not just the content, which does seem to have foretold a bit of the situation she's in now, emotionally and literally, but also because the crime itself,...- well, until the very, I'd argue arbitrary, ending of "Basic Instinct", every clue in the movie regarding the crime and whether or not she did or didn't do it, cuts both ways, in that every clue can be read as both an indication that she did do it, as well as an indication that she didn't do it. And there's actually a lot of that, even in this movie.

Like, just for one example, there's a sequence regarding a bruise on Sandra's arm; she lies about the fact that it was caused after her and Samuel had a fight, a fight that we find out, he actually secretly recorded. Now, on the one hand, it's suspicious that she lies about the bruise; she claimed it was from banging the corner of a countertop in the kitchen, it makes her an unreliable witness and it makes her look suspicious. On the other hand, she realized that, if she told the truth about the bruise, it would make her look like a suspect. So, if she didn't kill him, arguably it would make more sense that she lied? That's what I mean, every clue is kinda like that. That's why "Basic Instinct" ultimately doesn't work, because it just, doesn't matter at the end whether or she did it or not. And I could argue that it doesn't matter here either, but the thing is, it's not about whether or not she did it, it's all about the drama of whether or not she get convicted or not, which, that already is more interesting, but there's also more going on than that.

For one, there's no sex and she's not trying to seduce the person trying to get her off, in this case, it's her lawyer friend Vincent (Swann Arlaud), who warns her ahead of time of the charges they could bring against and never seems to ever ask whether she did it, or even indicate that he even wants to know. What I think helps here is the son. It matters whether or not he'll be going home to his mother, or to someone else, as he's under the care of a court monitor, Marge (Jehnny Beth) while the case goes on, and his testimony becomes more and more crucial as he recalls more and more details. And as the case goes on, he's not even sure which would be the better option. He even goes up to the area of the cottage where his father fell and look down through the window he fell out of. He has some vision, but just looking at the small area, and the way the window door was,- well, I have theories. Daniel has his own.

I'm not entirely familiar with the French court system, so the trial elements were a little odd to me, but I'm an American and its very possible we've been doing it wrong for hundreds of years. (Doesn't matter what it is, it's very possible we've been doing it wrong for that long.) The film was written and directed by Justine Triet; it's her first big international break and the film won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, and she got a rare directing nomination, rare for a female director, still, unfortunately. Honestly, I think I get the directing nomination more than the writing one, which-, yeah, the more you analyze it, the more it is a tricky script, with a lot of ambiguity. Sandra Huller's performance really does carry this film; I guess Triet told her, eventually to play the character like she's innocent, but it's definitely not clear at any real point. To some degree, I wonder if Triet did watch "Basic Instinct" and decided to just make a good version of the film. Kudos to her if that's the case. It's a mystery where every clue breaks both ways and it still matters a lot whether or not she did it, and yet, we don't get an answer.

So, to go back to the original question, "So, do you think she did it?"

THE WILD ROBOT (2024) Director: Chris Sanders

⭐⭐⭐

Sometimes watching too many animated movies can make you pretty jaded about them. I mean, I saw this film in my queue, "The Wild Robot" and basically half-guessed nearly all the major character arcs and plot-points of the movie, just based on the title alone. And it's not because I'm psychic or anything, it's just that there's already a lot of recent animated movies that have similar plots and arcs and y'know,- basically they're telling the same stories. That's not a knock, a lot of these stories need to be told and especially to kids, these movie's main demographics, they need to be told to them a lot in a lot of different ways. "The Wild Robot" is another way of telling one of these stories. It's a story about overcoming prejudice and feeling empathy for others. That's a good lesson to teach others, it's a powerful one to teach adults at times; I got a little choked up for a moment or two. But, when you see a lot of them, it's hard to completely get enthralled with all of them.

You do wonder, is this movie less than because I saw the earlier films that were so much better, or were those earlier films so much better because I saw them first? It's a conundrum, one you do worry about as a critic, both in terms of recommendations, but also, just because, it's a challenge to your skill and analyses. Certain movies will automatically be compared to "The Wild Robot", "WALL-E", came to mind right away. A mechanical humanoid character, stuck in a place where there's no other mechanical humanoid, or any human-like characters around, trying to go on with their life? Hmm, I don't know, I like "WALL-E" a lot, but maybe "The Wild Robot" is just as good? Well, how about other stories of, other characters coming into a world and then they learn to accept each other? Director Chris Sanders, even noted that he found parallels with this story with his first big directorial effort, "Lilo & Stitch", with that same story? Hmm, maybe. It's clear he cared about this film; it's noted for being the final on-site project for Dreamworks Animation, who are, in the immediate future, going to send out their animated feature projects and focus more on other endeavors, and if that fact remains, this isn't the worst film to go out on. But yeah, I feel confident in saying, that "The Wild Robot", is only in the ehhh-it's a'right tier for me.

The movie's story centers around Roz (Lupita Nyong'o), a robot who, after a plane crash, ends up stranded on a deserted island-, well, an island deserted of humans. She does, try to befriend the animals, who, she at first tries to help, since she's programmed to do so, but once it becomes clear to her, she's in the wrong place, she tries to phone home, but her tracker is broken. Inevitably, she ends up, accidentally taking care of a young baby gosling, who now thinks she's her mother.

I like this first part, the Robot, Roz, having to suddenly take care of, essential an orphan, two orphans taking care of each other. The gosling, who she names Brightbill (Kit Connor) eventually starts to grow up and befriends the group of birds who have migrated back after the last year, and eventually, he learns to fly with them, even though, he struggles a bit since, he was taught everything by a robot, with a little help from other animals, mostly a cultured fox named Fink (Pedro Pascal).

The second half of the movie, after this, I just didn't care for. It's not, awful or anything, but there are more than a few contrived moments and decisions that would've been avoided if certain characters literally just waited a few minutes. Also, obviously, eventually other robots come to collect Roz at some point. There's a battle scene between the animals and robots. None of this is necessarily bad or even unnatural to the script, it's just so formulaic that it just comes off as inevitable, when I actually wouldn't have minded something else instead. Like, just Roz, just, deciding to ignore her programming and just live on the island as this motherly creature to Brightbill and the forest, without any outside human-built force out to get her. I kinda like the idea of the robot who becomes in tune with the natural surroundings, that's an idea can be explored and emotional just the same.

The movie does come up with a good conceit about how love is something that is ultimately boundless and true, and I think that's good, but I think there was so much more than could've been done. The movie has a more painterly aesthetic, and Chris Sanders was inspired by the films of Hayao Miyazaki for this film, and I kinda wonder if it would've been more interesting if he was inspired by some of Isao Takahata's work instead, who often had a lot more emotional depth to his characters who were often stuck trying to forge their own paths through the worlds around them. I don't mean, make this is a depressing narrative, but maybe have a narrative that was more based on the character's emotions as opposed to a more conflicting, hero's journey narrative plot. He might just be being true to the book as well, this was an adaptation of a popular children's novel series.... (Shrugs)

Anyway, I'm clearly mixed on the film. I can see why some might like it, but if I have to ask, not comparing it other similar films, if this was the best film that this could've been, that's where I kinda feel like it falters, but it's still a nice little film. I just wish their was more.

FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA (2024) Director: George Miller

⭐⭐⭐1/2

"Mad Max" has always been one of cinema's strangest franchises. I've never fully understood what exactly to do with them, even as the films, strangely, continuously got better over time. I even had a class that taught "Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior", well before "Mad Max: Fury Road" was even a thought, and I remember it being,- well, it was a weird movie. After the first movie, all the films, became these hyper-visual surrealistic post-apocalyptic spectacles, but like, what do I make of all these films, as a whole,- I mean, the original concept, that the world is running low on gasoline, and power sources, so the world is quickly turning into a lawless desert wasteland where modified ancient technology is used to seek out new places to live and consume, and the world's been separated into these cult-like gangs because of it, like, I get that, and I can even to this day, see, a scenario where this kind of science-fiction can be disturbingly realistic in our modern world, but what to actually make of these movies?

(Shrugs)

And what to make of this one? You see, one of the weird things about George Miller's films, is that usually, the main characters, or the main protagonists at least, are, well, the least interesting characters, and Mad Max was not an exception. The most interesting things about him was the fact that outside of the first movie, there's not much to him or his backstory. The interesting stuff in George Miller's universes is the world building, and Max, seemed to be his conduit for us to, explore how deep this world was. That's George Miller's greatest strength by the way, his biggest films outside of "Mad Max", also franchises, were "Happy Feet" and "Babe" and both those movies, were about the world building as well, in "Happy Feet"'s case, it might've been too much about the world building, and it's not that he can't create interesting characters, he's created several, just in this franchise, I can think about five or six but it's just, never his main focus. I mean, this is a universe where frickin' Tina Turner played a tyrant Queen of a post-apocalyptic underworld city-state who oversees combatants in a death cage and she's maybe the third most interesting character in that film alone! Yet, it never seemed like he or anybody was interested in making a prequel to that film.

But then came Furiosa (Anya-Taylor Joy as an adult, Alyla Brown as a child) For whatever reason, Furiosa's character just became too intriguing to ignore and limit to one film. I'm not entirely sure of the reason for that, clearly Miller thought so as well since we have this origin story of her, which itself kinda leads into an origin of "Fury Road", which...- hmmm.

Okay, another weird thing about George Miller isn't just, how good he is at world-building, it's how good he is at world-building, with less. This is admittedly a bit contradictory for me, in particular, I'm known for bashing even the most accepted and elaborate fantasy world-buildings in literature if I think there's one scientific illogicality to them; I'm still the last holdout on Tolkien for that reason, books and movie adaptations, but the "Mad Max" franchise in particular,- Miller has a way of showing his world-building, without ever feeling the need to elaborate or explore further than he feels necessary, which you'd think would lead to me being more annoyed, and in some situations from other filmmakers it probably would, but from him, especially in this world, the less you know why things are going on the way they are, the better. (It might help that this is more sci-fi than fantasy, but still, if you really wanted to make a bitch about some aspects of the "Mad Max" films, you hypothetically could) He knows how to take stuff that we'd otherwise just stop fantasy/sci-fi narratives dead in their tracks and uses that mystery of why they exist in a way that adds to the story and characters. He really does it better than anyone too; that's really why "Fury Road" is probably never gonna be topped as his masterpiece.

So, I'm a little reluctant just on the premise of this film, for that reason. I didn't necessarily want to know more about Furiosa. Where she came from, how she got here, how she lost that arm. After watching the film, I'm still not sure I really wanted to know..., but I was fascinated by the film anyway. It's weird, it kinda reminded me both of the original "Mad Max" in terms of it being, an origin story, but it's also like, "Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior" too, in that, the main character, has like, I don't know, maybe 200 words of dialogue and it's everything going on around her that's interesting. She's also, basically a drifter between the worlds of the Wasteland. At first, she's kidnapped by Dementus's (Chris Hemsworth) gang, as his raiders were attacked by the leaders of the Green Place. Furiosa's mother Mary (Charlee Fraser) tries to rescue her, but she ends up killed and Dementus takes her as a prize. Eventually though, as Dementus and Immortan Joe (Lachy Halme) get into a political divide over who runs what part of the Wasteland, and gets sold to Immortan Joe to become one of his brides. She eventually escapes that, by hiding as one of his mechanics, pretending to be a small mute boy, waiting out for her opportunity to strike. She eventually does, but it doesn't completely pan out, but she's saved by Praetorian Jack, who also is out to get out of the grasp of Immortan Joe, and also doesn't trust Dementus, who's now taken over Bullet Town, and is planning a full assault on the Citadel to overtake Immortan Joe.

Honestly, explaining all that,- it's so...- it feels like I'm talking jibberish. It's one of those things that must look like a nightmare on the page, but when you actually see all this, you're so caught up in everything, that it doesn't come off as strange or weird. I've read sci-fi scripts that are so detailed in all the minutia that I just give up and toss them aside, and I feel like I would naturally do that with literally, every Mad Max film, but dammit, George Miller's just keeps getting more elaborate and fascinating with his directing. What originally looked like a fairly surreal-albeit modern apocalyptic universe decades ago, now feels so lived in and elaborate. All this diesel and dust, and these strange monstrosities of war rigs and makeshift war vehicles,- it feels like "Lawrence of Arabia" took a very wrong turn at Albuquerque and even at it's worst, you're just fascinated by the images on screen.

For all technical purposes, this is arguably the first time the "Mad Max" universe put out a movie entry that's weaker than the last one, but "Fury Road" was so good, it basically raised the bar to lengths that I don't think anybody thought possible. Ending this movie with highlights of "Fury Road", makes sense since it is a prequel, but it does hurt the film a bit, reminding me of how great the previous film was. (And it's a post-credit scene [Or mid-credits I guess], so knock off half-a-star for that.) I don't know, I guess the big sin is it took the most interesting character of the franchise, and kind made her less interesting by, well, turning her into Mad Max essentially. It's not that I hate it, in theory, but y'know, ultimately, I think you can argue "Furiosa..." does detract moreso than add to "Mad Max", by diving deeper into her backstory. That doesn't mean don't watch it, there's too much cinematic eye candy to ignore, but I would pretend this doesn't exist if/when the next proper "Mad Max" entry comes out. That said, at this point though, I would fund George Miller's vision, script unseen, 'cause I just trust the beauty in his cinematic vision. There aren't a lot of filmmakers, especially franchise filmmakers you can say that about, but dammit, he's one of them.

THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH (2021) Director: Joel Coen

⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2

I was in film school when the Coen Brothers won all the Oscars for "No Country for Old Men", and even before that happened, they were very popular around the staff and other students of the university and the film school world, myself included. I watched, several Coen Brothers films in classes, maybe more than any other directors except for Charlie Chaplin and Stanley Kubrick, and that's only because I took specific classes on those filmmakers. I can't claim I love everything they've ever done; I'm actually quite critical of some of their earliest works; despite watching "Blood Simple" and "Miller's Crossing" in a couple of those classes, I think those are some of their weakest films, but you couldn't claim any of those films, or any of their lesser films are anyone else's, and we talked a lot about them.

One of my professors, after either the second class screening I had of "Fargo" or the 4th or 5th class I saw "The Big Lebowski" in- (I saw "The Big Lebowski" in more film classes than any other film, seemed like every class I took had a reason to screen that one.) he talked about the scenario of what would happen if one of the Coen Brothers passed away, and most of us agreed that the other one would just continue making films or he would simply retire at that point. The idea of them, not working together ever crossed our minds. Now, for some, insipid and idiotic reasons, that the Directors' Guild had, many of their earliest films originally only credited Joel Coen as the film's director, but it was well-known that they essentially directed their films together, on top of writing and producing, and under an alias, edited their films, and if you look up those early films on imdb.com, you can see the front page usually lists both Joel Coen and Ethan Coen as directors for each of their films, and only when you go to the cast pages do you see Ethan's name has the word "uncredited" in parentheses next to them, but anybody who ever talked or worked with them, understood that they were a duo who did everything together and they often seemed like a hivemind behind the camera. The idea of them ever working separately or having other interests, was just so foreign a concept that it was simply never considered. They were already weirdos in Hollywood, and they were, as they once famously said during one of those Oscar acceptance speeches, they were happy being allowed to play in their own little corner of the sandbox.

Well, I guess, (Shrugs) they got tired of sharing that sandbox, 'cause here we have, a film directed by Joel Coen, and Joel Coen, alone. Ethan is nowhere involved in this.

I should note, this is not the end, they're split was amicable it seems; they just had a desire to work on separate projects at that moment, and they're currently in the process of working on a new film now, but-eh, it is still striking. I'm not even sure, how to think about them separately, or even, what to make of one of them, not being with the other. Like,- the Coen Brothers have a really unique filmmaking vision; I could go on a really long dissertation about them from an auteur perspective, a lot of their themes, their motifs, their comedic and dramatic storytelling ideas, their sense of Americana that they explored, but that's them together; what are they separate? What do they do when they're not apart of the Coen Brothers. What is a real Joel Coen film?

Um, I don't know what I expected that to be, but-eh,- well, I guess I can't be too surprised, considering that the Coen Brothers, well, they never did what you think they would do next, but-eh, somehow a fairly, faithful, Shakespeare adaptation was not on my thought list. I guess it makes a little sense when you realize that Joel Coen in particular was interested in doing theater as well as movies, so, yeah, why not a version of "The Tragedy of MacBeth"? I mean, I'm certainly not gonna complain, it's-, okay, it's a little funny, he goes into theater and picks the one play who's name you can't say, but-, alright, a version of "Mackers", I'm all for it. Or, I guess I should call it "The Scottish Play", since, this is about as far outside ~~their~~ his Americana motif, he's ever been. This is really just, a production of "Macbeth"; it's even very clearly, shot almost entirely on a soundstage. It's in black & white, intended to be almost an early Dreyer film look, although, honestly, this is more Bergmanesque to me. Again, not a complaint, in fact, now that I said that, I've kinda just now realize that somehow Bergman never did a Shakespeare adaptation, not for film anyway, he did adapt a lot of theater productions,- but, yeah, he never make a Shakespeare film, wow?! So-eh, yeah, definitely give me something that feels like that. From, Joel Coen though?

It's just, such a strange conundrum. Like, this is one of the rare moments where were trying to figure out, rightly or wrongly,- but nevertheless, we've got a rare moment to, in essence, distinguish the differences between Joel and Ethan, with, an example of Joel's work alone, and he gives us, MacBeth? I mean, I guess there's been some Shakespearean elements to some of their films before. You don't really think of them doing a lot of adaptations though;-, although I guess they did do "No Country for Old Men", of course, that was an adaptation, and a great one at that. I've read that book, it's actually a pretty faithful one. They did a remake of "True Grit", that was originally based on a novel as well, but I haven't read that one; I think most cinema people compared that to the original film, in which, I'd argue they improved upon. Still, they were very modern texts to adapt, and American texts as well, and even the shorts they had in "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs", the ones that were adapted were American western tales. The only other time they winkingly adapted something from the classics, was "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" which was based on Homer's "The Odyssey", which they both claimed they had not read. (Which I contend is a lie, but whatever.)

Eh, I guess, in that sense you can see a way that Joel has been moving towards something like this, with more faithful adaptations in their dramatic films at least, as well as more of an interest in theater. His wife's Frances McDormand, who's always in their films, and here, she's Lady MacBeth of course, she has three acting Oscars, but she's had a long theater career on and off Broadway, and has a Tony award as well. I remember when she won that Tony, she mentions a lot of the roles she played on stage, including mentioning that she played all three of Chekhov's Sisters. It's not like I can blame Joel here either, if I was casting Lady MacBeth, I'd probably call Frances McDormand first too. And I'd probably cast Denzel Washington as MacBeth himself.

This movie is an all-star cast. There are a few things that are clearly places where Coen he took some creative flourishes and liberties, for instance, he had one actress playing all three witched, (Kathryn Hunter), who, turn into crows, interestingly enough, but she also plays the Old Man. That's an interesting idea. The black & white cinematography, and the lusciousness of the fogginess of the land, like I mentioned gives this a classic cinema and a theatrical feel. It also centers the focus on the actors and the acting. I like minimalist Shakespeare, when there's great actors performing it, sometimes that intimacy makes the stories better and more profound. I once heard of a very popular touring Shakespeare acting troupe, who held makeshift performances with little more than a few props, some minor costumes, and a giant rug they'd lay out, and stand around. Once it was a character's time to speak or perform, they'd step onto the rug and perform. That's kinda what film essentially is, instead of the rug, it's the frame of the camera, and here, it's essentially like that.

I guess it's just odd to think of Joel Coen as a minimalist; so many of his other films are so eccentric and full of ideas and images all throughout the screen, but for something like "MacBeth", I guess you don't need it. Perhaps this was an experiment him in how good he can tell a classic story with as little as possible? I feel like I'm talking so much about the idea of "The Tragedy of Macbeth" that I'm making the movie feel like an afterthought, but let's be clear, this is a great film. It's one of those things where you're not exactly sure why it's here, but you are glad it is! Brendan Gleeson as Duncan needs to be singled out here too; he's one of our most underrated actors in general, but you see him on screen and just standing there and talking, but you're just convinced of him as a king. I'm used to him in such grittier and down-to-earth character roles, but you know once you saw him, you'd be in safe hands with this MacBeth adaptation. I also thought the dinner scene was done well, and the way he shoots the sequence from MacBeth's perspective and contrasts it so well with what everyone else sees, probably the best I've seen that done. (It's always a fascinating discussion, whether or not the ghost is seen on the stage, or whether or not the ghost is literally missing, he found a cool way to do both, although, at least Lady MacBeth, appears to see, a crow.... I'm not-, I have a theory, but I'm not sure what the thing with the crows is.)

There's other touches, like he'll throw in references to lines from other Shakespeare plays once in a while; I won't go into all of them, I'd need to watch and rewatch it a lot myself to do that, and frankly, I tend to think one performance of MacBeth is usually enough of any version for me. Although, my favorite, is the ending. First with how MacBeth kills Siwand, (Richard Short) without a sword, convinced of an advantage because he was born to a woman, and than he does it, in dominant fashion. That's fucking genius. And yet, underplays the superstition warning from the weird sisters, once (Corey Hawkins) MacDuff admits he was a c-section, which,- honestly, feels like it works too. Either he's lying to others about how much he believes those prophecies or he genuinely doesn't buy into them, but takes them into account anyway, either way, it gives a greater depth to MacBeth's madness. I think those were the parts that gave Denzel an Oscar nomination, not that he wouldn't have deserved it anyway. Denzel's done Shakespeare before; one of his biggest stage roles was doing "Julius Caesar" on Broadway back in the '90s, and it's always a pleasure to see him return to it.

I'm sure in the future, we'll all see this for what it is, a wonderful version of "MacBeth", but yes, it's perplexing origins, kinda like MacDuff's origin (Okay, not at all like MacDuff's but let's just say it is, for poetic license) is probably still what makes it most fascinating for now. But yeah, it's a great filmed Shakespeare adaptation. That's all that matters for now.

WAITRESS: THE MUSICAL (2023): Director: Brett Sullivan; Stage Director: Diane Paulus

⭐⭐⭐1/2

As much as I do admire Broadway, and definitely try to keep up with the happening on the Great White Way from afar, I gotta admit, sometimes their over-reliance on movie adaptations and turning them into musicals, it can be a little, eh, cringy. People don't think of the stage as a place for rebooting stuff, and for the most part, the stage, in general, isn't,- you're not gonna see "Shrek: The Musical" at your local Black Box Theater, but Broadway is different. Like, here, look at the Wikipedia pages on movies that were adapted into Musicals, this is an abbreviated list, but if you're a Tony watcher, you do realize how ever-present this is. A lot of these, y'know, you can kinda see how somebody would be inspired for a musical, something like "The Band's Visit" or "Once" which were both obscure indy films, but they both centered around music and were kinda musicals already, y'know, but there are some strange ones. "Rocky" as a musical? "The Queen of Versailles," a documentary about rich assholes losing their money is a recent one, why would you make that-, oh, Kristen Chenowith is in it; oh, she would be good in that...- Um.., "Cruel Intentions", the musical?! "The Opposite of Sex"?! "Dave"!? "Re-Animator"!? 'The Outsiders"!? "Days of Wine and Roses"!? "Debbie Does Dallas"!?- okay, that one can't be real! (Oh, I'll be damned, it is real.) Okay, some of these were Off-Broadway, but still, you get the idea. If it's an IP that's remotely well-known, at some point, they're going to try to make a musical out of it. And if I'm honest, some of these can be a little cringey, even the good ones. And it's not just, talking the really popular ones that they then turn them back into movie musicals, that make them cringey. I know a lot of people don't care for, "The Producers" musical remake feature film, but I think if they had just, documented an actual recording of the theatrical play a la, "Hamilton", it wouldn't have been so forgettable, yet as much as I do love it when we do document the stage performances as oppose to making a separate theatrical version, some of them, even on stage, can still be kinda rough. Sometimes, it's the adaptation, sometimes it's the content itself that just, doesn't really work, sometimes they just decide to adapt a lousy movie to begin with and turning it into a musical just makes it worst. (cough, cough, "Newsies", cough!)

I first heard about "Waitress" being turned into a musical a few years ago, and I had some, um, complicated thoughts on that one. Most of the thoughts, were positive, but they were complicated. I don't know how popular the original film "Waitress" still is now, I liked it at the time, and I totally get why it could be made into a musical, and it's a fun little movie, except for the fact that the husband character, is just, so- so-, irredeemably vile as a character that I wondered about how he would or could be portrayed on stage in a musical; like I guess you can add depth to him, but-, the thing is, the story is about how Jenna (Sara Bareilles, who also composed and the music for the film), a local diner waitress known for making pies that express her emotional despair, accidentally gets pregnant by her, pretty despicable husband, literally named "Earl", (Joe Tiplett) and how depressing and frustrating her pregnancy is, with both Earl treating her like shit, as well as her slight flirtation and eventual affair with her new OBGYN, Dr. Pomatter (Drew Gehling), and, like, the best part of this story is her, saying goodbye, eventually to Earl (Not like that ~~Dixie~~ Chicks song, but still...). Like, that's my original thought, that's a weird character even for an evil character in a musical, and I kinda don't want to like, hear him sing about his side of the story; I just want to hate him until she finally tells him the fuck off.

But even with that concerning storytelling caveat, I was happy to hear about "Waitress", being a hit Broadway musical, because,-um...- okay, um....-, well, I was happy for a really, really sad reason.

(Sigh)

Alright, I might never get a chance to talk about this person again,- but I imagine that's its probably got a pretty decent cult following since they made it into a musical, and it's probably a young following too,- it came around the peak of the mid-2000s, quirky fun indies era; I can easily imagine "Waitress" showing on a double bill with say "Juno" for instance and everybody would be happy, and the original film is a delight, it's joyful, it's life-aspiring, it's about how a horrible pregnancy can lead to a beloved and joyful motherhood, and it really makes me sad to watch it, because right after it was finished, this delightful uplifting and life-inspiring film, it's writer/director, the beloved cult indy actress Adrienne Shelly was heinously murdered in her own office.

You don't hear Adrienne Shelly's name that much anymore now, but she was a pretty beloved and respected actor, mostly known for independent films for decades. You've probably had seen her here-and-there, she wasn't hugely famous but people in Hollywood knew how good she was as an actress, and she directed and wrote films too and "Waitress" was the last thing she did, loosely inspired from her own emotional struggles while being pregnant. And then, a guy who worked on a nearby construction crew, tried to rob her and after knocking her out during a struggle, he tied a sheet around her neck, and hung her by a shower rod in her bathroom to make it look like a suicide, and it almost worked. If it wasn't for her husband insisting on further investigation, there might not have been justice at all. She was barely forty years old. Because her work was so indy for most of her career, except for the foundation her husband created in her name that give grants to female filmmakers (Which has funded many wonderful and important female filmmakers like Chloe Zhao, Dee Rees, Radha Blank, to name a few), and an award that's named after her by the Women's Film Critics Circle to honor films that are most passionately against violence against women, "Waitress" is probably the biggest cinematic legacy she has, and anything that continues on that, I'm just in favor of automatically. However, as lovely and delightful and really touching "Waitress" is, I can't help but to think of it, as mainly the last thing we saw from Adrienne Shelly, and frankly that's a fact that I have always had a hard time divorcing myself from "Waitress". That said, I like the original movie a lot, storytelling issues and all, and I really liked the musical, for basically the same reasons I liked the original film.

Yes, Earl gets his song, but it's a good song, and it doesn't make him seem anymore likable or relatable, he's still this one-note prick. That's always been a criticism of the story, that there is so little depth to Earl, that he's just so horrible and unlikable that it seems absurd that she's even with him to begin with, but-eh, (Shrugs), I don't know. There are people who are just assholes and some people do become pretty vile after they get married, and it isn't always as easy to leave as it seems on the outside looking in, especially if you're suddenly pregnant with their kid. The music is lovely; I've been a big Sara Bareilles fan for awhile, and the music all here is strong, as is her performance. She's become a pretty good actress over-the-years. There's a lot of strong performances here, especially by Charity Angel Dawson and Caitlin Houlihan as Jenna's best friends and co-workers from the diner, who are all also going through their own romantics struggles and endeavors. There's one sequence from the stage show I really liked where we see all three of the girls' sexual rendezvous' at the same time, and how different from each other they all are, that's really fun and hilarious. "Waitress" has this one horrible, dour character, but everything else about the movie is really fun, and remains after that character is told to get the hell out. (Maybe it is more like that Chicks song than I think.)

I'm always a little bit of a sucker for film productions of stage musicals; I firmly believe that we don't just need more of them, but many more of them, and have them more accessibly available; I think any attempt film can make to replicate the feeling of seeing something on the stage as much as possible is a great thing. I even wrote about it specifically when I reviewed "Hamilton" awhile ago, and while it's almost impossible to top that in terms of perfection for this documentary subgenre, "Waitress: The Musical" is pretty good. It's a good musical, it's a well-filmed production of the Broadway play. It's not from the original run; it was filmed from a limited engagement back in early 2021, (On top of the memoriam to Adrienne Shelly, there's also a memoriam to Nick Cordero, who originated Earl on Broadway, who died during COVID in early 2020) but it's a good production. It's one of the first Broadway productions that had an all-female creative team, with Jessie Nelson writing the book, Bareilles the music, Lorin Latarro's choreography and Diane Paulus's directing, and I can't imagine a more perfect project to have that distinction on Broadway. I really bet Shelly would be proud of that fact. It's a story about how sisterhood and motherhood can overcome all. It's an IP that deserved to be on Broadway and treated this well by the stage.

That said, Broadway can seriously tune it back a bit sometimes on the movie adaptations. It can get a bit strained-, like who was asking for a Broadway version of "The Time Traveler's Wife"? We didn't-, oh wait, Joss Stone and Dave Stewart did the music for that! I might have to see that-, Dammit Broadway, I'm trying to make a point; why do you keep doing that to me!?

EL PLANETA (2021) Director: Amalia Ulman

⭐⭐⭐

You know, for some reason, I've been watching a lot more, eh, what's-the-word, "mainstream" and more big budget films lately, if I'm not watching something old anyway, and it's kinda nice to suddenly stumble across something that's so small and delightfully indy like, "El Planeta". It's the debut feature from multimedia artist Amelia Ulman; she's mostly a performance and installation artist until now; I guess for American film people, you'd think of her as somebody similar to that of somebody like Miranda July, and her first film does have some similar aspects of her work, especially if you're familiar with July's biggest film, "Kajillionaire" about a family of thieves and huckster frauds, but in terms of tone, this film feels directly out of the 1980s American Independent scene. The movie's loosely based on a real mother-daughter duo in Gijon, Spain, which is where the movie takes place, and is one of the places that Ulman has lived, and her and her mother Ale Ulman, star as the mother-daughter duo, who strive to keep up their, "Lifestyle", in the face of a seriously struggling local economy. What is there lifestyle? Deferring payments, stealing from the nicest shops, waiting out evictions for as long as possible. Just whatever hustle these girls seem to be able to get into. Returning things to stores that they originally bought online, pretending they're bigger than they are to get special treatment from stores, whatever.

Although, it seems like Amelia, has at least, some life outside of her mom, or had one. She mentions that she lived in London, and after finding a spot in a well-lit corner of the living room, between two chairs and in front of the end table, talks with a colleague who says that he might, be able to get her some work in New York, maybe working on a project for Christina Aguilera, if she can get herself to New York in a few weeks. Apparently, she came back after her father passed. There's a few other characters who come in-and-out of her life at times. She briefly has a couple dates with a guy she meets (ZHOU Chen), but he turns out to be married. At one point, she meets a guy at a coffeeshop, and apparently she's trying to be a prostitute. When she hears that an average blowjob is about, $20, she wonders about a book in a store that's $19.95, and wonders if it would be worth the blowjob to get the book. That's funny, and kind of an interesting conundrum honestly. (I mean, you don't know if the book is gonna be good or not. Personally, I think you look through the book at the store first, maybe the first few pages or so, and then decide whether or not the blowjob is worth it, but that doesn't necessarily guarantee quality either.)

The movie that the film feels most achingly similar to, to me, was Jim Jarmusch's "Stranger Than Paradise". In fact, this film feels like a lot of early Jim Jarmusch absurdism. It honestly took me a little while to fully grasp the greatness of "Stranger...", I was always more prone to appreciate his follow-up "Down By Law" more, but "El Planeta" feels like it takes place on the same planet as "Stranger...", only, instead of it's characters going to places like the dogtracks of Florida, to get away from one squalor only to end up in another, this movie imagines creating a world where you're shopping at the best places for the best clothes, all the best restaurants, everything that looks so ideal on Instagram, before going back to living in squalor, only to find that the clothes don't fit, and you have to keep getting up to turn on the light to read, and your mother keeps getting up and turning it back off.

"El Planeta"'s biggest sin might be it's too achingly relatable. Sometimes the film will just stop to allow it's characters to just dance in front of a mirror when they think nobody's watching. It's a film where were basically just waiting for the rug to get pulled out from under these too, and were just seeing the last moments of joy and pain and ennui and frustrations they go through before it happens. You hope they realize that the mink coat, glasses, and modern t-shirt with the plastic window where your breast hangs out, are all just as shallow and meaningless as the electricity they can't pay for, but essentially, you know, that it won't end up well for them. "El Planeta" feels like a very astute look at the modern world and how it can really cost those who strive to be too much apart of it, and it doubles as a nice, quirky refresher to those tired of some more exhausting mainstream escapism.

THE TOP TEN WORST FILMS OF 2020! (Sigh) Let's just finish this year off.

2025-03-30T01:58:00.000-07:00

(Sigh)

I'm not crazy about this list.

I mean, no shit, it's a worst list, I shouldn't be crazy about it, right? Ehhh, sometimes it's a drag doing a Worst Films list, other times it isn't, sometimes it's cathartic and soothing, like a cleansing, but this time,- on top of being just, so far behind in general- I thought about not doing it at all. I mean, like, what's-the-worst that could happen, I get more behind schedule? I start posting even less than normal?! It's not like it really matters. And frankly, worst lists, especially for films from five years ago now,- frankly I should probably just move on. 2019's list, I felt like I had to make, especially when I realized "Joker" had to be my number one, an opinion that apparently wouldn't sound that weird now, based on the reception of the sequel. But even still, was it really the worst film? Probably not. But it was the worst I had seen, and there was a lot of movies that year, that just, absolutely bored me to death. That was a year I felt like I needed to do this. Other years, I used to not bother with a separate blogpost for this, and I'd just shove my Worst List on the bottom of my Best List, with maybe giving a one-sentence thought on it. I did that originally because I figured one sentence or two was all the films were worth, although apparently that's now called a "Letterboxd review", whatever that is.

Anyway, this isn't a Worst List that inspires me or anything, but I haven't posted in a while anyway, so, yeah, I'm doing this. Final nail of the coffin of the formerly previous worst year in modern history, until this current one, belongs to me. Even if, I- like other years, decide not to bother seeking out the real bottom of the barrel. It's the worst of the year, that I saw. I have a few opinions here that are gonna be controversial possibly to others, but, for me, this list is mostly bleh. There's still some terrible here, but,- eh, maybe I'm just still giving it a pass because it was 2020.

(Shrugs)

Anyway, let's-eh, you know, count down, I guess? Sure.

THE TOP TEN WORST FILMS OF 2020

Number 10.

I don't know if this is a controversial pick now, but I bet it was at the time.

10. Tenet

It seems stupid now, since I love his Oscar-winning "Oppenheimer" so much, but yeah, "Tenet" was an obnoxious, overbloated, self-indulgent meaningless mess. Oh yeah, traveling through time, is just hitting the rewind button. I stand by this, "Tenet" is Nolan's worst film by a mile, even worst than his bizarre mix of sci-fi and magic that was "Interstellar".

MY ORIGINAL REVIEW:

Christopher Nolan has always been fascinated with time. I have too, and I've usually been willing to go with him on his journeys through his prognostications on time. People think of him now, mostly as the filmmaker behind the "The Dark Knight" trilogy more then anything else, and don't get me wrong, I love those films, but if you're looking for his main motif in his films, it's clearly time. His breakout feature film was "Memento" a movie about a guy who, due to an accident, lost the ability to retain long-term memories and had to develop tricks to solve the mystery of who killed his wife. That movie itself, is noted for telling it's story backwards, starting at the end of the film, and then catching up one scene to another 'til it ended at the beginning.

That movie probably has the most relevance to "Tenet" of all his films, but it's popped up even in his most innocuous works. "Insomnia" was about losing sleep in a world where the sun never sets, so it always seemed like it was daytime, and how that adjustment from outsiders can be, well, insomnia-inducing. Losing track of days and nights. "Interstellar" shows characters literally missing decades of their lives through space travel in an effort to struggle to find a new home for Earth to survive on in the future and it even has cross-generational time messaging magic in it. ("Interstellar," to me, is when he officially started losing it.) His best film with time being the central motif is "Inception", and watching "Tenet", I think I get why "Inception" works so well, while "Tenet", is visually impressive, but very hollow and uninteresting despite no real lack in the quality of filmmaking from Nolan. "Inception" was about controlling dreams. I know people have their own metaphors to the meaning of the film, but dreams are fairly common. Everybody's had a dream, everybody can relate to all aspect of dreams and we've all lost track of time and often ourselves while being caught in our own dreams. The concept is a relatable and an easy metaphor for audiences and it's an easily accessible way to grasp concepts like losing track or getting trapped in our own timelines. It's so easy, it's been used to death in film, since "The Wizard of Oz", probably even before that.

I'm not saying that "Inception"'s simple and easier to relate to means that it's automatically better then "Tenet" or any of his films, I'm hypothesizing that that's why it's the easiest and best of his films to connect to. As to "Tenet", where, I get what the idea is, but I don't really care.

Yeah, "Tenet"'s biggest problem is that, with all his other films, even "Interstellar" which I contend was previously his genuinely only bad film, at the center of his experimental thought projects with time, were genuine characters and stories we cared about. "Tenet", I don't know how else to say it, it just doesn't have that. It's main character is literally named Protagonist (John David Washington) and he works for the CIA and after a bizarre failed mission, I think failed mission anyway, at the Kyiv Opera House. He finds out that in the future, somebody has invented a way to reverse entropy. Mostly, this shows itself in bullet holes that appear before the shot it taken, and once you get shot in the present or future, or whatever, with a reversed-entropy bullet, it's particularly ghastly in the present. It also means that time travel has occurred and that somebody has reversed the entropy on nuclear weapons and deposited them, in the past, in order to take out the past.

This is a cool idea in theory, but in practice, and as the lines between the past and the future start to come together, the time lines start to not matter as much as what happens. We often see the crash in a car chase before it occurs and we reverse to the point, where we see the results of the fight, before some really interesting fight scenes, essentially play in reverse. In fact, I think a lot of this movie could just be playing the shots in reverse order. That's a cool trick, but I don't know if it really works unless you're not supposed to notice it, but it's all I could really think of honestly.

Anyway, Protagonist, tracks this down through an Indian arms dealer, Priya (Dimple Kapadia) a Russian oligarch named Sator (Kenneth Branagh), who, for reasons I don't even understand, wants to blow up the world, as he's out seeking the entropy-reversed weapons, which he has to bring together in order to, succeed.... I don't really get this plot. Anyway, they go through his art appraiser wife Kat (Elizabeth Debicki) to get to him, and because there's also the time travelling thing, there's also multiples of each other depending on the events that occurs.... It's not that this is too confusing for me to understand, I don't need to understand what's going on exactly for me to like a movie like this, even a complex movie that's dealing in quantum socioanalytical theory, it's just that, I'm struggling to care about any of this.

Nolan has said that scientific accuracy isn't his main goal with this movie; apparently that mattered a bit more with "Interstellar" with him, either way, I don't particularly care one way or another with that, but this is the first time I've felt like he's just fallen way too far into his own gimmick and has fell into a literal time loop of himself. If you're wondering what the hell the title means, the word's used as sort of a code for the characters who are aware of this future reversal of entropy thing, but also there's something called a "Sator Square". It's this weird, kind of supposed coded word square that pops up in ancient Christian and Pagan texts and mythology. I've never fully gotten the big deal of this thing, but all the words that are made in this appear in the film. Sator, of course, is the villian, Opera, is where the first incident took place, Arepo is the name of an art forger in the film, although never seen onscreen, and Rotas, just means, turning, so you could easily call that time traveling aspect, I guess. It's an interesting piece of inspiration but I think it's tenuous connections at best.

Anyway, there's a lot of these weird missions both going forward through time, and through reverse entropy backwards, with dueling competing opposing guards at practically every location, plus several double-agents and potential double-agents caught in this time loop to stop or not stop the destruction of the world....

(Sigh)

Honestly, and I hate to say this about a Christopher Nolan film of all filmmaker, but I felt like I was watching somebody else playing a video game with "Tenet". I'm not caught up in his own little world, and there's simply no way for me to grab onto anything that I can care about. He's moving pieces together, we're going from level to level without really a complete explanation of why.... Actually, the thing the time travelling aspect reminded me of most, was that "Sands of Time" aspect of "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time". I hated that movie and really didn't care what the hell that little sequence was about, until I heard somewhere that the movie was based on a video game and that reversal of time was an aspect of the game itself, which, yeah, that explains a lot of the stupid in that film.

Honestly, I tend to despise any movies that remind me of or follows video game plots and structure in general, and honestly, this does feel like that, and the more I think about it, the more I think I should just outright pan this film. I don't want to do that, 'cause I like everybody here, and there was clearly a lot of work put into this film, and I think there is something here in the ideas, but I don't think he's exploring it as well as he could or worst then that, giving us any reason to explore it with him. It feels like I'm combatting with the movie to try to follow it, not with the movie trying to follow it, and that's just not the kind of movie I want from Nolan. It's not him at his best and he's trying to be too cute with it.

Yeah, you know what, I think I am gonna pan this one. If he's not trying to get me to connect with it, then I don't need the movie, period. It doesn't help that Nolan was the symbol of those seeming completely out of touch with the theater vs. streaming debate during the pandemic, even if I do kinda get his point; this movie would probably be more interesting to me in a movie theater, but nah, this is a just a weaker Nolan movie, one that makes me ponder why I enjoy his better movies so much more then this one. I'm certainly not giving up on him, "Dunkirk" wasn't my cup of tea, but it was a good movie, but maybe he should find a new motif to be inspired by. I think he's starting to run out of time.

Yeah, I haven't heard a lot of people talking about "Tenet" lately, and especially with how great "Oppenheimer" is, I think we've all collectively come together on Nolan's best films, and I think his core cinefile fanboys has also quieted down and shut up, but "Tenet" is genuinely lousy. This is Nolan at his most pretentious yet. He's so far up his own ass with this film, I'm glad he came out the other way eventually and can still create and tell some amazing stories, but this was such a bad film. It really was. He never sacrifice compelling characters and narratives before in exploring his fascinations with the abstractions of time before and this time he completely abandoned it. I gave it 2 1/2 STARS, I was probably being nice, this is bad. Just unwatchable.

Number 9:

Thank god I put "Tenet" number ten, at least I have something to say with that film, 'cause I don't have much to say about this one.

9. Some Kind of Heaven

Yeah, this list has documentaries, again. This one is called "Some Kind of Heaven" a look at the biggest planned retirement home community in the country, and frankly, it made me feel like, retirement kinda sucks. I guess that arguably could've been part of the point, I don't think it was, but even if it was, this is a painfully slow, boring documentary that made retirement look, well uninteresting.

MY ORIGINAL REVIEW:

Retirement is not something that's ever really been on my mind much, thankfully, but I have always kinda wondered about it. I can't imagine anybody who's ever been young who has ever actually imagined themselves living at a retirement community; I don't think we want to imagine that no matter how glamorous or luxurious such a place would be. I can't think of too many positive portrayals of them in media, at best, there's some sort of twist along the lines of, "Well, it's nice to see them having fun, at their age".

(Shrugs)

Are they really having fun? Most of the time, I doubt it. I'm sure they enjoy not working anymore and all, but I doubt it. I think, if you're at all physically capable of anything, and have a good mind at work, then retirement, especially retirement to a place like this, isn't so much a natural progression to life as it's always seemed more like a way to escape from it.

"Some Kind of Heaven" documents "The Village", the biggest gated planned retirement community in the country. With over 130,000 people in Central Florida, developed by a Harold Schwartz a Michigan man who was selling land in the 1960s, and like everybody else during that time, started turning the swamps of Florida into, well, Florida what it is today. Mostly, the whole area is full of tall tales of it's so-called history though, local reimagined myths. Honestly, it is kinda like if Disneyland was a gigantic neighborhood full of old people. So, it's Celebration, Florida, but full of old people.

We meet a few of the residents, including one guy who isn't quite a resident, but lives in his van trying to coarse his way into the beds of some of the women in town. He's Dennis, the most interesting character for much of the movie. We also meet Reggie and Anne, a couple who've been married well over forty years before moving into the neighborhood, and things have been going downhill for Reggie ever since, and not just normal downhill. Like, he's getting in trouble with the law, downhill....

Honestly, I kinda get it; you've spent the majority of your life living one way, and now you're not bound by your old lines and obligations, you suddenly get into some things. And Florida is full of some things....

We do get glimpses of the brochure images of this place, but I still think the movie, overall is mostly too slight for me. It's got some interesting characters to follow, but I feel like I don't learn much that I didn't already know and what I know is not much at all. I think documentary is actually a strange genre for this kind of story; I can think of several movies, most notably "Cocoon", that take place in retirement communities like these, and frankly it's a good setting for a film. I think I would've preferred that to this documentary oddly enough.

You know, this movie,- I've rarely seen a documentary showcasing old people who are so consistently and thoroughly uninteresting. Even the ones who are kinda interesting, like the rebels in this world, who get in trouble for drinking too much and doing too much drugs, or sleeping with everybody else, they're not interesting either. They're just old, pathetic versions of people they probably were in their youths. I hate to be mean, and it's not actually a criticism of them, it's a criticism of the filmmakers for either not drawing out the more compelling aspects of these characters, or just not finding interesting subjects to focus on. This place, "The Village" feels like the retirement home for a bunch of people you really wouldn't want to be around. It made me feel like, retirement is so boring. At it's this huge, rich gated community,- so all these people are like, really separated from the rest of the world-, if this movie was an advertisement this was a bad one. I betcha there's more interesting people and stories in any half-decent old folks home; at least if this was all the filmmakers could find,- I mean, y'know, yikes.

Number 8

Can somebody tell Tom Hanks to stop writing now?

8. Greyhound

Was this popular? I don't remember. I think it might've been beloved in certain history buff circles, and I don't know, maybe it's accurate or not, but-ugh...- okay, you guys know Patrick O'Brien, the writer of the "Master and Commander" novels, the one that that one great movie was based on. They're wonderful books and stories, but if you ever actually try to read those, you better come into them, with like, a deep, well-established knowledge on the intricate details of British war ships and British naval strategies and history from the 18th Century, or else, you're gonna just be- not over-your-head, but in a world that you're just not equipped to be apart of, and that's kinda what I felt like watching "Greyhound". It's a movie about a World War II naval battle where I felt like I needed to know every detail and intricacy about the battle to actually enjoy it.

MY ORIGINAL REVIEW:

I don't know why exactly I'm surprised that Tom Hanks would write a World War II movie. It's not like it hasn't been a personal subject for him for years, but it's still somewhat surprising. Hanks's scripts up until this point, have been much more light-hearted, at least in terms of the theatrical feature film route. His writing and directorial debut, "That Think You Do!" is still a lovely beloved tale of a '60s one-hit-wonder band. "Larry Crowne", which he also directed, and co-wrote with "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"'s writer Nia Vardalos, was significantly less interesting and memorable, and felt almost too much like some bad sitcom plots shoved together and somehow got the biggest stars in Hollywood to star in them. (And it's better left forgotten). That said, he has written more dramatic work, mostly in teleplays for the miniseries he's produced, including a particularly beloved episode of "Band of Brothers". So, no, this is not unthinkable, but still,- something does seem odd with this one.

At barely 90 minutes including credits, "Greyhound" is very stripped down and bare for a World War II movie. We get a brief introduction to Hanks's main character, Captain Krause, talking with Evelyn (Elisabeth Shue, in basically a glorified well-lit cameo) and then, we're on a World War II submarine, and shit's about to go down and continue to go down.

The movie details the Battle of the Atlantic, and yes, this is a section of World War II that for various reasons hasn't been that dramatized before, so kudos there. Krause is the Captain of the U.S.S. Keeling, and most of the movie takes place in the Mid-Atlantic Gap. This is an area of the Ocean called the Mid-Atlantic Gap where the subs are essentially on their own. There's no help through the air, and because of the German's ability to hear radio signals, their essentially relegated to radio silence, unless of course, there's no other option, for fearing that the Germans would take advantage of any assumed weakness they can detect, which they would. Meanwhile, they're orchestrating a strategic attack on their own anyway, and the Keeting, or "Greyhound" as it's known through their radio call sign, is shot directly into the middle of it. The rest of the movie, is essentially, a deadly cat-and-mouse game between the Germans and the Americans, with the Greyhound in the middle.

Occasionally, you'll run into a movie where, the people who are real history buffs, and I mean, the real hardcore history buffs, not just the people like me who are quite knowledgeable about history but generally more about the over-arching narratives of what happened and why, as opposed to buffs who care about the most minute and intricate details of events, those people, are gonna really like and appreciate a movie, but show the same movie to a general audience, and sometimes to people who are more film buffs then history people, and they're gonna be, way more underwhelmed by it. In my mind, the most quintessential example of this is "Tora! Tora! Tora!", which probably is the best movie out there ever about Pearl Harbor, and from everything I've ever heard, it's distressingly accurate, but it is not that fun to watch. It's made by good filmmakers but not necessarily great ones, and the look of the movie, especially considering when it was made, just seems too old-fashioned even for the time and has certainly not aged well. "Greyhound" is basically that, but not as good.

This is one of those weird cases where a war movie suffers from not being an epic, or at least not feeling or seeming like an epic in scope. "Greyhound" is relatively short and very astute and knowledge about it's story, but it's just so intricate and detailed that I feel like that I have to be a seaman on board the ship itself to even known what I'm talking about with the film. I guess, to me, it's the difference between reading a Patrick O'Brian novel, and watching "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World", it's not that one or the other is better, but it requires a lot more work and knowledge to appreciate the intricate details of the novel, while the movie, you can appreciate the authenticity and the accuracy, but there's also a lot more to grab onto. Mostly the characters that are interesting admittingly, but there's more even beyond.

I don't want to bash "Greyhound" because it doesn't go for character; it's intentional that we barely know anything about anybody; it's showing that heroes are other, these humble, quiet, nameless men who put their lives on the line in the worst of situations, often against their will and better judgment, and, (Sigh) yada, yada, yada, and- I hate to be dismissive 'cause there is something to that, but does it rarely make for good films. Especially war and action movies, when if you're really not caring about the people and characters involved, it just feels like watch computer effects battling each other. It's not that bad, for one the special effects are way better then that, but it's close enough to it that I have to pan the film.

I don't want to blame director Aaron Schneider, who is a really good director, despite seemingly never being able to make a damn movie. He won a short film Oscar in 2003, and he didn't get a job to direct a feature length film famously for six years after that with "Get Low", despite being a fairly successful regular cinematographer as well, and that was the last time he directed anything until now, and that eleven year gap is amazingly even more shocking and depressing, but this just isn't a good film, and while it's competently made, I can't help but imagine he deferred more towards Hanks's vision of the story and just handled the parts that would be a little more technically difficult for him to pull off. "Greyhound" is technically successful for being what it sets out to be, but the entry point to appreciate that is just way too deep for most people, and I suspect for those who are at that entry point to appreciate it, I can't imagine they're just gonna be blown away by it, or absolutely love it, and I'm not convinced it's worth the trouble to dig deeper to try to appreciate it.

Yeah, I think I was more apologetic to this film than I probably should be, and I still suspect, in other years, if I watched more films this wouldn't make my list, but this was, just a boring chore to get through. There is a way to do this, to take, just focus on the action and actual events of a war-like situation and just be enthralled by the chaos of the details; I think the best example is Ridley Scott's "Black Hawk Down", that's a great movie about a battle. But, like, you really gotta know, as a filmmaker, how to tell a visual story, and I think Hanks, is not the kind of writer who can tell that. He can tell the intricate details of how something happened, but make a documentary about that. I would rather watch Tom Hanks, telling me about the Battle of the Atlantic, than watch this movie he wrote and acted in, about the Battle of the Atlantic, and that's why it's on the list.

Number 7:

Okay, you know the term "Jump the Shark". It's from television, from this episode of "Happy Days", where Fonzie jumps a shark.

Yeah, that. The term comes from that and it's means the point in which a TV show, or really, any media franchise, per se, stops being good, and go so far bad, that it will never be as good as the show was before again. And yes, that episode, and that moment, it's- it's terrible. It's hilariously terrible, but-um, here's the thing, the myth is that, "Happy Days", not only was never good again, but that everybody stopped watching after that episode, and that's not remotely true at all. That was the premiere episode,- well, Part 3, of the premiere episode of Season 5 of "Happy Days, and it fell from Season 4, where it was the #1 show in the country with a 31.5 ratings share all the way to the #2 show in the country, with a 31.4 ratings share. It was still huge for another year, and the show lasted six more seasons after this, and was usually in the top 20. So, no, Fonzie jumping the shark, did not jump the shark for "Happy Days".

In fact, I'd argue the episode that should've for all intensive, been the show's "Jump the Shark" moment, occured later that season, the 22nd episode of that season in fact, "My Favorite Orkan". In which, this show, "Happy Days", which was a realistic-albeit-nostalgia-ladened sitcom about teenagers' white middle class upbringing in the 1950s, had an episode, where an alien visited.

This show had an alien in it,- and it wasn't the first show to do that either, by the way, not even close believe it or not, and it should've been the moment the show should've jumped the shark,- the term should be, "Brings in an alien", that should be what we call "Jumping the Shark."

Anyway, if you know the rest of the story, you know that miraculously, that insane, stupid idea worked,- they got lucky 'cause it turned out that some strange being called a "Robin Williams" existed, but that's the idea that really should not work, and it usually doesn't.

7. A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon

Okay, maybe I'm being a little, ridiculous here, I don't think bringing an alien into "Shaun the Sheep", is as bad and nonsensical an idea as it is for other properties, but- eh, really, this was the direction they needed to go in for their second feature? And I liked the first "Shaun the Sheep" movie,- but it's just not what I want out of Shaun the Sheep. But, I didn't like it when they introduced aliens on "Mister Ed" either. (Shrugs [Yeah, that happened; I told you "Happy Days" wasn't the first with that dumb idea.])

MY ORIGINAL REVIEW:

Looking over my review of the first "Shaun the Sheep" movie, it seems like I was actually fairly excited about it originally. That said, I haven't thought too much about it since, and really wasn't sure what to expect coming into, "A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon". Mostly, I just kinda liked the real back-to-basics approach that Aardman Animation was doing with Shaun the Sheep. It's been said of their Wallace & Gromit franchise that Gromit never speaks but has all the best lines, and that's true enough, and nobody ever has any actual lines in "Shaun the Sheep" stories, just some occasional bleats and grunts and grumbles. On the one hand, I do enjoy that about the best of Aardman Animations' work, but eh, it can also just be the kind of thing you need to be in the right mood for. But, they also have to have the right sense of whimsy and "Farmageddon," almost has enough of it, but ehh....

In my aforementioned "Shaun the Sheep Movie" review, I compared the film positively, if tongue-in-cheekly to "Babe: Pig in the City", which, for the record is an underrated film. But, yeah, the Sheep and their Farmer, eh, The Farmer (John Sparkes) had to navigate their ways back out of the big city and to their home at the Mossy Bottom Farms. (Also, the Farmer had amnesia and became an in-demand hairstylist, it was a bit weird.) This film, well, their not hiding their inspirations, the big one being "E.T.:..." but basically it's a sci-fi film, with the premise, "What if Shaun (Justin Fletcher) and the rest of the sheep, come across an alien?" In this case, a small female alien Lu-La (Amelia Vitale) who basically looks more like a rabbit with some occasional alien abilities, particularly involving his ears in a Snorks-like manner. While the Sheep struggle to figure out how to get Lu-La home, and enjoy his company, The Farmer also has them working on building an Armageddon-themed theme park on the farm. I like the sequences of the sheep sitting on the beam having lunch and some of those peculiarities, those things feel right for this.

And I'm not necessarily against science-fiction elements entering the world of Aardman; my favorite "Wallace & Gromit" short is "A Grand Day Out", where they literally travel to the Moon in order to find some cheese. But, those were also characters who were seeking out strange oddities and adventures. Shaun the Sheep, I feel is more interesting when it just sticks to the farm, and only just reluctantly at-best ends up having to go on more elaborate adventures. Like, the Farmer getting amnesia and going into town and having to get him back, that's a good way to push them off the farm. But an alien coming in, I kinda think this time, they were a little too eager to go outside the farm quirks. I get that it's a movie, but, eh.... It felt like it was being bigger just to be bigger as well.

I don't know, I guess this is more of a mixed review to me, but I wasn't particularly enthralled with Shaun the Sheep this time. Maybe if I was in a better mood, perhaps, but eh, this felt like a step back the more I thought about it. Before I really got the relationship and friendship between the Sheep and the Farmer, and this time, it seemed like they were too desperate to bring in another character for us to care about instead and just for this film only, presumably. It felt like I was cheated. Perhaps if the alien stuff was a side character that only casually invaded the Sheep's world, and they were as frustrated with him as the town was and not try to go for the winking heartwarming stuff.... Eh, it just wasn't a great natural fit for me. I might be being a little hard on it, but I think they could've done better.

Yeah, this one just-, I wanted to like this film, but it just fell completely flat. This was basically that arbitrary animated sequel and they didn't know exactly what to do with it. Honestly, it made me less interested in this franchise, as a whole, and I wasn't the biggest superfan to begin with.

Number 6:

Oh Christ, this motherfucker!

6. Hillbilly Elegy

Look, this isn't about his politics, which, are garbage, and from what I've heard that's about the least most offensive thing about him. Especially regarding his "autobiography" that got adapted into this unwatchable slog of a film. Ron Howard, bless him, I think he knows better, but he tries to be empathetic, and found something in this story worth telling, and actually, even on his worst day, he's such a good storyteller that I think he actually did find a narrative (maybe not the best narrative) out of Vance's tangled meandering mess of a book, and sure there's a moment or two, but this movie pissed me off from moment one.

MY ORIGINAL REVIEW:

So, I was taught forks in ninth grade. I forget what the name of the class was, it was when I was at a magnet program that, honestly sucked, at least at the time it sucked, I hear it's run better now, but the class, kinda was an intro and a catch-all class for general knowledge and career path indicators; it's the class that you took those career tests in, those tests that determine your skillset and what kinds of possible future careers you'd be good for based on those results. Anyway, I do actually remember a lot from this class curiously and one of things we were taught was the rules about forks and spoons, and fancy dinners such as they were. Always go left to right from the outside in with your forks, always eat meat with a knife and fork, fish, you can eat with only a fork however, and if you're still not sure, always just use whatever utensil the head of the table is eating with, because very often, whoever is actually in that seat, might be just as unknowing and unaware as you are, but he is the one that's big and powerful enough that nobody will tell him no. I'd make an obvious Trump joke here, but the person who wrote the book that "Hillbilly Elegy" is based on, JD Vance, is currently a Republican Senatorial candidate who got Trump's endorsement, so apparently he eventually learned that one, and perhaps maybe we should abandon that rule. Anyway, that's one stressful opening on "Hillbilly Elegy" for our main character, JD (Gabriel Basso) as he's trying to get an interview out of Law School, hopefully a good-paying internship of some kind, learning from his girlfriend Usha (Frieda Pinto) over the phone, what fork to eat with, before returning to some, distressingly frustrating elitist questions from the table about his background.

"Hillbilly Elegy" was described as one of the books that help explain how someone like Trump could've won in 2016.... (Shrugs) I can kinda see that, like, it is kinda embarrassing to think about how somebody can hear of someone being from Kentucky and immediately ask them if they worked on the coal mines. It's also annoying to hear an old Mamaw (Glenn Close) correct her grandson by saying, they're called "Indians, not Native Americans, like the Cleveland Indians," and yes, it took me so long to get to this movie that the Indians, did indeed change their names because of how racist and insensitive "Indians" was as a name. (And it was and is racist and derogatory, always was, you can look that one up.) The movie itself, well, it's been pretty heavily panned. Glenn Close, pulled off an extreme rare feat with this film, getting both an Oscar nomination, and a Razzie nomination for Best Supporting Actress and Worst Supporting Actress respectively, for the same performance. She lost both awards, but while the movie was heavily panned in general, it was polarizing. There are some who thought the movie, which is based on Vance's own youth, fell into some poverty tropes and stereotypes, some decried the film as "Poverty Porn" in fact, while some others were fairly effected by it, and found the movie quite inspiring and powerful, and a love letter to both his family history, but to an often-overlooked and shunned part of the country.

Ehh, where am I standing on this? Well, I'm mostly caught in-between. I don't think the movie is "poverty porn" or anything, but I also don't think it's that good either.

I haven't read the book to double-check what's been changed or altered and/or how, but director Ron Howard, who also got a Razzies nomination for the film, I imagine probably improved the material. It wouldn't be the first time, Ron Howard is a very underrated director, in general, and one of his better skills, is taking material that's not particularly of quality on the page and turning them into some surprisingly quality films. The big one that most will point to is "The Da Vinci Code" and it's subsequent sequels, which, yeah, is pretty cheesy to read, but I actually like the two of those movies I've seen, as absurd as they were. From what I can tell in this case, the main thing he added was a narrative, 'cause the book is far more anecdotal than this film is, with many of his personal stories being used as arguments to help defend or showcase his political views and give explanation for why much of the Rust Belt has shifted from recent years from Democrat to Republican. Some of these observances I think are interesting, if not valid, although I'd to love to argue some of them, but in terms of a narrative, the movie, kinda has to form one, and it's tricky.

Basically, the whole film takes place with a ticking clock to an interview, and the rest is told in flashback to JD's youth (Owen Asztalos). In the current time, around 2011, he's gone back to his hometown of Middletown, Ohio to collect his mother Bev (Amy Adams) a heroin junkie who's fallen off the wagon again, after years of bad choices and usually bad men that primarily came about mostly after her grandfather Papaw (Bo Hopkins) died. His sister Lindsay (Haley Bennett) has been married to her boyfriend, basically since high school, and has been struggling to deal with her life and kids, while also keeping an eye on their mother and JD's left, first for the Marines, and then for Law School at Yale. The movie jumps a lot in time and narrative, and keeping track of everything after this or within the timeline, basically becomes moot after a while. You do get to see all the major events, but we don't see them necessarily in a particular order, which I can't say is a terrible move here, believe it or not, but it's not really well setup.

That's the other thing, the movie sets us up with the geography of the area, how JD loves the Summers in the Kentucky Appalachia with his Grandma more than his homelife in- well, it's not really a big city, but if you prefer the Appalachia, than I guess it is. Eventually, he does move in with his grandmother, after Bev first begins to struggle and her addictions and messy relationship start really effecting their lives. Mamaw isn't particularly saintly either, we learn, but what really brings this down from somewhat compelling as a narrative to something less compelling is, oddly, how little the geography matters.

The movie is elegiac about the Appalachia in a sense that the narrator says it's where he grew up and is therefore some place that's apart of him, but the area and his problems, actually have very little to do with each other. His mother's a junkie who goes from man-to-man, his grandparents are old nags who struggle in their old age, his sister's in love, and his father's absent,- honestly, what the hell does that have to do with the hillbilly culture that you couldn't find in the big cities? I know people in rural, urban and suburban environments with basically the same problems growing up; it's not even necessarily a class issue, or even a cultural issue with that area necessarily. His family's fucked up, I'll give him that, and I will admit that I think it's a bit of an accomplishment getting to be as successful as he has after growing up like that, but there's nothing particularly compelling about it that makes me convinced that it was that unique. Maybe it's supposed to not be unique, but-, no, I don't see too many grandmothers light their loved ones on fire for being drunk, so I don't think that's it.

And frankly, I didn't think his early memories of being a kid in Appalachia were that good either; he's reminiscing about how his family inspired him after he got bullied by neighborhood kids, like what-the-fuck, why is that a positive to you?!

There is a good idea, somewhere here, in fact I think I do know where it is, and they missed a really sharp storytelling idea here; I won't give it away, but this could've easily been a road movie and that would've solved a lot of it's problems, for both the narrative interest, and for the characters themselves. The movie doesn't take that direction, I get the direction it did take, but it is short-sighted. The whole movie is kind of a short-sighted mess; it's a whole film about how great the area where this kid grew up is, and then the climax is, him leaving it...- that's not how these movies usually go. It's almost like he's trying to justify it to himself that this is where he belongs because this is where he came from..., and I just have severe doubts about this. I mean, there's another running theme of the movie where the kid is interested in politics, and that's from him constantly being thwarted in his attempts to watch the news, like "Meet the Press", which...- like, okay, I was a '90s kids, around the era as him, and I did watch the news very intensely more than most, especially at around that time, 'cause the late '90s, early 2000s, well, it's hard to remember now, but there a lot going on in Washington, but it never comes off as something he would have genuine interest in through any of other actions; it feels much more like something that might've been true, but I suspect he probably also watched "The Disney Afternoon" a lot, and that just didn't make it into the film.

"Hillbilly Elegy" is well-acted, and probably does improve the material given, but I don't think it does it enough. It's more interesting to reflect on afterwards than it is to watch, and it can be irksome at times. I don't think it's terrible either, and- eh, I guess some of the makeup is kinda Award-worthy, and sure, Glenn Close and even Amy Adams, in an underwritten, tricky role are good, but it's a lot less passionate and inspirational than I believe it's filmmakers think it is. And while it does indeed, see a lot of the problems with the area and the ways of life, it doesn't look at them and try to come up with better solutions; it just looks at them with awe in how unfortunate and sad it really is. In many ways I could easily make an argument that I should really be much more frustrated with it than I am, but I guess I'm lenient 'cause I'm somewhat impressed that the movie isn't as bad as it could've been. It could've also been a lot better though.

Yeah, why wasn't this a straight up road movie? It's right there, him and his wife travelling by car from Connecticut to Appalachia, to get his mother, and he tells his story along the way. Yeah, maybe I gave Ron Howard too much credit for a good adaptation. And, if that wasn't clear before, I don't remotely consider JD Vance to be an authority on anything, but especially Appalachia. I've heard people from the area pissed about how he portrayed them as well, and I don't really blame them. This isn't a good depiction of this area, this is a story of a guy's perspective of somebody who spent a few summers here. It's like if I wrote a book about my summers on the Jersey Shore and depicted it as though it was my entire upbringing. It's a shallow story from a shallow person, and it's a damn shame that talented people got caught up in this. Also, you could've just asked the people at the table about the forks, I'm sure they wouldn't have been as condescending as you made them out to be, if you just were your honest self, you prick. I'll bet money you did learn that in school, you just didn't pay attention that day.

Number 5

Oh, I'm gonna really get shit for this one. Um, okay....

The 2020 Oscars, as I mentioned in my Best List, were mostly uneventful, except for the fact they took place during the pandemic. They didn't match my lists, but I found them mostly harmless outside of some of the production choices that Steven Soderbergh made, but within film circles, there was one major exception, the Best Documentary category.

"My Octopus Teacher" is not on my list.

I did think about it; even though I actually gave the film a mildly positive review at the time though, and while I definitely don't think it should've won, I actually do get why it won this year. Hear me out: if you looked back at the recent Documentary award winners and nominees at that time, where, they weren't necessarily honoring the best films, but the best cinematic films. To me, the biggest example of this was "Free Solo" winning a couple years earlier; I like the film okay, but I believe it won because everybody was so impressed with how they got those mountain climbing shots. Remember, cameras, only really recently were small and good enough to get shots like that, so, I think it won just on that, and I think "My Octopus Teacher" fits that award narrative. It won because the footage of the octopus under the water, was spectacular. The narrative they created out of it, in hindsight especially, was kinda, what-the-fuck, but if you were picking the best looking documentary, than, yeah, that was the winner, and that is apart of filmmaking, so, I can't hate on it like I should. I was certainly impressed with the footage; you rarely see underwater footage that nice.

So,-, why am I bringing the Oscars up here.... You see, I think they got a category more wrong than that, and I don't think most people agree with me on this one.

Yeah, I don't get this one.

5. Another Round

I've had people try to explain this to me, and I get that Director Thomas Vinterberg, was going through a lot of personal stuff, but-, I'm sorry, as somebody who doesn't generally drink, it is not remotely fun around people who do, and I certainly think it's worst when then start pontificating on how their drinking is better than other drinking.

MY ORIGINAL REVIEW:

Okay, so I-eh, I don't drink much, at all. Except for the fact that I'm a writer, this is otherwise not a shocking revelation to most. It's not that I'm straight-edged, in fact I've spent much of my life around people who drink, and other mood-altering substances, let's say. Some of it I was aware, most of it, I was probably blissfully unaware of, 'til much later in life. (Hell, there are friends of mine, to this day, who are trying to configure ways into getting me to-eh, [finger quotes] "loosen myself up", if you will....) Honestly, I don't have a particular issue with it on paper, but I generally have not had great experiences hanging around too many chemically-altered people. (At least, none when I'm aware that they're altered.) I've often been the one in the room who's not drinking, and let me just say, it's not a terribly fun place to be, but I still think I prefer it to joining the crowd and drinking alongside them. Frankly, I would hate to act like the way I've seen some do when they're under the influence, and I genuinely feel a lot of concern for those who do partake.

I'm not trying to be a buzzkill here btw, if you're fine with it, then fine have a drink, have some fun, be safe, don't break any laws, have a designated driver, etc. etc. etc., but I just- it's just not for me. So-eh, those feelings though, that I've gotten when I'm the only one who's not drinking; that's a lot of what I felt while watching "Another Round", a strange, supposedly uplifting dark comedy from Dogme 95 director Thomas Vinterberg. Now, I'll confess that I'm not overly proficient in Vinterberg; I liked a couple movies of his I've seen, 'The Hunt" and "Submarino", but I can't say I was hugely effected by them. I know "The Celebration" is generally considered his best film; I haven't gotten to that one yet. There's a lot of Dogme 95 that I haven't gotten to, but this movie feels a bit like how that movement was probably created. A couple friends had a few drinks, and instead of deciding to artificially rediscover neorealism, they, decide to keep drinking.

Okay, it's a little more complex then that, but not much honestly. Basically, there's four high school teachers, that basically decide to concoct a social experiment on themselves. Over a dinner, they decide that, they've struggle a bit with their midlife crises lately, and hypothesized that it's because they're not drinking enough. Specifically, they're testing the Skarderud Theory that the human mind and body is better at a blood-alcohol or BAC level of 0.05%, is the ideal BAC to have while going through life; I suppose? Honestly, it just feels like alcoholics searching for an excuse to keep drinking. Strangely though, it actually works. The character Martin (Mads Mikkelsen) a bored history teacher actually has some inspired teaching moments and even has things pick up with his wife Annika (Marie Bonnevie). Eventually the other friends join in and they also have good moments at their respective teaching jobs and life. Tommy (Thomas Bo Larson) has a decent job coaching kids soccer, although he has to maneuver his way through an awkward encounter involving a water bottle that actually got a slight chuckle out of me. Lars Ranthe as Peter and Magnus Milang as Nikolaj also have some good scenes here as well. In fact, the acting in this movie is really amazing all the way through.

This actually makes the movie a little difficult for me to judge; 'cause I don't really want to pan this film too much. The premise is disturbing and hokey, and really feels like Vinterberg is trying to show what his nights out with Lars Von Trier probably were when they wrote up those stupid rules in the mid-'90s. And ultimately, the movie does show that drinking and staying a little drunk all the time, is ultimately not good, although I'm certain some idiot's biggest takeaway from the film is to don't drink anything with absinthe in it. (Which, should've just been a given, but oh well...) And I'm not really against movies about a bunch of guys drinking; in my mind I kept thinking back to Claire Denis's "35 Shots of Rum", and that movie has basically a half-hour scenes where four characters are just getting drunk and having a good time at a bar, and I don't remember much else about it, but I loved that movie. It's arguably Denis's best, so why does that work there, but the drinking in this movie, is just disturbing. Well, drinking on a night out and getting to know each other is a lot more intoxicating an experience then a bunch of middle-age longtime friends trying to recapture a bit of their past spark for one. That's probably a reason why I didn't like "At World's End" either. Still, though, all the arguments I can make for why these characters are essentially drunk pricks, I can probably make for Alexander Payne's masterpiece "Sideways", and that's one of my all-time favorite films, and that's just two friends drinking. They're also experiencing life and they're on a pre-wedding trip... I think that's what ultimately annoying me about "Another Round"; it's just four old men using this scientific theory as an excuse to try to drink their way through life, and they're not even like doing anything with it. They're not changing much, they don't want things to change, they just want to find something better, and they're searching for it in the bottom of a flask hidden in the school gym's utility room. Like, even if this was realistic, I still don't want to hang around these people who are trying to become functioning alcoholics.

I'm told the movie is supposed to be life-affirming but honestly, I don't see how, and hell it ends up destroying and ending one character's life, so even that thing is tainted ultimately. There's a little bit about the differences between binge drinking when you're in high school and when you're an adult, the movie even opens with teenagers performing in an organized traditional drinking challenge ritual that, is incredibly stupid. I guess the contrast is that the teenagers are stupidly trying to have fun and be drunk while the adults are taking a more thoughtful, scientific approach to it, and therefore are smarter?! I don't get this movie. Maybe I had to have drank a lot more in my youth, or now to fully understand it, and you know, there is probably something to be said about the fact that I made a choice to bypass the traditional sewing of my youthful oats, but in most aspects, I also don't feel any regret for that decision, and you know what, I can definitely think of movies that have made me wish I had more life experiences as a youth, or at least enjoyed the ones I had more then I did. This can be done romantically and well, not even that, just something more compelling somehow...; there's a good movie in here, somewhere, but ultimately, I didn't see it, and in my mind, I shouldn't have to be chemically-altered to enjoy or understand a piece of art.

I know people really found something profound in this film, at the time, I don't know if people still consider it as enchanting, but I didn't like it at the time, and I really don't like it now. I was really perplexed and confounded by this movie. This is probably the Worst Foreign Language Feature Oscar winner since like, "The Counterfeiters" or something. Nah, actually this film is worst, maybe worst since like ehh, "Belle Epoque", maybe. I wonder if people just enjoyed this film 'cause they were all stuck-at-home drinking at the time. I did not want to hang around these people. There's ideas here, I get wanting to numb your pain, and I get wanting to curb your vices in order to still enjoy them, but not be controlled by them, but this movie is "Faulty Drinking Logic: The Movie" and frankly it just reminded me why I don't like being around when people are drinking, even when they're not drinking a lot, they're still more annoying than they think they are. There's so many better drinking films, there's many better fun drinking films, I don't understand why people found this one so inspirational and heartwarming.

Number 4:

I don't think the rest of my list will be that controversial, but..., eh, maybe some people liked this one.... (Shrugs) I don't get it.

4. Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga

I mean, it's- it's got a laugh or two, I'm probably being a little mean here, but- god this movie felt pointless.

MY ORIGINAL REVIEW:

I love Will Ferrell, truly I do, but I do wonder if sometimes, he picks a target that's a little too ripe for satire. I haven't kept up with every single one of his films over the years, I usually enjoy them when I do, and even if I don't, I usually think he's the best part of them. Come to think about it, it's actually been quite a while since he made and starred in a regular Will Ferrell comedy, probably since "Get Hard" which I didn't get around to watching, but the first movie of his I remember skipping because the reviews were lukewarm and the premise just didn't seem compelling was "Blades of Glory". (Shrugs) I mean, I do like some of his sports and competition-inspired comedies, "Talladega Nights..." for instance, I think mostly holds up, but "Blades of Glory" was about figure skating, and figure skating, while, it is a sport I love believe it or not, it's basically, just self-parody at that point. Like,- even if it was funny, the figure skating world is already outlandish and flamboyant to the point of absurd, obnoxious camp spectacle; making fun of it is like, well, passe. It's just a ridiculously easy target, and frankly it's almost not worth the time. (I also just utterly despised "Napoleon Dynamite" and I guess I didn't really want to see Jon Heder in a lead role again. That was probably an overreaction)

Anyway, that's kinda what I think about Eurovision as well, and I think Ferrell knows that. For those unfamiliar, Eurovision is this infamously campy song contest in Europe where every country submits a representative to participate and, half the countries don't want the burden of hosting the next year, which, for some reason is the big prize, so they purposefully send the worst submissions and everybody has this really campy, gaudy performances...- There's actually a few people who became famous from this, Celine Dion, Julio Iglesias, most notably ABBA with their song "Waterloo", and their performance is shown in the beginning of the film, where we see a young Icelandic kid, Lars, (Ferrell) who's inspired by their performance to one day perform and win Eurovision. Unfortunately, he's Icelandic, a country that's never won Eurovision, probably because they never submitted Bjork, but also, he's not particularly great, and his hometown town of Husavik, doesn't particularly think highly of them or their performance. Oh yeah, their performance, he's apart of a duo with Sigrit (Rachel McAdams), his longtime best friend, and eh, possible half-sibling...- it's weird, 'cause they are attracted to each other,...- apparently something kept Lars's disappointing father (Pierce Brosnan) and Sigrit's mother, Helka (Elin Petersdottir) from being together as kids...- it's weird.

They're the local group that perform cover songs at everybody's weddings and at the local pub. They're not great, and nobody wants to hear their original songs that they're writing for Eurovision, but they want to keep going, and eventually, through a bizarre series of circumstances, they end up at Eurovision where their friendship and music are put to the test, especially as both of them become attracted to other competitors, Sigrid to the Russian singer, Alexander (Dan Stevens) and Lars with the Greek contestant Mita (Melissanthi Mahut).

This is a weird one, and I- don't really know how to judge this one, but my gut instinct is that, this is one of Ferrell's weaker efforts. Eurovision is one of those things that's really hard to make a satire of, partially because it is so self-satirizing, so Ferrell, kinda tried to split the difference and made something that's both a jab at it, but also make something genuine and show his appreciation for the contest. I guess there are films that can split that difference, Christopher Guest's movies were pretty good at it, especially "Best In Show", but here, what you end up with is a weird mix bag. It's an international cast, and while we have an American and a Canadian playing two Icelandics, we kinda skirt around the issues of making fun of other cultures, by essentially having most of Europe itself in on the joke. It kinda tames the comedy though, and that's when suddenly, when they do dip into bizarre stereotypes, like how Icelandics still believe in elves, it seems even more bizarre and off-putting. (Although they did mention briefly how Iceland did in fact, upend it's entire government after the Great Recession, so, what a weird little blip of accuracy to bring in. I-eh, I have no idea where they're getting the elves thing though.)

The movie got an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song, which does work as a climax to the film, and yeah, thank goodness it is a decent song, 'cause if it wasn't, it really would've brought the film down a lot more. As it is, it feels like a disjointed mess of a film that knows it wanted to do a comedy about Eurovision, but didn't exactly know where to take it. Like, there's a subplot where one of their rivals in Iceland is a ghost that haunts them, played by Demi Lovato of all people, and the movie even admits that she's kind of a useless ghost. Like, that's a funny scene in of itself, but you still kinda wonder why they needed it. I guess it kinda works like some of Will Ferrell's other tropes in similar movies that he's making light of with his deconstruction approach to comedy, but this time it just feels so disjointed.... Is "Eurovision" good? I don't know after watching this movie, and I feel like I should have an answer. I think it's mostly a love letter to "Eurovision" and- (Shrugs) I don't know; I've never had a particular thought one way or another about Eurovision, so... I don't know, it doesn't effect me. This what you get for trying to have something both ways, you don't get any personal emotion from the audience either way, and even in a comedy, you need to have a rooting interest in the main characters, and I just didn't. Honestly, I think I'd rather just watch a documentary on an actual "Eurovision" then this movie even with an occasional good laugh or two here and there.

Yeah, I apparently don't care, what the popular comedies are sometimes, for all I know, they might be making a second or third sequel to this film or something, but- I don't understand. Is this film if you don't know the context of Eurovision? I think it would just be a confusing mess, and if you are familiar with the context of Eurovision, than,-, like, wouldn't you like, not need context to this, 'cause Eurovision, is just, like ridiculous enough to begin with? I don't know if this is the worst Will Ferrell comedy but it's the most pointless one in a while.

Number 3:

Okay, the rest of this list is not gonna raise eyebrows or be interesting. In fact, if you've heard of any of these films, I would legit be a little shocked. I'm not entirely sure how they all ended up on my radar, but they did, and I wish they hadn't. And honestly, they're not even interesting enough for me to be, like, worried about bringing them up, that maybe people will seek them out to see how bad they are, well, maybe my number one is, but mostly, they're just obscure films that, frankly I think wouldn't make a lot of other worst lists 'cause they're not interesting enough to remember. I'm kinda just saying that now to warn people. This shows how I can be really lousy at this sometimes, 'cause if I really wanted to be controversial and make a point, I'd probably put "Another Round" or "Tenet" as my number one worst, but ehh. I'm ranking the films the best I can, as true to me- sometimes I hate a really interesting film, but-eh, this isn't a year where I can do that. So, eh,- my number three worst is a film called "Alice".

3. Alice

That alone, might be one of the reasons I'm ranking this so high, there's actually a lot of films called "Alice". I think it took me a while to realize I was watching the right movie called "Alice". Anyway, it was movie called "Alice", directed by first-time feature director Josephine Mackerras, and it's a story about a suddenly single mother who turns to prostitution after her husband leaves her and her children suddenly, and in serious debt. A good premise, but something ended up off here, and I don't know, it just annoyed me more and more, both when it strayed from it's most interesting dramatic aspects, and then when it did get to them, they still bumbled through them.

MY ORIGINAL REVIEW:

Okay, before I get into anything regarding this film, can we please stop naming movies "Alice". Or for that matter, all media, can we just stop with "Alice". I can think of like five movies named "Alice" off the top of my head, and that's not counting the TV show, and not counting titles that have the word "Alice" in them, including ones that also have the word "Wonderland" in them, and that's not counting books et. al. Just- if you have to name a piece of media after the main female protagonist, please pick another name. As somebody who keeps track of every film he's ever seen, including an alphabetized list, this is getting annoying.

(Deep sigh)

Anyway, how about this movie called "Alice"? Well, it starts out interesting enough.... It's the debut feature film from director Josephine Mackerras, an Australian director who curiously is making a film in France and in French, she tells the story of Alice (Emilie Piponnier) a young loving housewife who finds out that her husband Francois (Martin Swabbey) has left her and her son Jules (Jules Milo Levy Mackerras) and taken all of her money in their accounts, and they're overdue on everything, including a year late on payments for their home, and she needs to get a lot of money, really fast. I won't go into how exactly she ends up becoming a high-end prostitute in order to make the payments, but she ends up becoming a prostitute, and actually it's not a terrible transition. At first, it gets stupid later but, originally I was intrigued.

I mean, I once heard a tale from a former Parisian pimp that in France, Paris in particular, it's not that uncommon or even unaccepted for women in financial straights to occasionally work as a prostitute temporarily. (Believe it or not, that pimp was James Lipton btw; look it up....) I mean, there's plenty of movies about young women turning to prostitution for one reason or another, so I was hoping this would be a good one. I couldn't think of any particular good films about a single mother turning to prostitution before. (Well, I can but those were late-night Skinimax movies, so I'm not counting them.) This is an interesting premise, and when the movie confronts that premise, it confronts it well. When it doesn't deal with it well, it falls into some pretty questionable cliches.

For instance, the one main friend she has, Lisa (Chloe Boreham), which in of itself, is a cliche, but they don't do much with her. She helps guide Alice through the process of becoming a high-end prostitute, tricks and practices of the trade, but...- well, apparently Mackerras did interview a lot of prostitutes for research for this role, and you kinda get the sense that she was trying to condense a lot of different prostitute narratives into this one character. Oddly, the effect is that it makes her far less interesting then she would on paper.

Also, the johns actually, for the most part, aren't that compelling either. Thinking back to some of the best films on this topic, they usually use these scenes for progressive certain ideas and themes and personal narratives. "Belle de Jour" comes to mind, or even some stuff that's more exploitative like "Student Services" the scenes reflect the state of mind of the character. These scenes, well, the first one's kinda funny, but then they kinda just, feel like time-wasting scenes. There's not too many of them, and I get that there's a way to consider these scenes being uninteresting as also being apart of the narrative as well, that she just gets used to them, but then there's the fact that half-way through the film, the husband returns....

Yeah, I kinda wish he didn't. For one thing, his excuse is just stupid. Now, they do find a way to keep him around reasonably, sort of, by having him watch his son when she has to go to work; there was a great scene where she's got a last-second appointment call, but can't find anybody to watch Jules. That stuff was interesting; what wasn't interesting is seeing her past return and frankly we're not even empathetic to the guy to care about him. Again, I'm sure this is more realistic then it should be, but I wasn't looking for that. I wanted to see Alice strive on her own, managing to pull off being a single parent and working to repay all her husband's damage and return to something resembling normal. Maybe if this film was longer or paced better, or just didn't fall into that trap of a trope too early. By the end of the movie, there's only one obvious way the film could end, that would make me relatively happy, and I'm just waiting for it to happen.

I think intentions were good here, but "Alice" just kept moving downhill for me, and by the end of the movie I'm thinking about better movies. This was a missed opportunity; there's plenty of potential for a great story here, or a great character piece at least, but it doesn't reach that level. This is a script that could've used, one or two less rewrites through the three-act structure machine. This movie could've been really interesting if it stuck to the places where the drama was the most compelling...- Forget that she's becoming a prostitute thing, think of movies like "An Unmarried Woman", or other stories about a woman having to force herself to grow up and learn to survive on their own after their husband leaves them high and dry; like, she kinda understood a little to focus on that, and when she did I liked the movie, but I thought it just went the route of least resistance at the end. I thought about recommending it anyway, but there's better movies with all these elements out there and this movie didn't provide enough different for me to really back.

Looking back, my review feels a little more ennui, perhaps because this was a film that got a certain amount of acclaim, and I think I was trying to justify what others saw in it. I think I even gave this film, like two or three watches, trying to figure out the appeal,- I hate to use the excuse that their are better movies like this as a reason to pan a movie, but like, there just are a lot of better movies like this. And this movie, could've been as good as those films, and giving me some different perspective. I like the idea of this movie, a single mom going into prostitution, I'm sure that's a premise that's been made into a good movie before. I thought, she overdid the research, and maybe, tried to take as much info from sex workers that she interviewed for this project and put it into the film, but-, it's like she had a narrative and then did the research, but like, still forced this narrative structure of a story that she had into this film, and the two stories didn't necessarily go together, and she couldn't either, find a new narrative, or mix these two ideas better. This is one of those movies, where you're like, "How did this not work, and then, the more you think about how it doesn't work, the more it annoys you that it didn't work. Like, I don't really care if "Eurovision" didn't work on me, this one though, this should've been a little movie I would've championed and I guess in this instance, I consider that worst.

Number 2:

Oh Christ, another movie with a generic-ass title,- ugh! I'll give my number one this, I wouldn't forget what it was called, at least it had that for it. People, come up with interesting and/or unique titles for your films, if at all possible! Or you'll end up with a movie title like, "Beats".

2. Beats

Yeah, I saw two different movies called "Beats" within a couple months time period; neither were particularly memorable, so I still had to look up which one I really hated and which one was just, decent. This one from music video and tv director Chris Robinson, and just a side note on that,- I feel like most music video directors these days who become movie directors, seem to basically still just make movies about music and often starring musicians, and like "Beats" they seem to be very generic and uninteresting and usually badly acted. How did that happen, used to be the people who started in music videos were they new experimentalists who would move onto feature films and have a strange new perspective on movies? Where have all the Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry's gone? Hell, I might be happy with a new-age Hype Williams protege at this point. (Do the VMAs even give out a Best Director award anymore?) Anyway, "Beats" is on here 'cause it's every other cliche of this story all rolled into one boring, forgettable mess.

MY ORIGINAL REVIEW:

You know, I've seen so many of these any-, well, honestly I gotta ask my musicians friends this one, 'cause, well,... just-, is everyone who works in the music industry, just somebody who gets screwed over for discovering a talent?

Maybe this is just me, 'cause I come from film, granted, basically that's the same outskirts that these characters in music discovery movies seem to live in, but still,- it seems like you can be an artist, you can be a producer, you can be a mogul, a right-hand man of a mogul of some kind, or-eh, you can be the guy who spots the talent. On the one hand, basically the guy who, brings in the mark that the rest of the crew is gonna steal from, which is bad in of itself, but like, how is there only like, the one option to screw the talent spotter guy? Film doesn't just have a lot more avenues of entry, but it also has a lot more mixing and blending of skills for entry. Hell, that liaison role between producers and executives with artists, that's a whole industry in of itself in Hollywood. Several in fact, if you ever watch "Entourage" you can see how agenting and managing are differing roles and require different skillsets and education levels, even licensing. But, it seems like anybody can bring an artist off the street and bring them a producer or executive, and then, sign the artist, and then cut the manager out completely, and you know what, I don't know why. How do they get away with that? Why force him out, just buy him out if you don't want him, but even still, doesn't he play an instrument? He obviously knows music enough to find you the unknown what you want? How do you know you can't find some other job for the guy, that might be useful and beneficial to you? Sure, he's a leach too, but the guy could recognize somebody who's talented...-

I know I'm being a little reductive here, but it does seem that way with nearly every film, both real life music bio one and especially so with original stories like "Beats", a story about a school security guard in inner-city Chicago, Romelo Reese (Anthony Anderson) who apparently was a big shot record producer, until he got broke, (So, not as big a shot, I guess) and his main artist, Tone (Tyre Green), who discovers a troubled young man, Khalil (August Everage) who's apparently really talented at mixing beats, but is paralyzed by his sister Kari's (Megan Sousa) sudden killing, who he often still imagines seeing, while stuck at home as he's afraid to go outside, even to high school. His mother also feels it's too unsafe for him to go out into the streets, and yeah, this is modern-day Chicago, there is something going on. So, there's two stories, one is Romelo trying to get back into the music game on August's coattails, trying to get old "friends" and "producers" to look at him, but also just getting comfortable around August enough to want to create and mix and frankly just,- just to go out into the world. His mother, Carla (Uzo Aduba) is also frightened and overprotective of her kid, although it's not like they don't have good reason.

Okay, now is the point where I'm not gonna review or describe the movie anymore, 'cause, I'm not entirely certain I watched the right movie. See, this is one of two movies called "Beats" that came out in 2019,- actually this only screened at Slamdance in 2019, it didn't get a release, theatrical or otherwise until 2020, but there is another called "Beats" that came out in 2019, and I suspect now that that was the movie I was supposed to watch. This is very frustrating and annoying, 'cause this has happened to me, TWICE, within the same review period! If you scroll down to my review of "Revenge" I tell a completely different story of having trouble finding the exact movie I wanted to see, because "Revenge" is so generic a title that streaming sites and avenues kept confusing the film I was looking for, with completely different recent movies, also called "Revenge"!

Now "Beats" is a little weirder of a title, so I'll let this anomaly slide and try to watch the other movie later, but naming a movie "Revenge" is just stupid and lazy, and also annoying; especially for search engines. Like, half of literature is basically a narrative based around revenge; how the hell am I supposed to differentiate one from another?!

As to this movie called "Beats", it's got a couple good ideas and sequences that make it stand out a bit from some other movies like this I've seen, and some good performances; I especially want to single out Ashley Jackson playing Niyah, a girl that August has a crush on and she has a really good speech scene, where she in a prom dress calling out August on his bullshit outside his house, but honestly, this isn't different, unique or good enough for me to recommend outright. It might be decent if you stumble upon it on cable one afternoon, or on Netflix I guess; it's streams on there, but it's nothing special. Mostly I just want to tell filmmakers or all kinds, including writers and producers especially: DO NOT GIVE ME ANY MORE GENERIC MOVIE TITLES OF MOVIES! Seriously, TRY HARDER to be original and stand out! If you're gonna give a movie such a generic one-word title, you better be damn sure that the movie is so good and so distinctive that the movie not only can't possibly be named anything else, but the word itself has to be so thoroughly intertwined with the text of the film that it absolutely has to called that word, 'cause nothing else would make sense.

I did watch that other "Beats" movie eventually, and yeah, "Revenge", is another. "Alice" is another. I'm so sick of these generic titles. Is "Beats" #2 bad, eh, it probably isn't but it's stuck between these multiple films and points that the movie's trying to make and it really get them together well, ultimately. Honestly, if this movie was titled, "Mixes" I might've given it more of a pass. It still wouldn't be good, it's still too much of a mess, and a lot of music industry stuff is tiring and generic- like, I know the music industry is full of hucksters and conmen who pray on the musicians and artists but, man, I wish there was a better way of telling it. At least, when it's done in a biopic, I can usually concede it being how it is, but in a movie like this, I would've stuck to more of the story of the teenager able to just find his way out of trauma through music through the help of the people around him story, and y'know, not worry so much of the gangster politics of the music industry.

Alright, let's end this. (Sigh) Number 1:

Like I said before, the title of my number one film, is memorable. Eye-catching. It's interesting. You might see this title, on a library shelf or on a streaming service scroll and stop and look at it and maybe even press play. I can see that happening. Unfortunately, it is the most interesting thing about this film. Frankly, for a title this interesting, one of the reasons I'm ranking it number one, is that, I wish it was more interestingly bad. That's why I'm not crazy about this list,- these worst films, for the most part, they're not even so bad and offensive it's worth talking about, even this film! I mean, can you imagine the many kinds of movies, that you can make, with a title like, "Shithouse"!

1. Shithouse (aka S#!%house)

No, seriously, that's the title. "Shithouse". Here, there's a trailer, I can prove it.

See, it's a real movie, somehow. It's,- it's not a good one. It's just a less-than-mediocre post-mumblecore college romance film. It's a first attempt bumble from a young talented actor-director named Cooper Raiff and it looks like he's made more films since and done better, so I hope this is just his throwaway first feature that somebody will look back on later and see the beginnings of a talented career out of it, but for me, it was just a shallow look at college ennui romance that maybe wanted to be a second-tier Richard Linklater film but came off more like a fourth-tier Zach Braff film.

MY ORIGINAL REVIEW:

Y'know, I would've thought that a movie called "Shithouse" would've at the very least, been more interesting at least. Not necessarily good, but interesting.

Don't be jarred by the movie's title, the title refers to a colloquial name of one of the frat houses in the college in the film, and even then, it's not like "Animal House" or anything like that. It's just a college romance story. It's not even like, a romance between like, a frat brother and a sorority chick or anything,- honestly, I think the title was just the most obvious one that would grab attention. The movie itself is apparently inspired by Cooper Raiff's student short film that got the attention of Jay Duplass of The Duplass Brothers, who helped him produce this longer extended version of that short, "Madeline and Cooper". I've seen the short, it's actually a way better look an college ennui romance and frustration then this film tries to be; it even has a cute insert from Richard Linklater's "Before Sunrise" to really get that mindset put into your mind, and more importantly, it actually focuses on both characters equally, and more poetically. Honestly, I'd rather be reviewing that film....

"Shithouse" stars Raiff as he reluctantly hooks up with his dorm's RA Maggie (Dylan Gelula) and the two of them have one of those "Before Sunrise"-type nights, assuming a star-filled romantic night around Vienna, and a drunken dorm excursion at the end of a drunken stumble around Occidental College are the same thing. Actually, is it a cute little romance, or at least a start of one, and it does kinda go somewhere later on, when they get into their argument at the end, after he believes the date meant something and she tries to play it off as a one-night thing that didn't mean anything, but honestly, I kept wondering, what exactly did this thing get to.

Basically, it boils down to, what exactly entails a "college experience" and how supposedly Cooper is still halfway in his mind, still at home with his family, which we see in phone calls he makes to his mother (Amy Landecker, who, other then a cameo by Duplass are the only real established stars in this films), and this is in conflict with Maggie who has been sleeping around, even on boyfriends since high school and has a bit of a troubled homelife. Arguably her best relationship is with her pet turtle, who just died.

Honestly, I think the movie, just wasn't a good adaptation to a feature film, 'cause frankly, I vastly preferred the original short film. I don't think it's a great short, but it's more narrow in focus, and I'm more willing to overlooked the parts that I don't care about, like the obnoxious drunk stand-up wannabe roommate Sam (Logan Miller). Instead, the movie keeps trying to find so much other stuff to put in to extend it's runtime that, ultimately I didn't care much for either of these two leads. It has that feeling of the post-mumblecore romance, but if you actually go back and watch those movies, they were way more complex in the nature of the romances they documented. The Duplass Brothers knew how to create characters and put them in conflicting situations that showed off the best and worst aspects of them, and by comparison, "Shithouse" is just way too typical and boring. It focuses too much on the Cooper character, not nearly showcasing the possible motivations and emotions in Maggie until the end, goes for the easy happy ending as well, but frankly, I'm just not rooting for them, like, at all. Like a lot of bad indies, it's a 40-minute concept that I like, that doesn't work with an extra hour and forty minutes added. The movie's been titled differently elsewhere, most notably, "Freshman Year" in the UK, but I don't think the title would help much here. "Shithouse" will grab your attention; it's probably one of the most attention-grabbing disappointing titles since "Dirty Dancing", but mostly it just felt blasé, and it made me want to track down old episodes of "Undeclared" which, honestly I don't even think I liked that cult show, but I'll bet 2-1 odds they probably have an episode that's just this, but done better.

I hope Cooper Raiff doesn't give up or anything, this is his debut student film and he's gotten the attention of Mark Duplass, who's definitely one of those people who's attention you want to grab, so hopefully his next project will be more feature-length and compelling, and he learns how to take a story and push it towards his strengths. This movie could've been better if he knew what to add on, and what to drop off, and knew what his strengths were as a filmmaker and focused on them. He clearly is talented, but this is a misstep first feature. To that I say, eh, welcome to the club, Cooper; you'll do better next time.

I wasn't kidding when I said the short was better, it's called "Madeline & Cooper" you might be able to find it on a streaming site somewhere, I recommend that more. This film-, it's not offensively bad. I didn't watch enough films or seek out the very, very worst, just to fill this list, so like, I'm not pissed at this movie or anything. It's the worst 'cause it's on the bottom of my list, but it is a movie that's about a decent 20 minute short that's stretch to an extra hour and a half and it feels longer than that. And there's just other more interesting versions of this kind of story. And the titular "Shithouse" wasn't that interesting either. I know fraternities can look fun in some movies, but y'know, fraternities aren't usually a good thing to begin with, and the ones that really should be on double secret probation are also not really that good, and I don't think one needs a "typical college experience" while they're in college, either. I wish somebody just told this kid, "Man, the party shit is overrated, have fun, talk to cool people, have a one-night stand or two, but it's a freshman year, just look around 'til you find your major and then try to cherish the people around you with similar interests and goals. You got a whole life ahead of you, college isn't everything, take advantage of the good parts and be happy that you don't have to be an adult yet for a few more years. And fuck fraternities, even the good ones suck and the Shithouse is not a good one, so fuck them."

Anyway, that's my list. 2020 is done. With any luck, I'll be done with this decade before the '40s come around.

Oh, I'm not doing Dishonorable Mentions, this year, wasn't interesting enough to have a bunch of those. Sorry.

MOVIE REVIEWS #209: "ANORA", "DUNE: PART TWO", "OPPENHEIMER", "CYRANO", "THE LAST SHOWGIRL", "NO HARD FEELINGS", "CRIMES OF THE FUTURE", "BROS", "JOSEP", and "SOFTIE (Soko)"!

2025-01-25T05:56:00.000-08:00

I decided to pump out one last batch of movie reviews before the Oscar nominations. (NOTE: That didn't happen) I'm not making predictions or anything, but I'm still around. I wish I posted more often, but I also wish I had more to say at the moment. Most commentaries and thoughts on the goings-on of the entertainment world aren't nearly as interesting to me as they used to be, so I doubt they'd be as much interest to you guys, at least for now.

And I'm getting to some of the movies that are in the Oscar conversation a little earlier for me. At this rate, I feel confident I might get done with my Top Ten Lists of 2021 by the end of 2026. Anyway, I'm trying to get back into things. It's tough to find all the time I want, but I'm enjoying it so far. The only awards commentary I have at the moment is that, I suspect the "Family Film Awards", are not a real thing. I mentioned this on Facebook, but they're advertising that this year is the 27th Annual Family Film Awards, and I don't believe that. I think that's wrong. I believe they've, maybe existed as far back, in their modern form since 2017, but I think it's more likely that they're even younger than that. They claim the first show happened in 1996, which I do think happened, but if you look up literally anything since that show, up until like, 2-3 years ago, there's like, nothing. IMDB doesn't have any info, their website's history only goes back a couple years, and doesn't have an "About" page, which, even the most cheap hack local film festival awards usually have that,- and everything else I can find on them so far, basically nothing. They are suspicious as hell to me. So, before I devote myself into doing an expose on them, I would like to be proven wrong about this. So, if anybody has or can find, any evidence that the "Family Film Awards" are actually real and have been around for 27 years, up to and including the history, voting body, past winners and nominees for the last 27 years,- literally anything that convincingly proves that they've been around and handing out awards on 27 separate and distinct occasions, since 1997. Press releases, newspaper clippings people who've won or hosted, or- literally anything. Please let me know. Post links in a comment, find me on Facebook or Twitter, or even Bluesky-

Oh yeah, I'm on Bluesky too now. I keep forgetting I did that. I did it awhile ago, and I didn't like it back then, but I kept the address and it's starting to get better now. (I'm still on Twitter too; I'm not calling it you-know-what-letter though.) I'm trying to remember to post on it, but eh.... Anyway, Family Film Awards, until otherwise noted later, I consider, not a real award. Consider this a public warning.

Anyway, onto the reviews.

ANORA (2024) Director: Sean Baker

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

So, I often tell a self-deprecating joke about how I win every game of "Never Have I Ever", 'cause of the long list of, what would probably be described as typical and normal things that most people have done that, for one reason or another, I have not. It's not really a joke though, don't play that game with me, you will probably be hammered, far quicker than you think. Like, one of them is "I've never been legally drunk," and I've played this drinking game multiple times, so, this is from experience, don't do it! That aside, one of the more surprising ones, despite being born and raised in Las Vegas is that, never have I ever, been to a strip club. I have several reasons for this, mostly, just calculating the odds and tendencies of my peers, I was fairly certain that there was a more than 2-1 chance that if I'd go to a local strip club I will inevitably run into at least one friend/former classmate of mine. (It's probably more like, 5-1 now, but,-, well, let me put it this way, despite not ever actually being in a strip club, I have known more than a few strippers. [It's kinda just, what happens when you live in Vegas long enough, you end with at least one stripper friend])

I bring this up 'cause, "Anora" doesn't make me want to go to any of them. "Anora" is the latest feature from Sean Baker, who's become one of the great American independent filmmakers of our time. He's been on my radar since "Prince of Broadway", with his best films being "Tangerine", a film shot entirely on an iPhone about transsexual prostitutes out looking for cheating pimp at Christmastime, and "The Florida Project" about a little girl who lives with in a weekly on the outskirts of Orlando, unaware as her petulant mother loses control of her life as well as custody of her daughter. Both those films, also dealt with people in the sex industry; in fact, that's a really common theme with him. I forgot until I looked it up, that he had directed "Starlet" about a friendship between a camgirl and an older lady she met at bingo. And he made a splash a couple years ago with "Red Rocket" a film about a "suitcase pimp", trying to leave the adult industry, but basically ends up going back to his recruiting ways.

All that said, something else is going on with "Anora". You see, there is a seedy undercurrent to strip clubs, and the sex industry in general to an extent, strip clubs in particular,- what really makes the world of the strip club so, queezy to me, isn't the nudity, or the questionable clientele, but, the capitalism of it all. The more you work in Vegas, the more you realize that, the poor are essentially working, for the upper class, and strip clubs, really are just capitalism in its most grotesque and bare form; the lower class getting money for just, showing off how bare they are to those who have more money than they'll ever understand. Nobody broke (and somewhat smart) actually goes to strip clubs, only obnoxious young pricks with tons of money to burn do. Particularly among the more delusional in that world, and- with all due respect to some of my friends, the stripper world is really weird and delusional in of itself. It's selling a fantasy to those who's lives are already ridiculously fanciful, and losing track of that, can lead to some real problems.

Anora, (Mikey Madison) is about to get lost in illusion and begin believing her own scam. At first, she seems almost like a Picaroesque character, which, is, shockingly something that I'm surprised more strippers and sex workers in fiction aren't, but then she falls in "love" with a client, Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), a young trust fund kid of Russian oligarchy. He's supposed to be studying, but he's spoiled and rich and, he's a twenty-one year old kid. Anora, who isn't much older, likes him though, and she can speak a little Russian as her grandmother is from Russia. Eventually, an offer to stay a week with him, turns from a girlfriend experience to a week in Vegas, and then, making the stupidest mistake you could possibly do with a hooker in Vegas, they get married.

What happens next, takes this movie from observant societal commentary to absurdist comedy. There's a long sequence where, Ivan's family finds out about their marriage and sends Toros (Karren Karagulian) the family's fixer, who in turn sends, his henchman Garnick and Igor (Vache Tovmasyan and Yura Borisov) to, basically take the couple, through any means necessary, and get an annulment, a job that turns into a comedy of errors, just with the kidnapping, and then becomes even more absurd when Ivan runs off and they're not sure where to find him. It's all,-, just hilarious. I don't even want to describe the absurdity to it. It's one of those, everything that can go wrong, goes wrong, scenarios, that keeps playing out but, eventually, they find Ivan. He's drugged up and eventually, the parents, Nikolai and Galina (Aleksei Serebryakov and Darya Ekamasova) come in and demand an annulment, which requires flying the private jet, with Anora, back to Nevada, and then, flying her all the way back to New York.... It's- like-, I don't even know the words...- I've heard of stories like these all the time, in fact, one of the things I like about "Anora" a lot, is that, this is a fairly, familiar story beat-wise. I can think of lots of stories of a couple of young idiots getting wasted and married in Vegas, in real life and in fiction, and they almost all end the same, and this one does too, but it contextualizes just how absurd and disturbing, societally these kinds of situations are.

Then, the movie humanizes it, by humanizing Anora. I called her "picaroesque" earlier, I don't know if everybody knows that term, but I remember one of my old professors bringing that term up back in the day. I've seen various definitions of it since, but, the way he described it, to paraphrase, is as a main lead character, who through their own selfish and cynical actions and lack of emotional caring or interest in anybody but themselves, directly affects the lives of everyone else around them, but they themselves are not effected. He used the example of Dedee Truitt in Don Roos's "The Opposite of Sex", but basically this is any main character, who basically acts only in their own self-interest, regardless of everybody else's needs or wants. I've heard other definitions of that term though; Google seems to think the term only refers to any "rogue-type" character, particularly male characters. If I have to give a modern example that everybody might know off-hand, Capt. Jack Swagger actually fits both definitions more than you'd think, but I think Anora mostly fits too. Mostly, the issue, at least, in terms of coming up with characters like these according to my old's professor's definition, is that, unlike other lead characters, they can't have actually "learned anything" or "evolved" in any way; they affect and change others, they themselves, are not affected. Hell, even in "The Opposite of Sex", his own example, the only real reason Dedee Truitt counts is because, the movie specifically turns black to have her avoid showing us that she's evolved despite all the situations, so even then, there's a bit of an asterisk. It's more difficult to do that than you'd think, which is why we've probably either loosened that definition immensely, or my professor was just wrong and is making this up, but for most of the movie, whether or not we think of her as a picaroesque protagonist, she definitely thinks and acts like she is, or that that's what she should be, at least. Even her falling in love with this guy and marrying him, she's in "love," but that "love",- she was still for sale. I doubt if this guy gave her all this money for the week and then she came to his place and it was half of a windowless trailer and that he was basically giving her all his life's earnings, that she'd still be interested in him.

The ending of the movie, and I won't spoil it, involves her, under the eye of Igor, who's keeping an eye on her before dropping her off at her home, ends with her, completely going through every emotion she's been holding in and holding back. It's a scene that only works if you get the right actress with the right performance and Mikey Madison gives an amazing performance. She was so convincing, and knowing Baker's tensions to use lesser-known or unknown actresses, I didn't even realize that I'd been watching her career for years, all the way back when she played the oldest daughter on the seriously underrated series, "Better Things". I easily would've bought her as just a talented stripper that Sean Baker just found through the strangest open casting call in years.

"Anora" I think works more than Baker's other great films, because it best places all of this in it's greater context. His other films tell these great emotional, human stories as well, often about working all around the fringes of the sex industry, but never has he placed it so precisely before in a context of just how dreadful the glamour of that industry can feel when it envelopes you, and really shows just how, so many greater outside forces dictate and effect these worlds. Strip clubs like these exists because people like obnoxious billionaire sons want to experience beautiful young women who are poor enough that they can throw their money at them and they'll do whatever they want, and no matter how much pink lip gloss sexual revolution feminism you put on that fact, it doesn't really make it better or more meaningful. You throw that realization on top of everything else that just happened to poor Anora, I'd breakdown crying in someone's arms too.

DUNE: PART TWO (2024) Director: Denis Villeneuve

⭐⭐⭐⭐

"Dune, yo"! "Dune"! Or, "Dune: Part Two", or as it is in french, "Dune: Part Deux".

(Shrugs)

I don't know. Anyway, I wasn't looking forward to this one. I didn't care much for Denis Villeneuve's first "Dune" and frankly I was always skeptical of this franchise in terms of feature films. It's been beloved for years, but it's a really a strange and complex franchise, that's also fairly dated. At least, the first part of it is.

In my negative review of the first film, which, for the most part, I still stand by, I mentioned that I thought Villeneuve was not a great choice for director for "Dune". I still think that, but I think he was a much better choice for "Dune: Part Two". See, that's always been the real problem, whether it was Lynch or Villeneuve, the first "Dune" book, which is where everybody starts with this franchise, is one of the weakest parts of the franchise. It doesn't really get to be a good story until "Dune: Part Two", which is what makes Villeneuve a good director for this, he's a good storyteller. Even his weakest sci-fi-iest films, "Enemy", "Blade Runner 2049", they weren't great stories but they were told well. Even "Dune" was about as good a version of that book that I think could be told on film.

"Dune", on top of everything else about it, the political commentary, the very obvious-it-was-written-in-the-LSD sixties, vibe and tone, it's kind of a bait-and-switch narrative. The whole time, for at least the first couple books, it follows a fairly traditional Hero's Journey narrative, even a chosen one narrative as Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet) is believed to be the one according to the Fremen. He is the son of the House of Atreides, which was destroyed in the first movie, but the legitimacy of the prophecy itself is under question. However, as the prophecy more and more seems real with Paul Atreides, power and revenge seems to keep getting the better of him, and by the time, the "Prophecy" is fulfilled, he's complete turned into a dictatorial oligarch.

Yeah, that's the thing with "Dune", it's very much a sociopolitical allegorical warning as oppose to a traditional raygun gothic space opera. It's basically a story of what happens when you don't beware of false prophets. Hell, it's actually about why having such prophets or believing/hoping for such prophecies is delusional brainwashing. I was skeptical, but I ended liking this movie more and more as it went on, 'cause this is the true story of "Dune".

The filmmaking is out of this world, even from the beginning sequences of the Fremen flying up the sand dunes,- like, that's the other problem with the David Lynch one, he wasn't a visual effects specialists but even if he was, they just weren't up-to-date enough for the visual effects that we have now. There's some great sequences with the giant sand worms. Like, a lot of this stuff on paper, is true effects, but the elaborate world-building made it a lot more enriching and entrancing. "Dune" gets you into that hallucinogenic mindset, and then when Chalamet's characters finally begins to really turn, and that's to me, when this experiment in filming the supposed "unfilmable" feels like it's actually baring fruit. The performances are strong, especially Chalamet as well as Zendaya, who plays, essentially a love interest, but isn't blinded by the religious prophecy of Paul, and when he does ascent, she's the one who- well, I won't give it away- this movie gets, the complexity of Frank Herbert's work, better than it probably deserves on film. I think the only thing really holding me back is that, I don't particularly care about the world itself; and I think the symbolism of the story works better in a more insular medium like the books, but that just might be me. I don't think my thoughts on the first film would change, but I bet the more I would explore the world of "Dune" the more I'd appreciate it.

I'll say this, above anything the movie "Dune: Part Two", more than anything, actually makes me want to read the books, and frankly even "Jodorowsky's Dune" didn't make me want to do that.

OPPENHEIMER (2023) Director: Christopher Nolan

⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2

I remember in grade school, that their were certain kids, not me in particular but, there was a lot of discussion and fascination with the atomic bomb. In fact, I remember a lot of discussion amongst them about how powerful dropping an atomic bomb, or an A-bomb, now would be, and/or how a hydrogen bomb, or an H-bomb, would cause about ten times the amount of destruction as the atomic bombs had done in Japan. Come to think of it, I'm not exactly sure why there was such obsession and fascination about it; this wasn't exactly the dawning of the atomic age, I'm not that old, but the Cold War had, we assumed anyway, concluded after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, so there was a lot of discussion and debate going on about, what exactly we should be doing with all these bombs and other horrific and destructive weapons that both sides had been building and stockpiling for decades. It's not like there was a good answer, and me living in Nevada where, a lot of atomic testing went on, well into the '50s.... In fact, I'm about an hour bus ride from the Atomic Testing Museum at the moment, and there's also a few people who worked at a few nuclear plants that, hmm, let's say, if something goes wrong out there one day.... In fact, I lived through one of those such incidents once.... (Look up Pepcon Explosion, 1989 if you're interested.)

So, I guess, me having grown up in that backdrop, I shouldn't be too surprised that J. Robert Oppenheimer (Oscar-winner Cillian Murphy) should be a subject of a biopic, but, an Oscar-winning biopic, by, of all people, Christopher Nolan?

Yeah, it's weird, that this is the film that suddenly earned Nolan that precious Oscar, right? That is weird; I'm not like, completely off on that, right? I remember all summer of last year, how the film world was divided by the conflicting powerful forces of the atomic bomb that was "Oppenheimer", and the capitalistic marketing and corporate advertisement bomb that was, "Barbie", of all films. "Barbieheimer" they called the phenomenon. And it did have this, disturbingly dated "Boys vs. Girls" kinda undercurrent, as though women couldn't also be fascinated with Cold War politics and physics, and men, couldn't possibly be interested in empty braindead dolls that you could strip down and play dress up with. Having seen both of them now, hmm,- I'm honestly kinda just wondering what other options I had to choose from.

Don't get me wrong, I like both these movies a lot; I guess I'm more in the "Barbie" camp than the "Oppenheimer" camp, but not by much and the thing is, they don't really feel really comparable to me. I don't know what I was expecting with Christopher Nolan's film in particular, but I guess, what I got out of it, was,- for-lack-of-a-better-word, a meditation.

A meditation on what exactly though? Well, like most meditations, it's hard to fully describe. The movie itself is non-linear, which is not surprising from Nolan, no popular filmmaker has ever been so fascinated with playing with time chronology. Or, even just the feeling of time passing in general and how it can effect you. His breakout film was "Memento" a movie that took place in reverse chronological order but from the perspective of it's main character, who had no short-term memory, so he was constantly rediscovering information as thought it was already new. People forget the next movie he did though-, it wasn't "Batman Begins", it was "Insomnia" a remake of a Scandinavian police thriller that took place in Alaska when the sun never set during the summer. Al Pacino's cop character, 'cause of the lack of night and darkness, was unable to sleep and that lead to him, not fully able to keep his mind as sharp as he normally could while trying to catch a murderous Robin Williams, who was practically teasing him with how well he played him. To some degree, a lot of his films, really are about the trying to solve a problem while having one's mind constantly devolving or in the process of getting disoriented as time goes on, and in Nolan's world, time always seems to not only be the literal ticking clock, it's often the antagonist and enemy itself. It used to work brilliantly, but I'd argue he hasn't really been pulling it off lately. I thought "Interstellar", while having an idea about time, existed in a world that was too outlandish to take seriously, and when it jumped into 5th dimension, "A Wrinkle in Time" kind of magic, I thought it lost the plot. "Tenet" was a million times worst though; which basically, was the first time I think he presented a puzzle that I didn't want to see solved.

The point I'm making with this, is that, "Oppenheimer" is about, the same thing, it's just, in this case, it's about the developing and dropping of the atomic bomb, and everything that entails. The science of creating and testing it, what it entails to even do the science, the politics that bring about how it's being created, and then later used, and then, the after-effects of it's usage, but not so much, the literal, as it is, the mental realization. When the crew at Los Alamos created the bomb, and then dropped it, it meant that, we were in a new age; an age where the Earth can indeed, create something, that could destroy itself, and we've been living with that fact ever since, and trying to reconcile that, must've been difficult at the time, for the normal person, much less the people who actually did it. And I think that's where ultimately, Nolan's going here.

The movie essentially cuts between three periods of Oppenheimer's life. The first, is his youth and the leading up to and the building of the bombs. The second, comes years later when, due to his involvement in Communist politics during the McCarthy era, he's denied his Q Clearance from the U.S. government, and later, in Lewis Strauss's (Oscar-winner Robert Downey, Jr.) Senate confirmation hearings for Secretary of Commerce, where the hold up is his involvement in Oppenheimer losing his clearance, revealing his lifelong personal vendetta against Oppenheimer at how it's coming back against him now. All three of these incidents are quite thrilling on their own; Nolan is a master manipulator, and even if we ourselves are barely able to keep up, we're able to emotionally understand all that's at stake at each moment, and none of these events essentially couldn't happen without the other.

It's also, just contemplating the horrors of having created such a killing machine, how much genius and greatness there is in that, and yet, understand how, something like the atomic bomb, or worst, can never be used again. And yet, it did win us the war; it wasn't used on the Nazis like we intended, but Japan was refusing to give up. We can and will forever debate whether or not we should've dropped the bomb, the point is that we had developed a bomb that could, and then was, dropped, that was the changing moment, in a way, you can argue no other moment has more shaped the 20th Century than that.

It's in that sense where I most appreciate "Oppenheimer" and can most understand it's appeal; it's a thriller disguised as an epic philosophical meditation on the atomic age. You see, you can learn all this, I mostly knew all of these details outlined, at least, the ones about Los Alamos, and what Oppenheimer went through afterwards, I didn't know a lot about his life before that, although I think I did hear about the Neils Bohr (Kenneth Branagh) story involving the apple. What Nolan achieves with "Oppenheimer" and I'm not even sure it's entirely perfectly done, but he gets you contemplate what all of that actually means in the greater, more philosophical aspects of science. The way Neil DeGrasse Tyson can take some of the more inane and abstract ideas about quantum physics, and make it seem, philosophical, in the best way, that's what Nolan does here.

Of course the filmmaking is spot on, although I question some of the artistic use of jump cuts,- it's one of those weird things where when you get one wrong it makes the movie worst, but if you do it hundreds of times, you win an Editing Oscar, and I kinda think he maybe didn't do it enough, but that's minor. The all-star cast is great, I didn't even mention Matt Damon or Emily Blunt or Florence Pugh,- I mean, half of Hollywood is in this movie. Like, it was a distracting when say, Rami Malek, showed up for basically one scene at the end of the movie, but at that point, I had given over to the film. I thought I was done with Nolan honestly, but man, he got me again.

"'A planet doesn't explode of itself,'" said dryly,

The Martian astronomer gazing off into the air-

'That they were able to do it is proof that highly

Intelligent beings must have been living there.'"

---John Hall Wheelock, his poem, "Earth".

CYRANO (2021) Director: Joe Wright

⭐⭐⭐⭐

I don't know if I've ever brought this up before, but I love "Cyrano De Bergerac". It's one of my favorite stories to tell and see told. Hell, I've tried a few times to tell it myself in my own scripts. Not ever successfully, but I gave it a go, and honestly I'm surprised more people don't take shots at it. When I do see it done, I tend to enjoy most versions of it though. Of course, the best modern one, and I'd argue the best recent one is "Roxanne" with Steve Martin and Daryl Hannah; I'd argue that's Steve Martin's best film and screenplay, and really, even though it fumbles around some of the modern issues with its premise, it also knows that the story is better as a romantic-comedy. (And frankly, it changes the ending to the ending the story deserves. Who likes that, spoilers for a 125-year-old+ story, but Cyrano dies at the end, no, you wanna see him and Roxanne.) I know some people are affectionate for the 1990 French version with Gerard Depardieu, which, is oh-kay, I guess. I don't know, this version never did for me, but it's fine. I do love the stage version though; I saw a wonderful taped version of the Broadway play years ago with Kevin Kline and Jennifer Garner among others that I loved. Kevin Kline was such a perfect choice for that role, and if you see him do it, and then watch the Depardieu, you'll realize that, yeah, as talented as Gerard is, he was kinda miscast for that role, at least for me.

Still, I love "Cyrano de Bergerac", but you should take that with a grain of salt, because I think most writers, and I'd argue most, critics, in particular love Cyrano because of our own little wish fulfillment fantasies. Cyrano (Peter Dinklage) is a writer, poet, fighter, romantic, and I must stress this part in particular, he's a "critic"; I don't know why that doesn't get brought up enough, but he's one of few main characters in the literary canon that is himself a critic. His introduction is always him, just demolishing and destroying a beloved performer, in front of his audience, and getting cheered on for it. If that's not critic wish-fulfillment, than I don't know what is! He even beats the crap out a guy who tries to attack him, and his deformity, and he's almost more insulted that he was lousy at insulting him as he was at the insult itself! I mean, the closest we ever normally get to something like this is yelling insults at a screen in a dark room next to a couple robots. Of course, writers and critics in particular love "Cyrano de Bergerac". We are never the star, we are the ones who only pray that we can sing their praises or knock them down.

So, what about this "Cyrano". Well, it's the first time I've seen the story told as a musical?!

Yeah, there's a lot of adaptations of "Cyrano de Bergerac", but I was a little caught offguard when the actors broke into songs originally. It's not the strangest idea, I guess, but if you're not aware going in, it can be a little daunting, and sometimes they made some interesting choices on what to devote a song or dance motif to. For instance, there's an early scene where Cyrano, tells a baker friend Ragueneau (Peter Wight) to change the metaphor in his love poem from planets to baking, which is the right decision, but there's a strange dancing segments where a lot of dancers are essentially dancing around a lot of dough, and it's-, weird. It's an odd choice. Just, an odd thing to have a song or dance segment devoted to, at least to me. That scene is in the original play, but still.... Obviously, there are other differences, Cyrano's infamous deformity was his long nose, which,- I don't know if Edmond Rostand was going for, any deeper symbolism with that,- most scholars think he wasn't, I tend to agree, although I'd say naming the person that Cyrano's helping get the girl, Christian (Kelvin Harrison, Jr.) and having him be helped by a guy with a big nose, was probably a questionable idea, but essentially, any sort of modern, physical deformity would work, so naturally, dwarfism fits in, just as well here. It would seem even more naturally that Dinklage would be the star, but this project was specifically garnered for him, since it's based off the musical by Erica Schmidt, who is Dinklage's wife.

I'm cool with it, 'cause Peter Dinklage is one of our greatest actors, and if she didn't create "Cyrano" for him, than somebody else either would've, or should've. He is the reason to watch "Cyrano". Honestly, Peter Dinklage is often the best reason to watch nearly everything he's in. (He's actually the only reason I watched "Game of Thrones", he was the only character I really liked or cared what happened to.) Of course, Roxanne (Haley Bennett) is also a tricky role; it's hard to understand how much letter-writing was a big deal back in the old days, especially when it does come to romance,- like, we can laugh at how the "Fifty Shades..." books being mostly text messages exchanges between characters, but, y'know, it honestly wasn't that different from most of Jane Austen's works being letter exchanges, even her good work being that.

That said, yeah, Roxanne, is already a little tricky, it's always kinda hard to make her not seem shallow, (Although that's the best thing about "Roxanne", Daryl Hannah's version of the character isn't. I should really do a Canon of Film on "Roxanne" one day.) That said, the movie does make an, interesting choice in taking the De Guiche (Ben Mendehlson) character, and making him, much more possessive of Roxanne, in his insatiable desire for her. I-, I don't know about that choice; I like it here, but making him more of a villain overall-, De Guiche has his own arc in the play that's much more nuanced as he is usually more inspired by Cyrano's actions, and not by Roxanne. He does start off as a suitor of Roxanne, but that has less importance once she's infatuated with Christian, here, it's almost like he's ordained to be with her-,... I-, I get why, but I don't love that change,- especially since it makes him seem less trustworthy in the third act during the war, when that really should be his moment to shine. It probably wouldn't bother most people if you're not obsessed with the original like I am, but it irked me enough.

Anyway, again, I'm bias, I could watch re-workings and re-imaginings of "Cyrano de Bergerac" on a loop and be satisfied. And "Cyrano" would definitely be among them and be a highlight, and for everyone else, Peter Dinklage's performance should absolutely be seen by everyone. He's amazing in everything, but this is clearly a role he loves and relishes, and it's about as perfect a casting or actor and role you can come up with today, and he is truly great in this. Roger Ebert, once wrote about "The Station Agent" how he realized that Dinklage could play "Braveheart" during that performance, and he could, but I'm gonna pretend he wrote "Cyrano de Bergerac" there instead, and just be happy we got this.

THE LAST SHOWGIRL (2024) Director: Gia Coppola

⭐⭐⭐1/2

Oh boy, where-the-hell do I start with this one....

Um, so, I didn't end making Oscar predictions or anything, but I have been keeping up most of the awards, or trying to anyway, and even watching a couple of the films. I'm seeing who's getting nominated where and for what..., in general, I'm not usually surprised by somebody getting nominated or even being in consideration for their performances. I tend to believe most everybody, if they're getting work in Hollywood, especially if you're an actor, you're talented to some degree, even if the material doesn't exactly show them in their best light. I've met and worked with plenty of talented actors who can't get a dogfood commercial, so I know subconsciously that, if you're working for a long period of time at all, you're probably talented, so- unless it's your first performance that I've become aware and I had never heard of you before, than I'm now particularly stunned to see any name, show up anywhere, in terms of getting critical acclaim. Especially with the all the critics awards that I will look up, and I'm looking for the some of the obscure ones, just to-, you never know what small film that only one group of critics like will secretly be the best film from that year or something. Still, if there was one name from the past, that I completely didn't expect to see show up surprisingly consistently, during this or any award season, it would've been Pamela Anderson.

I'm not even entirely sure how to explain this, honestly. She didn't end up getting an Oscar nomination, but like, I don't think modern youths fully realize, just how, even the idea of her, even being in this conversation feels so, surreal. In fact, while I'm writing this, I've put on "Pamela: A Love Story"; it was in my Netflix queue anyway, but the documentary, which was produced by her son Brenden, who's also a producer on this film, "The Last Showgirl", and part of me is a little nervous about watching it. Like, I basically grew up with Pamela Anderson being an ever-present figure in pop culture and media, even trying to explain that,- is.... like- if you challenged me right now, I betcha, I can recall the literal rise and fall of her breasts. I'm not even trying to be like, pervy or anything by saying that, I just know, 'cause every time she got implants or had them taken out, it was news! Like regular, on the six o'clock Evening News, news! And having a two hour refresher on all of that, her record-setting amount of Playboy appearance, the fact that she was on the biggest TV show in the world, on two different shows,- and oh, Christ the doc is starting with home videos, (NOT THAT ONE!) but...- like whoever the biggest celebrity is right now, who you really wanted to ignore and couldn't, Pamela Anderson was 50x bigger in her day than whoever the modern day version is.

And yet..., here she is, in a film and a role that not only is perfect for her, and she nails, but is practically right up my alley and sweet spot of knowledge. "The Last Showgirl", might seem like an anachronism title to anybody who walks down the Las Vegas strip these days and sees half naked girls dressed like showgirls regularly, and you can pay them for a picture, but A. those aren't real showgirls. They're cos-players, and B. it's a scam, be nice to them, but don't take a photo with them, but they're really not showgirls like their used to be on the Strip, not anymore. There's a few people like Dita Von Teese trying to bring back the old showgirls-type shows, but the last one that really existed was Jubilees and that closed in 2016. I'm not sure the Rockettes still exist in New York honestly. Like, even in the opening of the film, Shelly (Anderson) saying she's 5'7'', in my mind, I went, "Oh, you were barely a showgirl." I've met actual showgirls from some of those shows, they're gorgeous even now, but among all their other proportional requirements they're mostly tall. You had to generally be about 5'8''- 6', to even be a Vegas showgirl, most of them, were usually at least 5'10'', and that was the minimum beginning of the requirements. It might not be Cirque du Soleil, but it was not then an easy job for anybody to get. (That's about the one thing the movie "Showgirls" got right, btw.)

The movie begins and ends with her trying to audition after her show, after 30 years, is announced that it's closing. In her day, she was the star of the show, but now, she struggles to change outfits backstage, and those are tough outfits, and all the other dancers around her so much younger, they think of her as a mother-type figure. (And they are also all running up and down stairs backstage, why are their always stares these girls in twenty-pound headdresses and beaded bustiers always had to run up and down stairs in these things, and that is a thing too btw) The show's producer, Eddie (Dave Bautista, who apparently is just in everything lately, and is actually, quite good here.) Tells the girls that the show's ending in a few weeks. They're crushed, but nobody more than Shelly. The other girls start working the tryout circuit around town, and when one of the girls, Jodie (Keirnan Shipka) shows the routine they had her tryout, Shelly's offended by how overly-sexual it is. And yeah, that, is definitely a thing too. If you've lived here long enough, there is this odd notion from the old-timers that the shows, even the topless revues were so much classier back then. I don't want to stray too far into this, 'cause I've lived in Vegas more-than-long enough, that I definitely reminisce a lot on a lot of the ways things used to be better, and you definitely hear it from people who've been around longer than me, but eh, their is something a little odd about that particular notion to me.... I do get it to a degree, but eh I'm not as sure that "Crazy Girls" or "Jubilees" were more or less classy than "X Burlesque" or "Zumanity" is/was now.

The only other character that's been there as long as Shelly is Annette (Jamie Lee Curtis) who isn't in the show anymore, having left the show earlier to work as a cocktail waitress, another job that also, is getting replaced by younger, prettier, girls underneath. Thankfully, she's union, so she can work forever; if she doesn't blow her money on gambling and booze. (I've met that type of former showgirl as well.) Other than that, Shelly's world, is basically just the show, and now that that's closing. She mentioned at one point trying out in New York years earlier, even complaining that when she tried out for the Rockettes, she thought the leg kicks were too repetitive. (They are, but that actually makes them more impressive, 'cause that is fucking impossible! You try kicking like that, that high, for that long!) She does get a visit from her daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd) who's studying photography in Arizona. I struggle to explain all the detail of their relationship, for one it's kinda underwritten, but it does hint at Shelly's more, adventurous youth. Let's just say that she wasn't a good mother.

In fact, Shelly's constantly being told about, how she could've or should've left the show years ago, and gotten a more steady and secure gig. It's when she's pissed off the most, no matter who's telling it to her, her friends, her daughter, her producer,- honestly, I get both sides of this; yes, you have a kid, and it's just a show and she needs a mother more, but then again, why should she give up something she loves to raise her if she doesn't want to, and it does make it more tragic. I can kinda even see the argument for this story being a little under-developed. The movie was based on an unproduced play from Kate Gersten; it's her first feature film as a screenwriter, but she's worked as a writer on a lot of good TV shows in recent years, and I could tell you some parts were some things could've been more fleshed out, but,- maybe it's more interesting, compelling and even realistic if her world is incomplete to us, and to her. The film was directed by the first third generation Coppola filmmaker, Gia Coppola. She's Gio's kid, and Francis's granddaughter and this is her third feature; she made "Palo Alto", that strange multinarrative based on James Franco's short stories about teen youth awhile ago. I haven't seen her other feature "Mainstream", which, I'm fairly certain it wasn't, so I feel safe in saying that this is probably her most interesting and mature work so far.

Pamela Anderson,- like, this part is too perfect for her. She still nails it though. That audition scene, once we get back to it at the end, is just brutal, and oddly it makes me wonder, how much this film would actually work, if it wasn't Pamela Anderson in the main role. It's one of those films and performances that feels like it's too difficult to not place the actor's personal life and history onto the part itself. Thankfully, it doesn't quite feel like she's completely undercutting everything she is and was up 'til now, but yeah, I wonder what those who come into this movie blind and legitimately don't know who Pamela Anderson is, what they would think of the film. I think they'd love the performance, but I do wonder.... I mean, that's kinda her unfortunate curse, that we know everything about her. I want to say that it took all these years, long past her sex symbol icon days to get this performance from her, 'cause it is that experience that makes it that much more special, but frankly, I really wonder if maybe she's been this good this whole time and just never really got the chance to show it off. I would argue that no film or acting role ever gave her the chance or the ability to express herself like this before.

Hell, maybe my biases mean that I never gave her that chance, and maybe if I rewatch "Barb Wire" I could see it there as well.... Okay, maybe not, but you know what, "The Last Showgirl" makes me want to see what else she can do as an actress. What we've missed all these years with her just being showcased, more as an image and a brand because of her looks. See her in roles that show off how special and beautiful she is as a person and talented she can be as an actress, and not her as an iconic sex symbol. As I said before, nobody stays around in Hollywood this long continuously getting work, if you're not talented.

NO HARD FEELINGS (2023) Director: Gene Stupnitsky

⭐⭐⭐

Before I start the review, this is the movie that made me pay full price on Netflix. Let me explain, apparently, there are now certain titles that you have to pay extra for, and extra, without ads; I had the basic package, with ads, because, I don't really have the biggest issue with advertisements, even on streaming, but apparently, I couldn't watch this film without getting that deal. I because of "No Hard Feelings," I paid extra on Netflix for a service that I didn't even want, when I would've preferred the crappier service. Look, I complained about the pitfalls about streaming for years on this blog, and nobody listened, so I'm not complaining now, I'm just making note of these things.... "No Hard Feelings" by the way, to those who said I was making too much of some of these things, btw. (Also apparently Netflix has games now you can play. I-eh, I don't know what to do with that info.)

Anyway, I was looking forward to this film; I think there's still room for the raunchy sex comedy and this is honestly a nice modern twist on it in theory. In practice, eh, it's-, it's got some moments, but maybe I would've given it another once over on the script. Or perhaps, eh, I don't know, was Jennifer Lawrence the best choice for this script?

Now, I love her work, but I'm going a little back-and-forth on this one. She can definitely do comedy; I think she should've won her Oscar for "American Hustle" and not for "Silver Linings Playbook", and "American Hustle" a comedic performance, but there's different kinds of comedic performances too. Here, she plays, Maddie, a down-on-her-luck local beach girl in Montauk; ah, the rare, northeast coast surfer girl. She's the local trainwreck, who barely keeps a job as a bartender at one of the beach bars that caters to the tourists, in between driving violations. The kind of girl who sleeps around but keeps a few sadsacks on the hook who are enchanted with her, at least until they're done with her bullshit, and right now they're mostly done with her bullshit. She's losing her house and her car, which she needs to keep up for Uber gigs between all her other conquests and hustles. The house belonged to her mother, and she really has nowhere else to go; she's alienated most of the town and what few friends she has are trying to move on, and she's determined to stay in her comfortable hometown, no matter how many rich out-of-towners come in and build and buy summer homes there.

This leads her to answering and advertisement on Craigslist, for...-, hmm, how do I put this.... She has to, um, secretly, seduce, a young teenage boy, nineteen-year-old Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman), on the request of, the kid's parents, Laird and Allison (Matthew Broderick and Laura Benanti). Basically, Percy, a very talented musician, is an extreme introverted loner, which, is something I get, and yeah, to an extent, sometimes people like these, they aren't as able to connect with others, as much as they'd like, and occasionally, they might need, more extroverted friends around them, and that includes sexually extroverted, to get them out of their introverted shells. Sometimes, they're particularly dense and shy about stuff like this....

Okay, full disclosure here, I'm not saying this character is similar to me, but I get it, and I also very much get, not exactly being able or willing, to accept the advancements of others easily either. (And from my experience, sometimes we are so dense about some of these things that even that at age, we don't even get when we're being advanced upon. Sometimes, I-, we, didn't find out until years later we were being hit on, even when clues were ridiculously obvious... [bites lip in shame]) At least I was never so dense that I thought Hall & Oates's song "Maneater" was about a literal monster, but yeah, this is an interesting character and an intriguing dilemma.

The movie has it's laugh, but oddly, I think it kinda works best when it's not being funny; the moments when Maddie and Percy connect, are when they both start opening about themselves, and really, this movie, gets what I think most people don't, is that, being extremely introverted and being extremely extroverted, are kinda the same thing. Or at least, they both come out from the same feelings of needing to bottle up your own emotions and feelings. Maddie's so venomous and cold-hearted towards others, including the lovers she takes in regularly, because she doesn't want to open up about her own personal issues, in this case, a father who left home when she was young, who wants nothing to do with her, and having to take care of her dying mother after when she really should've been going out into the world. In Percy's case, he's got his own embarrassing issues, although it's implied that his parents were extremely protective of him, rich helicopter parent-types, but it's not really elaborated on or shown much honestly. This is why I think the script could've used another rewrite or two, not necessarily to make his parents more extreme, because I actually don't think that automatically correlates to extrovertedness, but show more of how they struggled with him beforehand. Not only how they did baby him too much, but also how they couldn't get him out when they had the chance before.

Yeah, the movie, is good, but it is a bit underwritten, I feel like I might've watched a version with like 25 minutes cut from the film. That's not the worst thing per se, I think casting can save some comedies like these, but you gotta cast the right person, and Jennifer Lawrence, she's- she's good, I don't know if she's great here though. She's brave, I'll give her that, and she goes for it here, especially during a couple action sequences, especially one on a beach that kinda inches towards the kind of outrageousness this film aims for, but it just doesn't quite get there in those scenes. She's so much better at the character stuff for me. Apparently this part was written with her in mind, and her production company was one of the films behind this so she really put some effort into it, but I watched this film and couldn't help thinking, make this film, ten years earlier and put Cameron Diaz in it....-

I mean, the obvious comparison character that Maddie reminded me of the most was Diaz's work in "Bad Teacher", and that movie is actually,- like on the page, that movie's much more underwritten than this film. In fact, script-wise, that movie is a disaster; part of what's amazing about that performance is how Diaz has this ridiculous character and is somehow trying to show character growth and evolution when really, there isn't any, but because she's so perfectly cast in the film, it sells it anyway.

"No Hard Feelings" problem, is that, it's somewhere in between. It's not quite outrageous enough to feel like it's on that extreme, but it's also not exactly loaded with as much depth to make us fully care about Maddie and Percy, but it almost does. The balancing act here, is just off. There's something here, there's enough to here to recommend, for trying if nothing else, but it just feels like it could've been more. It's trying to be a little more of each, but in different ways, it doesn't become enough of either.

CRIMES OF THE FUTURE (2022) Director; David Cronenberg

⭐⭐⭐1/2

Huh... Well, it's-, it's not the first I've sat through a David Cronenberg movie and constantly found myself mumbling aloud, "What the hell am I watching?" Actually though, this one's kinda,- well, most Cronenberg movies are weird, but this one's kinda...- let's just say, this is something I've thought about for a bit.

So, one of the big trends going on right now, is body dysmorphia horror. It's been around for awhile, in fact, and frankly it's long been part of Cronenberg's aesthetic, but I've honestly found it intriguing or taken it seriously, at least not until recently, most notably, it's taken over recently French horror like the films of Coralie Fargeot like "Revenge" and "The Substance" and my favorite so far, Julie Ducournau, and her films, "Raw" and "Titane". These are films that really put body dysmorphia to some pretty extreme places, but it's for a point. They're exploring a lot of the pressures and expectations and, objectifications that have been thrusted upon the female form from the historically male gaze society that's shaped them. "Titane" is about a girl who's literally both turning into and begins a relationship with, a literal car and it's way more fucked up than even that description, btw, that movie is amazing!

Yet, those are very female perspectives, and newer ones at that, Cronenberg's been making films for decades, although, he does have a movie about where his characters are, um, aroused by cars, well, car crashes at least.... (At that's the movie called "Crash" that most people think is good..., uhhh..., ye-ah, I don't know how exactly that happened, but-eh, they got that wrong. I don't care, I stand by that one.) Yeah, that said, when he uses body dysmorphia, it's different. His characters are often under the influence of the outside world, they're turning into things, and other beings or people or objects, are invading their personal bodies. I think the best way to describe things like, "Jacob's Ladder" or "Videodrome", or some of his other films is that they're not so much, is that body dysmorphia is more about the invasion of and eventual loss of personhood. It's the fear of becoming less human. And that's where this film, "Crimes of the Future" comes in.

Here's the thing though, most of the time with his films, I'm kinda just amazed and baffled that he's even thinking about some of this stuff, this time though, uh,- well he takes it in an interesting direction that I definitely wouldn't have gone, but.... so, the main narrative of this films involves humans, evolving, into a different mutated form, in the future, because with the lack of more normal nutrients and natural food sources that were once available, they're not only becoming able to consume things that are made of plastic, their bodies are beginning to, and indeed are, growing new organs, in order to evolve into this new paradigm of humans + plastic. Like the opening, horrific images, involves a mother, and fair warning here, this is horrific and graphic, a mother, Djuna (Lihi Kornaski), um, suffocating her child, Brecken (Sozos Sotiris) because he's developed an ability to eat plastic.

The father of that child, Lang (Scott Speedman) is apart of a revolutionary group of, I guess evolutionist um, rebels, who believe that humans are evolving and that this is a natural part of human evolution and have begun helping adapt their bodies along, including using literal poisonous toxic waste to create, essentially a plastic power bar that's poisonous to non-plastic eaters, but to them, is basically fuel.

This is in response to the actions of the government, represented by the National Organ Registry, here by Dr. Whippet (Don MacKellar) and his main assistant Timlin (Kristen Stewart). They're fascinated by our main characters, a performance artist duo, Saul and Caprice (Viggo Mortensen and Lea Seydoux). Saul, is somebody who's mutated to the point where he's constantly able to grow these new organs, but Caprice, a former surgeon, which, is-, okay, this kinda confusing, but pain and lot of other illnesses are kinda things of the past now, so, it's actually harder to tell when somebody's actually ill or sick, so, she is a former professional surgeon, who now, does this surgery, as part of a performance, by removing Saul's new organs. This, in this world, is literally attuned to, the new form of sex, in this world. It's...- I...-

Yeah, I-, I don't know what to think of this. I do get it. It's weird, like, to go back to those power bars as well, since these mutations are often effecting everyone's digestive areas, people like Saul and Lang aren't able to eat normally, and they need this, skeletal like chair in order to actually eat and digest properly regular food. I don't fully get this whole world, but, I can't say this is all that, obtuse and weird as I suspect a lot of people might think.

I've known about this for years, I won't go down, deeper into this, but if you really want to go down a disturbing rabbit hole, go look up "plastics found in autopsy reports", one day. It's honestly pretty horrific and depressing and, here's the thing, um, this is something that, I've thought about more than most. Human evolution, I think people are under an impression that we've completed evolving, but-eh, have we? I mean, even now...-, people thought up until very recently that our appendix was a useless organ leftover from when humans ate things like grass and dirt, and it might still be, but now there's a growing theory that perhaps it's more necessary than we thought and that it helps store good bacteria in our body, and therefore helps our digestive system so maybe fighting appendicitis with antibodies can be more useful, than cutting it off and that we live longer with it than without it! Like, yeah, human evolution could still be happening, and yeah, with an evergrowing amount of plastic in our bloodstream and vital organs, this is like, the one time these odd Cronenberg images and ideas don't just feel like remnants of an old William S. Burroughs drug trip.

As to the film itself,- I- I guess I think it works enough. I'm probably more horrified by the reminder of what's actually happening to us than the surreal hypothesizes the movies thinks we might become, but it works in the same way most other Cronenberg films work. That said, I do prefer Cronenberg more lately when he is infatuated with the mind instead of the body,- I think his best recent efforts deal more with invasion of the conscious mind than the literal body like "A History of Violence" and "A Dangerous Method" but you know there is something to be said for this side of Cronenberg. I guess I just prefer others' interpretations and metaphorical uses of body dysmorphia at the moment, than this one,- this kinda feels dated in that respect, like this should've been a film he made in the '80s or '90s perhaps, not now, but, hey, I liked those films enough then too.

(Sighs)

Plastics. There's a very big future in them, isn't there?

BROS (2022) Director: Nicholas Stoller

⭐⭐⭐⭐

There's two genres out there that I feel, are probably, currently in our culture, the best at really presenting a unique and personal artistic vision to the world. The first one is horror, people like Jordan Peele I think exemplify this the most recently, however, I think a seriously underrated second genre that does this is romantic-comedy. I'm honestly not exactly sure why the rom-com has kinda fizzled for the most part in recent years; I think part of the problem is that, it's just too difficult a genre for most people to pull off these days. No seriously, people think rom-coms are easy, but they're-, they're not at all. They're hard to write, and they're often even harder to act in. There's a reason why like, the same actors used to keep showing up in them when they were around, they're hard and only a few great actors can really do them well. That's why Meg Ryan and Sandra Bullock worked for years at them, nobody else could do them! I think that's part of the reason they've really been so few-and-far between, at least really great ones. But the ones that have been great have been, the most unique and personal; "(500) Days of Summer", "Trainwreck", "Crazy Rich Asians", they're the best recent ones and all of them have really distinct and important visions to show the world.

"Bros", yeah, "Bros" is in that same category. Personally, I've never really been a big Billy Eichner guy though. Not that I ever hated him, but, I was never the biggest fan of his series or his comedy, but that's different than recognizing his comedic voice and the importance and gravitas his perspective brings to the world. He does seem to come off as a little abrasive for me, but I think he's aware of that. While on his "Billy on the Street" show, he seems more likable, whenever I do see him playing a role, he definitely seems to be leaning into his more obnoxious aspects to him, and he does that here.

He's a combative sys gay white man, a noted podcaster who's trying to help run/open the first LGBTQ+ museum in the country to teach the history of, well, being gay in the world. (Or bi, or trans, as he's often reminded) He leans into the stereotypes of being a gay man, perhaps a little too much;- (Sidebar: Do single gay men, actually have a lot of, threesomes? I mean, I'm sure there's some that do, but, boy, it seems like they have a lot, at least in the gay clubs that Billy frequents. Lotta sex, I get, occasional menage-a-trois, but like regularly? I feel like that's- I mean guess there's no harm to it, assuming everyone's using protection but,-, well I guess throuples are becoming more of a thing, as is pointed out in the film.... Did this sidebar go off-the-rails; I probably went off the-, I'll stop.) Anyway, between moments of freaking out in front of numerous gay icons of today and yesteryear, some playing themselves, others playing parts, he begins a tender, eh,- he probably wouldn't want me to say, "relationship", but, relationship, with Aaron (Luke MacFarlane) a young estate lawyer who frequents the gay nightclub scene, and they hit it off, despite Aaron, seeming a bit, boring, according to Billy.

Aaron, is somewhat boring for a gay person. (I mean, who-the-hell's favorite gay TV lesbian is Susan from "Friends", like, c'mon Aaron, she's not even the best lesbian in that relationship! [BTW, the best TV lesbian, is Shane from "The L Word". The best one from a sitcom though is Elena from the "One Day at a Time" reboot.])

Anyway, it's a rom-com, and it's slowly goes through the steps of the rom-com, admittedly there's a foursome scene that's, a little, um, atypical, but the beats are still there, Billy's trying to get comfortable being in a relationship, even though he feels like it goes against everything he stands for.... This is the kind of person who will through a fit when you try to mention that the rumors of Abraham Lincoln's bisexuality are still not completely confirmed or agreed upon. Hell, he'll argue he was gay, and not bisexual, but...-, look it up if you don't know.... Anyway, Aaron, except for the fact that he's openly gay, and has a secret dream of being a chocolatier, he's basically a pretty-heteronormative cis white male, and that does freak out Billy. He likes basic television shows and movies, and music, he like Garth Brooks, who is a known ally I might add, but still, not at the top of most gay men I know's playlists. He grew up pretty normal, and Billy is very extrovertive, aggressively, combatively gay. Aaron's more willing to jump into a temporary relationship, but he's also just as willing to float from one-night stand to one-night stand. Billy's used to that life as well, and even though he spends his lonely nights moping in front of Hallmark movie marathons, it's like a struggle between that comfort of cynical loneliness and opening up to the possibility that a normal relationship might be something he's possibly, perhaps open to..., at least long enough to give it a shot and then talk again about their status?

"Bros" didn't do particularly well in the theaters; it's one of those rare gay Hollywood mainstream releases, but, on top of, most movies not being huge in theaters anymore, it ran into competition, plus, yeah, romantic-comedy gay romances, some people in America aren't ready for mainstream versions of that, especially ones that might talk about the actual history of gay people, and how they've shaped our current world. Perhaps that's why I do have a soft spot for "Bros". Yes, Eichner can be a lot, but I'm glad he's a lot and somebody out there is willing to just, not hide everything about them. Rom-coms, when done hell, can give us this unique look into great artists, and Eichner's is right up there with those rom-coms I mentioned earlier. It's directed and co-written by Nicholas Stoller, who was the director behind "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," another recent rom-com I could've mentioned earlier, another one that's also more graphic about sex than most would be these days as well I might add. And, yeah, I do like that this film, on top of being a good rom-com about a gay couple, it does use this backdrop of history, a history, that honestly hasn't been as well told as it should be, to emphasize this inherent contradiction in Eichner, and in some ways, modern gay men and other members of the rainbow spectrum in general. What is love to those who's entire lifespan of history, is basically about being ostracized, erased, or worst, I might add, because of who they love? What is love for those for whom love itself is a political and radical act? What is being in love when just being able to express one's love to another is itself a fight? It would sure make me cynical about the whole aspect.

I guess that's why I like this more than Eichner's other work. Eichner is already a representative of all this, and I think confronting all of that, and that adding love to the mix,...- Like I said, rom-coms really are a great genre for personal expression like this, and a seriously underrated one too.

JOSEP (2022) Director: Aurel

⭐⭐⭐

As we plunder ever deeper into fascism in America, apparently, I feel it does become more prescient that we learn more and more about the Spanish Civil War. It's kinda stunning, and surprisingly under-discussed in this part of the Western world, so to me, Spain's fascist turn, post-WWII seems, almost surreal to me. If you ever do look into you really just, how horrific it actually was, and a lot of it's aftereffects are still being felt....- it's...- I don't even...- I think a lot of what throws us is that we're not familiar with a lot of Spain's history, which, in of itself is really complicated. Like, parts of Spain are trying to separate into their own separate country, today, and I think they're history and world and culture, those nuances that would lead to fascism, just,- we really just don't fully understand them. It's like that old Eddie Izzard joke about how we think that if you're killing your own people like dictators like Pol Pot or Stalin, we're just fine with that, but Hitler killed people next door, and that eventually annoyed everyone else. I think that's kinda just how we look at Spain, and the fascist regime that overtook the country for, basically the middle of the last century. We just, don't think about the atrocities and horrors of that time, because we, don't really know it, but we also just don't get it; like why certain groups of Spaniards hated other groups of Spaniards, not realizing just how different those groups are to those living in that amalgam of a country called we call Spain.

I don't know if "Josep" got me to understand it more thoroughly or not, but if it's a quiet first step for some, I think that's a positive. "Josep" is about Josep Bartoli (Sergi Lopez), at the time a revolutionary, a political cartoonist, and a refugee. Once he managed to escape through the Pyrenees, after fighting in the war, he was in a concentration refugee camp in France. Nowadays, I don't think his work as beloved as it was, because partly, among other things Bartoli did, he eventually married Frida Kahlo, arguably the most important Mexican artist, ever, and frankly, at least in America, her work is more prescient than Bartoli's work, at least nowadays it is. At the time, when he had escaped the refugee camp and made his way to the Americas, he was one of the biggest artists of his time, but this story is about that escape.

Actually, I think that's kinda where the film struggles. It's about his escape, but a good deal of it is told in flashback, and not from his perspective, but from the perspective of Serge (Gerard Hernandez) a French guard at the refugee camps, who purportedly helped Bartoli escape. His character does show that, these refugees, weren't exactly beloved by the French either at the time, 'cause,- oh Christ, France and Spain,- that's a whole other aspect that I don't have time to get into, but he was one of the few empathetic guards who didn't just see Bartoli, or the refugees as, what I will charitably call, less-than-human.

The film is the feature directorial debut by Le Monde cartoonist Aurel, and eh, it's not my favorite brand of animation; it kinda has a graphic novel feel, but it's interesting enough. I think Josep is one of those people's who singular life couldn't possibly be fully told in one movie, but even still, I worry this wasn't entirely the best approach, but it's still an honorable attempt. You'd need a full miniseries to really get into everything he did, but perhaps this is the most important part of his life and story. Who knows what would happen if he didn't escape that camp, and yeah; hell, he was lucky he even was able to keep drawing while he was there at all, much less escape.

SOFTIE (2020) Director: Sam Soko

⭐⭐⭐1/2

I knew that most of the issues revolving around African politics, especially in some of the more war-torn violent countries, or if not, specifically war-torn, definitely the ones most often succumbed to political violence and corruption was essentially based in tribalism. I didn't realize that, the reason it's based on tribalism, was because of the British imperialists. And I don't mean, some of the, more arbitrary delineations and border lines between some of these countries, I mean-, they- (colonizers), as they were, taking over the country, and began hiring and using the local natives to help build the continent in their, more western ideals and images, they determined what tribes were best, for whatever positions or jobs that they needed. And, now that, Africa, isn't trying to be colonized anymore by the Europeans or the west, the positions that the tribes were given, from the past, have essentially, determined, their statuses in their modern political scenes, which is now, basically, the basis for most of the violence and corruption.

I guess, if you think about it, that makes the most sense, but-, I guess,- being an American, we would've compared such tribalism to, something akin to, well, the Israelis and the Palestinians, where, they're history is so long and ancient that, they're disgusts and conflicts with each other is basically inevitable, and that, these nations, struggling to form, shape and run their own governments and nations, is just another chapter in their own personal, trivial histories, grudges and rivalries, and perhaps it is to a degree, but I get the impression from "Softie" that, it's much more arbitrary than that.

"Softie" is the nickname of photojournalist Boniface Mwangi, one of the most influential people in Kenya and all of Africa. He's been covering the violent government corruption and politics since the late 2000s, around the time when Kenya, essentially, restarted their country and formed a new constitution, replacing the one that had been ongoing since 1963, when they first declared their Independence from Britain, and the way he described it, the government had basically been run more like a monarchy than a republic before and since, with the people from the preferred tribes, being and staying in power, and oppressing those who dispute them through violence and other means. Softie, has had enough and the movie follows him and his family as he decides to run for Parliament, and the movie details that journey.

Personally, my most strongest opinion from this movie is that I liked his wife, Njeri, probably a little more than him. She seems like the more no bullshit one of the house.

There's this one aspect, of just seeing Kenyan politics like this, and how campaigning here is so much different. There are political parties, but it's really kinda difficult for a laymen to delineate them, and like I said, it's more tribalistic than anything. There's,- well, there's dispute on the count, but there's about 42 tribes in modern-day Kenya, some even use the term "42+", 'cause there's some disputed ones, Mwangi was born Kikuyu, which is one of the bigger tribes, but it's mainly focused in the southern part of the country, near the Tanzania, and he's long-since moved from there.

Eventually, things kinda fall apart for him. Part of it, is that, while he is a great photojournalist, one of the best, CNN used his work constantly and he's won awards for it, I'm not sure he's a great politician. Not that it would've mattered much, because, right before the election, the guy in charge of the elections office was killed a week before, and the footage of election day, is a nightmarish mess, with people standing in line from the early morning to early night, and the line not moving at all.

Maybe elections should only be run from people outside the nation that's having them? Anyway, there was violence and outrage, and then there was some kind of strange political compromise and a handshake. You know, I never realize how phony a lot of our, political, machinations are, until they're imitated and being done by others. We dress up in suits and shake hands with our rival and smile like they've accomplished something; it feels so forced, doesn't it? It did here seeing it.

"Softie" as a film, is an interesting look into this strange grey area where journalism meets politics and just how tricky that area is to crossover. I was definitely worried going into this, I've seen documentaries on war photographers in the past, and, as you can imagine, they're mostly depressing portrayals, not just of war, but of the photographers themselves. Mwangi, does, kinda feed into that stereotype of mine, but I think it's just a matter of he's not a politician and when he tries to speak like one, it comes off as unnatural and his wife rolls her eyes acknowledging it. She should be the politician. Mwangi can definitely be a voice of reason, but I think his photos have spoken better than he can. I still think he should do both and the Kenyan parliament would be a little better off with people like him in there, but yeah, his country may need him, but he's not ready yet. Perhaps the ones he influences will help change the country for the better in the future. Perhaps in the future, politics will also matter more than the tribes one belongs to.

THE TOP TEN BEST FILMS OF 2020!: MY MOST CONTROVERSIAL TOP TEN LIST, EVER! (I know I'm late, but I've been holding some stuff in on this one..., trust me.)

2024-12-11T11:50:00.000-08:00

(Sigh)

These last few years have been rough. They look like they're gonna keep getting rough, thanks America. (Fake smile, fake thumbs up.) But, as bad as this year apparently is, it still, as of yet, wasn't as bad as 2020.

For me, it's felt like 2020 never really ended. Partly because, I've been so busy with life and life changes that I am only now getting around to doing my Top Ten Lists, which is kinda weird; I think people would've thought that the pandemic would've allowed me to catch upon everything, but honestly, it really just made me dive more into stuff from the past that I had missed. In fact, the more reviews of recent films I see, in general, I feel like the less intrigued I am by them. They're not bad, in fact, my worst list, when I do that, is gonna seem fairly pedestrian,- I mean, based on what I watch, which is always the caveat to these things, if you think I missed something, or put something that shouldn't be on here, comment sections' all yours, but yeah, perhaps, this is the time I started really losing my love of cinema, and how could you not at that point?

Yeah, 2020, on top of everything else, ended the argument about whether or not you absolutely needed to see a movie in a movie theater or not, and the people who watched them streaming on their cell phones, defiantly won. In fact, the pandemic really redefined what exactly is a "Movie" and the lines between cinema, television, streaming, tiktok, whatever, all that became more and more blurrier than ever before. Whether that should be the case be or not is one thing, but frankly, now that even major streaming services are referring to legendary directors rightly or wrongly (it's wrongly) as "Content Creators", yeah, this ancient argument was ended and covered with a mask. And you know what, thank god it is. I was sick of it, I'm glad I lost that one.

Anyway, what was the best film that came out this year? What even was cinema in this most horrible of years? Well, I always have the last word, no matter how long it takes, so, one last look at the year of hindsight, from the one year that we just didn't look back from. (And besides, if I don't do this now, let's be real, I'm probably never doing it. [Sigh]) Also, spoilers, I think this might be a controversial list, arguably my most controversial list, especially when we get to the top of it, 'cause-eh, hmmm, I got a few things to say that I've had building up for awhile, even though this is late, this might be still be intriguing. This is not the list everybody else had, I'll say that.

So-eh, alright, let's count it down!

THE TOP TEN FILMS OF 2020!

NUMBER 10:

I actually had a bit of a difficult time narrowing this down to ten. I think I could make a pretty good argument depending on the day, for about, seven different films that I could've put on this list that didn't make it, but figuring out the order for much of the list was tricky, especially this bottom half. As it does mean something that, I don't watch everything I'd like to right away, and when I used to care and rushed through these lists, there's always a chance something would inevitably slip through. I'm sure there's films from this year, I haven't gotten to, in fact I know I haven't seen a lot of them, a lot of them are still on my Netflix queue, which-, used to be my DVD queue, but has since just become a long list of films I may or may never get around to. There was one film I got to so late, like, after I made a previous list that would've made my Top Ten that year. It was so long after that I didn't write a review for it. It was called, "I, Daniel Blake", a British film by the great Ken Loach, about an old guy who's just trying to get his pension, but keeps getting bumbled around by the inept British welfare system. It's pretty tough to watch, but I also happen to watch it, around the time I watched Loach's next film, the equally difficult-to-watch, "Sorry We Missed You".

10. Sorry We Missed You

Yeah, I didn't want to start off with something depressing, but especially in these times, where, again, rightly or wrongly, the working class feels like they're being chewed up and spit on by the system, it feels like I definitely need to make up for that earlier snub.

My Original review:

I don't know what the term for it is in the UK, but in America the term, "Independent Contractor" or some official variant of it, comes up a lot. To some extent, it's a natural progression of what's been termed the current "Gig Economy", but in other situations, it's an employment status that sounds more promising then it actually is. It's sold on the false notion that you'll get to be your own boss, while still clearly working at the behest of someone who seems to be able to just exploit labor more then most. It's basically modern-day sharecropping, only instead of working on a farm, they're delivering packages to everybody, and it's basically creating a world of Jobs. Well, jobs too, but I meant Job, as in the Biblical Job. (Pun unintended)

This is not surprising as a subject matter for Ken Loach, the legendary British neorealist director. He made a film a couple years ago that I didn't get to see in time for a review called "I, Daniel Blake", a powerful strike back to his neorealist roots that showed the struggles of a guy trying to get his pension after having a heart attack. Had I gotten to the film sooner, I would've put it on my Best of the Year list, and it was one of Loach's best films in general. I kinda caught onto Loach late, and usually with his more mainstream movies like "The Wind That Shakes the Barley" and "The Angels' Share" good movies, but they never particularly appealed to me. I still have to get to a lot of his earlier works like "Kes" or even some more acclaimed recent stuff like "Looking for Eric" and "Sweet Sixteen". Still though, going back to this more stripped down, more non-actors and more down-to-Earth simple tales of the downfall of the lower and middle class is probably where he's at his strongest. With England still reeling from the effects of Thatcherism, and in this case, the '08 Stock Market crash,

It's in this setting that we meet and follow Ricky (Kris Hitchen) a longtime worker who lost his job right as he and his wife Abbie (Debbie Honeywood) were about to pay off a house. She works as a home caretaker for the disabled and elderly, Ricky, after years of odds of hardworking jobs, gets a delivery truck, working supposedly as his own boss, which basically means that, you work for me, and the me in this case is Maloney (Ross Brewster) the personification of human exploitation. He runs the local branch of PDF, a not-so-subtle reference to that one company that delivers stuff that you're thinking of. He works fourteen hours a day, six days a week, and he has to sell the family car to afford everything he needs, which is what his wife drove from work to work with.

It's hard to describe all the details of what happens next, it's basically what you'd expect, as the roughness of the job exhausts him, and eventually his family. He battles everything we expect, everything from annoying customers to struggling to stay awake on the road to even getting attacked and beaten up. Meanwhile, his family really struggles. Their teenage son Seb (Rhys Stone) really begins to act out, and the more Ricky seems to work, the more Seb acts out, always more and more disgusted with his father who is barely there. His ennui is frustrating both Seb's mother and his little sister Liza Jae (Katie Proctor), and as he acts out, his father begins to act out as well, disturbing the family even more, and he doesn't quite have the capability to self-analyze and reassess himself and his priorities, and I can't blame him. Financial struggles often take precedent and financial struggles and work struggles breed the situation for the cracking of the family unit. At the end, the family is begging him to not go to work, but he has to go to work. It's very "Young Goodman Brown" to be honest, fees are just piled up and eventually you're either in indentured servitude without a family or in debt without a home.

"Sorry We Missed You" is purportedly a loose sequel to "I, Daniel Blake", I wouldn't be surprised if these movies are apart of a trilogy of some kind or anything, they definitely feel like they exist in the same universe, but you don't have to see one to see the other. (Although I highly recommend both) Perhaps this film is a little weaker then "I, Daniel Blake," but only because it's more frustratingly predictable. Daniel Blake was a man with nothing to lose so his rebellion at the end felt righteous, but we don't get any of that here; we get a family caught in the same circle of poverty. "Sorry We Missed You" is a brutal mirror to our society, but it's an essential and important one that needed to be made and absolutely needs to be seen.

Yeah, this is a brutal one. It's striped down, it's bare bones, it's not a story we haven't seen or heard a billion times over, it's not even done in a different way, it's just done in today's modern times, and that's the ultimate tragedy. You know, we knew to inevitably separate religion from government, but we still haven't separated business from government yet, and whether that's socialism or whatever, this is a modern picture of capitalism and led to, and it's not any close to seeming any different any time soon.

NUMBER 9:

Well, that's a downer way to start, but let's go to something more fun than capitalism in it's horrific modern British form. How about the surreal, flawed, early bumblings of capitalism in it's American form!

9. First Cow

Kelly Reichert's "First Cow", isn't my favorite of hers, that's "Certain Women", but this one seemed to touch a nerve, and I think I just enjoy it's unique and yet, quite believable tale from the Western frontier of a couple of scam artists trying to get ahead and make it rich in the early days of the Gold Rush.

My original review:

I admit to not always vibing with Kelly Reichardt's works, but I've been coming around more and more to her approach to storytelling and the stories she tells. She never takes the angle that most people would take; she's always looking around for more intense, quiet narratives of people and their surroundings finding different, off-the-beaten path avenues to,- well, not always success, but living. In recent years, I've admired "Meek's Cutoff" from her, which feels and looks like actually traveling along the Oregon Trail. (The computer game made it seem way more fun) but I didn't think she had made a really special film until her last feature "Certain Women", a multinarrative that followed three different stories of groundbreaking women finding their own paths to love and success in Montana. I don't know why she's attracted to the frontier areas of the country, in the past and its current remnants, but the part that always fascinated me around that time was the people who found success, not following the crowds of mostly miners, like during the various gold, silver and oil rushes, but those who saw all those people heading to a particular part of the country and thought stuff like, "There's a customer base." One of my favorite westerns is Robert Altman's "McCabe & Mrs. Miller", a film about a woman who opens a brothel in a frontier town full of mostly men for instance, and in hindsight, even though I haven't always liked Reichardt's work, (I seem to be the only person out there who's just outright allergic to "Wendy and Lucy" for instance) there's a lot of Altman influence in her work, moreso then I first realized.

"First Cow" takes place mostly in the Oregon Territory, and follows an East coaster somewhat-appropriately named Cookie (John Maguro), who makes his way out west as a cook on a team of fur trappers. He meets up with a Far East Coaster King-Lu (Orion Lee), who's caught himself in his own pickle as he's a fugitive from Russians in the area.

They eventually start working and living together, trying to find work and they end up prospering by Cookie making biscuits by stealing milk from the only cow in the area. Yeah, the area's so newly being built and founded, only the local governor, known only as Chief Factor (Toby Jones) has a cow. He was trying to bring the cow up with a bull and her calf, but they died on the journey up. They manage to pull it off by sneaking in at night and stealing the milk, Cookie often talking to the cow, having some pretty in depth conversations at times. (I mean, he's talking with a cow's imagined voice, but you know, it's the Frontier, you gotta find some way to keep yourself entertained.) Anyway, claiming an Ancient Chinese Secret for being able to produce the oily cakes, they begin to sell. They talk about trying to save up enough capital to head down to San Francisco, which was the booming West Coast multicultural capital of the West at the time and start a bakery. Things get complicated of course, especially after the Chief Factor hears about the biscuits.

I like stories like these; perhaps it's America's romantic fascination with the image of the Outlaw that also quantifiably started in places like these during the same time, but western tales are really about the building of a new world, a new community and whatnot, but I like the idea of the people who run along those paths, but aren't quite apart of it. They stick out, 'cause they can see a different opportunity then the same one everyone does, and "First Cow", based on the Jon Raymond book "The Half-Life" does that in a wonderfully Kelly Reichardt way. I imagine these guys, either together or on different paths, perhaps making it to San Francisco as they dream of and pulling the same biscuits schem, or some other scheme, in every area along the way. There's some other good performances here, Reichardt-favorite Lily Gladstone is Chief Factor's Wife a young Native American woman who works as a translator between Chief Factor and the Native American Chief Totillicum (Gary Farmer), Alia Shawkat has a small narrative role in the beginning and the movie also marks the final appearance of the great character actor Rene Auberjonois. "First Cow" doesn't create a romantic look in this time period but gives us insight into the worlds of those who tried to take advantage of it. Some of them were just as successful or unsuccessful and many of the goldminers of that time and these stories are some of the most fascinating out there. Kelly Reichardt might be the best filmmaker out there for this kind of tale and it shows.

Who knew biscuits would cause so much of an uproar?

I still, must confess, that I have no idea why people like "Wendy and Lucy", when they think of Kelly Reichardt. IDK, you can call me a dog-hater or whatever, I don't get it, it's her worst film, but it's the one held up as her best, and she is so much more interesting than that film. "First Cow" is one example, "Certain Women" is an even better example. She has this wonderful, southern gothic eye, and just finds new worlds and situations to put this perspective onto, that I've found more and more fascinating with each film. And "First Cow" is her most, like "fun", movie if you can call it that.

NUMBER 8:

(Sigh) You know, this was so long ago. I don't remember, what won Best Picture this year?

Oh yeah, "Nomadland". Hmmm.... I kinda was a little lukewarm on that one. I think I've come around on it, and I'm certainly not denying Frances McDormand's performance, but yeah, that's one of the strangest Oscar-winners in recent years. A neorealist indy from a female Asian director, who's strangely intrigued by life on the margins in the American West. So, yeah, a natural director choice to make a superhero movie. Still, um, in a weird year, we should have a weird Oscar winner, if not a weird Oscars. (Soderbergh, you were still wrong for not ending with BP, but the rest of the show wasn't bad.) But, I think I enjoyed a more inspiring choice about America instead.

8. Minari

Yeah, I didn't hate the Oscars this year, but I wouldn't say I was inspired by them either. This was the only Best Picture nominee that made my Best List, Lee Isaac Chung's "Minari". and it's a beautiful American tale of a Korean-American family trying to make it in the farmland of Arkansas.

My Original review:

If I'm being completely honest, up until now I'd been fairly underwhelmed by this year's apparent group of Oscar contenders. I'm not terribly surprised by that, since this is just a strange year for movies in general, but I thought it'd be more, on the surface, more interesting, obtuse and, for lack-of-a-better-word, indy collection of narrative films that managed to finish and somehow by hook or by crook, sneak into this year's collection of the so-called best films of the year, but . "Minari" is one of the first ones though that I did truly find inspiring and compelling. It's the first feature I've seen from Asian-American filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung, and it tells a quiet, patient tale of a Korean family's struggle to adapt to several life-changing moves, including a literal move, from California to a large mobile home in Arkansas, where the family patriarch Jacob (Steven Yeun) is intent on building a small garden/farm on the land he just purchased, hoping to begin to grow Korean vegetables in America.

This takes some work, and it's not an easy start. For one thing, they live in a mobile home in a part of the country that now sees tornado on a somewhat-regular basis. Both parents, still have to work a job separating baby chicks; this especially frustrates Jacob's wife Monica (Yeri Han).

The movie really focuses on their youngest son David (Alan S. Kim) their young seven-year-old whose both trying to begin his independent tantrum streak as an elementary school student, while also not only getting used to a new school, and an entirely new culture which isn't necessarily kind, but also, getting used to his Korean grandmother Soonja (YOUN Yuh-jung). She's traveled from Korea to watch the kids, David and her older sister Anne (Noel Cho). Most of the real meat of the movie, which is mostly shown through David's perspective is basically him trying to get along with his grandmother and the subtle, loving friendship they have as they both struggle with this new condition and learning to cope with it, and each other. It's actually quite sweet when David isn't hurting himself of otherwise being a brat, eventually they start to become major parts in each other lives, almost like a new front in the house against the parents who are still constantly fighting between themselves, sometimes out in the open, sometimes silently.

It's hard to describe "Minari" in some ways it's episodic and expected narratively, even when its not expected, you know the kinds of cringe you gotta get through, like when they all decide to start going to the local church and try to fit in and make friends. It doesn't come at you in expected movie ways though. Conflict feels like it getting setup all the time, but its often avoided or drifting away; in fact, conflict is not used as conflict but as steps in the evolution of these characters as they grow and evolve into this world. It's emotionally stirring and genuinely refreshing to see our expectations undermined. This is how slice of life narrative, as well as most fish-out-of-water stories should be told. There's wonderful performances all around, especially YOUN Yuh-jung as the Grandmother who manages to be an old school hardass and a generous and understanding nurturer, especially to David. Perhaps this is one of those rare family films that actually feel like it's about a real family. I don't know enough about Chung's earlier work to know where this seems placed in his ouevre, but I'm looking forward to diving in now; I want to hear both what else he has to say and what else he's said before now.

Yeah, "Minari", um, I haven't revisited it, since I first watched, but it's one of those movies that, even just thinking about it, you get this sense of ethereal hominess to it. It reminds me, kinda like a movie that might've been made in the '70s or something, but with a more modern interpretation, and with more intriguing layers than just, a family taking a chance on a new life and career. You get that with "Sorry We Missed You", but if that's how a Ken Loach approached the subject, this is how I feel a Terrence Malick in 1977 would approach it. Or, a Lee Isaac Chung, a different newer voice, from a different culture that's just as much Americana, as say, "Days of Heaven", or something.

NUMBER 7

Well, it wouldn't be 2020, without COVID.

7. Totally Under Control

There's actually a lot of documentaries on this list, this was the last one that I added. At first, I figured I'd be waiting for the next couple years for docs on how massively we fucked up COVID, but somehow, cinema finds a way, and there actually were quite a few docs on the pandemic, as the pandemic was going on. My favorite, and I think the most crucial one came from the great Alex Gibney and friends, "Totally Under Control", which goes into detail of just how bad America, in particular, Trump and the administration, completely fucked us over and left us unprepared and ill-equipped to handle the pandemic.

My original review:

I knew I was waiting for something before I released a Top Ten List for 2020. Other than, getting around to watching all the movies that I need to watch, no, what I needed was to watch this film. A film, about the COVID pandemic itself, and all the ways that, America, the Trump administration, really screwed up the response. And made by, arguably the pre-eminent documentary filmmaker of our times. Alex Gibney's films are probably the modern standard for expose documentaries. Ever since his breakthrough "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room", he's put out some of the most talked about and important documentaries of our time. He puts out documentaries so often that you can blur over how well-made and written some of the best ones of his are. I think his last great one for me was "Going Clear", which took a really good deep dive into the inner sanctums of Scientology, and that along with Leah Remini's TV show spurred up a lot of the current criticisms of the so-called "Church". "Totally Under Control", takes a look at just how Trump and America really botched up the entire COVID outbreak, something I think, especially now, we need to reminded of. The GOP and the Trump administration, admonished and despised the expert opinions and dismissed those who insisted on saying that the situation was as bad as it was. They made everything political, all the way down to masks, and slowed down testing in order to make it seem like there was less of the disease out there. Not to mention, getting rid of all the safeguards and plans that the Obama administration specifically laid out for him. While other countries came together and limited their death tolls and managed to find ways to even not be so confined during the pandemic, their ineptness killed people at astonishing rates. It was the equivalents of a 9/11 a day of deaths at their worst, and it is very fair to say that Trump killed lots of Americans.

And just to be clear, the movie does show that Obama's team wasn't always perfect when they had to deal with other coronavirus outbreaks. Oh yeah, pandemics are much more common than people realize. H1N1, SARS, MERS, all these were during Obama's administration, but they listened and trusted the experts and put plans into action. Got tests out, corrected and acknowledged their errors quickly. A lot of stuff that Trump just refused to do, under some misguided belief that things would get better. (Also, I didn't realize that they were also coronaviruses. Yeah, if you don't know this, "Coronavirus" just means that two viruses were combined together)

Meanwhile, Trump sees one social media post from a doctor dealing with too many patients to count and tries Hydrochloroquine and it gets a little immediate results, but then they try to publish that, or Ivermectin as wonderdrugs. It's like, he just wanted a quick fix, instead of just, following the procedure, but they couldn't give any credit to those who came before, and they couldn't also make it seem like it was as bad as it was, because there's an election out there to win, and he believed the economy was good enough to stay elected, if they could just make the COVID, go away. (Not that the economy was actually doing that good at the time, or even that Trump did anything to make it good, but whatever, when you're that dumb, even the economy can't help you.) They even started making the government bid alongside the states for supplies, thinking the free market is the savior of everything. (Boy, there's a lot of the GOP's positions that I don't understand, but man, that one that trust the free market as much as they do, just completely befuddles me.)

Gibney, along with co-directors Opehlia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger compiled a pretty exhausted and fully realize doc, shot during the pandemic on multiple continents, to tell the story of COVID-19, and how the U.S. should've stepped up, was capable of being the example for the rest of the world, and instead fell to pure incompetence and arrogance. Look, I hate just spewing vitriol towards the Trump administration, but frankly there's little other ways to put it. He said it was "Totally Under Control", when clearly it wasn't, and literally, the day after the this film was completed, was the day Trump got COVID. And somehow, the worst of it all still came after all this with him.... (Sigh)

Look, at this moment in time, I'm just not gonna say anything else other than, if you haven't seen this film yet, (And based on election results a lot of people didn't) watch it now. I understand if you weren't able to while you were in the middle of it, but this is the documentary that's gonna be shown in classes for years, to show exactly what went wrong and who and how we did completely bumble this, and for that alone, this needs to be watched.

NUMBER 6:

Okay, so "Totally Under Control" is a documentary, but it does have a narrative. It's telling the story of the pandemic and how the reactions to that pandemic, globally came about and shows why some governments were more prepared and adaptable at it, and why others were not. That's something that, kinda gets forgotten about history, and even recent history, is that, it's, well, a story. What historians of all types do, is to constantly take into considerations the events of the days and craft a narrative of how those things happened. And, there's nothing wrong with that, on the surface, it's what we do, to some degree it's what we have to do to make sense of things, but when crafting a narrative, what happens often, and this may especially be so when you're using a more limiting storytelling medium like film or television, is that some parts of the story, get edited out, and/or others, get more focused. Again, not always a negative in of itself, some things are more important and other things are less important. However, in all storytelling, there is potential biasness at play. Sometimes, the biasness can be incidental and harmless. Other times though, it can be more malicious, and there are several forms of this kind of editing, including, outright censorship.

6. Coup 53

So, "Coup 53" is difficult to describe. On the one hand it's about the 1953 overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mosaddegh, but on the other hand, it's about, telling that story, throughs the parts of that narrative, that were indeed, once, literally, edited out of history. It's a documentary, that's essentially correcting a previous documentary, as well as a piece of history, that's revealing and for the first time telling that piece of history, and telling about why it wasn't revealed earlier.

Yeah, this one's complicated, but then again, as much as we try to just tell a simple story, history is never not complicated.

My original review:

In 2013, the United States formally recognized their involvement in the 1953 coup to overthrow the Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh. It was the first, but by far, not, the only time that the United States and their intelligent agencies would be involved in the overthrow of foreign governmental powers and install, puppet dictator leaders who would do what they ask, most of which involved selling and using of their natural resources, in this case, oil. If you remember British Petroleum for the Deepwater Horizon oil tankard spill, well, they got the majority of their oil buy taking and controlling Iran's oil reserves.

In fact, somethings that's kinda overlooked is that, the United Kingdom actually had a lot more to do with the overthrow of Iran then America did, and had more monetary interest in the overthrow then we did, and it was more of a concern and note then the history books now indicate; apparently Eisenhower ran on not only ending the Korea conflict but also the Iran issue. (Truman, didn't want to overthrow democracies)

Talig Amirani has been a documentary filmmaker for years but he's been an expert on Mosaddegh for perhaps longer and has been utterly fascinated with how important and world-changing his overthrow and installing the Shah has influenced and change his life and the world, particularly the Middle East over the years. He's a duel UK-Iranian citizen and knows both cultures well, and how the story of Mosaddegh's removal is told in both the Middle East, and the West, and wants to get as much of the actual history down as possible. Unfortunately, for those who actually know how history is written and rewritten, this can be a much taller order then we realize.

"Coup 53" is a more unusual documentary then most, in that it follows Taghi as he's making the movie, something that, believe it or not, is very Iranian. Iranian New Wave moviemaking is often about the deconstruction and reveal of the filmmaking process, and here we begin with him, and then we see him going to several other sources and talking heads about the coup, most notably, some people who were involved with the documentary series "End of Empire".

"End of Empire" was a documentary series by the BBC in the '80s that was about, well, essentially everywhere that England used to rule. I saw a meme on Facebook not too long ago about how more countries in the world have a holiday for their Independence from Great Britain then for any other holiday on Earth; I doubt that's actually true, I'm sure New Year's and probably Christmas has a little more influence, but you know, I wouldn't be surprised if that's true. Anyway, Iran or as it was formerly known, Persia, actually isn't one of those countries, technically, but there was an episode of "End of Empire" on it anyway. It does discuss the coup, but not to the effect that Taghi would prefer or expect. It is a British production after all..., but he begins investigating the documentary itself. Eventually, he finds some transcriptions of interviews that didn't make it into the film, and some unused footage as well that actually discussed such things as the kidnapping and murder of his Chief of Police, Mahmoud Afshartoos, an original attempt at a coup that failed, and the successful one that installed the Shah. Most notably, a person named Norman Darbyshire, an MI-6 operative stationed originally in Iran before Mosaddegh as a defense mechanism threw out the entire British embassy and he then orchestrated, basically the entire coup in exile in Cyprus.

So, essentially what Taghi and legendary editor Walter Murch decide to do is not only investigate and piece together the missing pieces of the old documentary, including reshooting the Darbyshire interview with Ralph Fiennes portraying him, and getting the actual filmmakers who were involved with the film there. There's also some impressionistic animated sequences that document some of the eyewitness events being told by the interviewees of both this documentary and from the unused and/or recreated footage from "End of Empire".

Essentially, "Coup 53" is about how narratives, for documentaries and yes, history are created and told. The truth never is simple, and much of it is either undocumented, repressed from the public, unknown to the public, or often has to be investigated years later to find out. Nowadays, there's more avenues to report the news then ever, and we're more cognizant and aware that the first drafts of history are rarely if ever the complete stories but even still, things get forgotten, parts get rewritten, or reimagined, timelines get misplaced, and there's only so much room you can fit in a textbook, or a documentary, especially if you don't want to tell those parts of the story.

All documentaries and movies are bias, anybody who asks for an unbias perspective is either an idiot troll who knows better or an idiot who doesn't. "Coup 53" makes us exceptionally aware of that fact by placing the ways that history was kept from us into the forefront. While we may be able to actually uncover the real history of the world by sorting through hundreds of papers in specifically select boxes that have been storage away and kept for years, some/much of it, we're still not be in possession of for one reason or another, are we actually going to seek out and get these stories out there, or are we just gonna keep telling the more comforting tales of history that we're familiar with, that have been forced down our throats and sanitized with soap and corruption?

Anyway, I'd go on more rants, but smarter people then me already have, the big thing is that "Coup 53" isn't just one of the best documentaries out there, it's one of the most important. It shows and tells us history that should be more pressing and told then they are, and how and why it's not been told until now. There's ways to deconstruct the medium of filmmaking to make a bigger point through documentary and this is one of the best and most successful uses of it. This is the kind of movie that's both a must-see for cinephiles as well as history buffs; arguably, this should be a classroom staple documentary.

Yeah, "Coup 53", is a fascinating and complex documentary, about a complex part of modern history, it's-, at least right now, it's fairly unique, which is part of why I'm putting this high,- there's documentaries that have tried to fill in gaps with actors before, but I don't think I've ever seen one about filling in gaps of other documentaries before. I would not be surprised, if in the future, we're going to see, more movies like this though. Usually you watch old documentaries like that, and you know, or look up stuff about them now, and you realize, "Oh, they didn't say this part," or "They didn't talk about that", and sometimes they just edit it out, or other times, you can honestly say that they probably just didn't know about them yet. But especially with certain subjects, their really could be more nefarious hands at play, and we just didn't get the whole story at first, and only now, are we that we are actually able to see the entire tale, especially when it does come to major historical events like this,- like this is the good use or going use of going back through your old films and changing your edits. As we get closer to the fullest drafts of history possible, the more we should be doing stuff like this, and I hope we do get stuff like that soon.

NUMBER 5:

Okay, so, I have not liked the Emmys in recent years. There's a lot of reasons for that, most of it has to do with the current voting system. I've given it a fair amount of time, and whether or not I agree with the decisions they make, I basically hate it. I wish they'd go back to voting panels, that watch all the nominees in particular categories, and then give them a weighted vote, combined with the popular generic vote that not goes out to all Academy members within a branch. It's led to a lot of quirks, like TV series just sweeping the awards in their category regularly, just because it was the most popular show at that moment, sometimes finding that show, after it had been on and ignored by the Academy for years. I know all these awards are simply nothing more than a reflection on what everybody's wants to praise at the time, but there were steps taken to curb it, so that the most popular thing didn't always win, and now that those steps aren't in place, it really does feel like that now. One of the more curious streaks of Emmy dominance, in the acting branch in recent years, as well as throughout the awards was one actress who, literally had been on television, basically all my life, suddenly out of nowhere, just getting a butt-ton of recognition. I'm not even complaining, it was just perplexing. And that actress was, Regina King. I love Regina King, but suddenly she was an awarded for a Miniseries or Movie four times out of five nominations in a six year span. She won for obscure TV movies that I'm not even sure she watched, much less the more mainstream and popular fare. And when she was not winning an Emmy, she took a break from that, and won a Supporting Actress Oscar for "If Beale Street Could Talk". And that was a great performance I might add, not one I would've honored, but-, like, I don't know if everybody in the acting branch suddenly just decided she was the greatest actress alive and decided to honor her relentlessly or what? I think, she's just one of those actresses who's been around long enough and worked with damn near everybody for so long that, basically she won half those times for just, being really beloved and popular in the Acting Branch, and there's nothing wrong with that btw. She has been great, and around forever! Like, do you guys know how long Regina King's been around? This long:

Yeah, she was on "227"! And basically, she's been working steadily ever since. That's how long she's been around. And only recently, did they let her direct.

5. One Night in Miami...

I'm not sure why she never directed until now, but we really should've let her direct earlier, 'cause goddamn, what a debut. She didn't waste it and gave us an actor's showcase. Adapted from the Kemp Powers play, "One Night in Miami..." takes place the night after Cassius Clay won the title from Sonny Liston and let us be a fly on the wall of a hotel as four of the biggest and most important African-American leaders of all time, talk about the struggles of the past, and the struggles ahead of the movement and America, right at a crossroads for them and for America.

My Original review:

I think at some point every writer, especially any writer with any fascination with playwriting at all, eventually comes up with an idea for a story about famous people sitting in a room and talking to each other. I knew a few people who've done stories like this, and I've thought about it occasionally. Sometimes these ideas are more contrived then others, (They're all contrived of course) but the best of these are so beautifully contrived that you just want to believe that they really did happen. Perhaps it's for the soul, the philosophical soul that we want things like these to have happened. In that respect, it's no surprise to me that Regina King chose "One Night in Miami...", the Kemp Powers stage play to be her first directorial feature. She's been directing a lot more then we realize, mostly in television up until now; of course, she's also been acting for a lot longer then we realize. Now, every award show basically recognizes the fact that Regina King should be honored for everything that's remotely good that she's in, but I don't think most people realize exactly how long she's actually been around. She was a regular on "227", like, every year of the series, before she ever made her feature film acting debut, which was frickin' "Boyz N the Hood"!!! She's quietly had one of the greatest acting careers for the last three decades-, no longer then three decades, and that fact makes it a little more shocking that she's only now gotten a shot at directing a feature film.

Despite all I've said, I'm still a little surprised that this is the project she picked. Not sure why honestly; I guess it's just that I never thought this would be the kind of subject Ms. King would have chosen, but I don't know; perhaps it's just that this is a masculin film. There's barely a female character in "One Night in Miami..." not that it needs one, and I'm certainly not complaining; it's one of the best films of the year, so yeah, if she finds a project to direct next time that's just as good, it could be a cast of amoebas for all I care.

The night in Miami, is February 25th, 1964, the night Cassius Clay (Eli Goree) became the youngest Heavyweight Champion in the world after Sonny Liston (Aaron D. Alexander) didn't come out for the seventh round. Most of the movie takes place in the hotel room at the Hampton Inn, and after the fight, he's brought a few friends over for a small celebration. Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), spokesman for the Nation of Islam of course, not a surprise to anybody who knows what happens next in Cassius's life, Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge), the biggest name in team sports at the time as the dominant Cleveland Browns running back and one of the most political of figures as well, right at the beginning of his film career, as well as a brief respite as a boxing commentator, and Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom, Jr. in a particularly special performance from him) one of the greatest singers of all time, and one of the biggest pop stars of the days and one of the greatest and most important singer-songwriters of all-time. He was a guest of Cassius for the fight and the four men, have some deep-rooted thoughts and conversations for the time, while also debating on what's the best way to celebrate Cassius's victory. Malcolm, who doesn't drink and is married, has brought two packages of, ironically vanilla ice cream. Cassius wants to celebrate a little on his last day before joining the Muslim faith, so perhaps his last night of drinking. Jim and Sam want to head back to the Fontainebleu, where Sam and Jim, and the rich white people mostly hang out and Sam performs at occasionally.

I don't want to go over everything they talk about and how they talk about it, but just want to encourage those to lay back and enjoy the discussions and conflicts between them. It's a look at both where these particular icons were at at the time, and a discussion of where the African-Americans identity and purpose means for the future. I kept thinking about how two of these men would be gone within a year from this moment, and how only Jim Brown is still alive today; one of the last major figures left of the Civil Rights Movement of this era that's still around. It's an imaginary look into the past, but also a look at the leaders of those who'd laid the roots for the future of the modern Civil Rights/Black Lives Matter and other social justice movements. Those who fought on their own, and those who worked for change within the system.

"One Night in Miami..." is just a fascinating and inspiring film; one of the better versions I've seen of these imaginary conversations between important figures at major dates and times. It's an appealing and inspiring debut for King and this, along with "Soul" which he wrote and co-directed, introduces Kemp Powers as a stunning new, inspiring voice in American cinema, hopefully for years to come. Movies like these should usually be good, but they're rarely this good.

Yeah, "One Night in Miami...", that's the movie, that, as a writer, I wish I wrote, and I can imagine, any actor, wanting to play any of these roles, either on stage, or in this film. I tend to be one of those people who thinks film adaptations of play, actually should be, more narrow, as opposed to opening up the world of a play, 'cause I like, those rare moments when film can emulate the stage, and give us, the feeling of watching a play. I will say, and I don't know, if this was apart of the stage play or not, but, at the end of the movie, they do recreate a scene, of Sam Cooke, on, I think it was "The Tonight Show" in fact, and he performed that, for the only time publicly, his best and most political song, "A Change is Gonna Come". Or course, Sam Cooke was killed shortly that performance, and NBC didn't save the tape of that episode, and is now considered lost media. So, essentially, what King and Powers, did, is basically, giving us back, that performance that's long been lost, and not only giving us, a possible peak, at this rare moment in history, but giving us back this moment; that was one of the most powerful moments of the year in cinema for me. And all the performances are amazing, but Leslie Odom, Jr. as Sam Cooke, to me, gave the best performance, and I thought he should've won the Oscar for that, over Daniel Kaluuya for "Judas and the Black Messiah," that was the supporting performance that I distinctly remembered the most from this year. That's my big Oscar hot take from this year, Leslie Odom war robbed.

NUMBER 4:

(Sigh, incredibly long pause. Sniffling breathing.)

Okay, (gulp)-. When I posted my review of this film originally, I refused to give it a star rating. I will not be giving a rating for it here either. In fact, I will not be discussing this movie, in any additional detail. I will simply repost my original review and note that it lands on this spot on the list and nothing more, other than to say that, if you haven't seen it, please watch it when you get a chance. Thank you.

4. The Reason I Jump

My original review:

I have been dreading getting around to this film, probably more then any other film I've ever seen.

I'm not sure how that statement is going to sound to some of you, both to those familiar or unfamiliar with my personal life. No, I have not read NAOKI Higashida's book, "The Reason I Jump", but I have definitely heard of it. NAOKI's memoir was written when he was thirteen years old, and was translated to English a few years after, and was the first detailed account ever of what it was like to be a non-verbal person with severe autism. I've talked sparingly about it before, selected links below:

http://davidbaruffi.blogspot.com/2012/08/why-ill-never-watch-temple-grandin_19.html

http://davidbaruffi.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-worst-thing-about-having-autistic.html

but for those unfamiliar, my brother Robbie is severely autistic and is especially non-verbal. When I'm home, I'm watching him. Even now, as I write this. He needs 24-hour care and at times I've documented some of the tolls that's taken on me. So, if you're asking to yourself, "David, is this is a subject that's so personal to you, and provides something so precious as insight into what your brother might be thinking and trying to communicate and how he thinks among other things, why wouldn't you seek out and read this book?", well, here's the answer: fear.

Excessive horror and fear. Fear of learning about everything that me and my family have been doing wrong, everything we could've done better, things that maybe we should've done more of to help Robbie be better, things that maybe he would've liked and appreciated, realizing things that he was trying to say and now doesn't try to say anymore because we were just too unable to grasp what his problems was. These are thoughts that have constantly crossed my mind, often, like apparently NAOKI describes in his book, the difficult manner in which time and memories don't work in a straight line for people like him, and memories can come flooding back and emotions can overcome me in thinking about some of these events. (It's possible, though I've never been officially diagnosed, [And I don't plan on finding out for sure] that I myself may have some form of autism or more likely, Asperger's Syndrome, so some of these revelations could even relate to me.) That kind of overwhelming sweeping emotion and pain, and just utter disappointment in myself, it's something that I frankly, made specific efforts to avoid.

And now that I've actually gone through this movie, which is based on the book, which is periodically told to us through narration while also following several families around the world and the autistic people in their lives, now I've got to thread a new needle, where I don't give details of every memory that gets evoked in this movie, every behavior I recognize, every recall of a heartache that I've suffered and floods back to me, and yet still talk about how much those details are so important and distressingly accurate and emotionally overwhelming in their effectiveness. I come to film and entertainment often for the escapism, and this movie can seem like a shotgun blast to the heart of my real life, and more importantly, not only do I not want to describe all these painful thoughts and memories to you guys, even if I did, I wouldn't want all of you to be burdened with my emotional traumas.

It also means, that I don't know how to review this movie. I think it'll be a fascinating curiosity to most of you, and I think that's good. For me, I can explain in great details why things like bubbles and trampolines or just waiting in the car are triggers for me. I can maybe give an anecdote or two of some of Robbie's more troubling misadventures I've had with him through varying periods of his thirty-one years on Earth, like the ways Naoki describes wanting to go out and keep going, or in our world, the reasons why every door in the house has multiple locks on them, but no matter how I describe that, you're not gonna be effected by it the same way I am.

And also, that still would make this review, more about my emotions and feelings and you know, I can describe those anytime, just like any of you can talk about them. My brother and others, they cannot. Naoki himself even, while becoming an accomplished author since the book came out, he still struggles. I don't know if my brother will ever be able to use a letterboard like some of the people in the film eventually learn to use to communicate, or maybe at one time in his life, if we able to put more effort into teaching him, we could've, but...- like I said, I don't want to discuss my own disappointments or failures that this film can stir in me. The film is about trying to understand what's going on in the mind of someone like him, and if NAOKI doesn't represent Robbie or the autistic nonverbal person you know, I'd say that right now, this successfully represents people like them better then anything else I've ever seen. I hope in the future, this movie will be looked at as the first open door into not only understanding this kind of severe autism, but the first step in eventually finding a world where this kind of autism is accounted for and understood enough by everyone that everyone will eventually not only will we be able to communicate well with non-verbals like NAOKI and my brother, but that it'll be natural for all of us to do so because of how we've adapted the world to make it more adaptable for them to live and experience it.

(Note: I've forfeited my rating for this film, only the second time I've ever done that, after "Life, Animated" which not-so-coincidentally was also a documentary about a person with autism. It's not a fair comparison, but "The Reason I Jump" is a far better film and an absolute must-watch, but yeah, my biases might be too deep for me to properly rate this film, so I'm not going to.)

NUMBER 3:

To get back to the Oscars and "Nomadland" for a second, Chloe Zhao won the Oscar for Best Director, only the second woman to do so at the time, but Emerald Fennell, the director of "Promising Young Woman" was also nominated that year, making 2020, the first time the Oscars nominated two women in the Best Director category in the same year. I remember when you can count on one hand how many female directors had been nominated, and frankly this was a year they could've and arguably should've had more. Regina King would've been nominated in my world, but-eh, there was one female-directed feature that year that I think even topped all of those.

I'm not surprised it wasn't nominated, despite this being this filmmaker's most accessible film, it was still a tough and brutal watch. But it's a necessary one, probably more necessary even now than when it came out, and it felt extremely prescient at the time.

(Sigh, long pause)

I-eh, I thought I could segue into talking about abortion better here, but I guess not....

3. Never Rarely Sometimes Always

The farther we seem to get from getting Roe v Wade back on the books, Eliza Hittman's "Never Rarely Sometimes Always", feels as much like a cry of desperation as it does a warning. It tells the story of two teenage cousins who have to travel to New York City in order to get one of them an abortion, and ending up stuck over the weekend in the city, as the procedure is revealed to be more difficult than they at first believed, as they now have to traverse the city in order to fine, or earn, money for the abortion and the bus ride home.

My Original Review:

The first time we see Autumn's (Sidney Flanigan) bare back, she is in a locker room changing from her checkout uniform into her regular clothes and we see her adjusting her bra strap, loosening it, with her cousin Skylar (Talia Ryder) zeroing in on her shoulder with concern. The next time we see it, she's undressing from her clothes, into a medical gown, and we're looking closely at her exposed skin, on her back and everywhere else we can see, for any kind of unusual indention or remnants of some kind of past cut, scrape or bruise.

Only recently with "Never Rarely Sometimes Always" has writer/director Eliza Hittman caught the attention of mainstream Hollywood, but she's been on my radar for a while. Her debut feature, "It Felt Like Love" was a shocking and disturbing look into the world of an under-developed teenage girl who's desperation to keep up with her supposedly more sexually-adventurous and knowledgable classmates leads her to making some really dangerous decisions and behaviors. It was almost like that scene in "Leaving Las Vegas" where Elisabeth Shue's character ends up with the frat college boys, only completely lacking the self-awareness of the penance she's subjecting herself too, and replaced a teenage girl trying to have sexual experiences, and also the whole movie. "It Felt Like Love", went to theaters unrated (I suspect it would've gotten a hard NC-17 otherwise); her follow-up "Beach Rats" was given an R rating but was still pretty out there as it followed a young gay man on the beaches of Brooklyn during summer vacation who was struggling with both meeting his homosexual desires for both sex and a relationship, while also trying to save face against some of his more jockish and probably homophobic-to-a-bashing-degree friends. They're two of the most brutal and graphic depictions of youths in films in recent years.

Comparatively, "Never Rarely Sometimes Always" is far more digestible to an audience, although that could just be because we're comfortable with the idea of abortion in society, at least the majority of sensible people should be by now, despite attempts by more-then-their-should-be to turn back the clock and return us to the era of women dying from failed coat hanger abortions. Autumn tries to punch her stomach a few times when she finds out that she's pregnant.

She lives in a suburan area of Pennsylvania, a state that is shockingly still pretty behind-the-times on abortion laws; in fact this is the second movie I can think of in recent years about a teenage Pennsylvania girl who's pressured into not getting abortion by her surroundings and has to cross state lines in order to get an abortion without being forcefed some ridiculous propaganda from the inept so-called Crisis Pregnancy Centers of the area and doesn't have to be forced to only have an approved abortion with their parents signature. The other movie was "Lebanon, PA", which is actually a real county in what James Carville would call the Alabama middle section of the state. That was more of a cute indy, but Hittman is out for the gritty realism.

We don't know exactly why Autumn is seeming separate from her parents; it could just be normal 17-year-old girl stuff; there's only a scene or two at most where her parents are even present, and I don't think she says ten words to them. She doesn't seem to have to explain it to Skylar, who, seemingly on a whim and instinct, once she finally reveals to her the problem, immediately takes her to New York. They don't have much money, and the whole time there, they seem to get pestered all over the streets and subways of New York. Nothing that's apparently unusual to them; the first time we see a character react to Autumn, it's some kid from her school making a blowjob hand gesture towards her, like that one scene in "Boogie Nights". She throws a glass in his face and we don't know anything else.

When things get rough and they have to stay in New York two extra days cause apparently she's more pregnant then the store-bought test at the Pennsylvania center said she was, and at the amount of weeks she is, the abortion is a 2-step, 2-day procedure. So, in between, there's a devastating and unbelievable single-take interview sequence and procedures that in a just world would easily give Sidney Flanigan an Oscar nomination. In light of this development, we see Skylar and Autumn reluctantly meet up with Jasper (Theodore Pellerin), one of those guys on the ride up they ran into who couldn't possibly get the hint that they're not interested, but for needing money to get home and/or to pay for the treatment with, maybe they can put up with him.

I'm reminded of something that I was taught by an old Literature professor of mine, about how all men's fairy tale are about overcoming a feat of strength, while classically, women's fairy tales are about them losing their virginity. I can't say that I don't have a male gaze, I do, but that disturbing dance between conqueror and prey that's embedded in our sexual DNA and promoted and approved of by society has rarely felt so disturbing. One of the last scenes in the movie is Autumn, privately grasping for Skylar's hand who's sacrificing herself and her body to this fairly disturbing and empty-headed guy in order for Autumn to essentially rid herself of whatever reminder's left from someone for whom she probably also put herself in such a voluntarily (or perhaps not) vulnerable position. Sex is the weapon young women have against the world and I don't honestly know whether I should be relieved that at least they have that tool, or pissed off that we've developed a world where it has to be their weapon they have to use.

Eliza Hittman's created her most thought-provoking work yet; I don't know if it's my favorite of her work so far, but this young filmmaker has been nothing but provocative, and she's become one of the most interesting American directors out there and few have explored youth sexuality in its modern brutal transition phase in smart, observant ways like her. This is a powerful one. I know I'm making it sound like some brutal hard-to-watch piece of American neorealism, which it is, but this is too good a film to ignore and overlook, but more-than-that, it is intense! It's more watchable then I'm letting on as it's subtlety thrills us. It's an intense ticking clock but the way she tells these stories...; she is making quintessential American character pieces and they are some of the richest characters out there. You become engaged in what they'll do next and you care about how they're gonna pull all this off. Don't just overlook this because of the subject matter and aesthetic; this is a great entertaining film. It's a film that, for adults, is gonna provide or reveal shocking insight into the struggles of our youths, and it's probably a movie that kids should watch as well. I know it's rated R, screw the MPAA on this one, kids at that right age, and probably younger if we're being honest, should absolutely watch this film and probably Eliza Hittman's other films as well. They may read them as cautionary tales, but they only are until they happen.

Honestly, screw the MPAA on all of Eliza Hittman's films, these films should be watched, in early middle school, and then, like, again, later in high school, to every kid. To see how they're reactions evolve with experience and time, 'cause they'll have different thought, the older they get when they see this film. And you know, arguably, the moment of cinema from 2020, that I've remember and felt more affected by than anything else, was this one long take, of this interview scene, that the movie's title comes from, where Autumn, is at the abortion clinic, and she has to answer these, disturbing and humiliating questions, with one of these answers...- which reveals a totally different aspect of this film, that her relationship, with whoever the guy was that got her pregnant, was itself, not a healthy relationship. Arguably that gets talked about, less than abortion, is that, there are people in abusive and violent high school relationships. I personally knew somebody, a very close friend in fact, who was in a relationship like that, while we were in high school, and she didn't reveal how bad it was to me, or maybe anybody, 'til long after the relationship ended, and it makes me mad, knowing that, there are people who think abortion is like the worst thing ever, and they think a teen girl should have the child of an abusive teenage father!? That that's the morally correct thing to do, to have a kid before your old enough to vote, with somebody who's already an abusive asshole before he even leaves high school!? What they're doing is making more young girls and young women, have to go through horror stories like this, in order to not have to deal, with a potentially worst horror story later on. Sidney Flanigan,- I don't know if she should've won the Oscar, but if you watched that scene, and didn't think she should've at least been nominated,- this was her debut performance, she's done a few other films, I hope her career eventually pans out to huge success. And Eliza Hittman, she's doing some TV work now, but somebody needs to give her carte blanche to do whatever-the-hell she wants. She could arguably be the most important American filmmaker right now, when she gets a chance to make a film she's telling the most important stories about the struggles of American youth right now and nobody knows who the hell she is. People want to protect kids all the time, and frankly I think it'd be better if we confronted kids more with this, and get them to understand and be prepared for some of the bullshit, that the supposed adults have laid out in this world for them, especially the young women.

NUMBER 2:

At some point, the film world had to discuss the big elephant in the room. 2020, will always be the year of COVID before anything else. I don't think we've even fully grasped just how much it's truly effected the film industry. Every film production going on was effected by it; it could not be ignored. There were and have been several attempts to try to capture and grasp the moment, some more successfully than others. There was a lot of creativity in that, but-, eh, I think in retrospect most of it's only gonna remind us of the time as oppose to document the moment.

There was, one movie, that wasn't a documentary, that did manage to find a way to put the COVID pandemic into it's proper place in the moment. Oh-eh, forgive me here, if I'm unsure of a proper movie title, I defer to the Academy, and I guess when it was submitted for consideration to them, they hadn't shortened it yet,.... Anyway, I'm as surprised as anybody that this film makes my list, much less, this high, but thank god, the best film to tackle the pandemic was this one. We needed to laugh.

2. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazahkstan

I'm not even that big on Sacha Baron Cohen, but the more I thought about this film, the more impressed I was with it.

My Original Review:

I also jumped the queue again to watch this movie before I watched a favorite Youtube essayist discuss it; in this case, it was Lindsay Ellis's that made me get to this now. I'm glad she did though. And to be honest; I was already debating about when was the best time to get around to "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm" myself, since the reports of Rudy Guiliani's "involvement" in the film seemed particularly timely. The movie itself is timely. Maybe I wasn't paying that close attention, but this film seemed like it was sprung on us out of nowhere. I wasn't expecting it, nor was I particularly wanting a sequel to "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazahkstan". It'd been years since I last revisited or even thought much about that film, and I really hadn't paid that much attention to Sacha Baron Cohen's comedic work lately. Or really ever, despite the fact that I absolutely loved "Borat..." and hell, I gave five stars to "Bruno" and I seemed to be the only one who liked that one, but still, I really wasn't too familiar with his comedic ouevre.

Like, I knew the Borat character originated on "Da Ali G Show", which I honestly never watched. I remember a few British classmates of mine in film school who said they were kinda tired of him and were a bit annoyed he had made it to America. I only knew about Ali G through from that one Madonna music video and...,- I swear to God, until I literally just looked it up right now, I didn't realize that Cohen actually was Ali G. Seriously, I'm so blind to this I thought Cohen was an Ali G side actor who created Borat and that became big from the show; I didn't realize Ali G was also him too!

(Very long pause)

Wow, he just spent 20 years fooling me and I didn't even notice. Oh-kay, I definitely get it now. I get how, some people can be totally lured into these pranks of his. I'm a little surprised he brought back Borat to do it, and the fact that he even could is really surprising honestly. He mentions it at the beginning that the movie was popular and that it would be hard to do his work undercover here, and we see that a bit early on with clips of him trying to hide his face from fans who recognize him instantly. I guess that's another reason I didn't pay that much attention to Cohen before, despite how hilarious and in hindsight foreboding his interactions with other Americans has been over the years, I never fully embraced this prank style of humor over the years. Lindsay Ellis's video, which I mostly agree with about how the humor or the Borat character, as well as Cohen's prank style of humor actually works better today then it did at the time. She brings up Tom Green, who was big around the time Ali G broke, and I always hated him even as a dumb teenager, but she also mentions in a positive comparison, Nathan Fielder's work in "Nathan for You" about how the people on that show would open up more to Nathan as they trust and appreciate his supposed business advice. She does have a point about that, but I never liked or thought much of "Nathan for You" either. I guess I just never felt sorry for anybody fooled by Cohen because they were often doing it to themselves while Fielder, I always thought he was taking advantage of people who actually were in desperate need and he comes in with a camera crew and the pose of being an expert to help out their struggling businesses, and-eh, it always rubbed me the wrong way. (Although in hindsight, I guess any business owner that gets convinced to sell poo-flavored ice cream probably deserves to have their business fail, but yeah, even still, I think he crosses a line that I don't like.)

I mean, look at the sequence where Cohen, literally spent five days in character, with QAnon conspirarists during the beginnings of the COVID pandemic. He's not taking advantage of them, in fact in the narrative, he's getting help from them since he has no place to go, and they think they're just helping out a confused foreigner trying to find his daughter Tutar (Maria Bakalova). They might have some, truly horrendous and disturbing views on Democrats, like they're worst then the Pandemic, fuck these guys, but on the same token, they're not actively trying to physically hurt anybody. They actually end up helping Borat find her. They also point out how some of the supposed beliefs he's been taught from his country and about the world that are wrong. Hilariously wrong, but still wrong, and correctly. Just because they believe in Pizzagate or whatever insane thing QAnon is saying exists now, doesn't mean they should let Borat be wrong about the horrors of female masturbation.

That's the big difference to me, when Cohen is pulling these stunts and pranks on others, it's to reveal their true selves more or less. There's a famous scene in the movie that shows Cohen at an event where he sings a song at a right wing rally that goes through as many offensive and racist right-wing beliefs you can think of. Now, in real life, apparently they caught onto the joke eventually and the event coordinators tried to denounce Cohen's song and act, but he did catch on video several people singing along and cheering such sayings, and even one person giving the "Heil, Hitler" salute.

(Sigh)

Thinking back on the original "Borat" film, I remember laughing a lot at some of the better sketches and segues, but I kinda figured at the time that the comedy in the movie would actually age pretty badly. It has, but not for the reasons I figured it would. I thought the prank jokes would just seem particularly mean-spirited and those who fell for it, well, I wouldn't feel sorry for them exactly, but I figured that we'd look back on that film and ponder how stupid we were, and now I look back at that film, and watching this one, laughing loudly stil, but laughing at how truly stupid we are.

That's basically the movie; I haven't described too much of the plot which is a bit surprising since this movie actually has one; it even has characters and character development, and it's really well done. Frankly, I think it's better to be surprised, but I do want to showcase Maria Bakalova's performance as Borat's daughter who's traveling with him to America this time around. She arguably gives a braver performance then Cohen does, and they get to go into details, like some of the disturbing revelations of how people think about sex and sexual politics and norms. She has some very funny sequences with a Christian women's health place where she's being refused to get help having a baby removed (Not what you think, while also being exactly what you think, but not what you're thinking.), and having a touching, yet disturbing father/daughter dance at a Southern Cotillion, I think. My favorite stuff though is when she gets advice and help from her babysitter, who was both the only African-American character I remember in the film and also probably the most genuinely nice and uncorrupted character they manage to fool; well her and a couple old Jewish ladies that Borat runs into at a synagogue during his lowest moment, and it's really telling how the ones who were the most ostracized based on the history of their race are the ones that are the most instantly accepting and helpful, and just seem like the nicest people around; the best of America, the ones not corrupted by the toxic culture or political misinformation.

"Borat Subsequent Moviefilm" is a funny and sharp look at the modern climate, and just how easily it can and has boiled up in society and just how easily it can truly be undermined, both by corruption at the top, but also from a particularly inventive, intelligent and ambitious prankster, and for that reminder, I say thank you, "Borat". Also, thank you for shortening your film title this time. Apparently the original title was "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazahkstan". Eh, that'd be fun to keep saying of course, but I'm glad it's shortened.

If hindsight, I think I'm kinda pissed it was shortened; glad the Academy decided to say screw that and keep the long title. But yeah, if you're not-, if you're not watching a documentary like "Totally Under Control" or something, than I'd argue that the best snapshot of the pandemic, especially a look at America during it, is indeed, "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm", and it's frickin' hilarious. Now, I liked Cohen and his previous other films and performances, it took 'til this film where I really got his genius, and why he is actually a comedic genius and those, who are kinda, trying to use some of his techniques, why they're just, not on his level. It made me appreciate the first "Borat" and "Bruno" a lot more. Like, you know the people who bitch about "cancel culture", the people who think in the old days you could get away with anything, because Mel Brooks or George Carlin or "All in the Family" weren't controversial-as-hell at the time, and think we're so reserved and we can't "offend" or whatever. This is A. the film that proves that they're wrong, and B. it proves they're fucking hypocrites, 'cause they would hate this movie, and bitch about being the subjects they're being made fun of. (In Guilini's case, they were literally the one being made fun of.) And the fact that, they really did figure out a way to maneuver COVID into the narrative, and so easily too,- 'cause this movie was in the works, before the pandemic broke, and then got caught up in it,-, that's really amazing. That's not just a writing skill, an editing skill, that's a storytelling skill, that's an acting skill. Cohen, got an Oscar nomination for Supporting Actor for "The Trial of the Chicago 7" in this year, and he was great in that film, and the Academy did nominate Bakalova's work in this, but who else could've actually done this role, the way he did!? Under the circumstances, that he did it. There were times where he had to stay in character for days. How does his work, as an actor not come up when people talk about the Academy ignoring comedic performance, like seriously? I'm as amazed I'm saying stuff like that myself, but "Borat..." really is that good.

NUMBER 1:

My number one film of 2020, is a documentary.

I don't know why that feels strange to say. I mean, I've often put documentaries on my Top Ten Lists, and this is the fourth one on this list, but yeah, for some reason, up until now I never had a documentary at number one. I could've; "Hooligan Sparrow" came close one year. "Samsara" or even "How to Survive a Plague", both of them easily could've been number one that year. Eh, just couldn't quite do it then, but 2020 was such, an exception of a year.... Every standard and rule that we had to go by, basically went out the window, so naturally, putting a documentary at number one this year, yeah, why the hell not? Hell, the biggest TV shows were documentaries, that year! People cared more ABOUT "Tiger King" than whatever the hell superhero movie was supposed to be released that year that's been lost to time.

Yet, even for a documentary, this is still, not a normal choice. For one, I don't believe people think of this film as a documentary, some might argue it isn't one; they'd be wrong, but they might say it isn't. In fact, some people could argue that this should not even count as a feature film of any kind at all. Even accounting for the pandemic forever changing our true stances on the necessity of the theater-going experience, this one, for some might still be debate-worthy.

Still, I don't know what you guys think of or remember about what you were watching while we were all stuck in our homes, but...,-, when I think of 2020, what we had, what we needed the most, and the thing that actually gave us the most of what we needed and craved the most, from an entertainment level, from an artistic level, from a soulful level, from an inspirational level, the piece of art that we had, that actually helped us get out of it, and should've been the most influential to our life and world once we actually got out of it the most.... There is only one option for number one.

(Long pause. David gets up from his desk, and walks over to a piano keyboard. He cracks his knuckles and stares for a moment before playing.)

F♯, F♯-F♯-F♯-F♯, F♯-F♯, F♯, B♯, E, A♯

A♯, E, D, C♯

(Large, sly smile)

Oh yeah, I'm going there.

1. Hamilton

Oh, I can already see some people reacting to this one. How does a bastard, orphaned, streaming movie that's just a filmed production of a Broadway blockbuster, get all the way up to the top film of 2020?

I can hear some of you guys thinking, "This is a movie?" Yeah, it's got an MPAA rating, it was supposed to be released in theaters. Even if that wasn't enough, I think the argument that, I was on the other side on for years, died when the pandemic killed the movie theaters.

But it's just a filmed production of a Broadway; it's not even a filmed adaptation!

(Shrugs)

Yeah, so. I don't want to see a filmed recreation of "Hamilton", like it's "Wicked" or something, that'd be terrible.

I did write a "review" of "Hamilton" but I didn't really talk about the film much. I bitched mostly about how we don't get enough Broadway productions released on professional film, which it should. Theater is a different experience, and frankly, especially on the Broadway stage, a more expensive and timely one that most Americans can't get to see, and sometimes waiting for it to get a film adaptation isn't the same as seeing it on stage. Most people think that film is a chance to open up a theatrical production, and not limit it to the three walls of a stage, look at "Wicked" right now for instance. I mean, arguably, that's a work that in theory should work better on film than the stage; it's actually shocking it worked as well on the stage to begin with. But I still disagree with this in general; I'd rather see more of this instead. Wouldn't you all have preferred say, a similarly excellent documentary recording of "The Producers" with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick than the film that we got? Some things are better on stage and I think it's more impressive and more valuable if film can actually capture, even a little, the feeling of actually being in the theater! And it's not as easy as just setting up cameras and lighting, when it's done badly, it can be rough. Theater people won't care, 'cause they'll watch bad illegal bootlegs of any production they can find but, if it's a bad professional film recording, it can be brutal; like I didn't like "Julie Taymor's A Midsummer Night's Dream" production and she's a theater person who did adapt to filmmaking pretty well in the past, (And admittedly, I'm not big on that play) but that should work better than just recording the stage production, yet it doesn't. This is not as easy as it looks. Hell, the Razzies, a couple years after "Hamilton", named "Diana" a film production of a flop Broadway musical, the worst film of that particular year. Granted that was a bad musical anyway, but like, this can be really be done badly, I'd argue it's harder to do it this way and be this successful at it.

But okay, but it's still just a recording of a performance, it's barely a film, the Academy doesn't consider it one?

Yeah, the Academy's wrong on this one. And not just because it was streaming, even if it was released in theaters it still wouldn't have been Oscar eligible, but A. just because I defer to them sometimes doesn't mean I'm beholden to them, they don't decide what a movie is, I do, but B. at one point in their history, "Hamilton" would've been considered. They didn't make that rule until after a filmed version of James Whitmore's one-man-show "Give 'Em Hell, Harry" earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. And hell, once upon a time, Pauline Kael tried to insist Richard Pryor should get an Oscar nomination for one of his stand-up feature films. And so what if it was streaming, everything was streaming in 2020, like I said, any argument now about movies needing to be in theater is just outdated and arcane now, even by the greats.

Yeah, but, okay, let's say you want to argue that "Hamilton", really, you know, it's nowhere near accurate, and that's not even counting the casting and the rapping, right?

Oh yeah, I know. I mean, this movie's full of bad inaccuracies too, there's a lot of historians that actually can't stand "Hamilton" for that reason. Like calling Alexander Hamilton, an "Immigrant", LOLOLOLOLOL! Yeah, no he wasn't. Yeah, this movie does beat history up pretty badly actually. Hey, did you know New York was still a slave state when Hamilton died, and he definitely was involved in selling of slaves, if not owning them, so that rap battle is a little hypocritical too. Hell, they even got major character's names wrong! It's pronounced, "Maria" Reynolds, like in "West Side Story", not "Mariah," as in Carey". I know it's spelled that way, but no, it was Maria. Yeah, that said, I don't care.

So okay, all that, and you're still putting a Disney-produced and distributed Broadway play, that's arguably shouldn't be considered a film at number one!? Really?!

Oh, here's thing, I'm going further than that....

"HAMILTON" IS THE ONE OF BEST FILMS THIS CENTURY!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, I mean it too!

It should be on any shortlist. There are days I might put it number one. When I did my Top Ten hypothetical Top Ten List for Sight & Sound a couple years, I seriously almost put "Hamilton" on there. I saw Indiewire's list, what'd they name, "A.I. Artificial Intelligence"? Good movie, but "Hamilton"'s better. This is one of the greatest artistic achievements of all-time. I don't even like comparing it to other feature films, or even other Broadway shows, to me it's more equivalent to like, Zhang Yimou's production of the 2008 Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremonies, something like that! It's a brilliant example of finding a way to tell the story an entire nation in a single grandiose act of art.

Yes, it's the story of America's birth as told by America today, but it's so much more than that. It's arguably the greatest and most important musical to ever hit Broadway, and yet, it's messages are as timeless and important now more than ever. At a time where we seem to politically be fluctuating more and more between the insane and the sensible, between fascism and anarchy, "Hamilton" reminds us that, indeed, history has it's eyes on us, and it will be written down. And whether the American democracy survives or not, what will stand is whatever everybody did in order to protect it, or destroy it, and that goes for both or all sides. How we tell that story matters, and who tells that story matters. "Hamilton" more than an amazing play, is a story of a Puerto Rican New Yorker, and a bunch of people from as many different races and ethnicities as they could find, using their skills and arts, all coming together to tell the story of a bunch of white British slaveholders and rebels who dared to form a new country and new form of government, in search of equality and democracy for all. And it wasn't easy then, and it's a struggle now and it's hard to not see parables to today, and it's hard to not wonder, just how we will tell the stories of today, a couple hundred years from now. Frankly, the reasons "Hamilton" is number one, is because, well, A. in a time of pandemic when we had nothing to do but catch up on everything we missed, I found myself just watching "Hamilton" on a loop instead of looking for anything else, 'cause why bother, when I got "Hamilton", nothing's topping this, and B. 'cause frankly, if we were more inspired by the messages of a movie and story like "Hamilton" I think we'd be better off as a people and society.

I'm so tired of everything being so goddamn cynical about this country, especially in our media. That might be why I can't really get around to liking things like "Succession" or "Game of Thrones" or "House of Cards" or even "Veep", it's because I don't want to give a shit about these capitalist owners who we've decided to just let control the world, fighting behind-the-scenes for power, without any real care about what they actually would like to do or want to do with it. It's not entertaining, it's just "Lifestyles of the Rich & Obnoxious", trying to turn the world into "The Handmaid's Tale", 'cause it'd be better for their businesses. I don't want to see reenactments and reminders of what the government is turning into, I want to see what the government should be like. People who vehemently and passionately disagree with each other, but are honestly trying to run a country to make it better for everyone else. And for those who are only their to seek power for themselves, getting destroyed by their own hand. How we tell our stories matter, and who tells our stories matter! I think if we all took that to heart, things would be a helluva lot better than they are now.

So, if this is my one shot, I'm not throwing it away. The best film of 2020, number one with a Bullet, is "Hamilton". You want to come at on this one, I'll see you on the dueling ground.

In the meantime, here's a list of Honorable Mentions:

FEATURE FILMS (Honorable Mentions)

"Bacurau"-Juliano Dornelles and Kleber Mendonça Filho

"Beanpole"-Kantemir Balagov

"Beans"-Tracey Deer

"Better Days"-Derek Tsang

"Calm with Horses (aka The Shadow of Violence)-Nick Rowland

"Da 5 Bloods"-Spike Lee

"The Father"-Florian Zeller

"The Forty-Year-Old Version"-Radha Blank

"His House"-Remi Weekes

"The Invisible Man"-Leigh Whannell

"Judas and the Black Messiah"-Shaka King

"Kajillionaire"-Miranda July

"La Llorona"-Jayro Bustamante

"The Life Ahead"-Edoardo Ponti

"Ma Rainey's Black Bottom-George C. Wolfe

"Miss Juneteenth"-Channing Godfrey Peoples

"Moffie"-Oliver Hermanus

"Nomadland"-Chloe Zhao

"On the Rocks"-Sofia Coppola

"Palm Springs"-Max Barbakow

"Promising Young Woman"-Emerald Fennell

"Quo Vadis, Aida?"-Jasmila Zbanic

"Servants"-Ivan Ostrochovsky

"Soul"-Pete Doctor and Kemp Powers

"Sound of Metal"-Darius Marder

"To the Ends of the Earth"-Kiyoshi Kurosawa

"The Trial of the Chicago 7"-Aaron Sorkin

"The Vast of Night"-Andrew Patterson

"The Whistlers"-Corneliu Porumboiu

"The White Tiger"-Ramin Bahrani

"The Wolf House (aka La Casa Lobo")-Joaquin Cocina and Cristobel Leon

"Wolfwalkers"-Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart

DOCUMENTARIES (Honorable Mentions)

"76 Days"-Weixi CHEN, Hao WU and Anonymous

"All In: The Fight for Democracy"-Lisa Cortes and Liz Garbus

"Assassins"-Ryan White

"Billie"-James Erskine

"Born to Be"-Tanya Cypriano

"Boys State"-Amanda McBain and Jesse Moss

"Collective"-Alexander Nanau

"Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution"-James Lebrecht and Nicole Newnham

"Dick Johnson is Dead"-Kirsten Johnson

"The Go-Go's"-Allison Ellwood

"MLK/FBI"-Sam Pollard

"MR. SOUL!"-Melissa Haizlip and Sam Pollard

"Our Time Machine"-S. Leo Chaing and Yang Sun

"Rebuilding Paradise"-Ron Howard

"Rewind"-Sasha Joseph Neulinger

"Time"-Garrett Bradley

"Welcome to Chechnya"-David France

"Zappa"-Alex Winter

MOVIE REVIEWS #206: "CLOSE (Dhont)", "JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4", "FULL TIME", "KAJILLIONAIRE", "TOTALLY UNDER CONTROL", "76 DAYS", "SERVANTS", and "MUCHO MUCHO AMOR: THE LEGEND OF WALTER MERCADO"!

2024-10-29T15:29:00.003-07:00

Well, I'm still not posting at a rate I prefer, or used to,... but I am posting and am watching movies somewhat regularly again. (Shrugs) I'm still behind, but I am catching up.

I'm also working on other projects as well, that have kept me busy. I'm still transitioning in my life, and things are strange for me. What that means for this blog, I don't know. Frankly, I prefer writing screenplays now more than I do this blog, but that just might be that I don't have as much to say about the entertainment world as I used to. Perhaps it's age that's made me feel more apathetic and distant from it, perhaps it's my personal situations over the last few years has left me out of the loop. Perhaps, it's just that the entertainment world, it's changed so drastically from the world that I was familiar with and grew up with that, frankly me criticizing or trying to relate to it, makes me feel too much like I'm an old man yelling at clouds. Perhaps, when I was a young man yelling at clouds, it was more tolerable and the energy and vigor I had for my thoughts on whatever disaster new streaming service that comes around or whatever else it is that everyone will talk and/or complain about, felt more like a necessary release of frustration and anger, but now, eh, it just isn't always something I feel like my opinion is worth putting out there.

And that's okay. I'd rather wait 'til I have something to say anyway, than to just try to say something just to get more views or likes or whatever-it-is I'm supposed to be trying to get on this thing.

What I do have are movie reviews. Not as many as I'd like or prefer, but I do have them, and it's time to post them again.

CLOSE (2022) Director: Lukas Dhont

⭐⭐⭐⭐

It's admittedly hard for me to put myself into a perspective where I can ever imagine what I would do if I was in a, for-lack-of-a-better-word situation like the main characters in "Close". For one thing, it's about a very close relationship between two people, for another, it's about a close relationship between two male kids. It's hard for me to really be close to anybody; hell I don't even put pictures of myself on my social media, but especially that young, to be close to another person the way Leo (Eden Dambrine) and Remi (Gustav De Waele) are, is.... I mean, I can imagine people like that; I might've known particularly close youth friendships between others growing up, but I can't imagine myself, especially at that young age, being apart of a close relationship like that. In fact, I can easily imagine this movie, being pitched to an American producer, and nearly all of them would recommend aging the characters up a couple years. In hindsight, I can think of several films and stories that are basically similar to "Close" in that way, except the kids were a little bit older. Not that I was particularly better at getting close to people then either, but yeah, this is definitely a movie plot that feels like it's from a more European sensibility of coming-of-age.

And it is, it's from Belgian director Lukas Dhont, and the film was nominated for Best International Feature at the Oscars. Leo and Remi are very close friends as they begin their 6th grade years. How close? Well, they often share the same bed when they sleepover at each other's houses, which is quite often. Neither of their parents seem to mind or object. They often play on Leo's family's flower farm. They ride bikes together, they do a lot of stuff together. When they go to, I guess, middle school,- not sure what the equivalent in Belgium is, but when they get there, their intimacy is clear to most everybody. They're confronted about it, even asked if they're boyfriends.

Is this a film about young gay pre-teens? Perhaps. They're never sexually intimate in any way, but they do fight and wrestle occasionally with each other. If either of them are gay, it doesn't matter. It is a close relationship and when the kids start talking, that's when Leo starts getting concerned and nervous about the connotations and rumors. Eventually, he starts taking up ice hockey, and stops going to ride bikes with Remi together, and all-in-all, just slowly pushing him away from him.

This eventually turns tragic, and I'm reluctant to talk about the story or plot further. Honestly, I don't know quite how to describe my thoughts or feelings on "Close". It's clearly a good film, I don't know if it emotionally effected me, 'cause I think it's just a little too insular and unique. I feel like it's personal, I'm not entirely sure about that, this is the first Lukas Dhont film I've seen; I haven't gotten to his debut "Girl" yet. I will say I love the performances, especially by the two main kids. He's clearly a talented director, and I can definitely see this story happening to someone. I definitely remember being confronted with rumors of friendships being more-than-that with some friends of mine from school, but they were definitely older friends than this. Again, this might just be an American thing not getting this dynamic fully. Maybe I'm in the minority and I'm just lucky to not have a tragedy like this one effect me so much.

JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4 (2023) Director: Chad Stehelski

⭐⭐

(Sigh)

I don't get this franchise. I'm sorry, I'm trying, but-, I saw this movie a week ago, and I didn't have much to say about it, so I kept putting this review off. And I've been thinking about it since then, and I still don't have much to say about it. I'm mostly just baffled by this whole franchise.

It's been a weird running theme of these movies, whether I like them or not, my fascination is with the severe reactions to this franchise. It seems a lot of people love John Wick (Keanu Reeves), and I mean really love these movies. Sometimes people really hate them. Me, I don't understand either reaction, 'cause I just, don't have any reaction to these movies. I don't get why those who love them find them so beloved, and I also don't really get why those who don't like them, hate them.

At least that was true enough of the first two movies, I actually did like "Chapter 3", but part of that was just because of how batshit the world-building had started becoming. Honestly, it was the first time that I actually felt there was something memorable about the franchise. That and-eh, Halle Berry stealing the show. Not the first time she's been the best thing in an otherwise forgettable entry in a long-running action franchise.

Well, I guess that's not entirely fair; I think it all depends on whether or not you like the John Wick character, and-, I-eh... (Shrugs) um.... Am I missing something? Cause I just don't remotely have any interest in this character. And that sucks, 'cause you can get away with a lot of ridiculous bullshit if you care about the character, apparently others do, but-, actually, I'm not even sure that's true, 'cause I think they just like Keanu Reeves. There's been a major social media offensive in defense of Keanu in recent years, mostly random stories about how nice and down-to-earth a guy he is, and for everything I've ever heard, he is and all of that is true. I don't hate Keanu Reeves in general, and I think he's fine in these films, I just am not captivated by him in these films. I've been in others, I love most of the "Matrix" films, but I also am more captivated by the world of "The Matrix" than I am, the world of "John Wick". Or, really, this, underworld of "John Wick".

"John Wick", really is one of those movies or movie franchises where, the poor guy who works down at the morgue is having the worst days of his life because of all the ridiculously absurd body counts that the movie adds up. I think my favorite movie like that is John Woo's "Face/Off", and that's really the perfect example, that movie is insane, but just the gimmick of Nicholas Cage and John Travolta having to switch places and faces, it takes something that's otherwise just a bunch of people getting killed and makes it a compelling acting exercise and frankly, it's even a decent story of cop and criminal having to live each other's lives. Of course, that's not what these movies are going for. The story of these movies, is really just, people want John Wick dead, and John Wick survives.

I had a friend of mine who likes these films say that; he thought they were reminiscent of an old Clint Eastwood western? Eh, I guess there's something to that, John Wick is about as close to a Man with No Name we probably have, although I'd argue in recent action films, Jason Bourne is a better version of that. But, Eastwood-, he was mysterious, the whole issue with those films, is that, a lot of insane stuff happened around him too, but you didn't know what he was thinking or how he was going to react. There was something compelling about him. Wick, has a past that we've learned about. He's Russian, and tried to leave his assassin life, but eventually, things fell back for him, but there's nothing naturally compelling about him. Now, the "High Table", is determined to take him out, so he has to rejoin "a family", in this case, his old Berlin family,- but first he has to kill a member of the High Table, as well as go along with the strange and surreal rituals that I think only make sense if they were cut scenes in a video game, and then, he has to challenge, the Marquis (Bill Skarsgaard) to a duel in order to rid himself of the High Table.

Didn't this all start 'cause of a dog getting killed?! Honestly, this is one of those movie franchises that started someplace concrete and realistic and then, just keep getting more and more moon logic insane. How did this "High Table" come about? How did these bizarre archaic rules come about? How has nobody just beaten the crap out of everybody for all these bullshit rules by now and overthrown this underworld government? Why are these "rules" still so stringently followed for hundreds of years by all these criminals? And how does nobody know about this damn thing, despite the countless dead bodies that they keep lying about? That's really all I think about now with this movie franchise.

Chad Stahelski, the former stunt coordinator-turned-director is still on board with directing, but this is the first time he got new writers for his movie; this is the first movie in the franchise not written by Derek Kolstad, which,- I mean, his stuff was confusing too, especially with "Parabellum", but I thought the look of that movie as well as the intensity of the acting, kinda made up for a lot of that in "Parabellum". I think the world of this movie did just get lost though. It's way too long, there isn't as many interesting developments and it's just a mind-numbing amount of violence that's only really appealing if I was playing a video game. Frankly, I liked the movies better when I just complained about how they were just average normal hitman movies and I couldn't figure out why everybody was so fascinated with them.

FULL TIME (2023) Director: Eric Gravel

⭐⭐⭐

Let's talk about Italian Neorealism. Yeah, that Italian Neorealism, that movement that led to those sad movies shot around Rome on low budgets that depicted the struggles of the poor and downtrodden in post-WWII Italy, the movement that completely changed cinema forever, inspiring every low-budget independent movement from French New Wave to Mumblecore ever since, that one. You know where, curiously, those movies weren't particularly popular? Italy.

No, seriously, they were hugely popular in the rest of the world, and everywhere else, but they actually weren't that beloved at the time in Italy itself. In fact, Vittorio Di Sica, who made, arguably the three best Neorealist films, "The Bicycle Thief," "Shoeshine" and "Umberto D", he was more beloved, for his studio films that he was also making around that time, and believe it or not, most of them were lighthearted comedies. Hell, arguably he was more beloved as an actor than a director; he was quite a popular handsome actor, and in a few big films too. He took a lot of his money from those gigs to make those Neorealism passion projects; he was Cassavettes long before Cassavettes, but yeah, those films that probably defy Italy's most famous film movement, Italy, didn't actually like them much, and the reason is simple. Their lives were terrible and frankly they didn't just want to be reminded of it. Poverty was rampant, people were struggling to get by, and yeah, literally one stolen bicycle could lead to financial ruin and disaster for some. They wanted the light-hearted comedies to escape those lives for a bit, not to be reminded of them. And yeah, I get it. I love most of those films, but boy do I need to be in the mood for them before I revisit them.

"Full Time" is a French film, but I couldn't help but think about those classic neorealist films, 'cause that is essentially what this is. It's a good film, but it's a movie about a struggling single mother, Julie (Laura Calamy) who's struggling to keep her head above water, and what happens when just one thing changes around her. See, she takes the transit system to work as a head maid at a major hotel in Paris, but the transit system, has gone on strike. She doesn't have other ways of travelling, and she can't afford, or have the time to move closer to work. She's also got a job interview lined up, and already, she's struggling to maneuver the time off just to get to that, plus, if everything goes to shit, she's gonna be late picking up her kids, and she's struggling to keep babysitters going, if she can either get the new job she wants, or keep her current job. Ugh! Honestly, all I could think watching this film was just how fragile my life can be. I've had days where travel hang-ups cause me so much frustration and time. Everything feels so out of your hands, and yet, you must somehow continue and stride on. I know, at least, if the bus drivers around me go on strike, they'd be replaced by scabs, but that doesn't assure me anything would be easier.

I felt for Julie, but mostly I watched "Full Time" feeling for myself, and that's-, well, it wasn't the mood I really wanted to be in at that moment. It's the second feature, I haven't seen his first, "Crash Test Algae", although based on the description of that film, about a girl who loses her factory job after it was relocated to India, and she decides to go there to keep her job, I get the sense that he is fascinated by the neorealist struggles of those who are living on the edge of their rope, and in order to make their lives work, need literally everything around them to work perfectly in sync, and then suddenly, something goes wrong and everything gets thrown for a loop. I guess we all live there to some degree, some more vehemently than others though. Perhaps if I was in a better position, I can more appreciate "Full Time" for the document of modern life that it's trying to be, but in the meantime, it only played like a reminder of how fragile my life is at the moment. Again, the right mood, I'd appreciate this more....

KAJILLIONAIRE (2020) Director: Miranda July

⭐⭐⭐⭐

I know I'm late for "Kajillionaire", which, as I currently have DirecTV, I was surprised to notice replaying on a few of the basic cable stations I have somewhat regularly. I hadn't watched it, but I saw it replaying. (Also, cable TV replays a lot of movies that should not be replayed all the time. Why are all the superhero movies on all the fucking time? Those aren't movies that you want to watch again and again, even the good ones! Jesus, these people used to know what movies were actually rerun-able.) Anyway, I found it curious 'cause the one thing I knew about the movie was it's director, and she's not somebody I think of as making a mainstream popular film.

Miranda July is-, she's made a few movies, this is her third feature film, but it feels strange or wrong even calling her a filmmaker or a director; she's more of a,-, for lack of a better word, she's an artist. What kind of artist? Um, it feels like all kinds? I guess, technically you can categorize her as a performance artist, but even that feels limited. She's put on plays, she's written a couple books of short stories, she was way ahead of her time regarding multi-media art, she's released a couple music albums, she's got collections of short films that have been shown in museums. She's even started acting more regularly, and not just in her own movies; she's done voiceover work for documentaries as well. Her parents were East Coast academics, but she really started making noise, as part of the Portland Riotgrrl scene in the mid-90s, but even saying all this, doesn't really give you a sense of her work, or her odd point-of-views and perspectives. It's not just that she can, and does, do basically all of this, it's how she does all of this, even only three feature films in, her work is really distinctively her.

Her first feature we a multi-narrative indie called "Me and You and Everyone We Know", and it's a polarizing film. I love it, and to some extent, I'm kinda wondering if that film has kinda clouded my judgment on her other two features, including this one, "Kajillionaire". "Me and You and Everyone We Know," is- it's got a lot of odd and questionable material in it, but there's such a sense of abandoned to it, like she threw every weird idea and experience she ever had into it. That movie literally begins with a main character lighting his arm on fire, as a way to entertain his children, but forgetting to soak his hand in lighter fluid so that it doesn't burn, so he ends up hurting himself. That's kinda how I like to think of July, she is a fascinating portrait of reckless abandonment, and the rest of that movie, is full of thoughts and ideas so obtuse and twisted and weird and in this conflicting sunshine-y and blissful sheen,...- it's so out there that you wondered if she just insisted on getting these ideas out of her head, fearing that she'd just never be allowed or able to make another movie again. And yet, her ideas are odd and comedic, just-, weird thoughts and observations on very slight and typical behaviors. Her second feature, "The Future", was more of an insular narrative. It involved a couple who decided to test out whether they want to move onto the next phase of their relationship, by adopting a terminally ill cat, but can't take him home for 30 days while the cat recovers from surgery, and thinking that, if they take good care of the cat later on, that it's such a responsibility, that they should spend the time living freely. It's almost too absurd to say it's plot out loud, these two people in their '30s trying to get a cat and are so inept at adult relationships that they struggle to adjust to that and think they need to spend time apart freeing themselves of their inhibitions. (Like her stories kinda remind me of what I think people who hate Lena Dunham think her plotlines are about, but because she's not such an aggressive extrovert and exhibitionist that they don't notice.) She's deft with her humor, and despite her movies seeming pretty and bright, there's a strange darkness underneath it all.

I think her movies are about realizing the absurdities in one's own lives and having to confront them. In "M&Y&EWK", there's too many plots of this to mention, but "The Future" definitely is about characters being confronted with how low-maintenance and blissfully inept they actually are at being a loving couple, or adults for that matter. In that sense, I get why "Kajillionaire" is the one that broke through to the mainstream. It's about a character realizing that their world is, patently ridiculous and absurd.

This character is named Old Dolio (Evan Rachel Wood). Old Dolio, named after a homeless man, is the daughter of two con artists, Robert and Theresa (Richard Jenkins and Debra Winger) and Old Dolio is also a con artist with them. They spend their days, trying to find a scam, like stealing and returning a piece of jewelry for reward money, or something to that effect. They live in a makeshift place and they're about to get kicked out of that. Old Dolio comes up with a scheme involving flying to New York but getting their luggage lost in order to collect the insurance money, and this one seems like it'll work, but the insurance check could take weeks to arrive. Meanwhile, her parents befriend Melanie (Gina Rodriguez) on the plane, and soon, they begin inviting her along on some of their schemes, even coming up with a couple of her own as she works as a physician's assistant at an eyeglass store and knows some old people who've befriended her and are likely to give her stuff they can resell. This works a couple times over, although sometimes in disturbing ways, like when they have to pretend to be one person's family while he's sick and dying in their house, because it comforts him.

Describing the actions of these characters, doesn't describe exactly how odd these characters are. At some point, it seems like her parents had some kind of education, they even get confused for professors or academics at times, and yeah, they do feel like a random husband & wife team you'd think were college professors somewhere that spend their days like George and Martha in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", or like modern-day post-hippie era versions of them. It's through Melanie, who is so much more outgoing and forwardly observant, that Old Dolio finally starts to see how bizarre these parents of hers actually are, and realizing that real upbringing and stunted adulthood might also be severely messed up.

Honestly, this movie reminded me a lot of "Dogtooth", the breakthrough Yorgos Lanthimos film about a family that was also otherwise shielded from the outside world to a disturbingly extreme degree. This isn't quite that extreme, but these parents definitely have thrusted their daughter into their world too much, and Melanie has taken it upon herself, to help Old Dolio get out of it.

Basically, it's July's version of Plato's Cave Alleghory, only instead of being stuck in a cave, she's stuck in a never-ending string of cons by her parents. Even her name, apparently was a long con, as they named her after a homeless man who won the lottery believing he'd give them money he had left after he passed, but he spent it on cancer treatments instead. I'm not exactly sure how these parents got this way, but despite all the strangeness and occasional cringe, "Kajillionaire" is still July's most relatable film. Who doesn't feel like their parents somehow left them unprepared for the outside world? Probably not so much as to believe that somehow surviving an earthquake while stuck in a confined space makes gas station snack foods seem joyous, but there's definitely a feeling that July's tapping into in her own strange, surreal way.

It's a shame July is such a Renaissance Riotgrrl, 'cause I think if she did focus more of her attention to feature films, we'd get more special ones more often, but she's definitely always felt that there's something wrong with anybody being held down by people, places or even things, and I also presume by artistic mediums as well. I hope afterwards in that same artistic spirit, Old Dolio goes down to the courthouse and picks her own new name.

TOTALLY UNDER CONTROL (2020) Directors: Alex Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

76 DAYS (2020) Directors: Weixi CHEN, Hao WU and Anonymous

⭐⭐⭐⭐

If "Totally Under Control" was the autopsy of the COVID pandemic, up to that point anyway, than "76 Days", is the- uh, the patient zero? The birth? Uhhh, sorry I started writing that sentence before I had this down and thought something would come to me, but- Anyway, "76 Days" is a cinema verite look at the front lines of the pandemic. The patients and hospital workers at the Wuhan Hospitals during the outbreak of the pandemic. The title references the number of days that the city was under strict quarantine, which, feels like a lot less than what we were under, which, hopefully means that despite everything, they were easily the more prepared and willing to listen when things got bad. Also, in case you don't know, Wuhan has eleven million people in it, not to mention it's a big worldwide hub location, so a there's a lot of travel normally throughout the city, but at this moment at the beginnings of the pandemic, it's in lockdown.

All the doctors and nurses are in HASMAT suits with several masks. The patients range from older people who've long worried they've lived to long to young newborn babies who are born under quarantine and have to be protected from the world around them so they won't get infected. Families can't see their loved ones, and when they pass away, they have to walk outside in a designated walled-off location, where their loved ones' belongings are eventually given to them, after they'd been bagged and disinfected.

It's weird watching this documenting of the front lines a few years later, knowing everything that went on, knowing how the U.S. Government so fundamentally blundered this entire thing. Even with Wuhan getting it the worst and first, it's kinda startling that they managed to only be in lockdown for so short of time. I'm not saying that even that was necessarily the best idea, this movie won't go into those details but it shows us what it was like in the heart of the COVID pandemic, and how those who dealt with it head-on and most directly. If "Totally Under Control" was about how the higher ups dealt, or didn't deal with it, "76 Days" shows up the groundlings who had to work their way through it. Sure, we were all there, but not all this close. It's a haunting reminder that, while COVID might not be as viable and debilitating as it once was, just how close it really came to completely taking us out. Imagine these people weren't in a world of science, medicine and technology and weren't prepared with all the tools, knowledge, and equipment we now have to combat such pandemics. How easy, in another world, this pandemic could've been a plague.

SERVANTS (2020) Director: Ivan Ostrochovsky

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Something Communism, in practice, always seems to get wrong is what to do about religion. I'm not saying Capitalism's record is spotless with it either, but it definitely feels like they're more perplexed by it than other governing systems. Even Marx and Weber didn't entirely agree on how it should be integrated into society. That is kinda understable on the surface, religion, especially Catholicism has served several different roles in western society over the years. At one point, they were, the ruling class, and were the oppressors of society. Even as recently as the American Revolution, people forget, we weren't just getting rid of our political rulers, but a theological ruler as well, as the King of England was/is also the head of the Church of England. However, it is also fair to say that, since the Church, for all intensive purposes, doesn't serve that role anymore, that it has since become a more corruptive force for the world. In that, whatever, or whomever runs the ruling class of the society, be it Capitalist or Communist, they end up corrupting the religion and using it for serving their own purpose.

We, in the West, don't really think about how much power the Soviet bloc actually had over Eastern Europe much anymore, and frankly, it's hard for us to even fully understand its depths, even back then. Hell, I recently had been going through old Presidential Election Debates, 'cause I wanted to remind myself how they used to be relatively normal, and I totally forgot that one of the reasons Gerald Ford lost to Carter was that he stated quite bluntly in a debate how the Eastern countries, like Czechoslovakia for instance, weren't under the thumb of the Soviets. Hell, one of the big points in 2012 was how we should be regarding Putin and his stronghold over Russia, and this time the roles were reversed, with Romney saying that he feared Putin's continued reign and corruption and Obama saying that they were well on their way to easing into the modern western world, and I'll give credit where credit is due, he was laughed out of the room at the time, but Romney was right on that one. Perhaps he caught it earlier because, as a practicing LDS member, he was more religious and therefore conscious of those in the church who are indeed threatened to be oppressed by the ruling class than others? (Shrugs) I can only speculate there, but the fact is that, during the Cold War, those who were Catholic were oppressed by the Soviets.

"Servants" takes place in 1980 Bratislava, shot in black-and-white and with a tone, pace and visual style that more than once reminded me of the films of Bela Tarr, focuses on two seminarian Juraj (Samuel Skyva) and Michel (Samuel Polakovic) but the story is really about how the Church was suppressed during the authoritarian reign of the Soviets over the Eastern bloc. The Warsaw Pact troops have begun invading the city, and they intend to censor the church, confiscating typewriters so undesirable pamphlets can't be written or promoted, threatening the Church's existence if they don't conform to their strict guidelines, things like that. Questioning the students, even arresting one. Things like that. One member is killed after being tortured by them, possibly because he was involved in the Underground, or perhaps because he just refused to cooperate.

As the intrusion becomes more severe, and the rebellion, quiet as it is, most notably a widespread hunger strike, the two friends begin to grow apart. Juraj eventually getting weaved more and more into the State Security, while Michel, quietly encourages the rebellion.

"Servants" is directed by Slovakian director Ivan Ostrovochovksy, the first film of his I've seen, who was born in the old Soviet Czechoslovakia, and it's a fascinating moody look at what happened when the Church is compromised by a dictatorial regime. They are supposed to be servants to god, but is that even possible in a world like this? What is the correct path, compromise? Death? Rebellion? Michel did get messages to Radio Free Europe and The Vatican? The radio can report, but that's it, and it's not like anybody was gonna take up arms, and what exactly could do, quietly secretly name a Bishop or Cardinal? I think Juraj and Michel represent both sides of that conflict and take with that what will with how their paths end up. "Servants" is quite a rare and stirring look at what life was like from behind the Iron Curtain and from a perspective that we don't think enough about.

MUCHO MUCHO AMOR: THE LEGEND OF WALTER MERCADO (2020) Directors: Christina Constantini and Kareem Tabsch

⭐⭐⭐

So, I guess I never fully picked up on it, but apparently astrology is really big in Spanish-speaking households. And apparently, big on Spanish television.... So, I-eh, I didn't know the name, Walter Mercado before watching "Mucho Mucho Amor..." He definitely looked familiar,- nobody as distinctive-looking as that are you able to fully get out of your mind, but-eh,- yeah, I'm not as familiar with Spanish-language television history as I'd like to be, so the fact that the first documentary I've come to watch about a famous Spanish-language personality from the small screen, is about this,- flamboyant and flashy,- guy who-, gives the astrology report on the news broadcast....? Yeah, clearly, I'm just not familiar with this.

And that's not to say that I'm anti-astrology, in fact, my mother used to do astrological charts; it was a big passion for her. I don't think she was a "believer" per se, but she definitely found it fascinating. And you know, come to think of it, when I have occasionally channel-surfed and stumbled onto the Spanish stations, and tried to figure out what was going on,- well, first of all-, seriously, why don't Univision and Telemundo, have an English-language subtitle option? (Okay, I just looked it up and apparently there is very limited English captions options available on those channels, but I'll be damned if I've ever been able to find that option when I'm watching them) Secondly though, there does seem to be more astrology influence on Spanish TV than I would've thought. Like, I've stumbled across "12 Corazones" a few times. I didn't quite get all of it, but I definitely caught that it was a dating show, and the contestants are separated and partially matched up based on their signs? Like, that if you told me, that their was an American English-language game show that lasted for 12 years, and asked me, when I thought it aired, I probably would've said something like, (Shrugs) maybe, from the late '70s to the late-'80s, early '90s at the latest? Eh, no, that show was on from 2005-2017! Like, really that's when it aired?

I'm not criticizing, just an observation; I never realized or thought astrology was, such a big deal in the Spanish-language communities. Apparently, the horoscope report was more apart of a Spanish news broadcast than the weather report was! And, if you grew up in a Latino household, than that astrology report was probably presented by Walter Mercado. "Mucho Mucho Amor..." the documentary shows him, right before he passed in 2020 and goes over his rather exuberant life. He was an actor before finding his way into in astrology bit, mostly in local theater and some TV in his native Puerto Rico, but his style and flash got popular reactions from the audience, and he eventually became a popular character on the news, and his work eventually spread across the world.

During the height of his popularity and acclaim, you can find him on a lot of English language TV as well. He appeared on several talk shows, and even did a couple of those old psychic informercials that used to be a thing. Everybody remembers Miss Cleo, but if you were around, you know there was a lot more than her.

He claims that as a child, he believes he had visions, and he even majored in psychology, pedagogy and pharmacy in college, although he pursued acting originally, the gimmick seems to be something legitimate to him. Although, he does mention that he never gave out any negative notes or words in his horoscopes, which, hmmm,- look, while I am fascinating by astrology, I am still a skeptic, and that's-, like even some of the most atrocious of people in these fields, they weren't 100% positive all the time. (Look up on Youtube some of the times, Sylvia Browne "got it wrong"...- Sidenote: man, we really should talk more about Montel Williams at some point....) . And Mercado was apart of some of those more atrocious informercials of the time. He says he never promised something like lottery numbers, but-eh, the movie shows that he did.

Granted, the movie also shows how basically, his entire image and gimmick were basically sold off to his manager and much of his image and even his Intellectual Property was in his name, which-, yeah, he's a performer first, they're not good at business decisions, so, yeah, I'm not surprised that a lot of his absence in recent years got caught up in a lot of BS like that, attempts to try to get his money and name back. I mean, he had so little control over his image newspapers were often literally just copying old horoscopes of his from the past, and re-running them, and he couldn't do or say anything about it; even for astrology, that's low. (And horrifying if I ever read any of his horoscopes; man, I could've been doing things completely wrong at certain points in my life. What? I'm an Aquarius, I'm a free spirit who takes his own path, but that doesn't mean I won't listen to ideas once in a while.)

"Mucho Mucho Amor: The Legend of Walter Mercado" as a film, is not much, it's a typical documentary about it's subject; I really don't have much to say about the movie itself. If you're interested in learning about this dominant figure in modern Spanish-American culture, than it's definitely worth a watch. Mostly it was just a learning experience for me, and I guess a fun one, just-, an odd one. I don't know who I would equate him to that I would be particularly familiar with, maybe somebody like the recently-passed Richard Simmons? But, I don't know, it's weird, I don't tend to think of astrology as such a modern mainstream part of culture, but perhaps I need to reevaluate that, knowing now how big Walter Mercado was. Y'know, my horoscope did say I'd have to stop being a teacher and be more of a student for awhile; maybe this is what it was talking about? Why did I have to be learning while Mercury was in retrograde, that really is annoying.

CANON OF FILM: "DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES"

2024-09-17T14:20:00.000-07:00

DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES (1962)

Director: Blake Edwards

Screenplay: J.P. Miller

Is is strange that when I think of Blake Edwards, this is the film my mind first goes to? Not one of his comedies, not "Breakfast at Tiffany's", but the one dramatic film he made, and the one about alcoholism no less? I thought perhaps this was just a me thing, but honestly, I think there might be something to that. I had put off adding "Days of Wine and Roses" to this Canon for awhile, because on the surface, it does feel like one of the outliers in Blake Edwards's filmography, and I thought I should first get around to more of his comedies before I added this one, but,- well, a few things, one, I'm not actually that big on his comedies. I have to see more of them, but a lot of his material, it's still funny but it doesn't always age that well. I guess "Victor/Victoria" is still pretty good, but ehh,- "10" has always been a weird one to me. Eh, I guess "Operation Petitcoat" will get a laugh or two out of me, and honestly,- I've only seen the first "The Pink Panther" film, and-eh, it's honestly not that good. Apparently most of the sequels are apparently better, but the original is, just, not much of a movie. Peter Sellers is actually barely in it believe it or not, and he is the best part of the film too and if you don't know that going in, it makes the movie a much bigger slog than you'd expect, and even if you did know, it's still, kinda nothing for awhile.... (And, I don't know if this is a controversial opinion, but I just can't stand the movie "Breakfast at Tiffany's".) So, that, and I just happened to come across it again recently and was stirred by how powerful and observant the film actually was. I thought maybe it was just how spectacular the performances by Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick are. Maybe it was the screenplay, especially for a movie that directly involves AA, it actually portrays that organization pretty bluntly, and doesn't exactly show that it as having a monumental success rate that other movies and TV shows tend to subliminally underline. But that wasn't it either.

No, it was watching that recent "American Masters" episode "Blake Edwards: A Love Story in 24 Frames" recently, where it was revealed that, Edwards along with Jack Lemmon, after completeling the film and having quite a few drinks, then came to realize that they were both alcoholics making a movie about alcoholism. I had known about Lemmon's alcoholism, he famously came out publicly about his struggles when talking about the film during an interview on "Inside the Actors' Studio", but I wasn't aware Blake Edwards had decided to quit drinking and smoking after the film. In hindsight, it makes sense; Edwards was in the middle of a struggling married that was on it's way out, and the other thing about "Days of Wine and Roses" is that, it's not about one alcoholic, and their struggles, it's about a couple who are alcoholics.

Two people, who essentially come together, because they're alcoholics. At first, Joe (Oscar-nominee Lemmon) is a social drinker, often drinking for work since he works in public relations and does have to organize a lot of events and parties for his clients, but eventually he meets Kristen (Oscar-nominee Remick) who isn't a drinker at all, but she enjoy chocolates, and eventually hanging out with each other, she begins drinking brandi alexanders, because they're like chocolate. (I have no knowledge of the accuracy of this, but it sounds plausible to me.) Eventually they fall in love while they're drinking together, and get married and even have a kid, but their drinking keeps getting them into trouble.

The scene most everybody remembers is after they swear to stay sober by getting away from the world and they move into her father Ellis's (Charles Bickford) house, and working at his greenhouse. Ellis doesn't exactly approve of Joe to begin with, but they try and succeed for awhile, but then they fall off hard. And Joe, in a desperate, drunken stupor stumbles through the Greenhouse destroying all of the plants 'cause he couldn't find the bottle he had hidden in one of the plants. Even still, you expect for them to eventually come out on the other side of all this somehow, or at least, for Kristen to snap out of it and leave Joe for corrupting her, but it's actually her that never recovers.

After multiple trips to the Sanitarium, Joe gets help and a sponsor from Jim (Jack Klugman) who convinces him to go to AA. (Which at the time, Alcoholics Anonymous wasn't exactly as well-known as it is now). He tries to convince Kristen as well, but it doesn't take her. She ends up leaving or being missing for days at a time. One time, finding her a real mess at a rundown motel, and not alone originally, and she convinces him to drink again, as that's how she relates to feeling good now, and feeling good being with him.

Famously, the studios wanted the ending changed, but Jack Lemmon left for Europe after filming and didn't return, so the studios had to keep the ending, where, a barely sober Kristen tries to see her kid, who Joe, sober and working steady for the first time in years, takes care of her in a rundown small apartment. She's not ready to give up drinking for him, or her daughter, and he's not willing to start again to be with her. I guess, the idea is that, he stares at her down from the window of his apartment, as she turns away from the nearby bar and he tends to his daughter who wondering when Mommy will get well, but I also couldn't help thinking that, man, he's literally right looking out the window, overlooking that bar, and the bright neon sign to go, almost like it's taunting Joe, inviting Joe to go in. I guess, even when you're not on your addiction, so much of one's addiction surrounds that person's life that it's not always possible to ever fully get away. For all we know, he can fall off the wagon again one day and one day soon, and both of them are gonna be spending the rest of their lives trying to balance that struggle. The movie benefits in this regard from the time it was shot too, right around the time when the Hayes Code was starting to loosen up a bit. Also, the film just looks gorgeous, especially in the way a lot of those late '50s-early '60s film look, right when widescreen was just taking over and the cinematography looks so sharp. The movie got Oscar nominations for the art direction and costumes as well, and yeah, a lot of this movie shows that these two aren't- like, naturally down on their luck; they start off as movers and shakers, and they look like it, the quintessential young, up-and-coming couple; in another couple decades we'd call them yuppies. Seeing them slowly but surely see their clothes, looks and surroundings dissipate as their drinking overtakes them is really well-done here. Also, Lee Remick is one of the most underrated actresses Hollywood had. Lemmon gets most of the attention, but it's kinda stunning this was Remick's only Oscar nomination, (How did she not get nominated for "Anatomy of a Murder", and how are we not more pissed at the Academy for that snub?) and she is remarkable here. She came along at the right time, and always felt out of place and time; she always seemed like a Ingmar Bergman actress who accidentally ended up in Hollywood, especially in the close-ups. There's much of her performance that's great, but it's her close-ups really stand out; she was often compared with Marilyn Monroe, and other sex symbols of the time, but what they could do with their bodies, she could do as well, but she could it even better with just her face.

"Days of Wine and Roses" originated as an hour-long teleplay on "Playhouse 90", some even still argue that that version with Cliff Robertson and Piper Laurie and directed by the great John Frankenheimer is even better than the movie. Both are quite great, but I think Lemmon and Remick's work really make this special. The music enhances everything too, of course I can't mention Blake Edwards without discussing his longtime composer Henry Mancini. Him and the also great Johnny Mercer won Oscars for the title song. That title comes from the Ernest Dowson poem "Vitae Summa Brevis...", which foreshadows that "They are not long, the days of wine and roses, out of a misty dream, our path emerges for awhile, then closes, within a dream." I'm admittedly not a drinker myself, but I have been around a lot of drinkers, and no matter how they are, drunk or sober later on, they do seem to have a dreamlike quality in their inflections when they talk of those nights and events that might've been compromised through their boozy delirium. And I can imagine romances can feel the same way, especially when that's when/where they start. In the old days of film, if there was a couple drinking all the time, it was more like a fun prop or eccentricity, they were like Nick and Nora Charles in "The Thin Man" movies, but that's the thing, people rarely begin as drunks alone. It's kinda stunning that there weren't more films about drunk couples before "Days of Wine and Roses", and even today, alcoholism in film is usually portrayed as a singular, solemn experience; off-the-top-of-my-head, I guess the James Ponsoldt indy "Smashed" with Mary Elizabeth Winstead" is one of the few others that deals with an alcoholic couple, and even that's about one person struggling to get sober, but their aren't many others off-hand.

"Days of Wine and Roses" got this dynamic more right than the rest did. As much as I adore those other films,- like, you never feel empathy in Ray Milland's struggles in "The Lost Weekend", because 'cause he's so hell-bent on having more drinks, but also, 'cause it is so personally insular; it's more about how an alcoholic feels as oppose to the lives of others he's effecting with their drinking. "Days of Wine and Roses" is all about how drinking effects everybody's lives in the film. That's why this one still holds up and remains so powerful, we might not all have been alcoholics, but we've all seen and known how alcoholism effects others, and how those others' alcoholism can effect us; that's why it remains so powerful even today.

It might have been nice to see Blake Edwards make more serious and dramatic movies, but considering this is what he comes up with when he does do it, I totally get why he would gladly spend most of the rest of his life just trying to make us laugh instead.

THOUGHTS FROM THE "MIAMI VICE" TWITTER DRAMA AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, WHY I STRUGGLE WITH THE IDEA OF FAVORITES! (Eh, fair warning, this article goes places, and gets a little more personal than I normally wish to get, but, if you ever really wanted to know some favorite films of mine, they're at the end, but, it's a struggle for me....) )

2024-08-27T22:52:00.000-07:00

I had mostly been staying out of the Internet Film Discourse lately, but I do occasionally peak back in and look around. And apparently there had been a surreal and strange discussion on Twitter regarding the film "Miami Vice".

Yeah, that one, the film, "Miami Vice". Apparently, somebody on Twitter talked about showing his girlfriend his favorite movie. It devolved from there, and the point I first saw it, was a FB friend, who's a critic himself, posting a picture of a tweet that reads, and I'm gonna quote, but not name the person here:

"As a queer Black woman if you tell that "Miami Fucking Vice" is your favorite movie, I'm DEFINITELY going 2 assume you are a meathead heterosexual with GODAWFUL tastes in movies. Your fake offense is giving Black Woman witch hunt & your bedazzled Klan hoods are showing."

I'm not even gonna pretend to try to dissect, or explain, whatever the hell that was. My only thought regarding it, just seeing this tweet of a tweet about the subject was "Wait, somebody's favorite film is 'Miami Vice'"?

Frankly this thought, just-, well, I didn't believe it. And it's not that I think "Miami Vice" is a bad movie, I actually thought it was good myself, but "favorite" movie, of anybody? No, why would it be? It's not interesting or memorable enough to be anybody's favorite. And if you do like it, than you'd probably just, like the show, 'cause the movie actually did a good job or recreating the feeling of the series, and if you like, the action crime stuff, there's too many other better, more interesting films you can have as your favorites. I didn't get either, meathead heterosexual or godawful tastes in movies, but I did come up limited knowledge or exposure to films, 'cause the only thing that made sense to me is that, this person hasn't seen a lot of movies yet and for some reason, his limited viewing experience, has somehow led to "Miami Vice" being the best of a weak bunch. So, I tweeted back, as much.

I wrote: I'm not a queer black woman, but if somebody tells me that "Miami Vice" is their favorite movie, I'm gonna presume that person has only seen like four movies, and got really bad advice on which ones to watch first. I mean what other scenario is there?

I was a little taken aback that my friend pushed back on me on this. I literally stared at the screen for like about an hour and a half, but he thought my declaration was far worst than the original tweets that started all this discourse, and-, that's when I finally just decided to just dive into this ordeal, 'cause I had to figure this out. So, I looked through it.

https://www.distractify.com/p/miami-vice-twitter-drama

The guy who claims his favorite movie is "Miami Vice" is Brandon Streussnig. I think I've read a few of his reviews and/or articles before; he's an freelancer who writes reviews for several websites and magazines on film, with a heavy focus on action films. He's also, according to his Twitter, he's a (frustrated sigh) Baytriot. For those who don't know, that's a colloquialism for being a Michael Bay fan. So..., that crime against humanity aside, uh, I'm not particularly a fan, but he talked about introducing his "favorite film" to his girlfriend, as some kind of...- well, I guess yeah, that can be, a big moment. It kinda does feel shitty that somebody would take that and make some kind of political assertion which was definitely not what I was trying to do; I just wanted the smartass observation and then go on with my life. But somebody commented on it, bringing in, a lot of baggage, and made a lot of jumps and leaps, apparently she really hated that movie and hates people who like that movie, which...- I mean,- I'm sorry her declarations are so outlandish that I don't even want to acknowledge them. Frankly, I think my original swarmy comment relates perfectly to her as well, if you're somebody who hates "Miami Vice" that much, I'd think you haven't seen a lot of truly awful terrible movies either.

You see,- really, what strikes me weird, is just having any passionate feelings about the film. Until this was even mentioned, I barely remembered that "Miami Vice" film even existing, and again, I like it, I think it was a good movie, but I haven't thought about it since it came out and barely thought about it then, and really, if there is something particularly vicious about my comment, it's not really against any of these people's choices for favorite movie, it's that severe reaction to pieces of media, that, frankly is what I was really reacting too. It's been on my mind lately, 'cause as all this was happening, I was in the middle of watching the fourth "John Wick" movie.

Yeah, that one. I'll write my review eventually, but- I'm sorry, I don't understand the popularity of this franchise. I've been trying, but-, and again I don't hate these films, I just, have never understood why anybody would react to them. Positively or negatively! What is appealing about this that you can't get better, or different, somewhere else. and yet, "John Wick" keeping being popular and everybody keeps overly-praising them, and I'm just like,- they're-, they're fine! What the fuck!? I kinda had a similar reaction to "Man of Steel"; I feel like I was the only person who had a fairly neutral position on that film. I saw it, wrote my review, and then forgot it right away. And then, like a goldfish turning around and being surprised by the little plastic castle, every time I turned around, it seemed everybody had a "Hot Take", and it hurt my head even trying to remember stuff from that film. That's why, I felt puzzled by the choice of "Miami Vice" as a favorite,.... I guess I'm warming up to that possibility of somebody liking it enough to make enough it their "favorite", but in the moment....-

(Long pause, depressed sigh)

Actually, no.... Honestly, that's not-, (Sigh) That's not even it really. When my friend said that my declaration was worst than the original, thing,...-, all that, he said that, "...If 'Miami Vice' is your favorite movie, than 'Miami Vice' is your favorite movie."

And I stared at that statement for hours. Like, I know, logically, he's right, but consciously it was not going through my head. Like, I was just doing, I'm trying to do mental gymnastics and jump through hoops trying to explain how I could think that, or perhaps, how I could possibly argue that....

Look, I'm lying to you all. This isn't an article about Streussnig or "Miami Vice", or "John Wick", or even about how movies can get severe reactions to others when I find almost nothing from them... That's just the jumping off, catalyst of what got me thinking about what I'm really gonna write about, and to be honest, this isn't even a good catalyst to bring this up, but...:

(Deep calming breath)

See, here's the thing: in all my years of running this bog, being a film student, filmmaker, screenwriter, etc., all that time, I've devoted to films and filmmaking there is no question that I fucking hate more than "What is your favorite film?" I have no idea how to answer that question. I just-, I don't get the question. I don't have, "favorites",- or at least, I don't think, "favorites" have any,- ugh, I don't even know how to put this, I don't see how favorites, relate to, the person. Does that make sense? Like, I don't think the answer to that, ultimately says anything about you. Or, at least, I don't believe think it should at least. Which is why that fucking question pisses me off so much, 'cause that's what they mean, when they say that. They're trying to figure out, your personality or something; like they're trying to see if their astrological signs match, and- like why?! Why would you think that?! Why would you think that matters? If anything, I'd be worried if people like the same stuff I like, and I do mean, "Like" in this case. Not, think is good, I'm talking about "stuff I like" here, and I do distinguish those two, I don't know why others don't, but even still, frankly I hate the stuff I like.

I know that sounds weird, but I wouldn't want to be around those who relates that well to me. You see, that's why I don't interpret this as something that's like, a good things, "favorites", to me, mean, limiting oneself. Narrowing your view and perspective; it's making your world smaller. It's making your perception of others smaller. It always baffles me when I hear fans, talking about how they meet people and relate to them through similar extreme, narrow, interests, like what they're favorite things are and what they focus on.

I don't believe, what I like, should then, infer what I am, nor do I think it actually does and to me, that's something that happens way too much. And it's a frustrating belief to have, especially when you are somebody who looks to seek out more and different, especially in art, and you constantly see everybody drifting towards the same shit. Frankly, it makes me starts hating the stuff they drift towards more, whether I actually hate it or not.

Alright, again, this isn't an anti-fan blog of mine, I have plenty of those, but it is weird; am I only one who does think that this is so weird, that we do brandish ourselves, based on the stuff we like that other create? That we just naturally make that apart of us, and everybody around you just accepts it, and I don't like, just being accepted or felt like I'm understood based on shit like that. It feels like a pose. No matter what answer I feel like I can give to that question, even if I did have an answer, I feel like the girl that dresses like a punk rocker 'cause all her friends dress like that too.

So, there. That's why, this bugs me, 'cause I don't have favorites. I have a critical analytical eye, and it bugs me when that's not the dominant way of observing stuff. It makes it seem like nobody gives a damn whether anything is good or not, and frankly, if you can't see or express why something is good, than I don't care why you like it. Like, is a germ of nature and nurture combinations, the randomness of discovery and chance; it's a side-effect of how we viewed the world, when the world was indeed, new and limiting to us. Seeing the rest of the world, still take to that as the default, always comes off as a simplistic and narrow view. To me, favorite equates to limiting, and frankly, I don't get why so many would limit themselves with things like favorites, especially when he realize exactly how subjective and bias something like that can be, when there is a whole world of art out there.

I can definitely see how some of you might be reading this and thinking, that this is all bullshit. Another justification for anti-social behavior and that the unwillingness of a so-called (finger quotes) "film critic" and "screenwriter" to actually be willing to admit that they indeed personally like something, that they have favorites, is somehow the fault of the rest of the world, and not a personal psychoanalytical issue, that I'm just using this as a guard that hides my own personal psychological neuroses that get in my way of actually being able to relate to others as though they're human beings 'cause I'm not able to get over my own paralyzing social anxiety disorders, well,- I'm sorry to disappoint, but, that couldn't be more,...- correct....

It's-, it's-um...- tsk... yeah. That's..., that's what it is, isn't it?

INT. LONELY APARTMENT-NIGHT

Lights go dark surrounding ME, on his computer. He takes a lot of slow deep breaths, while he clinches his hands lightly above his nose, covering his eyes, realizing what he has to do. He sobs, he tries to hold it in, but some cries come out, his eyes slightly tear up. He changes the font and bold on his blog, knowing, he has to continue.

It's been rough these last few years for me. I-um, while I was moving, I recently found some of my-eh, my old child psychologist notes. I don't know if I've ever actually read them before, but- they painted a picture of me. You see, my autistic brother is still in the hospital, and we're waiting for him getting a permanent placement. He's younger than me, and-eh, I guess, growing up, we-eh,- it became more and more clear we'd had to focus so much time and energy, medical and otherwise on him, over-the-years, that-eh, we didn't really get around to, continuing, getting me the help to work through/on my issues. I don't even, really think I realize they were issues, or problems...- or at least, that they were as concerning to the people and loved ones around me, as they were. Now, I read it, and it's like, "Oh shit!", I guess that really was concerning.... They said a lot of things, some of it, I'm not sure about, other things though, have felt really prescient.

One of them is that, I have a hard time being able to be understood by others, and boy, have I felt that lately. I do remember, having a really hard time, sometimes,- I think we thought it was an accent or speech impediment. I think I just thought everybody was using me as the butt of a joke, but maybe not. I think that's why, it does feel like, I'm over-expressing myself, using so many words and all...-, 'cause what's a natural feeling to me, is just, not really often a feeling others connected to,- and-eh, it always felt like I needed to keep, searching and finding the words a way to express these feelings so they could understand, and I think people, especially when they're kids, they can be mean when they don't understand you....

(Frustrated sigh, holding back tears)

And it makes it,- frankly, all those, bad experiences, and the struggles to connect and be understood by others, and when you can't always do it, frankly, it makes you not want to be personal. It makes you skeptical of those who are, and all the aspects of humanity that are needed to connect. It makes you cynical; it makes you critical. It makes, those failures you have when you do try connect even worst, 'cause-, you know, that your struggles to even try, are so much more difficult for you, and when, it doesn't work, you feel so defeated. When you feel like, you're trying, three times harder than you ever naturally would, and then you get told that you're not meeting them halfway, or that you're doing it wrong still..., and you're just stumbling to try to figure this out...- UGH!

(Holding back tears)

Oh god,- why is this...? Why is this so hard,- why is this so much harder for me? WHY IS IT, SO GODDAMNED INGRAINED IN ME, that what's natural and normal for others, is something that my mind and body, rejects so easily!!!!!!

(Extremely long pause)

I don't know why, certain aspects of, revealing myself to others, being open about myself, is so-eh,- is such a struggle, but it is. It just is....

(Deep breath)

I wish I was able to have a favorite film that I'd be nervous about showing someone I care about....

INT. LONELY APARTMENT-DAYBREAK

Lights slowly turn back on. He looks around as the room brightens around him. After a moment, he motions to switch the font back, but then stops, and decides against it.

Okay, let me...- let me, re-introduce myself. I'm David Baruffi, and I have lots of favorite films. I really don't think that, tsk, they mean as much to me or represent me and my-, whatever.... I don't know how to describe it, but I don't think my favorite films mean as much personally to me, as other peoples' favorite films seem to mean as much, personally to them, and frankly I don't even really, fully get why they do mean so much to those others.

That said, here's some of my favorite films and why:

Let's start with "Casablanca".

I know it's a cliche answer, but goddamn it, I've spent literal weeks of my life, where I just did nothing but watch "Casablanca" on a loop, 'cause I couldn't fathom how their could be a better movie than this, and if left to my own devices there's a chance I'd still be watching it on a loop. It was my Grandmother's favorite too, but I love it; I quote it regularly, and it is so damn quotable. It really is just a perfect, brilliant script.

Next, I'm gonna cheat and go with three films. The "Three Colors Trilogy."

I could probably pick any Kieslowski film, he's probably my favorite director. I even put "The Decalogue" on my Top Ten of all-time list, and I go back and forth, but even few years I need to rewatch the Three Colors Trilogy. "Blue," "White" and "Red". They don't reexamine how I look at film, but reevaluate how I look at emotions. How I look, random events, and connect the physical and the spiritual worlds. I'm not normally that religiously inclined, to think things are so connected, but watching his films and these ones makes me feel like they are, and frankly I do love that feeling.

What else. Um...- I guess "Back to the Future".

I feel stupid even saying that though, "Back to the Future" is everybody's favorite movie. Have you ever met anybody who hated it, or wasn't overly-fascinated by it? No, that person doesn't exist.

Alright, here's a hot take, Frank Capra's best movie, is "Arsenic and Old Lace".

A lot of this is that, I'm not terribly big on most of his other great films, but I love comedy, and few movies make me laugh consistently more than "Arsenic and Old Lace". I also love theater, and typically film people aren't supposed to like movies that are basically just film productions of a play, but I wholeheartedly disagree with that. I think some of the best movies of all-time feel like you're watching a play, and the best ones should make you want to see the play live, and man, I hope I do see a decent live production of "Arsenic..." one day.

In that same vein, I tend to love movies that take place mostly in one location. Like, "The Breakfast Club".

Every time I think that one might be a little outdated, I rewatch it, and yeah, there's some issues with it, but, I don't know, it still gets at something for me. It feels weird that their wasn't a movie like that before.

I like that, I like "12 Angry Men".

I liked the teleplay on that one before the film even. Um, I love the Before Trilogy.

Those are more locations, but still, I like conversations in intimate settings. For instance, I don't think this one comes up a lot, "Dinner Rush".

I'm only posting the trailers, but somebody post the whole movie on YouTube if you want to look it up, this is underrated classic. The whole film takes place in an Italian restaurant. And, yeah, maybe me being an Italian-American means that a lot of my favorite films, have some Italian aspects to them....

Yeah, I can't pretend isn't something that me and my family have referenced all the time. I do love this film; I used to keep some framed portraits of both "The Godfather" and "The Godfather Part II". My family even started back east and then left out west for Nevada. We mostly came from South Jersey/Philadelphia area, so, "Rocky" is also important to me.

(Shrugs) I am amazed how even the most cynical people go into "Rocky" and think they're gonna hate it. It's probably my favorite action movie, but it's also such a great love story. That's the Philly side of me. The Jersey side of me, that also loves movies that take place in the same place, loves, "Clerks."

I like most Kevin Smith comedies, but "Clerks." hits close to home for me. Although, I guess it depends on the day, I might prefer "Dogma" depending on my mood. (Shrugs) Let's see, well, I can't leave this one out I guess.

This is more or less my love of Looney Tunes as much as anything, but man, this movie's still great. The studios keep trying to go backwards and recreate it now, but you're never seeing a movie like "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" again. Maybe this is why all the superhero crossovers have never satisfied me, I saw Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny crossover, why should I be impressed that Superman and Batman are together, or whomever? Still, I've talked about many of these films before, but here's one I haven't.

See, I don't know if this is actually a "favorite", or just a movie I have a deep connection too; I watched this film on a loop pretty constantly. I think I kept expecting it to be a cartoon, 'cause the opening credits were animated and the cover of the VHS had Donald Duck masks, but eh, "Ruthless People" actually holds up pretty well.

(Sigh) I don't know, is that enough? Is it too much? I can't tell. I can go one for hours. I either have too many or none at all in my mind.

Honestly, just doing this makes me realize that, and I hate to reiterate it but, yeah, I just don't like favorites. Not that I hate my favorites, I just don't like favorites in general. I thought I would like them more doing this, being this open,- trying to be more open about myself, but I don't like getting excited for stuff like that. Well-, let me rephrase that, I don't like, "Me", getting excited for stuff like that. I don't like how I am when I'm like that,

I like critically looking at things. I like looking at art and trying to determine what they were trying to do, whether it worked or not, was it a good idea, was it the best idea, etc. etc. I don't get joy out of my personal favorites; I don't think it's noteworthy that I've spent weeks of my life just watching "Casablanca", or that, I spent much of my childhood watching old "SNL" reruns, or whatever it was.... I could talk for an hour on "Smokey and the Bandit," too but, is that something special about me, or just a side effect of how I grew up or what I was exposed to?

(Shrugs)

Perhaps it might be special to others, but it's not to me, maybe it was at one time,... and perhaps that lack of excitement is why I do have trouble finding somebody to share my "The West Wing" DVD collections with.

(Sigh)

I'm not sure entirely why I'm like this, but I am.

But, I'm trying.... It's a start. A re-start, if you will.

MOVIE REVIEWS #205: "ARGENTINA, 1985", "DON'T LOOK UP", "ATTICA", "LOVE AND MONSTERS", "THIS IS GWAR", "THE PEZ OUTLAW", "PETITE FILLE (aka LITTLE GIRL)", and "REWIND"

2024-07-08T12:28:00.000-07:00

Every day, I cross the Mojave. Sometimes I cross the desert back and forth, multiple times each day. I'm not the only one, there are several of us, every day, we travel. Me, I usually go by bus, but there's a lot of walking as well. The heat is frustrating, but I'm used to it; it's really when the weather shifts too rapidly that gets to me.

That's mostly how my life has been lately. Right now, I'm living in a weekly, while I wait for my brother to be placed in a permanent home. Almost every day I go down to the hospital to see him. Sometimes for a few hours, sometimes for a few minutes as I got to get to work after. It feels like I'm always on the road, not just literally, but physically; it takes a toll. Anyway. that's what I'm going through now. I guess it's strange to be in my late thirties and to say that it's the first time living on your own, but that's my situation. If I think too long about how rough it's been these last couple years, I start crying. How rough it's still going to be. Eventually, once my brother is placed, I'll find a place near him, for a little while; I'll need to be near him while he and everyone else adjusts.

I wish I could say that in the meantime, I'm enjoying watching movies and reviewing them, or at least watching other entertainment and all, but frankly I haven't even really had the time for that like I'd like to. Like I said, every day I cross the Mojave. Even around people all the time, I can help constantly thinking that this desert can seem pretty deserted right now, and I wish my mind was less occupied. I always thought this would be the time that I would buckle down, work on my writings, my movie ideas, my thoughts, but clearly, based on how rarely it seems that I ever post these things here anymore, that's not the case. I still have my GoFundMe, I'm not getting much from it, even though I can use and deeply appreciate even the smallest donations right now, but I'm just leaving it open until everything is actually settled for all of us. Clearly that's not right now. In some ways it will clearly never be, but my life is in flux right now and has been for awhile. I wish that my troubles and issues don't paint my reviews and articles when I do actually find the time to watch movies and publish my thoughts, but it feels like everything I do is awash in my own struggles, so if my reviews do seem, a little bit too pre-occupied recently, that's why. Perhaps even keeping this blog in times like these at all is a Sisyphean endeavor, but frankly, especially now, I need to be writing something.

So, let's get to the reviews.

ARGENTINA, 1985 (2023) Director: Santiago Mitre

⭐⭐⭐⭐

I decided to google, "Last Nazi to be put on trial",- honestly that's something I occasionally do randomly anyway whenever anything like this comes up, 'cause it shows just how long, hard and difficult it genuinely is to use the justice system in order to achieve, well-, justice, for some of our most heinous, violent, insurrectionist, genocidal parts of our history. If you're at all still curious, eh, it was, last year. 2023, they prosecuted and convicted a 98-year-old man was a guard at a concentration camp, and he was prosecuted on 3,300 counts of aiding and abetting murder. Yeah, we are still finding and convicted Nazis from their crimes during World War II. (Look, I'm not saying, we should be backing Israel at all times, we definitely and probably shouldn't be some times, like, probably now, but-eh, it's not like they weren't the victims of the most abhorrent and egregious genocide in history, and that's still so recent that we're still prosecuting for that, not to mention every other atrocity they've been the victim of.)

That said, I probably shouldn't be so curious about it, because, there's been several other horrible government-led atrocities, because since then, there's been, so many, many, many others. Argentina for instance, between 1976 and 1983 was run by the U.S.-backed dictatorship, the National Reorganization Process. They were the last of a long line of military dictatorships in Argentina, and the Juntas as they were called, may have been the most vicious. They were the most recent, and when Argentina became a democracy, the first round of prosecution and trials began.

If you don't know about Argentina's recent history,- um,... I don't know a lot myself, but I do know that, a lot of people went missing. In fact, nearly every other time I happen to see a recent Argentinean film, it feels like a story about this time period and regime and how gruesome they were. (Just to be clear, there are plenty of fun Argentinean films that aren't about this, "Nine Queens" or "Wild Tales" for instance, but still...) Short story is that there were a lot of "forced disappearances" to quote the Wikipedia, and actually, in most cases, that could've been the best scenario, 'cause there were worst things, look up what happened to a lot of pregnant women during this time. "Argentina, 1985" is about the trials of the Juntas, the first ones anyway, the ones in power. This was the first time in history that a Democratically elected government investigated and prosecuted leaders of a military dictatorship, and in case you're wondering, this is something that also, like wrangling up Nazis for prosecution, that's in fact, still going on.

"Argentina, 1985" tells this story from the prosecution side. It's basically a straight-up historical courtroom procedural, even shot in many of the same courts and locations of the actual trials and tribunals. Told through the perspective of the chief prosecutor Julia Cesar Strassera (Ricardo Duran), the movie focuses mainly on the struggle of the prosecution as they tried to compete with the high-end attorneys that the defense had, as well as document as many of the stories of the disappeared as they could from their families and loved ones. This actually required finding college law graduates to fill their team, since they were the only ones without a reputation they needed to protect which made the more well-known and expensive lawyers back out of the case. And the case itself was a struggle, it even started with a bomb threat.

"Argentina, 1985" is best when it's down to the story of the actual dynamics of the how they build and construct a case, and how difficult it is. It reminded of other similar procedurals like "Ghosts of Mississippi" or "A Civil Action", only on an even higher and riskier scale. The scene with all the Juntas outright refusing to recognize the courts' jurisdiction when getting arraigned was frightening. It's also stirring how much dictatorships of all kinds tend to take on a cult-like vibe. "Argentina, 1985" is an important albeit, way too recent history lesson, and probably should be a good tool when it becomes necessary to prosecute others who's misused and abused their powers while in office, whether democratically elected or not. It is perhaps nothing unique or special in terms of the narrative or beats, but it does them really well and tells a story that, unfortunately might be more prescient now than ever, and is unfortunately gonna remain prescient for awhile.

DON'T LOOK UP (2021) Director: Adam McKay

⭐⭐1/2

You know, there actually is a comet that could potentially hit us. And soon, 12 years from now they think, at it's current projections. It's not gonna completely destroy us, but it's pretty damn big. They think it'll slam into the Pacific Ocean, and cause a giant ripple effect that would do things, like completely erode the entire California coastline, among other coastlines. I've seen Neil Degrasse Tyson even talk about this. It's only about a 1 in 40,000 chance it'll happen, and there's backup plans in place. Some want to send up ships to run next to the comet and move it out of it's current orbit. Some just want to blow it up. The point I'm making is that, for a movie, this obnoxious, it's not exactly that far off.

"Don't Look Up" was by far the most controversial and divisive movie of the year in 2021. The people who loved it really loved it, it got a few Oscar nominations, including sneaking into Best Picture. Yet, it also made a lot of Worst Films lists too. A lot of people didn't like it in fact. I hadn't seen it, but I knew people who really loved it and thought it was hilarious. I heard the song from it and thought that was hilarious. And I loved most of Adam McKay's work; he's been the preeminent comedy director for awhile now, dating back to "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy" and I've liked his previous forays into telling stories of political and cultural importance a lot. "The Big Short", about the housing crisis that led to the Great Recession was my pick for best film of the year when that one came out, and I liked "Vice", his biopic on Dick Chaney, quite a bit as well. That easily could've also made my Best list that year. That said, I haven't liked everything he's been doing lately.

I might be in the minority on this one, but I didn't really get the appeal of "Succession". His highly-acclaimed HBO series; I'm not saying it's a bad show or anything, it's not, but I just, don't really get the mass appeal or all the critical acclaim it's gotten. Like, seriously, all those Emmys? Like, I get it, the people who are in the mansions on the hill and all that are just as ignorant, stupid and fucked up as we are, and they're all essentially greedy assholes.... It just felt so cynical;.... I have a friend who does love "Succession" and he compares it to "Shameless", another show that I appreciate way more than I actually like, and he's right, it's basically "Shameless" if everything took place in the Getty Villa or Hearst Castle, but I don't know, I feel like having too many of these truly vile and cynical takes on life, all aspects of life, you end up just filtering out the actual aspects of important stuff, like, media, and the government, and y'know, the complete and total destruction of the planet, and make everything seem so...- I don't know, perhaps in a different time and place I can appreciate this, but yeah, "Don't Look Up", is...- it doesn't work.

It worked in the beginning, but then Meryl Streep's President character came onscreen, and I just had several questions. One, what is she playing? Two, why? And I'm not talking performance, she's Meryl Streep, she's great in this role, I'm talking, why this character? In fact, that's kinda the issue with the whole film, there's a lot of things that, he's making fun of here, and there's a lot to make fun of, but I don't really get why he's throwing in all this stuff he's making fun of. Like, why is this President, such a locust of a human being that she's easily bought off and manipulated, basically into selling the office to all her friends, and being the literal epitome of a ditzy YouTube influencer? I'm not saying, this couldn't be funny in another context, but why in this movie are these characters portrayed like this here? Even in "Dr. Strangelove...", Peter Sellers didn't play the President like he was a buffoon. Is she the female Trump? Is she, a-eh...- Hillary-type? Is she a Lauren Boebert-satire? I guess that's the closest I can come up with, but- I don't know what this is, why it's here or what is it commentating on?

It got me asking another question? Who was this role originally for? I couldn't find that out, but, I could guess that say a Maya Rudolph might find a different take on this character? But, anyway,- that's what ultimately got me to the real problem with this movie...- it's in the wrong medium. "Don't Look Up", isn't a movie; it's a bunch of sketches....

Adam McKay was the head writer of "SNL" during much of the late '90s, and he was and is a good writer. Even this movie, is pretty well-written, but it's not written as a movie; it's written as a lot of long sketches.

Like, imagine, the opening sequence, Dibiasky, (Jennifer Lawrence) finds the comet, realizes how big it is, informs her professor, Dr. Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) and he does the calculations, and realizes that the comet, is too big and is heading directly towards us, and everybody completely freaks out! That's a great sketch idea! And if you saw that sketch, for like five minutes on "SNL" one night, you'd like that sketch. Let's say, later on in the episode, or perhaps, the next week, they continue that sketch, and then, these two characters, are being transported to the White House, to tell the President, and they're freaking out about having to tell the President it's the end of the world! That would also be awesome!

Then, the next weeks, you'd see them in the President's office, trying to describe to her all the problems, and she's not getting in, and there's her cronies trying to usher them out or call them down....

For those who don't know, this isn't a new idea, a lot of older variety shows had sketches that actually did play out like small little series, with long-form narratives in the middle of TV shows, that you had to keep coming. Probably the most famous one is "The Family" sketches from "The Carol Burnett Show" that eventually evolved into their own series, "Mama's Family", but it's older than that; I think "The Honeymooners" to a degree qualifies for this, and especially in their early days, "SNL" would have a few of these over the years. Even kids variety series did stuff like this; "Rocky & Bullwinkle" were great at this, and from my childhood, I turned into every episode "Square One" just to watch that week's "Mathnet" episode. The more I watched "Don't Look Up", the more it felt like this should've been a very long drawn-out series-of-sketches during an episode of "SNL"; the weekly, "A comet's coming to destroy the world" sketch, the one that airs before the second musical performance by Ariana Grande but after the sketch that parodied how rancidly preposterous and chipper the early cable news show segments and hosts are. Until, that sketch crosses over when Mindy and Dibiasky go on one of those shows. Dibiasky freaks out by all the artifice that she becomes a meme, and Dr. Mindy gets sucked into the world by Brie Everhart (Cate Blanchett) the news reporter, and eventually gets brought into the President's sphere, under the guise of being able to destroy the comet, until she's influenced, by, another weird character that only makes sense if you imagine this as an SNL sketch, Peter Isherwell (Mark Rylance). Mark Rylance is playing, some kind of Steve Jobs meets Elon Musk, meets, I-don't know, some kind of faux-deity-type, uh,- honestly, he actually kinda reminds of the Heaven's Gate guy-, the cult, not the film.... I get that he's an amalgam character, and he would make sense in a sketch. The black turtleneck, the talking about advancements in computing in terms of evolution towards the future, meanwhile he's just as money-hungry and bloodthirsty a CEO as anyone else, and he sees money potential in the comet hitting the planet.

See this is why the sketch of Dibiasky, frustrated and given up on life, thrown off the project for speaking the truth, hanging out with a bunch of teenage skateboarders outside at night so funny, countdown is coming, and she realizes how stupid everybody is, and just starts making out with the flirty teenage dirtbag Yule (Timothee Chalamet), is funny. There's a funny story here, there's even sharp satire here. It just doesn't come across like that, because this is the wrong medium for the story. In a sketch, these scenes that would normally be funny and sharp takes on the state of the world and ourselves, our government,- given a big budget and no benefit of the studio audience laughing along,- hypothetically, I guess they could be funny, but they come off as cringy. It gets better by the end of the movie, the closer to the apocalypse we get, but man, it takes a long time to get there. In sketch form, when you're not dealing with some of these characters for achingly minutes on end, they can be more palatable, but this movie dragged in the meantime. What you end up getting are really confusing and conflicting caricatures on the government and pop culture,- just things that don't-, they just don't feel right in this cinematic world.

This is especially damning towards the end when it does start to work more as movie. I like the endings and how it both feels like other apocalyptic movies as well as undercuts them. The ending in particular feels a bit like "WALL-E" if the idiots who destroyed the planet actually survived, that's kinda clever. There's great performances here too, I like DiCaprio and Lawrence in particular. And that's the thing, I have no doubt that McKay, could tell this story straight, even dramatically if he wanted to; he can make "Fail-Safe" or "Dr. Strangelove...". Clearly he went more for the latter, but it's a matter of the choices he made, and I think he could've made better choices. More cinematic comedic choices, instead of sketch choices. He made them in the filmmaking. I've been going back-to-forth trying to figure out what film he's trying to make. I've mentioned "Dr. Strangelove..." a few times, as I was watching the movie I kept thinking about "Wag the Dog", but that's not the right comparison either; there's great satire in that film, but..., eh, maybe something like "The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!", that's an underrated little Cold War-era comedic gem, but nah, it doesn't feel like that either. No, the movie this really feels like is "1941". It feels like Spielberg's bloated attempt at an over-the-top political comedy. That movie is just too big and overblown, but the thing also was that, Spielberg isn't a natural comedic director, McKay is. It's kinda the opposite problem but the result is the same, the material's either too small for the budget or the comedy's not big enough for the filmmaking, and either way it's just too long. This movie, could've been cut by like half-an-hour and I think it would've been more appreciated,- or not even cutting, just make it go quicker. (Snaps fingers) Have more snappy comedy moments and quick-witted dialogue, go all "His Girl Friday" with it. McKay's serious films were paced better before,- I'm stunned this movie got an Editing nomination in hindsight, but perhaps they just worked with what they gave him?

"Don't Look Up" is polarizing. It's polarizing me even, I can barely tell if I like it or not. I like the message, I generally like the messenger, but eh,- maybe in twenty years, if we're still around, I'll look at it again and regain a certain appreciation for it; some comedies do in fact age better with time, but eh, once I, and perhaps you, start realizing that this movie would play better as a series of sketches like I did, you really can't unsee that the biggest problem with the movie, is that, it is indeed a movie. It really does showcase the missteps taken in trying to take this is up from sketch ideas to movie more. E for effort and I won't begrudge anybody for liking it, but yeah, this needed a few more drafts and maybe more than that, just a different way of approaching this material. This could've and probably should've been funnier, and it just wasn't. Maybe fewer potshots at the vapidness of the culture at large, some of those jokes kinda felt mean-spirited and not necessary too. It's a good idea, good cast, good filmmaker, good writers, I'd even say it's good material, it just unfortunately made way-too-many of the wrong choices, approaching that material.

ATTICA (2021) Directors: Traci A. Curry & Stanley Nelson

⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2

Back in 2003-ish, back when the American Film Institute still made that annual lists every year, they did one for the Top 100 Movie quotes of all-time. I remember not particularly liking that list, and I suspect if they did that one now, there'd be more changes than you'd think, but I do recall that on that list, at number 86 in fact, was simply the words, "Attica! Attica!" It's from the movie "Dog Day Afternoon". I wrote about that film before, it's in my Canon of Film. I talk about how "Attica!" has essentially become the iconic quote and scene from that movie, as angry, obsessed and scared man has failed to rob a bank, succeeded at creating a hostage crisis and becoming a star on the New York television for the day, at he manages to keep the police at bay, by screaming "Attica! Attica!" at them in front of the crowd and cameras all around. I wrote about how "Attica" was a successful prison uprising in 1971, at the federal prison, that was a cornerstone moments for the Prisoners' Rights Movement.

You see, that's not actually, why he was yelling "Attica!" It's true, that, for a time, the prisoners took over Attica. They took most of the staff as hostages, and insisted on their demands of better treatment and conditions to be met. And in a way, a little while, they did accomplish their goals, not just in Attica, but statewide. A lot of them got reversed, and while I say they accomplished their goals....- well, it's because the protestors were massacred by the cops. That's why he was yelling it.

Thankfully, "Attica" this documentary by Stanley Nelson, doesn't even mention that film. Instead, it focused in intensely on simply detailing from as many of the survivors and archival footage he can find, to just go through the events as they happened during those four days. And what happened after. The intensity of the film is striking as the events seem to get constantly gloomier and gloomier for the prisoners as they go on. How, at first, they were getting treated better, and the police were negotiating, but after one of the hostages died, all bets were off. No more shot at getting immunity for the uprising. Governor Rockefeller, on Nixon's advice, wouldn't come down to talk with the prisoners.

Then, the massacre happened. It was reported at first that the prisoners had murdered the hostages, but even of the hostages that were dead, most of them were killed by the cops during the invasion. The autopsy revealed that the cops were the ones who were just going to kill everybody if they could, under the backdrop of the right-wing law & order culture believing that the criminals had to be the ones that were just complaining and worst off. "Attica" is a quiet sobering documentary that recreates the events of those days from every perspective and the successfully shows all the perspectives, of those days. The media, which documented it surprisingly soberly at the time, those officers and the loved ones of those who were held hostage, the police, who were at first conflicted, before eventually moving into action. It's the kind of movie that you can listen to like a book on tape and imagine the horrors, but gets more powerful when combined with the archived images. "Attica!" can easily become a forgotten footnote, a punchline in recent years, and frankly it needs to be more remembered and documented. In recent years, prisons are arguably worst than ever, especially with privatized prisons, but it's still bad in regularly and frankly, most of the rest of the modern world has caught up and realized that dehumanizing prisoners doesn't work. A lot of them don't have the issue of race often separating prisoners and guard or prisoner and society though. I don't know if "Attica!" will naturally make everything better, but it's good to make sure that everything is documented like this so that we all know what actually happened.

LOVE AND MONSTERS (2020) Director: Michael Matthews

⭐⭐⭐1/2

Eh, I gotta be honest, as much as I can appreciate these kind of quirky, youthful, apocalyptic stories that have come about in recent years, and I usually like most of them admittedly, eh, I'm really getting tired of them too. Actually, I'm just generally tired of apocalyptic stories in general. Every time I see one, I feel like it leans into our worst tendencies. Our cynical nature that everything is too far gone and we're just laying down and accepting the inevitable as opposed to actually trying to envision a better world. I don't want apocalyptic tales of survival; I want futuristic stories of a better world that we've made and cultivated, through visionary technology and the advancement of humanitarian ideals. I want us to be inspired by what we can create or become and not doomed to settle; I find these stories so cynical, and frankly, along with all the over-abundance of superhero stories, fear that it's psychologically making us less inclined to achieve the simple things in the world that indeed we could easily do ourselves that would make the world better, and I like stories told in those worlds. More "Star Trek", less, "Planet of the Apes", as much as I do like most of the films in that franchise, (Both franchises of it).

Or in this case, a land of radioactive monster superanimals-monsters? It's the end of the world and the animals, due to human error when trying to destroy a giant asteroid that was threatening Earth. Okay, I'll give the movie a little credit here, in that it takes a very obvious plothole from "Armageddon" and makes it end the world. Anyway, the humans have moved to live underground in colonies, and one such colonies includes Joel (Dylan O'Brien), a lonely young man who was in high school when the monster apocalypse happened, and lost both his parents in the original attack. His colony is full of paired-up couples and survivalists who have begun adept at keeping their colony safe by the outside world while also able to canvas out for surviving ingredients, gardening seeds and their only surviving cow. He's not a particularly good shot with the makeshift crossbows and other weapons they've created. He's mainly the cook, and the only person in their underground bunker colony who isn't coupled with anybody.

He does eventually, through an old CB radio, he decides he must brave the outside world and head to a Coastal Colony to see his old high school girlfriend Aimee (Jessica Henwick). Hence, the love aspect of "Love & Monsters". From there, the story becomes a more traditional tale of traveling through the deserted lands in a post-apocalyptic pilgrimage tale. It's a good pilgrimage; I was mostly entertained, and like a lot of these tales, it's about the characters we meet along the deconstructionist way. He meets Clyde and Minnow (Michael Rooker and Arianna Greenblatt) a couple of survivalists who live on the surface and give him tips and training on how to survive. It probably gets a little too, emotional when it really isn't at around here, but I like these characters, and I like the connections.

Along the way, there's several other monsters and experiences until he does get to Aimee's colony, and they kinda run into an extra plot at the end, that's a bit arbitrary, there's an obvious liar reveal. (Shrugs) I don't know, a lot of the comparisons to the movie noted "Zombieland" as an obvious comp, and yeah, that's the movie I was thinking of too. "Zombieland" was genuinely unpredictable though. The characters were more interesting and mysterious and the fact that their was a zombie-based world meant that, there was almost no chance of real connections to the past that the characters would be seeking out. The only ultimate goal was survival and there was only multiple ways of determining the best course of action to achieve that. "Love and Monsters" does have the slightest connections to the past still around, and it leans into that. There's nothing inherently wrong with that as a narrative, but it does limit the story and the possibilities of what could happen. It makes the story, the relationship and whether or not, if he gets there, which we all suspect she will be there, we're more interested in whether or not she'll be with someone or be someone else, or whether he can get the girl, and then what then? It's still the apocalypse and even if he gets her, will they be happy?

It's fine on it's own, and overall I'm recommending the film, but when you do realize and think about the influences, it does feel like a lesser film and idea. They definitely put a ton of work into the film. The movie got an Oscar nomination for the special effects, and it definitely deserved it. If you like romance with your wild radioactive bugs and monsters, than I guess "Love and Monsters" is good enough. It's probably not for me, but I can appreciate it.

THIS IS GWAR (2022) Director: Scott Barber

⭐⭐⭐1/2

I must confess I've never listened much to Gwar, but I've known about them for years. The first time I saw them was on "The Jerry Springer Show", and I remembered more or less just being perplexed by them at the time. I didn't get them, but I also think that was kind of the point. They showed a few clips of their appearance on Springer, as well as another appearance they had on Joan Rivers's show, but the first time I really, got them, was not a show they aired a clip of in "This is Gwar"; it was from VH-1's "Where Are They Now" show. Mainly 'cause that was the first time I saw them, out of character. Honestly, I think that helps me appreciate a lot of the shock rock artists more, seeing them outside their performance characters. That might just be how I relate to music; I find music more interesting and compelling when there's less artifice involved in the production of it. I'm not saying that I'm one of the weirdos who preferred non-makeup KISS or anything, but seeing Gwar as human beings for the first time, helped me in appreciating what exactly they were doing, and I think this really helps with shock rock.

I actually met a few people in shock rock bands weirdly enough, one of them, actually was friends a few people in Gwar, including Dave Brockie who, when I knew this person, was still mourning his passing from a heroin overdose. "This is Gwar" details the origins of the band, and interviews, what seems like nearly every living important member of the band; there's actually quite a few members and several changes in the band have occurred and honestly, while I think Gwar still tours, I don't think any of their original members do. Which, I think makes sense. Gwar, basically originated as a crazed film school project that somehow morphed into this depraved satirical punk rock band by taking the costumes and effects they were using for the film and creating a band out of it. The film itself never got finished, but the band took off. I mean, they did have a dinosaur on stage, no matter the quality of the music, that's gonna get people's attention, and frankly that was the most normal and least obscene thing that the band did and had on stage.

Like, I said, I never really got it, but I could appreciate it. Gwar, really is basically more of an artistic collective than a band, but actually the musicianship is pretty strong and a lot of their music has held up over time, but Gwar really is more of a brand than a band. What is Gwar exactly without the outrageous Viking costumes or the bloodsplattering beheadings at every concert? It's a special effects extravaganza; I'm not at all surprised a lot of the members of the band found outside careers in film and theater, often designing things like sets and effects.

Gwar is an odd strange entity in music. "This is Gwar" does a decent job at showing how it was this strange passion project that morphed into a surreal shock rock band. They never earned much money, if they did, they poured it into their production on their tours and their music videos which, for the most part weren't shown much on mainstream music video outlets, but were beloved by those in the know. Even the Grammys recognized them a couple times. At one point, they mentioned that they thought they were gonna be the Walt Disney of Metal, and that's kinda what they did evolve into. Their were bands who cared about the performance aspects of rock & roll, in particular metal; I mean, Alice Cooper was putting on gorefest nightmare fuels at his concerts from back in the '70s, but he was more about the performance accompanying and interpreting the music; the music always came first with him or other similar acts. If Gwar has an influence still felt in the community, and I believe they do, it's that they reversed that dynamic, and made the outrageousness of the gimmick and the show outflank and overpower the music.

Even they and their fans will tell you that the joke of Gwar is that they're actually pretty good at music.

THE PEZ OUTLAW (2022) Directors: Amy Brandlien Storkel & Bryan Storkel

⭐⭐1/2

You ever, once-in-a-while, hear an obscure fact, somewhere out in the ether somewhere, that you know, is a thing, but it's so obtuse that you don't think about it, or recall it, and then suddenly you're like surrounded by that fact? No? Just me? Yeah, that would actually explain a lot now that I think about it,- so anyway, Pez collecting is a thing. Yeah, pez dispensers. People collect them. I bet people aren't terribly surprised by that, people collect a lot of weird things, pez dispensers are something that's been around forever and are a fun little toy that holds candy, I'm sure everybody has kept a few around here and there, and some are pretty big collectors of it, right? Um, actually, Pez and Pez Dispensers are actually a huge goddamn deal and some pez dispensers can be sold on the market for thousands of dollars, easily. In fact, European pez dispensers, ones that are made and sold only for the European market, would rack up lots of money to American collectors. "The Pez Outlaw" is a brief documentary about Steve Glew, who spent years travelling back and forth from Europe, around the Croatian area, and on the border of a war at times, in order to smuggle in knockoff European dispensers through customs in order to sell them on the open market in America. He got so good at this, he got to the point of the Pez company trying to go to extreme lengths to go after him.

Part of it is their fault, they never registered Pez never was put on the list of items to be verified through customs, so all he really had to do was get ahold of them, and that included finding the factories and getting the pez from the factory. He claims that there were some people high inside the company that were helping him out.... Honestly, it's kind of an interesting story, I just don't know if it's a movie.

I think I would prefer "The Pez Outlaw" as like, a 40-minute short film. There is a somewhat compelling afterstory when he tried to design his own Pez dispensers and Pez basically ripping off his designs and selling them for cheaper to make him bankrupt, and the fact that he started this lifelong endeavor to help subsidize his wife's illnesses and bills is heartfelt, but "The Pez Outlaw" is one of those harmless documentaries that gets made and nobody can really bash them for being bad, but they're not exactly great either. These kind of docs get well-reviewed as this film is too, but eh,- I don't know, there's definitely compelling stories out there about people who care greatly about stuff on the far off fringes of very specific niche interests, "The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters" for instance, comes to mind, but, eh, I don't know, this isn't on that level. I guess I could be nicer to it, but eh, for me, I wish Pez was better. Dispensers were cool, but the candy itself was never that good.

PETITE FILLE (aka LITTLE GIRL) (2021) Director: Sebastien Lifshitz

⭐⭐⭐

It's been difficult for me lately trying to figure out how to review movies for awhile. Personal issues mostly, things are on my mind.... But, it's particularly tricky to review "Petite Fille" or "Little Girl". Mostly 'cause I'm not sure what to review here. Frankly, it's kinda odd for a documentary, in that, there's not much, in terms of like...- well, it's just oddly filmed for me. It kinda feels more like it's scripted than most docs, even more than ones that are blatantly scripted; I saw one review compare it to a Dardenne Brothers film; that's not a terrible description, but honestly I don't think it's that narrative, it's more like, they shot a lot of scenes and the characters just talk, but like, not to the camera, usually to the doctors or others involved.... (Shrugs) Perhaps it just feels weird to me because of the content....

"Petite Fille" tells the story of Sasha, a 7-year-old boy, who has always been aware that he's actually a little girl, just born in the wrong body. So, there's a lot of controversy recently with this topic, so,- look, I'm totally in favor of anybody exploring their gender fluidity or whatnot. I know that gender is not genitalia-based, hell I think gender might arguably be fluid, and hell, sometimes I suspect gender as a binary concept, is itself, something that we made up more than something that actually exists perhaps. I mean, at one point, we all start as female, and then in the womb become either male or female, or whatever other gender their is; trans, I guess? My point is that I think that it's important to explore all sides of that personally. That said, I'm not entirely sure, when, we should explore all those things. In my mind, before puberty, feels too young.

And I'm not saying that because I think Sasha isn't firm in her commitment that she's a girl, or that she's even wrong for having such strong feelings so young, but that said, we are having several reports out there of people who've altered their genders, many of them young, through such processes as hormone treatment and surgery, and then later regretting it. Bill Maher thinks it's because kids are trendy little edgelords and now that trans and gender fluidity is trendy, they jump in before actually thinking out the possibilities. I think that's a part of it, although I also just think that it's possible that some people just don't know what exactly they are and just come to a wrong conclusion sometimes. Or perhaps, they thought they were one other thing, because they only figure that it was the only other option and once they realize their were other possibilities, of who they could be, they realized that that new option might fit them better...- I don't know, but something tells me that, whether or not it's your first or your last change-of-gender, either you should be really, really, really sure, at that moment that it is absolutely what you have to do to help yourself be complete and happy, and I don't know if I trust somebody so young to be so confident about that. I don't know if I trust somebody 3x older than Sasha to be that fully sure, honestly.

So what happened, what's the results? As far as I can tell, it was the best choice for her and the procedure's a success. Honestly, there doesn't even seem to be a lot of difficulty for her, most of the troubles and conflicts of were spoken of and not really shown. Honestly, I just found those scenes, I don't know-, it felt too stagey I guess....- I feel like there are better movies out there on the subject, like "Born to Be", the wonderful documentary about the Mount Sinai Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery, but I do like just, seeing this documented case over time and what to make of it. But,- I don't know, for somebody so young....

You know what it is, this is, Part 1 of a film. What's really gonna be interesting is, the sequel, like ten years down the road, what happens to Sasha and who she's become since this. I think I'd like to see that more than this film personally.

REWIND (2020) Director: Sasha Joseph Neulinger

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Home movies are strange. I'm not even sure that they really exists anymore, not the way that, they used to exist. The giant camera you'd put on your shoulder, those old VHS tapes,- the look of a home movie is so different from even looking at something shot on a modern phone camera..., it always feels like it's from another planet as oppose to another time. Now, you can argue that the modern Tiktok and Youtube videos are just as artificial as those from the home movies of the past, and we'll probably look at the picture quality of those projects a lot differently thirty or forty years from now, but-nah, there definitely is, something off-putting about those old home movies. I remember my family shooting a bunch of them, and I remember even trying to shoot one when I was a kid. I'm sure it's on some VHS somewhere in my garage, but I don't remember being particularly proud of it or anything. Now, I kinda just wish I had it to remember all those who've passed and those memories, but for the most part, our home movies weren't hiding some awful realities.

For director Sasha Joseph Neulinger, these home movies represent a falsehood. It's not the first documentary I can think of that uses the contrast of home movies and old photos that depict supposed happier times to reveal the darker underbelly underneath; off-the-top-of-my-head, Daniel Zwigoff's "Crumb" is probably the most notable and earliest film I can think of that uses this effect. That's not a fair comparison though, "Crumb" itself seemed to be a movie where you had to look, not only underneath the subtext but even it's main focus seemed to be slightly unwilling to even let himself in. A better comparison to "Rewind", would be "Capturing the Friedmans" which also utilizes home movies to undermine a shocking secret within the family, in that case, it was a widespread child molestation charge against two of the family members. "Rewind" is different in that, the story is told from the perspective of the abused; Sasha and his sister as well as other family members were sexual abused by several members of his family, including a renowned and beloved cantor.

I don't know how much I should go into the details of what eventually transpired and the eventual investigations and prosecution of Sasha's family members, as well as the secrets of the family that, him coming forward with these accusations revealed. What I will say is that, what "Rewind" brings is kinda of a lucky draw in that Sasha's father was a TV director and ended up documenting a lot more home movies than others might've; in my mind, at least until it became unfeasible, we made, maybe one home movie a year, unless there was like, a wedding or something we needed to document. So, we get something kinda more interesting here, we see the aftereffects of the abuse, resonating in some of the footage. The changes in the behavior of Sasha and his sister over the year, especially as he became more angry and starting acting out much more after as a preteen. It's the kinda thing that usually you would only recognize in hindsight. We're kinda starting to see some of that now in real life. As I was writing this review, that docuseries on HBO about Dan Schneider's and others predatory behavior on the sets of many of the Nickelodeon show he was producing got released and suddenly a lot of people have been going back and looking up some old interviews and stuff, and I think I saw one Tiktok video comparing an interview Amanda Bynes gave when she was twelve with one that occurred just a year or two later, during which time, according her at least, Schneider raped and impregnated her and forced her to have an abortion, and yeah, there's- there's clearly a behavioral shift in her, and considering some of her antics in her life post-fame, it definitely feels like, in hindsight, something happened. (I haven't seen the documentary yet,... I might later,- but, yeah, from everything I had already long heard about Schneider and all,- there's nothing that would surprise me right now about what happened on those sets.)

So, yeah, looking at something like "Rewind" is kinda fascinating. Disturbing and troubling to watch, but-, you know, there's an old myth that some think the camera reveals a person's soul; it was a popular Native American belief back in the early days of photography, but-eh, you know, sometimes it feels like they might've been right, you just have to know where to look for it.

Hence the issue with home movies, they around to document the good times, but it always seems to be the things that occur when the camera's off....

CANON OF FILM: "NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD" (Romero)

2024-05-20T03:30:00.000-07:00

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968)

Director: George A. Romero

Screenplay: John A. Russo and George A. Romero

To be honest, I’m not normally into zombies. There’s obviously been some exceptions, but I don’t know....; I have horror fan friends who genuinely find them frightening, or appealing, or both…. They don’t usually do it for me. I think the most compelling and interesting aspect of them is that they’re always metaphorically interesting, but oftentimes, even when done well, I think that the metaphor just becomes way too malleable. What do zombies represent; you don’t really have to stretch too far to make them represent literally anything you want. That’s probably why the most interesting zombie movies in recent years were the ones that were trying something new; I don’t particularly think all of them succeeded at quality, but they were all interesting.

In that respect, George A. Romero’s original terrifying masterpiece, “Night of the Living Dead”, can probably come off as too cliché in the wrong light. No doubt, the technical brilliance is always there, but it’s become literally the playbook that every other zombie movie is either borrowing from, stealing from, or trying desperately to differ themselves from. And yet, under the right circumstances, the movie genuinely can haunt and stir me in ways most thrillers couldn’t dream of. And I don’t think it has anything to do with the “metaphor” of the actual zombies. Romero was definitely symbolic, zombies were never just zombies in any of his films, and I’m sure you can look up theories on this one, and I have one or two of my own, but the things that makes “Night of the Living Dead” so special starts with the executing of the tone of dread. At certain moments at mine, and I’m certain in many others’ lives, we feel like we’re at a point where nothing can go right; the walls keep closing in and no matter how hard you work and stress out just to struggle to keep your head above water, you know deep down that there’s this inherent dread that disaster’s coming towards you. I never really got how, zombies can be so easily defeated and yet seem so frightening to others; I get the idea that they’re so many of them and that they just keep coming is apart of and ware you out and exhaust your resources, but I don’t think most movies really express that veil of dread that that entails. Not that you’re short on everything, but that true sense that something horrible, no matter what, is going to come and take you all out, at the right, or more likely, at the worst-feeling times of your life, watching “Night of the Living Dead” can really grip you in ways other films can’t.

Zombies aren’t actually that prevalent in the film; most of the movie, is that claustrophobia. Zombies are out there, and we’ve seen what they can do, but there’s not much you can do. You’re stuck in a house. Who’s house? I don’t think it’s ever fully determined, and nor does it necessarily matter anymore. What does matter, is hopefully being able to keep them out for as long as you can, until either the threat miraculously ends, or until the inevitable is unable to be delayed anymore.

Duane Jones’s performance as Ben, the film’s protagonist stirs me. A lot was made of casting an African-American as the lead, which was rare for the time in general and especially so for a horror movie, but Jones wasn’t even a professional actor. (In fact, most of the cast, had very little acting experience and didn’t have much after the film.) He was an English professor who directed theater in his spare time, and when he auditioned, Romero re-wrote the part to fit him. I totally get why; he’s got an intensity and a presence that yields a degree of knowledge and authority that I think too many horror films tend to forget to have. In fact, most of the characters are intelligent. When it’s revealed that a family has already taken the cellar to evade the zombies, or ghouls as the radio and TV tell them; I think they both have a point on what the best approach to evade them, and they’re approaches and reactions are reasonable given their particular situations.

What I think really is the secret of the film are the radio and television reports that we hear and watch sporadically throughout the film. Another thing that too many horror films get wrong, but they work brilliantly here, they’re almost as frightening as the actual flesh-eating zombies. They sound and feel like genuine old news reports from that time. They remind me of Orson Welles’s famous “War of the Worlds” radio program, which also used the form and structures of legitimate news broadcast to help tell their story, although this film, they’re used more for exposition, but they manage to more convey the intensity in tone that's needed and sometimes it’s the quiet professionalism of the news broadcast makes the subjects they’re talking about, seem more real. People forget just how believable and how quaint-seeming much of Welles’s broadcast originally seemed as well. (I also suspect some of the Kronkite footage of JFK’s assassination and some of the other broadcasts of tragedies of the era played a part in influence. In hindsight, 1968, in America seems like a particularly intriguing year for this film to have come out.)

Its terror is also intriguing to put into context, horror films were always around, but they were more cheesy and special effects-based, and they were goofy and they were movies, in the most pure entertainment sense. “Night of the Living Dead” really stands out next to them. In many ways, it was the first horror film that really wasn’t for kids to enjoy. It was gruesome and dark, had family members having to kill other family members, and while the ghouls might’ve eaten a ton of human flesh, we didn’t see them graphically eating people before. And the deaths were far more visceral as well.

I don’t know if George Romero intended to be a horror film director, or for that matter the zombies guy, but he definitely leaned into after the success of the film. Even adjusted for inflation “Night of the Living Dead” is listed among the profitable movies ever made, although Romero himself didn’t get a lot of profit from it, in fact, he was still working at his local public television station in Pittsburgh after the movie came out, and believe it not, shot quite a few second-assistant segments for “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” of all shows. (In fact, Betty Abelin was originally cast in the role of Barbara, the young girl in the cemetery in the beginning with her brother who get attacked by the first ghoul, but Mr. Rogers refused saying that he didn’t want her, fearing it would distract his audience to see her performing as a different character in such a film, although he liked Romero’s films, which- for some reason I don’t particularly believe, knowing Fred Rogers’ taste in entertainment, but oh well….) Anyway, he ended up casting local actress Judith O’Dea and her and Brown were basically the only real actors in the film, everybody else was basically a friend or producer or somebody else close to Romero, the project or some of the other stars. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had professional actors though, he got some great performances out of them, and the fact that they are mostly unknown or little-knowns just helps enhance the reality of the project.

You can honestly separate modern horror, at least modern-American horror, to before and after “Night of the Living Dead” and yet that fact doesn’t make the movie any less powerful; if anything, it just get more stirring and frightening over time, and Romero’s films in general, have grown in distinction over the years. I have to watch more of them, but part of me knows that they’ll never match up to this one. “Night of the Living Dead” turned horror into terror, and instead of showing a visceral fear of the characters onscreen, it created that visceral dread and fear in us.

IN MEMORIAM: A HISTORY OF THE OSCARS F***ING UP THE EASIEST PART OF THEIR SHOW!

2024-03-30T07:30:00.000-07:00

So, for the first time since I've done this blog, I didn't go out of my way to focus on the Oscars races this year. I probably could've faked it and posted a few things, but I didn't see the movies, and really have just been too distracted by life to trust my judgments at that time anyway, so I wasn't gonna force myself to say some stuff out of obligation, especially I didn't have anything to say about who won or who should've won or whatnot. I'm tired of talking when I don't have anything to say anyway. But, I'm starting to get out of that funk. At least, I'm trying to anyway. So, I happen to be able to watch the Oscars this year, which wasn't planned, but since it was kismet, I decided to watch and live tweet some thoughts on the show.

Overall, it was a good Oscars show. Probably one of the better ones in recent years anyway, arguably the first great one post-Covid. Well, almost great.... There's one thing that ultimately ruined the show for me. It wasn't any of the results, it wasn't the fact that it was Jimmy Kimmel's worst and laziest gig as Oscar host yet, it wasn't that it went on too long, or that any of the performances were too shit. No, the Oscars were destroyed in my mind, after they did something, that they, and other award shows have been doing, for what seems like a ridiculously long time now, and this one, is maybe arguably the absolutely worst one yet. They've been fucking up, the In Memoriam segment!

So, who died last year? As far as I could tell, the only person who died was Alexei Navalny; he was the only person who died who got honored at the Oscars this year. What in the freaking Hell was that!? Well, if I have to sit here and detail every single thing that was wrong with that segment,- it would be twice as long as the longest and worst Cinema Sins video, so I'm not going to do that. I'm just- I'm just not gonna do that.

No, this post is about, how we got here. 'Cause this isn't the first time, I've been pissed off at an award show for screwing up the "In Memoriam"; no we've been trending this way towards that abomination- which...- like- that might legitimately be the worst segment of any kind in Oscars history. That might be worst than the goddamn Snow White and Rob Lowe opening segment. And if it isn't worst, it is undeniably so much more baffling, 'cause, it's the goddamn In Memoriam segment!!!!!! Like, stop it. Why is there so much bullshit going on?! Sad music, from the orchestra, montage of dead people, nothing else! How hard is this?!

But no, we get, everything, but that, it seems.... So, I decided, to look up what the hell happened? Why did this segment of the Oscars suddenly get so goddamn overblown, and why?! And more importantly, find out who's responsible, 'cause somebody needs blame for this shit. Somebody looked at the In Memoriam segment and decided, "Hey, let's fuck it up!" and that's put the terrible idea in every other Oscar and award show producers' head!

So, I looked it up. The first thing I looked up was, well, when did In Memoriam segments start? Cause, I remember the old In Memoriam segments from my youth and I know they weren't like this. At all. Like, here, this one's from the 1994 Oscars:

See, that's how they should be. You get somebody who can say a few words, and then, you play, some kind of appropriately sad music,- Producer Chuck Workman would call it "Schmaltzy" music, which, okay that was schmaltzy, but just sad and appropriate and you don't need a big name performer to do it, in fact, you don't need a performer at all, just get some sad music, or have the orchestra play it, and then roll the clips! What's wrong with this approach. It's worked for years, right?

Actually, um..., that clip above, um, that actually was the first In Memoriam segment ever at the Oscars, or any award show.

Yeah, I didn't realize this, but apparently the In Memoriam is a much newer segment than I realized. I guess, it makes sense that it wouldn't like, date back to the original Academy Awards, back then, it was so new that not a lot of people would've died yet, but I'm still kinda surprised to find out that the In Memoriam only dates back to '94. At least, the way we think of the In Memoriam,- they did one kinda, back in 1978, and that one actually is a performance.

It's Marvin Hamlisch on piano and Sammy Davis Jr. singing "Come Light the Candles", and it's- barely an In Memoriam.

Apparently, this came up again in pop culture recently, during the credits of that "FEUD" miniseries. I haven't seen it yet, so I'm withholding my thoughts on that, but yeah, this might be the actual catalyst, and to be honest, I don't actually like this performance. But, it's barely an In Memoriam, it's mostly a performance and then, a screen comes down, with a very brief montage of some of the performers who died the previous year. There's no names, or closeups on the montage so that they can easily be identified unless you're looking really close at a TV screen, that was not hi-def at that time. But they didn't continue it the next year or anytime after. In fact, the next year, Sammy Davis Jr. performed with Steve Lawrence in a better and more much upbeat medley of movie songs that were famously not nominated for Oscars and that performance is much, much better from him.

See, that's a lot better. Also, it's kinda nice to know, the Academy already knew they screwed up not nominating either "Theme from 'New York, New York'" or "Staying Alive", both from movies that literally came out the year before. (Don't look up what actually won that year, it'll just annoy you.)

Also, a lot better were when they actually started having a real In Memoriam segment in 1994, and for the next few years they basically kept the segment the same format. Somebody coming out who can convey the proper emotional depth, and then, we see the In Memoriam segment, just a regular montage. And the montages were even better back then, more clips, lots of great images of people in wonderful idyllic moments of their career.

The Academy also occasionally did something different and special for certain people who pass away during this time. Like, in '96, they did a whole thing for Gene Kelly.

Yeah, and that was good, simple. The nice shadow effect, there, and that was the great Savion Glover, by the way, tap dancing as Kelly, if you're my age you remember him fondly from "Sesame Street" which, he might've still been on at that time, now he's one of the great living tap dancers and performers. The Academy still does this, occasionally, the last time I remember them doing one was,-eh, I think it was for John Hughes, back in (google search) 2010! Good lord, he's been dead that long? Wow! Time flies. I don't remember them doing one since, and honestly, I remember not particularly finding that tribute, good. It was also just strange; I love John Hughes, but he wouldn't have struck me as someone that the Academy would go out-of-it's-way to specifically honor, (I mean, how many John Hughes films even got an Oscar nomination? [The answer is three, all of them in Music. One was for "Beethoven's 2nd". The Academy is weird sometimes.]) I don't think they've done one since, but I could be wrong about that.... But, y'know, occasionally doing something special for somebody in particular separate from the regular In Memoriam, not the worst idea some years, although you can go overboard with it, ask the 2013 Emmys about that one.

Anyway, for the Oscars, and other award shows that followed with a similar format, and it's not like they weren't controversial. There's always controversy on who gets in or who's left out. Even back then, after the 1999 In Memoriam, the show's host, Whoopi Goldberg stopped the show to mention somebody being left out, by giving a thumbs up to the heavens to honor Gene Siskel. I couldn't find that clip to post, or I would've but I'm going through every Oscars In Memoriam that I can find, and if possible, finding the montage, as it was broadcast. Even the Academy, who again, has been screwing this up in recent years, has tried to remedy their mistakes before with this. Even still, I could nitpick some of the details between them. Some are better edited than others, some are more emotional than others, but for the most part, it's fair to say that there's extreme care put into these segments. From what I can tell that first starts to change in 2005.

This isn't, terrible. It's the first time they've had a performance associated with the In Memoriam; they have Yo-Yo Ma come out and perform, and then the picture screen drops and shows the In Memoriam. This is..., acceptable. They do break the montage one time to show Yo-Yo Ma playing, but you don't miss the montage. That said it's a little lazily edited, the actual montage. Like, with some of the non-actors in the past, they would show clips or images from the movies they worked on, that showed off their achievements and instead, they kinds just use texts. Some of this btw, might've been a rights thing at times. The Academy does need permissions to show a lot of clips, and sometimes that might be harder than we'd like to think it is, but I would argue it's worth it, if for no other reason than to see more than just the words "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" on the screen in white text. Still, this,- this isn't like horrific at first, and if you have to do, (eye roll) a musical performer of note accompanying the In Memoriam, than just having Yo-Yo Ma play the cello and then cut immediately to the montage and then back to him at the end, like, eh, that's probably the most harmless way you could go about it, but still, you're not gonna get him every time....

To be fair, the next couple years they got it back to being about the way it should be. Then, 2009, this is when it first went off the rails.

Yup, this was the first time I distinctly remember everybody being pissed off at the show for the In Memoriam. And this was controversial even regardless of the mind-boggling dumb choices for the actual presentation,- there's a whole Wikipedia the controversies of the omissions and who got put in for this year. But, the actual montage, was not watchable. You had, Queen Latifah performing "I'll Be Seeing You", which, you don't need. She's fine, but you don't need that. And then, instead of the one big screen, just showing the montage, I guess the thinking is that, there's this whole room at the Kodak Theater that they can show images of the deceased, so, they have to show that, which, again, they don't, it- it- might work, live, for the people there but it doesn't on camera, on TV, and so, they kept zooming in and out of what I think are crane camera shots of both sides of the Kodak Theater and, you can read some of the names, but not all the names. They're not all gonna be recognizable to everyone at home. So,- what you get is that, instead of one screen, you're looking at a bunch of screens, you're focusing some time on Queen, a camera that's moving around,- so you're trying to focus on a screen, within a screen.... It's atrocious, and I thought after this, we'd all just learn the lesson, that you don't fucking do this for the In Memoriam! But, time and time again, that's not been the case. The next year, the editing wasn't as bad, but they had James Taylor perform a cover of The Beatles "In My Life" and the montage was again, multiple screens and out-of-focus for the viewer at first. After that, the next year, Celine Dion performed Charlie Chaplin's "Smile" (Yes, that Charlie Chaplin wrote "Smile") Again, too many cuts to the performer, only one screen, although the montage itself was edited a little lazily. The next year, Esperanza Spalding performed Louie Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World", with a giant choir that surrounded the stage. This was also, like the first year that they mostly just stopped doing clips of the artists and just showed a single picture of them. They put a couple clips in there and, it's kinda artistically done well, and perhaps this was a rights issue, but I still think it sucked. (And I'm sure somebody thought they were being funny ending with a shot of Elizabeth Taylor in her role in "Cleopatra" of all goddamn movies.) 2013 though, this is the one year, where they basically, did the performer thing and they got it right. For one, they just showed the In Memoriam first! The huge montage of all those who died, they had music underneath but no performer or performance, and it was beautiful. The last one they named was Marvin Hamlisch, and that's when there was a surprise performance and speech, by Barbra Streisand singing "The Way We Were". Okay, this works, mainly because, they did the In Memoriam first, secondly they perform a song that fits into the montage, because of who passed away, Hamlisch is a legendary singer-songwriter, an EGOT winner, and one of the most important musical artist of their day and in particular of cinema, and this is a song that he's known for and that he won an Oscar for. Also, Barbra Streisand, appearing, is itself a shock! She's somebody who generally doesn't show up for these things first of all, and then getting her to perform, is also such a rarity and an honor for these things that it's actually meaningful. She doesn't show up, she rarely performs even if she somehow does and now you got her performing, and it's all because of who passed away and she's decided to honor him, because they were such close friends, personally and professionally. It's beautiful, and perfect. And also, a once in a lifetime perfect storm scenario where the performance along with the In Memoriam actually works! The next year, they kinda got the same idea, kinda.... The huge montage first, and then after the montage is when you go into a performance. (And again, if you are going to do it, this is the best way, but even then, I'd advise, their has to be a perfect storm scenario) Unfortunately, they choose Bette Midler to perform "Wind Beneath My Wings", which.... ugh.- look, I love Bette Midler, but for one, I hate that song. But worst than that, it's not a song that's immediately connected to anyone who passed this year and it wasn't to honor someone in particular, they just called her in to sing it. Bette Midler does have mystique, but not Barbra mystique, and- I guess co-writer of the song Larry Henley did pass away around that time, but he wasn't honored during the Memoriam, he wasn't a film person and he's not why The Divine Miss M is there, she's just there, because last year, they got a diva to sing an emotional number after the In Memoriam, and she's a diva who can sing an emotional number after the In Memoriam, but the context and meaning of the way it worked the year before is completely gone. (Also, did you know that song was a cover. It's actually a country song originally sung by an Malaysian-born Australian singer name Kamahi and Bette Midler was like, the tenth artist to record that song! Man, how did that become her standout tune; it's not even her best movie song ballad; hell, just making her sing "The Rose" instead would've improved this thing a little) Anyway, this doesn't work. It's an unnecessary performance that doesn't add anything to the In Memoriam, and that's the problem. All of these performances, whether they're good or bad, or nice or not, you have to ask, "Do they add anything to the In Memoriam", and I would argue that, only the Barbra Streisand one, in 2013 does that, and that literally, none of the others do. At best, they don't get in the way, like Yo-Yo Ma. At worst, you get...., well this year's In Memoriam.

Anyway, the next year, they did it correctly, just Meryl Streep coming out and a montage of those who passed. Again, not clips so much as some well-done painterly images of everyone, which, eh,- I prefer clips but that's fine. Then, the next year, they went back to a performance, which in this case involved Sara Bareilles singing,- she sings Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now"? Okay, again, there shouldn't be a performance of any kind, but at least until now, I understood why they picked each of these songs- even "Wind Beneath My Wings", I-, I get why someone would use that song, This might be me, but I have no idea why you would pick "Both Sides Now". That song has nothing to do about death or passing or- it's a song about self-reflection of one's own life, it's not really a song about reflection on others' lives. I know it sounds sad, but like,- what?- This might be me, but I don't think that song works for this; maybe I just love that song too much, but I don't think that's a good song for an In Memoriam of any kind. Maybe, an instrumental as background, but definitely not as a performed piece.

Also, can I just say, there is something kinda just gross, about bringing somebody in to just do one song about the dead people every year. Not that we need another reason not to do this shit; like, I'm sure all these artists were happy to do this, and that they were at least paid well to do it, but like,-, "Hey, we want you to sing, while everybody is sad for a few minutes, can you come?" That gig sounds awful and kinda offensive, honestly; what would that sound like to you if people asked that of you, that they think of your music, they think about dead people? I might be kinda insulted myself. Even if it made sense,- like, I don't think they ever asked, say Elton John to come and do this while singing, "Candle in the Wind" for them, which is literally a song about a movie star who died, but I'll bet you a million bucks that if they did, he would've immediately rejected the offer, and keep in mind, he's a two-time Oscar winner himself. (And he's smartly kept away from these performances by the way....)

Anyway, the next year, Eddie Vedder performed Tom Petty's "Room at the Top"- which, okay another weird-ass song choice, even though I like that cover, and I guess, you can kinda stretch that song, to being relevant to an In Memoriam, at least the way Eddie does it, but the editing is back to shit, with the camera panning, right in the middle of the montage, and the screen in the background again for part of the tribute...- who now leads to the question of, who gets the full screen treatment and who gets the in-the-background of the performer treatment, as though this process isn't already too morbidly political to begin with....

They did it correctly in 2019, just the orchestra and the montage, no cutting to the orchestra in the middle,- perfect, no notes with the staging. The next year, Billie Eilish and Finneas O'Connor, who have performed at the Oscars, way more than I realize they have at this point,- they do, The Beatles "Yesterday",- which, is an appropriate song but at this point, I'm just morbidly curious on what other beloved songs the Academy is gonna try to shove into their In Memoriam; they seemed to just go through every popular song that's remotely emotionally sad. And this is also one of the more obnoxiously edited ones, as instead of a solemn video screen, they project the images of those who've died on these elongated, arch-like double-screen that's behind the main stage, and sometimes there's one person and an image or two from their career, and other times there's two people listed at once, and you wonder why, are they related or something, did they work together, or what, but no, they just want to shove everybody in. Also, they back up the camera again, so that we don't just see them entirely. It's another shitty job, and it another thing that politicizes this more than it needs to. Like, now that you're dead, are you important enough to have your own screen, or do you have to share the space with some other dead person? WTF?

This is another pet peeve of mine-, I know there's constant complaints that the Oscars or other award shows are too long. I'm not saying they're wrong, necessarily, but the In Memoriam, is not the area where we should be cutting time on this. I'm not saying include everybody who died...- there's always gonna be certain snubs for one reason or another, and yes it sucks, and sometimes I will complain about certain ones they makes, like the year they snubbed Joan Rivers, but I'm okay with having that controversy. We can complain about them, but what's worst, not having your name mentioned or not having your name focused on when it's there? I'm sure if you ask they'd say, "I don't care, I'm dead do whatever you want," but for the sake of argument, if your doing this, it should done well, and that's the real complaint. This doesn't need to include everybody or be apolitical when perhaps it shouldn't, but if you're doing it, it has to be done well, and frankly, we've had a long, long run of most-of-the-time, the Academy, just, not doing it well. And, to be clear, they're not the only ones, they've had bad In Memoriams at the Emmys and Tonys as well, (Probably the Grammys too, but I haven't watched them since Santana won everything) but the Oscars are the ones who started this and they're the one that, frankly we're gonna just scrutinize the most, as we should, and you know what, more than the other award shows, they have to be the ones doing it well and showing everybody how to do it, so when they are, going through it badly and lazily, you gotta really call it out.

The 2021 In Memoriam is a good example. This is a weird one, 'cause of COVID there actually wasn't an orchestra at the show, and there also wasn't a performance of any kind, so, from what I can tell, I think they used an acoustic version of Stevie Wonder's "As" as the song. I'll let that slide, 'cause 2020 is the exception year for everything, and at least they didn't drag Stevie or anybody else to perform it, but what I will knock them down for is rushing through the In Memoriam too damn quickly!

Okay, this is why I never advocate listening to fans, "Oh, the show's too long, it needs to be shorter," yeah, but sometimes it needs to be longer, and if there was ever a year, when you should've just said, "Fuck it, make the In Memoriam ten minutes long if we need to!", it was the 2021 Oscars. Like, I didn't feel sad, or annoyed, I think I just got dizzy watching this. Maybe figure out how long the montage needs to be, and then pick the song? And, btw, you picked a song that should've worked; the album version of "As" is seven minutes long, why are you playing it at double-speed to get through everybody?! If it's ABC bitching, (And it very well could be, I might add) stand up to them and tell them, we're spending this much time on it, I don't care, we'll cut something else!

Oscars 2022, they fuck up the In Memoriam so badly, that the Academy had to post an alternative, better version on their Youtube page. They previously did this in 2009, but it was only on their official website at the time, Youtube and the Oscars Youtube presence wasn't as prominent back then. This one, again, they use this oddly-shaped stage where the screens are more abstract, and not like a normal screen, and the montage is blocked, originally by Tyler Perry talking too much about Sidney Poitier and then by the gospel group The Samples, that's a little way too happy to be singing, and singing the peppiest version of Sarah McLachlan's "I Will Remember You" at that, 'cause that's how that song should be sung as gleefully and blissfully happily as possible, (eye roll) and then Bill Murray talks about Ivan Reitman for a bit in the middle, then the stupid peppy chorus does a two-step in unisom and starts happily singing Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky", and yes, complete with lots of cutting away from the screen putting the emphasis on them. And then there's- I'm told that was Jill Scott, I didn't recognize her but she's singing-eh, actually, I honestly have no idea what song that is. She's just singing "I'm Going to Heaven" on repeat; I honestly have no idea if that's an actual song or not. I tried to look it up, but I couldn't find it. She might've just been improvising until Jamie Lee Curtis and a puppy came out to talk about Betty White's passing for a few minutes. Then the theme to "The Golden Girls" kinda leads into the rest of the music performing over the clips. Then there's some other speech...- Um, this was awful. All of this. Weirdly, while the Academy did post their more appropriate montage, I don't see a lot of reports about just how bad this montage was at the time, but-eh, it's honestly horrible, maybe the worst version of it yet. I can kinda understand though, 'cause this occurred a few moments after the Will Smith/Chris Rock incident, so I'll forgive some for not remembering this, but this was pretty bad. (Note: I previously showed the French dubbed version of this in my original post, but it's been removed from Youtube, so here's just, the regular how-it-aired version)

Man, this was so tone-deaf, it's kindly startling in hindsight. This is the kind of performance that might work, like the old Gene Kelly one did, for a single person, separate from the In Memoriam, but when you shove into it a joyous gospel performance for their passing, this- well,- some of these deaths this year, were kinda difficult to consider like that. For instance, William Hurt, who while an amazing actor, and an Oscar winner, also was a domestic abuser, and a domestic abuser to another Oscar winner, one who just happened to be starring in that year's Best Picture winner, btw. That's a little indecent.... Also, Halyna Hutchins, the cinematographer who was accidentally killed on the set of "Rust", a death that, we're still in the middle of dealing with through the court systems. (Baldwin's involuntary manslaughter's case is going to trial in July, meanwhile a jury convicted Hannah Gutierrez-Reid, the film's armorer of involuntary manslaughter with sentencing up to 18 months in jail possible) Yeah, I think gospel choir was a very bad idea to "celebrate" that particular horrid death.

Compared to that, the 2023 Oscars where Lenny Kravitz sings "Calling All Angels", is considerably better, even though it's pretty awful too. Kravitz's performing his own song is good, but again, we don't need him. Also, this has everything bad about past bad In Memoriams. The bad directing, constantly cutting to a performer, the screen in the background not the foreground, some people getting clips others having to share the screen with another random dead person. I do like, that they added the Oscar insignia for those who've won an Oscar; it's kinda tacky, but I like that that's acknowledged now. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, started doing that one recently too, and I kinda like that when they did it. It's still just a lot of everything that ruins the In Memoriam for me, just tamer.

And now, we finally get caught up to this year's atrocity.... which, again, I'm just not going into.

So, who is responsible? Well, while I'm tempted to say the first year they had a performer for the modern In Memoriam, which was '05, but I think '09, when they really first started screwing this up, and apparently they never learned the lessons that should've been taught then. So, who was running that show?

Okay, that year, Bill Condon and Laurence Mark were producing the show. Bill Condon, an Oscar-winning screenwriter for "Gods and Monsters," he also wrote the screenplay for "Chicago" an Oscar-winning Best Picture, and he's also directed quite a few movies, "Kinsey", "Dreamgirls" most notably. This is the only time he produced the Oscars. Laurence Mark was a producer on "Dreamgirls" and him as well as several other films; him and Condon have worked together a lot. They're both industry vets and they both like things to be a little too big and a little too over-the-top when possible, especially when it comes to music, so yeah, perhaps they were thinking, "The audience likes musical numbers, let's find places to put more musical numbers in the show" and they thought of the In Memoriam as a place for music a musical performance, and not, as an In Memoriam. (Also, Queen Latifah, was in "Chicago", so there's that connection.) Anyway, knowing that, explains why it happened that time, but it certainly doesn't explained why everyone else keeps following in that tradition, which, again, was not a tradition before, and should never have been!!!

I can't express how bad this idea was to begin with, was considered bad at the time, and how just it's continued as though it ever really worked. (Again 2013, is the most extreme exception) But now, I'm afraid people are going to think this is normal and common and it's friggin' not! And for that, I am blaming Condon and Mark first and most. As much as I like you guys' work otherwise, I hope you two burn in Hell and when you do die, you look up from there and see yourselves get snubbed in your In Memoriam! Cause, goddamn, you guys screwed this up, so much worst than you even realize.

I don't know who's producing the Oscars next year, but whoever it is, take this lesson, and don't fuck up the In Memoriam, ever again! No performer, no performance, create a good In Memoriam montage package, find a sad song and play it. I'd rather "Crash meet Green Book" win Best Picture next year than see this shit again! If ABC bitches about it, tell them, you don't have to re-up when the contract runs out in 2028 if you don't want to, but we're here now and celebrating those we've lost correctly! If the studios asks for extra money for footage,- okay, well, if it's in the budget, pay it, if not, eh, find a good tasteful idea to compensate;- that actually could be tricky paying for all that, so.....

And, if you really need an extra performance, how about do a new version of that list of songs that were never nominated?! That was cool. Do a modern version, get like, Lin-Manuel Miranda and I don't know, eh, Janelle Monae to do a medley. That'd be awesome. Start with Lin, singing, "We Don't Talk About Bruno" and then have Janelle sing, I don't know, "When Doves Cry", then go into, eh "Secret Garden" or eh, "Part of Your World", maybe do some rap songs that weren't eligible but memorable, like "Gangster's Paradise" or something and Janelle goes into "Independent Women Part I". Let them figure it out and have them do ten minutes on that. Go into. you know, "How Deep is Your Love", or "Don't You Forget About Me" or "Born to Be Wild" or "Jailhouse Rock", have some fun with it. See what new songs missed and what songs from the past they didn't get to. Let the show run a few minutes longer doing that. I mean, we are starting the show at 4:00pm on the West Coast now, so you got the time.

Or Not. But whatever you do, just do the In Memoriam correctly. No noteworthy performer, or any performer, just music that plays, montage plays on a single big screen, so everyone at home can see it! And do literally nothing else to it! Nothing! NOTH-THING! Take an Oscar-winning musical's wishful words of wisdom to heart and "Let It Be"!

MOVIE REVIEWS #204: "ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (Berger)", "NAVALNY", "AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER", "BARBIE", "TRIANGLE OF SADNESS", "EO", "ALL THAT BREATHES", "EMPIRE OF LIGHT", "DECISION TO LEAVE", "HAPPENING", "X (West)", "PEARL", "SAINT OMER" and "THE VELVET UNDERGROUND"!

2024-03-05T21:34:00.000-08:00

I wrote most of these movie reviews months ago.

I don't think they're particularly my best work, but at some point I gotta get back to watching and reviewing movies. More importantly I gotta get back to writing. 2023 was a rough year for me. 2024, itself isn't starting out great either. In fact, the last few years have been...- well, they've sucked for me. I haven't posted anything in a while, and the last thing I posted here, I didn't even promote for personal reasons. (If anybody's interested in that post, I read and reviewed a comic book of all things, and found it-, um, mostly perplexing honestly. Here's the link)

Lately, I haven't been saying much either. It's not that I haven't had opinions on things that have been happening, but I haven't felt the desire or need to express them. In some ways that could be considered growth, but I just consider it grief. I don't even think I'm gonna be posting for the upcoming award season this year. I'll be paying attention, but with a more passive perspective; the desire is gone. I haven't had the desire to watch films in a while, even before my mother passed. My life's been too much Hell to focus on it. I'm still struggling, I started a GoFundMe, just to get through. I finally did get guardianship of my autistic brother, but now my mom's boyfriend/stepfather, he's been sick as well, and, he's starting to do better, but it's still a struggle. And my brother's not doing great either. I'm gonna be struggling to figure out the next steps for awhile, and hopefully I'll be able to come out of this eventually, and hopefully stronger and better, but for now, I've got other things I have to focus on and it won't be easy.

I've always viewed entertainment as that which is there to distract us and help us relax as we deal with the struggles of the world. I still do, but I certainly get why people, as they get older, just watch and rewatch those programs that make them most comfortable. I haven't been able to focus on newer films, or watch them for that matter. When I do, I feel more distracted than ever. I've had bouts of such apathy before, but never this bad. I hope it's temporary, but even if it isn't, my focus is just not there right now and I don't think forcing it to return is the best thing for me at the moment.

I will write again, and write here again, I'm just not sure when or what it'll be on, but while I'm still grieving, and struggling with the perils of finding Robbie a place, hell, just keeping a roof above us for now....

So, most these reviews are old, but they're still the latest I've written, and as a writer, you have to show your work even when you don't feel like it. As for those in true grief you know that there's never a real "time" to move on, you just have to move on anyway, and hope you emotionally catch up, so that's what this is. Sorry, I've been so absent and sorry my mind's been elsewhere.

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (2022) Director: Edward Berger

⭐⭐⭐⭐

I haven't read "All Quiet on the Western Front", but I have seen the original Hollywood film. The 1930 Lewis Milestone-directed epic was one of the first really great war movies in Hollywood, and it's especially noteworthy for a lot of the technical aspects that we often associate with modern war cinema, particularly sound effects. It was in 1930, it was Milestone's first sound film, and sound in films itself was barely a few years old, and considering the technology of the time, the film was a modern miracle, much less and incredible advancement in cinematic directing. As to the plot, and the story, I don't remember a lot of the specific details, mostly I remember three scenes that, actually had very little to do with the epic battle sequences. I remember the first early sequence where the young kids are excitedly heading off to the war, not only because it almost seems like the movie's about to burst into song, right before it doesn't. I remember a midpoint scene where, the was has been going on and the battle, for the time being is stalled, and the soldiers begin to question why exactly they're fighting the war to begin with and what they are fighting for and why are they fighting the people they're fighting. And then a scene at the end, where the main soldier, is supposed to give a similar boisterous talk up of the war, and then he breaks down and doesn't. In hindsight, I might've made up that scene. It's been awhile seen it, so I'm a little rusty on it, but it definitely seems like a scene that was supposed to be there. Nowadays, scenes like these in war and anti-war movies are kinda commonplace and cliche; it's actually easy to forget how influential "All Quiet on the Western Front" is in marking out the modern-day soldier-at-war narrative film; to some degree, it feels like most war movies basically are just modern remakes of "All Quiet on the Western Front".

That said, it's a little odd that Germany hasn't produced their own version of the film until now. Well, it- kinda is and kinda isn't, because the book and the original movie were actually banned in Germany by the Nazis of course, who really wanted to glorify WWII and bemoan those who seeked and got the armistice signed. That's inherently the biggest difference between the two movies, as well as the book. The original film, might be most remembered for those elaborate battle scenes, but the movie's narrative is actually quite tunnel-visioned in it's approach. It's simply about the horrors of war and what that experience is like on it's soldiers. And it's here too, and a lot of the scenes are basically the same. We follow Paul Baumer (Felix Baumer) as he goes from excited young soldier to eventually, disenchanted and disenfranchised dead soldier, but it also skips back-and-forth between two other tales.

The first one follows Matthias Erzberger (Daniel Bruhl), as he leads the charge towards ending the war peacefully and we see him struggle to eventually get the armistice signed. Erzberger is actually a real person who was ostracized by the incoming Nazis for his part in ending the war before Germany could've hypothetically won;- see, this is kind of the issue. The other tale is that of General Foch (Thibault de Montalembert), who is a fictional character, but represents, essentially the Nazi stand-in of those who gung-ho fighting generals and others who wished to distort and propagandize the German's spot in the war. Now both sides of these are incredibly distant from the actual battlefield, despite making decisions that effect them, which is itself a major point, but really, this is a look at, World War I, from the German perspective, in modern times, knowing what we know now. One of the few real problems with the original "All Quiet on the Western Front" is it's lack of hindsight and awareness; in hindsight, knowing how WWI would lead to Germany's role in World War II, is something that, well,- Germany at least, has had to deal with and try to contemplate all the implications of it. So, I guess in that light, it makes sense why director Edward Berger would want to explore that, as much as the actual novel. Apparently, in light of Russia's invasion of Ukraine which has indeed turned very much into a very similar World War I-style trench war at certain parts of the country, it resonates a lot more in Europe. The movie won the BAFTA for Best Picture among other acclaims, and while it did okay here, including four Oscars, a Best Picture nomination and winning International Feature, it definitely plays better overseas.

As for me, I think I just like the tunnel-visioned storytelling of the original too much, and appreciate more, the horrors of war and seeing how it effected the soldiers than I like anything else. It's not that there's not a good story with Erzberger and the Nazi stand-in, and it is something worth exploring, and has been done many times before and done well, Michel Haneke's "The White Ribbon" does a decent job exploring that. I just don't know if it particularly improves this text in of itself. It could just not relate to me, but it could also be representative of Germany's conflicted legacy about "All Quiet on the Western Front" itself. I don't know, maybe if I didn't have the original to compare it too, I'd appreciate it more, but this version's still how powerful and important the story remains even today, so at least that didn't get lost in the translation. So recommending it, but eh, I think we're gonna have still more and better movies in the future that will reflect on all the subjects touched on in this film, whether it'd be inspired by the novel itself, war itself, in particular the Ukraine war, or even exploring that strained part of Germany's past they're still struggling to overcome. This'll do for now though.

NAVALNY (2022) Director: Daniel Roher

⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2

(NOTE: This review was originally written and posted on Letterboxd on Nov 17, 2023. [Sidenote: Yeah, I have a Letterboxd now, I'll discuss it at a later date] This review has not been altered or revised in light of recent events.)

I've spent months dealing with my own personal struggles and grief and unwillingness to write this, or any review. (Or write anything really.) That had nothing to do with the film itself, the movie is great, it's not the movie's fault I haven't felt inspired or compelled to write. That said, recall and memory of the film are definitely a bit foggier than I would like, which is a real shame cause it's such a mind-boggling expose into the genuine, terror, horror and utter stupidity of the Kremlin and Putin in particular, that I really wish I was more in the state of mind to be inspired by it.

Alexei Navalny, is himself a major political figure in the nation, although the most apropos comparison to him in the U.S. is somebody like a Jon Stewart type. He's an inspirational YouTube foil for Putin, so much so that in 2020, Putin tried to kill him through poisoning. It didn't work, thankfully, and Navalny's around to make the movie, but what's so striking, is just how idiotic and short-sighted Putin's assassination attempt was, but also, how shockingly easy it was to figure out how and who did it. Literally, at one point, with the help of internet detectives, they're actually able to single out the three men who were assigned to the project, and Navalny has their names, addresses and phone numbers. It doesn't just show how wrong-headed Putin's Cold War KGB Perspective on the world it, but it also suddenly reveals, possibly, just how simple-minded and dumb much of the KGB practices probably were. The Cold War was pretty lucky to have gone on back before the days of the World Wide Web. (Don't think the CIA was necessarily smarter or better at their brands of spycraft, "Navalny" shows that if anything, we are firmly passed that classic era, except Putin's powerful enough to think that he's still in it, and that it doesn't matter what detractors like Navalny might say. Why are all dictators so damn stupid?)

Anyway, "Navalny" won the Best Documentary Oscar and I can see why. Navalny is a compelling man with a compelling story, one that's still getting told. He might someday, somehow overthrow Putin, and that shift towards a more Democratic Russia could have its own potential issues. (While Navalny himself is generally on the Left-to-far left, the constant presence of Putin's control over Russia has made him literally march with some more far-right bedfellows in the painfully slow march towards Russian Democracy. In the meantime, Navalny is one clever court jester, hopefully one of many figures that are picking and prodding at Putin's continued reign. Hey, he can't kill all his enemies, literally.

AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER (2022) Director: James Cameron

⭐⭐

I guess before I start this review, I don't think I've ever actually expressed my thought on "Avatar" before, so, let's get that out of the way:

(Clears throat)

Ahem. There is a certain James Cameron style and approach to filmmaking, and I like his films the farther and farther away that he gets from that style, so I enjoyed "Avatar", a lot,... for about the first ninety minutes or so. In fact, I might dare say, that, if the movie ended at about that point, I could easily see myself ranking the film among the best movies of the 2000s decade. Then, the movie turned into a James Cameron action film, and I frickin' hated all that. I've never cared for James Cameron to be honest; admittedly I gotta catch up on a lot of his back catalog, but I have not particularly liked what I have seen. Actually, that's not entirely fair..., well, except for "True Lies", which is just, trash. Sorry, I'll never understand why anybody likes that one, but I guess "Titanic", eh,- well, that movie is just weird in general to me. It's not a technically bad film, but I've never found it as interesting or as compelling as everyone else did at the time and to a degree seems to now. Cameron's movies are strange to me, like, I can watch them once and generally give them a pass, but if I ever try to watch them more than that, the flaws and the simplicity of his stories really start to burst out at me.

Actually, that's why "Avatar" ultimately, pissed me off; it's never been so much that he decided to create that hugely elaborate, beautiful and amazing new world, and then used it as a battleground, although that does piss me off, but it just annoys me that, it feels like, in his case, turning this land into a battleground, was the only thing he could think to do with it. I do tend to get annoyed at that trope in general when there's a fantasy world that we spend all this time learning about, experiencing and living in, and then, all that ends up in is some giant special-effect blast. Of all the things that pissed me off about "Avengers: Civil War", and there are a lot, the biggest one that pissed me off the most was Wakanda just being used as a sight for a huge Avengers defeat. I just learned about this Wakanda place, loved this place, and now you're just destroying this place; and all I can think is, what the fuck was the point of all that to begin with then? There's so many other interesting and intriguing stories you can tell with that world..., and "Avatar" just felt the same way; the last hour-long fight at the end, it should've been the end of like, the fourth movie, not the first! (You know, actually,- I take that back, I don't really get why it should've been the end of any of the movies; why create this world just to threaten it with destruction? Can't you just enjoy your creations and let it wash over us?)

For comparison, let's look a movie that clearly "Avatar" wanted to be based on how much they stole from it, Hayao Miyazaki's "Princess Mononoke"; now that's a movie about a stranger coming into and learning about a foreign fantasy land and there's a giant battle at the end of that movie as well, but the conflict of that battle, is complicated, and filled with complexities that go beyond the simple meatheaded military conflicts of a colonizing force wanting and striving to overtake a more natural group tribe of locals. The battle, comes around, naturally, because of the complexity of the situations and of the people, the natural evolution and changes in beliefs and technology, and therefore the battle for power is really a battle for survival in a world, where only one way of life can and will survive, and that's regardless of whether the factions fight each other or not. One side is dying out and the other side, might not survive themselves if they don't seek to take out the others...,- it's so much more intriguing and elaborate, and meanwhile, "Avatar", just doesn't have that kind of complexity. Some may argue about the implications and metaphor it's making for the sins and ills of colonization, but, like, it's barely metaphor, and this can be done in much more subtle and complex ways. Off the top of my head, even something like "Dances With Wolves", isn't so simplistic with it's details of the Americans raping of the indigenous lands and genocide of it's peoples.

Or even, Terence Malick's "The New World" is much more elaborate and nuanced than the story seems on the surface. I mention that one, 'cause I wonder if Cameron is trying to be Terence Malick with this film. I know that seems like a strange comp, but especially in the opening, of "Avatar: The Way of Water", with the editing of the family sequences and the voiceover, it does feel a bit like he's trying to evoke the gravitas of a Malick epic, before the ships from Earth come back in, in an attempt to do the same stupid thing the humans were trying to do in the first film, only dumber,- (Well,- not-, actually yeah, let's go with dumber.) and they're now after Jake (Sam Worthington) as well as his whole family.

And I do mean they're back, kinda.... The same group of villains are here, only this time, they're avatars themselves. Except they're not exactly the same villains, they're Na'avi avatars, who were inserted with the memories of the past fallen warriors who died years ago, so they essentially are, like powerful zombie clone avatar versions of them. They're not after the unobtanium anymore, per se, but instead, they're looking for tulkun, a whale-like creature who have a substance in their brains called Amrita that prevents human aging, so instead they're now after that substance and have brought in some marine biologists and harpoonists to go chasing after them.

Okay, this is what-, why would you do this? Like, I get, why the military is here to overtake the land, I've read American history, I get how colonialism works, but like, why would they do this? Like, okay, maybe in a desperate move, after all else fails, this would make sense, but like, it's almost like this was Plan A to bring back these soldiers, from the dead, to fight the indigenous peoples who took them out the first time? First of all, I don't want to see these people at all, even in the first movie these cartoon villains pissed me off. (Jesus, a lot of things piss me off with this film!) And they are cartoon villains; there's like one, like, half-a-line from a monologue from Edie Falco, who plays like, the main general, about how is the Earth is dying? And that pacifying the natives on Pandora can lead to them being able to colonize and find a hypothetical new home, but you never actually believe that, and besides, since we're dealing with zombie clone soldiers of evil soldiers from before, who the hell cares?

And why, just go after Sully, and his family, so much that they decide to leave their forest and instead live amongst a far off island tribe who connect with tulkuns unlike the forest people who connect with, the flying hornet-like dragon things? (I don't remember what anything was called, I'm trying to follow a Collider guide while I'm writing this. Pandora's a beautiful world, but for a story so simple, it's fantasy is too complex) I guess, it's because Sully is like, the one main skillful soldier who can out-maneuver the humans attacks in guerrilla warfare, but, I don't know, I still feel like following him across Pandora to take him out specifically feels like a strange strategy. Wouldn't you rather have like, a multi-pronged attack from several direction on multiple parts and directions, especially if the tulkuns are the more valuable resource now, why aren't they more focused on going after the more coastal tribes connected to the tulkun anyways-... not to mention, just coming to attack the Naa'vi is just stupid, when you could just come as refugees if the Earth really is dying like they say? You tried this already, the Na'avi are aware of working with other humans for years who are friendly....- MY GOD! Are these space-traveling earthlings just fucking incompetents idiots and jackasses in the future!?!?!??!?!?

I think I'm just focusing on all of this so much because it's the stuff that keeps ruining this franchise for me. Like, Jake and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) start a family, that's fine. There's conflict with the humans, that's fine, if it wasn't stupid and this conflicts leads them to head off to another part of Pandora and have to discover and learn more about the world and different parts of their world, that all makes sense, and is interesting on paper, even this idea of the island Na'avi connecting more closely with the water creatures, this is all intriguing and fascinating, and yet, I can't get into it, because I know what's coming. The last hour of the movie is basically an action movie, and a James Cameron action movie at that, and this one, comes complete with, apparently Cameron's new trademark, a sinking goddamn ship! Again! At least, with the first "Avatar", you didn't know that the conflict was coming up and I could actually be impressed and intrigued with the world they were showing, but here, in this film, I was impressed by the visuals, but I wasn't impressed by the world itself. I wasn't getting my hopes up, 'cause I didn't want to get built up to see it annihilated and massacred again.

The fact that the villains are so single-mindedly military and bullish; it undercuts everything that would otherwise be fascinating after "Avatar", about this world that's apparently ingrained deep inside James Cameron's mind. Also, it doesn't help that it's been done a little better at times. I can't have been the only one who was thinking a lot about the "How to Train Your Dragon" sequels and wishing they were watching them while watching this. Actually, I can go into a long rant about how they should just make these films animated, but Cameron loves his goddamn special effects. "Avatar: The Way of Water", feels like a stew of all the worst indulgences and tendencies James Cameron has. Maybe others see some of these things as fun, with Cameron, but I never have, and frankly for as long as he takes to make these movies, now, like...; I know I'm just watching on a DVD or streaming on some streaming service, but I feel like I'm watching a lot of ingredients for an elaborate seven-course meal come into the kitchen and then when I sit down at the restaurant to eat, I find all the least fattening and unappetizing parts of those ingredients prepared in the least appetizing ways possible, and only in three courses instead of seven, but still getting charged for the whole seven I was hoping and imagining I would get. Like the kind of meal where sauce is presented in foam form. That's what James Cameron movies feel like to me the more I see them, and especially this one.

BARBIE (2023) Director: Greta Gerwig

⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2

I’ve been forgetting to talk about this, but the guys over at the Geekcast Radio Network, invited me to submit a ballot for them in a poll. I’ve participated in a few of their polls before, and occasionally we’ve gotten into some spirited debates, sometimes a little way too spirited admittedly but they’re good guys; this time they did the Top 100 Greatest Toys of All-Time. I had plans to post my ballot here on this blog, but life got in the way and frankly I just didn’t feel like it, at the time, and frankly I just forgot the whole thing existed it until recently. Here are the links to their podcasts where they reveal the final results:

https://www.geekcastradio.com/podcasts/geekcastradio/top-100-countdown-toys-part-1-introduction/

https://www.geekcastradio.com/podcasts/geekcastradio/top-100-countdown-toys-part-2-100-76/

https://www.geekcastradio.com/podcasts/geekcastradio/top-100-countdown-toys-part-3-75-51/

https://www.geekcastradio.com/podcasts/geekcastradio/top-100-countdown-toys-part-4-50-26/

https://www.geekcastradio.com/podcasts/geekcastradio/top-100-countdown-toys-part-5-25-01/

https://www.geekcastradio.com/podcasts/geekcastradio/top-100-countdown-toys-part-6-wrap-up/

And if you’re interested, I did eventually post my ballot on my FB pages, so if you want to look at that you can.

https://www.facebook.com/david.baruffi/posts/pfbid0hENVWzCvmenY12HhLFCJtabwDZwDypMWFXUNQea42T7FzNSJQ23W1KdHaziqNnbbl

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid03XSTj2vDrEi6ZQxU9n8JkEdaR5GP2TYPb6EyNP5xq9n8p1yHGgXmWMp3N77ZFLfyl&id=100057155933433

(Shrugs)

I think it’s a good list, but-eh, it’s apparently very different than the results that the GCRN crowd and group came up with. I did expect that, to a degree; I typically am the outlier in this voting group. Also, apparently people like playing with action figures way more than I ever did. (They sent every voter a reminder packet of toys to consider and separated them into a bunch of different categories. Action figures, took up like four or five pages, and before I saw the packet, I was debating whether or not action figures as a whole were worth putting on the list at all. I did ultimately put a couple on there, and maybe should’ve put “Star Wars” on their at least, considering their importance but I’m sorry action figures just annoyed me growing up. I don’t get how they were so appealing to others) Also, another spoiler, my number one missed the list entirely, which was playing cards! How the f- how do action figure for TV shows that lasted like thirteen episodes make the list, but a deck of cards doesn’t make it! I know it just missed, but c’mon! You can do anything with a deck of cards, all action figures do is stay there and break if you do anything to them!-

I’m sorry, I had a point I was making… Oh, yeah, anyway, on my ballot I ranked Barbie number six.

(Shrugs)

I think it was a good spot for her. I never played much with “Barbie” (Margot Robbie) myself growing up, although I never had anything particularly against Barbie either, which actually makes me unusual ‘cause nearly everybody else in the world does have something against Barbie. Boys hated Barbie ‘cause they were girls, girls hated Barbie for a litany of reasons that would take up a book if I went into detail over all of them, although if I had to boil it down, most of the reasons were because Barbie is a girl, and of course everybody hates Ken (Ryan Gosling) including Barbie, who I believe officially broke up with him, around the mid-2000s I think. (Google search) Yeah, Feb. 14, 2004, oh on Valentine's Day too! Damn Barbie, that's a bitch move!.... So, there you go, everybody hates Barbie. But, a “Barbie” movie has always been a weird thing to me. In fact, any Barbie media on film or television or home video, has always sounded weird, ‘cause, well, who is Barbie? Frankly, I couldn’t particularly tell you. Barbie is…- whoever or whatever Barbie needs to be or whoever you want her to be. She’s,- ummm,- she’s an image of admiration, I guess, but- it’s hard to explain, even if you’ve lived in a world that’s been shaped by Barbie literally your whole life. She is and has become so malleable over the years that, it’s hard for me to actually believe, literally anyone or anything actually is Barbie, so how would you create a story about here?

Well, a few people gave it a shot over-the-years; I’ve been following this film project back when Amy Schumer was originally tasked for writing and starring in the film, and even before then, the project was stuck in pre-production Hell forever. I love Amy Schumer, but I get why she would’ve been the wrong choice here, even if you wanted to do a spoof of Barbie, it’s a fine line to take a product and also be able to satirize it, while also selling it and I don’t know if that really was in her wheelhouse. Frankly, I’m half-amazed it’s in anybody’s, but eventually, Greta Gerwig took over the project and I suspect she started from scratch.

Or, actually, I think she started from “Enchanted”. Yeah, I don’t know if anybody’s compared these two, but “Barbie” struck me as a sardonic version of “Enchanted”. Instead of a fairy tale princess in the real world, we just have a Barbie girl in a Barbie World. Literally, Barbie, lives with all the other Barbies in her own dreamhouse in her owl dreamworld where everything is perfect. Except she begins to have thoughts of death and other disturbing ideas. Then, her feet become flat and other odd things start happening. She can’t fly down from her rooftop anymore, her toast got burnt, even the Lizzo song interrupts her day to ask if she’s okay. It’s weird. Eventually, she ends up getting help from Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), the Barbie who got played with a little too hard and rough in the real world. She’s like the Barbie World medicine woman who everybody makes fun of behind her back and to her face, even if everybody kinda begrudgingly respects her.

Robbie is Stereotypical Barbie, so she’s the most bubble-headed bleach blonde of them all, even to the point of being completely oblivious to Ken’s needs and desires to be with her. In this world, Ken’s are just there to be at the beckon call and will of Barbie, but apparently something is amiss, so before things get any wronger or stranger for her, she decides to leave for the Real World, to find the girl playing with her, figuring that solving her emotional crises could help her get over hers. Ken tags along, and immediately, they get arrested a couple times, as they begin rollerblading on the West Coast, and realize that they don’t have a lot of money or the means to get by, and eventually two stranger dimwits going around half dressed saying their Barbie and Ken, gets the attention of the Mattel people. Apparently this has happened before, y’know, but with Skipper, so nobody cared, and they need to get Barbie back to BarbieLand. (They're not so much worried about Ken being out.)

Eventually, Barbie does find out about how much or how poorly Barbie’s influenced the world, eventually finding her owner, Gloria (America Ferrara) a Mattel employee who’s struggling raising her angst-filled daughter, Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt). Meanwhile, Ken learns about patriarchy and begins embracing a more machismo view of the world and the media he’s apart of. While he’s not equipped to get the male positions in society that he really desires, he goes back to Barbieland and immediately starts changing things in order to make all the Kens more dominant in decisions and the Barbies becoming more subservient to them. This is actually kind of a improvement from “Enchanted” but it’s still just as goofy. It’s just goofy and definitely has a sharper point about society at large.

That makes sense. In a way, if you can describe Barbie, it’s that she’s always been a representative of the times that she’s around. When she started, in was in the 1950s, and my Aunt Patty had one of the early original Barbie that would’ve made me buttloads of money if my grandmother hadn’t toss it away not-knowning the value that doll would’ve had now. Back then, just the idea of a doll that wasn’t a baby or child for a child herself was a novel idea, the idea being that she could become the adult that the girl would envision. What that adult is, eventually could be anybody and continue to evolve and change based on what society has thought that “anybody” could or should be. So, the film, taking the approach of comparing an ideal Barbie World, to the real world, and then seeing the collision between them, how Barbie struggles to have the influence/impact on the world that was originally intended, and then seeing that ideal world, ruined by an idea of a Ken-dominated patriarchy…- it’s definitely subversive, and at times, really funny, even if it is still a commercial, although Mattel doesn’t necessarily come off that ideal in it, but I don’t think they care that much. I mean, they’ve had a couple female CEOs in the past, so they’re good?

How good is “Barbie” though… Well, I don’t know honestly. I’ve been debating this one myself. It’s apparently beloved for its sharpness and wit, it’s made most of the award season, including the Oscars. I can’t completely tell if it’s truly that good. I guess in order to really see just how good it, I have to think about, exactly what it could’ve been, ‘cause absolutely this could’ve been awful. Most toy adaptations are questionable-at-best, despite many of them being much more easily adaptable to the feature film format. I mean, I’ve never like G.I. Joe, but I get why that could be a movie franchise. (Yes, I left G.I. Joe off my poll, not only is G.I. Joe an action figure that sucks, but he’s caused more harm to society than Barbie has done. [There’s your controversial “Barbie” opinion for you]) Barbie, really could’ve been as empty and blank as a stereotypical barbie doll, and it probably would’ve still been big, but Greta Gerwig is a lot smarter than that. She made not only “Lady Bird”, but also the best adaptation yet of “Little Women”; in fact, her “Little Women” is very much the key to this film. That movie is also about recontextualizing a text, and a very feminine one at that, and then looking at how it was essentially corrupted and reinterpreted by a more masculine patriarchal structure before being put out into the world, and essentially revealing just how that itself has effected the world; how Louisa May Alcott had to change the ending despite finding love not being representative of Alcott’s own vision. That’s what makes her perfect for Barbie. Gerwig’s constantly struggling to find an equal place in a masculine-controlled world. Hell, even her Best Director snubs in recent years can be interpreted as such, and it’s all through her material. “Barbie”’s just the most populous and pronounced product that she’s supplementing this conflict through. It’s also probably the most obvious medium you could express this ache and frustration through.

In that respects, “Barbie” is exactly the only movie that could’ve been made, at least the only one with any emotional power at all. It’s still a blatant commercial, but in a way, it’s the best kind of blatant commercial, the one that’s honest enough about it to show its greatest faults warts and all. Good job, Ms. Roberts, you got about as good movie out of you as you possibly could’ve been. (Yeah, Barbie’s actual full name is Barbie Millicent Roberts. That’s my favorite Barbie fact; I guess because knowing her middle name is Millie shows just how old she actually is.)

TRIANGLE OF SADNESS (2022) Director: Ruben Ostlund

⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2

I think if I was more, in the mood or willing, I'd probably write a more analytical look at Ruben Ostlund's first English-language feature "Triangle of Sadness"; the metaphorical significance of what he's saying or trying to get at or analyze, but I don't think that makes the movie more entertaining or enjoyable. Besides, it basically boils down to, "Let's laugh at the capitalist rich and famous," which is fine by me and more than enough, but "Triangle of Sadness," just takes such a deliriously absurdist and surrealist takes on it, that it's just too much fun to actually dissect. Besides, this story is just too absurd to secretly be about the Russian Revolution or anything like that anyway.

Ostlund's movies, while they're all various forms of dark comedy, they're all really about taking a look at the accepted norms of humanity and society and then breaking them, and breaking them down, tearing away the artifice and facade, and showing them for the incompetence and unimportance they are. The film is titled after a cosmetic term; a "Triangle of Sadness" is basically what a bag that grows under one's eye is called, and it's something that botox injections are famous for trying to alleviate.

The movie itself is separated into three segments. The first showcase a pairing of a couple, Carl (Harris Dickinson) a male model and Yaya (Charli Dean) a social influencer. This feels like it's in the same universe as Ostlund's last film, the absurdist satire of the high art world, "The Square", and the two characters get into a very elaborate discussion over money and how they much they make.

The second, and longest segment, takes place on a cruise ship that Carl and Yaya are on, a trip they got free due to her fame as an influencer. There's other couples there, mostly older couples. I don't want to give too much away about them, but the big thing you want to know about them is that, through a series of scenarios too ridiculous and absurd to fully describe, they eventually put all their lives on the line, in several ways, during the cruise's "Captain's Dinner", where they honored their inebriated Captain (Woody Harrelson). The slow build-up and watching all these eccentric and mostly rich characters, unaware of how their own little insistences led to such, nauseating problems for themselves and everyone on board, the movie finally kinda started working for me. 'Cause, this is basically a Jacques Tati film this whole sequence. It's "Playtime" at sea basically. You can look at every little detail if you want, but really think about it, would the entire sequence make any less sense, if M. Hulot was walking around everyone and everything during this scene? If anything, that's what this movie needs. If you like these kind of slow-moving setups, for Tati to come in and make a mockery out of everything, this sequence is perfect for you.

Inevitably, the ship gets blown up by pirates in the middle of this, stranding and shipwrecking fellow passengers, luckily most of the castaways that we've been following throughout the boat trip. On the island, with everybody else seemingly cos-plays as the Thurston Howell III and his wife, that leaves, the toilet maid Abigail (Dolly De Leon), eventually becoming the leader of the group, being that she's the only one who can catch food, build a fire, basically do anything to survive on their own. Now, if you're me, than the movie this part reminds you of, is Lina Wertmuller's "Swept Away...." and it isn't exactly off per se. At one point, she even has Carl, basically as a sex slave in order to get extra amenities for him and Yaya. This goes on, until even this situation, falls into a twisted perversion of power and wealth dynamics running amuck.

"Triangle of Sadness" probably inspires me the least of Ostlund's recent outings, but it's hard to top "Force Majeure" which is simply a brilliant and nearly perfect script, but "Triangle of Sadness" feels like a modern-day Luis Bunuel film, particular at his most surrealistic. You could easily play this on a double feature with "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" or "The Exterminating Angel" and feel like you're watching the same story just told fifty years apart. I've listed a lot of filmmakers off in this video, I can probably list more; I'm sure I won't be the first review to mention "Monty Python's The Meaning of Life" in a review of this film, but you know what all these artists have in common is that their approaches to filmmaking and their style of filmmaking and storytelling were very at-odds with the times they were working in. They were all rebellious filmmakers who's work constantly challenged the norms of filmmaking, and often of society. Even Tati always seemed out-of-time-and-place; he seemed like an old comic from the silent days who accidentally stumbled into a modern film and modern world. And they were all satirists too, maybe not always comedically per se, but they saw the world as a joke and sham that needed to be exposed for the flaccid incompetence that was really behind them. "Triangle of Sadness" takes dead-aim, and if it does falter, it's only because the power and oligarchy that he's making fun are just the same ones that have been around forever now. Only, this one takes Instagram photos of pasta dishes that they don't eat at the dinner party that they can't seem to leave.

EO (2022) Director: Jerzy Skolimowski

⭐⭐⭐

There's a famous movie called "Au Hasard Balthazar"; it was made in the '60s and basically the movie follows a donkey from it's birth, an through several owners, almost all of whom mistreat the donkey in various ways over the years, and then, the movie ends with the donkey's passing. The point of the movie is that, the donkey, just keeps doing whatever he's doing, whatever's asked or required of him and he doesn't react with any callousness or any other recognizable emotion or reaction, he's a donkey. I've seen the movie, I've even thought about revisiting it a few times over the years, but I gotta admit I've always been a little reluctant to do so. It's by a filmmaker who I haven't talked a lot about over the years, Robert Bresson. If you talk to most of the really big critics over the years and some of the really big filmmakers as well, they'll often list Bresson as one of the all-time greats, and it's not that their wrong, 'cause I've seen more than a few Bresson films and all of them are great films, but I tend to find him, much harder to connect to than others.

For one thing, his films were really religious. Christian to be exact. Not necessarily in content, like I said, one of his more famous films is just following a donkey, but the idea of that film even, is that the donkey, and his life, is representative, of life as a whole and how we should live it, in this very reserved, evangelical counsels way. No money, no fuss, just going about your day and doing what you can and should, it's almost saint-like some people describe it. A lot of this also has to do with his unique filmmaking style. He didn't like professional actors 'cause he was a severe minimalist, only shooting the most essential details and didn't want his performers to express much emotion; he would often wear out his actors, shooting and re-shooting scenes until they gave almost no emotion in their performances. The effect is, fascinating; it makes you pay attention more intently, but the lack of emotion also means you gotta essentially start putting your own emotions onto the characters and situation; it's almost like some kind of a reverse audience Kuleshov Effect.

Essentially, "Eo", which is, one of the absolutely most annoying-titled films to search through when trying to find it on a word document, is essentially a modern remake of "Au Hasard Balthasar". It's definitely not exact, but a lot of the elements are there. The donkey's named Eo, and when we first meet him, he's working for a circus act, which is getting protested for them using animals. He gets sold to a stable, where the horses run free, which, I guess, Eo, finds.... um, yeah, I think it's implied that he finds the horses being free, inspiring. He ends up working at a labor farm where Kassandra (Sandra Drzymalska), the person who he performed with during their act, visits for his birthday. That's the last time he sees her as she ends up escaping and into a brutal and chaotic, often violent world. At one point, he gets adopted by an amateur soccer team. At another, he ends up nearly killing a man who works at a fur factory. He gets befriended by a priest, Vito (Lorenzo Zurzolo), and by "befriend", I guess, talks to Eo like a person and not like a donkey. Vito has a gambling problem, that his stepmom, The Countess (Isabelle Huppert, weirdly) complains about him enough. Eventually, Eo does end up dying, he ends up, somehow in a slaughterhouse and gets caught up in the line.

Honestly, I don't know what to make of most of this. "Eo" is in many ways, just as out-of-reach for people like me as "Au Hasard Baltazar" can be, but even in that film's episodic nature, there are a few continuous threads going on, and a lot of it actually does tie into Baltazar specifically. Clearly, "Eo" isn't entirely random either, but it's weird, 'cause the movie seems to be indicating that Eo, has a lot more agency in his actions than Baltazar had. The whole point of "Au Hasard Baltazar" is that everything that happens to him, and is out of his control, in "Eo", I don't think that's entirely what he's going for. I still kinda read it that way, but at multiple points, Eo seeks out freedom and escapes into the world, and it's indicating that he was inspired to do this. I guess, you can read it like that, since he grew up originally in the circus and that kind of free-spiritedness is inside him, but eh, I don't know. I feel it's just a little hard to be believable. I kinda have the same problem with Steven Spielberg's "War Horse", that essentially we have to be putting these extra human actions and emotions onto an animal that frankly, eh, I question whether or not a donkey is an animal that's really capable of it, and especially a real donkey. Six different donkeys played the role of Eo, not that I could tell them apart, but this isn't a special effect film. It's impressive in that regard; despite the advancements in CGI technology, and yes, the horrors of some of the more exploitative stories of animals on set, I do miss real animals in stuff.

The thing is, they only, kinda go along with this idea that he's in control of certain actions and not in control of others, so I don't really know the intent by this decision. It makes it actually feel less meaningful and more pointless to me if the movie is indicating that he does have motivation and desire to act out, and not have it just be, something that happens. It would make the story, like, he got out of his bondage, and then, bad things happen to him, and ultimately, it doesn't work, and he dies like all the other animals. Eh, it's not as inspiring or moving. The tragedy is that, Eo doesn't have the freedom, right? Would that just be too close to "Au Hasard Baltazar"?

Maybe. The film was an Oscar-nominee for Best International Film, as was directed by the legendary Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski, and he's had a very eclectic career in Europe and the United States, both in front of and behind the camera. He's 84 years old and started work as a screenwriter for Andrej Wadja, one of the all-time great Polish filmmakers. (His film "Ashes and Diamonds" is basically the Polish version of "Rebel Without a Cause") Skolimowski's been a little bit of everything though, he's an award-winning writer-director, he gave it up to paint in L.A. for a couple decades, he was a boxer at one point in college, he came into film through architecture like Fritz Lang had...- he's basically one of those renaissance guys who's done everything. Hell, he even had a minor role in "The Avengers", and six decades after writing the dialogue for Roman Polanski's breakout feature "Knife in the Water", he's writing his next feature film. (I'll let the penal colony determine their own judgements on that one, but whatever..., they're legends of the Polish New Wave) Probably his biggest films in America was 1970's "Deep End" and 1982's "Moonlighting". I haven't seen either of those films, and I also haven't watched too many other feature films he's directed unfortunately, so while I can list off the list of people he's worked with, I don't really have a sense of his style or motifs as a director. Nor, do I really get, why he wanted to make this film of all things.

I could speculate, the idea of stardom with the circus and then breaking free and getting beaten down by the constant search for fame, from the donkey, and then seeing, that strange robot, could be, the failure of the donkey being replaced with a machine, then he's exploited,.... I-eh, I don't know. I feel like trying to make logical sense out of the film is just stretching. "EO", is fine, as a movie, but it's thin when you analyze it any deeper than that. It's a well-made and interesting homage to Bresson, but interesting is about it. I'll still barely recommend it, but there's probably better introductions to Skolimowski and I hope to explore them someday.

ALL THAT BREATHES (2022) Director: Shaunak Sen

⭐⭐⭐

I guess my initials thoughts while watching "All That Breathes" were some variation on the idea that, "Well, I guess somebody has to." It's one of those things, looking at the greater world that you do wonder, why and how somebody would focus their time and energy, into something like what the brothers in "All That Breathes" do. The Shehzad Brothers live in Delha, a city that's recently been both a political hotbed center in the world, as well as, in some cases very paradoxically, one of the biggest and most technically advance in the world. That however has lead to pollution. Now in some of America's bigger cities, we're kinda use to waking up to some smoky gray skies, or in the old days in Las Vegas, dirt brown skies, but in recent years, certain big American cities have started alleviating that problem. Delhi however, is a little slow on renovating the air quality and that has led to a phenomenon of, birds dying.

Yeah, birds. Black kites to be specific, and some of them have been literally falling out of the sky. And the brothers have over the years started collecting and helping them heal, building a sanctuary for them. "All That Breathes" is a meditative look at having such a,- well, I don't know what the word would be, but as we see the brothers as they continue to find and help heal these birds, the discussion often runs towards some of the political activities going on in the country. I can barely understand a lot of it, India's politics have always been a little on-edge, caste systems and several various groups, there's been a controversial populist movement in the country in recent years. I'm not gonna I understand most of it, but the main conflict of the film, is that, when you're surround by, a greater chaos, what's the point of just of birds.

And mean birds at that. Blue kites are predators, but traditionally, the locals would throw meat up at them to eat and I guess it, some kind of good luck. I wasn't entirely sure about that, but like, they're raptors, which I didn't even realize is a kind of bird, which,- seems a little +Hitchcockian-like foreboding for me, but you know, the struggles of the birds are indeed, an effect of the problems with Delhi right now. And yeah, I mean, birds are falling out of the sky, somebody has got to help back into the air.

The movie was directed by Shaunak Sen, it's his second feature, his second feature, the first one I've seen. His previous feature, "Cities of Sleep" was about the homeless of Delhi and the struggles for them to get beds at night at the local shelter. Apparently the health of the city is important to him and he shot over 400 hours of footage of "All That Breathes". I'm not surprised, but it still felt like a bit of a struggle to come up with a true narrative, and I'm not surprised by that either. I can kinda see how this film more than others would appeal to the Academy members as the movie got nominated for Best Documentary. Normally I'm not as big anymore on these meditative documentaries on life being lived, but "All That Breathes" does put it in a bigger context. it might strain itself trying to reach it sometimes, but it gets there. I probably appreciate more than I like it, but at least it's aiming to soar, even if it just mostly flutters.

EMPIRE OF LIGHT (2022) Director: Sam Mendes

⭐⭐⭐

It admittedly feels weird trying to review a movie that's essentially about how great the old moviehouses used to be, to be writing a review on a blog while listening to some Youtube video, which I occasionally pause on the TV to watch different Youtube videos on my computer, while listening to a podcast on Spotify on my tablet, but here we are. That said, "Empire of Light" did continue to capture my attention.

That said, it is underwhelming in hindsight, especially for Sam Mendes. I always felt he's mostly been overlooked as one of our great directors. "1917" was regarded as a comeback for him to many, which-, I don't really get. Maybe it's that he didn't originally come from film; he's probably more of a theater director than a filmmaker, it might be that the modern reevaluation on his debut breakout feature "American Beauty" hasn't been kind and most people still associate him mainly with that film, (Even though they're wrong, it's still a masterpiece) Yet, here's the thing, he's never made a bad movie. In fact, I think most of his other films are pretty damn good. "Road to Perdition" is in my Canon of Film along with "American Beauty", "1917" will probably be there eventually. "Revolutionary Road" was a damn-near masterpiece, "Jarhead is a fascinating anti-war movie about Persian Gulf. Okay, "Spectre" isn't the greatest Bond film, but "Away We Go" is an underrated comedic gem. Plus he also did "Skyfall" and that is up there with any James Bond. Exactly, how and why doesn't he get more credit and appreciation?

Even "Empire of Light", it's a bit flawed and cliched, but it's got some moments. The "Empire" is a classic old-school moviehouse on the Eastern shore on the English coast. It takes during the early eighties, around the time "Chariots of Fire" was coming out. Hillary (Olivia Colman) is the leader of a nice little crew of people running the Empire. She herself, doesn't actually watch a lot of movies, and is actually fairly quiet it seems; she's been doing this longer than anybody and has seen everything. She's also taking lithium now, and the only person she really talks to occasionally is her doctor. And her boss, Donald (Colin Firth) who she's having an affair with, and it's a rather depressing affair at that.

Eventually, she befriends a new employee, Stephen (Michael Ward), a young man who's family came from Trinidad. Right around the time of the upheaval of in the UK of race attacks. (Sighs) Margaret Thatcher just totally sucked; I'm sure there's more that needs and should be said there but that's about all that really needs to be said. Anyway, she starts a relationship with him, a tender one that includes romance in the upper abandoned theaters, where they take care of a bird that's nesting. He does have his own relationships with people his own age and ethnicity; he befriends a nurse named Ruby (Crystal Clark) for instance, but he's more drawn to Hillary at first. Both of whom have one good acquaintance in Norman (Toby Jones) the projectionist. He's another of those older male projectionists who can spout poetry about about the magic of movies, and the projector. I guess he's not the romantic blind schemer character like, say, Alfredo in "Cinema Paradiso" or anything but it interesting to me that, at the end of the movie, a movie is played for one character and a book is given as a gift to another. I like that idea, that a gift to remind one another of stuff is art.

That said though, I think the problem is that these two stories aren't exactly good at being connected. I'm leaving out a point about Hillary's condition, that's partially a reveal, partially shown ahead of time, but either way,- you know something's up but you don't realize how bad it is until much later in the movie, but I'm not sure it was ever gonna be good. The movie that I was reminded most of was "Educating Rita", another movie about two characters who fall in love through each of them experiencing their own diverse worlds. That movie has simplistic reveals about each of their main characters as well, and honestly it's not as deep as it thinks it is. (Apparently the play was better, and I believe that) "Empire of Light" is not that bad. The May-December is a little more interesting and intricate. I don't know, it just doesn't have the magic of the kind of romance that it's trying to force on us. It's more idea than story,- perhaps if it was a more in-depth miniseries I would like it more, but eh, for Mendes's worst film I can still kinda appreciate what he was trying to do at least.

It's a shame though. This could've been better.

DECISION TO LEAVE (2022) Director: PARK Chan-wook

⭐⭐⭐

It took me a few times to even push my way through "Decision to Leave", the latest from the great Korean director PARK Chan-wook. I wasn't really big on him until his previous feature film "The Handmaiden", which, was actually inspired by a book by British author Sarah Waters. It worked pretty well anyway, because, well, Waters is a pretty good writer to begin with, but the themes that that film developed through the complex class relationships between their characters, actually held a lot more metaphorical value. "Decision to Leave" though, is just as western in influence, it's basically a romantic thriller, but I'm not sure it's actually a good one, or if there's a greater depth to it that I'm missing. Personally I kept watching it and found myself thinking about more interesting recent neo-noirs. "Basic Instinct" came to my mind a lot, which is unfortunate 'cause "Decision to Leave" is way better than that film, but compared to something like say "Body Heat", ehhh.

Yeah, "Decision to Leave" is basically one of those films, that neo-noir erotic thriller film where a detective on a case, Hae-Jun (PARK Hae-il) falls in love with a suspect, in this case, the wife of a immigration officer Seo-Rae (TANG Wei) who's husband was found off the edge of a mountain. Seo-Rae is a Chinese emigrant who works as a caregiver for elderly patients, and was found with both several unexplained bruises, plus a unique tattoo that matches the markings on some of her husband's prized possessions, possibly indication something nefarious. She also seemed noticeably unshaken by her husband's death and Hae-jun is soon watching Seo-Rae under surveillance as they suspect foul play.

Little is found, but he becomes infatuated with her. Hae-jun is already an insomniac, and while he is married, he rarely sees his wife due to her job, and he becomes getting closer to Seo-Rae. Eventually, he falls for the femme fatale, and they begin a relationship but eventually it does end, only for them to reconnect later when she's with another guy and eventually they reconnect when she's with that other guy, Ho-Shin (PARK Yong-Woo) who also, soon later, winds up dead under suspicious circumstances.

Honestly, PARK Chan-wook's films have, been much more hit-and-miss for me over the years, and sometimes it does take me a while. It took me a couple viewings before I really understood the power of "Oldboy", his big breakout film in the West, in fact, I hated that film at first, but eventually I warmed up to it. Park is more western-influence than most of the big Korean filmmakers, like I said, his best film is an adaptation of a British work, and even "Oldboy" is basically a reimaging of "The Count of Monte Cristo". His vampire film "Thirst" is pretty popular as a vampire goth romance, that's pretty western all-in-all, and it's okay, but I didn't care much at all for "Stoker" his only English language film, even if it was basically a reworking of Alfred Hitchcock's "Shadow of a Doubt".

I think that's my issue with him, I think Park just lacks depth sometimes and is more-or-less attempting to coast on doing interpretations of these other genres and films without always adding greater context to them. It makes me think that when their is something else to them, that it's almost entirely by accident moreso than intent. Compare him to say BONG Joon-ho, I don't love everything he's ever made, but even his worst film, which for the record is "The Host", which is basically a Godzilla film, and frankly I can't stand it but, it's got a lot of subtext going on, like the origin of that monster and how it relates to the ways that the sins of the rich western world has hurt other countries. PARK's films, I don't always see that, and when that's not there and all you see is the genre, you kinda feel deflated.

Perhaps I am missing more than I should, I guess there is something with the notion of a Chinese emigrant coming in, and suddenly those who've brought her in have sudden passings, but, eh, I feel like I'm stretching with that. I think Seo-Rae is basically just another femme fatale who tries to get away with murder by manipulating the detective investigating her, and perhaps I've just seen too many of those films. I mean it's less sexual than most of those erotic thrillers that loved this kind of plot, especially the '80s and early '90s ones and that's mostly for the better. In fact, it's not nearly as sexual as you'd expect, that's a positive. I found "Decision to Leave" better than most of those movies, which isn't saying much, most of those films were pretty sketchy, and it's not in the great category either.

I'll say this, "Decision to Leave" marks the last film I'll get on DVD from Netflix, so for that, it means something to me. That means something, but I wish it was a better film though. It's okay if you just want something familiar-but-new, but if you're looking for a transcendent take on a classic genre, eh, I didn't get that.

HAPPENING (2022) Director: Audrey Diwan

⭐⭐⭐1/2

Out of curiosity, after I watched "Happening," I googled what year it was that France made abortion legal, it's 1975, but more importantly, I ran into a recent article talking about how next year, France will have abortion legalization ingrained into their Constitution. Huh, can't help but notice the irony, being in today's America, where our backwards-ass Supreme Court reversed Roe and the right is doing their damnedest to backpedal without actually backpedaling on the issue.

So, "Happening" feels particularly prescient at the moment to us, but perhaps to more civilized and progressive parts of the world, it plays like a reminder of the horrors of the way life use to be, and not as a foreshadowing of the ways the world will become if we don't fucking fix this.

I'm not gonna get too political with the film though. Every so often, even without abortion being in the news, it's important to be reminded of where we were and how far, or how little, we've come. The film takes place in 1963 France, and Anne (Anamaria Vartolomei) is a precocious and ambitious young student in the dorms. Even though, sex is a constant discussion amongst the girls, even the supposedly prudish ones, somehow Anne's the one that's been branded as the slut, because occasionally she has a one-night stand or two. Of course, she ends up pregnant though, and begins to struggle to get an abortion. No doctors will help her, one of them even lies and gives her pills to make the embryo stronger, which- how was that not illegal?- and she seems to continually ostracize all the coeds and professors around her. To me, this is a little unclear why she's rubs everybody around her the wrong way, but it doesn't help that when asked, she doesn't speak up as much as she should. One of her Professors, Prof. Barnac (Pio Marmai) seems like he'd be more sympathetic if she ever let him in on her problems, but perhaps since she's shunned or misguided everywhere else, Anne's reluctant to share her struggles and pain.

Perhaps this is just, the time period too. This is the story of a successful abortion in technicality only. "Happening" is adapted from Annie Ernaux's memoir, the Nobel Laureate and was directed by the Lebanese-born French screenwriter, Audrey Diwan, who'd been a go-to screenwriter for a while after years a journalist and she noted how personal the novel was to her. The movie swept the Venice Film Festival among other accolades. It was her first big breakout hit as a director, and she's now directing...-

(Stares at IMDB. page with wide eyes!)

"Emmanuelle"?

Seriously, they're remaking that? Huh, they won't put it in the XRCO Hall of Fame, but it's getting remade again.

Oh-kay, that'll be interesting. Anyway I can understand Diwan's devotion to the story and this is a good time to tell it. It sucks that I do have so many other films I can compare this too though, 'cause I would recommend, say Mike Leigh's "Vera Drake" or Eliza Hittman's "Never Rarely Sometimes Always", or Christian Mingiu's "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" over this. Although that shows just how prescient and important this subject is that so many films and filmmakers are tackling this issue. "Happening" There is something to be said about the way it's done here though.

More than once, Anne talks about the baby as an illness, and how it's the sickness that turns women into housewives. That's odd enough, and definitely true feelings that many women have, although, in hindsight, I realize how rare the actual word "abortion" was uttered from her, or anybody for that matter. Something so taboo has a lot of euphemisms doesn't it? "Happening" is definitely one of them.

X (2022) Director: Ti West

⭐⭐⭐

I gotta admit, I get a little chuckle every time I hear somebody talk about how they're going to make porn that's more artistic and even make it mainstream. Believe it or not, that kind of thinking still exists. I think I once heard porn director Kayden Kross a few years ago, talking about how she had intended to make a film that, with some edits for the really adult content would actually be able to be shown in mainstream theaters. Believe it or not, that's actually happened before. Not lately, but there were a couple attempts at that back in the early '80s before the home video market completely took over the porn industry.

I bring this up because "X", this, artistic horror movie from writer/director Ti West, follows one of those crews hellbent on making one of those kind of artistic porns. Of course, the movie takes place in l979, and admittedly looks it, especially with the farm aesthetic and the gorgeous cinematography the movie does indeed look like, well, a lot more of those supposedly artistic porn movie than you'd think. The film could've been on double feature bill with a Bethel Buckalew film. The film takes place in Texas in the 1979, and this Houston-based crew have rented out a small side house to a farm out in the middle of nowhere owned by a Howard (Stephen Ure) who's the kind of old-time farmer in the middle of nowhere you'd expect in these kind of movies, the ones that open their doors with their shotgun in hand. He warns about his elusive wife, but they all plan on avoiding them at all cost while they quickly film this artistic porno film.

So, trying to describe the rest of the movie is tricky.... For one thing, the movie isn't really complete, it's actually part one of a trilogy of films, all starring Mia Goth, in a duel/role as one of the actresses, Maxxxine, with three X's and as Pearl, deep in makeup as the wife. The second movie is "Pearl", and it's high on my Netflix queue, I'll get to it soon enough, with the third film being "Maxxxine", that's currently in post-production. So far, I'm not entirely sure, why, she's playing both roles, other than Mia Goth is probably just that fascinating a muse, which I can understand. I haven't seen her in much, but she takes on some brave roles when she does. There's actually quite a few interesting actors here, Jenna Ortega from "Wednesday" plays a girlfriend of the film's writer/editor RJ (Owen Campbell) Another couple porn actors are played by Brittany Snow, slightly against type here, and her boyfriend is Scott 'Kid Cudi' Mescusi, I didn't even know he acted, but he's actually quite good here as a former Vietnam vet who went into porn and reminds me a lot of Eddie Steeples's Crabman from "My Name is... Earl".

I guess the parallels of youth and attraction also helps in the double-role. A lot of the conflict, before the movie turns into a blood-soaked disaster, is about that gray area between love, sex and art, and then, when the old couple eventually make their feelings known, the idea of youth, sex and beauty comes into the story. I'm not sure exactly what he's saying about it, other than using this conflict as a reason to get to some horror deaths,... I guess that's my issue in that, while I appreciate the influences and look and style of the film, and the attention to the details, I just don't know or think there's much else to the film though. Compare these horrors to say, Jordan Peele's movies, there's just as much detail and ideas in those films, but they're making bigger points and using the motifs of the genre to create more unique and personalized points, and in that light, "X" feels rather miniscule in comparison. I'm still gonna recommend it for doing just enough to create an interesting and different take on the genre, but I wonder if the movie itself is just as shallow artistically as those porno films from the past were. Hey, it's true, sometimes they were making art as well.

PEARL (2022) Director: Ti West

⭐⭐⭐

Okay, I think I get Ti West now.

I was intrigued by "X", his previous feature, took place in the late '70s and followed a ragtag group of filmmakers trying to make an artistic porno, but unfortunately running into the wrong farmhouse. And the wrong Farmer's wife, Pearl (Mia Goth).

Now, we got "Pearl", the origin story prequel. Why did we need an origin story to "X".... Umm,- no, we didn't. Honestly, most prequels I don't think we really need, especially horror prequels, but I at least get why West would do it now. He loves old movies. He loves movies and filmmaking in general. That's why "X" genuinely did look like old '70s porn, and "Pearl" opens with credits that feels like an old Douglas Sirk movie from the '50s.

Of course it strays from that aesthetic into horror, but actually narratively, it doesn't stray that much. Pearl is the story of a small-town young war bride during the end of WWII, who's stuck living in her family home with her demanding mother (Tandi Wright) and her nearly-catatonic and disabled father (Matthew Sutherland). She dreams of eventually becoming a star and is excited about an audition for a traveling group of dancers, who are holding an audition in town, and while her mother won't let her go, and insists on just dealing and living with what you have and not have such high goals and dreams, she doesn't recognize the clear-cut fact that Pearl is frickin' insane.

Like, really crazy, insane. We learn that in "X" of course, but in "X" she's this sexed-crazed old woman who's as murderous as she is lecherous. In this movie, it's hard to tell whether she started that way or became that way, but she does get pushed by having a brief affair with a sleezy film projectionist (David Corenswet) who shows her some very early stag films. I don't quite know what to make of all this, but I kinda like that about "Pearl". Most of the time, I feel like giving movie villains a genuinely sensible excuse or explanation for their actions, is kinda,- well, it takes away from the villain's power and influence. Sometimes, the scariest stuff is that which isn't naturally explained. We don't exactly get an explanation, just a series of events per se in "Pearl".

Or maybe, I'm just more sympathetic because I like the film's throwback style as well as the performance of Mia Goth. This is partially her story as well. Originally, their was no plans for a sequel, but after shooting "X" in New Zealand, the cast got stuck in the area after COVID and they decided to come together for a prequel since they were still around and still had the set. So, I kinda like that it feels kinda half-formed as a true sequel and ends on such a twisted note, leaving us to fill in a lot of blanks. All that said, despite West's flair for circumventing the aesthetics and expectations of classic movie genres, the movie only really works because of Goth. She's been one of the more daring young actresses around for the last few years, and she's used these films to really thrust herself into the breakout roles. In many ways, "Pearl" is actually kind of a demo reel of all her skills and work not just showing what she's done up til now, but what she's really capable of doing. The movie is kinda reminds me of is actually "Jolene" a movie that would otherwise not be noteworthy except for how it shows Jessica Chastain as basically any part you can ever possibly imagine her being cast in. "Pearl" is a little more interesting artistically than that, but it basically serves the same purpose. I don't know which film is better, but I think I slightly prefer "Pearl", and I'm looking forward, although admittedly, I am slightly worried about "Maxxxine"; they might've had too much time to think about it and try to make something too coherent for this series. Hopefully, I'll be proven wrong.

SAINT OMER (2023) Director: Alice Diop

⭐⭐1/2

"Saint Omer" has one of those strange conceit plots that,- eh, well, it's hard to explain but essentially, it's a movie that's more about how a character reacts to the events and actions of others, as opposed to just being about those events. There's ways to kinda do this well, "Nocturnal Animals" essentially comes to my mind, but I don't like that example, because that film is a little too complex. It's about a character reading a book, and what that story and book means to her. "Saint Omer", is kinda trying to do something, similar, but not really. It doesn't help, that also this isn't a fictional tale at all, in fact, it's autobiographical, sorta....

It's hard to explain. Let's start with the filmmaker, Alice Diop. No relation to the famous Senegalese filmmakers Mati Diop and her famous father Djibril Diop Mambety, but she is Senegelese, but mostly until now a documentary filmmaker, and even then, I think I might argue that she's been more a journalist than a filmmaker. In fact, this movie, "Saint Omer" is actually about a case that she was a journalist on. And it's about her, being a journalist on the trial of this case. It's from her perspective, or at least, the surrogate character's perspective, Rama (Kayije Kagame). She's a pregnant young journalist, from Senegalese immigrant parents, and she's in a relationship with a Frenchman outside her nationality and heritage.
The trial, is a murder case where a young Senagalese woman, Laurence (Guslagie Malanda) is on trial for murdering her 15-month old daughter. A daughter, she had in secret, and didn't tell her French boyfriend about, and has issues with her Senagelese immigrant family.

This is, based on a real trial, and an infamous one that Alice Diop herself was in the courtroom for, and reported on. I don't know if she intended to interpret the story as a modern day telling of "Madea", in the movie she's a literature professor, and finds the story intriguing, but eventually, begins to find the story, more meaningful to her. Laurence confessed to allowing her daughter to drown on the beach, believing that the witchcraft and evil forces led her to the decisions she made. This was a big trial in France and attracted a lot of attention, especially from women notably, many of whom sat in on the trial from the beginning to the end.

Now, the trial itself is kinda interesting, and I'd be interested in a story about Fabienne Kabou, the woman Malanda's story is based on. There's been good stories about mothers who, for one reason or another begin to lose it mentally. The Joachin Lafosse film "Our Children" comes to my mind; that movie's still harrowing to me. "Saint Omer" is not though. It's too disconnected to me; it wants to tell the story of how a trial affected her and frankly, all it really does is point out the similarities between them, and yeah, I guess, we do become fascinated by cases and random things we see on TV and in movies that reminds us of ourselves and viewing how somebody's life, especially when we see how troubled they are, just how different our life is to theirs, or how close our life could be to theirs, it is fascinating. It's not really a movie though, I don't think.

This movie has gotten a lot of praise, but I'm not seeing it. I think there's some interesting stuff here, but the perspective is just all wrong. I get that it's personal and it's her first non-documentary feature, so I get why the film is like this, but it just doesn't work. There's a way to do this, maybe focus more on her personal life, and then intercut more with the trial instead of being as meticulously detailed about recreating the trial.... I don't know, once you start with the off-perspective to a story, if you're not doing something with it, it becomes tricky and the plot becomes too distancing to really cover and make up for it.

THE VELVET UNDERGROUND (2021) Director: Todd Haynes

⭐⭐⭐⭐

You know, I'm fairly knowledgeable about the history of rock'n'roll, the evolution of it to be exact, and how the major cornerstone artists and trends changed, altered, reinvented and reimagined the genre, and-, the thing is, I rarely, if ever, think about The Velvet Underground on that paradigm chart. In one way, they kinda don't belong there; in another way, it feels more fitting to actually put them outside of that chart. They are influential and groundbreaking, their music was way ahead of their time. And yet, I don't think about them. Trying to explain or examine their importance and influence, within the history of rock'n'roll is, just is too difficult. I mean, I can go through the same talking points that others make, that while The Beatles were doing "I Want To Hold Your Hand", The Velvet Underground were doing songs like "Heroin", or whatever, but what does that even mean, how exactly do you characterize that? (Shrugs) I don't really know. They don't follow or start any trends, they weren't successful, John Cage talks about how he once got a $2.37 check and that was more money than he ever made with the Underground. I rarely if ever hear their songs on the radio, and if I do, it's usually not their version, it's usually like Cowboy Junkies's cover of "Sweet Jane" for instance. They don't come from the same music backgrounds and inspirations as everyone else did from their era, and hell I barely think of them in terms of music at all; I tend to place them more into the New York Underground Pop Art movement of the '60s than I do, anything else that was going on. They were progenitors to hard rock and punk I guess, but they're not really hard rock, and they were too good a musicians to really be listed as pre-punk. They weren't hippie, West Coast or East Coast. Honestly, I think it's easier to fit Frank Zappa onto this chart.

Luckily, Todd Haynes, doesn't try to do that. He knows the story of "The Velvet Underground" can't fit into a traditional rockumentary narrative. "The Velvet Underground" is naturally more of a mood piece, as much as the music is. My big nickname for the Velvet Underground myself is the House Band at the Factory and it is probably more important and accurate to look and think about them in terms of their relationship with Andy Warhol and their place with his whole scene than any analysis of trying to connect them to the music scene of the time. The movie itself, while it does have some talking heads, it's mostly footage and that's been collected over the years. The idea is to get us right inside of all aspects of the band and the scene they were apart of. Perhaps it does that in the content, but I mostly just fell into the tone and the mood. Like their music, "The Velvet Underground", is music that sets and places you in a particular vibe. It's one of the frustration of addiction and personal struggle, especially when it seems bathed around you with peace and love that feels just as counterintuitive as the Nixon-era squares that were really running the country. They told stories of the disenfranchised, those shunned by society. Those who were addicts, those who were gay, those who were just struggling with life in general.

"The Velvet Underground" goes through the band's history well-enough, but it more than succeeds at creating a visual tone of the band and their music overall. If you like the band you'll like the movie henceforth. If you don't, well, maybe you'll find the experience it's own hallucinogenic wave for a few hours enjoyable anyway.

I READ A COMIC BOOK CALLED "KINGDOM COME"; AND I-EH, I DON'T THINK I GET IT....

2023-09-27T06:45:00.000-07:00

EDITOR'S NOTE: This blogpost was written months ago. It hasn't been posted until now because personal events have taken up and upended much of my current time. I allude to some of them that were going on at the time in this article. I also reference other personal events that occurred to me; none of this is done directly, and I don't plan on posting or commenting on any additional context. All I'll say is that, me and my family are still struggling and have a long road ahead, and that I started a GoFundMe, in order to supplement for recent losses and to pay for any/all doctors/legal and any other fees in the immediate and it's still going and will continue to until all is settled, and any little bit can help, so if you can donate, please do so, if not, at least share the GoFundMe with others. Thank you and on with the article I originally intended.

I-ehhhhhhh...? Huh...?

Umm...- (Sigh)

I don't really know how to start this one. It's not that I don't have to something to say, I do, but...-

(Scratches head)

So, I read a comic book....

Alright that sentence is already gonna make a bunch of people who know me heads turn like Scooby-Doo discovering something, but... (Sigh)

Alright, let's start at the beginning. This started a few months ago.... I was on Facebook and a friend of mine mentioned the movie "Shazam". (Actually, I think he mentioned the sequel that came out earlier this year, but I,- doesn't matter.) Anyway, I don't know if anybody caught my review of that film at the time, but I really hated that film. It made my worst list, and-, anyway, I really found myself unnerved by it, and expressed it. It felt like something I should say, 'cause, I don't know, apparently I was one of the few who really despised this film and particularly find myself dumbfounded by the praise for it. And I particularly found it out-of-place within the DCU, or is it the DCEU? I don't know, anyway, considering how goofy and old-fashioned the film was, I found it particularly out-of-place with the rest of those movies which, good or bad, usually had a much more darker look and tone to them.

That criticism caught the attention of another fellow critic, one I admire, and she recommended to me a comic book that told a darker variation on Shazam's origin story. What followed next, was, well, basically me being an idiot.

I mean, I didn't realize that, I was being an idiot at the time, of course. Honestly I was, still coming down from remembering how much I despised that film, and some other personal things I was dealing with..., so I wasn't in the right state of mind. And in that incorrect state of mind, to me, while I didn't want to read the book, at least not right away, I decided to try to understand some things about comic books and comic book fandom/culture that I didn't understand. That's all I was trying to figure out, and when I didn't get an answer that made sense to me, I became confused and disgruntled, and... like, I said, I was being an idiot. There's no me, backing out, of this, on my end, I was an idiot and I've taken responsibility for that, and I'm trying not to be from now on.

So, I guess, as my penance, I decided to read the comic she recommended to me. Which is rare for me, because....- Okay, I've talked more-or-less about my experiences with comics several times over the years. Several times, here's one of my earliest articles about comics. I've said other things over the years, too, so I'll try to wrap it up as succinctly as possible here.

AGE 6ish:
(Watching that "Simpsons" episode where Bart, Milhouse and Martin share a comic book)

That's pretty funny. It'd be hilarious if that kind of thing existed.

AGE 10ish: Boy this Batman cartoon is pretty good. I wonder why the movies suck though; they should really stop making films about these characters from, what are these? Comic books? Didn't those things like die, 60 years ago or something?

AGE 16ish: Wait, people still make comic books?! That's a thing? I thought that was a plot device for TV shows? Well, I mean, there can't be anybody who actually reads those things, right? We got television now, why would we?!

AGE 17ish: Why are they making a Spider-Man film; it was always such a terrible cartoon. I'm sure it'll flop; we have way too many of these comic book movies already. What are there like, I don't know like, what, couple hundred people who care about these things? Seems like a weird group to focus on.

AGE 21ish: WAIT! There's COMIC BOOK STORES are a real thing!? WHY!?

AGE 28ish: I guess I'm glad they finally made good Batman movies now, but c'mon, people! I don't know why everybody cares about these things. Now, "Iron Man" gets a film?! Christ! Well, at least this won't lead to anything long-term in the industry! And has anybody noticed that the people who liked these things are just mostly just fucking terrible! We really shouldn't be listening to fans like this, y'know!

CURRENT AGE: These people- they, just-, I swear I didn't think comic books were a real thing, how have they just taken over everything!!!!! WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!

I'm skipping over a bunch of other incidents there, but as far as I'm concern, this whole, thing, it's just severe dropshock for me. People explain to me how much and how important and relevant comic books and comic book characters have been to their lives whole lives and-, I,- I just, I feel like I'm talking to aliens; this was literally, so not a thing in my life, for so long, that it just will never compute to me that it was thing for anybody, and I genuinely can't fathom how in the hell it is. I had no friends who read them, no family members who read them, there weren't comic book stores around when I young....- When I heard about comic books, I think the closest thing I thought they were were sticker books. Does anybody remember them? You collected stickers of, like I don't know, some Disney property and you bought the pictures that you stuck in the books? I knew what comics were, I read the funny pages growing up; my comic heroes weren't Stan Lee or Bob Kane or Alan Moore or anybody of that ilk, they were Charles Shultz and Jim Davis and Gary Larson; and I thought that that's what they evolved to. Comic books were a thing in a past, they were kids thing, eventually some of the bigger names and characters caught on, but they weren't moneymakers and superheroes were kinda not great storytelling to begin with, so eventually it evolved into strips in the paper.

I guess the best I can explain it to, is like those reaction videos on Youtube that a lot of younger people or foreigners make to pop music that's been around for decades and they're like stunned at like, how great so much of it is, and you just yell at the computer, "Yes, "Piano Man", is an amazing song, how did you not know that 'til your 20s! That's what I feel like everyone is to me when they talk about something with comics. Except, most of the time, I look at the group who are obsessed with comics and comic book culture and fandom and how they've taken over the world, and yes, I don't like most of what I see. I do see the appeal and the good parts of it, but mostly I see how awful most of it is.

To be fair, I think that's just what fandom is in general, it's mostly awful and terrible and I still highly believe that being a "fan" is not a good thing. It's not inherently a comic book thing, being fans of anything is not good in my view. It's just frustrating that for my purposes, being someone who's found film and television to be the inspiring art of my time period, and not realizing that comics had such widespread appeal until long after my formative years, and have taken control and over so much of my industry that it's become my instinctual reaction to them is much more adversarial than I probably should be. I don't think the medium is the problem. I mean, most movies and TV shows, are storyboarded, that's just comics in another form too.

And I've read a few comics in the past before. I did eventually read "Watchmen" which I love. I read "Ghost World", which I liked a lot. Yes, they're movies that I liked first and went back to read the comics, but y'know, that's why I read them. I never begrudged the medium; I had issues with the trends towards superheroes among other stuff that the medium propagates. I have other issues involved here, but-, here's what I'm building towards. I've never actually, read, like, a real, regular superhero comic, before. I've heard a lot about them. I do try to keep up with the goings-on in the genre, partly 'cause I just have to with film and television being so thoroughly dominated by it now, I know a decent amount of some of the main points of reference and history regarding some of the bigger characters and names and stories. But, superhero stories, um, I like some, I don't like most, and I'm apparently really picky. And apparently, if I don't like something about a character, there's several other versions and variations of the character which I can look and find one until I like it, which....

(Sigh)

Which is what brings me back to this comic book. This darker version of Shazam! It was not something I was looking forward to, considering how much I really hated my introduction to this character, but to reiterate, I was an idiot. So,....

I read it. It's called "Kingdom Come" by Mark Wald & Alex Ross. It's from 1996; I actually had heard of this comic, even before it was recommended to me. It's one that popped on a lot of all-time lists for the best comics. It's apparently influential and important within the genre and community. And-eh, so yeah, I decided to read it.

So, one of the things I was told was that, if I was more involved with the culture, I would understand more why it's more acceptable to have such varying multiple versions of some of these characters, which was one of my questions. And I didn't like that answer. I did eventually find an answer to that that made sense to me, and that answer was licensing. See comics are cheap to make, but they were also cheap to sell in the old days and so, they had to make things that would sell much more than original and unique work. So, when a superhero or other character caught on, the companies would own the copyright and licensing of those characters and they would beat those characters to the ground. And they still do that essentially, so while I would like to blame fans for wanting to keep seeing these same characters over-and-over again, and true, I'm sure the market was there, but-eh, I tend to now think this is more of an issue with the industry than it is, the fandom. You go into Marvel or DC, and give them an original idea, they'll ask you to mold it to fit with one of their superhero franchises. That why we have spider-verses full of Spider-Man, whether that's a good idea or not. (It's not) Even "Watchmen" which felt to me like it was an original world and universe, both the film version and the original book was apparently inspired by something called Charleton Comics and many of the characters and their depictions coincided with those characters and a lot of references to them just went over my head.

And-eh, after reading "Kingdom Come", I'm definitely thinking there's stuff that went over my head here. I hesitate to call this bad, 'cause I don't think it is, but I do feel like I'm not getting what I'm supposed to be getting here.

Well, the-eh... um...-

(Sigh)

You know, I finished the book a few days ago and I've been trying to figure out what to say on it, and I'm a little stuck to be honest. Okay, so.... I guess I'll start with the Shazam stuff, since, that was the catalyst for this whole thing, and yes, there is-, well, I wouldn't call it a different origin of him, per se...,? Actually, scratch that, I better start off with the book itself.

Okay, so, "Kingdom Come" is a miniseries, a short-run elseworld novel. So, it doesn't take place in any particular continuity or universe, basically these are ways for creators to explore some of those most famous license characters and put them in these other alternative worlds and explore other ideas. Basically it's that "What If..." show, which I haven't seen yet admittedly, but I get the idea. (I guess "Watchmen" could also technically qualify as this too....? Maybe? I don't really know.) It's also not about Shazam, he's actually just a minor character in this story. It takes place, in the near future, but it's a world where...-, basically Superman confronts a philosophical question about his existence, and it's an interesting one. It talks about whether or not, the presence of Superman, as well the several dozens of other superhero characters out there in this world, is actually holding back humans evolutionary advancement.

Honestly, I've always kinda wondered about stuff like that myself, especially with this universes where there are several superheroes around. Like, I watch those "Avengers" movies and personally I always wondered what the regular person trying to go through his day was like in those films. Like, how this superhero shit must be annoying to be constantly getting in his way. Like he's taking the bus, and suddenly superheroes are fighting on the bus. Or the Fingersnap of Doom happens and now half his co-workers are gone and now he's got to do all their jobs 'cause the office is short-staffed. Or perhaps, my favorite, scenario, the superhero stuff goes on in the extreme background, and he's oblivious to all of it, and he's just like, having real trouble finding the right carpet design all day, so he's going from carpet store to carpet store or something like that. Seriously, why hasn't anybody done like, an "American Splendor" type comic that takes place in the MCU, but like none of that shit matters; I think I would enjoy that.

That's not the direction, "Kingdom Come" goes though. It, instead imagines a future where Superman has retreated to his childhood home, and began living off the grid raising a farm and basically ignoring his superpowers as other superheroes similarly follow suit. I guess it's supposed to sorta be like "The Incredibles" in that way, but...- I- I don't quite get this apocalyptic future that they're explaining. I kinda get Superman becoming temporarily a recluse, especially after, apparently everybody from the Daily Planet being killed in an attack by the Joker, which means his love interest is now Wonder Woman, who's also going through an identity crisis feeling like her actions haven't promoted the Amazonian ideals enough. Batman's become particularly angry with Superman and more of a cave-dweller mad scientist recluse than normal.

See, I was kinda hoping with an Elseworld story I wouldn't have to know all the traditional beats and background characters to understand the story, but I kinda feel like I did need to know a lot of this. It also doesn't helps that when humanity on their own, can't fully handle themselves and things get really dire and when Superman finally snaps out of it and reforms the Justice League that, we also find out that he's a fucking narcissistic messiah-like idiot himself!

Yeah, he stops most of the superhuman villains that are out for no good, but he's puts them all inside this huge self-built prison in Kansas called the Gulag; Kansas was a desolate wasteland after an atomic attack years earlier...- again, I couldn't fully follow this, but he doesn't want to kill any of them, so, he uses the prison as a corrections facility essentially. Like he's trying to teach these guy to become good and use their powers for the good of humanity, and that goes about as well as you think and leads to possibly the apocalypse, which is also being foretold throughout this whole story.... The narrator is a priest who sees visions and there's this dark figure named Spectre who's showing these images of a horrific future, but he only passes judgement and can't help.... I'm assuming that this makes sense to a lot of people, all this.... I-, (Sigh) yeah, I don't really get any of this.

Let's just say that, if you gave me this premise this would not be where I would take it, nor where I would want to take it. I don't think of Superman as being so single-mindedly dense or tunnel-visioned; I think he would've taken into consideration some of the possibilities of his effect on humankind, and perhaps, y'know, wouldn't fly around the world to pull a cat out of a tree or something and only really come for the truly big disastrous moments that require Superman. And it wouldn't be like, a miniseries, but it also wouldn't have all these other superhero characters, 'cause I think that defeats the point of that idea. This is why I think all the "Avengers" films suck, the whole point of a superhero is that they're superhuman, and if everybody's a superhero, than an idea like, are superheroes preventing human advancement, loses all it's power and luster. If there's already so many damn superheroes than, humanity has clearly already started advancing, plus...-

(Sigh)

You know what, I won't go over all my problems with multiple superheroes coming together-, unless the story begins with a bunch of superheroes already in a world, I don't like crossing superhero characters over into each other. I get why they do it, but I don't get why is it popular, like, at all. I have no fucking clue. It's another thing I'm not against in theory; television did that all the time, but y'know, what's the harm of, I don't know, having a character from "Mad About You" show up on "Friends"? It's not losing the whole conceit of the idea of either of those shows. (Although, in hindsight, I don't really get how Mork started in the '50s on "Happy Days", but when he went to live on Earth, he flashed forward to modern day in the '70s to live, and then would occasionally travel back to the fifties.... Okay, that one was just Robin Williams can get away with anything) When it's superheroes it kinda just defeats the purpose. Like, I know there's examples in mythology, especially Greek and Roman mythology looking out over the humans and whatnot, but like, even at the time, those stories were understood as not complete narratives of gods existing and controlling the world, they were fragmented and scattered tales used as explanations for why things happened. The soap opera between the gods was about how it affected the humans, when I see gods fighting and arguing amongst themselves, especially in these superhero stories, it's almost like, the protecting of the humans, or even just their relationship with the humans really doesn't matter. It loses that extra context that makes the mythological ideals that superheroes are inspired from work.

Anyway, that's how I generally feel with stories like these, and there are exceptions; I'm generalizing here, but another reason I'm reading stuff like this is that I'm hoping to find the exception that makes me understand why this is appealing. I'm trying to understand, which is why I'm very frustrated that I don't really get all this. I think it's supposed to be, like a tale about, how superheroes are great, not in the world that the book takes place in necessarily, but as a metaphor for the greatness and importance of comics and superheroes overall. Which, for that, it's... (Shrugs) Eh.... maybe if this Superman wasn't such an idiot.

Sorry, I can't get past that, you really thought locking the supervillains in a prison of your design in to go through a conversion therapy was gonna work?! I know this was 1996, but seriously what the fuck!? Is this just me on this one? Am I interpreting this wrong? I feel like that's...- this is why Superman's better with Lois Lane than Diana. There, I said it. I love Diana, I love Wonder Woman, she's probably my favorite of the DC superhero, but she doesn't belong with Superman, even if Lois is out of the picture. Lois keeps him from doing stupid shit like this.

Okay, if you guys know the text and want to tell me what I'm missing and why, than, please, comment sections are all yours, I'm not gonna say anything or dispute anything you want to argue or explain, please go ahead. I clearly, don't relate to this story. If I was supposed to be convinced, I wasn't, but if it was reaffirmation for the choir who already likes superheroes, than eh, I think it was, um,... okay? I don't know I'm fairly lost by this whole thing. I'm just gonna talk about the Shazam part now. That was the part that I was originally recommended this story for.

So, the darker, "Origin" of Shazam? Well, I won't give away the ending, but I wouldn't call this an origin, necessarily... I guess it hypothetically could be; I would argue that in this universe, it isn't an origin of him, but let's say it is, for the sake of this article, um-, it's definitely darker than the movie.... So, in this world, Lex Luthor has created a liberation front to protect the supervillains, under the guise of protecting humanity, and Billy Batson, is brainwashed by him, and Luthor plans to use him in order to help the villains break out of the really stupid prison that Superman created and have the supervillains go to war with the superheroes, probably causing destruction, and Superman has to break him out of that spell. It is, very dark and I did say that I didn't care for the Billy Batson narrative in "Shazam" because of how goofy and light it was, compared to the tones of all the other DC movies until then. I don't know if I like this one better though....

Like, I think it's a better story; I like the idea of a character who was once a hero, but-, and I think it's a little too goofy the way it's explained and used in the book, but the fact that Shazam, is part human and part god in his powers, in the source of his powers, that the idea of him, living in a world where he decides to suppress his more superpower side to him, and that leaves the human side dominant and more vulnerable to evil influence, that is interesting in of itself. I don't know if I like it in the context of this story, I think as a standalone idea, that would be a compelling narrative and that could be something that would appeal me to the character. So, I guess I like it better than the DCEU origin story, as a story, that we got, but honestly, as much as I hate that film, I think I would prefer the film's origin to this one.

Yeah, I'll be honest, I think I'd appreciate the arc of the movie more knowing this other narrative, but I still don't think it really works...- Although, honestly, I think I just hate this character. Or maybe more precise, I just don't like this character in the DCU, maybe in another world, I'd like it more....

After thinking about it more, yeah, I think this character just gets on my nerves. He's literally, the child superhero in the film. Another thing I'm not necessarily against in theory, like "Kick-Ass" mostly worked for me, but I'm against it here, 'cause of how it's worked. Honestly, the character that Billy Batson most reminds me of, in hindsight, in the movie anyway, is Ash from "Pokemon".

I wrote about "Pokemon" as well, not too long ago, and my personal experiences with that franchise, and spoilers, I think a lot less of "Pokemon" than I think of comics and superheroes to be honest, but I especially hate the Ash character, and I kinda hate Billy Batson for the same reasons. They're basically the awkward, uncoordinated, average, unimpressive kids who are put in the spot of superhero, chosen for that position to be the best, even though there's probably better and more well-knowledgeable and qualified people for the role out there. It's to make it relatable to the target audience, sure, but that always just felt like I was being talked down to. Like, instead of the best and the brightest, I'm being told that, any idiot can be special, and that only goes so far with me. To me, it would be like, imagine if Jar Jar Binks was actually the lead perspective character in "The Phantom Menace" how bad that would be. That's kinda how I think of Ash, and Billy Batson's is not that bad, but he's kinda in the same boat for me.

Now, I do think an adult version who had the same backstory of the character, is a little better, but I also expect him to be, an adult who's not a surrogate for a childlike protagonist. So, ehh.... is that what I get with Shazam in "Kingdom Come"? Umm,... well, I don't really know; he's literally brainwashed through most of the story. In the end, I guess he makes a very adult decision, but I could see him making the same decision as a more childlike version of him too. I don't know, I guess this is a decent dark story for Shazam, but I think as an origin story itself, it's-, well, I don't think it's an origin story to begin with, but even if it was, somehow, I don't think I like it more than the one I got in "Shazam". Yeah, I think it's too much of an overcorrection in that regard.

I don't know what I would want in it's place though. Like, it's a weird thing that there's all these versions of the all these superhero characters in comic books, so that, ideally I could look for some version of the character I like, however, if I think too far outside certain core aspects of these characters, then I might as well just be asking for a different character completely. Like, if I create a Batman who's parents weren't murdered when he was young, and in fact were still alive, and living a happy well-to-do life, you know how many people would be after me? If I don't like that part that everybody associates with that character, than, there's really not much anybody can do.

So, what did I learn or gain from this experiment?

Um, well I read one more comic book, that's good-ish. I guess...? I don't know if it's any good. Um, I don't like Billy Batson, sorry, he's just not a character I want around. I hate Superman a little more than I thought I did. I really don't like him and Wonder Woman together.

Mostly though, I just found myself, frustrated with the comic book industry. Not the fans so much this time, but the industry itself. Mainly because I came out of the comic not being more inspired by superheroes or feeling that their presence was beneficial or essential, but instead, I found myself saddened that so much of the comic book world focuses so prevalently on superheroes as opposed to other stories and genres that I think would be much more interesting and appealing. There definitely are stuff other than superheroes, but I wish we heard more about them and see them portrayed much more prevalently across the rest of media, it would encourage people like me be more interested if those stories were more prevalent and promoted more. If it was a story I like or cared about I would probably enjoy reading these more and appreciate the appeal.

MOVIE REVIEWS #203: "THE WHALE", "BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER", "ELVIS", "THE BATMAN", "BABYLON", "ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED", "TURNING RED", "THE QUIET GIRL", "MRS. HARRIS GOES TO PARIS", "PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH", "FOUR GOOD DAYS", "THE WHITE TIGER", "THE DISSIDENT" and "A SECRET LOVE"!

2023-08-20T03:18:00.001-07:00

If you guys just want the reviews, just scroll down and you'll get to them.

My mother passed away last week from pancreatic cancer. She had been suffering for months, but-eh,... treatment didn't help and eventually she just lost her battle. I haven't been mentioning her illness until now; I normally try to keep my personal.... (Sigh) It's not the only reason that I've been so absent recently, but it's a big one, it's the main reason I'm still absent, 'cause I've got a lot to deal with now.

I've mentioned my severely autistic brother before occasionally, but now that she's passed, on top of struggling with the depression and lethargy of grief, which I'm-, (Sigh) I hope I can overcome someday..., but my mother's passing left me with, a lot of legal issues, especially regarding my brother and his guardianship. I don't want to go into it all right now, but for the immediate time being I can use and need all the help I can get. So, I started a GoFundMe, you can find it at the link below:

https://gofund.me/3b8057f4

I don't ask for much, I certainly don't like asking for money, but-eh, any little bit you can, I greatly appreciate it, and I won't forget it. If you can't donate, I understand, but share the GoFundMe to anybody/everybody you can, anybody who you think would or could donate. Or if you want to find other ways to help, please don't be afraid to contact me through Facebook or Twitter. Thank you all.

THE WHALE (2022) Director: Darren Aronofsky

⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2

At one point in the film, Charlie, (Oscar-winner Brendan Fraser) an English professor, during a stress binge, writes an email to his online class, where he demands that the assignments don't matter and that he simply demands, that they "WRITE SOMETHING HONEST!".

(Long pause)

You know, it's a strange thing, honesty in writing or any kind of art for that matter. As a critic, we probably don't use that word enough when expressing why something is good. It's also just weird to use it in general, because well, art is a lie. By it's very nature and definition, all art is a lie. Anybody that comes into art and expecting to hear the full truth is just, wrong. Even if it's a documentary and it's bias perspective, whatever it is. And yet, it is honesty that we most relate to and are most looking for. What we are actually looking for, is through the medium of lying, the ability to decipher what is indeed, truth. Honest truth, maybe not my truth, but somebody's truth. The artists' truth. The artist, we're searching for something real and honest.

Charlie teaches his writing class online, and without his camera on, to hide his face and body. He was always a big man, he claims, but in recent years, he's been eating himself literally to death. His arms are so gargantuan that they simple don't seem real, even as prosthetics, which I know consciously they are 'cause I know what Brendan Fraser looks like after decades of films, but at first, you can't help but notice, but as the film goes on, you start to ignore it and feel like you're absolutely caught up in his own little world. Which is, his apartment, he's barely able to stand up and has preparations near him at all times, in case he does indeed, die. His only visitors, are his nurse, Liz (Oscar-nominee Hong Chau), and, perhaps occasionally, a delivery guy. He seems to have orders already set for most days, and one pizza guy, Dan (Sathya Sridharan) tries to ask for help, but instead, he just leaves the pizza on the doorstep and he takes a twenty-dollar bill out of a mailbox.

Why is he eating himself to death? Well, he has multiple regrets, the first one, somewhat strangely comes in the form of one of the few non-delivery visitors, a young man named Timothy (Ty Simpkins), a missionary who's going door-to-door trying to preach the teachings for a religious movement called "New Life", which apparently is an offset-Mormon apocalyptic cult that both Charlie and Liz are quite familiar with (I'm not entirely this is a real church they're referencing. I don't think it's the New Life Church that originally Ted Haggard founded, which, actually would bring up a lot more interesting layers to this story, but I don't think that's the case.) Anyway, he says Charlie and the amount of pain he's in and decides rather quixotically to attempt to save him, figuring that since he's refusing medical help to save him, that spiritual salvation is what he actually needs. Charlie, at least humors him as much as he can, but Liz is having none of it as she explains how Charlie's boyfriend Alan, was an exiled member of the church and she believes the brainwashing eventually led to his suicide, which in turn, has led to Charlie's depression and overeating.

The second regret comes from his daughter Ellie (Sadie Sink) who isn't normally around, but he's convinced her to see him occasionally and desperately asks her to write for him. He even offers her money to stay around and write her school assignments, which she is flunking out of. Charlie left the family to be with Alan, who was a student of his when she was eleven, leaving her to be raised with an alcoholic mother, Mary (Samantha Morton) who means well, but can't really control her.

Ellie's angry outbursts and actions are hard to describe here. Her mother outright calls her evil in how smart and manipulative she is, and she is very sociopathic. She is one of those teenager girl for whom everything she says has a hint of vile in her voice. There's one particular sequence who she's alone in her the apartment with Timothy, along with a sleeping Charlie and she really finds a way to dig into him until he reveals some real truths about why he's there.

"The Whale" is adapted from a play by Samuel D. Hunter who adapted it into this film's screenplay and for a movie that's basically about about a man eating himself to death, he makes some interesting and unique choices to add to this film. For instance, making him a teacher who preaches honesty above all else, even though he's constantly in denial and literally hiding from the world around him, including his students. The fact that he made him gay and his partner dead after struggles with a religious cult, even the setting of the movie, in Idaho, presumably one of the few college areas in the state is an odd choice on the surface. Yet, it makes more sense when you look up Hunter. He himself was apart of a fundamentalist religious family, and after he eventually came out, he struggling with overeating as well, before eventually having the support and drive to overcome it, and "The Whale" is essentially his imagining of somebody similar to him, and what would happen if he wasn't able to have the support system around him. It's daunting to be honest.

The film was directed by Darren Aronofsky, and it's his first feature since the widely-panned "mother!", and he takes an interesting approach directing this film. Aronofsky's always been best when he's on a budget and has limitations, but even this movie tests his boundaries. His films are often about obsessive characters, who are often taken down by their obsessions, but usually they were pretty active characters anyway. I always notice that his signature shot is a Steadicam shot where he follows somebody from behind as they head somewhere. That shot is nowhere near this film though, instead using a dolly around a very constrained set with only rare and occasional glimpses outside. Sure he's made comparable films and showcased some characters with aching similarities to Charlie before, but the material challenges him artistically and it's the most interesting I've found his directing in a while. Apparently the idea was to show the other characters walking around Charlie, to emulate them being voices in his mind, especially when they're behind him. I like that concept, and I can imagine it working even better on stage.

We do see some of him gorging out on food, especially at his worst, and to be honest, I didn't care for those scenes much. I get why they're there but it straddled that line between arbitrarily showing him over-indulge for the emotional appeal of wanting to be angry that he does waste his life like this, to just seeming like they were showing it to show it.

That said, "The Whale" achieves honesty. It expresses the feeling of which that this story, might not be my story, or even the people creating it, but it emotionally feels like it does for them, or for at least somebody, and it feels like it touches on it for several others out there. The movie is titled after of course, like all whale references in art, after Moby Dick, it's not just an insulting nickname to someone who's overweight either, "Moby Dick" is referenced quite a bit, especially in one particular piece of criticism that Charlie finds inspiring. I find it inspiring, mostly because I agree with it about the book and not so much that it's particularly well-written, but the critique that, through the writing, it really does convey the truth and honesty, in that novel. Of course is also as much a lie to, but I'm sure to Melville and many others who read it, that it Captain Ahab represented Melville's honesty and truth as much as Charlie represents Samuel Hunter, Darren Aronofsky and all the other filmmakers involved in the project. It's honestly all we ever ask for, and despite the inherent sadness in this tale, the fact that it succeeds, makes me happy.

BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER (2022) Director: Ryan Coogler

⭐⭐⭐

Maybe we should've left well enough alone.

I hate to say that, but eh, it's really all I could genuinely think about watching "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever", not that this is a terrible movie or even necessarily a bad one, but..., eh.

This is tricky to talk about but "Black Panther" is the best and my favorite of the Marvel movies. It marked one of the very rare times where I thought this constant expansion of the MCU into these greater worlds and places actually not only helped the franchise but actually added power and emotional value to it. The idea of a non-colonized area of Africa and seeing a hopeful alternative world scenario of an African nation being a major world superpower and the most advanced technical and cultural center of the world, that was actually inspiring. As somebody who doesn't care about the MCU and superhero and in particular is not inspired by elaborate fantasy and world and universe-building, at least not in the ways I usually run into it through film, "Black Panther" marked a huge exception for me. This was the rare time where they all got this right. Frankly, I don't think about it within the terms of a Marvel movie, which is good, 'cause if I did, I'd have to think about how fucking awful and dismissive the whole nation of Wakanda was basically just used as a battlefield in "Avengers: Infinity" which, is still fucking garbage I might add! (Yeah, I'm still angry at how shitty that film is, and the treatment of Wakanda in particular.... God, that movie alone makes me hate every MCU movie, just a little more.) I was hoping that, if they continued "Black Panther" that at least within those films, I could ignore all the other bullshit in this universe....

In a way, I got my wish, but not exactly how I wanted it. Chadwick Boseman's sudden and surprising passing through off a lot of people, myself included. I wasn't the biggest fan of his, but for somebody who really was just beginning to hit his stride as an amazingly talented actor, and seemed to have a lot more to give, it felt like we were cheated when he died. Writer/Director Ryan Coogler was blindsided as much as everybody else was, as he had basically three "Black Panther" movies in various stages of pre-development all about T'Challa's continued struggles as King and as Black Panther. I can't imagine what I would've done if I was in this situation, you're friend and colleague who you both had simultaneously become more successful than you two could've ever imagined monetarily and critically just passed away and you've only just begun to tell this amazing story..., honestly, I might've moved on to something else entirely, but I also get why he would continue. And it's not like their weren't some outs in the original comics that he could use. One of them is that T'Challa's technological-bound sister Shuri (Letitia Wright) takes over as Black Panther after T'Challa and essentially we get an origin story of how that happens, and I'm very conflicted on this.

For example, I like how this ultimately comes about. Shuri is a medical and technological experimenter and the film opens with her struggling to recreate an herb in order to help keep T'Challa alive, which ultimately she can't complete in time. Without T'Challa and under Queen Ramonda's (Oscar-nominee Angela Bassett) reign, have led to other world powers and some less-than-reputable world actors trying to attain some of Wakanda's most powerful resource, vibranium. That's...- I don't know how I feel about that subplot; I find it repetitive, but I also find it believable. I do like how the Wakanda's often called any white westerners they run into, mostly CIA agent Everett Ross (Martin Freeman) a "colonizer" as an insult though.

However, instead of one of those powers being the first big competitor to take on Wakanda, their biggest threat comes from a distinct different secret culture that's only now starting to make themselves known to the world, and they want to destroy it. Or at least, their leader Namor (Tenoch Huerta Mejia), who is threatening to take out Wakanda and the rest of the world. Talokan, apparently is this Mayan-inspired, underwater Na'avi peoples, although Namor isn't blue, for some reason. Yeah, I made allusions to "Avatar" when I watch "Black Panther", but yeah, now there's a new separate hidden world and it's if Pandora was Atlantis and it survived completely underwater. It's a little freaky.

They get the help, of basically everybody, especially an MIT student named Riri (Dominique Thorne) who everybody's after since she built a machine that could detect Vibranium, and by Nakia (Lupita Nyong'o) who's spent the time since T'Challa's passing living in Haiti away from the political affairs of Wakanda.

I don't know, on paper, I get and like the ideas in this movie, I even liked the Michael B. Jordan cameo that comes out of nowhere and adds an intriguing dimension to Shuri's evolution and transformation. Still though, I found this film underwhelming overall. It might just be overload, I really enjoyed Wakanda in the first film, and I thought finding out more about the world and how the country itself would continue as it's part in MCU affairs around the world would be intriguing, and instead, we get this whole other universe that literally feels like it's from another world and movie. Like, I already got that experience, and now the people of Wakanda are gonna get their own version of that experience? I don't get it. Like, "Avatar" is the most obvious comp, but actually the Talokan stuff reminded me mostly of the "Maleficient" sequel where we saw the whole fairy land.

Actually, now that I think about it, that's what so bothersome about "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever", this plot device of seeing this incredible new utopian world that's under attack and striving to be protecting, I don't know if you can do that, twice, in the same franchise, twice in a row? It's bad enough when we're already in a fantasy world and now we're meeting a new fantasy world, but a fantasy world within a fantasy world, within a fantasy world! That's a little too much; it's like the opposite getting a character out of jail, it's like, "run into a wall, let's create a whole new world?!"

Also, Wakanda, has way more compelling and intriguing dynamics involved in it. It hypothesizes a world that projects where a modern African society would be if colonization from the West had never happened and evolved naturally both culturally and technologically completely outside of Western influence, it's a look at a best-case scenario world that should've been. Talokan is just, like another version of Atlantis, with some Mayan influence thrown in, and frankly I don't get it. Honestly, the more I think about it, the less I like this film. I feel like there were many interesting stories about Wakanda to be told, even without T'Challa that would've been captivating without the addition of a new society being created to do it. Hell the first "Black Panther"'s villain was a relative of the crown, it was Shakespearean, not only a threat from within the world of Wakanda, but within the family at that! I like the idea of other nations worried about what Wakanda will do considering their power while simultaneously thinking about finding ways to take their resources and take over Wakanda themselves, even if some of the casting is weird there. (Am I the only one who saw a scene in this movie with Martin Freeman, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Richard Schiff in the room and wondered why this sitcom pilot scene ended up in the middle of an MCU film?) I don't know what I expected from this, mostly I just felt sad though. It like, got halfway there.... I'll spare the half-star strike for the post-credits scene, even if it was hokey, I at least felt it was honoring the fallen well. I guess I'll slightly recommend the film as an homage to Boseman. A look at what he could've been as oppose to what Wakanda could be. If there is a third "Black Panther" film, I hope they get it back on track though. Show me that there's more to a universe this profound that's been created other than to see it attacked by other made-up universes or used as a battlefield for others. If we can't though, then perhaps go back to my original assessment, and leave well enough alone.

ELVIS (2022) Director; Baz Luhrmann

⭐⭐⭐

You know, I honestly have no idea what the hell possesses Baz Luhrmann to do anything he ever does. I know people who love him and definitely people who don't, he's absolutely a polarizing director. But, whether I've liked him or not, and it's usually not, I find his excessive quick-edit style just obnoxious and outlandishly unnecessary most of the time, (And especially his frickin' obsession with filling the movie with lettered graphics all over the place, good lord it's getting more and more obnoxious; watching a recent Baz Luhrmann film feels like I'm reading the National Enquirer headlines while in line at the grocery store! That has gotta be wrung in really damn fast) but honestly ignoring a lot of this stuff, as hard as that can be sometimes, mostly I'm just, not sure what-the-hell inspires him or not. I mean, I thought I knew at one point, and "Elvis" has some of that. I mean, he likes pop music, and he's intrigued by this anachronistic idea of taking music from one era and putting it into another, or even taking whole stories and finding newer more elaborate variations and ways to tell them. He likes stories about fighting against the conformity of the surroundings, and breaking out doing your own creative thing, which does makes sense since he's Australian and for some reason that's a theme that comes up in a lot of Australian cinema. I know that's like a big theme everywhere, but it's somehow more pronounced and often way more grotesque in a lot of the more popular Australian films, and trust me, watch enough Australian cinema and it becomes really noticeable and distinctive very quickly, and Luhrmann more than fits into that. Hell, he had a movie just named "Australia" which, oddly was one of his more perplexing films. (I don't really get where sweeping time period epic fits into his aesthetic.) He likes showbiz and performances, his Red Curtain films have always shown that. And, apparently he likes, eh, classic literature, for some reason. I really don't get how that one fits everything else, especially "The Great Gatsby" which- like, okay I didn't like his "Romeo + Julies" but I still felt like he had a connection to that story, but I don't have any idea what he saw about "The Great Gatsby" that inspired him with that film, if it inspired him; I honestly doubt it did.

I guess the point I'm trying to get at, is that despite some obvious similarities that sometimes his choices and muses are just so random that frankly, sometimes I've found them just as strained and jarring as his filmmaking. Like, it's not that I'm inherently against another "Elvis" (Oscar-nominee Austin Butler) story, but like, why Elvis? Why a biopic of Elvis, hell, why this biopic of Elvis? Why one, through the perspective mainly of Col. Tom Parker (Tom Hanks). Like, again, I'm not necessarily against this, I'm just more-or-less confused and baffled. Hell, why a biopic at all. all of sudden, even of a famous musician; he's never had an interest in this genre before. And if you asked who he would've made one of, eh,- well, I guess I have no idea who I would've picked in that regard first, maybe Madonna, but certainly wouldn't have thought Elvis. It's kinda odd to have much of an Elvis fascination at all these days when Elvis's influence arguably seems less relevant than ever.

Well, I guess he's not irrelevant; Elvis's music will never go away. And yeah, I do get how Luhrmann's connecting a lot of the modern rap and hip hop scene to the early blues and rockabilly that evolved into early rock'n'roll that Elvis incorporated into his music helped stamp out that pattern of white America incorporated traditionally black music into their own aesthetic still matters. Hell, nowadays it's not uncommon for white musicians to start their careers as rappers before switching to more of a rock'n'roll sound, so yeah, a lot of that, and all of rock'n'roll really traces back to Elvis.

To be clear, I actually know quite a bit about Elvis; in fact I had family members who actually knew Elvis, in fact they knew him back when he was appearing regularly at the International, or the Las Vegas Hilton as it was mostly called back then. (Now, it's the Westgate, which, honestly is the worst people who should be running that property now but I digress) For instance, I do know how Steve Allen made him sing "Hound Dog" to an actual hound dog. What I don't think happened was that performance leading to people protesting that the that was the end of the "Old Elvis" and that they wanted him to keep swinging his hips. (Also, his version of "Hound Dog" is not inspired by Big Mama Thornton's original version; his version was a remake of a Las Vegas lounge act's very white version of the song he heard when he first appeared and performed in Vegas, where he bombed huge at the time, I might add. Yes, his first forays were not successful, like, at all.)

Also, was that really a big moment in Elvis's career, the Steve Allen performance? It's an interesting note, but it was really his third appearance on Ed Sullivan that really started Elvis's original popular downfall, and not just because they famously shot him only from the waist up when he sang "Don't Be Cruel", but something that's forgotten is that after that, he ended the show by singing "Peace in the Valley" a full-on gospel song and performance. He was still big after that, but he was no longer dangerous, it wasn't just that he was censored, it was that that sex appeal that was sanitized from that.

Something else with Luhrmann that I've noticed lately is that, while he just loves the quick edits and splattering of signs and graphics and signs over graphics, when he actually does want to slow the scene down and just let it be, he's usually pretty good at it. In fact, a lot of his movies, since "Australia" really, just start at a million miles per hour and then suddenly shift to more traditional paced filmmaking. My favorite scenes in this movie, are the ones with Elvis and Priscilla (Olivia DeJonge), and where you see the best and worst of Elvis's home life. Honestly, I'm more confused by that approach than anything; I kinda get the quick-cutting editing when it's showing the excessiveness and wild exuberance of the world around what he's creating, or to create a sense of confusion and wild-eyed wonder, but sometimes I think he wants to film like that. Like, his magnum opus, "Moulin Rouge!", there's almost no breaks in that film from the editing, and it's all a wild rush of a party. The best part of "The Great Gatsby" is the opening party atmosphere, when he slows it down to tell a story, it's almost like he doesn't know what to do. (Not that it would've helped if he did, maybe in the minority on this, but I don't think "The Great Gatsby" has ever been a good; great American Novel, my ass! Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women" wants a four-letter word with you Mr. Fitzgerald.)

Here, we have a lot of sequences intercut. Elvis's rise to early fame off his early recordings like "It's Alright, Mama...", and "Hound Dog", we have the goings-on and who's who's of fellow famous people who they've made several biopics on with his Beale Street crew, we even get a black church sequence that turns into a revelation for Elvis. There's also a performance with Parker's traveling carnival-like show, intercut with a literal clan rally that happened miles away.... I guess, there's some kind of point here about how quickly he rose to fame, but y'know, I was thinking back to "Walk the Line" recently, and how well that movie, which isn't great at all, but it does show the early beginning of Johnny Cash's career well, and how innocuous and paced his version of meeting Sam Phillips and recording on Beale Street was. Somehow I don't really picture Elvis's beginnings as being so manic. I actually think it would've been better in reverse, start off slow with a long sequence of Elvis's early rising to fame, and then have the editing get faster and quicker the farther into his career we get, and the more the lying Dutchman's control over Elvis took shape.

And speaking of Col. Parker as well, it's not necessarily a bad idea to tell the story through his eyes for the most, but it is a curious one. I think I do get where he's coming from though. Tom Hanks probably received the most criticism for his performance in this film, he even got a Razzie nomination for the performance, and I can kinda see how some people might think that, but I also don't think it's his fault. The performance feels jarring and gratingly over-the-top, but all of Luhrmann's villain characters have been these over-the-top pompous and grotestque caricatures, even going all the back to his first film "Strictly Ballroom", which I might add is still his best film. I think it's apart of his style an aesthetic, but what is weird is that, now he seems to be sympathizing with that character. Perhaps he fears that he is a Tom Parker-type himself. I mean, for all the talk about, why he's so worried about international security as to why Elvis Presley won't travel the world, they don't actually go into the actual probable story of why Col. Tom Parker, couldn't go outside the country and had to adopt this new name and persona. Perhaps because it's unlikely that even Elvis knew exactly what the story was, and to be fair, we're not 100% sure either, but most Elvis historians believe that he was a fugitive from the law after murdering a woman in his native Holland. I guess he doesn't have to bring that up, but it's just odd what he does and what he doesn't.

To be fair though, almost none of this feels like a realistic and beat-by-beat biography of either Tom Parker or Elvis; what we're getting is a very stylized depiction of what I guess Elvis symbolizes and means to Baz Luhrmann. And..., well, I don't quite know what that is. I think I believe that he has a meaning and opinion on Elvis, his legacy and his music. To be fair, you can make dozens of stories and movies about Elvis, and people already have, in his short life, he lived a lot. They barely get into a lot of things that I find more interesting about Elvis, like his movie career; his movies aren't necessarily great or watchable, but he was actually a pretty decent actor who enjoyed acting. I like some of the focus on the '68 Comeback Special, that really was intended to be a Christmas special, although why anybody including the TV execs or Tom Parker would be obsessed with him singing "Here Comes Santa Clause" is beyond me. BTW, black leather Elvis is my favorite Elvis, so I liked most of that stuff anyway. But, y'know, no mention of his infamous meeting with Richard Nixon a couple years later, right as he was starting to get fat and drugged up and weirdly wanted to help curb the drug epidemic thanks to the hippies? In fact, a lot of this movie seems to show Elvis very emotional about the Left at that time, and- well, I don't know if that's untrue; he was a big Martin Luther King supporter, but from what I've heard Elvis was much more mercurial person than what we see in the film. Nothing against Austin Butler's performance, I think he actually is really good here as a version of Elvis, but I don't know, I ultimately just don't know if Baz's Elvis is the Elvis that I'd like to see or remember.

"Elvis" is a very uneven film that I don't really know what to make of it. I'm not saying it doesn't succeed at what it's trying to do, I just don't know if what it was trying to do was the best way to go about it. I guess I just think Elvis the man is way more interesting than "Elvis" the star, the attraction and the story. I've never gotten tired of people telling their Elvis stories before no matter how mundane or in some cases, insane or outright lies they might be, and I guess this is an story about Elvis that's done well enough and with enough care to be told, but I definitely find myself more numb to it. It does make me want to listen to more Elvis though.... (Shrugs)

Although now that I'm looking at the soundtrack, anybody else surprised at some of the Elvis songs left out of the movie? I mean, "Suspicious Minds" is my favorite Elvis song too but like, why keep coming back to that one, and like, not have any "Jailhouse Rock"; in fact the only movie song was a weird Stevie Nicks and Chris Isaak duet of "Cotton Candy Land". Hell, no "Viva Las Vegas"?! Half the movie takes place in Vegas?! No, "All Shook Up"? I don't even like "Don't Be Cruel", but I'd prefer that than "In the Ghetto", why have that one in their at all? Maybe I just gotta stop trying to follow Baz's strange and weird muses, I'm never gonna fully get this guy.

THE BATMAN (2022) Director: Matt Reeves

⭐⭐1/2

You know, I used to think that all those parodies and satires, often by other DC properties, that would mock how much of an emotional trainwreck of a person that Batman had become were kinda way too much, but now, I'm kinda thinking, you know what, maybe Batman has become too moody for and, for lack of a better word, emo, for his own good. Oh, excuse me, not Batman, it's "The Batman".

(Sticking finger in mouth, and simulating gagging motion like a '90s teen girl.)

I'm not saying that their isn't tragedy in his backstory, and that sometimes exploring and going over and even reinterpreting that backstory can't be done well or exciting, but there has been just, way too much focusing on Batman's backstory over the years. This isn't even the worst offender film-wise, I say "Batman v. Superman" still has that strang;ehold, but this is the first time I watched a Batman movie but this was the first time I really felt like I was caught up in the grips dourness ennui headspace that the most mocking of parodies focus on. I'm not even really a fan of the more lighter and comical tones that many of the older variations on Batman played on, but even in the great Nolan movies, you could tell that, even if that old Billionaire playboy son, Bruce Wayne (Robert Pattinson) was an act for him, he did like, enjoy playing that part a little and lavishing in it a bit. He did play the part well for as long as he needed to, and was able to do so.

But here, in that version of "The Batman", that part just doesn't exist. Even Carmine Falcone (John Turturro, really good here, btw), when they meet up for the first time, mentions how Bruce is the only person in Gotham more reclusive than him.

"The Batman" is also another film where we see the re-evaluating of just how great the Wayne Family actually was to Gotham. I kinda get why there's been such a desire to re-evaluate that, especially as the world because more and more conscious of the ruthlessness of and corruption of the rich and wealthy. So, Bruce finding out more bad things about his father and that he wasn't exactly the perfect idyllic charitable billionaire that he thought he was, that's always a little intriguing, but, it plays so much more into his dourness, and frankly I'm just not intrigued by boring emo Batman. Not without earning it; it really only works when you actually see the transformation of Bruce Wayne, the charismatic, flamboyant trust fund baby playboy turning into the mopey and misanthropic caped crusader. That is I think why I'm ultimately down on this film.

It might help just this film that was stuck in the moody mud for three goddamn hours! Why is this movie so long?! Matt Reeves is a good director; I enjoyed his "Planet of the Apes" reboot trilogy, and was thoroughly impressed with how each of those films got better as they went on, but sometimes you need to cut some things down. I like that he's telling as full and rich a story he could, but I don't know.... I feel like there's too much here. I mean, I like the Carmine Falcone stuff, especially when he talks about his connections; I even like that The Penguin (Colin Farrell, also quite good here) as a henchmen of his, and I like that we have Batman and Commissioner Gordon (Jeffrey Wright) both working towards trying to seek out the corruption at the highest levels of local government. And, I also, like the new Riddler (Paul Dano) motivation, to an extent.

I'm not a Batman villain aficionado admittedly, but The Riddler, has-, almost literally by his name, is one of the more cartoonish villains in the franchise. I mean, the last time he was on film he was literally portrayed by Jim Carrey, back when he was basically just a cartoon as well. Putting him, in a darker, more Nolanesque-inspired Batman world, ehh, kinda iffy to me. I think he pulls it off, surprisingly well, and they give a really decent motivation. In fact, there's an extent where you, and the movie for awhile, actually seems to debate whether or not he's more on the right side than he probably should be, which is also kind of another problem with this movie, but,... I don't know. Some of the Riddler's riddle are kinda just,... it doesn't really feel right. I guess, if I squint, I can kinda see him as a variant on Heath Ledger's Joker character, but the thing that made that character so menacing, other than the performance and how maniacal and unpredictable he was, it was that, he wasn't doing it for any real cause or to make a larger political point or commentary. The only reason the Joker will assassinate a Mayoral candidate, and then try to kill a corrupt politician during his public funeral, would be because it was fun. He would think it was a laugh. Riddler, is going to such elaborate ends to make a point about the true corruption of the city of Gotham, and how he indeed became, this mirrored opposite to Batman, also effected by the death of Thomas Wayne (Luke Roberts).

There's also Catwoman (Zoe Kravitz) around, she works at Carmine Falcone's club and has her own agenda, involving one friend that's gone missing, as well as having her own hidden agenda involving Carmine. She's also the opposite of Bruce, in how she's more of a vigilante justice fighting against the corrupt system from the outside. In fact, that's really the problem, everybody and everything in this movie, is like, the opposing viewpoint to Batman. It's like, everybody's a mirror image of him. There's the image of him that's working within the system, there's the maniacal vigilante, there's the political vigilante, Carmine's the corrupt alternative reality version of what happens when you seek wealth and you just want power, while Batman's trying to be the charitable, reputable, trying to do good version.... This movie isn't really a movie, so much as it is, a psychological profile of Batman, at least for what I want out of Batman, I don't think it's a good one. Or, it's more like an incomplete one; it feels more like it's a film about Batman, told or shown from everyone else's perspective about him. These all work well enough in one movie, and you can even combine a few of these well and make it work; there was always multiple villains in the Nolan movies even and each of them has specific connections and conflicts with Bruce, but you know, say Scarecrow, didn't need a huge psychological analysis of how his choices and paths were effected by Bruce or other members of the Wayne families to make him who he is and why he wants to get vengeance against the system. We didn't need that, we had enough with the other more central villains, but it's literally like, every tertiary character gets their opportunity here. The only one who doesn't weirdly is The Penguin and frankly I liked his arc better as he's got both Carmine and Batman and Gordon out there trying to figure out whether or not he's a rat in Carmine's gang, or if he's got some other undermining activities going on.

I think Matt Reeves is a very talented and underrated filmmaker in fact, especially for a Hollywood filmmaker, and I think he just shoved too many ideas into this film. Like, I get what he's doing, he kinda did the same things with his "Planet of the Apes" films. If you're not familiar with the original franchise of films, it's fascinating how he retold the story by taking ideas and stories from all over the five main films in that original franchise, and wonderfully recontextualized them into a new tale over three films, plus adding in some other new elements and finding new paths to go down. I think he tried to do the same thing here, take ideas from all over the Batman franchise to create something new, but I think he took too many and ultimately tried to force it, instead of separating these ideas, limiting them down to one, and then, when that works lean that, in future movies, into other directions and path, and finish the story more thoroughly. By doing this, he makes the story and the plot seem too elaborate and messy to seem plausible and clear, and instead of a story, we get a movie that feels more like a tonal poem. Ultimately it's a movie that's feels more like a movie that striving for the feeling of Batman, or "The Batman" than actually presenting us with a good Batman movie. I don't necessarily hate that feeling, but I don't think it's enough alone.

BABYLON (2022) Director: Damien Chazelle

⭐⭐⭐1/2

Well, it seems that little Damian Chazelle has finally completed his metamorphosis transformation into his Baz Luhrmann.

Okay, that's not exactly true, but it sure seems that way. But, I prefer Chazelle's version of Luhrmann than Luhrmann's version, so.... That said, "Babylon" is a giant, overblown glorious pointless mess of a movie. I'm still recommending it, but mainly because I enjoy his vision of excess, especially 1920s Jazz Age excess, even though, this is more Hollywood than New York, than I do others. Also, I just buy that Chazelle has a greater emotional hold on his material than Luhrmann did. I know it's mean to compare them here, but they actually are quite similar. Their movies usually begin with some elaborate, over-the-top set pieces, there's lot of scenes of music and partying, and while Luhrmann is more pop music oriented, Chazelle is definitely more jazz inspired. His movies are strangely more free-form. Of course, this isn't an attempt to make a Luhrmann-esque film, like, at all. There's actually several films and filmmakers that you could easily point to that he's working on emulating here, he even brings up a couple of the more obvious ones during this film. In fact, this whole film is basically just cinephile nerdshit bait.

"Babylon" is of course, Hollywood, not the first to make that comparison, but an apt one. Specifically, Hollywood during the end of the '20s and the beginning of the '30s. Now this is a long time ago, but it's not as long a time as you think. And it's more than fertile ground for films as well, 'cause-, well, the big transition at this time is of course, the transition from silent movies to sound films, but their were other things going on in Hollywood as well, and while there is definitely some, no pun intended, lip service to the sound transition, this movie is more about the shift from the excesses of Hollywood, or at least the perceived excesses of Hollywood, (And in many cases, actual excesses) to the early thirties, which, for several reasons became the start for a much more, for lack-of-a-better-word, conservative period in Hollywood. And that conservative era, while, to some degree, it itself was always a facade that wasn't real, it lasted quite a while. I don't think people realize now, just how genuinely new the phenomenon of California being a bastion of liberal hedonism actually is, and specifically Hollywood, like the modern take on it's it's not much older. Or for that matter do people realize just how nuts and vehemently unsafe Hollywood was for making movies, or for that matter, just how much extreme excess their was. Granted, this movie is going a little more over-the-top, the obvious inspiration is Kenneth Anger's infamously inaccurate book "Hollywood Babylon" about the excesses of the golden age.

In fact, most of this movie, is essentially just, a giant game of early Hollywood "Where's Waldo", only the part after you find Waldo where you start looking around for the other stuff in the picture. In fact, I wonder how many would watch this movie and not know who or what people Chazelle is making reference to, or if he's making reference to someone at all? I mean, there are a couple characters who are specifically real people, Irving Thalberg, (Max Minghella) is probably the most notable one, but even he is barely in the movie. Most of the others are clearly inspired by people, for instance, the Troy Metcalfe character in the beginning, where he's being urinated on by a dancer, Jane Thornton (Phoebe Tonkin) in a private room in Don Wallach's (Jeff Garlin) ridiculously elaborate orgy, before she apparently accidentally OD's in the room, is very clearly a reference to Fatty Arbuckle, even if it beats a timeline of the movie with a stick a little, who, despite being one of the two or three biggest silent movie stars of his time, was arrested and bought to trial for rape and murder after a particularly leacherous night out ended in a girl being dead, (That he didn't kill or rape, and he was eventually acquitted in court for; that part of the story gets overlooked way-too-often.) But he's also a minor character in this movie.

In terms of the actual main characters, well, the established movie star is Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt) a beloved heartthrob who's known for changing his wives as often as he changes his socks sometimes. He's in a lead in a-eh,- you know, I actually don't know what-the-hell movie they were making, but based on the number of stunt extras getting accidentally killed during the incredibly elaborate action scene, I'm assuming something like "Hell's Angels", I think... (Actually, a movie that I did think about with this was "Souls for Sale", one of the first and very best Hollywood satires that Hollywood made.) Anyway, Conrad, is inspired by a few people, most notably Jack Gilbert, especially how, despite technically succeeding in making the inevitable transfer over to talking pictures, it's a rough transition for him, and eventually the headlines about his excesses and well, just the general continuing lack of interest in his work, leads him down a wayward personal path. He remains friends with a title card writer, Lady Fay Zhu (Li Jun Li), who's also an actress, and a cabaret performer, but is limited to behind-the-scenes and one-shot roles in most films until finally the talkies basically ends her career in Hollywood and heads off to Europe. Okay, I'll get this obvious one out of the way, she's clearly intended to be Anna May Wong.

Also in that movie, and bursting into the opening orgy with the same subtlety as the elephant does, (Yes, this orgy has an elephant) is Nellie Le Roy (Margot Robbie) a nymphet of a starlet who snakes her way into the movie, and absolutely takes over the scene, eventually becoming her own star, as Hollywood's new "It Girl". Okay, there's a few people she's being here, but mainly she's Clara Bow, who was literally the "It Girl" in her day and definitely had rather debaucherous sex life offscreen, but she also shined fast, before her career had a sudden end. She also had issues with the conversion to sound, and there's an incredible sequence in the movie where we see how many takes it takes her to get through one scene of a sound picture that's constantly interrupted by the sound engineer, Lloyd (Carson Higgins) and how stifling the new equipment and having to actually learn and memorize lines and spots is to her acting, as she vastly preferred when her and her director, Ruth Adler (Olivia Hamilton) worked on the silent movies. Adler is probably Dorothy Arzner, although it could be a couple other female directors at the turn of sound, most of whom faded away as the Hays Code and other standards of Hollywood swooped in. (Yeah, a weird side effect of the Hays Code was a sudden lack in female directors, who were actually much more prominent in the early days of Hollywood. Wasn't 'til like, maybe Ida Lupino did women get allowed to direct regularly again, and that took a couple decades.) She has a somewhat tenuous flirtation with Manny (Diego Calva) a Mexican immigrant who started out as a very undervalued gopher on the set, but eventually evolved into an early producer role, right as the modern producer, of the guy who keeps the directors and others on schedule was just getting understood, but he is more of an executive, until he has to bail out Nellie from one of her forays into gambling in a sequence that's both too out there to explain and also somewhat not out there enough for this film.

The third storyline involves a jazz musician, Sidney (Jovan Adepo) who also, through his music, becomes a star in the films in the early days of talkies, which makes sense, while music was always accompanying film, (Which is one thing they weirdly get wrong here; when they screen a movie with no music at one point, that was weird.) popular music was one of the first things that got put onto film once the technology was adapted. I mean "The Jazz Singer" basically is just an Al Jolsen concert when you think of it. Also, like Jolson, Sidney's breaking point comes when he's asked to put on blackface in order for the lighting to be able to photograph him better. After doing that, he shortly leaves the industry and goes back to touring. (Camera lightings are indeed racist, and that would require blackface in some circumstances, that's true. And sometimes whiteface as well. The default standard for cameras are white so light-skin is easier to light than blackskin, so yeah, this was as much a practical thing as it was just, a fucking racist stupid thing at the time.) Sidney's probably a stand-in for Louis Armstrong, but you can literally name any African-American musician of the time and argue that was him.

Okay, enough of the history lesson/translation of this film, let's look more at, what exactly is this film, as a film. So I'm mentioned and alluded to a few movies that "Babylon" are clearly inspired by, but based on the main plotlines and plot descriptions, it's very clear to me that there's is one movie that's the very biggest inspiration, and that's P.T. Anderson's "Boogie Nights", his masterful epic about the L.A. porn industry during the late '70s and early '80s, right as videotape was replacing film as the main product and distribution method for porn and how the art changed during that time. Okay, PTA and Chazelle also have a lot in common. They both love very elaborate epic stories, they both like to tell L.A. stories, they were both directing wunderkinds who were making big waves in Hollywood at very young ages, both of them like very long elaborate long takes, especially with lots of people and other moving parts and often music, both have used music extensively as well to varying degrees. And these two movies, they're both about Hollywood and the movies at a time of drastic transitions, both involve multiple narratives, involving a leading man, a female starlet, people of multiple races, genders, creeds, wealth. We watch them succeed, we watch them struggle to continue to succeed, and then we watch them fail as they can't adapt to changes in the industry. And both are inspired by real actors and events, or at least reported events, and to a degree, you can see those real stories adapted into their fictitious amalgam characters.

So why does "Boogie Nights" work, but "Babylon", doesn't?

And to clear, I am still recommending this film, despite it's issues, it's a mess frankly, but it's also just too much fun for me to ignore but it really doesn't work, I'll be frank, and I think I know why. "Boogie Nights" was more than just an attempt to document the time period of the porn industry. It wasn't just trying to show us how some things were, like how the movies were made back then, it was showing how everyone was effected by all the events and ordeals around the industry. And everyone was connected, they all worked together, they all loved each other, they hung out and hung on to each other, they cheered together, they cried together, they fought together and with each other and then made up together; the porn industry, at least in "Boogie Nights", was a family, and those multiple narratives, even though much of the film was centered around Dirk Diggler, there was more than enough time given to other characters and their own arcs and struggles, and yeah, they never felt separate from each other. You would never think of say, Amber Waves's struggles to get custody of her kid while working in porn, as something that itself could be it's own separate movie, even though, it absolutely could be. So could Buck and Jessie's struggles with being a couple, (An interracial couple at the time at that) raising a family and starting a business while working in porn to supplement the income, that could be it's own movie too, but we don't feel like it's separate from everything else. And that's helps make those parts feel like they reflects of the greater emotional narrative of the lives of these people that's P.T. Anderson's telling us about.

"Babylon"'s greater emotional narrative feels like it's just, "Look at all these old stories of making movies back then, and aren't they fucking amazing!" (Shrugs) It has at least four main narratives, arguably more and they don't feel like they come together, or were ever even supposed to come together. Perhaps that's part of the point, filmmaking wasn't as collaborative a journey at the time, and in fact, the whole point of "Babylon" is kinda showing how disparate so much of it was, perhaps because of, or in spite of the excesses surrounding that world. It feels like the myths of Old Hollywood coming to life, but they also feel like I'm watching long dead ghosts, not people who were once alive and thriving in the industry we all love. By the end of the movie, it even feels like Chazelle is just struggling to make all this come together, like a multi-piece improv jazz jam sessions that's winding it's way into making all those freestylings feel like they add up to a full song or performance, as though a crescendo is automatically gonna make all this feel like a full experience. I mean, Chazelle likes jazz, so I'm not surprised that he takes that approach, but it's got it's drawbacks. I mean, we're seeing so many in-the-know references to people that it's hard to actually really feel for everybody as characters even. And as to their own narratives feeling so separate from each other,- I mean, I could argue that Michel Hazanavicious's Oscar-winning "The Artist" was a better telling of Brad Pitt's character's story, so yeah, these stories feel like they're either overtaking the film or we're not telling enough of them, depending on who we're focusing on. Maybe this should've been more of a miniseries akin to something like Steve McQueen's "Small Axe" series, and we see a lot of separate stories, each like a little over an hour long into each of the characters.

There is a fuller greater tale of Old Hollywood somewhere in all this mess that is "Babylon", but it's not fully told right now. What's there is fun, but eh, perhaps, one day, Chazelle will revisit and find the better medium to shape this material. I do believe he is inspired by this material and passionate about it, but, eh, I think the approach was wrong. Making us feel like we're in "Babylon" is one thing, and it's fun, when you're here and not thinking too deeply about it but at the end of the night, sometimes we're left with just a hangover of a time that was. I guess I'm still smiling from the night before but a hangover is still a hangover.

ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED (2022) Director: Laura Poitras

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I must confess that, personally, I don't really have any experience dealing with addiction. I mean, like real addiction, I'm sure I had a withdrawal symptom or two when I haven't had a diet coke in a couple days, but you know, addictions to stuff that's real. If I do have any secondhand experience, clearly I don't think I was much help. And me, not having experience with it, does make it harder for me to fully understand it. My mind does not work the way an addict's mind works to begin with and there isn't anything that I'm not constantly struggling to live without, much less something that could potentially be horrifying to be addicted to like OxyContin.

"All the Beauty and the Bloodshed" is a fascinating biodocumentary about the photographer Nan Goldin. In recent years, she's been a confessed opioid addict who had to go through rehab to recover and has become a major protestor of the Sackler Family, who owned Purdue Pharmaceutical, who created and distributed Oxy on the American public under the claim that it was safe and non-addictive. With a lot of the money they've accumulated over the years, the Sackler have donated tons to money and have their name on several museums, many of which have displayed Nan Goldin's art over the years in their collections. The movie's kinda fascinations, instead of it drifting into the past, as we see her and her team orchestrate and plan out their protests and litigation against the Sacklers, we kinda drift into the this present as the rest of the movie seems like it, well, it feels like it fits the aura of Goldin best. Goldin is one of those New York Underground artists from the early-to-mid '70s that really documented much of the gay and trans scenes of the time, as well as her own queer life and existence. Her subjects and friends are a who's who that druggie alternative Bowery subculture, people like doll artist Greer Lankton and John Waters-favorite Cookie Mueller, or fellow photographer David Armstrong. These are names that are much more romanticized now than they were then in the mainstream, but the in-the-know knew who they were. Also, most of them are long dead, many of them due to AIDS.

Her work documented that too, but she also documented a lot of her own sexuality and experiences. Looking at a lot of her photographs, it's striking how much they seem and basically, like, home photos taken of the people she knew. That was striking at the time, you rarely saw such bare and brazenly crude and homemade photography taken seriously at the art world at the time. Honestly, she probably invented a lot of the home-style camgirl shots and images we see now. Her most famous work is a 45-minute picture visual picture book called "The Ballad of Sexual Dependency" a document of the No Wave Scene in New York gay and heroin districts, although I think she often sees just photos of her old friends when she observes them.

I loved getting caught up in her descriptions and stories of the worlds and times she had experienced. She also talked about her upbringing, which also influenced her as she rebelled against her parents after they hid from her her sister's suicide. It's what originally led into her life in the drug-induced haze of the art world of the bowery. Yet, late in her life, it was her addiction to a pharmaceutical drug that shouldn't have been out on the market that really got her to begin using her organizing skills, to fight the Sackler's family influence on the art world. It's an odd dichotomy, and I don't entirely know what to make of it. I get the connections between the losses of her past and the losses she feels the Sackler's have cost today, (Which they have) but I think it's much more the lying for her that's really offended her. It's one thing to be an addict or to compromise oneself for their own benefit but, it's the lying and hiding the truth to the public that really disturbed her, especially having been lied to for years about her sister.

I've struggled to describe this film but I like Rotten Tomatoes's description best, it's a movie about an artist fighting against addiction and the institution responsible for her pain. I think to some degree that's what all great artists are doing, but Nan is pretty literal about it. Thinking back, you almost feel like her becoming an artist like this was inevitable.

I'm more of less on what to make of the movie and Goldin as a whole, but as a movie, it feels like I'm watching a great performer talking about her life for hours, like a one-woman show performance that you'd think somebody like Judy Garland would've done decades ago, but instead of the music and dancing, we get this lovely drone of living a life on the edges of society, until she portrayed it enough to become apart of an upper-crust world that she's actively rebelling against. "All the Beauty and the Bloodshed" indeed.

TURNING RED (2022) Director: Domee Shi

⭐⭐⭐1/2

Okay, I swore I would start reading up more on movies before I watch them. So, let's see, I don't know anything about "Turning Red", so, let me read a little on this film. I mean, it's Disney/Pixar, so I'm not too concerned but, what is this? Okay, Disney+ description:

"Meilin (Rosalie Chiang) tries to balance friends, family and an uncontrollable ability to poof into a....- um,.... a giant red panda.

(Long thinking pause)

Okay, maybe this is just me, but why does it feel like every other animated movie out there is about a character turning into or out of an animal?

I'm not saying it's bad, it's just,- I'm starting to feel like Arthur Sullivan whenever W.S. Gilbert pitched him a "Magic Lozenge" plot. I don't know, I guess it's an important thing in many cultures and that's why it seems to come up so often in animation, especially recently as some of the barriers for entry into animation at the major studios have come down in recent years and animation in America has become much more diverse and inclusive, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised, and I'm not really, I think I'm just tired of it. That said, most of those films, when they would have characters turn into animals, they would have different meanings and symbolic value, so let's see. Meilin is a precocious and confident 13-year-old, who acts and seems like she's self-assured but even her friends know that she's, basically brainwashed by her mother Ming (Sandra Oh). Not, horribly, I mean, but her devotion to her family, who runs the oldest ancient Chinese lineage temple in Toronto, at the turn of the Century, for some reason. Mostly because a boy band centers around a lot of the plot, which.... (Shrugs) I don't know, I guess this is partly autobiographical for Writer/Director Domee Shi; she's the filmmaker behind the Pixar's short "Bao" about the sapient dumpling. (Yeah, was anybody else just freaked out by that one? I liked it but..., I don't know, that one freaked me out. Maybe that's just me.) Anyway, Meilin keeps a lot of her personal thoughts and secrets away from her mother, her normal 13-year-old girl stuff, until her mother comes across some pictures she drew of a boy she liked, and then she freaks out and ultimately embarrasses Meilin, thinking the depictions were of something that the boy had actually done, as opposed to just Meilin's own imaginations and fantasies.

Mei becomes so embarrassed, humiliated and angry at her mother, that, she turns into a,-eh, a giant, red, panda.

(Long pause)

Oh-kay, um, so-eh,- boy, I normally try to stay away from using euphemisms but-eh,..., so is this like Pixar's version of "Are You There God, It's Me Margaret?" Kinda, not really-ish? I mean, it's the first thing the adults think it going on before they realize what's actually going on..., which is kinda weird now that I think about it since the mother knows damn well that Meilin can and will turn into a giant red panda. It turns out that this is a generation change dating back in their line centuries and that the reason the mother is so protective of Meilin is because of how terrifying and out-of-control her Panda was at her age.

I mean, there's a lot more than the red and hairy obvious here, "Turning Red" is a classic tale of coming-of-age and a decent tale about the struggles between mother-and-daughter, especially at that age, as well as how those struggles at that age can effect that relationship for years to come. Honestly, looking back, it's striking how many Disney or Pixar films are about how parents screw up or almost screw up their kids so badly, often because they love them so much. I like how specific this film is too. The movie's set in Toronto for some reason, and also has notable Toronto landmarks play a major role in the story. I like the music, including the weird boy band stuff which, was not my cup of tea at the this movie takes place, early 2000s, but y'know, it fits. I also like how it gets the kids correct, not just Meilin, the groups of eclectic friends she has voiced by Ava Morse, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan and Hyein Park all have very distinct personalities that hit that weird middle school edge where some are still just a little bit awkward than others and some are slightly more mature as well; it reminded me of the young boys in the very underrated "Monster House". I like that kind of attention to detail.

Part of me still thinks "Turning Red" just seems like another version of the same story that the Disney/Pixar group, and some of their competitors have been telling before and over-and-over again, and part of me just doesn't like that story. Maybe others think of humans turning into animals and can think of some of the better Studio Ghibli works first, but on some level, I'm always gonna think of like, "Teen Wolf" or something equally insipid and goofy first. When it's used well it's not bad though and this isn't bad; I probably would appreciate it more if I wasn't completely tired of the trope; I like it better than say, "Brave" or "Brother Bear" off-the-top-of-my-head, but symbolism aside, it's never been something that I inherently relate to. I do like that the message in this movie more than I like it when this changing into an animal thing is done in others, that changing isn't bad and that one should embraced their full self and repressing those emotional urges from oneself and others can be more damaging than it is helpful. If you're gonna do it, this is the right situation to use this device, so I kinda like that. That and all the personal touches make it more compelling too. I don't know if it's a great Disney/Pixar film, or simply a good one. A lot of the ending, when all the giant pandas started attacking the Sky Dome seemed a bit much for me. I can see how others might've appreciated it more though.

THE QUIET GIRL (2022) Director: Colm Bairead

⭐⭐⭐1/2

I have some distant relatives; I don't want to put out their names for fear of embarrassing them, but we're close to the same age and for a good part of our lives, we grew up together. They, unfortunately didn't have the best of parents. They weren't necessarily terrible people but they had some problems and demons and frankly they weren't really adept or capable of taking care of them the way that they should've been taken care; simply put, they deserved better. Again, I'm not gonna go into details, but they would occasionally come by and visit and hang out with us for awhile when we were young, and they, well, they always wanted to stay at our house a little longer, and hated to leave. (Or if we were at their place, they hated when we would leave.) I didn't really pick up on it or notice it as a kid, but my mother always did. She always felt heartbroken that she couldn't do more for them, and every once in a while, when they come up, she always talks about how she wanted to keep them here with us. The way they asked, the way that, she knew how difficult their lives actually were 'cause of their parents, she always felt like she couldn't do enough and felt sorry for them.

They're fine by the way now; they've grown up, they have their own lives..., they're parents, well..., let's just say that, I'm happy that somehow, they didn't inherit their parents' worst demons, and we're all thankful for that. Maybe it was them seeing others' lives like my family that showed them that, things didn't have to be this way that helped them. (Shrugs) I don't know, but I know that-eh, I thought about them while watching "The Quiet Girl", especially at the end of the movie.

The movie takes place in 1981 Ireland and Cait (Catherine Clinch) is the quiet sibling in a group of-, wow, even the wikipedia page doesn't list how many siblings she has. (Sigh) I feel like this close to the start a racist Irish joke here...- uh, anyway, yeah, her family is pretty poor and has a lot of kids, and, frankly just, don't like they're the best of parents anyway.

So naturally, they're having another kid, and for whatever reason, they decide to send Cait to a distant cousin of her mother. Anyway, her cousin Eibhlin (Carrie Crowley) has a pretty nice and kept-together bigger house, and... um, hmmm. I don't know quite how...- okay, so one of my favorite books/stories is actually "Heidi". Yes, seriously, I love "Heidi", and this story feels a lot like "Heidi"; it's kinda the opposite of "Heidi" to me actually, at least, the second part where she leaves the mountains and goes to the city. In this case, instead of an aging enigmatic grandfather, it's a crowded dilapidated rural Irish family and it's more of a transition story from somebody who wasn't being loved to actually feeling appreciation and love for the first time. At first, there's a lot of trepidation and struggles. Cait's so unaccustomed to, well, just being taken care of, that she's almost taken aback by it that she barely reacts to it. That's not-to-say that it's an easy transition on either side. Like how Cait doesn't have extra clothes with her when she leaves, but Eibhlin doesn't have girl clothes, so she gets put in hand-me-down boys clothes. This disturbs her at first, although eventually when she finds out, why there's boy clothes with no little boy in the house, she warms up a little.

The whole movie is essentially just Cait warming up to these warm people, family she didn't know she had before, family she didn't realize were much more capable of love than her parents. Like how, she eventually learns to like doing chores with Eibhlin and her husband Sean (Andrew Bennett) and they become personal endearing moments. And it makes all the more emotional when she has to return to her "home".

The movie was directed by Colm Bairead, mostly known for his television work in Europe and the film represented a rare Ireland nomination for Best International Feature at the Oscars and I can see why. For one, it's barely in a foreign language, there's more than enough English to get by, but also, it's a very universal story full of empathy and pathos and it's done well-enough and in a way that makes it feel genuine. Heartbreaking in fact. I totally get why it got the attention of the Academy. I could pinpoint some issues, part of it is that I think the movie could actually be longer believe it or not; this movie could've stretched this out even more for emotional impact, but ultimately, I just like the movie because it effectively reminds me of how lucky I am and how unlucky some people were growing. We don't get to choose our parents don't we, but parents we can choose who we wish they were.

MRS. HARRIS GOES TO PARIS (2022) Director: Anthony Fabian

⭐⭐1/2

"Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris" is a movie about a maid buying a dress.

I hate to go all, "Describe a movie in the most uninteresting way possible" with you all, but, like, seriously, this movie is about how unbelievable it is that a British maid would be able to just go down to the Paris House of Dior and buy a haute couture dress. This might the single most British movie idea I've ever; this movie plot couldn't be more British if it was served with tea and crumpets. Which is a little funny because it's actually based on a book by an American author.

Mrs. Harris (Lesley Manville) is a creation of Paul Gallico, who's probably most known for "The Poseidon Adventure", but his Mrs. Harris stories are quite popular and have been adapted on the screens, big and small, for years now. The most famous of them, "Mrs 'Arris Goes to Paris", (Okay, cute title; in French the letter H or hache, is always silent) which is apparently more comic in tone. This version, feels more sincere. Maybe too sincere.

It also feels more slight. At least for me. This film takes place in the mid-50s and and Ava Harris has suddenly received widowers compensation after her husband's fighter plane from the war was finally found. She works as a cleaning lady and admires a young actress, Pamela's (Rose Williams) couture dress she has, she decides to seek out a dress for herself. So, with cash literally in purse, she goes to Paris and invades the House of Dior, who are all immediately baffled by her appearance and insistence on buying a dress, at least until she begins to pull out wads of pounds, and the House's director, Claudine (Isabelle Huppert) reluctantly relents, along with the insistence of Andre, (Lucas Bravo) who takes a liking to her.

This is one of those...- hmm, I don't know if I've ever brought this up, but I fucking hate "Pretty Woman"; I don't know if that's a hugely controversial opinion these days, but I specifically hate that one scene that everybody else seems to like where Julia Roberts goes into the Rodeo Drive shop and gets tossed out because,- I don't know, she's somehow too low class-, I'm sorry, that's why I hate that scene! Like, really, you don't think a hooker, who happens to look like a young Julia Roberts wouldn't be shopping there?! Have you seen what high class hookers wear on the job? Like literally, my first guess for what that shops' clientele is, would've been, hookers who look like Julia Roberts. Even if somehow that wasn't the case, like, why would reject someone like that?! Like, this scene in "Mrs. Harris..." isn't that bad, but it did feel a little like, too much of a leap of realism. I would imagine haute couture would easily appeal to a lot of older women who came into money occasionally, especially around that time. I get it, this is a flight of whimsy and fantasy, but still, like, the joke of people selling the item don't believe that somebody wants the thing their buying, just feels awkward and unrealistic to me, simply because that person doesn't seem like the client they think they have. Even back then, I just don't get it.

That said, House of Dior is apparently going through financial hardship and Mrs. Harris's pluck and vigor makes her friends with some of the seamstresses and ultimately helps Dior get out of this funk by convincing him to lean more into the brand and put out more affordable outfits for everyone and not just the uberwealthy and famous.

That's not quite how it happens in the original story, but the original is basically just, when something happens to her original dress, Dior sends her a more lavish dress that a customer didn't complete the down-payment on because of how lovely she is. That happens here too, but...- I don't know, this Mrs. Harris character must be more interesting to some than she is to me. Like I said, this feels so British or European at least that watching this feels like what I imagine people who hated "Downton Abbey" must've felt like if they're snoody friends made them watch it.

"Mrs. Harris..." did get some acclaim, and an Oscar nomination naturally for the costume design, which, yeah, it's important and since it's important to the plot it gets the nomination. I don't know whether or not they actually went out of their way to fully replicate Dior's clothes and style from the time, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did. Ultimately though, this movie is so light as a feather that it feel like a burden to even try to take it seriously. I don't really know what to add to this, to explain why I don't care that this film exists. It shouldn't be this hard, there's plenty of movies about older women coming into a scene and interrupting the status quo and many, if not, most of them, are fairly enjoyable. Hell, it's a whole subgenre in Britain to some degree, and I can't claim Lesley Manville isn't inspiring, I know that's not true. Yeah, I honestly think this story or at least this telling of it, is just too dated and too generic. I think I would've liked it better, if it came from the point of view of the people working at Dior, and seeing how they get caught offguard by this crazy woman coming in, but from her perspective, it doesn't feel like it plays right. Like, I kept waiting for it to turn into a bad episode of "Keeping Up Appearances" or something. I guess, it was a nice attempt to kinda take the history of Dior and fictionalize it into Mrs. Harris being the catalyst for how the brand changed and became what it has become over the years, but I feel like there's gotta be a better way of telling that story too. Maybe Mrs. Harris could've found a nice dress in London.

PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH (2022) Director: Anthony Fabian

⭐⭐⭐

You know, it might have been a strange choice at the time, but in hindsight, it was probably for the best to spinoff Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas) into his own movie franchise. For one thing, the "Shrek" franchise was getting really boring and tiresome to begin with, and frankly it needed some new element to keep it interesting, and you weren't gonna get that with Shrek who, by the third movie, which is by far the most unwatchable of the group, he's a father raising a bunch of little ogres and the fourth "Shrek" movie was just a twist on "It's a Wonderful Life". So yeah, Puss in Boots's adventures seem way more interesting. And you could do a lot more with him, since he's always naturally seeking out adventure.

Which to some extent does make this film seem, eh, somewhat, counterproductive, at least in theory. Puss in Boots is down to his last life and Death (Wagner Moura) is beginning to literally closing in on him. He finally decides to give up the legend of Puss in Boots up and try his paw and domesticity. Ultimately, she's unfulfilled with the experience, although he does reluctantly befriends an orphan dog, eh, Perrito (Harvey Guillen) who was disguising himself as a cat in order to eat with the other cats.

Eventually, he ends up getting figured out by several other characters, bounty hunters mostly, although not all want him to collect. Goldilocks (Florence Pugh), the head of the Three Bears Crime Family, tried to find him believing that he could find the illustrious and elusive Wishing Star, which will supposedly give out one last wish to those who can find it. He also reconnects reluctantly with Kitty Southpaws (Salma Hayek Pinault...? Wait, when did she start start adding her husband's name? BTW, has that like, ever worked? I mean, personally it's fine, but like after you've been successful with your regular name/stage name, has anybody added their husband's name, to their name and then like, stay married and all? The only ones I can think of is Phylicia Ayers-Allen becoming Phylicia Rashad, but like, that was changing the last name, not adding a hyphen to their name? Oh, and Jada Pinkett-Smith, yeah, I guess she's the big exception, but anybody else? Also, did Salma just get married; I thought they'd been together for awhile? [Google Search] Yeah, '09 they've been married?! Oh, okay, she's insisting on it now since they've been forgetting to add it...? Huh... I mean, Salma Hayek is a great name, I wouldn't want to add something to it either. I'm overthinking this, right? Alright, I'll stop, she's Salma Hayek, I'll call her whatever the hell she wants to be called.) who we met in the last "Puss In Boots" film, Puss's love interest and rival, and together with Perrita they end up in the mysterious Dark Forest seeking out the Wishing Star as they each have to continue on the path battling their own demons, apparently? The Dark Forest is weird in this thing, it's basically an everchanging path that whomever's in charge of the magical map to the Star has to follow, so the Forest changes depending on who's got the map.

The real big bad is Jack Horner (John Mulaney) the now-grown up Christmas pie boy who because his nursery rhyme was so terrible has just become evil incarnate and has begun collecting everything he can. And a talking (finger quotes) "Ethical Bug" (Kevin McCann doing a, let's call it a Jiminy Stewart impression) that he's gotten ahold of can't seem to get to him. It's a bit weird that we have two groups competing with Puss's gang for the Wishing Star, but I have to admit that I like Goldilocks and her adopted Bear family. I suspect part of this movie is, like they did with Puss in Boots in "Shrek 2" is to come up with other characters who could make good characters to spin-off into other films, and Goldilocks and Papa, Mama and Baby Bear (Ray Winstone, Olivia Colman and Samson Kayo) feel like they could have their own film. In fact, this movie partly feels like their film as much as Puss in Boots which I do think is a bit weird, and a little desperate honestly. Apparently, the film was trying to pay homage to "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" with this, which I got, and I guess as an attempt at extending the Shrekverse as far as it could, it's not terrible, but for me, I just kinda found it, just odd in general.

"Puss in Boots: The Last Wish" has some good ideas, and a decent plot device, but it gets harder and harder to defend the more you strip the artifice from it. Still, I think I'll barely recommend it. It's got enough for me, but even at it's best, and there is some cool stylized animation here and the movie looks great, the movie feels like it's an epilogue to a franchise that's on it's last legs. If you like the franchise you'll enjoy the film, but that's about it. "Shrek" started off as a sharp, witty fractured fairy tale that took real backhanded shots at Disney, but still had a heart at it's core. And the original film still does that, and you know, "Ethical Bug" parody aside, "Shrek" seems to be stuck in it's own conceit of a fairy tale world and mostly just struggles to figure out what to make of it. It's not that it's doing the job badly, but you do get the sense that this was a film that was never really built or intended to have such an elaborate and extensive universe. Frankly I never thought it needed to have one and the fact that we're already at the point of a main character having to go toe-to-toe with literal Death, tells me that, despite the promise in the ending, they're probably tired of this franchise as well.

But who knows, I can definitely see myself enjoying a Three Bears Crime Family film in the future.

FOUR GOOD DAYS (2021) Director: Rodrigo Garcia

⭐⭐1/2

Good lord, they made Mila Kunis look like Hell? Jesus, why did they that? Why am I watching this one again?

(IMDB search)

Oscar nomination? Oh, right, god damn Diane Warren!

(Frustrated sigh, voice trails off)

Actually, I'm being a little too mean here, 'cause "Four Good Days" actually has a really good filmmaker behind it, and one of the more underrated ones I would say, Rodrigo Garcia. He's not a name that pops up a lot, because he mostly worked in television over his career, sometimes really good television. I think of him as being one of the main cinematic voices behind such all-time great shows like "Six Feet Under" or "In Treatment", back when HBO really was peak HBO. He's worked on a lot of other shows too, but he broke out in 2000 with a multi-narrative feature called "Things You Can Tell Just By Looking at Her", which had several loosely-connected narratives surrounding women in upper class L.A. It's a bit episodic, but it doesn't feel that way too much. Neither does a similar feature he made a few years after called "Nine Lives" which showed nine different stories from nine different female characters in similar ways. He liked this approach to telling stories, and while it sounds episodic, these films actually played more like a great book of short stories or even a novel where all these tales come together in beautiful poetic ways. The best of his films is "Mother and Child" which, if it didn't make my Ten Best List the year it came out, it must've been my number 11, which several characters barely passing each other in through missed connections all surrounding a tales about adoptions and seeking out the child/parent that each they never knew growing up. In fact, it actually makes a lot of sense that his films and television shows are so novelistic, he's actually the son of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Nobel Prize winning Colombian author behind such books as "Love in the Time of Cholera" and "One Hundred Years of Solitude" among others, and much like his father's work, he is best when you can feel a greater worldly and empathetic undertone and meaning to his works.

After that though, Rodrigo Garcia's probably best well-known for the last feature he made, "Albert Nobbs" which he also made with Glenn Close, and it even earned a couple Oscar nominations, and is a pretty good movie, based on a famous stage play that Close did decades earlier. It, however was a bit of a departure for Garcia, and while it's a good movie, I don't think of it as his film or one of his films even; that was much of more of a vehicle for Close than anything else. Maybe this is a vehicle for her as well, this film...?

I don't know, maybe. Honestly, I don't have much to say about this film in general. Good or bad really. I like the idea of it in theory, but in practice,... eh.... Okay, Close is Deb, and Kunis is Molly, her daughter. Molly is a drug-addict and she looks it, but shows up on Deb's front door for help, not the first time, and Deb is not believing her, not allowing her in her house until she's clean. Molly's undeterred for whatever reason and eventually, after staying outside their house for awhile, Deb ends up agreeing to take her to detox, again, not for the first time. However, this time she seems to actually want to clean herself up. And, apparently, if she can stay clean for the next four days, enough to get the drugs out of her system, she can get a shot of naltrexone, which would repel any opiates from being able to go through her body. I looked it up, and yeah, this is a thing. So, she's staying with her mother now, and both of them are trying, struggling to both deal with each other and keep Molly off any other drugs until they're out of her system entirely. It's an interesting premise and we do get to see these four days of struggle, and a lot of baggage to unpack. Just allowing Molly out of the house is basically a no-go ordeal. She's caused so much chaos and frustration over the years that everything in the house is automated, so that everyone can know where everyone is at all times.

On paper, this feels like a good premise, and it's a realistic one; it's actually based on a true story, about a mother-daughter team of drug abuse activists. And yet, this movie, gets- well, there's a scene at some point in the movie, where, for very contrived reasons, Molly is speaking in front of a class at her old school, she's still not entirely clean, and she's talking about her struggles. I get why this speech is there, but I don't get why it's here. Like, why would you let somebody speak about that when they were so clearly nowhere near in the clear. It felt and was contrived.

I do think this was an accurate portrayal of an addict in withdrawal, and a relationship between and unconvinced mother and a troubled addict who always seems to have an ulterior motive and a lie, even when she doesn't.

Maybe this was the wrong medium for such a story, or maybe such a story, shouldn't been so happy. I can easily see a modern Sam Shepherd take this idea and turn it into a dynamic three-person play on stage. Yeah, three persons, I didn't mention Stephen Root's wonderful performance as Close's husband who has his own kind of quiet dignity about him and has seen this relationship deteriorate over the years. There's a good play, somewhere here, but this uplifting tale isn't it. There's nothing wrong with film, and I get why all these actors would be interested in these roles, but eh, especially from somebody like Rodrigo Garcia who I always used to think of as somebody with a lot more ambition, this story just feels too thin. There's a difference between the kind of story that a lot of people might relate to as realistic experiences, and then taking those experiences and making them transcendent, and he used to be able to take things like that and make them transcendent. Here, it's just a single story between a mother and daughter and not much more. There's some commentary I guess on the opiate epidemic in the country, and how drugs like Vicodin were prescribed way too liberally and got people addicted, there's definitely stories about those who are suffering from these kinds of addictions, but this story could've easily occurred at any particular point with nearly any particular narcotic.

I don't know, the word that keeps popping through my head is "thin". This movie is thin, it's a simple told tale simply and nothing more and that's incredibly disappointing from the people involved in making it. I want and expect more from these people and they're capable of it, and it feels like they found the flimsiest interesting tale they could come up with and did as minimum amount to make it good enough and you can't knock it for being bad, but they don't go any further. Nothing in the movie feels like it exists outside of the paper it's script was written on; it's that thin.

THE WHITE TIGER (2020) Director: Ramin Bahrani

⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2

Ramin Bahrani has been one of the best and most underrated filmmakers for awhile. I've been a huge fan since his breakout feature "Man Push Cart". He can make some more introspective pieces like the wonderful, "Goodbye, Solo", about a friendship between a Senegalese cab driver and a suicide old southern white man, but most of the time, his films are often about those struggling on the fringes of society and fighting uphill against, or within, a corrupt capitalist system that's seemingly out of their control. Or maybe, not capitalism always, apparently his last directorial achievement was a TV movie version of "Fahrenheit 451", which, I didn't watch, but eh, I wasn't looking forward to that one; even as that text is more relevant than ever, unfortunately, that's also one that I don't necessarily think adapts well to the film. (I have seen Truffaut's version, it's, ehhh.) However, this time his latest got released on Netflix, "The White Tiger" and it's his most ambitious and arguably his best film yet.

Like most of his other work, he's telling a story of the struggles of economics situation, but this one deals with India, which even extra layers of economics and sociological layers to it. At one point, it's mentioned that there are over a 1000 castes in India, but that only rich castes and poor castes matter, but not everybody obviously knows which is which. Balram (Adash Gourav) is from a poor class, and he's the one telling his own story, strangely, in an email to Chinese Premiere WEN Jiabao.... One of the more unique framing devices I've seen, but don't let that fool you, he's an entrepreneur. However, he doesn't start that way.

At first, he's shown skill in school in one of the poor outskirts in India, which, honestly is most of India. Eventually, he's taken out of school and forced to work in the village tea stall by the village landlord until his father passes away. Yeah, I-, villages have landlords still in India, I guess. He's called "The Stork" (Mahesh Manjraker) and basically, whoever, or whatever crosses him, he takes out them, and their whole family, and anybody and everything else that they care for or about.

He gets sponsored to get driving lessons and inevitably ends up talking his way into being an occasional driver to the Stork's son Ashok (Rajkummar Rao), the Stork's middle son, with the American-raised girlfriend Pinky (Priyanka Chopra Jonas) both of whom are constantly at odds with Ashok's older brother Mukesh (Vijay Maurya) who is quite dismissive of Balram and others of lower castes, and higher castes as well. He's just a murderous asshole, the Joe Pesci character in "Goodfellas" in this family. And this family is quite well off. They try to buy off both sides of the political spectrum as an important race is coming up. Mostly though, we follow Balram as he takes their friendship and observes the lessons of the elite, and how they see the world, or rather not see the ills they're apart of, or caused.

The movie begins for instance, with a death caused by Ashok, (Well, actually, it's caused by Pinky) and inevitably, they all insist that Balram be the one to take responsibility. This give him personal hardship and of course, the possibility of going to jail for life and the harms that would cause his family, who he is sending money to. Oddly this'll inevitably blow over, but it gives him the encourage to figure out how to get out.

The big metaphor that the movie uses is the chicken coop, which the movie notes as India's greatest invention to the world. The chickens stay in the coop, they see what happens to them when they're taken out, they know it'll happen to them, and yet, they don't try to get out or leave, and that most of India, is indeed stuck in that coop. You could easily make the same arguments for a lot of the other major superpowers of the world, and most of them aren't not as complex and elaborate as India's history, which has so many extra layers to it's struggles towards a more democratic and socialist union that while you see the horrors of the chicken coop, you're terrified more that if you let the chickens out, the chickens will start attacking each other long before they go after the real people they all should be after.

Adash Gourav gives an amazing performance, one of my favorites in recent years. The film earned Ramin Bahrani his first Oscar nomination for Adapted Screenplay; the movie was based on a best-selling book from a friend of his that he was working on adapting even before it was published. Ironically, I could argue it's the movie where his characters end up being the most successful to come out of their economic turmoil, and normally I'd say, "At what cost?", and yes, there was a cost, but the movie also indicates how it was strangely worth it. In fact, the more I think about it, the more the "Goodfellas" comparison makes sense. The breaking of the fourth wall at times, the voiceover, the story of coming up from the streets to rise in a world that they would normally never be apart of. Balram calls himself a white tiger, for how rare and beautiful they are, how they only come around once in a generation, the idyllic entrepreneur who actually does treat his employees well and takes full responsibility for the errs of his employees and makes up for his mistakes. I've seen white tigers before. I mean, I live in Vegas, it wasn't hard, just used to see them at the Mirage reserve whenever I had to take a visitor somewhere, but they are startingly rare and beautiful. With every film, I feel like Bahrani's get more of an opportunity to show off more and more of what he can do, and much as I miss some of the more neorealistic in tone films he's made in the past, he amazing manages to stick to that ideal on a bigger budget and more elaborate stories. He's a son of Iranian immigrants who grew up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina of all places, but with his talent and skillset, along with that viewpoint on the world, you can make a real argument that he might be one of the most worldly or world-conscious filmmakers America's got. "The White Tiger" is the best example of that yet.

THE DISSIDENT (2020) Director: Bryan Fogel

⭐⭐⭐⭐

This is one of those honest political questions that, I do know the answer to, but feel like I should ask it anyway, if for no other reason than because it should be out in the ether somewhere..., so, serious question, why does the U.S. not have an embargo on Saudi Arabia? I'm dead serious; this is one of those, if I was President thing, I think I might make that an early declaration. Or at least, look into the possibility. And I know the answer is oil, but I also know that we produce enough oil as it is, and we get enough oil from other country who aren't so down on the human rights meter, so I know that's the answer, but I don't think that's a good argument or even a good enough financial reason. In fact, we actually get a lot less oil from Saudi Arabia than I think most people on both sides of the oil debate realize.

Maybe this is different for others, or maybe most people aren't there yet, but for me, the breaking point was the murder of Washington Post journalist and reporter Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate. I don't care how progressive a society is or is becoming, as admittedly some of the current Saudi leaders of the Saud Kingdom are making the country more progressive than many ever really thought possible, if you're killing and going after reporters, as far as I'm concerned, we don't need to be doing business with you. (Yes, I have similar thoughts on Russia at the moment.) Perhaps it's naïve of me to have even thought that Saudi Arabia was still worth being somewhat reluctant trade partners before then, but there's no other way to put it, they're run a gang of thugs. And I'm not saying Saudi Arabia needs to become a full-fledge American-style democracy, or that they should even give up their monarch system, what's "right" for us, might not be for other countries, yada, yada, yada, I'm not even saying whenever, if they're ever, replaced that who comes in next will be better. I'm saying, we should just be out, and then after their gone, we re-evaluate our relationship then. In this case, I don't care if they were going after frickin' Tucker Carlson, you don't go after reporters, period. If you can't stand up to the simplest and weakest criticism, than you're power is paper thin at best, and cowardice at worst.

And if you don't think Khashoggi's murder was the result of cowardly thugs, than I would highly recommend watching "The Dissident" a documentary that traces Khashoggi's role in the political circles around the country at the time, and details the actual details about his death, many of which I'm only learning now. For instance, the disturbing insinuation of how they got rid of his body in the Embassy. Well, there were a couple ways, one was in a well, and the other, ugh, well, if you know what a Tandoori oven is, um,... Anyway, I don't want to think about it. Or that their was a body double that didn't look much like him, that supposedly walked out of the Consulate, although Khashoggi's fiance was outside and apparently she wasn't fooled, and nobody else was either.

The movie also details some of Saudi Arabia's online tactics, including how the country is basically a Twitter farm to push Saudi propaganda and that Khashoggi was basically trying to help fund an anti-farm to combat that, and getting more populist ideas trending in the country. For most of us, Khashoggi might've just been another random reporter, but this was a Saudi reporter who worked for the Washington Post; the guy's importance and influence can't be overstated, and thankfully his influence isn't being overlooked and ignored in Saudi Arabia. We get interviews with those who investigated the crime, as well as others like those high up in the intelligence agencies who perhaps should've made it far more well-known just what they were doing and pursuing their more criminal actions a lot earlier before something like this happened.

"The Dissident" is a good outline of the status of the Saudi Arabia fringe of the political discussion, but it is a far cry from being a repeal of the current regime. It's basically a documentation of how these gangster thugs remain in power. This basically is just a very wealthy crime family, and should be thought about that way. They're still trying to throw their money around believing their wealth and influence will simply overtake and overwhelm all their little minor violations of human rights and freedom of speech, and it does work. They had a huge influence on Trump, the President who probably gave them way more legitimacy than anyone else. And recently they bought the PGA Tour of all things; not that I'm surprised or care that much that a bunch of golfers could be bought out, but it does show their power and might. The failings of the capitalist society being taken advantage of by a authoritative state.

Of course, it hasn't completely worked. Jeff Bezos, who owned the Post cut all ties after the death of his reporter and the Saudis were apparently offended that the Post continued to run print opposing them afterwards, feeling like such an ant that stops moving shouldn't be enough to stop everything. Harry Lime was wrong about that, and hopefully others in power and influence like Bezos will follow suit in the future.

A SECRET LOVE (2020) Director: Chris Bolan

⭐⭐⭐

I had a hard time watching this film, and on paper, this story should be far more captivating, and instead of thinking about the enduring love and struggles that Pat Henschel and the now-late Terry Donahue had/have for each other, I spent most of my time after and while watching the movie, focusing on a baseball statistics I learned in the film that utterly blew me away. See, at one point, Terry Donahue, who played professional in the AAGPBL, yes, the pro league that "A League of Their Own" was indeed based on, she was one of them, and she's at some museum exhibit, I think at Cooperstown talking and somebody's trying to talk up and prop up her accomplishments there, and that's absolutely true btw, people who don't understand the history and evolution of women sports in America might think they were just a fluke, but leagues like that incorporated a lot of the best female athletes of the time, and not just the ones who happened to be decent at baseball,...- anyway, I could write a dissertation there, but she oft-handedly mentioned that one of the players, stole 201 bases in a season and that that's still the professional record. My eyes lit up at that, because all my life, I've thought Rickey Henderson's 130 in 1982 was the record, so I went on a search, and sure as shit, she's right. Her name was Dorothy Kuras and that record is even more impressive than it sounds, like, somebody needs to get "Foolish Baseball" onto that, I think I found a perfect subject for his next Youtube video.

Both Donahue and Henschel were amazing athletes. Both were Canadian and they met at a hockey rink, which was Henschel's sport. But yeah, we get photos and a little bit of them through the years, dealing with having to hide their homosexuality, especially during the days when the gay bars were regularly raided by police for sport.

The thing with Keating's article is that, you know, they weren't like, hiding their relationship from everybody. Most of the gay friends and people I've known over the years, they may not be out to everybody, but they're always out to some certain close people in their lives. Sometimes they're out to everybody and certain close people in their lives are just completely oblivious to it. I've heard of a few people like that, they'll talk about being amazed when they find out, having not realized that why their co-workers of there's always brings her "friend" to office get-togethers and wondering why she can't find a boyfriend. (The female co-worker with the crew cut and the Melissa Etheridge t-shirt, I may add. [True story]) But yeah, we do meet their gay friends in the beginning. We also see and hear about their coming out, particular to Diana, Terry's beloved niece. Yeah, that's another thing, the family's basically been there all along, but wasn't particularly, aware...?

I doubt it. For a couple who kept their relationship secret for so long, even long after it was generally more accepted, it's kinda disturbing to think about how long they had to keep their sexuality secret from their family, and how little the movie actually focuses on it.

The biggest crux of the movie really surrounds Pat's declining health and what if anything everybody wants to do about it. Whether their house should be sold, where they should move to, etc. etc. Everybody has an opinion, and nobody's exactly sure what's the best thing for everybody. It's often through Diana that we really get a slight sense of the trepidation everybody has about their sexuality. We get a little sense with some tales about how their parents, the father in particular, wouldn't have been accepting of Pat being a lesbian, although there's some dispute over what he actually said at one point, and I won't go into it here.

There is a wedding, inevitably, but it sorta just comes about, and it feels more like a detail moreso than an achievement. I almost get the sense that the story is more about the end of this couple's lives than this couples' lives together. Perhaps the filmmakers weren't ready to tell that story through their eyes. The director is Chris Bolan, and these are his two great aunts he's documenting, so perhaps this is about him understanding how blindsided he might've been by their revelation as well? I don't know; this might not be the best possible story or documentation of Pat and Terry, but I'm glad we got what we got, and for I'm recommending the film. Perhaps I am chickening out on here, and should be more critical, but these two wonderful ladies have had a wonderfully long life and a long life together, and whatever stresses they had keeping their lives a secret all this time, that alone deserves a positive response to their life.

75th ANNUAL PRIMETIME EMMY AWARDS NOMINATIONS ANALYSES! LATE FOR THE ANALYSES, EARLY FOR THE SHOW THIS YEAR! THANKS STRIKING WRITERS AND ACTORS!

2023-07-29T05:10:00.000-07:00

For years, basically since this blog began, when the Primetime Emmy nominations come out, I'd rush to my computer and start typing away. I swore that I'd go down through every Emmy category there was, at least the ones that I felt could matter to most of the television watchers out there and go through and give full analysis on all those categories. Part of the reason I did that, was for the public, to have an outlet to really look at all the nominees, and hopefully find something for the most jaded of television viewers to seek out or cheer for their favorite series. Whenever I used to talk about the Emmys, I would get plenty of messages and comments of how irrelevant they were and how they never nominated the shows they watched, and frankly I wanted to show them that often, that was a misnomer at worst and an outright lie at best.

That said, that's not the real reason I continue that exercise. The main reason was my own selfishness; I wanted to go through the list of nominees and find out what show(s) I needed to watch and see what I'm missing from television, and for years I felt the Primetime Emmys were a good barometer of that. Lately, I haven't felt that way. In fact, the Emmys used to be the major award show I cared about the most, but in recent years, I've cared about the results and the nominees less and less. Part of it is that my viewing habits have changed and I just am unable to watch television as often as I would like and the way I would like. Television will be a weekly constitution for me and frankly it's become frustrating to have to be constantly streaming and searching for shows. More importantly than that though, I just flat don't like how the Emmys vote anymore.

I've brought it up many times before, but since they totally got rid of viewing panels, and left it up to the members to go by the honor system when they vote, I've hated it for years now, and frankly I just don't take the results seriously anymore, whether I agree with them or not. They're a popularity contest, in the sense that, whatever show is the most popular, they'll win, and frankly, that's not consistent with the past history of the Emmys, and I don't like that. I know people hate the Oscars for the exact reason that they never award the big blockbuster film, but frankly I like the Oscars because they don't do that anymore; ideally it would make the times that they would be more special. I'm looking for the best in quality in award shows like these and frankly, or at least, what I honestly believe the Academy voters actually think is the best in quality, but frankly I haven't believed that that's how or who've they voted for in a long time now. Until they change to different voting system, this will be my stance. I've recommend ways they could/should change it over the years, you can find some of those ideas, here. Until then, and/or until my current television viewing patters change, looking over these Emmy nominations, is much more of a selfish ritual for myself, to see what shows I have to get around to watching, moreso than the shows I actually watch or wanna watch.

And that's fine, that's another reason I always posted these things anyway, to show some who might not be aware that certain shows exist and these nominations are often a great way to find out about and find your new favorite series. Just because this is a selfish act on my part, going through the nominees and putting them together, doesn't mean you can't get anything out of it. And hey, you know what, if you're able to catch up on these series in the meantime, by all means, go for it.

In fact, this might be your chance, considering that, with basically all of Hollywood on strike right now, the word is that this Emmys show is going to be delayed, so, maybe there's time for you, or even me to catch up. And hell, maybe everybody who's actually voting will have the time to actually watch all the shows too?!

Okay, that probably won't happen 'til we make it happen. But, if I have any thoughts on any of the categories that I think is worth discussing, I'll mention it here. Let's see what they picked this year.

COMEDY SERIES

BEST COMEDY SERIES

Abbott Elementary-ABC

Barry-HBO

The Bear-FX

Jury Duty-Amazon Freevee

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel-Prime Video

Only Murders in the Building-Hulu

Ted Lasso-Apple TV+

Wednesday-Netflix

What the hell is "Jury Duty"? What the hell is "Amazon Freevee"? Also, is this the first time there's been, technically eight different networks getting a nomination here? I think so. I don't know what to make of that, per se, but it does feel a little odd. You would naturally think one network at least, would have a second nominee out there, but it seems like every network has just decided to push the single show they want this year, and naturally, the voters, only watched about one show per network or streaming service. Anyway, next year will be different. These are the last seasons for "Barry", "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" and "Ted Lasso", all three of which are probably the favorites, although I wouldn't count out "The Bear" to play spoiler here.

OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES

Bill Hader-"Barry"-HBO Max

Jason Segel-"Shrinking"-Apple TV+

Martin Short-"Only Murders in the Building"-Hulu

Jason Sudeikis-"Ted Lasso"-Apple TV+

Jeremy Allen White-"The Bear"-FX

Okay, while I think the voting is the big change the Emmys need to make, there are other rules and changes that need to be made, and this is a big one. Currently the rule state that for every category, the number of submissions determines how many nominees there are in the category. The only exceptions are Comedy and Drama Series categories, they are currently guaranteed to have eight nominations. For instance, there were 163 submissions in Drama Series this year. Normally, under the regular rules that would mean that there's seven nominations in the category, but since this is a category people care about, they make it eight. Comedy Series is the same thing, based on the number of submissions, which was 95 submissions, there should only be six nominees. I'm okay with this, the number of programs you want to nominate, I'm fine with, as long as you're not just nominating everybody, I think it's no harm no foul, however, the rule I would make here: I would say that, with certain exceptions made in certain lower tier categories for technical reasons, every category under those program should have the same amount of nominees! Now, in the lead categories, "Well, wait a minute, most shows have only one lead and there's not necessarily a lead male and lead female in all of them?" Yeah, you can justify the lead categories that way, but what happens when you get to the Supporting performer categories. Or better yet, the writing and directing categories, especially when their are some shows that had several writers writing different episodes. If you do the math, this can add up a lot. I think it's unfair and confusing personally. (Plus, there's also just the dumbness of it. There's eight shows up for Series, why wouldn't there be eight shows or episodes up for writer, actor, etc. etc.) Whether you agree with the Series category automatically getting eight or not, (And there used to be a minimum rule, where their be eight and then if somebody was within a certain percentage point of getting nominated, they would be nominated too; it seems they got rid of that... I honestly liked that rule, but under the proviso that the number of Series nominees, constitutes the minimum number for the category....) Anyway, this is why I think seeing five nominees in Lead Actor in a Comedy Series, just feels stupid when there's eight nominees for Series. Just throw the next three names in there; what difference does it make? Anyway, two newcomers here, Jeremy Allen White for "The Bear" and Jason Segel for "Shrinking". Hader and Sudeikis have won before, those shows along with "The Bear" are favorites in comedy series. No Steve Martin here, but Martin Short got in alone, and y'know it's been awhile since he's won, despite constantly giving wonderful performances. He does have two Emmys but none of them are for performing. He won one as a producer on an AFI Special, and another early in his career as a writer for "SCTV", way early in his career; in fact he won that Emmy in a weird year where "SCTV" literally took every nomination in the category, something that I don't think is allowed now in the category, not the way it used to be anyway. So, yeah, he's the sentimental vote for me, even if I really have a hard time sitting through that show, he's the best part of it.

OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTRESS IN A COMEDY SERIES

Christina Applegate-"Dead to Me"-Netflix

Rachel Brosnahan-"The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel"-Prime Video

Quinta Brunson-"Abbott Elementary"

Natasha Lyonne-"Poker Face"-Peacock

Jenna Ortega-"Wednesday"

Same with this category. By the way, did you know, "Dead to Me" was back? Man, I gotta catch up on stuff. Brosnahan's the only past winner in this category and I do hope she wins again. Honestly, I don't know why she hasn't won for every season of "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel", or why that show just hasn't won everything for every season it's been on. Easily been the best show on TV, literally since it hit Amazon. "Poker Face", I imagine might've been on the bubble of getting a series nomination, so I wouldn't count out Natasha Lyonne who hasn't won yet. Jenna Ortega might be the popular choice though. In fact, she would easily be the youngest person to ever win the award. She's only the second-youngest to ever be nominated in the category, behind,... holy Christ, PATTY DUKE?!?!?!? Sorry, I'm- half-stunned that she got nominated, and twice-stunned that that show got nominated for anything. I mean, if anything was ever gonna be nominated for the show, it absolutely had to be her, but like, really? Boy, there's a few exceptions of course, but on the hole, television in the '60s in America, was not great, even at the top a lot of the times. Also, how strange is it that we've gone so long between people nominated in this category for playing teenage girls? I mean, there's been plenty of comedy series just in my lifetime where a teenage boy character is the lead and gotten nominated, Frankie Muniz, Fred Savage, hell, Michael J. Fox, won one year in Lead, but nah, I guess, they never did nominate anybody for playing a teenage girl in Lead before. Man, I would've thought Mayim Bialik would've snuck in one year, but maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part. (Although in '92, for some reason Tyne Daly got in for literally the one episode of "Wings" she was on. How did that keep happening to "Wings", the only people ever nominated for that show were one-time guests, but in Lead categories, how did that keep happening? [Emmy rules have changed so that that could never happen now, but still, how was that allowed then?! And for a lot longer than you think])

OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES

Anthony Carrigan-"Barry"-HBO Max

Phil Dunster-"Ted Lasso"-Apple TV+

Brett Goldstein-"Ted Lasso"-Apple TV+

James Marsden-"Jury Duty"-Amazon Freevee

Ebon Moss-Bachrach-"The Bear"-FX

Tyler James Williams-"Abbott Elementary"-ABC

Henry Winkler-"Barry"-HBO Max

Brett Goldstein's won the category twice in a row; three in a row is hard, but not impossible. I believe the last person to do it in this category was Jeremy Piven for "Entourage". The all-time record for consecutive wins in the category is John Larroquette who won four in a row for "Night Court", before he took his name out of consideration. Piven also took his name out of consideration after his three consecutive wins, but Goldstein will not need to worry about that, as "Ted Lasso" is in it's final year. The only other winner in the category is Henry Winkler who won for "Barry" a few years ago, and admittedly, that was part-lifetime achievement honor. Nothing else that inherently looks like a spoiler off hand. All the nominees are from Best Series nominees with "Ted Lasso" and "Barry", the two presumptive frontrunners, tied with the most. I really hope "Jury Duty" has nothing to do with that old Pauly Shore movie from the '90s.

OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTRESS FOR A COMEDY SERIES

Alex Borstein-"The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel"-Prime Video

Ayo Edebiri-"The Bear"-FX

Janelle James-"Abbott Elementary"-ABC

Sheryl Lee Ralph-"Abbott Elementary"-ABC

Juno Temple-"Ted Lasso"-Apple TV+

Hannah Waddingham-"Ted Lasso"-AppleTV+

Jessica Williams-"Shrinking"-AppleTV+

I guess "Shrinking" might've also been close to a Series nomination. Getting two nominations in this actor field, that's heavily weighted towards the three shows that people actually watched is impressive. Sheryl Lee Ralph won last year, and Alex Borstein has won in the past. This years marks the first time since 2013 that no one from "SNL" got into the supporting category, that's an impressive streak, granted this has been a weird Variety year; we'll get to all that.

OUTSTANDING DIRECTOR FOR A COMEDY SERIES

Barry-"wow"-Bill Hader-HBO Max

The Bear-"Review"-Christopher Storer-FX

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel-"Four Minutes"-Amy Sherman-Palladino-Prime Video

The Ms. Pat Show-"Don't Touch My Hair"-Mary Lou Belli-BET+

Ted Lasso-"So Long, Farewell"-Declan Lowney-Apple TV+

Wednesday-"Wednesday's Child is Full of Woe"-Tim Burton-Netflix

Bill Hader, once again, pulls off the weird triple nomination, as he got Acting, Directing and Writing nominations, all for "Barry". "The Ms. Pat Show" got the obligatory directing nomination for a multicam series, but other than that, the rest of the nominees are from Series nominees. This could be the most likely spot to see "Wednesday" win something, especially with the biggest-name director being attached. I never really thought about Tim Burton for a Comedy Series before, but I guess when the right project comes around. Still though, we got series finales in the category, and comedy doesn't always give the award to the most well-known person behind the camera. Also, somebody who knows, can you tell what's the difference between BET and BET+?

OUTSTANDING WRITING FOR A COMEDY SERIES

Barry-"wow"-Bill Hader-HBO Max

The Bear-"System"-Christopher Storer

Jury Duty-"Ineffective Assistance"-Makki Leeper-Amazon Freevee

Only Murders in the Building-"I Know Who Did It"-John Hoffman, Matteo Borghese and Rob Turbovsky-Hulu

The Other Two-"Cary & Brooke Go To An AIDS Play"-Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider-HBO Max

Ted Lasso-"So Long, Farewell"-Brendan Hunt, Joe Kelly and Jason Sudeikis

There's always one weird one in the Writing category, and this one goes to "The Other Two", which, um... okay. I know nothing about that one. What is that? (Google search) "The Other Two",... Wikipedia... millenial siblings, thirteen-year-old brother's overnight fame..., originally aired on Comedy Central....?!!!! Oh, WAIT A MINUTE, I do remember this show! I think I watched an episode or two when it first aired! I didn't know it was still around? It moved to HBO? That's weird, usually shows start on HBO and then end up on Comedy Central. Huh? Is this, the finale episode...- (Google search) Nope. Huh. Alright, congrats on a weird, single Emmy nomination for this. Can't remember the last time a show in it's final season got it's first ever nomination, in Writing. I guess, if you don't count "Lucky", which was a one-season wonder in '03, a pretty decent one at that, than I guess, it would've been the year before for "Andy Richter Controls the Universe", which got a writing nomination in it's 2nd and final season. (Another underrated show I might add) Other than that, I don't think a show's ever won in this situation, so, definitely looking towards the other nominees for the winner.

OUTSTANDING GUEST ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES

Joe Bernthal-"The Bear"-FX

Luke Kirby-"The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel"-Prime Video

Nathan Lane-"Only Murders in the Building"-Hulu

Pedro Pascal-"Saturday Night Live"-NBC

Oliver Platt-"The Bear"-FX

Sam Richardson-"Ted Lasso"-Apple TV+

I'm happy to see Luke Kirby pop back up again; he's won this category before and he's really amazing; I thought he was a shoe-in last year to win, and somehow he wasn't nominated. The award, instead went to Nathan Lane, who is also back. (Lane was really good in the episodes of "Only Murders....") The only other one back is Sam Richardson. The other two nominees went to "The Bear", and one for Pedro Pascal, for "Saturday Night Live", which hasn't done that well in this category in recent years and with this being an already weaker year, which got ended early 'cause of the strikes, I'm thinking Pascal partly got in because he's big on a drama series that's one of the shows everybody watches, or at least Emmy voters do. (Although, he probably was one of the few memorable bright spots for "SNL" this year.)

OUTSTANDING GUEST ACTRESS IN A COMEDY SERIES

Becky Ann Baker-"Ted Lasso"-Apple TV+

Quinta Brunson-"Saturday Night Live"-NBC

Taraji P. Henson-"Abbott Elementary"-ABC

Judith Light-"Poker Face"-Peacock

Sarah Niles-"Ted Lasso"-Apple TV+

Harriet Walter-"Ted Lasso"-Applet TV+

Well, this is the clearest sign of "Ted Lasso" being the favorite. in series, getting so many Guest Actors into the categories. Altogether, that's nine actors they got nominated, and that's arguably a weak year for the series. After that, eh, it would be nice to see Judith Light finally win an Emmy. Harriet Walter is the only returning nominee from last year, so she might be a slight favorite at the moment. Other than that, the only previous winner in the group is Quinta Brunson who won for Writing last year.

DRAMA SERIES

BEST DRAMA SERIES

Andor-Disney+

Better Call Saul-AMC

The Crown-Netflix

House of the Dragon-HBO

The Last of Us-HBO

Succession-HBO

The White Lotus-HBO

Yellowjackets-Showtime

Apparently it's not TV, it's just drama series TV now on HBO. "House of the Dragon", I believe is the "Game of Thrones" prequel? I- I'm kinda amazed people cared enough still about "Game of Thrones" to be honest. "The Last of Us", is I think the first time a series based on a video game has been nominated. "The White Lotus" goes for that "Downton Abbey" jump from miniseries to regular series. After that, I guess "Andor" takes "The Mandalorian" spot, and "The Crown" and "Better Call Saul" as well as "Succession", the favorite, get in for their final seasons. And I guess, somebody actually still watches Showtime. I didn't even know "The Crown"'s last season was on, but I'm not looking forward to it; I absolutely hated the last season, the one it won the Emmy for, naturally. That seems to be how it goes now. Anyway, I think "Succession" is the heavy favorite, which, honestly, I struggle to get through. I'm still on the first season, and I'm, usually just annoyed at it. I finally finished "This is Us" recently, I know I'm late, but you try binging that through tears, and, yeah, looking at this list, in that light, I find it very underwhelming. Even "Better Call Saul" my favorite of these, eh, I've been tired of it for a few years. Why are so many of these continuations of an old franchise? Maybe I am cheering for "Yellowjackets" after all?

OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES

Jeff Bridges-"The Old Man"-FX

Brian Cox-"Succession"-HBO Max

Kieran Culkin-"Succession"-HBO Max

Bob Odenkirk-"Better Call Saul"-AMC

Pedro Pascal-"The Last of Us"-HBO Max

Jeremy Strong-"Succession"-HBO Max

Three actors from the same series in the category, that is a record. There's been plenty of shows with two, but three sneaking in incredibly rare. This is partly Kieran Culkin switching categories to Lead though. Jeremy Strong last won this category three years ago, but that makes him the only past winner oddly enough. This category has been weird lately anyway, often with winners for flash-in-the-pan series that only capture Emmys and audiences attention for very brief runs. The category will be really different next year with "Succession" and "Better Call Saul" ending this year. Oddly, "Better Call Saul" has mimicked "Mad Men" with their ridiculous 0 for the World streak at the Emmys in acting categories. Strong has won against Brian Cox a couple times, but three from the same show could split the vote if there's a legit option out there, and Odenkirk makes a little more sense to get the sympathy vote. Pascal has time, and Jeff Bridges, um, good for him to getting in here. Actually FX, has done remarkedly well in recent years at the Emmys, basically they've done well for every noteworthy show they've had, not named "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" at the Emmys, which is weirdly still the most mind-boggling to me, but.... (Shrugs)

OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES

Sharon Horgan-"Bad Sisters"-Apple TV+

Melanie Lynskey-"Yellowjackets"-SHOWTIME

Elisabeth Moss-"The Handmaid's Tale"-Hulu

Bella Ramsey-"The Last of Us"-HBO Max

Keri Russell-"The Diplomat"-Netflix

Sarah Snook-"Succession"-HBO Max

A little more all over the map here. Oddly the only previous winner is Elisabeth Moss, and also weirdly "The Handmaid's Tale" kinda got shafted this season. This wasn't even an eligibility technicality this time, they just have fallen. HBO Max has taken the ball, but this category could go in any way. The only series nominees in it are "Yellowjackets", "The Last of Us" and the heavy favorite "Succession", but this is a category that has a lot of history of not remotely matching up with the Series noms, and while I do see Melanie Lynskey's back for "Yellowjackets", and she's definitely one of those great actresses who's been long overlooked for awhile, speaking of long-running TV actresses who's never been awarded, Netflix got Keri Russell back into this category. She hasn't been nominated since "The Americans" and she might take the sentimental vote for those wanting to honor TV's past and present. And, I have no idea what "Bad Sisters" is. I really gotta catch up on Apple TV+; I'm still struggling with season one of "The Morning Show", which, ehhhhh....- you know I actually have a lot of thoughts on that show, but dissecting that show could be like, doing the autopsy on television itself, ugh.

OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES

F. Murray Abraham-"The White Lotus"-HBO Max

Nicholas Braun-"Succession"-HBO Max

Michael Imperioli-"The White Lotus"-HBO Max

Theo James-"The White Lotus"-HBO Max

Matthew Macfadyan-"Succession"-HBO Max

Alan Ruck-"Succession"-HBO Max

Will Sharpe-"The White Lotus"-HBO Max

Alexander Skarsgard-"Succession"-HBO Max

So, the last time a television show had four nominees in this category was in 2002 when "The West Wing" has four. Both "The White Lotus" and "Succession" have four this year, and no other series got nominated. In the current iteration of the Emmys this is about as singular as unusual as this category gets. There was the one year in '82 infamously, where all the nominees in this category came from "Hill Street Blues", but that was back when there only five nominees, and large ensemble dramas were actually still pretty rare back then, so the novelty makes that particular year a bit of an exception. You have an incredibly large cast series with "Succession" and a former miniseries with a multi-narrative which doesn't have a lead, so the supporting categories are essentially acting as lead nominations. This means they're by far the biggest favorites this year, and while I think "Succession" has a slight advantage, this is a potentially real race for Series this year.

OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES

Jennifer Coolidge-"The White Lotus"-HBO Max

Elizabeth Debicki-"The Crown"-Netflix

Meghann Fahy-"The White Lotus"-HBO Max

Sabrina Impacciatore-"The White Lotus"-HBO Max

Aubrey Plaza-"The White Lotus"-HBO Max

Rhea Seehorn-"Better Call Saul"-AMC

J. Smith-Cameron-"Succession"-HBO Max

Simona Tabsco-"The White Lotus"-HBO Max

Jennifer Coolidge won last year for Limited Series last year, and was the only person to come back to "The White Lotus" for season two, which is the reason it's in the Drama Series category and not in Limited or Anthology Series. And five nominees in this category, that, I think that's the record. Yeah, that's easily the record, I'm double-checking, but I don't think any other show has had more than three in a year in this category. Although, keep in mind Sarah Snook submitted in Lead this year and she was nominated in this category last year, so there's a chance somebody snuck in here 'cause of that, and "Succession" still got one in from last year, along with the returning Rhea Seehorn, who, again, "Better Call Saul" never winning feels just annoying now, and I don't even like the show much at this point, and I'm annoyed, and they got the girl who plays Princess Di for "The Crown" this year. (Shrugs) I hated "The Crown" the year it won and that was a Diana year, so maybe it's just, I'm sick of reliving Princess Di's all-too short life but maybe I'm in the minority on that. Also, now you nominate Aubrey Plaza? I swear to Christ, this is why we need to redo how the voting works!!!!

OUTSTANDING DIRECTING FOR A DRAMA SERIES

Andor-"Rix Road"-Benjamin Caron-Disney+

Bad Sisters-"The Prick"-Dearbhla Walsh-Apple TV+

The Last of Us-"Long Long Time"-Peter Hoar-HBO Max

Succession-"America Decides"-Andrij Parekh-HBO Max

Succession-"Connor's Wedding"-Mark Mylod-HBO Max

Succession-"Living"-Lorene Scafaria-HBO Max

The White Lotus-"Arrivederci'"-Mike White-HBO Max

I wouldn't immediately just think "Succession" will take this offhand, I mean, if they weren't just check-marking the same show for everything, at least with some adventurous directing work like "Andor" and "The Last of Us" out there. Other than that, no other real thoughts. Lorene Scafaria is probably the biggest name of this group, so I'd list her as an early favorite.

OUTSTANDING WRITING FOR A DRAMA SERIES

Andor-"One Way Out"-Beau Willimon-Disney+

Bad Sisters-"The Prick"-Sharon Horgan, Dave Finkel and Brett Baer-Apple TV+

Better Call Saul-"Point and Shoot"-Gordon Smith-AMC

Better Call Saul-"Saul Gone"-Peter Gould-AMC

The Last of Us-"Long, Long Time"-Craig Mazin-HBO Max

Succession-"Connor's Wedding"-Jesse Armstrong-HBO Max

The White Lotus-"Arrivederci"-Mike White-HBO Max

"Better Call Saul" has two shots at winning Writing here, including for the series finale, and I just looked it up, "Better Call Saul" has 53 career Emmy nominations, and it has not a single one yet. It if doesn't go to Odenkirk, then it really should go here.

OUTSTANDING GUEST ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES

Murray Bartlett-"The Last of Us"-HBO Max

James Cromwell-"Succession"-HBO Max

Lamar Johnson-"The Last of Us"-HBO Max

Arian Moayed-"Succession"-HBO Max

Nick Offerman-"The Last of Us"-HBO Max

Keivonn Montreal Woodard-"The Last of Us"-HBO Max

Another "Parks and Recreation" cast member who never got nominated suddenly showing up here. Kind of a startling amount of "The Last of Us" nominees, in fact, there's been a little lack of variety in particular in these guest categories. All of them in the Drama Series categories are from "Succession" and "The Last of Us". God, you know, I used to be annoyed when some random "Law & Order: SVU" or 'Scandal" episode would get a Guest Actor or Actress nomination and you're like, "What, people were watching that?", but now, I'm kinda like, "You know what, at least they were watching those shows enough to nominate a good Guest Actor." You see, it's not that I agreed with their choices in the past, it's that I could respect them. These performances might be great and well-deserved nominees, but it sure does feel like they only watched a few of these shows and nominated everybody from the ones they liked the most.

OUTSTANDING GUEST ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES

Hiam Abbass-"Succession"-HBO Max

Cherry Jones-"Succession"-HBO Max

Melanie Lynskey-"The Last of Us"-HBO Max

Storm Reid-"The Last of Us"-HBO Max

Anna Torv-"The Last of Us"-HBO Max

Harriet Walker-"Succession"-HBO Max

I don't have anything else to add to this category that I didn't say for the male side of it, but since I got another chance to talk about Melanie Lynskey, possible apocryphal opinion here, but how did she never get nominated for "Two and a Half Men"? She was by far, the best part of that show, and no, I never cared for the series much myself; I thought it was good for like, three or four years, and then lasted way too long without changing enough things permanently until it was way too late to do so, but she was always good. She really should've got more credit for that. She's also just, always great in general and has been forever!

VARIETY

OUTSTANDING TALK SERIES

The Daily Show with Trevor Noah-Comedy Central

Jimmy Kimmel Live!-ABC

Late Night with Seth Meyers-NBC

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert-CBS

The Problem with Jon Stewart-Apple TV+

Okay...- first of all, thank goodness, Seth Meyers finally got in and James Corden is no longer in. Second though, and more importantly, so... years ago, they separated the Variety Series category into two different categories, Variety-Talk and Variety-Sketch series. I, did not like that change at the time, but I kinda got why they did it. Mainly they did it because there was a greater number of Sketch Comedy Series out there, enough to have a category, and there had been a dominance in recent years from traditional Variety Talk Series. And I had heard a lot of people at the time talk about how great shows like "Key & Peele" and "Drunk History", "Portlandia" and "Inside Amy Schumer" were much more advance and that "Saturday Night Live" in particular wasn't funny and was on it's dying days as a new breed of sketch comedy series were coming in. I know it was a fad and a trend and that "SNL" would always bounce back, but nobody took me seriously. So, yeah, now that there's only a couple other sketch shows, and "Last Week Tonight" was just winning the Talk category outright, and "SNL" was basically a de facto winner, they made a new switch to the categories. Now, we have Talk Series, against Scripted Variety Series. Which means, "Last Week Tonight", gets kicked out, and that leaves room for, the late night talk series, that are more improvised and off-the-cuff, especially in their interview segments to qualify here. I don't think this makes much sense either to be honest, but...- the problem with the Variety Series categories is that, there used to be a lot more variety, and now it's just forms of comedy that aren't sitcoms. There just aren't like traditional, like, Ed Sullivan-type variety shows anymore, and frankly half-the-time, when you do see those kinds of acts, they more-or-less shove those acts into Reality programs now where they have to compete. So, anyway, this change, (Shrugs) it's not the worst, but it's still kinda stupid. I really think they should shove these categories back together into one Variety Series category, and if you think for some reason that I'm being a little too picky. Like, "Dave, I mean, yeah, but there's still just the two kinds of variety series now," okay then, if that's the case, tell me, what category would "Who's Line Is It Anyway?" submit under? Yeah,.... if that, or any other improv sketch show makes a comeback, we're gonna have a very tricky discussion of what the category(ies) should be. Oh, also Jon Stewart.

OUTSTANDING SCRIPTED VARIETY SERIES

A Black Lady Sketch Show-HBO Max

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver-HBO Max

Saturday Night Live-NBC

Y'know, before the category standards switched, I would've taken "A Black Lady Sketch Show" to pull off the win over "SNL", but throw in John Oliver in there, and now it just feels like we're being particularly mean to them.

OUTSTANDING VARIETY SPECIAL (LIVE)

The Apple Music Super Bowl LVII Halftime Show Starring Rihanna-FOX

Chris Rock: Selective Outrage-Netflix

Elton John Live: Farewell from Dodger Stadium-Disney+

The Oscars-ABC

75th Annual Tony Awards-CBS

I might be a little bias, this year's Super Bowl is not a highlight, it drew a loud a frustration for me, frankly, but-eh, I thought the Halftime show sucked this year, sorry Rihanna. I mean, congratulations, but still, you couldn't even do one costume change? Or, just have colors other than red and white? Anyway, the other four nominees are pretty cool though. I don't think anything's Elton's done ever got him Emmy consideration before, this is cool.

OUTSTANDING VARIETY SPECIAL (PRE-RECORDED)

Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love-NBC

John Mulaney: Baby J-Netflix

Lizzo: Live in Concert-HBO Max

Norman Lear: 100 Years of Music & Laughter-ABC

Trevor Noah: I Wish You Would-Netflix

Wanda Sykes: I'm An Entertainer-Netflix

Well, it's only half-stand-ups this years. Stand-ups, and TV legends celebrating their years of work, both of which are amazing, and Lizzo. Lizzo's back here. Well, she's not eligible for reality program so, yeah, put her in for her concert here instead. Sounds good to me. (Tugs ear)

OUTSTANDING DIRECTING FOR A VARIETY SERIES

Jimmy Kimmel Live!-"20th Anniversary Special"-Andy Fisher-ABC

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver-"Afghanistan"-Paul Pennolino-HBO Max

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert-"John Oliver, Broadway cast of The Lion King"-Jim Hoskinson-CBS

The Problem with Jon Stewart-"Chaos, Law and Order"-Andre Allen-Apple TV+

Saturday Night Live-"Co-Hosts: Steve Martin & Martin Short"-Liz Patrick-NBC

It'll be interesting to see if "SNL" can take this category without Don Roy King at the helm. Still though, the fact that Colbert's nomination here is for the episode with John Oliver, tells me that John Oliver is safe to win again in the new category. Not sure who's the favorite in that Talk Series category though, although the fact that Jon Stewart got in here is kinda interesting. Also, Kimmel's been on for twenty years now, Christ! I still think of him as the new guy on the block, although I guess he is the old man now.

OUTSTANDING DIRECTING FOR A VARIETY SPECIAL

The Apple Music Super Bowl LVII Halftime Show Starring Rihanna-Hamish Hamilton, Shawn Carter-FOX

Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love-Paul Miller-NBC

Chris Rock: Selective Outrage-Joel Gallen-Netflix

The Oscars-Glenn Weiss-ABC

Wanda Sykes: I'm an Entertainer-Linda Mendoza-Netflix

I can never remember if this is a year where they show this category on the main show or not. Maybe when the DGA joins the strike later on, they'll go over the details about this for the Emmys and make sure the strange guidelines regarding these awards get updated. Leaning towards Glenn Weiss taking it again.

OUTSTANDING WIRTING FOR A VARIETY SERIES

The Daily Show with Trevor Noah-Head Writer: Dan Amira; Senior Writers: Lauren Sarver Means, Daniel Radosh; Writers: Trevor Noah, David Angelo, et. al.-Comedy Central

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver-Senior Writers: Daniel O'Brien, Owen Parsons, Charlie Redd, Joanna Rothkoph, Seena Valli; Writers: John Oliver, Johnathan Appel, et. al.-HBO Max

Late Night with Seth Meyers-Head Writers: Alex Baze; Writing Supervisors: Seth Reiss, Mike Scollins; Closer Look Writing Supervisor: Sal Gentile, Writers: Seth Meyers, Jermaine Alfonso, et. al.-NBC

The Last Show with Stephen Colbert-Head Writers: Ariel Dumas, Jay Katsir; Writers: Stephen Colbert, Delmonte Bent, et. al. -CBS

Saturday Night Live-Head Writers: Alison Gates, Streeter Seidell, Kent Sublette; Writing Supervisors: Gary Richardson, Will Stephen, Celeste Yum; Senior Writer: Bryan Tucker; Weekend Update Head Writers: Pete Schultz, Megan Callahan-Shah, Dennis McNicholas, Josh Patten, KC Shornima, Writers: Lorne Michaels, Rosebud Baker, et. al....-NBC

Boy, these shows have a lot of writers. No Jon Stewart here is interesting. I think it's still John Oliver's crew here to lose. Nice to see Trevor Noah get in for his last season, I think they could honor him here if they really wanted to.

OUTSTANDING WRITING FOR A VARIETY SPECIAL

Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love-Jon Macks and Carol Leifer-NBC

Chris Rock: Selective Outrage-Chris Rock

John Mulaney: Baby J-John Mulaney-Netflix

Wanda Sykes: I'm An Entertainer-Wanda Sykes-Netflix

Would It Kill You to Laugh? Starring Kate Berlant & John Early-Kate Berlant, Andrew DeYoung, John Early-Peacock

Wait-, what the hell is that last nominee? "Would It Kill You to Laugh?" (Google search) Huh. I guess this is, like, the "Bo Burnham: Burning" entry for the year in this category, which I seem to be the only one who thought that was overrated as Hell, but whatever, it's the stand-up category. And your yearly reminder that they gotta really figure out a way to honor Variety performers in their own categories. Perhaps, separate them into Performer/Host/Comedian and Performer/Music categories? It's been way too long since that category went away, it should be brought back again.

REALITY

OUTSTANDING REALITY OR COMPETITION PROGRAM

The Amazing Race-CBS

RuPaul's Drag Race-MTV

Survivor-CBS

Top Chef-Bravo

The Voice-NBC

This is the first time "Survivor"s been nominated in the category since 2006; I imagine that's gotta be some kind of record. That said, I know some people who really are quite devoted to "Survivor" and they are very happy about this, and- I gotta be honest here, I have no idea why it's still on the air, 'cause it has not been watchable since it's groundbreaking first season. I don't get how it's still a thing, but the fact that it is, and it's back here, reveals a deeper truth about this category, Reality Competition Shows are dying. It's about time to some degree, but eh..., I'm a little more torn up about this than I thought I would be. For one thing, there's been some good shows that popped up in this genre, and some of them are nominated and have been consistently nominated over the years. "The Amazing Race" is still good, "Top Chef" is still must-see television every year, I don't really get "RuPaul's Drag Race", but, there's a lot of good profiles and aspects to the show I do enjoy about the show. Hell, even the first few years of "The Voice" were really good and the frankly even as it's become particularly unwatchable in recent years, I'll always take it at it's worst over "American Idol" at it's best. I can always finds ways to defend reality when it's good and you know what, for the most part, the Emmys have managed to find and seek out those shows.

OUTSTANDING STRUCTURED REALITY PROGRAM

Antiques Roadshow-PBS

Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives-Food Network

Love is Blind-Netflix

Queer Eye-Netflix

Shark Tank-ABC

All repeat nominees, some coming back into the category like "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives" and just another sign that Reality programming is dying. "Queer Eye" and "Shark Tank" are the only past winners though, but I personally am cheering for "Antiques Roadshow". This is their twenty-first nomination in a Reality Program category and somehow they've never won! You'd think just on a lark in a bad year for the category they would've taken it once.

OUTSTANDING UNSTRUCTURED REALITY PROGRAM

Indian Matchmaking-Netflix

RuPaul's Drag Race: Untucked-MTV

Selling Sunset-Netflix

Vanderpump Rules-Bravo

Welcome to Wrexham-FX

(Eye roll) Okay, I guess this is the closest were getting to "It's Always Sunny..." nominations, so I'll take it. I don't have much to say about this category, but who the hell is "Vanderpump" and why I do know this person exists? I've seen her name pop up, and I keep feeling like it's somebody making fun of Diane Von Furstenberg when it's not...- It's about time I figured this shit out... (Wikipedia search) Okay, Lisa Vanderpump, she was a failed child actress from the '70s what the hell.... Minor "Silk Stalkings" and "Baywatch Nights".... What the...- Okay, so from what I can tell, she ended up as a cast member on the series of "Real Housewives...",- am I the only one who actually remembers why those shows exist? Like, they were a joke, to make light of "Desperate Housewives" which was the biggest show on TV at the time. I don't know why exactly they're still around, whether it's Andy Cohen's insistence or they're actually popular but I don't get it either way. Anyway, apparently she runs restaurants now, I don't know why? I can't find like a legitimate reason why I'm supposed to think, this Real Housewife and connect her for food and drink enough to have restaurants in Vegas hotels. Or, Stateline hotels, which is not a Las Vegas venture, Wikipedia, Stateline; that's not even the same County.

OUTSTANDING HOST FOR A REALITY OR COMPETITION PROGRAM

Bobby Berk, Karamo Brown, Tan France, Antoni Porowski, Jonathan Van Ness-"Queer Eye"-Netflix

Nicole Byer-"Nailed It!"-Netflix

Padma Lakshmi-"Top Chef"-Bravo

Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph-"Baking It"-Peacock

RuPaul-"RuPaul's Drag Race"-MTV

BTW, when did RuPaul's Drag Race switch from VH-1 to MTV? Is that the first time a show's done that? (Google search) Okay, so apparently, there's some business ownership stuff, and technically VH-1 is under the BET Media brand that Paramount is considering a sale of, so they're moving their shows to MTV.... Anyway, congrats to Amy Poehler, for her 26th career Emmy nomination, of which she's won, once. And as she and Tina Fey once pointed out, since they shared that Emmy, that really only counted for half a win. So if she wins here teaming with Emmy-winning machine Maya Rudolph, she'll have a full Emmy. (Sigh) This might be a harsh thing to say, and I'll listen to arguments for other people, but I swear to God, nobody's gotten screwed over more by the Emmys than Amy Poehler has. Next time somebody's in Julia Louis-Dreyfus's mansion, can you just steal a few of her Emmys and give them to Amy; I think that's just fair! And right! Anyway, if I'm cheering for anybody this is Padma Lakshmi's last seasons hosting "Top Chef", so I'm rooting for her. She's never won, this time not nominated with Tom Colicchio. Kristen Kish will replace her, who's become quite the host herself on top of being a world renowned chef herself, and a former winner from season 10. I'm looking forward to that. I don't think that'll ruin a show like the way Heidi and Tim leaving "Project Runway" did.

LIMITED SERIES

OUTSTANDING LIMITED OR ANTHOLOGY SERIES

Beef-Netflix

Dahmer-Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story-Netflix

Daisy Jones & The Six-Prime Video

Fleischman Is in Trouble-FX

Obi-Wan Kenobi-Disney+

Is that the full title of that Jeffrey Dahmer thing? "Dahmer, Hyphen, Monster, Colon: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story", Jesus that's awkward. Honestly, that and the "Obi-Wan Kenobi" one is the only one I've heard of. Well, maybe I heard of "Beef" and then forgot about it. During Covid year, this was the main category at the Emmys, and frankly it deserved to be. I think we're done with that now though.

OUTSTANDING TELEVISION MOVIE

Dolly Parton's Mountain Magic Christmas-NBC

Fire Island-Hulu

Hocus Pocus 2-Disney+

Prey-Hulu

Weird: The Al Yankovich Story-The Roku Channel

I think this marks the first time The Roku Channel has gotten an Emmy nomination, and yeah, the Weird Al movie is probably a good pick. Well, they do have the backlog of Quibi technically, but yeah, I'm counting this for Roku. Also, when the hell did "Hocus Pocus" became like, a movie people were reminiscent for enough that they made a sequel decades later? Why? Sorry, I never got the appeal of that one; like I get the appeal of Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy being witches, like, nothing else in that movie worked, like, at all!

OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTOR IN A LIMITED OR ANTHOLOGY SERIES OR MOVIE

Taron Egerton-"Black Bird"-Apple TV+

Kumail Nanjani-"Welcome to Chippendales"-Hulu

Evan Peters-"Dahmer-Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story"-Netflix

Daniel Radcliffe-"Weird: The Al Yankovic Story"-The Roku Channel

Michael Shannon-"George & Tammy"-Showtime

Steven YEUN-"BEEF"-Netflix

I'm not gonna have a lot to say about these miniseries categories; I haven't seen most or any of these categories, but everyone else cares about them.... It's a good list of nominated actors, I apparently have to know what "BEEF" is, other than what's for dinner. Would like to see Daniel Radcliffe take this.

OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTRESS IN A LIMITED OR ANTHOLOGY SERIES OR MOVIE

Lizzy Caplan-"Fleischman Is In Trouble"-FX

Jessica Chastain-"George & Tammy"-Showtime

Dominique Fishback-"Swarm"-Prime Video

Kathryn Hahn-"Tiny Beautiful Things"-Hulu

Riley Keough-"Daisy Jones & The Six"-Prime Video

Ali Wong-"BEEF"-Netflix

I will say that I do like how these categories are indeed spread out among all the major streaming and premium networks. Again, great actors here, I'll look up these titles later.

OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A LIMITED OR ANTHOLOGY SERIES OR MOVIE

Murray Bartlett-"Welcome to Chippendales"-Hulu

Paul Walter Hauser-"Black Bird"-Apple TV+

Richard Jenkins-"Dahmer-Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story"-Netflix

Joseph Lee-"BEEF"-Netflix

Ray Liotta-"Black Bird"-Apple TV+

Young Mazino-"BEEF"-Netflix

Jesse Plemons-"Love & Death"-HBO Max

Awwww. (Sad sigh) Ray Liotta. Damn, I'm gonna miss him. I hope he can end his career with a win, for those morbidly curious, he actually does have an Emmy; he won a Supporting Actor Emmy for "ER" years ago. There's not much else to say, great actor, who never awarded enough for his work when he was alive, and he is now and will forever be sorely missed. That said, Emmys are not usually sentimental, there's very few posthumous winners. By my count, it's only happened five times in an acting category of any kind, the only time someone won the award posthumously and was nominated posthumously was back in '94 when Raul Julia won for the miniseries "The Burning Season". Emmy voters tend not to be sentimental, but I wouldn't be too surprised if they are for him. I doubt it, but I wouldn't mind seeing it.

OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A LIMITED OR ANTHOLOGY SERIES OR MOVIE

Annaleigh Ashford-"Welcome to Chippendales"-Hulu

Maria Bello-"BEEF"-Netflix

Claire Danes-"Fleischman Is In Trouble"-FX

Juliette Lewis-"Welcome to Chippendales"-Hulu

Camile Morrone-"Daisy Jones & The Six"-Prime Video

Niecy Nash-Betts-"Dahmer - Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story"-Netflix

Merritt Wever-"Tiny Beautiful Things"-Hulu

Hmm, Juliette Lewis is in a movie about Chippendales; I think I might actually watch that one now. I might have to see that.

OUTSTANDING DIRECTING FOR A LIMITED OR ANTHOLOGY SERIES OR MOVIE

BEEF-"Figures of Light"-LEE Sung-jin-Netflix

BEEF-"The Great Fabricator"-Jake Schreier-Netflix

Dahmer - Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story-"Bad Meat"-Carl Franklin-Netflix

Dahmer - Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story-"Silenced"-Paris Barclay-Netflix

Fleischman Is In Trouble-"Me-Time"-Valerie Faris & Jonathan Dayton-FX

Prey-Dan Trachtenberg-Hulu

Kind of an interesting category to see exactly where the shows might be in the running for Series. Probably the biggest names here are Faris & Dayton, they're the filmmakers behind "Little Miss Sunshine" among other beloved indy hits. Dan Trachtenberg's an interesting name here too; he's a horror director most known for "10 Cloverfield Lane" and he's only one nominated for a full movie. All the others are nominated for episodes of a miniseries. Occasionally, if somebody directs the entirety of a miniseries for instance, they could sneak in here and steal a Directing Emmy in this category. A TV movie is a little trickier; the last time somebody won this category for just a movie was ten years ago when Steven Soderbergh won for "Behind the Candelabra". Vote splitting though between the favorites could help it out....

OUTSTANDING WRITING FOR A LIMITED OR ANTHOLOGY SERIES OR MOVIE

BEEF-"The Birds Don't Sing, They Screech in Pain"-LEE Sung Jin-Netflix

Fire Island-Joel Kim Booster-Hulu

Fleischman Is In Trouble-"Me-Time"-FX

Prey-Story/Screenplay: Patrick Aison; Story: Dan Trachtenberg

Swarn-"Stung"-Teleplay/Story: Janine Nabers; Story: Donald Glover

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story-Al Yankovic and Eric Appel-The Roku Channel

Relax, Weird Al also got nominated for Original Song, but yeah, three TV movies in here. For all the dominance of limited series lately, TV movies are slowly making a comeback into these categories, and there's a lot more of them than you'd think. If networks promote them right, they can pick up a film that was meant to be theatrical and just move them to streaming. Some of them ever start picking up and get pushed into TV categories, this could be competitive and interesting again.

ANIMATION

OUTSTANDING ANIMATED PROGRAM

Bob's Burgers-"The Plight of Christmas"-FOX

Entergalactic-Netflix

Gennedy Tartakovsky's Primal-"Shadow of Fate"-Adult Swim

Rick & Morty-"Night Family"-Adult Swim

The Simpsons-"Treehouse of Horror XXXIII"-FOX

Boy, looking it up, "Entergalactic" almost sounds pre-designed to just win this Emmy. It's an hour and a half long television movie/pilot based off and inspired by Kid Cudi's new album, working as sort of a companion visual album similar to say, Beyonce's "Lemonade", kinda. I still have it on my queue so I'll get to it, eventually, but it does bring up an interesting question of whether this should be in this category, or whether it should be in the TV movie category. It's seem to be a little unfair to compare an hour and a half concept movie to an episode of "Rick & Morty". Usually when a one-off enters this category it's still rarely more than an hour long. Perhaps the Emmys will have an animated feature category later. Hell, they didn't have a Short-Form Animated Program category this year due to none of the prescreen entries received enough votes of approval, so this might be a sign of the future here.

OUTSTANDING CHARACTER VOICE-OVER PERFORMANCE

Julie Andrews-"Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story"-Netflix

Alex Borstein-"Family Guy"-"A Bottle Episode"-FOX

Mel Brooks-"History of the World, Part II"-"VIII"-Hulu

Maya Rudolph-"Big Mouth"-"Asexual Healing"-Netflix

Wanda Sykes-"Crank Yankers"-"Wanda Sykes, JB Smoove & Adam Carolla"-Comedy Central

Ali Wong-"Tuca & Bertie"-"Fledging Day"-Adult Swim

Did anybody know "Bridgerton" was still a thing? Do we just make Shondra Rhimes shows last forever no matter what? Actually, that would explain a lot, wouldn't it? Also, how is this "Tuca & Bertie"'s first ever nomination?! Anyway, we got five really talented women here, and Mel Brooks, who's still frickin' making material this late into his career, and getting awards considerations. I don't know if he's gonna pull this off. It is kinda interesting that this category in particular is so flooded with character performances that aren't animated, only half are from animated series and of those three, none of them are up for Animated Program. That's so weird.

DOCUMENTARY/NON-FICTION

OUTSTANDING DOCUMENTARY OR NON-FICTION SERIES

100 Foot Wave-HBO Max

The 1619 Project-Hulu

Dear Mama-FX

Secrets of the Elephants-National Geographic

The U.S. and the Holocaust-PBS

Part of the reason I usually include these programs is because of people out there who speak out loud about how their shows are never the ones honored at the Emmys, when, often in reality, many of the shows they do care about are. Also, because they have a point, we often do just ignore all of television when frankly, sometimes the best and most important television are in these categories. Okay maybe finding "The Secrets of the Elephants" aren't the most important television, but it's probably still good and worth honoring.

OUTSTANDING DOCUMENTARY OR NONFICTION SPECIAL

Being Mary Tyler Moore-HBO Max

Judy Blume Forever-Prime Video

My Transparent Life-Prime Video

Pamela, A Love Story-Netflix

Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie-Apple TV+

Good lord. See, this is why I showcase these categories, look at this! Mary Tyler Moore, Michael J. Fox, Judy Blume, Pamela Anders-, HOLY CHRIST, is that what she looks like now, without makeup! I mean, she still looks pretty, she's not a trainwreck or anything, but Jees! All that focus on her plastic surgeries, we should've been asking who her makeup people were. You could've given me100 guesses..., wow! Anyway, and a story about two people going through the process of gender reassignment surgery. This category's filled with interesting stuff.... Seriously, I could've walked by her and never noticed it was her when she's like that! Sorry, I must sound weird to everybody who lived through, but you have no idea how ubiquitous she was for a shockingly long time when I was growing up.

OUTSTANDING HOSTING NONFICTION SERIES OR SPECIAL

The Light We Carry: Michelle Obama & Oprah Winfrey-Netflix

My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman and Volodymyr Zelenskyy-Netflix

Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy-CNN

Taste the Nation with Padma Lakshmi-Hulu

United Shades of America with W. Kamau Bell-CNN

Nice to see Padma Lakshmi's new travel series on here; makes me feel like her decision to exit "Top Chef" isn't completely in vain. Good luck in this category though. I mean, Stanley Tucci could pull off a small upset here after his Italy series was cancelled but W. Kamau Bell's show is a past winner that's much more of a favorite, but then you're up against, Letterman and Volodymyr, and Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey!? Good luck winning against either of those duos in this year.

EXCEPTIONAL MERIT IN DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKING

The Accused: Damned or Devoted?-PBS

Aftershock-Hulu

Last Flight Home-Paramount+

The Territory-National Geographic

About time Paramount+ showed up somewhere here.... This category is always a little weird. I'm not gonna go into every detail, but basically this is the Emmys category for films that are documentary features that were technically released in theaters for limited runs, before becoming finding their true home on the television screens. There's a lot of other hoops to go through to be eligible here, you can be eligible, like they had to not be nominated for an Oscar, the film had to have a social impact of some profound, technical skill involved in making the film, etc. etc. but if a program meets these requirements and can be submitted here, they can placed to a jury to determine filmmaking quality, as both Producers and Directors are actually nominated in this category, and this is usually a good group. Checking my Netflix queue, I already had many of these films listed under films I was gonna watch as theatrical releases, the only exception was "The Accused...", but a lot of documentaries especially that make theaters do start out or are at least funding by television networks or associated companies and subsidiaries with the intent to be on television, so, basically this is a category that honors great documentaries that television produced that they felt were quality enough to be in theaters. And there's some big names attached to some of these, the biggest this year is Darren Aronofsky, who's a producer on "The Territory", so yeah, I like this category overall. A lot of the complications with this category would probably be alleviated if the Television and Motion Picture Academies would ever just come together and be one singular group like BAFTA is for instance, but that's a problem to solve for another day.

OUTSTANDING NARRATOR

Mahershala Ali-"Chimp Empire"-"Reckoning"-Netflix

Angela Bassett-"Good Night Oppy"-Prime Video

Morgan Freeman-"Our Universe"-"Chasing Starlight"-Netflix

Barack Obama-"Working: What We Do All Day"-"The Middle"-Netflix

Pedro Pascal-"Patagonia: Life On The Edge of The World"-"Mountains"-CNN

For the first time ever in the category, there's not a single Caucasian or white person in the category. And it's a tough category. Barack Obama actually won this category last year for "Our Great National Parks". Angela Bassett is the only female nominee and she happens to be from probably the biggest film of the group, "Good Night Oppy". The only female to win this category was Meryl Streep a few years ago. Morgan Freeman shockingly hadn't been nominated 'til now also. Tough category.

OUTSTANDING DIRECTING FOR A DOCUMENTARY/NONFICTION PROGRAM

Judy Blume Forever-Davina Pardo & Leah Wolchok-Prime Video

Moonage Daydream-Brett Morgen-HBO Max

Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields-Lana Wilson-Hulu

Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie-Davis Guggenheim-Apple TV+

The Territory-Alex Pritz-National Geographic

The U.S. And The Holocaust-"Episode 3: The Homeless, Tempest-tossed (1942-)"-Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein-PBS

Some pretty big films, and pretty big names in front of and behind the camera. Brett Morgen and Davis Guggenheim are past Oscar winners for Best Documentary and Ken Burns and Lynn Novick are pretty big names in the documentary field as well. Judy Blume and Michael J. Fox are joined by Brooke Shields, David Bowie and The Holocaust as subject matter, so this is a loaded field; you rarely find that many big celebrities in the same category. Also, that National Geographic thing about the rainforest. Interesting how every channel gets something here.

OUTSTANDING WRITING FOR A NONFICTION PROGRAM

100 Foot Wave-"Chapter V - Lost at Sea"-Zach Rothfeld-HBO Max

Dear Mama-"Panther Power"-Allen Hughes and Lasse Jarvi-FX

Moonage Daydream-Brett Morgen-HBO Max

Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me-Alek Keshishian and Paul Marchand-Apple TV+

The U.S. And The Holocaust-"Episode 2: Yearning to Breathe Free (1938-1942)-Geoffrey C. Ward-PBS

I get how this sounds counter-intuitive but a lot of nonfiction is written. This category used to be perennially won by Anthony Bourdain for awhile there for instance; there's skill in taking several various elements and constructing them into a coherent written idea. Not everything nonfiction is written so, which is why, while we get a few repeats, we also get, Selena Gomez sneaking in here somehow for her profile documentary. Not complaining or anything, just explaining how it works. Also, is that Allen Hughes, of The Hughes Brothers? (IMDB search) Yeah, it is, huh. I was wondering what he's been up. Not Sure what Albert's been up to. Man, they haven't made a feature film together in almost a decade and a half!? Man, that feels like a lot of lost opportunities there.

GAME SHOWS

OUTSTANDING GAME SHOW

Family Feud-ABC

Jeopardy!-ABC

The Price is Right-CBS

That's My Jam-NBC

Wheel of Fortune-ABC

Ummm- what,- I'm sorry, I think accidentally, copied from the Daytime Emmys nomination sheet, let me- correct that...- Wait, no, this is the Primetime Emmys? What the hell?! I know there's been more game shows on Primetime in recent years, but...- hold on, time for research.... Okay, here's the Emmy announcement....

Wait, decision is the result of an Agreement....! What the- Holy Crap, why was this not a bigger story!?

Okay, backstory...! Um, for those who don't quite know this, if you've ever wondered why there were two different Emmy broadcasts, one for Primetime and one for Daytime shows over the years, it's not simply that they wanted to separate the time and periods, there's actually history here. And there's actually two separate Television Academies! They both award the Emmy, but the Television Academy of Arts and Science gives out the Primetime Emmys, as well as the local L.A. Emmys, but NATAS, they give out all the other Emmy awards. The Daytime, the Local Emmys, the Sports Emmys, the news Emmys, which are separated nowadays into their own broadcasts. And the reason this happened, is partially because of game shows by the way. Before these groups split into two separate groups, the Emmys would only have one award to honor the best in Daytime programming, and the award was juried and one year they just didn't give it out. They did nominate both Peter Marshall and Paul Lynde for "Hollywood Squares" that year, but at that point, the Daytime brethren had had enough, so the more East Coast branch of the Emmys, which did mostly focus on daytime shows at that time, formed NATAS and led by Agnes Nixon, the legendary soap opera creator behind "One Life to Live" and "All My Children" among others, formed the daytime Emmys, and up until now, there's been very few intersections between these properties.

However, streaming has changed a lot of things, as had, the availability and prominence of certain shows, and eh, I kinda get what's happened here. Last year, the 1st annual Family and Children's Programming Emmys happened, which separated family and children's shows, which their are a lot more of than you realize, into their own Emmys show, and that seems to be the direction of the majority of future Emmys, the NATAS Emmys are going to be more separated into genres in the future, with the major exception being daytime dramas, for tradition, mostly, and so they came together to figure out how to separate some of this, and this lead to the Game Show category, at the Primetime Emmys, for the first time, since well, they separated. (And Primetime game shows also had this issue, before reality programming categories, they famously had to enter in the daytime categories previously; the big example is when "Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?" won in it's first season, along with Regis Philbin winning for Game Show Host that year.) That doesn't mean that game shows haven't been more of a primetime staple lately though, "That's My Jam" showing up here is a good clue, and the fact that all the shows are listed with broadcast networks and not under the Syndicated banner, means that they've all had Primetime specials in recent years, and that is true as well. Still, except for "That's My Jam", this is a fairly innocuous list of game shows. I'd give the slight edge to "Jeopardy!" who by the way, holds the record for the most Daytime Emmys in this category with, 19 wins over it's run, and that's more than double the second place winner, which, believe-it-or-not is "Pyramid". I like most versions of "Pyramid" but I wouldn't have guessed that one.

OUTSTANDING HOST FOR A GAME SHOW

Mayim Bialik-"Jeopardy!"-ABC

Steve Harvey-"Family Feud"-ABC

Ken Jennings-"Jeopardy!"-ABC

Keke Palmer-"Password"-NBC

Pat Sajak-"Wheel of Fortune"-ABC

Well, I guess I better look up the history of this category at the Daytime as well. Most recently, Steve Harvey won last year, his third win for "Family Feud". It's also, technically the first time there's been two separate nominees for hosting the same program, although last year Pat Sajak was actually nominated twice in the category for both "Wheel of Fortune" and "Celebrity Wheel of Fortune". I'm actually surprised that historically, that hasn't happened more often; it didn't used to be that uncommon for some hosts to have two or even more shows at once. (Previously, only the late great Alex Trebek was ever nominated against himself, a couple years when he hosted both "Jeopardy!" and "Classic Concentration".) Speaking of "Jeopardy!", Mayim Bialik and Ken Jennings have split time hosting for the last couple years and I'm not gonna go over that whole ; could be interesting if one of them wins and the other doesn't. Bialik and Keke Palmer could become only the third women to ever win the award as well, only after Betty White won in '82 for "Just Men" and Meredith Viera who won twice for history the syndicated "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?", last time in 2009. I watched little of the NBC "Password" that Keke Palmer's hosted, and-eh, eh, I think she's a good host, but maybe not for "Password", she can be a bit boisterous and I think that show is best when it's muted down. Maybe I'm just a traditionalist though. I mean, she's still better than when Bert Convy hosted it, but I get why it didn't sneak into Series. (HOT TAKE: I never thought Bert Convy was a good host of anything.) I would've put Elizabeth Banks in here for "Press Your Luck" or Wayne Brady for "Let's Make a Deal" but what do I know. Also, this is officially Pat Sajak's final season, Ryan Seacrest will be taking over, and you know what, that weirdly feels like a very appropriate final stop for both of their careers. I hope they both remain happy and that neither one of them tries to host a talk show again. Anyway, Sajak's won, I think three times, and has a lifetime achievement Emmy already, but those are daytime and if people care about sentimental stuff like that.... I suspect Steve Harvey is the slight favorite, wouldn't be surprised Pat Sajak won though.

SHORT FORM

OUTSTANDING SHORT FORM COMEDY, DRAMA OR VARIETY SERIES

Awkwafina is Hangin' With Grandma-Comedy Central

Better Call Saul Filmmaker Training-AMC

Carpool Karaoke: The Series-Apple TV+

I Think You Should Leave With Tim Robinson-Netflix

Only Murders in the Building: One Killer Question-Hulu

Is "Carpool Kareoke" really still a thing? Nice to finally see Awkwafina show up somewhere. "Better Call Saul" gets in for their annual short. The only series that's it own thing and not a spinoff of a major show is "I Think You Should Leave With Tim Robinson"; I wouldn't be surprise if that wins, but I'm not as big on that show as others are but I suspect it could win.

OUTSTANDING SHORT FORM NONFICTION OR REALITY SERIES

House of the dragon: Inside the Episode-HBO Max

The Last of Us: Inside the Episode-HBO Max

Saturday Night Live Presents: Behind the Sketch-NBC

Succession: Controlling the Narrative-HBO Max

The White Lotus: Unpacking the Episode-HBO Max

Okay, this category is officially ridiculous now. We literally have five behind-the-scenes of other shows categories, and four of them are those post-episode little blips they show after shows on HBO. Just for that reason I'm cheering for "Behind the Sketch", which is basically just NBC's version of that, but man, this short form genre is slowly being whittled away. Remember, they didn't have enough entries in animation to deem the category qualifiable this year, and it looks like the live-action series are falling to the side as well.

OUTSTANDING ACTOR IN A SHORT FORM COMEDY OR DRAMA SERIES

Kevin Hart-"Die Hart 2: Die Harter"-The Roku Channel

Tim Robinson-"I Think You Should Leave With Tim Robinson"-Netflix

Ben Schwartz-"Die Hart 2: Die Harter"-The Roku Channel

Only three nominees are two of them are from "Die Hart 2". Same as the Actress category I might add, despite the show not getting into series. I guess congrats on The Roku Channel for continuing to hold the banner for Quibi. Not much else to add, I think Tim Robinson has this.

OUTSTANDING ACTRESS IN A SHORT FORM COMEDY OR DRAMA SERIES

Nathalie Emmanuel-"Die Hart 2: Die Harter"-The Roku Channel

Jasmine Guy-"Chronicles of Jessica Wu"-Prime Video

Paula Pell-"Die Hart 2: Die Harter"-The Roku Channel

Hold on, is this the first time Jasmine Guy has ever been nominated for an Emmy?! Holy God, it is!? How is that possible? (Sigh) Oh, Emmys. Alright, well, it might be in a backdoor Amazon short, but at least you finally corrected that egregious error. Hope she wins this.

MUSIC

OUTSTANDING MUSIC COMPOSITION FOR A SERIES (ORIGINAL DRAMATIC SCORE)

Andor-"Rix Road"-Nicholas Britell-Disney+

The Last of Us-"Long, Long Time"-Gustavo Santaolalla-HBO Max

Succession-"Connor's Wedding"-Nicholas Britell-HBO Max

Wednesday-"Woe Is The Loneliest Number"-Danny Elfman, Chris Bacon-Netflix

The White Lotus-"In the Sandbox"-Cristobal Tapia de Veer-HBO Max

This is actually a fascinating category this year with several Oscar winners against each other, Nicholas Britell against himself as well. Mostly I include the music categories for those keeping track of EGOT Awards, but you never know. There's several other categories that might fascinate others; I know some people care about some of the crafts, makeup, editing, casting, costumes, etc. I'll invite you guys to look those up for those who are interested. In this category, I think "Wednesday"'s got the edge though.

OUTSTANDING MUSIC COMPOSITION FOR A LIMITED OR ANTHOLOGY SERIES, MOVIE OR SPECIAL (ORIGINAL DRAMATIC SCORE)

Hocus Pocus 2-John Debney-Disney+

Ms. Marvel-"Time And Again"-Laura Karpman-Disney+

Prey-Sarah Schachner-Hulu

A Small Light-"What Can Be Saved"-Ariel Marx-National Geographic

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story-Leo Birenberg, Zach Robinson-The Roku Channel

Nothing to add on this one. Couldn't come up with a shorter category name though? Jesus!

OUTSTANDING MUSIC COMPOSITION FOR A DOCUMENTARY SERIES OR SPECIAL (ORIGINAL DRAMATIC SCORE)

Eva Longoria: Searching for Mexico-"Veracruz"-Tony Morales-CNN

Light & Magic-"Gang of Outsiders"-James Newton Howard-Disney+

Pamela, A Love Story-Blake Neely-Netflix

Prehistoric Planet-"Badlands"-Hans Zimmer, Anze Rozman, Kara Talve-Apple TV+

Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie-John Powell-Apple TV+

Huh, I guess CNN couldn't afford to keep having Stanley Tucci go searching for Italy, but they could afford for Eva Longoria to go and find Mexico. I actually like a lot of those docuseries, but they really do feel off with everything else...- Just in general, CNN really has to get their shit together, make it less Jeff Zucker-fied. I would've thought Hans Zimmer was a lot closer to an EGOT than he is, but apparently he's got a lot farther to go.

OUTSTANDING MUSIC DIRECTION

2022 Rock And Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony-Adam Blackstone-HBO Max

The Apple Music Super Bowl LVII Halftime Show Starring Rihanna-Adam Blackstone, Omar Edwards-FOX

Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song: Joni Mitchell-Greg Phillinganes-PBS

The Oscars-Rickey Minor-ABC

Saturday Night Live-"Host: Austin Butler"-Lenny Pickett, Leon Pendarvis and Eli Brueggemann

I'm glad to know that they're still giving out that Gershwin Prize and Joni Mitchell of course, an absolute great recipient. Music Directing is kind of a fun category, it's for Music directing for live music on programs. Adam Blackstone's competing against himself, although this category was basically invented for Rickey Minor. Personally, I like to think of this category as the Doc Severinson or Paul Schaffer category.

OUTSTANDING ORIGINAL MUSIC AND LYRICS

"Marriage is A Dungeon"-Ginny & Georgia-Music & Lyrics: Lili Haydn and Ben Bromfield-Netflix

"All About Me"-The L Word: Generation Q-Music & Lyrics: Heather McIntosh, Taura Stinson and Allyson Newman-Showtime

"Your Personal Trash Man Can"-The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel-Music & Lyrics: Curtis Moore and Thomas Mizer-Prime Video

"Fought & Lost"-Ted Lasso-Music & Lyrics: Tom Howe, Jamie Hartman and Sam Ryder-Apple TV+

"A Beautiful Game"-Ted Lasso-Music & Lyrics: Ed Sheeran, Foy Vance and Max Martin-Apple TV+

"Now You Know"-Weird; The Al Yankovic Story-Music & Lyrics: Al Yankovic-The Roku Channel

Another category I love because I can just look up all the songs. For instance, what the hell is "Ginny & Georgia"? Never heard of that one, but looks fun based off this one song. Also, what the hell is going on on that new "The L Word" reboot, it's- looking odd. Nice song. Would've thought if anybody got a songwriting nomination for that show it would've been Leisha Hailey, but I guess no one else is a big Uh Huh Her fan. (To be fair, the original show, got really out there and weird late, so I imagine this newer version is just an even bigger mess.) Anyway, the big names here are Ed Sheeran who wrote one of the "Ted Lasso" nominees, although I think the other one is better, and Weird Al who wrote the ending credits song for his biopic movie. I like it, even though it is a little long. Personally I like "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" song the best though.

OUTSTANDING ORIGINAL MAIN TITLE THEME MUSIC

Andor-Nicholas Britell-Disney+

Guillermo Del Toro's Cabinet of Curiousities-Holly Amber Church-Netflix

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power-Howard Shore-Prime Video

Ms. Marvel-Laura Karpman-Disney+

Wednesday-Danny Elfman-Netflix

Is this the first that "Lord of the Rings" show has been mentioned? Wow, that did not catch on; I'm a little surprised on that one. Anyway, I listened to all of these as well, and the only ones I could pick out of a lineup are "Ms. Marvel" and "Wednesday", and I think they're both pretty good. I'm a little more partial to "Wednesday" since that's a show I actually watch and like, but I wouldn't mind "Ms. Marvel" winning here.

OUTSTANDING MUSIC SUPERVISION

Daisy Jones & The Six-"Track 8: Looks Like We Made It"-Frankie Pine-Prime Video

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel-"Four Minutes"-Robin Urdang-Prime Video

Stranger Things-"Chapter Nine: The Piggyback"-Nora Felder-Netflix

Ted Lasso-"So Long, Farewell"-Tony Von Pervieux, Christa Miller-Apple TV+

The White Lotus-"Bull Elephants"-Gabe Hilfer-HBO Max

Eh, Music Supervisor, is basically Music Director, but overseeing a soundtrack. It's not as important EGOT-wise, but since I'm doing the music...- wait... CHRISTA MILLER? Why do I know that...- oh, wait a minute, that's Jordan from "Scrubs", right? Yeah, she was on "The Drew Carey Show" and "Cougar Town" too! She's a music supervisor? I mean, I know she's married to Bill Lawrence who created "Scrubs", "Cougar Town" and "Ted Lasso", but I-eh-, okay. Little annoyed this is the first time she's been nominated, but-eh, okay. I mean, they have a daughter who's a singer, so yeah, she's probably a little knowledgeable when it comes to music. (Shrugs) About time she got nominated for something....? I guess

MISCELLANEOUS

OUTSTANDING EMERGING MEDIA PROGRAM

For All Mankind: Season 3 Experience-Apple TV+

Gorillaz Presents-Google

MLK: Now It The Time-Oculus

The Notorious B.I.G. Sky's The Limit: A VR Concert Experience-Facebook & Meta Horizon Worlds

You Destroy, We Create: The War on Ukraine's Culture-Meta Quest TV

Facebook & Meta Horizon Worlds?! Can somebody please beat Mark Zuckerberg upside the head with a 7-iron. It's not as bad as trying to turn Twitter into X, but (Sigh). (NOTE: Remind me to join Threads later). Anyway, what the hell is this category? I think this is another rebranding of the Interactive Media awards. I'm not sure of the difference. Basically, it's any television or stream media that isn't a video game, that has an interactive element to it. It could also be like media that's made with a 360* camera approach. Eh, it's always been an odd category, but there's stuff here worth noting.

OUTSTANDING COMMERCIAL

AirPods-"Quiet the Noise"

Apple-"The Greatest-Accessibility"

Apple-"R.I.P. Leon"

Apple TV+-"Call Me With Timothee Chalamet"

Dove-"Cost of Beauty"

The Farmer's Dog-"Forever"

Squarespace-"The Singularity"

Since these are commercials, I decided to just watch all these. Eh, the only one I really didn't care for was "The Farmer's Dog" which I think is a dogfood company, and their commercial which was okay.... I don't know, commercials about how great and long a life you can have with a dog just seem unnecessarily sad to me. The Dove commercial is also a bit heavy-handed to me, too. It's good, but.... Eh.... Also, doesn't Dove sell like, soap or something, why is this a commercial about social media causing eating disorders? I would think "The Greatest-Accessibility" is the favorite and my favorite.

OUTSTANDING MAIN TITLE DESIGN

Guillermo Del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities-Netflix

Hello Tomorrow!-Apple TV+

The Last of Us-HBO Max

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power-Prime Video

Wednesday-Netflix

The White Lotus-HBO Max

Anyway, always a fun category, my favorite of the bunch is "Wednesday", the only one whose inclusion I kinda question is "The White Lotus"; that one didn't seem particularly creative to me, but the rest of the category looks fun.

Alright, I think that's enough for this year. I don't think I'll do a predictions blog again this year, I'm sure I'll fill out my Gold Derby ballot at some point, but yeah, despite everything it's good to go over with a fine tooth comb the full nominees if you want. You never know, you might find that your favorite show did get something, or find something new you've never heard of that you see gets something and find out you want to watch. Anyway, I got a couple months to forget to catch up on all these, maybe more after. Who knows. I'm hoping for a quiet ceremony this year, with all the awards getting tossed from the balcony and caught by the winners on the picket lines.

Actually, in case you were wondering, there was an Emmy awards during a strike once before. in 1980, when SAG was on strike. Of the 52 acting nominees for the show, all but one, actually boycotted the event. Powers Boothe, who was nominated and subsequently won for Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie for "Guyana Tragedy: The Jim Jones Story". He said that it was either the most courageous thing he's ever done, or the stupidest. He later regretted that decision. Let's hope nobody crosses that picket line again. Don't be like Powers Boothe. Let's make this Diamond edition of the Emmys, as lousy and uninspiring as the current Emmys voting process. (Assuming of course, the Actors and Writers are still on strike. Actually, let's make it boring and uninspiring even if they end the strike.)

MOVIE REVIEWS #202: "WOMEN TALKING", "RRR", "THE FABELMANS", "LIVING", "GLASS ONION: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY", "MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON", "FIRE OF LOVE" and "THE FIRE WITHIN: A REQUIEM FOR KATIA AND MAURICE KRAFFT"!

2023-05-29T12:16:00.005-07:00

I'm debating how much I should or shouldn't say about some of the recent changes many of out favorite entertainment distributors have made in recent months. Part of me wants to bitch and complain about Netflix getting rid of DVDs, right as every other streaming service is starting to get rid of half their streaming content every so often whenever they seem to feel like it, and whatever show we lost in the last ten minutes from some streaming site that just changed it's name to something far stupider than it was before, but honestly, I've lost a lot of the will to fight this fight anymore. I'm warned and complained about stuff like this happening literally since the beginning of this blog well over a decade ago and people thought I was overreacting and nuts then. Well, I could say I told you all so, but I don't even want to give that out. This fight was lost long ago and I've long since adapted to accept changes and stuff like this. I mean, I'll still make fun of HBO or Max, as they've rebranded their streaming service again, mainly because of how stupid their whole thing has been for like the last year, but in terms of this trend towards streaming the monopolization of the material, eh, I'm not surprise and I don't know what you all expect me to add.

Other than to say that, not much is actually getting added that's new onto streaming at the moment anyway. The Writer's Strike is in full effect, and honestly I don't think this one's gonna end any time soon. I'm starting to get a little worried. A lot of the details of streaming especially, are what the writers are fighting for, and let's hope they get it all, 'cause if not, they're not gonna be the only ones fighting in the near future, and don't think that a lot of these recent moves by streaming services to gut a lot of their programming is unrelated. This is a tactic they surely will plan to use in the future and I don't think the Writers can control that ultimately, but while they are streaming the stuff they create, we do have to make sure that while those favorite movies and shows and content are streaming, that the writers of them eventually get paid.

Anyway, let's jus get to the reviews this time; we got a lot to get through.

WOMEN TALKING (2022) Director: Sarah Polley

⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2

Before I started writing movie reviews, I used to read movie reviews, a lot of movie reviews. By my estimate I don't think I ever watched a movie without reading, at least, three, minimum reviews of that movie, and usually it was closer to about eight or nine, especially for the bigger features. I know there's a sense nowadays among critics and fans that critical opinions and analyses is a secondary opinion to the film, by that I mean, first you see the movie and then you go and check the reviews of the film to see what the critical consensus is. I tend to disagree with that, entirely, I think the point of film criticism is that the critics job is to inform and possibly protect the public from wasting their valuable time and perhaps more importantly their money on sub-par entertainment. Also, I think good criticism is informative, not just on the quality of the film but whether or not it's a film that you might enjoy even if se critic doesn't and, it gives an idea on what the film is ultimately about so that the subject matter itself doesn't upend you entirely. I bring this up because in recent years, basically since I started this blog, I haven't done this; I felt for some reason that I should not look into a film before writing a review, and you know what, lately, especially with better movies, I feel like that might've been the incorrect approach to writing reviews. I don't think I necessarily should read as much critical reviews per movie I watch as I once did, but lately, I've been lazier than I should and haven't even particularly bothered looking at trailers, or even reading up on movies before I watch them, and-eh, yeah, uh, this is the movie that is going to be the tipping point of changing that strategy for me.

I clearly knew about "Women Talking", it was widely acclaimed, won Sarah Polley a writing Oscar, and got nominated for Best Picture, and I heard it was based on a novel, and it looked kinda like it took place in the same universe as M. Night Shaymalan's "The Village", which, for the record, is definitely where he started to go downhill. And the title, indicated to me that their would be, well, "Women Talking". But yeah, a few minutes into the film, I decided to check out the film's wikipedia page to get of what exactly this film is about that I'm watching, and-eh,

"Women Talking" is a 2022 drama film written and directed by Sarah Polley. Based on the 2018 Canadian novel of the same name by Miriam Toews, itself inspired by the-..." THE WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!?

...Based on the Canadian 2018 novel of the same name by Miriam Toews, itself inspired by the gas-facilitated rapes that occurred at the Manitoba Colony, a remote and isolated Mennonite community in Bolivia,^[4] the film follows a group of American Mennonite women who discuss their future, following their....

(Eyes widened)

GAS-FACILITATED RAPES!!!!!!

Yeah, this is a fact I wish I had known before starting this film, a review might have been a good informative tool for that! Yeah, I gotta get back to reading reviews, at least before I watch a movie.

So, I know about some Mennonite Communities in America and Canada, but I didn't realize that they were way more common throughout and that their were some that went all the way south to places like Bolivia. That colony also originated in Canada and Mexico and only recently moved down to Bolivia, which seems very sketchy to me to begin with, but apparently in this community, some men in the colony began a practice of constantly sedating and raping the females, for years, by sedating their entire household using a veterinarian anesthetic. Looking into it further...- actually you don't want to look into it further; it just gets more disturbing than you can imagine. Much more disturbing....

The movie, "Women Talking", thankfully, evades outright depicting these incidents explicitly, although they show enough of the effects. It instead, takes place, after the reveal of such events, after two young men were caught in the act and eventually several of the men have been arrested and sent away, however, a bail hearing is about to happen and the men of the community have left for a couple days in order to oversee it, and perhaps return the men to the community. With the women split on what to do now, "Women Talking" is about the more outspoken women in the community discussing what exactly they should do now. Some want to forgive the attackers, as their teachings have generally taught, others want to fight the leaders, some even insisting on fighting them and possibly somehow evoking an entirely new power structure to the community, full revolution in fact. Others are simply believing that they must leave the community and try their luck on the outside world. That idea might seem the most logical on the surface, but this is a Menonite community and the women aren't taught to read or write, only the men have that privilege, and one of the few men in the community that's remained, a schoolteacher named August (Ben Whishaw) is kept around to record the minutes for prosperity, is from an excommunicated family and is often noted as being a failed farmer before being noted as a teacher. Being the only person who can read or write, he also has a college degree and is therefore the only person with some knowledge of the outside world.

There are some really strong performances here. Ironically, most of the awards for the acting, outside of Ensemble awards went to the one prominent male actor in the film, Ben Whishaw and he is good here, but I'd single out Jessie Buckley in particular. Rooney Mara and Claire Foy, the second and third best actors to portray Lisbeth Salander, are also really strong here. August Winter as the trans Melvin, who helps with the children, but because of his trans status is still ostracized from the meeting is also a pretty interesting performance here in a limited role, but honestly, I don't want to go too much into the details of the discussions and revelations that are revealed through the meetings. For one thing, the revelations are the movie essentially, this is a story that gets told through the discussions and those are best left secret, but also, The more interesting aspects of the meeting and discussion, isn't as much the literal as it is the metaphorical.

That's fairly obvious as well, but you could also look as the film not so much as a women deciding to leave a literal repressive community as it is a commentary on women's role in society at large and how honestly difficult and indecisive the struggles and choices made to progress actually are. History's often written with the broad strokes, but it's also reductive and a lot of times those broad strokes get written or told as though the events were inevitable, when in reality, not only were they usually not, but they were also heavily debated and argued about, even within the groups that are doing the progressive act. The obvious example that most Americans learn about is the American Revolution, even with as much as we have probably incorrectly idolized and deified our founding fathers, we still discuss and analyze just how much they disagreed and argued on almost every detail about the founding of our country, but similar frustrating arguments and disagreements happened throughout the advancements of all the major women's rights and feminism movements. And modern society, for all-intensive purposes is male-centric and male-dominant and there are people who do not like or accept the notion that it's a problem that should be alleviated.

I'll be blunt, if you look more into these Menonite societies, and some of the very disturbing events like the ones that happen in "Women Talking", especially the ones that have migrated over-the-years down to places like South America, it becomes more and more clear that these communities exist almost for the sole reason for the men to exert dominance and control over women, for whatever gains that involves. Keep them uneducated, keep them subservient, make them believe that men, males are the leaders and the holy ones who speak for God,... like, it's a practice that in the old days, it might've been actually beneficial but to then reject progressive technology, even modern languages, in order to keep that order, that's just exercising and keeping dominance and control. Frankly, I'm now skeptical of all of them after watching this movie and looking more into them with what little I can find; peoples who insist on hiding their lives from the rest of the world in such a way, definitely makes you wonder what ills they're actually hiding.

Perhaps that's why I'd prefer to read the film metaphorically; the movie is more interesting and inspirational when you take the synecdoche of the situation and look at it as, the struggle and ultimate victory of females breaking the walls of a society that has essentially just ostracized them. The movie is based on a novel from Canadian author Miriam Toews and she's written about her Menonite upbringing and past before, and some of her work's been adapted into features before. Sarah Polley started as an actress before switching over to directing but hasn't made a feature since her autobiographical documentary "Stories We Tell". I've liked all her features and while she's been politically active for years this is definitely her most political and darkest film by a mile. "Women Talking" is a movie that shows how and why sticking to the old constructs of society at a modern age is both foolhardy, horrifying and can become a breeding ground for all the worst of male actors to use their supposedly god-given preference over females. Breaking through the patriarchal pasts and traditions can be difficult and shouldn't be forgotten, and the struggles of coming to that realization are difficult no matter the circumstance and "Women Talking" shows that better than most. It shows both it's difficulties, but also how, it can indeed become a birth of a better future.

RRR (2022) Director: S.S. Rajamouli

⭐⭐⭐

I don't think I get "RRR". That's okay, and I wasn't expecting to fully get it. Indian cinema and history, is definitely my absolute biggest blind spot. Every time I watch an Indian film, I feel like I need like, half a degree in Indian History and Culture just to fully get it. In this case, I actually do need a partial history lesson, but then again maybe that's 'cause this film is actually one of the trickier literary genres to turn into a film, historical-fiction.

Historical-fiction is a strange genre. In my mind, I think of the genre as more of a narrative that takes place during and is about some famous historical events but it's usually from the perspective of fictional characters who are more often than not portrayed as minor players or even sidelines players to the more larger historical conflict. Which makes sense, if you're going for historical accuracy, we know certain things that did indeed happen and trying to stray too much from that can be daunting if not counterproductive. In my mind, at least with American literature, and relating to American history, the big examples I think of are "Johnny Tremain" about a teenager in the colonies during the early years of the Revolutionary War, and the novels of John Jakes, particularly his "North and South" series, which spreads over three books dealing with events before, during and after the Civil War. They're more straight-forward historical-fiction, and like most historical fiction, they work better in books than in movies.

There's exceptions though. Although, they're usually more cerebral. I had a professor who once made a short film that was just Charles Darwin having a conversation with Sigmund Freud. That's historical-fiction as well technically, and that's the kind of historical fiction I like to think of, but there has a been trend of taking that simple idea, and expanding it to, well, not essentially reinvent or reinterpret history, although, yeah, sometimes they do that, Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds" and "Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood" are probably the most noteworthy examples, especially in film, but from what I understand "RRR" also fits in this mold.

Essentially "RRR" which stands for "Rise Roar Revolt", takes two important figures from India's revolutionary past, and imagines a scenario where they meet and eventually combine their skills and talents to fight off the British Raj and sustain India's Independence. I think. Okay, maybe not win all of independence, but they definitely won this battle. The first figure is, Komaram Bheem (NTR) lionized symbol of the Gond Rebellion, and revolutionary leader of the Hyderabad State of British India, and his actions and leadership eventually lead to Indian independence. He also coined the phrase, "Jal, Jangal, Zameen" which, translated from Telugu means, "Water, Forest, Land", which explains why parts of "RRR" are separated into similarly named sections. The second figure is Alluri Sitarama Raju (Ram Charan Teja), sannyasin to the Tribal Peoples of Madras, and leader of the Rampa Rebellion of 1922, where he raided several police stations to acquire firearms for the Rebellion, which lasted three years until he was killed during the battle.

Now, these two revolutionaries never met in real life, but "RRR" imagines a scenario where they do. So, I guess, this is kinda like...- honestly, I don't know what to compare this too in America; the nearest I can imagine is if they made a movie where Martin Luther King and Malcolm X came together to eliminate J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, but I doubt that's truly an apt comparison, but it's the closest I can think of. Not that it matters, 'cause while this movie also starts in historical-fantasy, it also doesn't pretend to exist in the real world.

The actions sequences in this movie,- well, the only way I can describe them is that they seem like they're from a video game. The opening scene show Raju, working as a pseudo-sorta double-agent for the Crown, is able to single-handedly able to hold off an entire rebellion on the Crown, which in this film is most represented by Governor Scott Buxton (Ray Stevenson) and his wife Catherine (Alison Doody). Catherine, while travelling through the forest, kidnaps/buys a child from a local tribe, and has her mother killed. Bheem, acting as the Tribe's guardian, is the one lead to the search and army to retrieve the girl and bring her back to their Tribe. He also, has video game like action powers, although he also is slightly more romantic as he's able to get into the Crown through wooing Scott's niece, Jenny (Olivia Morris).

Raju and Bheem meet during a revolutionary meeting, Raja is undercover, but they come together to save a child from a train, disaster I think...- Honestly, most of the action sequence I really kinda just tuned out on. I know this style is popular in Indian cinema, and particularly with this director, S.S. Rajamouli. I have heard of him, his "Baahubali" films have been stuck on my Netflix DVD queue, which is probably gonna turn into my GameFly DVD queue in a few months.... (Ahem, NETFLIX! [Double middle finger] You better at least start doubling and tripling your streaming options, and soon!) and, yeah, he seems to love these large, massive, action period epics. He reminds me of Cecil B. DeMille in his exuberance and bombast, but his action style is, just a little over-the-top too often for me. I enjoy it enough though. I liked how during the climatic battle sequence at the end, one of their tactics was to shoot bow-and-arrows with triggered hand grenades on them; I have no idea whether that's an accurate tactic or not, but I thought that was cool and clever.

I still feel like I'm missing a lot of the context though. You see, the point of historical-fiction like this, is to take a piece of history and recontextualize it. That's why "Inglorious Basterds" works so well, it's playing against dozens of other similar true stories and fictional tales about World War II and the history of what happens to the Nazi leaders and regime; Tarantino's breaking of that history is a personalization of the narrative as much as a recapturing of it. I don't know if this film is recapturing a narrative or breaking with a history though. From what I can tell and read, I feel like, this movie is like a fun adventure video game where two of the main characters happen to be these important figures in the Indian Revolution. It's almost like that example of MLK and Malcolm X I gave earlier, but they're also both superheroes, and you probably know already on how much I'm not big on superheroes coming together.... That said, this isn't that atrocious. This isn't a terrible movie; it's a long and inconsistent epic, but honestly that's most of the most popular Indian films from what I can tell. This isn't a Bollywood movie, since it's based in the Tulugu Province, it's actually a Tollywood film, but you can definitely see the inspiration of the traditional Bollywood narratives all over it. I did like the musical numbers, especially that Oscar-winning "Naatu Naatu"; that damn song is catchy. And, I don't think the songs stopped that action like other Bollywood songs can do, but I do think the action sequences were the least interesting part and did stop a lot of the forward momentum.

I also just, don't know what exactly I'm supposed to take out of it. It's clearly not for me, and not just because the British villain characters are stunningly one-note and mind-numbingly vicious to the point of exaggeration, although I do appreciate how the bullet motif eventually comes around. I don't think that portrayal is entirely inaccurate, but it does make this film just seem simple. Everything about this seems simple in fact. Children are the MaGuffin and what brings these characters together, The Crown are just violent, pompous colonialist overthrowers, and the Indian character heroes are just better at kicking ass than everyone else, so they win. After looking up a few interviews with Rajamouli, I'm wondering if I want to fully understand the meanings and purposes of this film, I suspect that not all the symbolism is as well-meaning and intended as it may seem on the surface. Wouldn't you think though that, bringing together two important figures in the Indian Revolution like this, from different areas and regions and whatnot, would lead to, some-, maybe not as deep as say, what we get in a movie like Regina King's "One Night in Miami...", but something a little more nuanced, philosophical, depthful....? I feel like bringing characters like these figures together, would make the conversations between them the most interesting parts of the movie, not the parts that are the most glossed over and simplified.

Still though, as entertainment it's harmless enough. I enjoyed it for what I got out of it, and I suspect that's what most people are getting out of it. I can appreciate the craft and skill it clearly took to make this film. I doubt it's power, but it's fine.

THE FABELMANS (2022) Director: Steven Spielberg

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

(Imitating the late, great James Lipton)

And once again, we have come to the predominant theme of our series, family dysfunction, and parental separation.

Actually that's something that we probably don't give Steven Spielberg nearly enough credit for. It's a bit of a running gag now through his films, but how often did we actually have stories, in any media really, and especially film, where parental separation was a major theme, prior to him? I'm sure it'd come up occasionally for a film here-or-there, but in terms of it being something of a common theme of the filmmaker, the only filmmaker before him that comes to my mind that's somewhat regularly analyzed through the lens of parental separation is Walt Disney, and even then I'd be stretching it; Disney talked about parental separation, mostly through death, and even then, it was stories painted in the lights and colors of a fairy tale the majority of the time. Of course, divorce wasn't nearly as common as it is now, or even frankly back in Spielberg's youth, and the fact that he became such an established filmmaker at such a young age, meant that not only was it fresh on his mind, but he was unusually talented technically and acute enough mentally to actually dive into it, accurately. He really was the filmmaker who brought out these ideas of having to be an emotional and literal witness to seeing your family falling apart, and still having to go out and struggle to live your own life, and he did a lot of this, right at the time when many kids and families were themselves starting to go through divorces. Perhaps it's less of a coincidence that Spielberg's peaks of stories like "The Sugarland Express", "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", "E.T....", and others, was also the peak of all those damn after-school special programs that almost all seemed to be about the struggle of kids going through a divorce.

BTW, out of curiosity, after watching "The Fabelmans", Spielberg's most personal and autobiographical, apparently, story to date, I actually did go back and watch his episode of "Inside the Actors' Studio"; it was difficult to find, so I won't say how I found a copy, (And somebody ought to find a way to make more episodes of that series available everywhere, btw, we're really missing a huge treasure trove of material, and even then, I could only find half the episode) but I actually didn't realize until now, just how coy he was on the exact details of his parents' divorce. I guess most people aren't specific-specific in interview situations like those, especially ones taped for two-hour TV broadcasts and all, but I guess since it has become such a huge part of Spielberg's mythos over the decade, it's actually kinda surprising how little he's actually gone into exact details about it, at least until now. So, in that sense, this movie was inevitable.

It's so inevitable and the Spielberg narrative and mythos is so infamous, that part of me is trying desperately to not point out all the obvious details that I've known for years and/or to discuss or debunk some of the stories and their accuracies. Interestingly, probably the most infamous origin story of Spielberg that's still constantly debated is whether or not young 19-year-old Spielberg actually did jump off a Universal tour bus, talked his way into getting a 3-day pass, and then kept showing up on Day 4 onward without the pass, and took an empty office and just acted like he worked there and had a job as he kept himself around the lot until he got actual work. I've spent film classes where we actually debated over whether or not it actually happened or could've happened back in those days. If anybody's ever seen the Dutch documentary, "Climbing Spielberg", you'll see an experiment of a few people trying to do this now, and obviously failing as security details and technology make attempting such an act on Universal's lots impossible now. I do like the story he instead replaces with it, another true story that happened to him when he was 15, where he got to meet John Ford (I'm not revealing who played him, but it's genius casting). This story gets shifted up to when he's nineteen, as the horizon line falls pushes downframe. It's a cool ending.

The rest of the movie, is also, just great. I don't know quite how great it is within Spielberg's filmography; I mean, everything he makes is at least competently made and almost all of it is watchable, even his worst film "Ready Player One", is about a good a film as anybody could've made out of that material. And it's hard to even discuss it within his oeuvre, 'cause on some level, it feels like a lot of his greatest hits. Go down the list of the things you expect in a Spielberg movie and you'll find almost all of them here except for maybe aliens. And actually even then, you can argue a few of the side characters do indeed feel like aliens. Judd Hirsch got an Oscar nomination for Uncle Boris, in what's essentially a cameo, but like Spielberg's real uncle, who he only met twice in his life, he was this bull of a man who toured with Ringling Brothers as a lion tamer. He was the black sheep of the family, and seems like a complete stop to the movie, but must've also been like a strange diversion to a young Steven as well, like someone coming from another world. Or, the first girlfriend character, Monica (Chloe Webb) in the film, a Catholic at his California high school, where he is the only Jewish kid, and apparently is infatuated with Steven, Jews and Jesus, not in that order, but also, weirdly together.... There's a lot weird with this that,- I've tweeted and discussed it on FB a bit, already with others, but it's probably better to just see it for yourself, and the only other thing I'll add is that, the relationship occurs when he's in the middle of his parents, divorce.

I really shouldn't be using Steven's name so much, even though "Fabelmans" is basically another word for "Spielberg", and I mean literally, Spielberg means "Play Mountain", play as in speech, performance, storyteller, oddly enough, also just play, but yeah, "Story Mountain" or "Story Man", while it's definitely an adaptation of his life, it's not hiding it's inspiration. The film also marks the first time he got an Oscar nomination as a screenwriter along with his friend and Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Tony Kushner, which is one of those weird Spielberg facts that both makes sense and yet still sounds wrong. (Like, I know he doesn't usually write but like, how did he not get nominated for writing "Close Encounters..." at least?) But yeah, "The Fabelmans" is technically the story of Sammy (Gabriel LaBelle) and about him growing up and getting swept up in the world of moviemaking, and as a happy youth, and then getting swept down to Earth after his parents, Burt and Mitzi (Paul Dano and Oscar-nominee Michelle Williams) marriage begins and continues to devolve. Steven does talk about a critical year and a half of his life where he struggled to make movies in high school after moving to California, but even before then, he realized that his father's best friend and co-worker Benny (Seth Rogen) and his friend were a little closer than they should've been. If you know that's coming up, which, honestly I wouldn't have if it wasn't spoiled for me (Not because I didn't know this about Spielberg's background, but mainly because I forgot about it; like I said, he's not always talked explicitly about the details of this period of his life), than you'll start seeing the clues a mile away. Of course, I'm not a kid, or somebody in denial, or both.

Other than that, what I'm basically grading this film on is how good a telling of someone's own life is told by them. I mean, what am I gonna say, somehow wish Spielberg's childhood and experiences were different than mine? I could dwell on just how lucky his upbringing was, a son of an eccentric artistic concert pianist who once bought a monkey and a groundbreaking computer electronics engineer who patented and influenced top-of-the-line technology for decades who naturally happened to be able to get ahold of an 8mm camera and get him a state-of-the-art Lionel train set. No, that'd be dumb. And it'd just be as dumb to dismiss the film as a therapy movie from him, on that basis, like half his films could be some kind of therapy movies for him since he's never been subtle with his themes and motifs and his upbringing has always been apart of his motifs. So, yeah, how good is Spielberg telling his own life story? Well, it's Spielberg, so he gets an A+. Spielberg could tell the life story of an amoeba and get an Oscar nomination for Best Director for it, and he would be deserving of it. It's by far, from here on in, gonna be listed now as his most personal film; now where's it gonna rank or get placed within his oeuvre, how's it ultimately gonna rank among his films...? That, I have no idea. I almost wonder if the movie's gonna get separated out from his works, like the way "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" is generally separated out as nobody can figure out if it fits better in Spielberg's works or if it's an extension of Kubrick's message from the beyond. "The Fabelmans" feels that different, just in the, too personal direction. I almost feel bad trying to catalog it; hell, it makes me feel bad for trying to catalog and compartmentalize any of Spielberg's works. How do you determine that something like, separate the more action/sci-fi stuff with the more emotional personal stuff, with the more historical and often Jewish background stuff,...- all this tells us is that Spielberg's been around long enough and made enough movies, and great movies at that, that we are able to make so many distinguishes between them. "The Fabelmans" biggest legacy is probably as a reminder that so many different eye-opening ideas and visions can indeed come from the same source and this film is just, him showing us why and how. Of course, while doing so, baring his soul, which he's really always done, but probably never as much as with this film.

LIVING (2022) Director: Oliver Hermanus

⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2

I'm honestly surprised that this hasn't been done before. I'm also surprised that it works this well, although honestly that shouldn't surprise me. "Living" startled me at first, just with it's opening sequence. It's hard to fully explain but it feels like an opening out of some older movie, like one from the forties or fifties, but I can't pinpoint exactly what film that reminds me of. Although I certainly know the movie that it's based on.

Perhaps that was to it's detriment though. "Living" is a remake of Akira Kurosawa's film "Ikiru", and for the most part, if you've seen the original film, than the beats of the movie won't be surprising to you. Also, if you've seen the film, you know how much of a large and difficult shadow that is to overcome. "Ikiru", which translates to "To Live" is a goddamn masterpiece, arguably the Japanese master's best film; recently when I decided to publish what would've been my picks for the Ten Best Films ever, in accordance with "Sight & Sound"'s recent poll, "Ikiru" made my list. I didn't talk much about it then, but I later posted a Canon of Film blog on "Ikiru" earlier, but to paraphrase, it's just this beautiful, haunting poetic film about dealing with one's inevitable and upcoming mortality. Anyway, the point I'm making is that, this movie will inevitably get compared to "Ikiru", and frankly, well,- well, while I'm surprised there hasn't been too many western remakes, I kinda get why there haven't been; it's just one of those movies that's just too good to remake. It's too sad, beautiful, perfect. I can't think of it without crying. I doubted whether I would cry for this film.

Well, eventually I did. Bill Nighy, in an Oscar-nominated role, shockingly, his first, plays a sly, drab Public Works employee who mostly pushes paper around and sends them off from one department to another as oppose to helping to get things done. Then, he finds out that he's dying, and only has a few months to live. At first, he tries to tell his son Michael (Barney Fishwick) but he's busy with his life with his wife Fiona (Patsy Ferran) and realizes he's become more of a burden on them than anything else. One change is that, we get to see occasional flashbacks and glimpses from the Williams's (Nighy) past. Like, how he hears a call for him from his son, and gets up startled, not realizing he's just being asked to lock the door for them.

He also considers suicide, even buying sleeping pills and pulling out much of his life savings, which isn't in the original. He ends up going against that idea, but realizing how little of life's more exuberances he's had, he does take up an amnesiac writer's, Mr. Sutherland (Tom Burke) offer on spending a night on the town with him. It at first seems awkward for him, but he appreciates it ultimately.

He does end up connecting with a much younger woman, in this case a former employee of his, Margaret (Aimee Lou Wood), who left working at the Public Works to take a supposedly promising waitressing job. They spend some time together, and while their relationship is nowhere near romantic, sometimes it does take the inspiration of youth to realize and inspire a next move.

Eventually, he comes around to getting that playground request through, although it's sorta indicated early on that he must've felt somewhat inspired in that respect beforehand, as per this film's version that famous montage of the women going from department-to-department all through the government, he insists on a newcomer to the office, Mr. Wakeling (Alex Sharp) accompany them through the process until it ends up back in front of his desk, to eventually put to the side. That's a new addition, but it might actually be an improvement. Without giving too much away, it's Wakeling who is eventually inspired, somewhat from Williams's inevitable passing, and is ultimately the one who pieces together the secret of his changes in his last few months, but also finds out about Williams's own path of discovery and happiness, ending with, yes, that final image of a story of our late hero, singing joyously late at night, swinging in the snow, staring up into the stars.

That's when "Living" really got me. It's hard to be shocked by a story so heartbreakingly sad that it's made even the most harshest of filmgoers cry their eyes out for 70 years, but I'll be damn, at the end, I was indeed tearing up. Don't think it's just the fact that this is a remake of a universal tale, it's a damn great interpretation, filled with first-class acting, especially by Nighy, and gorgeous, period filmmaking. "Living" takes place in an older time period, but it also aims to feel like an older film, one that's been around as long as the original has, and yet, seems just as unique to the United Kingdom and the Western world as "Ikiru" feels to Japan and the East.

The film was directed by Oliver Hermanus, who made a powerful gay romance feature, "Moffie" about two apartheid-era white South African soldiers who discover their feelings for each other in probably the worst time and place they could. That movie kinda got buried in the pandemic, even after it got loads of acclaim on the indy circuits, but it definitely shows how capable he is of telling interesting emotionally-complex tales with complex characters struggling to handle their feelings. "Living" fits right in his alley, and the Japanese-born British Nobel Laureate Kazuo Ishiguro is a perfect choice to make this wonderful adaptation. He's the writer behind such works as "The Remains of the Day", which he wrote the screenplay for the wonderful and severely underrated Merchant-Ivory film. He was familiar with the original, and clearly had the instincts of Kurosawa, but he used his sensibilities to make the movie quintessentially low-key and British in it's approach. Most western adaptations of Eastern cinemas try to play everything up, it's almost like he knew how to play everything down, but kept in the emotional subtle details that give the story power.

It's hard for me to put "Living" right up their next to the film it was inspired by in terms of greatness, but it achieves it's own kind of splendid greatness. It knew not to try to mimic the beauty of the original so much as to find it's own kind of beauty and lean into that. It's makes the story almost feel more awe-inspiring in that way. It's easy to get those to remember you who are most devoted to you, but "Living" ends with a note of how Williams was inspiring to one who wasn't inherently devoted to him and his work, and that's arguably a preferable ending in my mind. Hell, that's just art really, getting those to feel for that which has no direct personal connection to them? Is that all that we want to leave the Earth on, knowing that something we create and exist, will inevitably be remembered for their contribution to it? No wonder he's singing at the end.

GLASS ONION: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY (2022) Director: Rian Johnson

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Oh, I don't normally look forward to sequels, but I was looking forward to this one. "Knives Out" made my Ten Best List when it came out and frankly it's the most fun movie I've seen in recent years; I fucking loved it. Not just because I love a great murder mystery story and "Knives Out" licked the scenery which so much absurd, audachuberance that I couldn't help but just sink my teeth into it, but also because I finally felt like I was back to getting Rian Johnson in the genre that he loved.

Whenever I hear Rian Johnson's name brought up these days, most everybody seemed to associate him with the fact that he made a "Star Wars" movie. I've seen stuff like that happen to a lot of good and great directors recently, as though you're only judged by the big franchise blockbuster you made as oppose to everything else they made. But I remember when Rian Johnson first broke out and he didn't break out with a "Star Wars" movie. He broke out with a film noir mystery, a little independent film called "Brick". It took place and surrounded a world of high school kids, but it was a cool little film noir, was one of Joseph Gordon-Levitt's first big leading roles before he really started to break out. And he followed up with a couple other movies that were essentially homages to older-style classic genres. "The Brothers Bloom" never impressed me much, but it was a classic con movie. Even "Looper" was a clever sci-fi film that felt more like a sci-fi film from decades earlier, and they were smart movies too; they weren't just films full of idiots playing out the conventions of the genre. Clearly though, I thought he loved the film noir mystery aesthetic the best, and he's been proving that recently.

"Knives Out" felt like, he wasn't just going back to his roots, but that he had enough clout and money to make the film he really wanted to make and go all out with it. The best murder mysteries are never about who the killer(s) are anyway, they're always about the process and journey through the worlds the characters have to go through to get to the solution.

So, now we have a sequel to "Knives Out",- well, not so much a "sequel" per se, it's just another Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) mystery. Blanc was the wonderful detective in the first film, and now, him, and a strangely eclectic bunch of, well, they call themselves "Disrupters" are invited to the Mediterranean island home of crypto tech billionaire influencer Miles Bron (Edward Norton, in a role that I have to imagine had to be a little inspired by Elon Musk). His island home which is guarded by Banksy statues at low tide, run on Hydrogen energy and has a giant mansion filled with a giant "Glass Onion" structure in the middle. Why a "Glass Onion"? Well, it was the name of the bar that he and the group of disruptors used to meet at before they all made in big in their respective fields. Each of them has arrived by invitation from Bron for an elaborate murder-mystery plot.

I don't care how stupid it is or how it's always stupid, I love the murder-mystery game night actually turning into a murder-mystery plotline. And yes, eccentric island filled with the absurdly rich and elite that's blocked off from society and no one outside can reach it for hours, all it's missing is an Agatha Christie detective. (Well, there is a cameo from the late great Angela Lansbury, so I guess that could do. Steven Sondheim is there in both their in their last films. Actually, there's a lot of subtle great cameos in this film.)

I don't think most people understand how genuinely hard it is to write these kinds of murder-mysteries; I'd tried to do this genre a few times, and you really have to write it out ahead of time and get everything prepared. I think modern audiences have mostly been spoiled with such an abundance of cops and detective shows that have littered the television airways for decades. Hell, I just saw a trailer for a new "Matlock" lawyer series that weirdly makes note of how little it actually has to do with "Matlock" other than it being a show with lawyers and having the same name as the old show.... (Sidenote: As somebody who actually has seen and knows everything about the original "Matlock", I am fascinated and utterly confused by that trailer and that series) That said, this is not an easy genre to write, and this one is by far, one of the absolute best and genuinely one of the dumbest ones I've ever seen; I love it all!

It's even weird enough to take place during the pandemic and pulls that off brilliantly. I love that the dimwitted Kate Hudson, a trust-fund baby fashion model who's remade her career making a killing on sweatpants, character wears one of those masks that's made of mesh so people can see her face, that she only wears outside and not inside during her party. Hudson and Norton are great, so is Kathryn Hahn as a rebellious Connecticut Governor running for Senate. Dave Bautista's got a nice role here as a Twitch streamer who's trying to morph into a Men's Rights activist as well. The real standout and I won't give away why is Janelle Monae and a former partner of Miles who's sudden appearance on the island stuns everybody as she normally doesn't go on these regular Bron retreats of his. I'll admit, for about the half the movie I was wondering why everybody was giving her so much credit for her work in the film, but kinda just like how unassuming Ana De Armas's role in "Knives Out" only becomes more fulfilling as the movie continues on, Monae's work gets better the more the mystery gets revealed.

I also have to say, I like how Johnson reveals these stories. There's a few different ways that these kinda murder-mysteries can be told, although usually the best and most simplest way to tell them is to have the detective summation of the killer at the end, but in both these films, Johnson has found ways of both subverting that trend and also completely twisting the storytelling; these films are not linear, but they're not linear storytelling for a reason. We don't get all the information to solve the case ourselves at first, we get the information at the best moment it matters for us to have that information revealed to us, and it often means that we're often way more out of the loop than we are for even the best and most normal whodunit mysteries. I like how that keeps you us on our toes, and it often allows us to buy into, some of the more outlandish developments. Like how, and I won't give it away, a hot sauce owned by Jeremy Renner becomes a key factor in helping to solve the mystery.

"Glass Onion..." is probably not technically as good as "Knives Out", but it's still just too much fun to dismiss. I love these twists and turns, acerbic wit and details. I think sometimes even the best detective stories in recent years, forget just how much fun they can be and how the genre is often so much better when it is fun. I think we forget that, and I'm glad Rian Johnson doesn't. Definitely the two most fun movie experiences I've had in the last years, are the two Benoit Blanc movies.

MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON (2022) Director: Dean Fleischer-Camp

⭐⭐⭐⭐

(Startled look on dumb face)

What in the hell, am I watching?

Okay, I don't know what I expected with a film called "Marcel the Shell with Shoes On", but-eh,... um...-

I'm kinda at a lost for words here. Normally I like it when I see things onscreen or in movies that, I haven't seen before and are really new and original, but this is-eh,- wow, this might be a little too out there for me. At least, me personally, I'll analyze the film itself in a minute.

Actually, real talk right now, it's not just the, no pun intended, the eye-opening nature of the film, the-eh, story's kinda getting to me a bit at the moment, 'cause frankly, it's-eh,... well, I hate to say that a movie about a talking, um, shell, is literally hitting a little too close to home for me but it actually is, so part of me just, doesn't even want to review this film because I fear diving into certain raw feelings and emotions that this film triggers in me. Then again, it's a movie about a talking shell, that, is-, like, it's definitely an animated film, but the way it's mixing media is striking. Like, clearly this is stop-motion but even most stop-motion movies exist an a world that also is clearly animated, and "Marcel the Shell with Shoes On" exists,- like, seemingly in a contemporary modern world. Honestly, that's kinda more frightening; this might be one time where I'm wishing that the movie created more of a fantasy world for this character to exist in. Actually, what is this character,- I need to google search this.

(Google search)

Huh, from 2014...? Alright Ellen, help me out.

Oh, I think I do remember hearing about this before, but I don't think I watched any of those shorts. That's probably why this is so surreal to me. Having now gone back to watch them, they're kinda cute. And I definitely get that feeling, of, just seeming so small; I like that thought thought and trying to survive in that world. I don't think I ever thought of myself as a tiny shell, but- y'know what, maybe I have, metaphorically. Something that covers you up to protect you, that does feel like something I would've done. Still, these feel like, very small, quaint little shorts; I could easily imagine Marcel, as like, some kind of character you'd find in like a commercial for some kind of insurance company or something.

A feature-length film though, that's a trickier proposition. Marcel, (Jenny Slate, who created the character) is a shell, with shoes on. Not in a shell world, in our world, and living in a house that turns out to be a big AirBnB house, means that, on top of some of the regular struggles of, just surviving as a one-inch shell in a world full of full-grown humans, they also have to survive in a world where they don't have humans around, and are all alone.

Well, when I say "They", it's mostly Marcel, although he does have his grandma, Connie (Isabella Rossellini), an old shell that Marcel helps take care of in her old age. There used to be more of them, but right now it's just Marcel and Connie.

And Dean (Dean Fleishcer-Camp, the film's director and Slate's real-life husband) who, I guess, discovered Marcel while staying at the AirBnB house and decided to pull out his camera and make Marcel the subject of his videos.

Yeah, "Marcel the Shell with Shoes On" is that rare mixed media mockumentary feature. I honestly can't think of too many other films that fit this description. As to the story the film tells, well, I guess I enjoy it, but I kinda think it was a little inevitable, which I ultimately find disappointing. I mean, there's only so much you can do with a tale of a lonely shell. I didn't think Lesley Stahl would come into play, but other than that, it was told about what you'd expect, and that for me, made it difficult to watch. I want to be clear, it's not because of the execution, the movie does this as well as it could, it's the way that, I found, hard-to-deal with and frankly that's more of a personal thing than an issue with the film itself.

Other than that, I do like using animation like this, to see the worlds of people, or in this case, shells, and how different they are from us, and I like that contrast between the two worlds and to the film's credit, they do find a lot of good ways to examine that as much as they could. I'm not entirely crazy about it all, because some of it's just irksome to me, but Marcel does make a lot of the cringy parts more tolerable. Also, I'm a sucker for a great use of an Eagles song, and there's a wonderfully sad moment where Marcel sings "Peaceful Easy Feeling" at the end. Yeah, I can't help it, this movie works. It's quirky and weird, and I think I prefer the shorts for this character, but yeah, I still like how I get taken in by "Marcel...". Can't help it; I know what it's like to feel small and alone sometimes, whether you're actually alone or you're surrounded by your loving community of shells.

FIRE OF LOVE (2022) Director: Sara Dosa

⭐⭐⭐

"Fire of Love" is a meditative journey through the lives of the volcanologist couple Maurice, Katia and Maurice Krafft. They were freelance volcanologists who traveled the world studying the most active volcanoes they could, and tended to fund their studies through filmmaking, often grabbing some of the most shocking and harrowing images of volcanic imagery. They funded their studies through their films and Maurice's books and speaking tours in particular. The movie focuses mainly on their love story, although it does go into some details of their adventures, like how Maurice was annoyed at missing Mt. St. Helen's implosion, but also how they constantly campaigned in Columbia to evacuate the area surrounding the Nevada Del Ruiz explosion, and how when they didn't, it lead to one of the most catastrophic death tolls a volcano's ever produced. Katia barely survived that one.

Now, my initial instincts watching this film is that, it's okay, but it's basically a Werner Herzog documentary. In fact, the film I was most thinking of watching this film was "Grizzly Man", the great Herzog documentary about Timothy Treadwell activist who went on to live amongst the grizzly bears until he and his girlfriend were killed by them. This movie isn't so fascinated with the man vs. nature fascination and dynamics, but yeah, essentially this film is just a Herzog film; even Miranda July, her narrating is basically doing her best Herzog impression. It kinda makes sense, July and Herzog are actually kinda similar kinds of weirdos. Still, I'm a little surprised Herzog didn't make a movie first.

(Google search)

Except he did....

Huh... Is this film streaming anywhere....

(Google search)

Okay, you know what, change-of-plans, this is gonna be a double review. I don't think I've done one of these in a while, and usually it's because I have to suddenly have to watch a movie before I watch some sequel that got huge, but why not do it this way, let's compare these films.

THE FIRE WITHIN: A REQUIEM FOR KATIA AND MAURICE KRAFFT (2022) Director: Werner Herzog

⭐⭐⭐1/2

Herzog's film's better.

Well, I could end both reviews here honestly, but it's not like I think either film is great per se, but I personally just found Herzog's telling of the story more compelling. It focuses much more on, what you would expect, the power and destructiveness of the volcanoes they "researched". That's the thing that's kinda alluded to in "Fire of Love", but not entirely explicit but at a certain point, they basically weren't scientists anymore, they were just filmmakers. Herzog even makes the obvious comparison to Jacques Cousteau, which is what Maurice thought of himself as. Both Herzog and "Fire of Love"'s director Sara Dosa had rights to the Kraffts' footage, although apparently she had more, although some footage is used in both, and I do like how both of them used it. Dosa's a little better in some respects here, 'cause she actually does shows some of the more obviously contrived and arbitrary footage of the Kraffts basically just shooting home movie stuff that happens to be around a volcano. Even their official stuff is kinda odd.

Werner makes a proper declaration about how ridiculous some of the "protective" outfits that they wore were. I also like how his narration is more able to emphasize and add to the footage in ways that July's more-or-less, floats over most of the footage. It's a preference thing, July's tone is slightly more cerebral and elegiac, I guess if you prefer that than "Fire of Love" might be more preferable. Personally, I like Herzog's film better. It feels like Herzog gets the full scope of the Kraffts and their accomplishments and legacy while "Fire of Love" struggles to bring them up to some higher plain, and frankly I just don't think they rise to that level. I get why they're fascinating to both of these filmmakers, especially for Herzog whose whole career is seeing the constant fight between man and nature, and I kinda get Sosa's desire to take a Herzog-like subject and style and try to tell a different kind of tale. Again, I'm not either of these are great, but I definitely liked one more than the other.

Little surprised so many people have drifted more towards Sosa's film though; granted the Academy has always kinda dismissed Herzog, but I don't know how they thought enough of this film to nominate it for Documentary Feature. Honestly, the one other film I thought a bit about watching "Fire of Love" was Jim Jarmusch's "Only Lovers Left Alive" a romance about vampire lovers who struggle to keep their identity hidden and romance together through centuries. I've seen some people list that film as one of the most romantic of all-time; I don't know if I agree with that analysis either, but I think that same instinct is what propelled people to enjoy "Fire of Love" more. I didn't really get that instinct in "Only Lovers Left Alive" though, and I don't really get it here.