R for all kinds of stuff. First and foremost, this movie is about heavy drug use. The phrase "chasing the dragon" becomes commonplace because so much heroin is used in the film. Then, there's the graphic nudity that a child witnesses. It's pretty uncomfortable. Sex seems pretty casual in this world. While it doesn't condemn the Catholic church, it doesn't make it look great either. It feels like a moot point to say that language is on top of all of this, but it is definitely there. Well-deserved R.
DIRECTOR: Pedro Almodóvar I can't believe that I'm watching another Almodóvar movie. It's been almost a decade since I sat down and watched an Almodóvar movie. When I was working at the artsy video store, I realized that anyone who is anyone knows the work of Pedro Almodóvar. I didn't. When the fancy-pants box set came out, I ordered it immediately. This was pretty par-for-the-course for me. Whenever I didn't know one of the greats, I tended to get the entire box set and binge the greats, if not all, of that director's cinematic ouvre. This was an era of disposable income and little responsibility. I can't do such things anymore, despite the fact that I apparently have enough time to maintain a practically daily film blog. But when I watched that box set, I did so alone. Almodóvar tends to include elements of intense sexuality. I don't know if this sexuality is meant to provoke a sense of eroticism or is more of a normalization of sexuality, but I can't deny that it is there and it is often. When I saw that an Almodóvar movie --in this case, Pain and Glory--was up for an Academy Award, I knew that I'd probably be watching it with my wife. It's kind of like walking into a minefield. I knew that something impressive was going to be on screen. But I also had no idea what was going to be on screen. Perhaps it is my distance from my initial experience with Almodóvar. I binged those movies. Almodóvar is not a director to be binged. I treated his films like a six pack of Mountain Dew in the '90s. I put all of those away. Most of the cinematic greats probably deserve to be watched and experienced like a sipping whiskey. There's a lot to take in and all lot to unpack. When I watched Almodóvar the first time, I understood that there was value behind his films. He told stories honestly and earnestly. Plot was sparse and character was deep. His visuals were not what I expected. When I think of the great directors, I tend to thing of the camera as a living being, screaming cinema across a canvas. Almodóvar's imagery was often straightforward to the point of simplicity. There were shots that almost came across looking like a soap opera. But I think that my distance from that original box set that is still in my basement helped me really appreciate Pain and Glory. While it will not put Almodóvar on my list of favorite directors, I see Pain and Glory as something worthy of an Oscar. It makes sense that Antonio Banderas was up for best actor. I mean, we all knew he wasn't going to get it. Joker, after all, was an excuse for Joaquin Phoenix to act so, so much and Pain and Glory is simply offering Banderas a role that we hadn't seen him in. It's quiet and understated, which I have to believe is more challenging than loud and contortion-y. I'm not fighting that decision at all, but I also knew that Banderas didn't have a prayer. What I noticed first and foremost that Pain and Glory seems like a larger stretch for someone like Almodóvar. I commented that his imagery often were so simple that they looked like they were soap opera snippets. I don't know if that holds true for the majority of the film in this case. There's one shot that I still think, "Oh, there's the Almodóvar I know." But there's some real effort. Almodóvar has always been impressive with color in the past for me, but this movie takes it to a new level. Going through the education of Salvador Mallo was a trip, to oversimplify it to an extent that I feel uncomfortable with. It lets us know that something deep and unique is going on in Mallo's head that may not necessarily sell itself to traditional narrative. It filled me with existential dread and guilt for being Catholic for a moment. (For, like, a half second. I then realized that this was a very specific story and that I, through my faith, did not make Salvador Mallo have a crappy education.) The way I understand it is that Almodóvar is a deeply autobiographical director. I'm not saying that all of his movies are one-to-one his life, but I know that Pain and Glory reflects a lot of issues that he as a director dealt with. It kind of screams it to the audience that this movie is about him. Mallo, as a director, deals with issues with his sexuality and drugs. Yeah, that is going to make me do a quick Google search to find out how much of the film I just watched was true. Knowing that a lot of that was taken from his life, it makes me question how resolved human beings really are. My big takeaway, besides the fact that Mallo deals with a depression that I cannot fathom, is that he abandons his moral code in a moment. I think I have done things that I never thought I would do. It is a series of small concessions that makes that big decision seem small. However, that moment when he asks for heroin is huge to me. I can't condemn this choice in this movie. It seems like that was Almodóvar and his life, so it cannot be too far removed from reality. But it is such a toxic moment for this character. There's no pressure put on him from outside forces. He has a history with the dangers of heroin. He has all of these moments in his life that build towards him avoiding heroin. And then...he just decides to take heroin. And it becomes as dangerous and addictive as those ABC After School Specials warned me about. (I'm not that old. I was warned by the Cartoon All-Stars not to take drugs.) What makes people addicted to drugs? People have addictive personalities. I understand the science behind it. I can accept certain things. While I'm nearly a teetotaler, I have to believe that everyone has an addiction to something. I always get really good at quitting soda...until a special occasion arises and I put away a 12 pack in half a week. I suppose I'm lucky, in that regard. I never want to try drugs. Part of it is because I accept that I'm lame. Also, it seems awful to me. Maybe these morality tales about taking drugs have done exactly what they are supposed to do and reminded me that drugs are terrible. But there's such a disconnect between the awesomeness of drugs and the horrors of drugs. I know that movies out there glorify marijuana and mushrooms, but heroin always comes across as practically a suicidal cry for help. I loved the meta narrative at the end. I have thoughts, but I keep getting stuck on the drugs element of the movie. Banderas's performance is so good and I adore the fact that he's pursuing something new. I can't shift off of his approach to this character, so it is hard to formulate what I want to say about the framing structure of the entire piece. After all, I watched this movie for Banderas's performance, I should be commenting on it. It's along the lines of the burden of depression and the burden of aging. It's weird seeing Banderas play someone almost normal and human. But that meta narrative makes me smile and I have to question why. In a way, finding out that all of the flashback sequences are actually flash-forwards. That everything works out makes it all kind of worth it. But there has to be some better answer to that. It is a commentary on Almodóvar and his memory. It is played by professional actors. It is him commenting on himself. If the entire film is a note about his own life and his own personality, that reveal at the end reminds me that everything is artifice. My memory is artifice. Nothing is how we quite picture it. There are elements of reality. I still treat the flashback sequences as canonical to the story. But that framing device both changes everything in the film and leaves it all the same. This might be my favorite Almodóvar movie. I don't know if the content is what makes it great, but I can preach about how Antonio Banderas owns this role. Is it worth it? Definitely. Will you love it? That's up for debate.
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PG-13 for swearing, car wrecks, and people dying from car wrecks. I feel like that might be spoiler territory, telling you that people die in car wrecks. But you are aware...they are car wrecks. When someone gets into a car wreck, one of the more common questions is, "Did they die?" Well, this is a racing movie, so car wrecks get bigger and badder. When they get bigger and badder, people tend to die more often. There's also some fighting and I can't stress how fast and loose Ford v Ferrari plays with the swearing. Like, it's adorable because a lot of it is British, but it's still swearing. PG-13.
DIRECTOR: James Mangold If you told me that Ford v Ferrari would be one of the most fun movies I watched in 2019, I wouldn't believe you. Despite my almost religious watching of The Fast and the Furious movies, I could tell you that I'm not a racing fan. I don't actually like sports. I don't even really like a lot of sports movies. I know! Blasphemy! When I saw the trailer for Ford v Ferrari, you could hear my eyes rolling back into my head. You could even hear those rolling eyes over the sound of an audible groan that I made in the theater. They kept showing that trailer. It didn't look interesting. I looked like every other movie I don't care about. Then it got nominated for an Academy Award, which means that I had to see it. Yeah, I didn't win Best Picture. It probably shouldn't have won Best Picture. But despite an overly long runtime, I absolutely adored this movie. Now, I have to caveat a lot of things on here before I got into my diatribe for why Ford v Ferrari is ultimately about the characters and not the plot. I know that, apparently, Ford v Ferrari gets nothing right about racing. There's about a million mistakes that this movie makes and car fans tend to get up in arms about these things. As a nerd, I get the impulse. I don't think I usually let the minutiae get me down over a thing that I really like. Like, I adored Gravity and most space things. Ad Astra confused me with its science all throughout the film. But again, I don't know how important these things are. When I hear gearheads (That's what they're called, right?) wax poetic about why it shouldn't work like that, I tend to harumph. But for all I know, these things are important. As an outsider to racing culture, I can say that the movie is meant for me. It allows me to see what is interesting in something that I find fundamentally boring. Because racing, to me, is a lot about the machine. Whoever has the fastest car wins. Ford v Ferrari doesn't deny that the fastest car is a huge element of racing, but it really stresses that it is the man behind the machine that has talent. The devotion that this movie has for Ken Miles makes the movie worth watching. Now, I don't know the real story of Ken Miles. My wife Wikipedia'd everything, as she is wont to do. But that really just gives us a peek into the loosey-goosey facts around Miles. I don't know how hotheaded he was. I don't even know if he was as talented as the movie portrays him. But what Mangold does is present a story about a complicated character who embodies a character type that works really well in this world. I have to treat Ken Miles as a character. Because I don't know the real guy, I can only watch him from a narrative perspective. Bale portrays Miles as a sympathetic jerk. He's the Mr. Darcy of international racing. (For all we know, Mr. Darcy would have made a superlative international racer, so don't argue with me.) He's this guy who is filled with love and is brimming with it. So many stories present the gruff butthead as someone isolated and removed from all relationships. Instead, Miles has the love of a wife who understands, but doesn't necessarily put up, with all of his malarky. She sees a good man who loves what he does and loves his family. I adore this in a protagonist. Yeah, he's a jerk. He has a short fuse, which gives his character something to do throughout the film. A perfect protagonist shouldn't be leading this story. The conflict of the film comes from the fact that corporate suits don't want him to represent the company with his bad attitude. He's a guy who gets in his own way. Which makes his character choices all the more insane. I want to remind myself right now to talk about Ford v Ferrari's commentary on corporate America, but I don't want to derail from this look at Ken Miles. (I really hope that this reminds me to do this later.) Miles internal conflict is that he knows that he is right. But instead of approaching other pigheaded people logically and calmly, he just does what he wants. He's right. Mangold and Bale craft the story to let us know that Ken Miles's choice is ultimately the right choice. But it's how he does things that is toxic. That's what makes the end of the movie so insane. We've seen the story before. For Ken Miles to grow as a character, he must abandon his pride and play the game. But it is playing the game that actually destroys him. That's insane to me. The whole movie sets up for Ken Miles to learn a lesson about humanity. It is the lesson in humanity that fails him. We are so ready for Miles to trust people to be fundamentally moral and good and he is actually burned by it. (Pun wildly inappropriate right now.) Because Ken Miles played ball for two seconds, he lost the one thing that he actually wanted out of life. It's something that I never would have seen coming. We have been so bred to understand that an internal conflict is something that must be overcome. Instead, we get this deep understanding of why Ken Miles is the way he is. I don't want to go all Ayn Rand into this reading because that can only be problematic, but Miles has probably been through this before. His real growth, and I doubt that this is how it played out in reality, is that he was able to accept that loss and move on, never to win LeMans again. But let's look at the guts of this movie. I had this theory a while ago that any movie with a "versus" in the title was terrible. Now I have to retract that. But the name of the movie is Ford v Ferrari. I hate corporate film. I know that there are a lot of You've Got Mail and CastAway fans out there (I like Tom Hanks, though). But those movies are as corporate as they get. (I like The Lego Movie! Shhhh!) I knew that Ford was going to be the good guy and that rich Ferrari was going to be the bad guy. This is about one of those moments where blue collar stands up to the rich and rubs it in its face. I am born and bred Detroit (Royal Oak, fine). My dad helped design one of the Mustangs. My entire life until my most recent car has been on a family plan. Knowing that Ford was going to rep blue collar was a genius movie. But then Ford ends up being this corporate entity that is kind of soulless and Ferrari, despite being the antagonist of the film, is about artistry? That's something I didn't see. I feel bad for the friends and family of Ken Beebe, by the way. That guy comes across like a monster. He might be 2019 Cinema's greatest villain. (Sorry, Thanos.) There's something so prideful of everyone at Ford. The movie starts off with Carroll Shelby making a deal with these guys. Ken Miles warns him that they are the devil and, like Shelby, you can't help but dismiss these as the ramblings of a bitter turd. After all, Lee Iacocca played by The Punisher is a great guy. He's charming. He seems to really care about the car. They're the underdog! But then the movie just turns hard on Ford. Everything about them seems slimy. I loved Ford growing up. (We're not playing this game right now, reader. You have your opinion; I have mine.) It's such a great move to make this about the boots on the ground versus the public image. I suppose that another motif running through some of the movies this year is the haves versus the have-nots. Because as much as the final result of the film is about a Ford car going against a Ferrari at LeMans, the story is about the boots on the ground versus the people who don't want to get their hands dirty. Henry Ford II comes across like a huge butthead in the name of profit. He threatens to fire workers who don't come up with ideas for how to make Ford more successful. He eats extravagant lunches and leaves the race at crucial times. Ken Beebe is all about his own pride and how the image of Ford should be perfect, getting in the way of actual progress. As much as the film is about Ken Miles, Carroll Shelby's understanding of how corporate America functions is as much of a lesson as anything else. This movie is so good. Do you know what it is? It's the movie that you watch with your father-in-law and cheer audibly as the film progresses. It's a film for all viewers, shy die hard sticklers. It is entertaining, yet poignant. It's got heart, but also has a ton of fun along the way. I loved this film and I never thought for a second that I would. PG-13. It's a movie about slavery. The film establishes an America where cruelty is commonplace. The purpose of Harriet is to inspire and lead, which means that much of the violence and cruelty happens off camera. But there is an understanding that these are trying times and that absolute atrocities are being committed. There's some on-screen violence, but much of the disturbing stuff is implied through the showing of scars. Also, Harriet holds people at gunpoint. Couple what is common knowledge with a PG-13 rating, this is a tame film compared to what it could / should be.
DIRECTOR: Kasi Lemmons The Oscars happened last night and I mostly got it wrong. I went gutsy this year. I bet on a lot that I wanted to win. A lot of the ones I actually won were picks that I knew would win, but probably didn't really care for. It doesn't matter, because I still have a lot of writing to do before this entire Oscar season is behind me. I might have had a chance to see this one for free early, which would have been rad. Regardless, I got this one in on Blu-ray before the Oscars went up. I'm kind of shocked it wasn't up for more than just Best Original Song and Best Actress, but I'm not going to fight that good fight. Instead, Harriet makes me ask different questions than I normally have to. With a lot of biopics, there's a degree of predictability. It's why I have been complaining about the string of movies like Bohemian Rhapsody that seem to cover the same style of narrative over and over again. Harriet is running a bit parallel to that, but it is different enough that the effect on the audience is a bit different. While we may know some of the events in the life of Freddie Mercury, Harriet Tubman's life is kind of commonplace knowledge at this point. We, hopefully, were all taught something about Tubman's role in the Underground Railroad since childhood, which begs the question: "Where do we go from here?" If we know the story, what is the point of watching the story? As it turns out, there's a lot to be gleaned. Because we know so much about the plot, much of the film is about building character. What kind of woman would Harriet Tubman have to be to endure all of these things. I can't help but make the comparison to Selma and its portrayal of Dr. King. (By the way, I'm near positive I wrote something on that, but Weebly is saying that I didn't. I may have to rewatch that in the near future.) Besides the fact that they were both heroes in the fight for equality, we knew both of their stories. Because we don't really have to worry about the narrative unfolding in a way that is unexpected, much of the stress falls on the actor to find something interesting to say about the protagonist. It's why Cynthia Erivo deserves attention when, perhaps the rest of the movie does not. I'm still pretty shaky about saying that this isn't Best Picture worthy. But I also know that the Academy Awards, as much as I enjoy prepping for them, kind of miss the boat with some of their nominations. I keep falling back to I, Tonya in terms of movies that get nominations for other things besides Best Picture. While Harriet didn't destroy me, it is definitely a solid and important film, especially in light of how much I didn't care for Joker. I can't deny that the role of the Academy, especially with its Best Picture award, is fundamentally a quality award. But I tend to find that quality should be coupled with artistic merit. There's a reason that some things are in the canon and that some things aren't. Perhaps we tried too hard when Green Book won best picture (please read my "White Savior" reading into that movie). But Harriet is a movie that builds what we've almost started as treating like folklore and reminded us that this was a real lady doing insanely dangerous things. Lemmons gets that Harriet is both a story about a woman who defied odds and that there was constantly a sense of danger to what she was doing. It's tough doing someone's entire life. Yeah, we don't see Harriet as a child, but she's pretty young at the beginning of the movie and she's pretty old at the end of the movie. I almost want this to be two movies in a way because the movie kind of suffers when it rushes these moments. Much of Tubman's work freeing slaves is told through montage. Montage makes sense. The story is about the person Harriet Tubman, not the legend Harriet Tubman. By focusing on those individual escapes, perhaps we would have gotten more emotional drama and suspense. But there also probably would have been diminishing returns knowing that Tubman escapes each time. It's such a bummer because I know why Lemmons decides to speed through those moments, but I want to experience them. Similarly, the end of the movie is interesting as heck, and we only really get one moment of it. The movie ends with Harriet in the Northern army freeing slaves by the hundred. It's overwhelming how many people are running across that field as Harriet welcomes them. It's a great shot and I'm glad it is in the movie, but I also want to watch a movie about JUST THAT. We don't get much narrative of Harriet Tubman as a soldier during the Civil War. It probably would end up being wildly depressing or misrepresented. But there's this moment in the film that doesn't really fit with the rest of the throughline that the movie, up to that point, had established. It's so great and I wanted to have more of a transition into that moment. I wanted that moment to breathe and have its own sense of identity. Again, a two movie thing would have allowed the Civil War to become a more threatening thing than simply the historical marker that this movie provides. One of the moments in the film that's a bit Hollywood-y is Tubman's relationship with Gideon. I get why Gideon is in the movie, despite the fact that he's probably one of the more fictional moments in the movie. Gideon acts as a perfect foil to Tubman. She's this strong, independent woman who was powerful, despite all that she had gone through. Gideon, as a child, was a friend to her. There's a line in the film where Gideon's father compares slavery to livestock and why it is dangerous to befriend a slave. It's really interesting. Gideon probably represents a lot of different people in Tubman's life. Despite the fact that he isn't actually a real character, he's based on probably a lot of truth. Gideon starts the movie thinking that he has been betrayed by his friend, but is completely unable to stand outside of himself and understand his very closeminded worldview. I don't know why there are moments where Gideon is almost portrayed as sympathetic. The movie stresses how evil his father was and that his father corrupted him into doing these things. But Joe Alwyn plays him super evil. Like, super evil. There's never a moment where he questions anything that his father taught him. Why introduce all of that bad parenting stuff to the movie if Gideon is just going to be a monster from moment one to moment ten? I think that Gideon should be a monster and that people around Gideon should be equal monsters. The world is a terrible place filled with terrible people, so I have no problem with that portrayal. But why have all that stuff in the past about what he was versus what he could be? Maybe it is a commentary on how people were all inherently good, but then were corrupted over time. I don't know if that is exactly sold over the course of the film, but it's a thought. There's never a time when the story of Harriet Tubman shouldn't be told. I'm actually floored that I can't think of another major release of the same story. The movie does everything right for the most part. There are things that could go better, but nothing is outright wrong here. The performances are pretty solid. The tale is riveting. It's a well made movie all around. My official Oscar predictions are in! Check out my predictions here and keep checking in as I update the page live with the results as they come in.
IT ALL COMES DOWN TO TONIGHT! We watched the Oscar nominated shorts last night. For everything available, please check out the Academy Award Nominees page for a quick rundown of each.
PG. Despite being mostly about violence for the entire movie, it's PG. What was I expecting? It doesn't really deserve a PG-13 rating, but I do really want to stress that the How to Train Your Dragon series seems kind of bent on violence to a certain extent. It plays up the action elements of kids' storytelling. There's actual peril throughout. The villain seems pretty villainous. There are a few fakeouts for how scary things can get. But ultimately, these moments provide catharsis by revealing the truth and good nature of the protagonists. Regardless, PG.
DIRECTOR: Dean DeBlois I feel terrible. One of my students is obsessed with the How to Train Your Dragon series. I wasn't going to watch this movie, mainly because I only thought that the first movie was "fine." I completely skipped the second entry in the series. I watched this because it was up for Best Animated Feature (over Frozen II!) I try to watch everything, but I also broke a rule to get this movie. I mentioned that I skipped the second entry. I've only done that one other time before and that's when I was stuck at a movie theater and the only thing playing was Transformers 3. I think it was that moment that I really galvanized my guideline into a rule about seeing the second entry. Regardless, I don't know if I get it. I jump back and forth about the role of entries in a franchise. I'm writing in an era where Avengers: Endgame somehow pulled off being the most satisfying sequel of all time. I know, you are fighting for The Empire Strikes Back or The Godfather: Part II. I don't blame you, because that's kind of my point. Both Empire and Godfather II stand up as movies on their own. They are fully realized movies in their own right. While the experience watching either of these movies may be enhanced by seeing the previous entry, they kind of stand on their own two legs. Endgame doesn't really do that. Endgame is all about rewarding what came before. Not only is it a direct sequel to Avengers: Infinity War, but it is a sequel to a really huge franchise before that. But that's my point. If Empire is the best standalone sequel and Endgame is the best dependent sequel, I'm not sure where The Hidden World really falls. I figured out everything that I needed to know pretty quickly on in the movie. Despite not seeing the second entry, there was no question about the dynamics of the characters or what had transpired in the previous film. I thought for sure that I would need to hit up a Wikipedia entry or something. Nah, it does a great job of catching me up. But what I didn't get was the emotional importance of these characters. That might be on me. Partially, it has to be on me because it was my responsibility to watch the previous entry. But the biggest flaw that The Hidden World has for it is the communication that anything in this movie that happens matters. The movie expects me to love a lot about the world of How to Train Your Dragon. I don't. Aesthetically, it's fine. But the movie is ultimately an action movie without a lot of ties to higher themes. Oh, sure. The movie verbalizes Hiccup's concerns about leadership. But a lot of that comes from backpedaling the character a bit. I can say that I've seen the first movie, and that character flaw is teased there as well. The first movie really drives home the fact that no one takes Hiccup seriously. Now that time has passed and Hiccup has become the leader of the clan (which I assume happened in the second movie), he still has the same doubts. To a certain extent, I respect that choice in character development. It isn't pulling anything out of the blue. Instead, that is somewhat of a character arc. But it also feels like it is going back to the same well. Hiccup should be facing new problems now that he's the leader. Maybe tease something about missing the anonymity of being a regular guy. Maybe leadership itself isn't rewarding. Instead, it's all about that doubt that we've seen in entries from the past. So when a character has been backpedaled in development a bit and the rest of the movie is just action, we have to start looking at beats that really define the movie. Toothless falling in love with his female doppleganger has been done since the dawn of time. It's the safe route to go. The theme of having to grow up is there, but I kind of read it as a ploy to not have to make any more How to Train Your Dragon movies. The series really feels like it is solidly locking down that this is the end of the series, unless the film decides to go with Hiccup's kids. (Great. I just solved a problem for DreamWorks. I expect to see my check in the mail any day.) But the big problem is that The Hidden World is just plain old boring. The movie teases a villain that I placed money on that he was being played by Javier Bardem. The character was the archetype of the same villain as Skyfall. Heck, let's go beyond archetype. F. Murray Abraham is doing a straight up impression of Javier Bardem's villain from Skyfall. It's so boring. The villain in Skyfall? He was great. He was an honestly scary villain and I felt like Bond might have actually died in that movie. It was the 20th film in the series on the 50th anniversary. But Grimmel was a carbon copy. He's this guy who can plan five steps ahead of you and you can't possibly fight him. But you know how they beat him? Their plan just worked. What happened to being five steps ahead? Also, he's a kids' movie villain. For closing up a franchise, why have a villain that isn't connected to the hero? He's so generic and so throwaway that it kind of ruins the movie as a whole. The movie threatens a villain that is able to tear down the whole establishment. He's just a guy who is better at his job than the other villains. But he doesn't really make people question the moral center of this world. He's just...a guy. That means all of the action is ultimately useless. Think of all the great villains in film history. The threat has to go beyond the external threat. The most that Hiccup has to deal with is a little doubt about his ability to lead and beat the villain. But Hiccup is ultimately the same Hiccup before this event as he is after and that's all because the villain is super dumb. I hate to be dogging on this movie because its biggest problem is that I'm not the audience for the movie. It has things that really appeals to die hard fans, but does almost nothing for a general audience. My kids liked the action and the the animation, but I don't know if they grew at all with this movie. There's little artistic to it. It seems like it's just a fun movie, only I didn't find it to be fun. There's so much action that it actually gets to be kind of dull. I never felt like characters were in peril, which makes the action kind of vapid. I don't like dunking on movies. When I saw that this was an Academy Award nominated movie, I got really excited to see it. But then I realized that this is inferior to other movies that came out this year. I straight up don't like it. The only thing that is positive is my kids like violence. Wait, is that positive? Passed. It studied for its final exams all night. It was touch and go there for a while, but then it really hunkered down and passed. The movie has violence. I mean, it is about a murder. The protagonist, as part of the framing narrative, is technically bleeding out for the entirety of the film. There's adultery and cruelty. But it's a film noir. We're meant to delve into the darkest elements of men's minds. That means that housewives feel free to greet guests only wearing a towel and an anklet. Regardless, it passed.
DIRECTOR: Billy Wilder The Oscars are only days away and here I am, writing about another entry for my film noir class. Don't be mad. It's Double Indemnity. I'll always look for an excuse to gush over Billy Wilder. Do you know how excited I get when I see that Billy Wilder directed something I'm about to watch. In this case, I owned this movie ahead of time. (I'm probably the best audience to take a film noir class when I've already seen or own the majority of the films on the syllabus.) In this case, I also had to read the novel it was based on, so I do have some new takeaways. The only bummer about writing a thing on Double Indemnity is that I've talked about this movie for hours in class. The point of this blog was to talk about movies because people don't really talk to me about movies. This is almost excessive and I'll probably end up stealing other people's insights. Regardless, you have been warned. A lot of the reason why Double Indemnity works is because of Billy Wilder. (I told you I was going to do this. Why are you shocked that I'm doing this?) Wilder seems to elevate anything he touches. We have had all these discussions in class how there's a lot of elements that make film noir and none of them seem to be rules that must be adhered to. Again, this is a whole discussion point in themselves. But one thing that never really gets discussed is that, as character focused as people claim these movies to be, they are really plot heavy. Part of it is that many of these movies tend to have really intense detective-style mysteries behind them. Sometimes, it's from the perspective of a detective, but in this case it is the criminal. Neff's big mystery is "what do other people know?" I know, I'm really stacking the deck for "mystery" in my favor, but I think a similar part of the brain is being activated. Double Indemnity really works well as a story in itself. But I want to stress that it would be very easy to just shoot the story and not worry about the details of the imagery. I know a bunch of the techniques used to convey meaning throughout the film, but that's not the point of my writing. I suppose I'm not here to inform, but to analyse and critique. Wilder doesn't allow this to be just another adapted pulp novel. I wrote about Kiss of Death last week. Kiss of Death was a rush job. I know that a lot of the film noirs of this era tended to be the second film of the set to save money. But there's nothing really cheap about Double Indemnity. It feels like the A film on the docket and it really illustrates what can be done with the subgenre that is film noir. The acting is just top notch. My wife wasn't exactly floored by Barbara Stanwyck in the way that she was the first time that she watched this movie. But both MacMurray and Stanwyck are crushing every scene together. But the real takeaway is Edward G. Robinson. I can't help but make the comparison to Joe Pesci in The Irishman. In my head, Pesci and Robinson are both character actors. They present something very specific in most of their films and they tend to get typecast as one thing. In both Irishman and Double Indemnity, both Pesci and Robinson are recognizable as their performance styles. But there's something important that is added to both of their performances. Robinson is still the same voice that I'm used to hearing in things like Little Caesar, but there's something restrained about it. I'm not used to seeing him on the side of angels (which it can be debated whether or not he actually is on the side of angels for the sake of argument). But seeing this character who is able to do these ups and downs. There's something really vulnerable about the character that I absolutely adore. Every time that I watch Double Indemnity, I see something different in that role. I want to leave the plot in a separate compartment because the only thing I can really say about it is that it is brilliant. I don't know if I like the book or the movie better, but that's not a bad predicament to be in. Instead, I want to focus on how these characters breathe within a narrative that is so tight. Neff, as a character, kind of confuses me. If the French were obsessed with the moral ambiguity of film noir anti-heroes, Neff might take the cake for many of his choices. Neff is a sleaze, but he's a guy who is all around liked. I mean, if you were going to make a case for male toxicity in the 1940s, Walter Neff might take your number one spot. He is sold to the audience as a good guy turned bad early on, but he instantly puts the moves on a client because she's attractive. I know that I'm sitting pretty in 2020 and commenting on the societal politics of yesteryear, but I do love how the insurance business is teased as being morally bankrupt to a certain extent. Keyes may be halfway decent, but Neff is successful because he embraces the moral dubiousness of his profession. But even for Neff, the decision to kill a client is a big jump. I'm fighting the script despite the fact that I think it is perfect. There's something otherworldly about the world of film noir and Hollywood and that's what I'm dancing around. Neff is an arrogant jerk. But he's an arrogant jerk because he's a big fish in a little pond. He knows that he's better than everyone but Keyes, but Keyes is a different kind of fish anyway so it doesn't matter. Why would he put everything at stake to prove a theory about a perfect murder correct? Perhaps it is because he is so prideful that he is willing to throw away his old world and adopt the world of crime. I would blame Phyllis, but I hate blaming the femme fatale for the male's choices. I know that the 1940s want me to blame Phyllis. A lot of the movie points fingers at her, but he's a grown man. The pictures in his room give me the indication that he likes the sport of it all. If insurance sales is his career because he enjoys the sport of it all, perhaps the perfect murder is part of the same game. He treats the entire thing as a very serious game. It's all about planning. Like Hitchcock and his movies, he derives joy from the planning, not the execution. There doesn't seem to be anything really fun for him while he's actually committing these crimes. Rather, those images of '30s style boxers might be an indication that it's about a sense of competition. I don't quite know who he's competing with. One part of me wants to take the cheap way out and claim that he's fighting society. The other easy answer is Keyes. Keyes is the example of genius in this film. He's the Sherlock Holmes. He always gets his man and it just comes to him. Even though Neff and Keyes are friends, there seems to be this element of "catch me" to the whole plan. While watching thrillers, particularly ones that involve the hunt for the serial killer, there's always that line of "He wants to be caught." This always has to be a subconscious thing, right? If asked every day if he wanted to be caught, I believe that Neff would claim that he's doing everything he can not to be caught. But he also goes into this plan knowing that Keyes would be the biggest problem he would have to beat. He has this whole thing with a huge hitch in the middle. It's such an interesting dynamic for a character to have. Yeah, the movie, like a lot of film noir, embraces this complex plot. But it is through that complex plot that delivers a complex set of characters. I feel bad for not talking about Phyllis more. If I'm guilty of watching a film with the male gaze, Phyllis has become a non-issue for me. Part of it is that Phyllis isn't as developed as she is in the book. The movie leaves a lot of Phyllis's motivation kind of ambiguous. There is some obligatory information that is passed onto us, but it never really takes time to build character. There are moments that Barbara Stanwyck delivers some amazing performances, but it is all in the service of Phyllis as closed off. Nothing we really see is real, making it very difficult to understand what makes her tick, outside of psychopathy. It's a bummer, but it also works for the film. I really like this movie and I really like Billy Wilder. Me recommending Double Indemnity isn't really a risk because it is such a classic. But I know that there are people who have never really dipped their toes into the waters of film noir. If you are going to start somewhere, maybe Double Indemnity is the way to go. Check out the Academy Awards Nominees page for all of the current and pending reviews!
PG-13 because of weird space violence. Like, it gets really bizarre. This is a world where there are space disasters, space pirates, and space gibbons. Those space gibbons, sorry to say, tend to get gory violent. I want to be specific, but I already feel like the MPAA section has gotten way too spoilery. Yeah, there's probably language. I don't remember any specific examples of bad language, but I know it is in there probably somewhere. It's violence and depression in space, which probably means PG-13. Is there blood? Sure. But not so much that it would deserve an R rating.
DIRECTOR: James Gray I can't stop making the connection between this title and the line from To Kill a Mockingbird. I know, it's from smart things too. Latin stuff that I'm woefully ignorant about. I'm sure a quick Google search would cover up a source of insecurity, but that seems like it would take time and I only have about twenty minutes before I have to stop writing. I thought for sure that this would be Oscar bait. I remember seeing the trailer, wondering what the heck it was going to be about, and then people talking like it was going to be the next big sci-fi epic. For five seconds, I feel like people really got behind Ad Astra. But ultimately, it's something that is getting acknowledgment for sound mixing or something like that. Regardless, I was excited to see it and the Oscars gave me a chance to see it. My wife hated it. I'm throwing that on the table. I don't even blame her. It is a drama that is steeped in science fiction. I think my wife can handle fun science fiction or science fiction romance. But throwing together a slow, introspective science fiction piece is probably not her cup of tea. I can completely get it. While I liked it, I also really activated my snob sense to get through this movie. And even then, I think I left with more of a meh-attitude than anything else. As I've mentioned in many of my others writings, I'm such a sucker for an estranged father narrative. Something in me is broken when I hear that a story is about a father and son pairing that needs fixing. The movie, coupled with a pretty visually spectacular setting and a sci-fi genre, had a couple of feet in the door that allowed the movie to just be functional to get me through it. Let's just say that I'm glad that I sprung for the extra $0.80 to get a Blu-ray from the Redbox. But my big question is, "Why is it science fiction?" That's kind of what I want to explore through today's writing assignment. I know the bare bones answer, which is probably pretty lame from an analysis perspective. I think it's science fiction because that's exactly what I would do. The internal conflict of Ad Astra has legs. There's something to be explored there. A father leaves his son to do something altruistic. The world sees him as a hero when really, he was kind of a jackass. Reuniting with this man might not be the healthiest thing in the world and the divide between expectation and reality grows wider as you grow closer. Yeah, that story exists. It is up to the writer and the director to decide how to make that story play out and to play out over the course of two-hours-and-three-minutes, in Ad Astra's case. And that explains exactly what I would do. I would fall back on things that I really enjoy and advocate for. Ad Astra has all the markings of a serious drama. Most of the film is told through the internal monologue of an introverted man of action. His entire persona, as stressed by his psychological exams performed throughout the movie, is based on control. Having him lose control over the course of the film makes sense. How does one do that? Well, I like space and space seems really stressful. It's the perfect foil for what is going on with him. He can handle the most impossible situations in space, but he can't come to grips with assuming that his dad might be a monster. (I made the connection with To Kill a Mockingbird and now I'm connecting Go Set a Watchman.) If I had a movie that had a lot of padding to figure out, I think I would set it in space. Films in space are either goofy throwaway (to the general public) or prestige films. Ad Astra desperately wants to be Gravity or 2001: A Space Odyssey. It wants to be considered serious cinema, which is kind of mind blowing considering that it never actually got any of the nominations it really wanted. There's something so degrading about considering a movie to be simply good or bad. I don't think that Ad Astra necessarily fails in any way from its premise, but it also treats a good portion of its storytelling as padding. Does it world-build? Heck yes it does. Does it need to world-build? Probably not. One of my favorite scenes in the movie is the psycho space gibbon. I love writing that. I don't know if that animal is a baboon or an ape or what, but I like writing the phrase "psycho space gibbon." It's a really fun scene in a movie that often takes itself way too seriously. If I was the director and I had a chance to shoot that scene, I know that I would keep it in there. The temptation would be too great. It's a fun scene in the midst of all this depression going on. But art critic Tim is also aware that the scene doesn't really contribute to the overall story. The only thing that I could justify as director Tim is that it shows that Roy handles stress and thinking on his feet better than anyone in the story whatsoever. But the film already does a more-than-admirable job showing that choice. We're introduced to Roy on the space antenna and he manages to keep his heartrate at a steady and calm pace. Similarly, the movie is loaded with scenes where his peers go into panic mode and he remains stoic and level headed. Adding a scene where he abandons his ship against his own better judgment to fight a space gibbon is fun, but ultimately a distraction from the film itself. For a movie that really fights to be spartan and to focus on the internal monologue of this guy having to meet his dad while battling what can only be described as extreme depression, it throws all of this gorgeous imagery around all willy-nilly. It's a pretty as heck movie and I absolutely adore that stuff, but I also recognize a distraction when I see one. I can't help but make a comparison to Blade Runner because I think it might hold the most in common with that very specific sub-genre. Blade Runner stands on the shoulders of film noir and science fiction and melds the two in a way that the story can only be told in the way it is. The plot is so intricate to the protagonist's sense of self. If Blade Runner is an examination of self-knowledge, the metaphor of wondering whether someone or other is a replicant is central to the story. But with Ad Astra, I'm not sure why it has to be science fiction. So I get the instinct to make this a work of science fiction. I, too, would do this. I know me. I know the type. The movie is gorgeous and it has all the trappings of being one of those movies that transcend the genre. But really, Ad Astra grafted something to a plot that doesn't really need to be there. I like the movie, but it really doesn't need to have stuff muddying up what could be a very poignant story. I get why the Academy didn't lose their mind about this one. The foundation is good, but it is mismatched with its content. R, mainly for cruelty. The trailers make this movie look super duper gory throughout. I would say that it has moments of intense violence and gore, but the rest of the movie is actually kind of tame. There's icky stuff in the movie, to be sure. The movie tip-toes around some statutory stuff, but the real stuff is just the cruelty that ensues throughout the film. If you have a thing about head injuries, you might get a little bit squeamish. There's also a pretty intense knife attack. But most of the movie is pretty okay. Oh, again, some kinda/sorta feces stuff too. Oh, and some graphic sex without nudity. Nothing to write home about. It's not The Lighthouse. R.
DIRECTOR: Bong Joon Ho I wish that I could say that I've seen more of Director Bong's movies. I adored The Host years ago. Snowpiercer was pretty great, but it was an adaptation of someone else's work. But when I heard that one of his films was up for an Academy Award, I got really excited. When I heard it was called Parasite, I simply assumed it was going to be a genre piece. I mean, The Host and Snowpiercer were both genre works, so I assumed the same would carry through. Instead, what I get is a movie that I have a really hard time placing inside a specific category. I stopped doing SPOILER WARNINGS, but I really have to stress that the twist works so much better with it as a surprise. The trailer actually kind of spoils it, but I went in blind, so I encourage you to go in the same way. I don't think I've ever seen such a tonal shift that worked so well in a movie. My wife and I were watching this movie together and commenting during the film (because we're obnoxious) how much we were loving the film. We knew something was going to happen. Things were just getting too light and pleasant. Also, the goals of the characters were nearing their completion and the movie just couldn't end. (But if it was a short...) So when that tonal shift happened, geez louise, I was not ready. I almost don't want to call it a twist. It is the plot, but the plot just shows up so late in the game. We may have become addicted to plot twists. Yeah, a gun to my head, I'd have to say that Parasite has a plot twist. But the twist in the movie is one not of "You should have seen this coming", but more along the line of adding complications to an already complicated world. I somehow adore the world of Parasite. We couldn't help but make comparisons to Shoplifters, which I don't like making that instant jump. I get the same way about The Lower Depths. I don't know why American audiences stay away from this demographic, but I like the character development that is associated with a group of people who bond together over poverty. We tend to have the story of the isolated impoverished. American characters that are poor are out against a system that shows people grasping for whatever straws they can. It's dog-eat-dog. But in movies like Parasite and Shoplifters, it doesn't deny that crime plays a part in the lives of the poor, but it does so as a communal act. In Shoplifters, the family was constructed over a bond in poverty. Parasite has biological ties between the family, but they are close because they depend on each other to survive. I love how instantly these characters come across as sympathetic. It's so interesting because these are characters who, like the title implies, are parasitic on their environment. Kim Ki-woo instantly takes advantage of his friends offer. He prowls on his underage girlfriend and begins the whole cycle of manipulation. This is going to make me a bad person, but he oddly seems like a good guy throughout, despite his absolutely criminal behavior. It's not a Walter White situation where we want to see how evil Walt can get before the end of the story. It's just that the Park family seems absolutely vapid and obnoxious in their luxury. They aren't ever bad people. We rarely get those moments. It's just that you see that the priorities of the Park family compared the priorities of the Kim family makes the Kim family, despite all of the horrible activities that they perform, way more of a relatable family. It's really bizarre and I question my whole moral compass right now. There's 10% of me who almost doesn't want the end. The end really works and I'm going to defend it. Director Bong does this thing in his movies where he does gorgeous gore. It's a little A24, but somehow tied directly to his particular style and aesthetic, making it valuable to the film. He cuts a lot of the Hollywoodness to the violence and makes impact work so much more intensely than stabbing. Everything in the movie escalates and it is what makes the movie memorable. I don't want to leave this idea because I believe that it has weight. But I also want to talk about how personal the movie feels before the basement reveal versus how epic the movie feels afterwards. The stakes at the beginning are criminal. From that perspective, it is a story of the haves versus the have-nots. That movie has weight. It becomes really about character in those moments. The movie dares the characters to come to grips with each others moral scruples. If the movie really wished to be this intimate character piece, it could have the legs to extend the argument to the whole film about whether the Kim family has the right to do what they do, despite a sense of priorities. But then the movie is really just Shoplifters. I suppose that's my big argument. Shoplifters managed to pull off a very similar story, why can't Parasite? But Parasite, with its tonal shift, also kind of shifts genre as well. If the beginning of the movie is a dramedy, the latter 40% of the film is an intense thriller that gets really out of hand while making a comment on social class. We were laughing pretty heartily for the first 60% of the movie. It's great and we fell in love with the character. The basement scene on, we were shouting at the screen. It's absolutely terrifying. In terms of playing with emotions, that's one of the primary goals of Parasite itself. It doesn't really let its audience get comfortable with all of the things being thrown at the screen. It's so much effort, but then the movie reminds us that there's a greater message. Ki-taek Kim chatting with Mr. Park reminds us that the entire world is insanely balanced. While I argued that the American poor fight each other, that may be a worldwide phenomenon that just looks a little different overseas. The fights between the Kim family and the family of the housekeeper should have been about wage equality with the Park family. There's something so degrading about the driver of a family having to dress up like a Native American brave, knowing that the poor were willing to kill each other over a dirty old basement and jobs that should have been considered pretty standard. And that's where Parasite becomes more than a drama, a comedy, or a thriller. It becomes an amalgamation of all three while commenting on wage inequality. Yeah, it's pretty insane that Mr. Kim murders Mr. Park. That's a real flex. I'm not sure what was the moment there that really happened. I have to imagine it was the humiliation of the headdress. But I also think that Mr. Park saw what he had done over the past 48 hours and how that affected who he was as a person. It's interesting because I'm sympathetic to all the characters. Mr. Park is a jerk, but not really. Mr. Kim is a jerk, but not really. It's all about realizing what choices are being made in the moment. It's a world where violence speaks louder than dollars. Director Bong is one of those directors that wake me up when he shows up. I'm still made at myself for not watching Okja because I know that there's probably something pretty special with that movie. I know that Parasite probably won't get the attention it deserves at the Academy Awards, but it might be my favorite movie this year. |
Film is great. It can challenge us. It can entertain us. It can puzzle us. It can awaken us.
AuthorMr. H has watched an upsetting amount of movies. They bring him a level of joy that few things have achieved. Archives
April 2024
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